A few things to know this week: June 19, 2020
Happy Friday (and happy Juneteenth), friends! Every week we collect some of the best things that members of our Verdunity team read, watched, or listened to over the course of the week—plus anything new from us.
New on the Go Cultivate! podcast:
Advocating for Texas cities – with Bennett Sandlin
Bennett Sandlin, Executive Director of Texas Municipal League, on the impact of COVID-19 on city budgets, the relationship between local governments and the state, and much more.
This week’s things to know:
Virus is Squeezing State and Local Public Workers’ Personal Finances, Survey Finds (Route Fifty)
The Center for State and Local Government Excellence released a new survey this week that reports on how the pandemic is impacting state and local government employees. – Kevin
News Release: Opportunity Zones will worsen affordable housing crisis, displace Black and Brown residents (Americans for Financial Reform)
The title pretty much says it all, but it’s worth reading, especially if you’re not too familiar with the Opportunity Zones program. – Jordan
Bonton Farms Has Big Plans for 12-Acre Site in Lake Highlands (D Magazine)
There are a lot of great non-profits in every city that solve important issues and meet important needs in the community. I came across this article about Bonton Farms, a multi-faceted nonprofit that is helping the Dallas with homelessness on a targeted property in Lake Highlands. Their approach to this problem demonstrates how non-profits who are used to tight budgets can help address community problems more effectively and efficiently. Oh—and there's also some great dialogue about how leaders of color are balancing their professional careers with our national dialogue on race and COVID threats. – Tim
Do you enjoy these weekly roundups? (Why wouldn’t you?) You can get them sent straight to your email inbox every Friday, if you’re into that.
Insights from some field experts on how we'll age, learn, create, and move around post COVID. – Kevin
When [Some] Workers Can Live Anywhere, Many Ask: Why Do I Live Here? (WSJ)
This article discusses how the covid-initiated remote work trend is impacting people's choices on where they live. On a recent podcast, Quint Studer and I talked about the opportunity small and midsize cities have today to bring talent back home. The types of neighborhoods and infrastructure cities build and business models they support will determine which cities capitalize on this opportunity. – Kevin
As we come through this extended period of time at home, active transportation organizations are taking action prioritizing safe spaces to get exercise outdoors. In a rather ambitious proposal, the five borough bikeway in New York is 400+ miles of protected bike lanes and trails. The details are still being worked out, but this continued focus on people-friendly city building is encouraging, and hopefully it becomes a model for other towns and cities to become more equitable and sustainable. It’s just once piece, but it’s definitely an important one. – Ryan
If We Don’t Solve Racial Injustice, We’ll Never Solve The Climate Crisis (Huffington Post)
Often it seems like the issues of pursuing racial justice (or social justice more broadly) and addressing our climate crisis head-on are presented as separate or even unrelated fights. Nothing could be further from the truth. This piece by Nylah Burton does a good job of introducing the topic of environmental justice for those who aren’t familiar—making the connection between racism, inequality, and the environment. – Jordan
How to End Anti-Blackness in Cities (Curbed)
A good piece in Curbed that highlights the work of just a few Black planners and designers. – Jordan
Here's the standard disclaimer: We always encourage our team members to freely share their thoughts and opinions, both in these newsletters and elsewhere. Given that, opinions expressed by any one member do not necessarily represent the views of the company as a whole.
Today, June 19 @ 1:30pm CDT
The third webinar in our (ten-part) biweekly series!
In our first two webinars, we covered assessing existing tools and resources. The third and final element of the assessment phase in our framework is evaluating how you’re doing on getting input from citizens. Do you have a culture of apathy, or do you have an interested and energetic citizenry that is anxious to contribute their ideas and feedback?
In this webinar, AJ and Kevin break down the topic of community engagement and discuss a few specific ways you can evaluate:
Who you are engaging—and who’s being left out;
How you’re engaging people—and other methods you may not be thinking about;
When to engage them; and
Most important of all… Why you’re engaging them—and how to better connect with citizens to increase the frequency and quality of your engagement efforts.
Want to learn more about how fiscal analysis can help you make your city stronger financially?
We created a new sister website showcasing how we use math, maps, and money to help cities communicate your resource gap and explore ways to increase tax revenue and improve service efficiency without necessarily raising taxes.
Hey, friends in local government:
Have thoughts on any of the links above? Think we missed something essential? We’re discussing these topics and more over on our brand-new online community, exclusively for local government employees.* Sign up for the Community Cultivators Network and join the discussion!
* The network is currently only for those wonderful folks out there who work in local government. If you’re not currently working for a city, town, or county, we still love you (and are sure many of you would add value to the community), but we want to keep our commitment to making this a community focused specifically on our friends working in local government. Thanks for understanding!
