Assessing Mayor Williams

Washington Post photo by Larry Williams.

I don't have the energy to do a long retrospective piece on Mayor Williams and his 8 years in office. I do think, overall, he's been an important and vital step forward.

Yes, he hasn't been perfect--who is?

But he has started the process of municipal transformation necessary to have a revitalized and healthy city in the 21st century, a city even while considered "the center of the free world," lies within a nation that for the most part is focused on suburban and exurban development.

And the focus of the Williams Administration, for the most part, on big projects and investments (big projects, big buildings, big developers, big national chains as tenants, big organizations) hasn't been tempered well enough by putting necessary resources behind more neighborhood-oriented stuff.

OTOH, we need the revenue that comes from property taxes and the income taxes from new, higher-income residents. (Hey, if it takes $10,000+ to educate one child in the DC Public School system, the money needs to come from somewhere after all?)

I know that people will counter with the Main Street initiative and the Great Streets programs as examples, but Main Street has been inadequately resourced, and the Great Streets program has taken on too difficult challenges given the level of funding provided to turn around very distressed areas, the social and organizational capacity issues, and the difficulties the city has in dealing successfully with what I call "the soft side of revitalization."

Note that I say Mayor Williams started the process of transformation. The process is by no means complete, nor has it been fully defined. But we are so much better off as a city than we were 8 years ago.

Anyway, here are good pieces that have appeared in local newspapers:

1. "Thanks Mr. Mayor" by Deborah Simmons in the Washington Times;

2. "Tony Williams: Mayor Hard Hat" by Harry Jaffe in the Examiner;

3. "Ciao: An open letter to Mayor Anthony Williams," by Jonetta Rose Barras in the Examiner;

4. Michael Neibauer's interview with the Mayor, "Mayor Williams contemplates his legacy," in the Examiner; and

5. A pro-Mayor Examiner editorial, "Editorial: Thank you, Mr. Bow Tie."
Photo by Lateef Mangum, for the Mayor's Office.

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization