Some Seeds Have Sprouted

Kalamazoo Gazette Editorial
Thursday May 10, 2007

Nine years ago, noted urban scholar David Rusk came to town, saw squabbling local elected officials who didn't know how to work together and a community mired in malaise.

Rusk came, at the invitation of James Jones, Kalamazoo College's president at the time, to study this community and proposed a "Kalamazoo County Compact" to get government leaders to work across political boundaries. It included a countywide land use plan, mixed income housing, tax base sharing and educational and economic development.

Rusk's message then, as now; is that communities have to work cooperatively to solve their problems, instead of quarreling and fighting over scarce resources. An inspired community rose up to meet the challenge. Committees were formed, meetings were held, dreams were dreamed.

A year later, by most accounts, nothing had changed. The Kalamazoo County Compact was on the shelf with all the other studies, gathering dust. Or was it?

Nobody talks about the Kalamazoo County Compact anymore.

But at least a few of the seeds of ideas that Rusk planted here germinated -- especially in, the private sector.

Southwest Michigan First, a private economic development organization, was born. It has raised funds to attract employers and to devise a strategy to help life-science startup companies set up shop here.

Changes in local political leadership--from elected officials to their hired administrations have cleared away some of the obstacles to regional cooperation. The Kalamazoo Promise wedded private philanthropy and a public entity, Kalamazoo Public Schools, in a stunningly brilliant college tuition program, the impact of which is likely to continue to be felt decades from now.

And, most important, the public appears to be gradually accepting the idea of cooperation, recognizing that this region will rise or fall together.

Rusk returns to Kalamazoo tonight to talk about regional solutions to Michigan's chronic economic woes. He'll be offering a free presentation at 7 p.m. at Westwood United Methodist Church, an event sponsored by ISAAC, the Interfaith Strategy for Advocacy & Action in the Community.
We hope he'll stay and take a look around. Some things have hardly changed at all since 1998, when he came to try to motivate this community to do things differently.

But other things have changed dramatically.

Thanks for the seeds, Mr. Rusk.