Diedrich appointed to national league of cities

For the second consectutive year, Marciopa City Councilman Carl Diedrich has been tapped to serve on the steering committee of the First Tier Suburbs Council of the National League of Cities.

The purpose of the NLC is to provide local elected officials an opportunity to raise the visibility of first-tier suburbs, discuss and draw attention to their challenges and leverage the resources of the organization to help address them. Diedrich will serve alongside only 22 other community representatives nation-wide, and is the only representative from the state of Arizona.
 
What is a first-tier suburb? It is generally defined as a community built with established neighborhoods near or contiguous to a central city with declining growth, increased poverty and a lack of the tax base of a larger city.

“While Maricopa does not fit all of the traditional criteria of a first-tier suburb, we face many of the same challenges – needing to focus on redevelopment and historic areas, dealing with the aftermath of rapid growth, and figuring out how to provide services in a tough economy and with limited resources,” Diedrich said.
 
Diedrich describes the insight gained when touring the communities of Mission, Kan. and Gladstone, Mo., which have demonstrated ways to combat retail vacancy rates and develop community centers utilizing public-private partnerships. The city of Mission’s center is actually revenue positive, generating 110 percent annually of the cost to maintain and operate the facility.

“This is a great benefit to Maricopa in that there is so much knowledge out there to be gained from working with first tier suburb communities who are willing to share their experiences and paths to success,” Diedrich said.
 
This is not Maricopa’s first time in the spotlight, either. Just after the announcement of his original appointment in 2009, Diedrich was invited to give a presentation to the steering committee highlighting the lessons learned by Maricopa in creating its first redevelopment district area plan, and the importance of communication with stakeholders and taking extra steps to gain as much public input as possible. This exposed a positive Maricopa story to stakeholders at a national level.

Diedrich presented alongside renowned panelists such as William Hudnut, former four-term mayor of Indianapolis and U.S. representative (as well as author Joseph C. Canizaro, Chair for Public Policy at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C.).
 
For more information on the National League of Cities First Tier Suburbs Council, visit http://www.nlc.org/inside_nlc/committees___councils/465.aspx.

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