RE: Secure the Blessings of Liberty:  Eleven years ago, the Jacksonville
Community Council Inc. (JCCI) and the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce thought
about such things and came up with different terminology for about the same
thing:  Quality of Life.  We were seeking a means of understanding where we
stand as a community, recognizing that economic indicators alone didn't cover
the waterfront.  We developed a process of measuring 75 indicators of the
quality of life in Jacksonville, which has been replicated annually since.
For most indicators, we have data from 1983, providing some interesting trend
lines.  In 1991, we set community targets for each indicator for the year
2000.  This project was created and designed by a citizens task force of about
100 in 1985.  The targets were set by another task force numbering about 140.
Each year, a citizens committee reviews and monitors the project.

The document published each year has become useful in several ways.  It
outlines important dimensions of our quality of life, as we have defined it
ourselves; it provides a mirror of where we are and what the trends are in our
quality of life; and it provides a guide for community action to improve our
quality of life, to better secure the blessings of liberty.

One of the primary criteria for selection of an indicator is whether something
potentially can be done locally through public action to alter the trend line,
if it is trending in the "wrong" direction.

This quality of life project is just one of those JCCI sponsors.  Most of our
effort goes into major citizen-based studies of specific community issues
(where we feel that the blessings of liberty are not being adequately
secured).  It's interesting to note that, since we started the quality of
life project, we've found that its indicators have been very helpful in
guiding us toward useful study issues.  A major criterion for selection of a
study issue is that JCCI can effect positive change on the issue at the local
level through citizen influence.

What I've described is a formal and complicated way of dealing with the
questions under "secure the blessings of liberty" in Ed's community-building
process.  It seems to work reasonably well, at least in Jacksonville, at the
level of a large urban community.  I hear Bill Callahan describing a similar
process at the neighborhood level, but one that is much less data-oriented and
formalized.  We at JCCI have pondered how our process could be exported and
adapted for use at the neighborhood level.  We're still pondering.  Maybe Bill
and others on this list have some suggestions.

As many of you may know, quite a movement has developed around the country and
the world to measure indicators.  It goes by different names in different
places--quality of life, sustainability, healthy communities.  From slightly
different perspectives, they all focus on the same issues, but within the U.S.
at the level of communities, urban and/or rural, and internationally at the
level of countries.  I've seen little attempt to bring the concept to the
neighborhood level.

Incidentally, the City of Jacksonville is sponsoring a "neighborhood summit"
next Friday, at which it apparently will offer a series of workshops designed
to strengthen neighborhood organizations.  Next week, I'll report on the
extent to which this event is informed by the concepts of community building
that we're discussing, including "securing the blessings of liberty."

RE:  Running a multi-session program using the guide...:  I guess each of us
must respond to this challenge based on the uniqueness of our community or
neighborhood and the role we personally play in community change.  JCCI will
not be sponsoring the specific kind of program Ed outlines.  Actually, we've
"been there, done that."  However, the major citizen-based study I'll be
staffing starting in October should fit right in with what we've been talking
about.  As I stated above, our studies are directed toward specific community
issues.  Last year and this year, however, the issues I've been involved with
are what might be called community process issues (as opposed to issues like
teenage pregnancy, transportation, water quality, and the like).  Last year,
I staffed (with a volunteer study committee of over 70) a study on community
leadership, which is now in its implementation phase.  I'm about to begin a
study that is being called "Improving Public Dialogue."  The issue statement
reads as follows:  "How do local public agencies, private organizations, and
citizens communicate for public purposes, and how can their communications
process be improved for the public good?"  The issue has been several years
in the making.  Until this year, it was conceived of as a media issue, and,
in that form, never was accepted because it always looked too much like a
vehicle to bash the media (which might be needed but wouldn't necessarily
lead to positive community change).  This year, the issue was redrafted with
this broader scope (yes, it'll be a huge study) to submerge the media
lightning rod.  In the process, it took on the aura of a civic-values and
community-building issue.  I'm looking forward to this one.  It'll be a
challenge to pull off but also has the potential for we the people in
Jacksonville to substantially raise the level of our capacity to deal with
developing a more perfect union, insuring domestic tranquillity, securing the
blessings of liberty, and promoting the general welfare.  Wish us luck.

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