We tried that for awhile. Focused on the negatives and how we could change it. We found it be incredibly hard and incredibly depressing. So we figured…why not focus on the good things happening in the world? And more importantly, in our community? Because there is much good happening. It doesn’t mean we stop caring about the problems, it just means we celebrate the good as well and maybe that way we can all find a nice balance.

Citizen Spartanburg hopes to see this blog grow into a place where individuals, non-profit organizations, businesses, the faith-based and education communities…in other words, everyone, can come together and share why they love our community and what they are doing to make a difference within it.

It will do all of us good to see the positive things happening in our community. Hopefully, we’ll find inspiration to get involved, share individual successes and do more to make Spartanburg a better place to live for ourselves and future generations.

We are working with the Spartanburg Herald Journal to feature our blog with other GoUpstate blogs on their main page. From time-to-time, blog contributions may be picked up to be printed in the paper edition of the Herald Journal.

Citizen Spartanburg hopes each of you will consider contributing. Share what you’re doing to improve the quality of life in Spartanburg. Share your passions. Why you volunteer for a particular organization or why you care about a particular issue that impacts the greater good.

This is not a place to complain about what is not happening. It is a place to celebrate what is happening.

Citizen Spartanburg hopes you’ll join the party.

Submission Guidelines:
We’re looking for quality not quantity. 500 concise words are better than 1000 that are not. You have the potential to be published in the paper…so make it good! While this will most likely not become your full-time job it is still an opportunity to get your voice out there. So don’t hesitate to read up on writing a successful Op-Ed. Tips abound on the internet.For example HERE and HERE.

Send questions/submissions to tdreamweaver@hotmail.com

Bilanchone stressed the importance of finding common ground. What can we all come together on to support? In a democracy, we must first be understanding in order to establish common ground. We must all understand that we come from different places.  That each of us see the world in different ways based on where we come from in life. We must listen and then we must think—sympathetically and empathetically in order to learn about each other’s experiences and points of view.

In order to achieve common ground we must create an environment of freedom, safety, openness and a place where people feel valued as a human being if we expect to have our own viewpoints heard.

She shared a mnemonic device to aid in remembering the approach to civil discourse: EUREKA.

E—empathy—begin by showing empathy for your listener’s position;

U—understanding—express your understanding about why you believe the listener might have adopted the position that he or she holds;

R—respect—demonstrate your respect for the listener as a person whose perspective is different from your own and for the position that he or she holds;

E—endorsement—endorse as much of your listener’s position as you can while remaining true to your own position.

K—Kommon Ground (poetic license)—identify common ground you can develop that is shared by your position and your listener’s position;

A—assertion—finally, assert your own position in language that will enable your listener to understand your perspective and respect it at the very least, and at most, see the possibilities of a combined position, if there are such possibilities.

This device is aimed at helping each of us create the safe environment for civil discourse referenced above.

When talking to elected officials, Bilanchone suggested, asking who do you want to communicate with and why? What is the outcome you are looking for—what are you trying to achieve?

A letter to the editor is one way to communicate. Bilanchone recommended stepping back and considering who it is you want to communicate with? You can only write so many ‘letters to the editor’ and you may not want to communicate to the world or need to. You might need to keep your point small. The last thing you want to do is call someone out incorrectly or embarrass someone because that will not help your cause in the long run.

You can telephone elected officials but this leaves no record and it leaves you open to saying more than you wanted to or saying something you might later regret. You can also schedule a personal visit but she recommends only using this for high level type issues. You can also make a personal appearance in front of a Council or delegation as a whole but the impact is not as effective as you may want it to be.

Bilanchone’s personal choice of communication is email. She said your message should be focused and as short as possible. It should contain one idea per message. No musing, no venting. Create a concise, fair, realistic message. Open it with an engaging sentence and advocate for a specific action. Keep in mind, elected officials are hearing from lots of constituents and often they read info to determine if it is a “for” or “against” a particular issue so spending lots of time on a long, drawn out message isn’t always effective.

Bilanchone gave the group copies of her book, “Civil Discourse: A Personal Ethic For Public Life.” We have extras copies and if you’d like to learn more about what she had to share we will get you a copy.

Finding common ground and having understanding are just two ways we can make a difference in our community.

Many thanks to Linda Bilanchone for sharing with our group! Let us know if you’d like a copy of her book!

Sustainable Spartanburg

Accommodations tax committee – 1 vacancy
HARB – 2 vacancies
Construction Board of Adjustments and Appeals – 3 vacancies
Election Commission – 1 vacancy
Housing Authority – 1 vacancy
Housing Board of Adjustment and Appeals – 2 vacancies
Human Relations Commission – 5 vacancies
Investment Oversight – 2 vacancies
Planning Commission – 2 vacancies
Public Safety Committee – 4 vacancies
Auditorium Commission – 2 vacancies
Zoning Board – 3 vacancies

You can learn more about the what each of these boards/commissions do and what the committment involves HERE.

You can access the application HERE.

If you’re interested…apply! And let us and your City Councilperson know!  We need smart, thoughtful people to step up and apply to these Boards!

We are planning an informal forum to allow Council members an opportunity to share with us why they do what they do for our community and how we, as citizens, can better help them move Spartanburg forward. It will be a great opportunity to get to know our City Council a little better!

Please plan to join us and bring a friend!

What a fabulous meeting we had last night! We had about 40 folks show up including 3 City Council members!  It was fantastic and proof that our community is ready for a Citizen Spartanburg.

The meeting consisted of a little business and a little socializing—we hope a nice balance for all. We opened the meeting by answering the question ‘who are we’ and ‘what do we want to do’? We explained how Citizen is a grassroots effort of everyday citizens who want to make a difference in our community. That we want to build community connections for citizens to our non-profits, elected leaders and the business community. We want to rally the Spartanburg troops. We want to serve as a community catalyst and get some things started! We must stand behind Spartanburg through the good and the bad. And, despite the fact we will not always agree, we must do this together.

People seemed super excited about the POSITIVE! Who doesn’t want or need positive???

We shared what we hope to accomplish with the First Monday Meetings. Networking, new ideas, finding focus and sharing our ideas and events with each other and building support. The whole community is welcome and needed. We must find ways to reach out to everyone.

Finally we introduced the POST-it question of the night! The POST-it question of the night was: What would success in our community look like? The group was told an answer can be as simple as ‘more restaurants downtown’ to something more complex. They wrote their answers on post-it notes and stuck it on the easel. Here’s what we got! (they were handwritten so I’m doing my best to decipher on some!)

• Thriving downtown
• Community that supports local
• Empowered citizens
• More people walking around downtown, shopping, eating, drinking and having fun with each other, their children and their dogs
• Success—people are walking and bicycling everywhere because they feel safe and connected
• Educators who work together to create social from their respective institutions, neighborhoods and/or “community”
• Educators who are proud of their role and powerful
• Constructive/critical student action
• Put the historic preservation portion back in the Master Plan
• I would like to see us work for a restaurant no-smoking ban
• Make an energetic downtown—more restaurants, rent cap for new business, summer outdoor movies
• Increase in “downtown” population/residents
• Residents inhabiting existing structures
• Alcohol sales on Sunday and a smoking ban
• Merge City and County government
• Would like to see a more streamlined version of issues and when they would be on the City Council agenda. It’s too overwhelming to try to get through traditional media for info.
• Do Neighborhood Associations actually meet together? As with anything, why keep reinventing the same wheel? Same with non-profits—what are we all doing that can help each other—grant writing?
  Neighborhood parties and neighborhood pride (litter, crime, walk to school)
• Stop being a college town in denial—make it obvious downtown. We have 7 colleges!
• Celebration of the City’s music heritage
• Support all of the Arts in Spartanburg
• More activities in City and neighborhood parks
• Influencing business owners downtown to relax rents to try to help bring more business downtown
• A city that welcomes diversity
• Every child has access to quality education regardless of where you live. No more project schools.
• A community where the middle class is the majority and we have quality housing for them
• A road diet on East Main from St. John to Converse St.
• Success—City and County Council are packed every meeting
• More cohesion between City and County
• Lower cost to own/lease space in downtown for business purposes
• More ‘kid-friendly’ restaurants in downtown
• More parking downtown
• More bike racks
• Need to work to revitalize downtown—more restaurants, bars and clubs—really make nightlife come alive and it will generate more tax revenues for the City
• Approval of the Master Plan!
• Repeal Sunday Blue Laws in Spartanburg
• Success—there are NO parking places Downtown because it is so hot!
• Fewer payday lenders
• More people and about (active, involved, doing, seeing, enjoying, attending, voicing, participating, smiling, disagreeing, dialoguing, etc. etc.)
• I would like to see a smoke-free Spartanburg
• Cool Downtown with lots of pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcycle parking. Live music, good restaurants, vintage clothing store.
• Seeing people of all ages walking, visiting, laughing, playing on the streets of Spartanburg as well as Morgan Square
• Strong Mayor form of Government
• Creativity and experimentation (in arts, culture and ideas) are valued, encouraged and unencumbered
• The aesthetic of Spartanburg is democratic, authentic and clearly “branded.”
• All citizens feel engaged and invited to participate
• Downtown is the most desirable place in the county to live, work and play
• Local history is regarded with pride and historic buildings and places are protected
• Local citizens are proactive about protecting and restoring key environmental resources such as clean air, water and land
• Downtown will have a mix of dining, entertainment, retail and residential space
• PRIDE in Spartanburg
• A vibrant downtown—a destination spot
• Cooperation between City and County agendas
• A Downtown with people (bars, restaurants, snack shops—ice cream, coffee, bakery)
• Preserve the green spaces
• Preserve the historical buildings
• Encourage local business owners
• More development/revitalization of Union Street
• Better coordination among colleges/universities
• Low unemployment, more parents involved with schools and more Arts in the community!
• Success—people are racing to buy homes in the City!
• A more exciting and thriving downtown district along with a stronger closeness between the various neighborhoods
• Close off Downtown to cars. Bikes and Peds only!
• Attract more and different business so there are fewer vacant storefronts and other buildings. It makes us look so run-down and like a ‘has-been’ town.
• What about making Citizen Spartanburg a kind of Citizens Council where citizens/community groups are represented, mobilize together, discuss issues, collaborate and share resources for different initiatives?
• Have a monthly focus or a ‘to do this month’ sponsored by Citizen Spartanburg, i.e. plan a night out Downtown, attend an event at the Chapman Cultural Center, volunteer your time to a local non-profit, etc. Use Facebook, email lists, etc. to promote.
• Co-Op Downtown
• Investments in Infrastructure
• Make it a place where our children want to come back to
• Realistic plan to revitalize Union Street
• Success—people who invest in our community cannot wait for the next opportunity 
• ridiculous numbers of women and other minority voters, even in off-year elections
• 55% or so women / other minorities elected to local, state, and national bodies

Now…there is some food for thought! Next question to ponder is how? We will be working on the answer to that as well. We are currently working on getting a forum up where we can discuss these ideas. Give us a little time–this is truly a grassroots effort!

Many thanks to everyone who came last night. Next month, let’s do it again! And THANK YOU for caring about community!

This project is a grassroots effort by regular citizens who want to make a difference in our community. We have jobs and families and lots going on in our lives but we take our responsibility as citizens very serious! We believe it is up to us to make our community what we want it to be and we need as much help as we can get. We know we need to keep our goals realistic. We are going to work hard for little successes because they do matter. We hope to build stronger connections between Spartanburg and our citizens. We want more people involved in the process. We want to raise the level of civil discourse. And most importantly, we want to see more pride in our community because this is our home and we should be proud!

So, keep coming back. Sign up for our newsletter. Come to a First Monday meeting. We will be sharing more and more opportunities and ideas and we hope you will share your ideas with us!