Budget Crises, Development Woes Confront Mayors

Looking around at the mayoral results from yesterday's elections, seems incumbents and historic new leaders face a shared set of urban challenges: budget gaps, development and housing costs, crime, and troubled educational systems.  Gee, what's new?

Certainly not the leadership in Boston, where Mayor Tom Menino won an unprecedented 6th term to become the city's longest serving mayor.  Menino's remarkable claim to fame in governing this city of 600k (or so) is that almost half of all Bostonians have personally met him - including yours truly (several times now).  Voters re-elected him with fondness for the Christmas trees he provides for neighborhood squares, his handshakes in line at Dunkin Donuts, and his seemingly 24/7 appearance on local public television.  His campaign promises include closing budget gaps, lowering the crime rate, and improving the Boston Public Schools - a big issue this time around.

In Detroit, arguably the most troubled city in America, Mayor Dave Bing must close a $300M budget gap and also tackle crime and a failing public school system.  He promises to whittle Detroit's finances down to reflect the city's new reality as the 11th largest city in the US, through cuts and efficiencies.  Beware the Mayors who promise to govern cities like they run their businesses.  Sure, they can buy themselves term after term, but eventually voters (citizens? shareholders?), especially the lower-income ones who don't usually see the corporate profits trickle down their way, will tire of these CEOs.

Cleveland's Mayor Frank Jackson and Miami's new Mayor Tomas Relegado also face budget woes as well as economic development challenges.  In Cleveland, Jackson is trying to jumpstart large scale development while Relegado is trying to halt it - in Miami, one-third of all condos built downtown since 2003 are vacant.  Spooky.  Cleveland and Miami both confront collapsed housing markets that add to the simultaneous economic development pressures and need to reign in spending and further inequality in housing and job markets.

Finally, in Pittsburgh, 70% of all municipal pensions are unfunded - a frightening and urgent issue for the re-elected Mayor, Luke Ravenstahl. I get a kick out of the Pittsburgh Mayoral candidates - all guys around 30 years old.  If Luke can do it, why not me? his challengers obviously asked themselves.

And in smaller cities around the country, including in Newton and Lawrence, MA and York and Harrisburg, PA, new Latin@, African-American and/or female leadership has come to power, a very positive trend in our increasingly diverse society.

Good luck to them all in the coming years!

(Photo "Pittsburgh GTECH Larimer green jobs day: Sunflower Harvest" by Chris Koch and Andrew Butcher for Greenforall.org)