Share
Moving the Charlotte region onto a clear, effective green track is no small task. Yet some concerted efforts have been made and are continuing.
In 2001, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory initiated multi-county, talks leading to Sustainable Environment for Quality of Life, sponsored by the Centralina and Catawba Regional Councils of Governments.
SEQL listed valuable goals, from open space preservation to dealing with kitchen grease to biodiesel. All are being done, ad hoc, in some places. But SEQL had no way to put together a coherent regional plan.
That, in turn, led to “CONNECT – “The Greater Charlotte Bi-State Regional Visioning Project,” again spearheaded by the councils of governments and joined this time by the business-led Charlotte Regional Partnership. With many sessions of citizens and public officials, six shared values emerged, serving as vision and guides to action:
Sustainable environment .
Transportation .
Sustainable, well-managed growth .
Social equity .
Economy .
Governance .
CONNECT's challenge is to translate all that into a regional agenda agreed to by people of 17 counties straddling a state line, more than 100 cities and towns and 2.4 million people.
The CONNECT effort rests on the shoulders of some focused, earlier initiatives. One was a citizens movement formed in the mid-1990s called Voices and Choices, which aimed to share information regionwide about pressing issues. It hit organizational and funding problems and the effort ended in 2004.
Will CONNECT, with its mix of high goals yet different and sometimes competing member governments, keep speaking out on tough issues? That's the clear hope of the COG staffs plus the Charlotte Regional Partnership.
But is there also need for an independent, citizen-based organization? Such a group could keep identifying tough issues and keep score on public initiatives. Would that strengthen CONNECT, or be seen as an inconvenient competitor? Might UNC Charlotte, as it develops its regional indicators project, see value in a public engagement dimension ?
That's the dilemma: How does the Charlotte citistate organize itself for a green – and demanding – century? It's a question that won't go away.
