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Steve Chronister For York County Commissioner |
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projects are as follows: Project 1: Sustainable Industrial Development -This project concentrates funds in specific York County neighborhoods to help increase private investments and to build up neighborhoods that are losing businesses and population. Project 2: One-Stop, Web-Based Economic Development Resource Center -This center provides designed and developed Internet and CD-ROM based resources that allow residents of certain areas to access funding opportunities. Project 3: Micro-enterprise Training and Financing Initiative -This project provides business training to low income individuals who are interested in starting businesses. Micro-loans in investment capital are available (up to $10,000) based on the quality of business plans. We would work with organizations in York County like the YCEDC to examine proposed business plans and to provide these micro-loans. Project 4: Asset Building for Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community Residents -This project involves the development of IDAs (Individual Development Accounts), which are matched tax-advantaged savings accounts for low-income people. These accounts encourage people to save by matching their deposits 2:1. Public and private sector contributions usually funded the program matches. Project 5: MUA Community Ambassadors Project -This program focuses on young people who are considered “at risk” aged 17-23 because of poverty, deficiencies in basic educational skills, and/or a lack of career goals. The Ambassadors will train MUA graduates to perform outreach in our communities through a 20 week program, and will also serve as aides in computer labs and with non-profit organizations, and teach classes in computer use and graphic arts to community organizations. These graduates could help with non-profit organizations in York County who may need technical skills or assistance, such as the YWCA. The program will ultimately seek to recruit at-risk youth into the MUA program, and the students will themselves have an opportunity to become MUA Ambassadors upon completing the program. Project 6: Homeownership Credit Counseling and Financial Management Workshops -This project provides homeownership credit counseling and personal financial management training to residents whose income would support a mortgage payment but who are disqualified by their credit history -Participants receive aid in developing plans to negotiate with creditors and reduce and/or restructure their existing debt. Project 7: Narrowing the Digital Divide in At-Risk York County Communities -This project calls for the development of a program dedicated to jump-starting community-driven neighborhood revitalization. Their goal is to bridge the digital divide within selected communities and use technological capacity-building to help improve our underserved communities. A suggested way of working towards accomplishing this goal is by reaching out to cable providers in our area for donations, and examining ways to set up wireless Internet access in our communities. **Above information cited from Reference 7 Full text of USC’s outreach programs is attached as Addendum II. The Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) uses resources that the university has and gives students who desire to improve their communities the means to use their talents to benefit others. They also use resources donated from local companies such as computer hardware and software to help meet the needs of these underserved communities. The programs of the COPC that are used to benefit underserved communities in Los Angeles have benefited several communities since their initiation. These programs can also be utilized in our own community. By cooperating with York County colleges, high schools, non profit organizations, and other businesses for support and donations, these programs can be incorporated into our own communities for the benefit of all age groups. We want to propose these outreach programs to universities and work with our local universities to develop them for our community’s needs, and for the benefit of our young people. These programs have helped save communities at risk in downtown Los Angeles for many of the same reasons that several York County communities are at risk today- loss of business, lack of population, and rise in crime. These programs work with community members to benefit everyone who lives and works in those communities while giving young people a chance to learn job and life skills and how to utilize them for the improvement of our community. These programs give our community a chance to bolster its economic development, assist its young people, and improve its conditions from the inside out. USC offers classes for citizens to take, instructional materials, and programs like the Ambassador’s program that give young people and students a chance to get the training they need to find jobs or to be accepted into universities. By encouraging York County colleges and schools to utilize resources and reach out into our communities, we can increase our economic development while lowering our crime rate. We also want to propose actions to improve economic development on a micro-level through these programs. By instituting programs to help our citizens purchase homes, establish savings, and develop job skills, we can give them the ability to improve our community themselves. We would speak with community banks about providing micro-loans for the development of small businesses in our community. By working with the York County Economic Development Center, which reviews pitches for new business plans, we can help those who wish to start new businesses in our community. All of these operations would seek to increase York County’s economic development with subtle techniques that can empower our citizens to develop significant changes as part of an approach that hasn’t been tried in the past. By developing outreach programs in our community and working to both improve our neighborhoods and give our young people opportunities, York County will benefit as a whole. Our goals for education include:
Conclusion These programs are the examples of the power of young people to reach out to the community while also learning useful life skills themselves in the process. They are suggestions for our community, actions that we can take based upon what has been successful in other neighborhoods with many of the same problems our own community faces. These ideas have been successful in some very difficult neighborhoods such as Watts in Los Angeles and the Bronx in New York City, and we can apply them to our own smaller county problems. By initiating programs such as these, we plant seeds that grow into steady economic development, the decrease of crime, the increase of community outreach, etc. We can take what works in the programs and utilize it, and observe what doesn’t work and learn from it. There are a lot of different aspects to all of the outreach programs and suggestions for fighting crime that we are suggesting, and if we try these in our community, we can take those that flourish and support them, build upon them to help our citizens benefit. By instituting some of these programs, we can also counteract the negative spiral that crime creates in neighborhoods. When crime takes over a community, it destroys jobs in that community, giving young people few other choices but to become involved in crime. They cannot find employment, may not have Internet access to look for opportunities online, and are sometimes afraid to leave their homes to use computers elsewhere. Economic development and education are also rendered ineffective by the negative spiral of crime. What we want to do with these programs is create a positive spiral in our community by taking out crime and giving our citizens alternatives. They can sign up for the CRU program, find employment, and get placement at higher education institutions. We want to overcome any hindrances to the improvement of our neighborhoods and turn our underserved communities into communities of opportunity, where our citizens can contribute to the positive spiral by earning paychecks and spending them at local businesses. We will ask for resources from local businesses to be donated to these programs, to teaching the community how to improve from the inside out, and ask our higher education institutions to offer classes in economics and technology to participants within the community. When we were children just starting to think about what careers we wanted to pursue in our lives, and someone asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, we said things like, “Firefighter! Astronaut! Dolphin trainer! Horseback riding champion! Racecar driver!” Since then, some of our career decisions have changed. But why shouldn’t everyone have the opportunity to pursue whatever career they want? By instituting both outreach programs and the CRU program, we can give our young people the chance they deserve to follow their dreams. By examining Giuliani’s successful innovations in New York and using the CompStat program in our own society, we can drive crime out of our county and make room for economic development, improvements in education, and citizens’ security. All of these proposed actions are the suggestions of citizens in York County who want everyone in our community to feel safe, secure, and satisfied with their lives and their county. |
