WASHINGTON – Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline has been honored by Governing Magazine and its Web site, Governing.com, as one of “America’s Innovative Mayors.”
He is the third mayor profiled – after Thomas M. Menino in Boston and John Hickenlooper in Denver – in the public-policy journal’s ongoing series about “American mayors who are setting the standard for innovative governance.”
The Cicilline profile, posted this week, dwells on the mayor’s role in the establishment of the Providence After School Alliance and its citywide programs for middle-school-aged children, citing the intensive research and coalition building that underlay the public-private effort.
“When a mayor with a strong personality takes over a troubled city with latent assets, the stage is set for that mayor to produce dramatic reforms. This describes the recent situation in Providence,” writes series author Stephen Goldsmith, an author, columnist and former mayor of Indianapolis who now directs the Innovations in American Government Program at the Ash Institute, an affiliate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
“Once elected,” Goldsmith writes, “Cicilline drew attention to the familiar but troubling statistic: children ages 12-19 are more at risk of falling victim to crime, drugs, gangs and other negative events during the period after the school day ends and [before] their parents return home.”
The article praises the mayor’s skill at “leveraging new assets and producing benefits from less than obvious situations,” from his success at attracting $6 million in grants from The Wallace Foundation, Bank of America and other donors to launch PASA’s neighborhood-based “AfterZones” to his response to a bad debt from a local arts group: “In 2001, the Festival Ballet Company borrowed $150,000 in economic development funds to purchase a building for performance and rehearsal space,” Goldsmith writes.
“When the company discovered they would be unable to repay the loan to the city, Cicilline suggested they could give lessons to PASA students instead. Festival Ballet jumped at the chance, and AfterZones kids can now receive instruction from professional dancers at no charge. This spirit of inventiveness, and commitment to developing quality programs, pervades PASA.”
PASA now offers nearly 50 educational, cultural and athletic opportunities to Providence’s 6,000 middle-school students, in part through collaborations with existing community programs.
Cicilline is now seeking to expand opportunities for high school students, along the same collaborative model, creating a career-focused network for local teens, Goldsmith writes. The “America’s Promise Alliance has recognized these successes,” he adds, by ranking Providence among America’s 100 Best Communities for Young People for three years in a row. (READ MORE)
Governing Magazine and Governing.com are publications of the Washington, D.C.-based Congressional Quarterly Inc. CQI is a subsidiary of the Times Publishing Co. of St. Petersburg, Fla., which also publishes the daily St. Petersburg Times and the statewide Florida Trends business magazine. For more information, visit www.governing.com.
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The Providence After School Alliance is a public-private venture established by the City of Providence and the The Education Partnership (www.EdPartnership.org), a statewide initiative to improve the quality of education in Rhode Island. PASA seeks to expand and improve after-school opportunities for local youth. For more information, visit www.myPASA.org.
For more news about the City of Providence, visit www.ProvidenceRI.com.
