{mayor} The All-America City Award is the oldest and most respected community recognition program in the nation. This year marks the 51st anniversary of the award, which recognizes communities, whose citizens work together to identify and tackle community-wide challenges and achieves uncommon results. Each year, only ten cities are selected as All-America City winners. These communities exemplify the true American spirit at work. Their citizens are actively committed to ensuring that their community is a safe nurturing place to live.

Each year, the All-America City Award program receives more than 100 applications from communities across the country. The applications are reviewed by a 20-member screening committee of public and civic affairs experts. Following a careful and thorough examination, 30 finalists are announced. This year Lancaster, along with York and Oil City, were designated as finalists from Pennsylvania.

At hearings before the All-America City jury in June, each finalist community presented its application and answered questions posed by the jury. Once the jury carefully considered all the finalists' presentations and applications, the winners were announced at an awards ceremony on June 3 in Louisville, Kentucky.

For a community to be named an All-America City, it must be able to demonstrate successful resolution of community issues through collaborative effort. Award winning criteria include the following: active citizen involvement, effective and efficient government performance, maximized local volunteer resources, a strong capacity for cooperation and consensus building, community vision and pride, inter-group relations, community information sharing, and intercommunity cooperation.

The City of Lancaster has not only met these requirements over the past several years, but with programs such as The Lancaster Campaign, The Partnership, and SACA DC, we have exceeded them.

The Partnership - a collaboration of four minority-headed organizations (3 African-American & 1 Latino), formed an alliance to address three initiatives (Community & School, Employment & Training, and Housing and Economic Development) in order to meet the needs of their community. These agencies, with board resolutions, have committed to a working relationship that is designed by the four directors, through regularly scheduled meetings and shared leadership. As a result of this collaboration the first Charter School was started in 1998 to address the dropout rate, and in 1997 Inner City Group, an economic development corporation, was formed to address housing, employment and training, neighborhood business development, crime, and infrastructure improvements. All of these efforts focus on providing our youth an opportunity to grow up in a safe environment that supports and nurtures them while providing them with skills for success.

The SACA Development Corporation Homeownership Program - a partnership involving municipal and state governments, the community, the private sector and financial institutions of Lancaster County, is working to convert a long neglected area characterized by deteriorating rental properties and crime to solid homeowner neighborhoods. SACA DC has made it possible for lower-income families who never dreamed of homeownership to become proud, stable homeowners. Over the last 6 years, 60 homes have been rehabilitated and sold to first-time homebuyers, and incidences of crime have reduced substantially. Recent development of a pocket park on a once vacant lot has enhanced the neighborhood. Other planned infrastructure improvements include street lighting, tree planting, new curbs and sidewalks. A Neighborhood Association has been organized to involve residents in maintaining the quality of life, keeping up their homes, and addressing safety issues. SACA DC, in a partnership with the City, Weed and Seed program, and a local lending institution, acquired an abandoned store and turned it into the Southeast Block Watch Center. This center, managed by a committee composed of block captains, is a meeting place for community members to come together to work collectively for the betterment of the southeast area of the City of Lancaster.

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The Lancaster Campaign - established to provide a link between planning and doing, to create a forum for grass-roots involvement in city revitalization.  The Lancaster Campaign is a nonprofit, nonpolitical, diverse organization in which City and County government, local development organizations, social service agencies, and businesses cooperating to implement a 10-point community vision statement. These ten points include, among others, economic well-being, public safety and security, celebration of cultural diversity, a vibrant downtown, strong neighborhoods, and a quality educational system. An important aspect of the initiative was the formation of the Campaign’s Executive Committee, which brings major community institutions to the table on a monthly basis to share perspectives and ideas on the City’s future and to support implementation of the volunteer Action Group projects. The Campaign’s muscle comes from over 250 volunteers. Until recently, these volunteers were organized around each of the 10 points in the vision statement. Then, they did what rarely happens: they measured success and commenced to consolidate and eliminate committees. Today, the Campaign is organized around five streamlined Action Groups that cut across all the elements of the vision statement. These committees include Education and Children, Destination Downtown, Economic Development, Finance, and Quality of Life/Neighborhoods

However, the All-America City Awards are more then just winning, it is how you go about your application and presentation process and who in your community gets involved. Between civic and business leaders, students, teachers and community activist, Lancaster had the opportunity to show 29 other cities and the City of Louisville that we are committed to homeownership, making our streets safer for our youth and utilizing business resources in our community. And although we recognize that we still have much work to do, it has been wonderful to see these programs get the recognition that they have worked so hard to earn.