The old Sunday morning trope asks, “What’s missing from CH _ _ CH? U R!“ No, it’s not particularly funny (my pastors growing up never were). It does, however, make a quick and important point — any group of people is only as vibrant as the people who participate in it.
Well, there are no letters “U” or “R” in the words, “Eastside decision-making,” but the point is no less true. It’s simply not complete without you.
That the Eastside is growing is not news. It’s been popular to tout our greater diversity than Seattle’s for years — more languages spoken in the schools, more foreign-born residents, fewer percentage of white residents. Then there is the infamous reverse commute — more workers come to the Eastside from Seattle to work than vice versa.
Yes, the Eastside is growing, but who’s deciding what we want to be when we grow up?
Despite roughly the same population as the Eastside, Seattle has a significant structural advantage when it comes to plotting its course — Seattle is a single municipality. Public participation in city-limits-constrained political processes results in widespread policy-setting.
What of the Eastside? With almost two-dozen municipalities, five school districts, business powerhouses with more global employees than the populations of the cities that host them and myriad compassionate, engaged nonprofits, it requires significant collaboration and focus to affect the whole.
And affecting the whole Eastside is what’s needed to plot a coherent course. That’s the way to grow up rather than to simply hope to keep growing.
So go the lessons of other U.S. communities looking to match and surpass our region’s success. A group of community leaders, led by Bellevue Downtown Association, has been traveling to peer cities around the country for the past several years to learn from their mistakes and progress. After visiting Vancouver, British Columbia, Denver, Pasadena, Austin and Minneapolis-St. Paul, one observation shines brightly as an underpinning of their recent advances: leaders in those communities collaborated to create a plan. Despite the challenge of multiple municipal boundaries — i.e., the two dozen cities in Denver County or the long, differing histories of Minneapolis vs. St. Paul — public, private and nonprofit leadership came together to plan their future and collaborate to get there.
The good news is a brand new partnership of business, nonprofit and public sector leaders is emerging across the Eastside to identify opportunities to collaborate on maximizing our inherent advantages and seizing the future.
What’s missing? You are. That’s why Leadership Eastside and Sound Publishing’s Eastside publications are working together to invite their readers’ voices into the conversation. The people who live and work here should have a say in the course that is plotted.
The time has come for us to be intentional about the kind of community we want to live in tomorrow. And to set a table where everyone has a chance to participate in making that happen.
The time has come for the Eastside to grow up.
Welcome to the table.
James Whitfield is president and CEO of Leadership Eastside, a nonprofit that convenes leadership for the greater good.
