How to Improve the Prospects for Madison and Milwaukee

Let us focus on one tool already available. Public employees of the city and the county organized into Neighborhood Resource Teams (NRT).

Traditionally government agencies are organized by function. The individual has a specific task and reports to their agency. While that classic alignment is maintained, NRT members cover a specific geographic area and meet on a regular basis.

To learn about the city of Madison NRT's, check out the Neighborhood Resource Team (NRT) website:

In 1992, the Neighborhood Resource Teams were established by then-Mayor Paul Soglin as a way to better coordinate City services within 10 smaller areas of the City. These Neighborhood Resource Teams (NRTs) were intended to be a resource to residents, not a substitute for neighborhood initiatives and leadership. Each team consisted of a city staff person from major City agencies operating in the area, such as Police, Fire, Building Inspection, Public Health, Office of Community Services, and Community Development Block Grant Office. After the teams had been in operation, the Mayor established a Guidance Team of managers and supervisors* to help better coordinate team activities and serve as a basis for their support and guidance

*Note: the origianl Guidance Teams were not just managers and supervisors.

Librarians, EOC representatives and others were added after the initial formulation.

So far so good, then:

In the fall of 2000, Mayor Susan J. M. Bauman created an initiative to make the benefits of these cross-functional teams available to all areas of the City...the teams begin to operate in larger geographical areas containing approximately 20,000 to 25,000 people.

Not good; 20,000-25,000 people are not a neighborhood. It defeats the entire purpose of the team. It saves money; it slaps a label on a program so everyone in the city can have an NRT, but it creates service areas that are not neighborhoods.

When an NRT convenes it has to know its purpose. It is torturous to assemble a team for the first time and pose this fabulous question to them: "Why are you working for the city (or county) and what are you trying to accomplish." There is a struggle but they eventually come up with the answer. The beautiful thing about it is that they realize they are not isolated; they have co-workers with different functions to share in accomplishing a difficult task.

The police officer working with neighbors can make a referral to a pubic health nurse, who in turn, may know a child who the librarian can help. The most important thing is that after a year or so, the neighborhood and the team see positive change and that energizes them.

Some reminders about the Madison NRT program:

• The NRT is a resource to serve the neighborhood, not to run it.
• The program has lost its essence. NRTs now cover populations and neighborhoods twenty to thirty times the size times they should. The one-on-one contact is no longer there. This is undoubtedly a 'cost saving' measure. Sorry, this is an expensive program, with high return when done right.
• The Guidance Team is critical. The Guidance Team would make recommendations for the next year's budget. Each year several, if not all, of their top recommendations were included in my executive budget.

It did go through my review, but the recommendations did not require departmental approval. The reasoning was simple. These were the people on the ground, the workers we expected to make hands-on change. If we were to trust them, we had to assume that their deliberation process was sound and that they were recommending services that were needed.

• Some staff may serve on more than one NRT.

It saddens me that Madison defeated the purpose of the NRTs. The concept is there, but the present structure does not work.

We used to have close to a dozen teams serving no more than 20,000 people. Now there are eight teams serving a population of 210,000.

The inspiration for creating the teams came the works of J. Edward Demings, the private sector expert  on Total Quality, which the city adapted to public service, the work of John L. McKnight, colleague of organizer Saul Alinksy, and author with John P. Kretzmann of Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets, the teachings of Madisonian Peter Scholtes, author of The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done , and my own belief that communities are built by people with the will to prevail.  Tom Mosgaller , then patiently working for the city, helped in challenging and reviewing the concept.

I stole from the best. The concept was simple. If comunity policing was a good idea, then have other public services community based, and have the functions coordinated.

Comments

[jim rowen]

Milwaukee Public Schools and the teacher's union would be among good audiences for these sources and ideas. Radio talkers like those you're jousting with won't be receptive.