Village Square in the news



Bipartisanship on the hustings
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post Writers Group

Americans say they’re sick of partisan politics, and some of them really mean it.

In Norman, Okla., and Tallahassee, Fla. - two university towns where football usually matters more than governance - local leaders weary of blood sport have begun taking matters into their own hands.

Next week in Norman, as the media hordes forget they ever heard of Iowa and descend on New Hampshire for the nation’s first primary, a dozen or so renegades from the major parties are convening a forum to develop Plan C. A third way. A bipartisan solution to business as usual.

Their immodest goal: To end divisive partisan polarization, create bipartisanship and bring the country together after the 2008 election.

Leading the charge are David Boren, Oklahoma University president and a former U.S. senator, along with former Democratic Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia, Charles Robb of Virginia and Gary Hart of Colorado, also a former presidential candidate.

Republican sponsors include former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former Sens. Bill Brock of Tennessee and John Danforth of Missouri, and Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

And yes, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be there, but he’s not running for president.

Other formers expected to participate include Bill Cohen, former secretary of defense, and former U.S. Sens. Alan Dixon of Illinois and Bob Graham of Florida. Also, Jim Leach, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa, and Edward Perkins, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Yes, this is primarily a forum of formers. In fact, only Hagel and Bloomberg are politically current, from which one may draw one’s own conclusions. Then again, former politicians may be the best kind. With hindsight comes wisdom and, having been there, done that, people formerly known as politicians have little to gain from speaking out except the rare reward of doing something for the greater good.

While these reform-minded formers are tackling national problems, their bipartisan counterparts in Tallahassee are acting locally through a relatively new Web-based creation called “To The Village Square.”

The square is the brainchild of attorney and City Commissioner Allan Katz, a Barack Obama Democrat who used leftover money from his recent re-election campaign to create the project.

He tapped as his partner Liz Joyner, a social worker and stay-at-home mom, (who also ran his last campaign), and recruited a bipartisan board whose members agree with two simple premises: facts matter; solutions should be bipartisan.

“If you say you’re nonpartisan, nobody believes you,” says Katz.

With that reality in mind, The Village Square aims to remind citizens of “The Big Idea” for which our ancestors spilled their blood - that Americans should be self-governing. The Web site, tothevillagesquare.org, explains that history in the context of today’s political dialogue, which “wouldn’t be tolerated between 5-year-olds at recess.”

“We’ve turned ‘talking’ over to professional polarizers on television who make seven-digit careers surfing this wave of hostility,” reads the Web site. “They warp what were once perfectly useful ideas, when understood in moderation, into black-and-white caricatures of ideas, so oversimplified they become effectively useless in solving real problems.

“These entrepreneurial yellers build for us such a fundamental misunderstanding of (and contempt for) people who think differently than we do, we’ve stopped bothering to listen to each other. … We’re spoon-fed slick (and expensive) commercials that sell us snake oil rather than provide the facts so basic to building the informed citizenry envisioned by our Founding Fathers.”

To that end, Katz and friends sponsor topical dinners ($25/person) to air local issues. Next week, while Boren and Co. are figuring out how to advance civil discourse at the national level, participants in Tallahassee’s Village Square will be dining with experts to discuss: “Energy Alternatives À la carte: Fossils and Sunshine and Garbage, oh my!”

OK, so you’re rewinding your videos that night, but somebody has to take this stuff seriously.

It’s not quite a movement, but both Boren’s initiative and the Katz/Joyner project suggest the stirrings of a necessary political backlash. Just as an unhappily married couple nevertheless manages to produce a lovely and beloved child, the ugly divorce of politics from the people may yet birth a very American revolution.

If Washington won’t lead the way, then Americans will simply lead themselves.

Born-again Americans. Now there’s a concept.

Kathleen Parker’s e-mail address is kparker@kparker.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/04/EDGFU8UH7.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Originally published January 4, 2008 in The San Francisco Chronicle, www.sfgate.com



Seeking Civil Discourse
By Liz Joyner, MY VIEW

According to an early report describing his Jan. 1 “World Peace Day” message, Pope Benedict XVI “launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom.”

Except that he didn’t.

He also didn’t characterize concerns about global warming as “scare-mongering,” words put in the pope’s mouth in the pages of Britain’s tabloid The Daily Mail. The misquote has since bounced all over the Web, with Fox News alerting online readers “global warming skeptics have (a) friend in the Vatican” and bloggers lamenting the lack of coverage of this big news in the “liberal mainstream media.”

Not to be outdone, the liberal blog Wonkette, assuming the quotation to be accurate, lowered the dialog to sump-pump depths proclaiming “The Pope sucks” and referring to him as a Nazi amidst a sea of other very bad words.

As is true of most thoughtful writing on complex issues, there was something in the pope’s message for everyone. But with more cherry picking of pope-quotes going on than at a cherry pickers convention, most seemed to have walked away from reading the pope’s message with their pre-existing biases firmly intact.

And by “reading” it, I mean not reading it.

It turns out that the Vatican has its very own Web site in all sorts of languages, quite handy when one is actually trying to understand the pope’s “World Peace Day” message.

While the message can only be understood as a whole, here’s a sample: “Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important that assessments in this regard be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions” He also wrote, “the problems looming on the horizon are complex and time is short.”

That crazy pope, he sounds suspiciously like a world religious leader.

Not being Catholic, defending the pope is new territory for me, but I say we all have an iron in this fire, as it is emblematic of today’s distorted “conversation of democracy.” Bad facts and bad tempers are wrapping their gnarly little tentacles around the decisions we make for our future.

And, we are making big decisions for our future.

Swimming upstream in this muck, The Village Square is trying to start a different kind of conversation, one that seeks out diversity of opinion and invites a conversation of substance and civility.

The Village Square, if you’re not yet familiar with it, is Tallahassee’s non-partisan public educational forum on matters of local, state and national importance. It’s dedicated to maintaining factual accuracy in civic and political debate by growing civil dialogue on divisive issues, and recalling the history and principles at the foundation of our democracy.

If our first dinner on this year’s topic “America’s Energy Future” is an indication of where this is going, we agree about a lot more than the talking heads give us credit for. Before our discussion on “The Economics of Power Generation 101,” one speaker humorously conveyed a warning that if Tallahassee’s liberal tree-huggers gave him too hard a time, he might have to resort to counting their SUV’s in the parking lot.

In the end, without any fistfights or SUV-counting, our speakers agreed on the following general guiding principles of the energy decisions before us:

1. Diversify energy sources to minimize economic risk, thinking “and” rather than “either/or.”

2. Make 50-year decisions despite four-year political terms.

3. Bank on correct principles rather than prophesizing long-term energy winners and losers; the energy future has defied accurate prediction.

4. When possible, let the market find the solutions.

5. No one size fits all: Seek local solutions to specific local energy demands.

6. Pay attention to scale when comparing power generation alternatives.

7. Energy independence is a national security issue.

We continue the conversation on Tuesday, Jan. 8 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. with “Energy Alternative a la Carte: Fossils and Sunshine and Garbage, oh my!”

The event features Susan Story, president and CEO of Gulf Power and Sam Kalen of leading national D.C.-based energy and environmental law firm Van Ness Feldman. Story is both the youngest and the first female CEO of a Southern operating company. Kalen represents clients on the cutting-edge of today’s energy issues.

We were hoping the pope could join us, but we thought we might need a larger room.

Liz Joyner is the executive director of The Village Square and may be reached at 264-8785 or liz@tothevillagesquare.org. Readers may visit the Web site at www.tothevillagesquare.org to find a more thorough description of the guiding principles or to buy tickets for the Jan. 8 dinner.

Originally published December 31, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com



Rezoning debate challenges the urge to be civil
By Liz Joyner, MY VIEW

Democracy seldom runs smoothly. Any veteran of middle-school history class knows that, as does anyone who has attended a school-rezoning meeting.

If you were snoozing during seventh grade and need a refresher, you might want to join Leon County Schools at the rezoning meeting for the new middle school at 6 p.m. today at Roberts Elementary.

At stake? Where my child and yours will attend middle school. I won’t be there, though, as The Village Square will be discussing its first “Local Roundtable” topic, economic segregation.

The Village Square came from the sense that politics, while it won’t ever be “beanbag,” has taken a notable turn southward of late. What’s missing is the local conversation between people who share Little League teams and drive carpools together, but don’t agree with each other politically.

Instead, partisan talking heads turn our neighbors into an evil “they” who have “special” interests, and probably hate America, too.

The Village Square thinks we can defy that trend right here in Tallahassee, by talking with each other instead of about each other. From those conversations come common sense and a measure of common purpose.

Of course, few things will test this civility concept quite like rezoning.

My very own civility may be at risk. We live in a pocket of Killearn, currently zoned for Raa Middle School, that may be rezoned to the new school. Rezoning would correct a poor feeder pattern that requires our kids to leave most of their elementary school friends to join a middle school full of strangers (middle schools are scary enough without strangers), only to return in high school to their former grade-school peer group, which no longer includes them.

Left with the short straw of the rezoning is Raa, which will lose a substantial number of its gifted and higher socioeconomic students. From what The Village Square has learned in our conversation about economic segregation, that matters.

Critically important to this conversation is the concept of a tipping point, which seems to exist both in school systems and neighborhoods. Schools absorb a certain amount of economic diversity successfully, maintaining a high quality of education for all students while providing additional benefits to help students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds achieve their potential. The many parents whose children have thrived in diverse schools such as Raa and Leon High know this firsthand.

But when the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch exceeds somewhere between 30 percent and 40 percent, the school risks tipping. Those families that have the resources to move, send children to private school or provide transportation for a child with a tuition voucher may leave the school. What’s left behind is a more challenged school that has tipped, and in it the students who don’t have options.

Also left behind is a higher bill for the taxpayer. We pay more than $9,000 annually to support a student in the recently tipped and under-enrolled Nims Middle School, compared with about $5,400 per student at Swift Creek Middle School.

Whatever the decision, it won’t make everyone happy. Nevertheless, it’s worth aspiring to have an informed conversation and remember that, as neighbors, we are partners in the ultimate long-term outcome.

We’ll do world peace next week.

Originally published November 8, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com



WFSU Perspectives on The Village Square

Originally aired 9/27/2007, click on link above to listen to program.

Tallahassee City Commissioner Alan Katz and resident Liz Joyner call an initiative by community activists to create a non confrontational forum where citizens cans discuss community-wide issues/problems “The Village [Square].” They invite expert speakers to facilitate informed discussions and brainstorming on issues like energy, economic segregation, and education reforms and so on.



Dinner, with a side of civic discussion

The Village Square, a newly formed nonprofit in Tallahassee, will open its first season of Dinner at the Square on Tuesday, Oct. 2 from 5:30 to 7: 30 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church on North Monroe. The bipartisan group, organized by a diverse group of community leaders, aims to improve the factual accuracy and civility of our public discourse.

The Village Square will host four dinners on a single topic of civic interest each year in a format that organizers hope will be both entertaining and informative. This season’s topic is “Powering Up: America’s Energy Future.” The discussion for the Oct. 2 dinner is “The Economics of Power Generation 101: Mother Nature, Common Sense and Turning a Supertanker.”

The first dinner will be catered by Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille. Participants may bring their laptops to fact-check during the discussion.

Speakers for the event are Peter Bradford, vice chair of Union of Concerned Scientists and former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Jim Rossi, professor of law and associate dean for research at Florida State University College of Law; and Jerry Warren, former CEO of Gainesville Regional Utilities.

Topics for the rest of the Dinner at the Square season are:

Jan. 8 - “Energy Alternatives a la Carte: Fossils and Sunshine and Garbage, oh my!”

April 1- “The Nuclear Power Debate, Version 2.0: What’s Old, What’s New, What’s Hype, What’s True.”

July 1 - “All GEOpolitics is Local: “Global Issues, State Law & Hometown Lessons.”

Originally published September 26, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com



Forum aims to fight divisiveness
Village Square dinner slated for October 2
by Julian Pequet, DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Tallahassee area community leaders announced Tuesday the creation of a community forum to combat what they called an increasingly uncivil tone of public discourse.

The forum, called the Village Square, grew out of Tallahassee City Commissioner Allan Katz’s 2006 bid for re-election and recent campaigns on a proposed coal plant and on a health-care tax proposal - campaigns that the bipartisan group’s members said were characterized more by political attacks than by factual debate.

“One of the things we hope we can do is bring light to some very important civic issues,” said Bill Law, the president of Tallahassee Community College and a co-founder, along with Katz, of the Village Square. “Shouting louder and vilifying people is probably not the way to get to the best participation and ultimately the best decisions in our community.”

The nonprofit forum offers two formats: four dinners a year that will be open to the public and monthly meetings of a panel of citizens that will follow a single topic through the year. The panel’s first topic will be economic segregation.

The $25 dinners, to be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 211 N. Monroe St., will also follow a single theme of local interest throughout the year. The first dinner is scheduled for Oct. 2. This year’s topic will be energy.

“We …. live in a time where we’re sort of breaking apart at the places where we disagree and avoiding the people with whom we disagree,” said Liz Herbert, the Village Square’s executive director. “We’re going to do the opposite.”

Tallahassee City Commissioner Allan Katz, co-chairman

Tallahassee Community College President Bill Law, co-chairman

Bryan Desloge, Leon County commissioner

Bill Montford, Florida Association of District School Superintendents

Laurie Dozier, Mad Dog Construction

Lyn Stanfield, Apple Computers

Father Melvin K. Gray, St. John’s Episcopal Church

Samuel “Buddy” Streit, Boys and Girls Clubs of the Big Bend

Lila Jaber, Akerman Senterfit

Virginia Wetherell, Wetherell Consulting Inc.

John Lewis, The Tupelo Group

Gil Ziffer, Ziffer Stansberry Advertising and Public Relations

Originally published May 9, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com



Square idea: civil discourse
by Chris Timmons, MY VIEW

On the front of The Village Square Web page, there’s an American flag woven with different shades of color and multiple design patterns which coalesce to make a grand view of e pluribus unum - out of many, one.

Also on the same page are words of wisdom from Albert Einstein: “To the village square we must carry the facts . . . from there must come America’s voice.”

Two community leaders have taken those words to heart, and have come up with a surprisingly civic-minded and thoughtful way to do that for this community with a new community forum called The Village Square.

City Commissioner Allan Katz and Tallahassee Community College President Bill Law have two aims here. One is to make typically divisive issues less so by getting people together to discuss and agree on the facts before meaningful solutions are found.

The second aim is to build a coalition for change that pulls from every view and talent of this community. Two reasons why this is necessary:

For a couple of years now, this community has confronted the twin challenges of diversifying its energy mix by joining a coal plant consortium in Taylor County and avoiding the calamitous social and fiscal costs of unaffordable health care by advancing a health-care tax proposal. It was inevitable that debate would ensue on both of these issues, and tempers would rise.

That was especially the case with the coal-plant issue. Ironically, Katz was one of the main offenders. Recall that City Manager Anita Favors-Thompson was accused of consorting with coal-plant proponents. Her accuser was Katz. He eventually apologized, but it wasn’t the brightest moment in local campaign history.

To avoid future acrimony, having a debate that is tailored toward a long view will enhance the quality of the solutions that eventually come up. The way the group hopes to do this is by holding annual dinners dedicated to a single topic, and monthly panel meetings of experts and community members on a single topic for a year’s time.

Mostly what this does is encourages a back and forth that allows people to buy into any solution, as opposed to just having random solutions thrown around and the process going nowhere.

Most importantly, it says something great about this community. Now that we have moved forward on a number of fronts - Gaines Street, downtown, energy, and myriad other things - community leaders recognize the value of keeping the momentum going without causing a rift among different community groups. The city’s long-term interests require that everyone buys into whatever vision the city has for itself. Group alienation will only deter, not help Tallahassee move forward.

This comes on top of another community project that is searching for new ways to push the community toward civic boldness and innovation: the Knight Creative Community Initiative.

With these two projects - two different projects, which have the same effect - the community is saying something that would surprise some longtime residents: Tallahassee is serious about creating a new image and a new reality. No more idyllic Southern town - no more small-town quaintness and small-mindedness.

The city has taken on a new mind-set, one of big dreams, of a vibrant and prospering community that attracts the best talent, and new industry, while retaining its charm. In the past, we heard that city-county relations made prospective businesses hesitate. No person wants to come in during a bad fight. So the logic of this new Village Square makes perfect sense.

While summoning up our greatest ideals, it also forces us to do the hard things that make communities great. In the deal, we get civic comity and a good conversation. Perhaps a solution or two. On the whole, not a bad deal.

Originally published May 12, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com



New community forum launched
by Julian Pequet, DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Disappointed with what they called the increasingly uncivil tone of public discourse, a bipartisan group of community leaders on Tuesday announced the creation of a new community forum called the Village Square.

The idea grew out of Tallahassee City Commissioner Allan Katz’s 2006 bid for re-election and recent campaigns on a proposed coal plant and on a health-care tax proposal — campaigns that the group’s members felt were characterized more by political attacks than by reasoned, factual debate.

“One of the things we hope we can do is bring light to some very important civic issues,” said Bill Law, the president of Tallahassee Community College and a co-founder, along with Katz, of the Village Square.

“Shouting louder and vilifying people is probably not the way to get to the best participation and ultimately the best decisions in our community.”

Instead, the nonprofit offers two formats: four dinners a year that will be open to the public and monthly meetings of a panel of citizens that will follow a single topic through the year.

The panel’s first topic will be economic segregation.

The $25 dinners, to be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 211 N. Monroe St., will also follow a single theme of local interest throughout the year.

The first dinner is scheduled for Oct. 2. This year’s topic will be energy.

“We …. live in a time where we’re sort of breaking apart at the places where we disagree and avoiding the people with whom we disagree,” said Liz Herbert, the Village Square’s executive director. “We’re going to do the opposite.”

For more information on The Village Square, visit Tothevillagesquare.org.

Contact reporter Julian Pecquet at (850) 599-2307 or jjpecquet@tallahassee.com.

Originally published May 8, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com



City set to unveil Village Square forum
by Julian Pequet, DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Tallahassee leaders today are set to announce the start of a forum aimed at getting residents to agree on facts before taking political action.

The forum, called the Village Square, will offer two formats: four dinners a year that will be open to the public and monthly meetings of a panel of citizens that will follow a single topic through the year.

“The hallmark of each event is that it will be bipartisan and incorporate people who have divergent opinions,” said Liz Herbert Joyner, the executive director. “The goal is to at least understand what the important facts are. Very often, that gets lost in the debate.”

The idea grew out of City Commissioner Allan Katz’s 2006 re-election campaign. Joyner was his campaign manager.

“The theory is that if you don’t agree on the facts, the chances of solving problems aren’t very good,” said Katz, who co-chairs the board of directors, along with Tallahassee Community College President Bill Law.

The panel’s first topic will be economic segregation. The $25 dinners, to be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 211 N. Monroe St., will also follow a single theme of local interest throughout the year.

The first dinner is scheduled for Oct. 2. This year’s topic will be announced at 9:30 a.m. today at the Florida Press Center, 336 E. College Ave.

For more information on The Village Square, visit Tothevillagesquare.org.

Originally published May 8, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com