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DEL.ICIO.USComments from the Denver trip
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Comments from attendees Denver LINK trip - 2008
From John O’Callaghan, President and CEO of Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership
This was my second Link trip (last year also). I was struck by the strong consensus among the Atlanta group around the urgent need for regional transportation funding structures. There was unanimous support for moving forward with a regional funding transportation funding structure which included highways and transit. Denver’s housing programs are designed to sync with their transportation plans. There is an understanding that when homes are near work centers and transit opportunities, the need for additional road capacity is reduced.
Denver and Atlanta continue to borrow best practices from one another. Their airport eerily resembles Hartsfield-Jackson. Coors Field and Turner Field are stadium cousins. I (and most others on the trip) am convinced that Shirley Franklin and John Hickenlooper (in that order!) are America’s top two big-city Mayors.
Mayor Hickenlooper developed the first 10-year plan to end homelessness and outlined multiple successes in their housing first plan which recognized that dollars for jails, emergency health care and the criminal justice system can be saved if housing and critical supportive services are made available to the homeless.
While the City of Atlanta’s recently developed affordable and workforce housing programs (TAD Affordable Housing Requirements, Beltline’s 15% set aside for affordable and workforce housing, Housing Opportunity Fund) match Denver’s, its clear that our suburbs trail Denver’s in developing incentives to ensure that working families across income spectrums can live near local job centers and services.
Atlanta can learn from Denver’s clear best practices in regionalism. Transportation and Arts funding along with Economic Development Activities are coordinated at the regional level. Denver can learn from Atlanta’s rich diversity, and how that diversity is represented in our civic and business leadership.
From Craig Lesser, managing director of McKenna Long & Aldridge
This was an outstanding trip. Great program and of course great participants. While not perfect by any means, the coordinated effort of the local jurisdictions was particularly noticeable, especially as related to transportation and BRAC
From Tim Lowe CEO of Lowe Engineers
What Denver demonstrated was that an engaged business community could provide the leadership needed to make good things happen. Denver is a fairly young city, reminiscent of Atlanta 25 years ago. They do not have major Fortune 500 headquarters, but have many regional headquarters. It is obvious that these ‘regional CEO’s” have a civic pride and have their hometown as the focus.
From Randy Hayes President of Hayes Development Corp.
The Denver trip was one of the better ones. It was better in the sense that the speakers were very good. Especially the doctor who is in charge of Denver’s Public Hospital. She was exceptional. She seemed honest and open about the status of her hospital, and I believe she said it operated in the black.
From H. Jerome Russell President of H.J. Russell & Co.’s New Urban Development
It was the most relevant LINK trip I have attended. Denver had many issues that were similar to the Atlanta region and it left one with a much clearer perspective on how to solve the problem.
From Al Nash Chairman of the Regional Business Coaliton; executive with the Columns Group
This was one of the best Link’s trips ever. I felt like the Atlanta participants really came together, especially at the end. One thing that became evident to me during the trip is that we in Atlanta need to work on trust, as so many times we do not trust the people and the project, which leads to failure. If we are going to succeed as a great city and region, we must work on trust.
From Raymond King SunTrust’s senior vice president of community and government affairs
They have good regional cooperation with strong support from state and Federal government in many of their infrastructure and quality of life initiatives. Its been a stark reminder of the unfortunate results of our recent General Assembly session. We are falling behind rapidly in transportation efforts.
Once again, we came away from the LINK trip with some great examples of the power of working together regionally. As we have so many times before, we saw how a competing region is taking advantage of regional cooperation to solve difficult problems such as the transportation challenge we face here in metro Atlanta. I would hope that all the participants take that to heart and collectively garner the political will to lead regional cooperation here. Our future success depends upon it.
From Demming Bass Vice President if Marketing and Public Policy of Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce
1 - We are very fortunate to have such strong leadership throughout the metro Atlanta region and within ARC. Our goal needs to be to focus that leadership and bring them towards a shared vision. To achieve that, three things have to happen…
First, as the Denver Chamber President pointed out, every community needs to be able to answer this question, “Will my community be willing to give up something/a portion of revenue for the greater good of the region?” The catch is, this must be a two-way street - what would the suburban counties be willing to give up for the greater good of the city of Atlanta and Fulton County? What would the City of Atlanta and Fulton County be willing to give up for the greater good of the suburban counties surrounding it? We must find ways to promote regionalism to every participant and ensure complete buy-in and understanding. With the exception of the regional transportation funding plan and our efforts within Get Georgia Moving as well as the recently formed Innovation Crescent Regional Partnership, I don’t think we are there yet, but we are moving in the right direction and under Chairman Sam Olens’ leadership, it appears the region is working more closely than ever before. There were a couple of examples of this in recent months…during Gwinnett’s efforts to support Get Georgia Moving and the transportation funding bill that failed in the Senate by three votes, Gwinnett’s leadership was even prepared to take the risk of having the T-Splost ballot vote on the same ballot as our local SPLOST this November. Many believed this would jeopardize our local funds, but we knew traffic congestion was such a crisis, not just for us, but for the entire Atlanta region, we were willing to take that chance for the greater good of our peer counties. Get Georgia Moving is an example of our working together by bringing together so many organizations with different agendas but we all agreed to work together with each other and making sure that everyone got something while no one got everything. We need more of that attitude and leadership.
Second, we need to remember the old saying from President Truman, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” This is hard to do for leaders and elected officials, simply because, often times, it’s not in their nature. But I have seen it personally from my days with the Greater Raleigh Chamber in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, where my former boss stressed this thinking daily and sets the standard in promoting regional cooperation. It seems this was also the attitude in Denver.
Third, we need true leadership from the top down. As we heard from the mayor and the superintendent and the community leaders that helped turn visions into reality, many participants commented about what an impact a strong leader makes. Imagine leadership at the highest levels of state government that actually took our transportation crisis seriously…leadership that laid out a clear plan for cutting our commute times, passing meaningful legislation for all Georgians, actually funding that plan and selling that plan to their constituents. But as we saw, bad politics trumped good policy this past session. Thank goodness we have leaders like Rep Vance Smith, Sen. Jeff Mullis, Rep. Donna Sheldon and others that take this issue seriously, which should give us hope.
From Andrew Feiler President of Metro Developers
To me there were two especially significant findings. First, they have a multicounty regional transit board made up of 15 members elected from districts of equal population. This could transform the transportation debate in our region. It gets beyond the county structure, and, since folks would have to campaign for these positions, it would be a massive effort in citizen education and engagement on the issues.
Second, all employees of the City and the health system are on Denver Health’s health plan. This creates a virtuous circle of putting more people into the system who would be demanding of quality care which should in turn drive care quality. Also, Denver Health has been very proactive in creating new service streams which are positive cash flow.
Comments
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By tesc nsevyoiau
November 13, 2008 4:13 PM | Link to this
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November 13, 2008 4:14 PM | Link to this
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