Visitors from Columbus explore Mobile

Sunday, October 25, 2009

It's always interesting to see your community through someone else's eyes.

Eighty-three people from Columbus, Ga., hopped a bus to Mobile recently, hoping to "bond and try and learn a few things that might make our city better," in the words of Ben Holden, vice president and executive editor of the Ledger-Enquirer newspaper.

The trip was organized by the chamber of commerce in Columbus, with its Mobile counterpart playing host and helping to develop the program.

The Columbus visitors stayed in the Renaissance Riverview downtown during the week leading up to the BayFest music festival. A sampling of impressions after three days in Mobile?

"A recurring theme ... was the need to think of quality public education as more than just good public policy," Holden wrote in a column for his newspaper, noting an assertion from Carolyn Akers, executive director of the Mobile Area Education Foundation, that "improving public education is our No. 1 (economic) development strategy."

"It seems to be a town that has a great economic base, which will allow it to do some real improvements in areas like education," said Russ Carreker, president and chief executive of Bytewise, a company that makes laser-based measurement tools for industry.

"It is a beautiful, very clean and progressive city with a vision and strong leadership," said Carmen Cavezza, executive director of the Cunningham Center for Leadership Development at Columbus State University. "I saw nothing bad in Mobile; I was particularly impressed with the downtown area."

There were good words about the city of Mobile's CitiSmart program, which takes a business-oriented, customer service approach to addressing public problems. Holden quoted a unique (and likely tongue-in-cheek) comment by John Windley, Mobile's superintendent of public works, who said, "I am by nature a pretty lazy person. I hate

(CitiSmart) because it makes me work."

Cavezza said Columbus would likely try some of Mobile's ideas for managing the problem of homelessness.

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