No longer a bridesmaid

The National Civic League announced over the weekend that Kissimmee won one of the 10 All-America City awards for 2008.

We offer congratulations to those who managed the city's application. If we had been judging, we would have paid a lot of attention to the fact that the expenses for the application and presentation competition were paid by individual and corporate donations, rather than from taxpayer funds. We believe that wise and frugal uses of tax dollars are a true "All-American" trait. We think this is also a good learning case...you don't need to field a team of 100 players at tremendous cost to get something done. Bigger is not always better.

We know that many of the commissioners worked hard to ensure that Kissimmee would be able compete for this title again. Many of them have openly stated that winning this title would serve as a rallying point to help bring our community together. As divided as our community has become, we hope this is true. We have also heard in several debates on the issue that winning this competition would help secure economic development. We hope that this win will be used by our commissioners to do more than fill space on their own campaign flyers. While some commissioners may deserve credit for the work they put in on entering our community into the competition, the work is not over. As a matter of fact, the hard work is just beginning.

The award is for one year. Kissimmee must use the publicity from this award to bring attention, and frankly, new businesses to the city. Simply putting the logo on city letterhead, a few signs on popular streets, and in various election campaign mailers, will not be enough. As elected officials, and leaders, commissioners now have the job of raising community pride and rallying and uniting our community around this accomplishment. This may prove to be an even more difficult task than winning the competition because the judges from the NCL don't visit the communities they judge, whereas our residents see the true state of our community every day.

Interestingly, when we were visiting the National Civic League's website on Friday, looking for news on the competition, we learned that the NCL has a whole "other side" that focuses on "helping communities confront and resolve their most pressing and urgent challenges."

Among other items NCL offers is a "Model City Charter" for municipal governments using the council-manager form of government. And there are some articles by Derek Okubo, Vice President of NCL, that would be of any interest to Wayne Who readers. Check them out at http://ncl.org/cs/articles.html. We hope our elected officials and candidates will.