Bridging the Divide

Bridging the Divide
(Original Blog Post March 2010)

Have you heard the song about the bridge?  You know - the Innerbelt bridge. The bridge connecting the east and west sides of our city that ODOT is going to rebuild because the one that's there is getting pretty weak.

There's a difference of opinion between the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and a lot of Greater Clevelanders about who should have a say in what the bridge is for and which design should be chosen.

Last August, I asked Jolene Molitoris, ODOT's Director, "Philosophically, what is the role for self-determination in public policy planning?"  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcG_r6ByQ2M&feature=related) While Ms. Molitoris answered with her commitment to partnerships and her welcoming of citizen input, she came down on the side of consensus decision making without weighing the concept of self-determination, or giving any weight to local opinions.  (In a separate part of her talk, she says ODOT is in the customer service business, so maybe there's hope.)

Ari Lesser, a composer and lyricist from Cleveland Heights, has written a song about the range of citizens of NE Ohio who have desires for that bridge.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GP3XJquJ_8 )  His song has moved scores of people to weigh in on this issue.

Ari read 50 letters to the Governor and ODOT to learn what the community-wide "consensus" was.  I was surprised to learn from his song, for instance, that all of us pay infrastructure taxes yet only some of us can legally cross that bridge. I hope you listen to his song to learn more about what this bridge means to a lot of Greater Clevelanders. 

And then I hope you visit the Green City Blue Lake website (http://www.gcbl.org/innerbelt) to get the latest news about the design process for this important civic project.  Perhaps you'll be moved to write to the Governor and ODOT, too.

The metaphor of this bridge and its visual reminder of citizens' relationship with our government is too compelling to waste.  The activity and enthusiasm around Sustainable Cleveland 2019 may be fertile ground for us to build new civic engagement processes around.  But that can only happen if people cross the bridge from complacency to engagement.

(Update 2011:  ODOT has agreed to add a safe lane for cyclists to the Lorain-Carnegie/Hope Memorial Bridge.  Thank you Ari and the Sustainable Transportation Working Group!)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Urban and Rural Paradigms

This post was originally written in January of 2012. This morning I attended a forum on the controversy surrounding horizontal fracking. The session was offered by a community minded church to educate the public   on the issues involved in the controversy. The panel was well-organized, prepared and diverse.  The hosts had invited people from the energy/fracking industry to come, but they declined.  So, it seemed that a fairly homogenous crowd gathered - homogenous in this case meaning urbanites against fracking.  Now, with my background in dangerous manufacturing, I’m sure that there are ways to safely extract gas from shale. If we apply OSHA-like regulations to the storage of the wastewater, then that storage could be done safely as well.   However, I'm really skeptical of energy companies’ willingness to protect people and the environment without regulation and mandated accountability requiring them to do so.  But something e...
Read more

Reflections on the Course I Just Finished Teaching

I haven’t written a post since the end of January when I told you about the course on which I was embarking.   Here, and in the next few posts, are some of my reflections.   The course I told you about at the end of January has filled my mind and my days.   It ended last week and has been a joyous, if hard slogging, ride.   I loved the design of the course – from the flow from high level skills overviews, through the focus on three ways to view human systems that are placed in and interact with the environment, the team projects and our 11 amazing speakers, including a panel of four from the Flats Forward Project.   The students in this MBA course were top-notch and delivered high quality projects to their clients in a celebratory last class.   One change from the original concept was clarity about not designing solutions.   The effective and ethical thing to do when faced with a problem that spans one or more boundaries, is to design a solutio...
Read more

New Leader Integration Process

Are you the new leader of a company or department?   Are you about to hire a new leader for your firm?   Would you like to accelerate this transition and realize amazing enthusiasm for what’s next?   Here are the steps one manufacturing plant took to get their new plant manager, and everyone else, up to speed. First, the new leader, Pat, and the management team wrote responses to a confidential survey to get their expectations and issues out on the table.   This process made sure the new leader and the whole team would be aware of and address the “real” issues in the plant that crop up every day.   Confidentiality meant the tough, politically difficult questions could be asked:   1.   Is there anything you need to know from Pat right away in order to do your job better? 2.   What do you want Pat to know about the direct report team? 3.   How do you feel about being a member of this team? 4.   What is the organizational "secret" ...
Read more