The Legacy Project: Burlington, Vermont
In 1998, Peter Clavelle, then mayor of Burlington, decided that it was time for the city to come together around a shared vision. The city was already a leader in a number of different areas — the arts, education, poverty alleviation, housing urban revitalization and energy efficiency — and could count on different groups who knew a lot about different aspects of urban sustainability. What the city lacked was a shared understanding of how all the parts fit together. Conflicts around a large affordable housing development planned for an open field, a planned expansion of a food co-op as the anchor grocery store in the downtown were skirmishes among different groups that illustrated a lack of understanding about all the various aspects of creating a sustainable future.
The city partnered with the Institute for Sustainable Communities and obtained funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency and private foundations to create a long-term sustainability plan for the city. Mayor Clavelle called it the Legacy Project, framing the process around what kind of city current residents would leave for their grandchildren. He defined his vision of an integrated plan as the Four Es of sustainability — Education, Equity, Economics and Environment.
To create a community-wide vision, the mayor convened a group of stakeholders that ranged from executives of the local banks, presidents of the University of Vermont and Champlain College (both located in the city), the CEO of the hospital, advocacy groups like the Peace and Justice Center and the Food Bank, local developers and ordinary citizens. The stakeholders agreed to meet on a monthly basis to discuss the planning initiative and make decisions about its overall direction.
The funding allowed the city and the Institute to hire several staff for the project, including two Americorps volunteers who would organize a lot of the public outreach activities; one staff person who worked for the City of Burlington; and another staff person — Gwendolyn — who worked for the Institute for Sustainable Communities at the time. Creating a vision was a goal, but an even more important goal was for the staff and stakeholders to draft an action plan that would help the city achieve the vision. In addition, the Institute for Sustainable Communities would compile a directory of best practices in use in Burlington, so other cities could learn from their example.
The project was scheduled to last 18 months — at the end a citywide vote was planned on any elements of the plan that required voter ratification. In addition, a large gathering was held — modeled after traditional New England Town Meetings — to get people in the community to help set the priorities for the action plan. In addition to the monthly stakeholder meetings, the Americorps volunteers participated in every public event they could fit on their calendars. They tabled at festivals, marched in parades, visited schools, organizations and anywhere people gathered to ask four simple questions:
1. What do you value about Burlington that you want to pass on to future generations?
2. What do you want to change?
3. What ideas do you have for the city’s future?
4. How can you help make the city a better place?
The answers to the questions were compiled, and the vision statement for the city was written from the results of the survey and a series of neighborhood meetings, focus groups and other public events that were held as part of the engagement process.
The Legacy Vision
Five major themes emerged in the common vision that Burlington residents hold for the future of the city. These are:
• Maintaining Burlington as a regional population, government, cul-tural and economic center with livable-wage jobs, full employment, social supports and housing that matches job growth and family incomes
• Improving quality of life in neighborhoods
• Increasing participation in community decision making
• Providing youth with high-quality education and social supports, and lifelong learning opportunities for all
• Preserving environmental health
In addition, the staff worked with four stakeholder committees to put together an action plan with goals, strategies and indicators that would be measured and reported by the University of Vermont, and an implementation plan to be monitored by the stakeholders with annual meetings into the future.
Committees and City Systems
Four committees were based on a modified version of the Four E approach to sustainability: Environment, Economy, Education, and Equity. As the feedback had come in from the surveys, it became obvious that the Four Es originally proposed were not enough to capture all the dimensions of community life that people valued. At first, the staff tried to add Es for things like Entertainment (the arts were a critical part of the community not expressed in the original formula), Eternity (people’s spiritual life was also important to them) and Etcetera (for all those things that didn’t lend themselves to an easy E).
From the chaos, an interesting order emerged that included and expanded on a basic truth the Es touched on — the key systems at work in every community. Education was an important part of the systems that provide social and human development. In addition to education, we have needs in this area that other activities have traditionally satisfied. Our need for aesthetic enjoyment and self-expression gives rise to the artistic and cultural life in any community. Our need for a sense of meaning, purpose and connectedness expresses itself in our wisdom traditions and spiritual practices. Our need for recreation, for safety, for caring relationships — all of these needs are met through the community’s social and human development systems.
Equity is also an important need — for fairness, for justice. Our need for equity — for a level of self-determination, for systems that help us manage conflict — gives rise to the governance systems we have developed over time — the ways in which we use power. Power is another important systemic flow in communities. Understanding how to meet people’s needs for empowerment in sustainable ways is a critical question for community leaders. Too often, the limited power that leadership brings makes people in positions of leadership blind to the need to share it widely, to cultivate leadership in neighborhoods, in civic organizations, in the faith community, so that the city itself is stronger and more resilient to the changes that the 21st Century brings.
So the four committees of the Legacy Project produced a plan for the Economy, Neighborhoods, Governance, Youth and Life Skills and the Natural Environment. Each section of the plan contained specific goals, a short list of priority actions, indicators that would be measured over time to track progress toward the goals and examples of some of the initiatives that have already been taken in the area. The final section of the plan outlined specific roles and responsibilities of the entire community, with stakeholders taking on particular elements of the plan as their institutional mission. The mayor was clear from the start that the city itself would not be the sole entity responsible for the plan’s implementation. That was a big reason for convening a large stakeholder process to begin with — the mayor truly wanted the Legacy Plan to be a plan for the whole community, not just city government.
The Action Taken
Like any plan, some of the actions identified moved along faster than others. Some are more controversial, even with a broad based public planning process, and can get snarled in politics or funding issues. Several elements of the Legacy Plan were implemented in the first couple of years following its adoption by City Council, some failed to get off the ground and others are still in limbo. Still others took on a life of their own and have had success that goes far beyond what the stakeholders imagined when they drafted the plan.
Coming out of the gate, there were controversial elements of the plan. An issue that got a lot of ink for the first year after the plan was completed was the plan’s orientation toward urban growth. The mayor and several stakeholders saw the sprawling growth patterns in Chittenden County and recognized that one way to change the pattern of the last 20 years was to take a more proactive orientation toward
growth within the city limits. One of the first goals in the plan reflected this as a major theme inherent in creating a vibrant urban center, saying:
In 2030, Burlington has absorbed the greater portion of the region’s population growth, expanding to as much as 65,000. The city is the center of culture, commerce, education, health care, and government. Housing and job growth have kept pace with the population.3
Given that in 1999 when the plan was written, the population in Burlington was approximately 35,000, this was an audacious goal which would almost double the population. Also, unlike virtually every other goal in the plan, it did not come from the input received during the outreach process, but rather from the mayor. More could have been done during the public input process to have a discussion about growth; this might have reduced the challenges to the legitimacy of the goal that immediately surfaced and unfortunately became identified with the plan as it moved forward.
Two of the priority actions under the Governance goal could have been controversial, but didn’t run into any real opposition as the mayor moved them forward. Since these actions involved changing the city’s charter — the document that forms the constitution for the city — there were several legal protocols to follow, which also could have provided opponents with a place to stop them. Two of these were:
Increase diversity — including youths and minorities — on decision-making boards of all types and provide a regular “report card” on progress.
Reorganize city government to make it more responsive and accountable to the voters, with the mayor overseeing city departments while balancing strong input from commissioners and other committed citizen volunteers. Implement more effective and centralized management.4
The City Charter was changed and was approved by the Vermont State Legislature in 2001. The charter changes included adding youth representatives to city boards and commissions, such as the Planning Commission, City Council and Conservation Commission. It also included a provision that gave the mayor hiring and firing power over department heads. Prior to the charter change, individual commissions — the highway commission, the police commission — hired and fired department heads. This meant that the mayor did not have an important tool at his disposal to make the departments accountable to the citizens; he had been a lightening rod for complaints, but did not have the ultimate authority needed to solve problems. As a chief elected official, he was also accountable to the voters, whereas the appointed heads of the commissions were not.
Legacy Projects
In addition to the structural changes made to city government as a result of the Legacy Project, several projects have been undertaken since then to meet the goals. Each year, the stakeholders get together for a review of the progress toward the goals and to play a role in establishing projects that can be done in the current year. The projects to date include:
The Burlington Food Council
The Burlington Food Council (BFC) is an open community group exploring ways to ensure that Burlington creates and nurtures a healthy, equitable and sustainable food system for all members of the community. To accomplish this mission the Burlington Food Council provides networking, partnership building and educational opportunities around food issues and provides strategic recommendations for decision makers. The BFC also works to serve as a model and source of innovation for the many groups involved in creating and nurturing a healthy, sustainable and equitable food system for the City of Burlington.
One of the main projects of the BFC is the Burlington School Food Project (BSFP), a citywide collaborative formed to address the integration of local foods into school meals and food insecurity among school aged children in Burlington, Vermont. Partners in the BSFP include Shelburne Farms, VT FEED, NOFA VT, the Intervale Center, the Burlington School District Food Service, City Market/Onion River Co-op and Healthy City Youth Farm.5
The Food Council and the School Food Project worked closely with local schools to give the school meal programs access to locally grown organic food. This was more difficult than first imagined, partly because the food services in the schools did not have the staff or the time for the food preparation involved. Most school lunches come as prepared foods, not foods that need peeling, chopping and cooking. The students and parents helped design a system for food preparation, and the students helped the food service by designing recipes that would use the produce from local farms, to make the integration of the new food as easy and cost-effective as possible.
No Idling Campaign
Legacy launched its No Idling Campaign in April 2007 with public outreach, education and policy advocacy efforts to reduce unnecessary vehicle idling as a way to improve air quality and overall quality of life for everyone who lives, works and plays in Burlington.6 The campaign worked with the city to enforce a city policy already on the books about city vehicles idling, and proposed an idling ordinance for the city to adopt. In March of 2008, the City Council passed a resolution directing the Public Works Commission to amend their parking ordinances to accommodate the anti-idling requirements.
Energy and Environment Coordinating Committee
The Mayor’s Energy and Environmental Coordinating committee (E2C2) was formed in mid-2007 and is composed of citizen representatives, government officials and others concerned with and involved in environmental issues. It is charged with recommending projects, programs and ideas to the City Council that can improve air quality and significantly reduce the City’s greenhouse gas emissions, the main culprit responsible for global warming.7 In May of 2008, the E2C2 presented City Council with several recommendations about making the transportation sector of the city more sustainable over time. These recommendations included:
1. Increase accessibility to transit with 15-minute bus service on major roads into and out of downtown and free bus service within the downtown.
2. Establish a streetcar line from City outskirts to downtown points, possibly originating at Exit 14.
3. Design and build a park and public transit facility at Exit 14 with seamless transit connections to area employment centers, as recommended in the CCMPO Regional Park and Ride Plan (February 2004).
4. Design and build a surface parking lot using the existing Champlain Parkway right-of-way near the I-189/Route 7 intersection. Collaborate with City of South Burlington.
5. Investigate a garbage contracting system by allowing haulers to bid for exclusive service in districts of the City.
6. Investigate increasing the percentage of biodiesel blend in the City’s summer fleet from 20% to 80% or higher.
7. Continue to strengthen and advance educational, outreach, incentive and recognition programs that promote walking, biking and car efficiency efforts.8
Social Equity Investment Project
The mission of the Social Equity Investment Project (SEIP) is to identify and support leadership in the Burlington community in order to facilitate sustainable and effective social change. SEIP does this through leadership development, social equity focus groups, the development of a coordination and influence network, financial development, and general education and awareness of social equity issues as Burlington moves beyond a crossroads of cultural and social shifting and growth.9
The Social Equity Investment Project does a lot through the coordinator working in the community to promote diversity. To do this, she works with a wide variety of community organizations to increase the representation in their leadership groups by people who are not traditionally in leadership positions — people of color, people who are physically challenged and people who have low incomes. Workshops are offered on subjects like “A Solution to Cultural Shifting,” and the coordinator supports projects run by Burlington’s Center for Community and Neighborhoods such as the Inclusive Community Initiative and the We All Belong Initiative.
A 2007–2008 report listed the following actions as the recommended next steps for the program:
1. Develop, extend and connect local community development capacity to ensure all the pe
ople have an opportunity to give voice to the future of their communities
2. Support increased capacity building efforts to improve the participation of marginalized groups in policy design
3. Support increased capacity building efforts to improve data collection, monitoring and evaluation of local, state and federal programs
4. Support increased capacity building to find, lift up and bring to scale programs that work
5. Identify and stabilize funding to support community leaders through access to leadership roles and opportunities
6. Local government leadership will contribute resources and participate in planning and action steps which support existing leadership to provide ongoing informed cultural dialogue, consultation and social resources
7. Identify methods to strengthen the city of Burlington collective work to more effectively achieve an equitable sustainable community 8. Maintain discussion and activity which foster awareness of and commitment to providing new emerging leadership the necessary tools to be effective
9. Continue to organize and facilitate discussion/gatherings with ethnic and culturally diverse and existing leadership at local government, business and non-profit sector to allow for greater opportunities to recognize commonality, valuable social connections and welcome strategies for successfully communicating and working with people across lines of different backgrounds
Creating Wealth Page 19