December 12, 2005

As part of an initiative begun by Working Mother magazine, Redmond (WA) Mayor Rosemarie Ives was pleased to host a Multicultural Town Hall at the Microsoft Conference Center November 30. One of only seven town halls convened around the country, the multicultural town halls are a unique opportunity for senior level women in leadership positions in government, business and academia to meet face to face and discuss key issues in the workplace such as work-life balance, executive women and women of color initiatives. Throughout the day, top female professionals from Redmond and the surrounding Seattle area shared insights and built consensus on how employers can support their women of color employees, as well as foster lasting working relationships and cooperation across racial lines. Attendees had the opportunity to:

• Learn from leaders who champion the core values of workplace diversity;

• Find out what employers are doing—and not doing—to set the standard for best practices in recruitment, retention and promotion of women of color;

• Talk with the CEO and editor of Working Mother magazine.

In addition to Ives, attendees included Phyllis Gutiérrez Kenney, Representative, Washington State Legislature; Carol Evans, Founder and CEO, Working Mother Media; S. Mae Fujita Numata, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Seattle Times; Claudette Whiting, Senior Director for Global Diversity and Inclusion, Microsoft; Trish Millines Dziko, Executive Director, Technology Access Foundation, Microsoft; and many more. Working Mother magazine is interested in expanding the initiative to include a greater role for local elected leaders in future town halls in cities across the country.

The New Orleans mayoral race scheduled for Feb. 4, 2006, will be delayed until early April. Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin and other potential candidates are confronted with an electorate that has been dispersed to other states. Nagin has been dealing around-the-clock on a busy schedule of visits to other cities to urge former residents to come home, and also frequent Congressional testimony on how his city responded post-Katrina. His schedule also has been heavy on national television interviews and meetings with his city’s council members and the commission New Orleans has to rebuild the city.

Kenosha (WI) Mayor John Antaramian is a driving force behind plans to build a $15 million Civil War museum, according to a Dec. 2 Associated Press story. Kenosha, halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago, is in an area where 11 million people are within a two-hour drive.

Antaramian’s museum would, if realized, join the billion-dollar a year Civil War tourism industry. While no battles took place in Wisconsin, Kenosha museum curator said about 94,000 Wisconsin residents- - roughly one-in-two able bodied men- - enlisted even though the state was established just 13 years before the war began.

The December 2005 issue of Governing magazine features several articles about mayors.

Buffalo’s new Mayor Byron Brown takes office next month and is profiled. Brown, 46, is Buffalo’s first African American mayor. A decade ago, the article notes Brown won election to the city’s Common Council and has spent the past five years representing the city in the New York Senate.

In the same issue, Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson and his effort in promoting charter schools has used his power to try and reshape education in the poorest parts of the city. He’s created what is in effect a parallel charter school district, one with a rigorous accounting system aimed at satisfying the concerns of charter school cities. Peterson has been in office since 2000, winning the mayoralty at age 41 in his first try for elective office. The article adds: “A lawyer, developer, and longtime aide to U.S. Senator Evan Bayh (when he was Governor), he ran as a conservative Democrat armed with a book of initiatives termed the “Peterson Plan.”

The lengthy article centers on a detailed analysis of the many challenges the mayor faced in implementing his charter school plans to make education one of the top priorities in Indian’s capitol city.

In another article, the one on city efforts to help solve homeless problems, efforts to move homeless people into permanent housing are showing results.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has pledged to end chronic homelessness and has won passage of a ten-year plan intended to pursue that goal, though his timetable is actually more like six years. The Bush administration, the article points out, is asking cities and counties to adopt ten year plans much like San Francisco’s. The article adds that new energy on the issue of homelessness comes from Philip Mangano, a longtime advocate from Boston, who is now the President’s “homeless czar.”

Notes the article in commenting on Mangano’s work with Democratic mayors: “It also helped that Mangano had an old friend in the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Mayors – Thomas Menino of Boston – to convince colleagues that the message was worth listening to.”

Sugar Land (TX) Mayor David G. Wallace was recently appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to serve on the Board of the TexasOne Program. Wallace is the sole local elected official appointed to the Board. The TexasOne Program was chartered as a non-profit organization by the Texas legislature in 2003 to raise money for use in promoting the state as an exceptional home for industry to leading companies and site selection experts around the world. It is a public-private partnership designed to spur job creation and economic expansion in Texas cities. The program works directly with the Texas Office of the Governor-Economic Development & Tourism Division.

Wallace will be responsible for working with the Board of Directors to guide the activities of the TexasOne Program. He will serve as a Texas “Ambassador” in the state and on out-of'state missions to attract new business. He will also help the program raise funds to market the state and its cities as prime locations for new business. The goal is to raise $5 million over three years to help state efforts to bring new jobs to Texas communities.

Wallace stated, “The cities of Texas can provide significant beneficial assets to businesses seeking to locate in a business-friendly environment. We have the land, the work force, the right fiscal environment and an outstanding culture in which to start, relocate or grow a business. The TexasOne Program is an intergovernmental partnership that links the economic development tools of the state with the ability of the municipalities to create tax abatements and direct incentives to attract new business and new jobs.”