Citizen Solution: How You Can Make A Difference

10. Renewing Government of the People

10 Renewing Government of the People Political leaders and civil servants seeking to strengthen civic life help return us to a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Citizens outside of government who remember that the government is us, not them, claim the station of citizenship. They shift from being childlike protestors or dependents to being adult partners. Both sides help create the shift from scarcity to abundance. F          and conservatives is entrenched in Minnesota and elsewhere with no resolution in sight, I believe a Star Tribune editorial of  headlined “Minnesota Shows Signs of Civic Revival” had it right. The paper ’s editors pointed to a civic stirring that is profoundly important. This is much more than increasing the number of volunteers or expanding the number of voters in elections. A civic revival can change our public conversation, widen our horizons, and shift us from a politics of scarcity to a politics of abundance.1 One necessary change involves rethinking the role of government and other institutions, now mainly service providers but potentially, as they once were, catalysts. Catalytic government helps to generate abundance by multiplying the civic energies and talents available to solve 159 problems, produce commonwealth, and build communities. Below the surface, strong examples of catalytic government have appeared. The Commonwealth of Burnsville In , after serving on the Burnsville city council, Elizabeth Kautz campaigned for mayor of the southern Minneapolis suburb on the slogan , “Government doesn’t have to be bad!” She wanted a return to a view of government as a catalyst for generating civic energy and engagement , not mainly as a service provider. “All of us together need to create a citizenry that is empowered to do the work of the public,” she said. “Government can help. But in an era of limited resources and great challenges, I can’t pretend that government alone can fix it anymore , and, besides, coming together to solve problems engages the people of the community and everyone will experience a sense of purpose, involvement, success, and pride.”2 When teenage skateboarders got in trouble with the law for skating in school parking lots, Kautz asked them what could be done to change their behavior. “If you get us a skateboard park, we’ll stop skating where we’re not supposed to,” they said. Kautz replied, “I agree you need a place to enjoy your sport, but we are not going to build the park for you. However, I will work with you and together we can build a park for you to enjoy and practice your sport. What I will do is bring people together and I can open some doors. But you’re going to have to organize all of the kids and the parents.” Working with several adults, the teenagers negotiated agreements with service clubs, businesses, and insurance companies. They raised money, developed a design, and gained support from the city to build the park. The city identified land within the Civic Center for the park, and city employees, along with volunteers from the businesses and service organizations, helped build it. The skateboard story is part of a wider effort at civic renewal in Burnsville called Partnerships for Tomorrow. The overall objective has 160 • T H E C I T I Z E N S O L U T I O N been to rebuild the civic life of Burnsville by tapping latent human talents and other resources in new ways. Kautz described Burnsville as a “commonwealth” and “a community of abundance.” Government work was redesigned and clustered in six priority areas set by citizens: safety, youth, neighborhoods, development and redevelopment, environment , and transportation. The mayor and council added Financial Management and Service Delivery to those priorities identified by the citizens. The city and residents formed substantial partnerships in each area. The Burnsville initiative hinged on a fundamental redefinition of government’s role. “We’ve had to get beyond customer service, so that public outcomes are widely owned by the citizens,” explained Kautz. City manager Greg Konat pointed out that this is difficult, given dominant assumptions on both sides. Civil servants are trained to think of citizens as clients and, more recently, as customers. “Moving beyond the customer service model has meant that we had to recognize that we can’t do all the public tasks in government, even if we’d like to. Rather than just provide...