MAYOR GOES TO HARVARD
Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership initiative offers chance for city leaders to compare notes, discuss similarities and be inspired, Thia James writes.
Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark is one of 40 mayors from around the world selected to take part in the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative.
The yearlong program began with a three-day classroom intensive in New York City last week, including a talk by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two senior Saskatoon leaders will attend a similar meeting this month. The program is hosted by Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Starphoenix reporter Thia James spoke to Clark about his experience, which he says was one of the richest learning experiences he’s ever had.
Q Were there certain issues or challenges shared among many of the cities?
A It was interesting because a lot of the core challenges that people talked about were, in a lot of ways, on the human side of what cities are facing: homelessness, gun violence, youth incarceration, growing inequality. The core sticky problems and the challenges that the cities and the mayors tended to gravitate towards were the human side.
I would say the session was a reminder that cities are ultimately about people, and if you pay attention to the needs of people and creating conditions for people to come together and work together to build a stronger community, then you can address some of the physical issues, the potholes and the transportation issues .... At the same time, the economy, the changing nature of technology and how it’s shaping cities and challenges of infrastructure were also on people’s minds and were also part of the discussion.
Q Is it also a chance to learn from someone else’s experience and apply it to our own?
A Absolutely. That’s the opportunity. St. Paul, Minn., Melvin Carter is the mayor of that city, it’s another city on the plains that is a winter city and has some similar issues and challenges to us, but has tackled some in different ways.
That opportunity to connect, to get to know one another and learn what they’ve been able to do in their community to address some of the issues they face is absolutely key because no one city should be trying to reinvent the wheel. We have so much more in common than we have different.
Q Were there any things that other mayors wanted to learn from Saskatoon?
A One of the areas I ended up talking to people about was about how we’re working on reconciliation in our community between the Indigenous and non-indigenous communities.
I had a long chat with Victoria (Woodards), the mayor of Tacoma, Wash., because there are some similar issues that they’re working on, and trying to establish and build a stronger partnership and relationship with some of the Indigenous communities in and around Tacoma .... Tim (Keller) from Albuquerque (New Mexico), we talked quite a bit as well because at the local level, there’s a lot of work being done to figure out how to create that successful, inclusive city built on partnerships that recognizes the failings of the past and moves forward in a different way.
Q Was there a city that you were most intrigued to learn about?
A Yvonne (Aki Sawyerr) the mayor from Freetown, Sierra Leone — what was striking to hear from her perspective was just how much we have to take for granted in our city.
In Sierra Leone, they only have 30 per cent of their properties that are in the city identified and assessable and able to generate property taxes from it.
It’s a situation where 70 per cent of the properties are not even recorded. The challenges of trying to provide infrastructure and services and everything in an environment like that, and sharing the experience that she had of them trying to deal with the Ebola crisis, it puts into perspective what, in other cities, people are trying to tackle.
(Also interesting to hear from were) some of the newer, younger mayors and some of the bold ideas they have around changing the way they’re doing their budgeting process, even in Stockton, Calif., Mayor Michael Tubbs has got a private sponsorship to run a universal basic income program.
He’s a mayor that has been in place for less than a year.
I was impressed by the problem-solving approach and the innovation that was going on there.