Civics Alumni Event Nov. 10th at Phillippi

From Vickie:

Hello Everyone,

I’d like to invite you to attend the last class of the fall 2011 session for Civics. The class will be held at Phillippi Estate Park. Please see attached flyer for more details. The theme of the program is “Our Sarasota Legacies – old, new, future.”

In the past, I have asked people to bring food to share with the group but this time I would like to ask you to bring an item to donate to the All Faith’s Food Bank. So please bring a non-perishable item to share with our community.

Please let me know if you plan to attend by November 7th.

Best regards to you all,

Fall Civics Taking Applications

Seats still open for fall Civics 101 session Sarasota County government's popular Civics 101 program still has a few seats open for the session beginning Sept. 8. Civics 101 is a 10-week session that introduces people to the operations and services of Sarasota County government. The Thursday-night classes give students a better understanding of how county government works and allows them to build relationships with county staff. (MORE)

Civics 101 Spring Graduation and Recognition

Belatedly (sorry!) here's the Civics 101 Graduation for the Spring Civics 101 Class. The enthusiasm of the classmates and the special recognition of Civics Class Coordinator Vickie French -- a $1,000 contribution for a tree and a plaque in her name at the Celery Fields -- are remarkable. The Civics item comes up quite early - about the 2 minute mark.

Apply Online for Civics 101, Fall 2011 Session

From the Planning Dept:

Civics 101 - The fall session for 2011 starts September 8th, 2011. Applications are now being accepted.

Civics 101 is a program designed to provide a toolbox of resources on Sarasota County operations and services. The program provides an in-depth and behind the scenes introduction to operations in Community Services, Emergency Services, Financial Planning, Health and Human Services, Planning and Development, Public Communications, Environmental Services and much more. For instance, there are outdoor learning opportunities provided like visiting some of our county parks; Carlton Reserve, Rothenbach Park, and others.

Civics 101 has two sessions - Spring and Fall - both of which are held on Thursday night each week for 10 weeks. You must also participate in one of the many outdoor learning opportunities scheduled. Twenty-five residents are accepted each session on a first-come, first-served basis.

Civics participants will graduate at a Sarasota County Commission meeting upon completion of the requirements outlined in the schedule.

Fill out the application here.

Civics Alumni Event May 19th

From Vickie:

Hello,

It’s that time again for all of us to reunite at the Civics Alumni event on May 19th at the Venice Community Center. Our guest speakers are Bill Furst (Property Appraiser), Commissioner Robinson (District 3 – our new commissioner), and Jeff LaHurd (Sarasota historian and author). The event begins at 5pm and will end at 8pm. Please see the attachment for more details including the agenda and of course the menu. The photos on the front page are of the current class and some of the new activities they have been enjoying.

Please RSVP no later than May 16th for our 6th Alumni gathering.

Vickie French

Click to enlarge:

Welcome Class of Spring 2011

The class of Fall 2010 (if I may presume to speak for them here) welcomes the class of Spring 2011 to Sarasota Civics 101. Through the grapevine, we hear there's been a modification to the course syllabus - instead of a tour of the County's Health Dept. (which is closed at night), the class will hear a lecture about the escalating use and abuse of Oxycodone - a topic highly relevant to Florida just now.

Here's hoping your voyage will be as memorable as ours was.

A few open spots for Civics 101

A few places remain for the upcoming Civics 101. Here's a note from County Civics Coordinator Vickie French:

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all doing well. I went to the opera to see La Boheme this past Saturday night. In the brochure provided there is a list of volunteers. I recognized 8 names from Civics. You are everywhere contributing to what makes Sarasota so special.

I am writing to you because I need your help recruiting participants for the spring class. It was almost full and have had 2 people cancel just today. I still need 3-6 more people. Work your magic. The schedule is attached and I have added in some exciting new tours for this session

Thank you in advance for your efforts. By the way, we’ll be having another Civics alumni event May 19^th so mark your calendars and I’ll send out information as the date approaches.

Vickie French

Neighborhood Coordinator

Sarasota County Government

1660 Ringling Blvd. 4th Floor

Sarasota, FL 34236

861-5145

A few openings remain for new Civics 101 class

Some news about the upcoming "semester" of Civics 101 -- now's a good time to let people know who might be interested, it's filling fast:

Seats still open for Civics 101 

Sarasota County government’s popular Civics 101 program still has a few seats open for the session beginning March 10. 

Civics 101 is a 10-week program that introduces people to the operations and services of Sarasota County government. Each week, staffs from different county departments guide participants through a particular area, exposing them to the inner workings of county government. The classes give students a better understanding of how county government works, and allows them to build relationships with county staff. Sessions are offered at no charge in the spring and fall each year to Sarasota County residents and anyone working in Sarasota County. Twenty-five people are selected each term on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Applications are available here.

The course schedule is available here.

For more information about Civics 101, call the Sarasota County Call Center at 941-861-5000 or e-mail vfrench@scgov.net

Civic Literacy

Members of Civics 101 will remember our quizzes at the finales of several of our classes. Civics takes on a whole different set of concerns at differing levels of political order. Here, for example, is a civics quiz that relates primarily to the federal level, with some history and constitutional law thrown in:

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

The site, maintained by the rather traditionalist Intercollegiate Studies Institute, has related resources including three key findings from its survey.

A Tale of Two Cities

A study comparing Minneapolis and Miami that attempts to compare modes of civic involvement. Do you find it convincing?

MIAMI, FL – January 24, 2011 – A new report released today shows Miami is the least civically engaged in the country compared to Minneapolis-St. Paul, the most engaged metropolitan area. The report helps to shed light on the contributing factors behind each city’s civic engagement in an effort to improve civic health. Researchers say that while the two areas differ demographically those differences do not explain the gap between their civic engagements. [Full text below]

Civics 101 2011 Schedule Set

The Civics 101 Spring 2011 course schedule is now posted on the Web -- just click here. According to County Neighborhood Coordinator Vickie French, the new schedule includes a tour of the Historic Courthouse and SCAT bus tours that will lead to walking tours of South Lido Park and Phillippi Estate Park. Applications for the class can be downloaded here.

Civi-physics

We know that "civics" derives from the Latin word for "city." But what is a city?

A physicist named Geoffrey West felt something key to our understanding of cities was missing:

“We spend all this time thinking about cities in terms of their local details, their restaurants and museums and weather,” West says. “I had this hunch that there was something more, that every city was also shaped by a set of hidden laws.”

West and others now aim to reduce the concrete metropolises spread across the globe to abstract equations, says the New York Times:

West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few exquisitely simple equations. For example, if they know the population of a metropolitan area in a given country, they can estimate, with approximately 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system. These are the laws, they say, that automatically emerge whenever people “agglomerate,” cramming themselves into apartment buildings and subway cars. It doesn’t matter if the place is Manhattan or Manhattan, Kan.: the urban patterns remain the same. West isn’t shy about describing the magnitude of this accomplishment. “What we found are the constants that describe every city,” he says. “I can take these laws and make precise predictions about the number of violent crimes and the surface area of roads in a city in Japan with 200,000 people. I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.”

In terms of the language of Civics 101, this has implications:

It suggests, for instance, that modern cities are the real centers of sustainability. According to the data, people who live in densely populated places require less heat in the winter and need fewer miles of asphalt per capita. (A recent analysis by economists at Harvard and U.C.L.A. demonstrated that the average Manhattanite emits 14,127 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide annually than someone living in the New York suburbs.) Small communities might look green, but they consume a disproportionate amount of everything. As a result, West argues, creating a more sustainable society will require our big cities to get even bigger. We need more megalopolises.

There's a lot more to the article and the thinkers it features, including this insight from Jane Jacobs: The city wasn’t a skyline — it was a dance.

Spring 2011 Civics 101 applications now being accepted

If you're interested in signing up for Civics 101, the contact person at the County is Vickie French. She does a great job coordinating a ambitious, highly varied program. This info comes from the County's site:

The spring session for 2011 starts March 10, 2011. Applications are now being accepted.
Civics 101 is a class designed to provide a toolbox of resources on Sarasota County operations and services. This class provides an in-depth and behind the scenes introduction to operations in Community Services, Emergency Services, Financial Planning, Health and Human Services, Planning and Development, Public Communications, Public Works and much more.

Civics 101 has two sessions - Spring and Fall - both of which are held on Thursday night each week for 10 weeks. You must also select one of the three tours scheduled. Twenty-five residents are accepted each session on a first-come, first-served basis.

Civics participants will graduate at a Sarasota County Commission meeting upon completion of the requirements outlined in the schedule. The new schedule for 2011 has not been finalized but the program will be very similar to the one posted for fall 2010.

	Civics 101 Application
	Civics 101 Fall 2010 Schedule

Utilities of this blog: Sharing, Extending, Responding

I imagine at least three purposes for this blog -- there are doubtless more, but these occurred to me right off:

• At the end of each session of Civics 101, we were asked to "review" the session and to say how we intended to share the information we received. I kept saying "I'll blog it," so that's one thing I'll do here: try to provide summaries of some of the splendid presentations, with links where possible, so that someone coming to this material fresh will, one hopes, find something useful.

• I'm sure some folks will be taking information presented and run with it -- the fascinating information about gardens, water, libraries, health, traffic control, public works, land conservation, parks, budgets, purchasing and more -- offer many paths to follow. It will be interesting to see where they lead us.

• A third purpose would be to respond to what we've been exposed to. The rich store of information about how things work was superb; meeting some of those who make them work was terrific; but now what? What thoughts, observations, questions, responses does all this information prompt? If we ask, what are we to do with all this transparency, perhaps one response would be to utilize social media to turn monologue into dialog. It might be your turn to speak.

These are some of the purposes that occurred to me for a Civics 101 blog. All those attending Civics 101 are welcome to post here - just email Tom at lakesarasota@gmail.com and I'll make you a co-author here. Or if you'd prefer, just send along what you write to that address, and it'll be posted here.

Civics for the rest of us

I've just finished the highly popular and well thought of Civics 101 course in Sarasota County. The course consisted of ten weekly "classroom" sessions -- each focusing on a different function within local government -- and several field trips.

The county has a good story to tell, because for the past decade or more, it's been run intelligently -- there was a good deal of fiscal prudence, so that now, as the economy flounders, important systems like the Sheriff, Fire/Rescue, the courts and the parks continue to operate without tax increases.

The county also has the benefit of very bright, energetic and creative people who are tapping into some fascinating thinking about sustainability, community, and nature. It may be that one of the benefits of taking a course like this is, we --  the 25 lucky residents who signed on -- have begun to think more broadly about how nature and technology can be understood as elements in the fabric of a larger whole: the sustainable community. The more we learn about nature's methods of doing things, the more wisely we might be able to support, nurture and govern our human habitations.

A few images from our trips are below. In order of appearance they include the wastewater plant, public works, traffic control, emergency services (including dogs), the T. Mabry Carlton Preserve, the water treatment plant, and a visit to the Celery Fields with guides from the Sarasota Audubon Society.