Community-Based Approach Brings Consistency to Local Development
Municipal governments come and go, and plans, programs and strategies elaborated by predecessors also often disappear with the wind of elections. In Ukraine, it used to be that a new mayor would bring a new team and would immediately start to reinvent the proverbial wheel. The elaboration of plans, programs, strategies, would begin from scratch, following the mantra “we don’t pursue anything we did not invent.” Plans and strategies were written without input from the people for whom they were written, and with little connection to the actual situation they intended to improve.
Prior to the 2006 parliamentary elections, the USAID Local Economic Development (LED) Project had worked to change the situation in 16 cities and focused on developing Economic Development Strategic Plans with them. In these cities, Strategic Planning Committees (SPC) formed with members of city administrations, community leaders and business representatives, crafted transparent economic strategies and a detailed work plans for implementation. Before introducing them to city councils, the SPC presented the plans at public hearings. As a result, communities began to take ownership of these plans.
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Newly-elected Kovel Mayor Serhiy Kosharuk (left) with his predecessor Yaroslav
Shevchuk (right) during a Strategic Planning Committee meeting session six
months prior to Kosharuk’s election
Photo Credit: Oleksandr Zheleznyak |
This spring’s electoral wind brought new mayors to more than half of the cities that had developed their strategic plans with assistance from the LED project. The plans survived the elections and remained effective. And while there may be some adjustments, no one has ever said that a community’s economic strategy as captured in a Strategic Plan is anything but a living document.
Pryluky Deputy Mayor Nadia Yeremenko says the new Mayor, Yuriy Berkut, supports the goals of the plan in his city.
“Maybe, the new City Rada will update the Strategic Plan by setting several new objectives. But the goals will remain the same. I think the Rada will consider Strategic Plan issues at its next session,” she relates.
Yeremenko also states that if a community is to develop, it must have a strategy that “allows us to see what we have to attain, and how.”
Zinaida Fedoruk, Deputy Mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, where the administration has also changed, echoed the view held in Pryluky, “As a matter of fact, no city can develop successfully without a development strategy. And it is very good that Ivano-Frankivsk already has the Economic Development Strategic Plan. Indeed, there are no limits to perfection, and some amendments might be made in the plan.”
Perhaps the most striking example of planning continuity can be seen in the city of Kovel. There, Serhiy Kosharuk, who served on the Strategic Planning Committee as its chairman, is the newly elected mayor. The Electors’ Committee, which monitored programs of mayoral candidates in Kovel, recognized his program, built on the Kovel Economic Development Strategic Plan, as the most adequate for the city’s development.
“I would never have ventured to contend for the mayor’s office had I not become involved in the committee meetings,” explained Kosharuk on his work as chairman of the pro bono committee. “During that time I became better aware of problems in Ukrainian cities, including my own, and learned how to solve them. I saw what was done wrong and realized what I’d like to change.”
Technical assistance projects come and go, and the challenge is always to test sustainability. If you ask: “What remains in local economic development after municipal elections have changed municipal leaders?” the answer is, “Consistency—which thrives because the entire community has created and owns its local development vision.“
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