Mayor: Addressing this to you may assist in getting your attention. I don’t mean to put you on the spot. I wish you nothing but the very best. This country will be served well by you. I understand the ramifications of what I am trying to achieve here. I will hold out some hope:
READERS: Please know I have no illusions. I am fully aware of the real tragedy. And that is that the plan I laid out in my series at “word on the street tablehopping.com” Dec, Jan, and Feb issues is not likely to take place. I am right. There is no doubt. The suffering exists. The City has been in decline throughout my life. The plan is good. It will work. So, let’s look at what is missing. It is largely properly directed spirit and innovation. At first blush this may seem condescending. Let me explain what leadership is. Then, when you see how far off the mark we are you will understand why we stay on the path of decline.
What I have asked is for the City to rescue 15 square blocks and set an example. To do it well and develop a “Template” to move forward.
Leadership is the ability to form a proper goal and bring on board those needed to not only achieve the goal but to achieve it with excellence. I am now referring to all City Leadership. A few of you have taken the time to look at this. Maybe a few have read it. No one has made it a priority. Something they will fight for. Yet it is so completely right. So how do we wade through the personality differences and the status quo operations of the City to form the thinking so that when one leaves office or your Management positions, the City is actually better off? That has not happened in generations. Complacency is where it is decided to function in a safe realm, where everything that is difficult or uncomfortable is suppressed and nothing happens. When there is such agreement within systems, systems fail. You need to break the mold.
It starts with the Mayor holding a meeting with the Council. Explaining that it is time to reverse course and for the first time in many decades he and they will leave office with the City a better place. Ask them to become the definition of an American City, really “Walking Tall”. Hotels and Malls and programs that work in the periphery of the common good will no longer be the priority. The target priority will be the definitive improvement of quality of life for the 143,000 citizens. Deeds that leave a mark on “individuals”, neighborhoods and homes and safety and hope. We are talking about a drug free city with each neighborhood beautified and safe with an additional array of massive quality of life improvements. (Read the series and you will get it. What is missing and how to incentivize is explained) Then call a meeting with the Mayor, the Council and every Department Head. Explain it is new day. Ask them to read my series. “word on the street tablehopping.com” Advise them, it is our time to “Walk Tall” and be part of a unique life changing plan that will revive our City, curb drug, abuse, murder, and suffering. And make it safe and wholesome. Let them know they are being asked to be part of something very special and you are looking for the very best of who they are. Syracuse is being revived. Explain the goal. A drug free safe city, beautified and structurally repaired. (sidewalks. streets, water pipes, sanitation pipes, gas lines, electrical grids, etc.) Major quality of life changes, where citizens live in a clean groomed city without fear. A City where a woman can safely and without fear, push her baby carriage on a smooth sidewalk.
Then rent a large hall. Invite every employee in Syracuse Government. (Including every available Police Officer) Explain the above to them as well. Explain, it is a new day. Syracuse is moving forward like no American City in generations. And each of you performing with the very best of who you are, will end suffering and pain and cause this City to be a home. Let them know we will be a beacon for others to follow. Instruct Department Heads to design plans initially for the 15 square block area. Now, you have inspired the leadership and the doers of the City. Give them authority and let the best of who we are fix this City. Set an example of what can take place when the best of who we are decides to roll. Yes, I used that word intentionally “Let’s Roll”. D-Day – June 6th, 2021. That is what heroes do.
As City Hall goes about their duties of officialdom, each day for generations each City block has deteriorated. Today, there are many areas as small as a block long where there have been several murders. In more places than not you can buy drugs within one block of where you are. This is a small manageable city. This should not be.
My articles for December 2020, and January and February 2021 are a series that offer unique solutions. Based on Special Forces Technique. “word on the street tablehopping.com” I have traveled and researched this city with Western Union (I am the last City Manager) and the Taxi business since 1956. I did not watch it grow because it did not. I watched it deteriorate. I write often with reference to Patriotism, such as D-Day, the Green Berets or the music of our great land. Because I understand you are not inspired. Few are in this Country. That is what is missing. Collective political patriotic inspiration. We don’t walk the talk. You have to really want to fix this City. Deep inside, for those that bled for a great land, not deserted cities of human pain where most of their families live.
If implemented in full the benefits are encompassing. Guns will leave the streets. Far less will be killed each year. You will be removing the reason for the anger that kills them. Much decency will be restored to mindsets in the absence of a drug business that has adopted mafia style methods.
Status quo daily procedure that leaves decline must be reversed. By reversing the decline in the targeted 15 block impoverished neighborhood you will prove that the entire city can be brought back. With this success clearly on the table money will flow from multiple sources. The degree of ease will largely be due to the “first come first serve” principle. With success which will happen if you do it, it will rain money as the State and Federal Government realize you are on to something that can begin the process of restoring safety and quality of life to our Cities. They will want to see you replicate. They will agree to finance successful replication and testing. They will be eager to see if a City actually can be saved. It can be. No one has tried. This has not been done anywhere in America where diversity exists. Again, by doing this well you will open a flood gate of willing financial assistance. And success will breed economic development we haven’t seen in generations.
The City should be able to afford to fix 15 square blocks. Success as I have carefully showed you how to achieve will show State, Federal and Private benefactors that an unusual plan is under way to revive a city and set an example for others. The Rescue Mission sets a great example of how to secure money. Management is paid extremely well. But they raise so much their salary is a pittance of the total. Because they are really good and because no else is doing it. They buy fund raising professionals, highly skilled at seeking out financing from every nook and cranny of the public and private sectors. And in this instance such talent will thrive in this naked, wide open, lonely environment. Complement the talents of these fund-raising professionals with a tool box with a successful template of a revived, thriving, and safe neighborhood and they will be able to easily raise money to rebuild Syracuse.
I was born 4 months after the end of WWII. The following 20 years were really an American Euphoria. The soldiers fought and the homeland supported them. A sense of unity was forged like never before. As a child I thought this was the norm. We went forward together. Each decision was for all of us. In every city, if a square in a sidewalk cracked, it was promptly fixed. A neighborhood store would not think of gouging as it simply would not be tolerated. Fairness and respect wonderfully reigned. It was not veneer, it permeated our hearts and our land. We allowed selfishness and greed to prevail and then one day far in the future the following request is made in the remnants of greatness:
Please Fix 15 square blocks. Where care, and respect, and safety once reigned. Where young women and men including minors are sexually molested daily, as street vermin feeds off their bodies and gives them drugs. Where drug dealers freely ply their life sucking trade. Where they retort with brutal violence if you break their hideous rules. Where helpless addicts are beaten by the human vermin of the streets. Streets drenched in dejected, dispirited and suffering life. Where the many weak are subjected to human puppetry or they pay dearly. Hope reduced to despair. No one cares. The City offers words. The Police are not ordered to end the scourge but are given duties that have allowed the city to degrade. We have the finest Police Force in the Country. Give them a Patriotic directive and you will see the finest serve like never before in full pursuit of a goal so noble.
On September 11, 2001 Flight 93 was averted, by American heroes from its deadly course as it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania killing 40 of the finest humans can be. Let’s live by their example. Think about that plane for a minute. Imagine these heroes moving forward. They knew they were entering the portal between life and death and they did so with the hearts of “Americans” as they knew they were about to die for the people of the neighborhoods of the greatest land on earth. Todd Beamer made these words holy as he led the charge to save the Capitol on 9/11. An average American just like us said: “Let’s Roll!”