Empowerment Zones’ Success

* The Times’ Jan. 31 editorial “An Empowered Santa Ana” warned that “merely throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them.” It stated that “the key seems to be getting everyone in the affected area working from the same playbook.”

The actual key is leadership.

The editorial reports that “the experiences of other cities recognized as empowerment zones have been mixed.” An important reason some of these empowerment zones have been successful is that civic leadership has kept the process on track and tightly focused the funding on projects and activities that work.

The failure of some empowerment zones can be traced, in part, to weak or incompetent civic leadership that has squandered both opportunities and resources.

Santa Ana can ensure that a collaborative process with “buy-in” from all societal sectors is established by creating, with empowerment-zone dollars, a civic leadership program that will orient and instruct emerging civic leaders in the decision-making efforts it will take to build economy and community in Santa Ana for the future.

We need to create “civic entrepreneurs” who can work collaboratively and creatively to do more than “rearrange the furniture” of the status quo. It takes leaders and not bureaucracies to solve problems and make true progress in getting empowerment zones to live up to their name.

TIM GEDDES

Huntington Beach