Providence wins public-private partnership award

WASHINGTON – Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline was honored yesterday, at The United States Conference of Mayors’ 76th Winter Meeting, with an Outstanding Achievement Award for Public-Private Partnerships.
The award – honoring the City of Providence and business partner Waste Management Inc. for their role in the Providence Hospitality Resource Partnership – was one of 10 awarded to cities nationwide in recognition of outstanding partnerships to improve the local community.

The Providence Hospitality Resource Partnership is a coalition of residents, restaurants, nightclub establishments, security officials and law-enforcement officials committed to creating a cleaner, safer and more welcoming city and downtown. It was established last year by the mayor’s office, in partnership with the Downtown Improvement District.
“With Providence earning national recognition for its thriving arts and culture scene and unprecedented new economic development, we needed to create a downtown neighborhood where people want to socialize and where residents and businesses thrive side-by-side,” Cicilline said in a statement yesterday.

City efforts have included a roving detail of 10 police officers, who issued more than 1,000 parking tickets and made several dozen arrests, according to the mayor’s office. Waste Management Inc.’s participation has included providing equipment and staffing for clean-ups of vacant lots, or before and after major events, and providing recycling containers for downtown public events.

The Hospitality Resource Partnership has also addressed such issue as overcrowded nightclubs, underage drinking, over-serving of customers and after-hours traffic.

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Besides the Providence award, the other honors presented by the Mayors’ Conference to public-private community partnerships nationwide were: Outstanding Achievement Awards to Buffalo, N.Y., for its partnership with American Water; Colorado Springs, Colo., for its partnership with CH2M Hill; Elizabeth, N.J., for its partnership with Verizon; Germantown, Tenn., for its partnership with Comcast; Johns Creek, Ga., for its partnership with CH2M Hill OMI; Tulsa Okla., for its partnership with Staubach Co.; and Wilmington, Del., for its partnership with ACS State & Local Solutions. And Awards of Excellence, to Alexandria, Va., for its partnership with the National Association of Home Builders; and Wichita, Kan., for its partnership with Bank of America.

Today is the final day of the three-day leadership conference. The meeting – attended by the mayors of more than 250 cities around the country – has focused on the national mortgage foreclosure conference; climate protection, “green” jobs and environmental innovation; infrastructure, housing, crime and community development.

On Wednesday, Cicilline and nine other mayors met with 15 members of the U.S. Senate majority leadership – including Rhode Island Democrats Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada – to offer their advice on how to support city economies in the face of the national economic slump.

At a news conference after that session – where they were joined by Cicilline and two other mayors – the lawmakers pledged to support block-grant funding for those dealing with foreclosure and other threats to city neighborhoods. They also pledged to ensure funding for the Energy Efficiency Block Grant, a measure passed by Congress last year that would direct $5 million to Providence alone and create “green collar” jobs in cities nationwide.

Mayor Cicilline has been a member of the United States Conference of Mayors since taking office in 2003, and holds several leadership positions on the USCM, including membership on its Advisory Board; Chair of the Children, Health and Human Services; Vice President of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors, and member of the Homeland Security Task Force.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 residents or more. There are 1,139 cities in the United States, each represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, the Mayor. For more information, visit, www.usmayors.org.

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