The city of Wilmington's Citizens Participation Plan

Date

2000

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Southern New Hampshire University

Abstract

The original goal of my project was "To develop a strong plan action that would allow for the sustainment of the City of Wilmington's Neighborhood Planning Councils beyond this administration". In April I changed the focus of my project from the sustainment of the NPCs to the Development of the City of Wilmington's Citizen Participation Plan. The Citizens Participation(CP) Plan is being revised for two reasons; 1. It is an HUD requirement to obtain CDBG funding and two. It is part of the Mayors vision of bottom-up government. Presently, under discussion is how the CP Plan can be used for the development of the five-year consolidated plan, as well as, the distribution of the 6.2 million dollars in capital funds for the community. As stated in the thesis project, "In my project contract, I explained that the Neighborhood Planning Councils (NPCS) was the City of Wilmington's community-based initiative. This initiative was in response to the Mayor's vision for the City's neighborhoods to become empowered and to help plan, develop and implement programs, projects and initiatives that will revitalizes their communities in conjunction with City government. The NPCs consist of representation from civic association, block clubs, churches, social service agencies, businesses, and individuals within the boundaries of the NPCs. There are eight NPCs, one for each councilmanic district and the boundaries are the same. The NPCs also have a leadership council. The "Leadership Council" includes the Chair and Co-Chair/President and Vice-President from each of the eight NPCs. It is this leadership group that I am working very closely with for my project. From April until the Present I have accomplished the following: √ collected data from other cities which have citizens (see appendix "a") √ formulated an ad hoc committee from the npc leadership to assist with the development of the plan (see appendix "b") √ have a completed draft of the plan (see appendix "c") √ have presented the draft of the plan to the NPC leadership for review and comments √ have presented the draft of the plan to the Mayor and the Director of Real Estate and Housing We are awaiting approval and/or comments from the NPC Leadership, the Mayor and the Director of Real Estate and Housing. The Mayor's approval is very important to the processes because without it, there will little to no cooperation from the City's Department Heads. A major hurdle we now face is the adoption of the plan by City Council. There are several reasons way the plan needs to be adopted by City Council. One reason is it is a federal regulation from HUD. The second reason is the it will be used for more than the allocations of CDBG dollars. It is our intentions (the community and staff) to have the Plan completed and adopted by City Council by the being of the CDBG funding cycle which starts in late September or early October of 1999." (Library-derived description)

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