A city deeply in debt; an infrastructure crisis brought on by years of neglect; a crime rate at epidemic levels; a population demoralized by poor past political leadership and a recalcitrant refuse problem.
Sound familiar? Harrisburg 2013, of course.
But also New York, circa 1977, when Ed Koch was elected mayor for the first of his three terms.
At Koch’s funeral last month, the current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said of him, “The New York that Ed inherited is almost unimaginable today. There was crime, a broken government and whole neighborhoods that looked like they had been bombed out in an air raid.”
But Mayor Bloomberg also said, ‘”He restored the arc of our city’s history. He reminded us why we loved New York, and he inspired us to fight for it.”
Harrisburg had its Ed Koch, so to speak. That was former Mayor (for Life) Stephen Reed, another man married to his politics. He too helped re-engage and re-inspire a demoralized population devastated by years of crisis—from race riots to floods to its citizenry fleeing to the suburbs—by aiding in the re-imagining of the downtown business district, drawing regionally attractive entertainment options like minor league baseball into the city’s borders and using modern financing mechanisms to support significant new development for the first time in almost a generation.
It is hard not to see the similarities between the two cities and the two men. Unfortunately, the differences are just as stark.
Harrisburg didn’t have the advantage of New York’s world-class cultural cachet or tax income derived from a booming 1980s Wall Street to support a declining residential tax base along with a large percentage of tax-exempt municipal properties and non-profit entities.
And although Mayor Reed and Mayor Koch both had pugnacious personalities, Reed detested dialogue while Koch once said, “If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.”
And that is the root of much of the ongoing dysfunction that emanates from the halls of Harrisburg. Under Reed, the idiom of “my way or the highway” became a de-facto rule of law. Even now, there’s too often an attitude of coddling or conflict with city government, rather than one of cooperation and coordination. That’s how we got a bungled retrofit of the Resource Recovery Facility, a structural deficit untended for a decade or more, an emaciated city workforce that is simultaneously overworked and overprotective of its perfunctory prerogatives and a haze of officialdom that easily confuses the average citizen attempting to find even the simplest of answers to basic governing questions.
However, it is undeniable that there’s momentum for change and renewal in the collective Harrisburg ethos. Granted it will take the re-invention of the city’s governmental and schooling structures to conjure the skeleton key that will unlock the doors of sustainable and scalable economic development. However, there is a grassroots energy beginning to percolate in neighborhoods across the city. Perhaps it’s only fool’s gold, just the nature of social media or that feeling of freedom when there is little to lose. And, so far, its effects are difficult to quantify with any meaningful metrics.
But as evidenced by Today’s the Day, Lighten Up Harrisburg, a coalescing the City Beautiful 2 movement, the Green Urban Initiative, The MakeSpace and countless other nascent initiatives and small business endeavors, it feels as if the city’s communal corpus had been hibernating and is only now reawakening and stretching its municipal muscles, slowly strengthening its civic connective tissue that is sorely needed to support the bureaucratic backbone of government. Perhaps, in time, Harrisburg will even be muscular enough to reach back and pull forward those same attributes that made it one of the most thriving, vibrant and progressive cities in the early 20th century (for more details, read “City Contented, City Discontented,” available at your local library or bookstore).
I realize that some readers will think “maybe in NYC, but that could never happen here.” True, it will require cooperation, dedication and commitment from all the city’s constituencies: local officials and state actors; corporate entities and small businesses; daily commuters and all-day citizens; community activists and nonprofit agencies.
After all, it did take New York a long time to come back from its brink. I should know. I lived there in the mid-‘90s, when the city was transitioning from the most dangerous big city in America to its safest, and yet I still couldn’t get a cab to take me from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Culture change takes time.
I am also sure those same cynical sentiments of doubt were communicated to Mayor Koch when he first took office. But he just kept on with his optimistic disposition, famously greeting constituents with the question, “How am I doin’?” Perhaps, if Mayor Reed had taken the same approach to governing that Mayor Koch had, Harrisburg’s financial health and his legacy wouldn’t find itself so badly damaged today.
So Harrisburg, don’t forget: we’re all in this together.
Stay focused, but stay accountable, both to the task at hand and to each other.
Change—of any kind—is sure to be chaotic. It will be uneven and at times seem stuck in reverse.
In our quest to make this city a more vibrant, healthy and safe environment in which to live, we just need to keep moving forward with our individual and mutual efforts, and remember—every so often—to stop and ask ourselves, “How are WE doin’?”
Bruce P. Weber currently serves as a member of Harrisburg City Council and can be reached at HBGCC.bweber@gmail.com or on Twitter @btrain12.
