Paul Bonneville made a very long and interesting post on Columbus RetroMetro on Friday, mainly as some background clarification information to accompany a write up he received in The Other Paper this past week.
If you read through his background and the history of Columbus RetroMetro, you’ll see that Paul has a great passion for what he does and is looking to encourage more people to take up in arms and get involved on a local level. Below are a few excepts from his post:
Bob Milbourne of the Columbus Partnership was the spark that ignited a more active posture that I took with RetroMetro, that started with a period of more spicy and critical commentary and observations on city initiatives. In our meeting, we talked about a need for some citizen voices to start getting more active and taking a more direct interest in city affairs on a regular basis.
I stepped out of my safety zone and my fear of reprisal for expressing my critical opinions and started to focus my observations on a number of various topics that had been on my mind concerning a number of city initiatives. In turn, that shift in my writing snowballed into a paradigm shift in my thinking regarding civic activism and what was really needed to ensure Columbus’ urban revitalization and successful growth in the coming decades.
I realized we needed a new model which aimed at stimulating citizen’s to come back to the table to help work on the issues we will face in the coming years and the need for everyone to come together to work on them. Crime, education, downtown revitalization, transit, retaining our young and educated…the only answers that will fix these issues have to come from a collective body of Columbusites committed to working on them in a sustained manner that moves us away from a reactive model of govenrment.
The Columbus Partnership was working on things at the top. The city and county governments were in the middle and binding everything together. That left a huge gap at the bottom that I felt needed to be filled by the common folk to the end of working on issues directed at the betterment of Columbus. That is, in my mind, the true birthplace of innovation, a very necessary element for Columbus’ success in coming years. That’s where we come in.
I’ve got plenty of ideas for smaller micro-initiatives that I think could help, but no clear picture on how exactly downtown will evolve other than it won’t unless we all pitch in and start collaborating more to capitalize on our existing assets in the form of venues, restaurants and other retail establishments.
I do, however, have a vision for a connected group of multi-faceted citizen-based, grassroots organizations coming together to collaborate and work on issues we face as a city. Issues that I feel need to be addressed in order to make Columbus a city that will attract the talent and businesses needed in the coming years to make us a continued success.
The mayor and his proposed Bicentennial Bond package are setting the stage to make the capital resources available for use to develop our neighborhoods and communities in ways that haven’t even been thought up yet. Again, that’s where we come in. Start noodling some ideas for some initiatives in your community so that if and when the time comes that the mayor and the city comes to us and asks us what we want, we have some answers.