July 14, 2008

Mayors attending this year’s Annual Conference of Mayors in Miami devoted the last afternoon of the meeting to a work session that laid the groundwork for an up-to-date plan for a partnership between the federal government and the nation’s cities that will be presented to the presidential candidates following the conventions and serve as the basis for discussions with the President-elect during the White House transition period.

In the two-hour session on June 23, mayors were invited by Conference CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran to participate in roundtable discussions to identify the specific priority areas that should be emphasized in an updated action plan for the cities. The roundtables were organized around several of the Conference’s established priority areas:

• Protecting the climate and developing clean energy sources;

• Fighting crime and terrorism;

• Responding to the mortgage foreclosure crisis, continuing affordable housing shortages, and growing community and economic development challenges;

• Providing the transportation, telecommunications, and other infrastructure essential to city economies;

• Creating jobs and preparing the workforce to fill them through quality schools and responsive training programs;

• Addressing poverty and other problems facing children, youth, and their families;

• Increasing the contributions of tourism, arts, and culture to local economies; and

• Creating an effective intergovernmental partnership to eliminate unfair taxes, unfunded mandates, preemptions, census undercounting, and other problems imposed by federal and state policies.

The Conference’s existing 10-Point Plan of action, "Strong Cities…Strong Families…for a Strong America," served as the basis for the discussions at each table. For the individual issue area on which they were working, the mayors were asked whether the 10-Point Plan should be updated to reflect changes or new developments that have occurred over the past year; whether new items should be added to bring it up to date; whether existing items should be dropped in the interest of keeping the focus on the Conference’s current highest priorities; and whether specific language should be included in the new plan — either in its description of the issues or in the specific recommendations it contains.

Each roundtable chose a mayor to serve as discussion leader and to summarize the roundtable’s recommendations for all the mayors at the close of the work session. The reports that the mayors presented will serve as the basis for an initial redrafting of the existing 10-Point Plan by the Conference staff members who served as resources during the session.