MP Business 2018

www.MPBusinessMag.com | www.BestOfMP.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com MPB mp business darn close. However, the All-America City Awards aren’t about a city or a town’s attractive amenities. They are focused instead on the important work that goes on within communities – and that means the people as well as their government – to develop and promote programs and policies that highlight civic engagement, across-the-board inclusiveness and equity, collaboration, innovation and visionary planning. None of these somewhat-abstract concepts is as easy to wrap our heads around as just enumerating and extolling the many positive aspects of the Mount Pleasant lifestyle. Yet they are the keys to unlocking the prestigious All- America City Awards. “No city or town in America is perfect,” said Sarah Lipscomb, program director for the All-America City Awards at the National Civic League. “We’re not saying that Mount Pleasant doesn’t have many attractive features. But they’re not why it is a repeat winner of this award.” By way of background, the National Civic League was founded in 1894 with the stated goal of stopping corruption in local government by professionalizing local governance. This was just after the reign of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall in New York City, which had become the fool’s gold standard for municipal cronyism, patronage, political payoffs and more. To that end, the National Civic League deserves much of the credit for devising and establishing the city manager form of government – under which Mount Pleasant operates today – to diminish the power of politicians by increasing the authority and influence of theoretically dispassionate experts. This system seemed to work well, with the city manager serving more or less as the municipality’s chief executive officer, advising on and executing the policies of an elected board of governors, usually termed council members. In the 21st century, thousands of cities and towns operate under this system. Despite the apparent successes of city manager government, with its attendant staff bureaucracies, the National Civic League eventually came to the distressing conclusion that the very professionalism they espoused tended to push local residents away from the decision- making process. Too often, citizens simply looked to their municipalities to solve all of their problems. “With that in mind,” Lipscomb noted, “the All- America City Award was created in 1949 to recognize the Photos courtesy of Gary Santos.