Community Voices: How to woo City Hall

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I grew up in the 1960s where a familiar mantra was to make love not war. I’ve discovered over the last dozen years that – when it comes to City Hall – a little wooing goes a long way. 

With no budget, no authority, no constituency, I’ve learned a few secrets of the exercise of informal leadership, and this essay is designed to pass them along to you.  

In our first effort, when Rick Baker was mayor, a group of local authors got the Council to proclaim that St. Pete was a “City of Writers.”

More significant, the great Peter Meinke was declared the city’s first Poet Laureate. This move was so successful that Helen Pruitt Wallace was named Peter’s successor. And, in one of the great upsets in political history, Peter was appointed Poet Laureate of the State of Florida by none other than Governor Rick Scott.

Now that’s what I call juice. 

Not long ago, my friend John Capouya wrote a terrific book called Florida Soul, a cultural history of soul music in the Sunshine State. The first chapter was devoted to the life and influence of the great Ray Charles. As a teenager, the man who would become known as The Genius lived and worked in Tampa with trips across the bay to St. Pete and venues like the Manhattan Casino. 

One of the first recordings ever created by Ray Charles was of a sweet song he wrote called “The St. Pete Florida Blues.” I found a version on YouTube and spent more than a year telling folks about it – including Mayor Rick Kriseman, whose eyes popped like champagne corks. 

The result was a performance of Ray Charles music at TheStudio@620 during which the story of Ray Charles in Florida was told, and a proclamation was read by the Deputy Mayor, proclaiming Charles as an adopted son of the city and his song an official song of St. Petersburg.

Poet laureate?  Woo!

Song of the city?  Woo, woo!

So what came next? 

How about making the brown pelican the official bird of St. Petersburg?  You may have thought the pelican already had that status. After all, the pelican emblem is everywhere, on storm drain covers, garbage cans, utility trucks. We had the emblem, but search through the city archives revealed that we did not have the bird.

I did not originally intend this initiative. It was a collateral benefit of asking the city to recognize the pelican poem, written in 1914, as an element in the new pier, where there will be a 14-foot, whimsical, red origami pelican sculpture: “A wonderful bird is the pelican /His bill will hold more than his belican.”

Two essays in the Times combined with research by St. Pete’s cultural prince Wayne Atherholt, and, before I could say “Woo, woo, woo!” I am standing before Council, reciting the pelican poem, receiving a pelican photo to mark the occasion, with members voting unanimously to elevate the brown pelican to its honored status.

How to woo City Hall

The point of this essay is not to pat myself on the back. I already have bursitis from doing that. It’s to offer six tips on how to exercise unofficial influence over city government and other institutions.

*Find an idea that is so good and so obvious that no one sees it. In each of the three initiatives described above (poet, song, bird), nothing new was created.  The ideas existed for years, but under a veil of inattention. I once attended a school that built a new campus and did not, at first, lay sidewalks for foot traffic. Instead, administrators planted grass and watched as students created paths of their own. That’s where they put the sidewalks.

*Do a little homework, but not too much. Chances are you have a day job. If you spend all your time doing research on an idea, it will never get done. Let’s say I wanted to raise the profile of Babe Ruth, who helped put St. Pete on the map in the early days from his years playing baseball and golf and doing charitable work and raising more than a little hell. Learn enough so that you can take the next step.

*Talk it up. Develop a pitch that creates a shock of recognition. Your curiosity will lead you to information and anecdotes you can begin to share. I often start with a did you know question. “Did you know that Tampa has a poet laureate, but not St. Pete?” “Did you know that Ray Charles wrote a song about St. Pete?” “Did you know that there is a popular poem devoted to pelicans?”

*Offer to launch it at the lowest possible cost. Preferably nothing. An early effort to create a poet laureate for St. Pete failed when the proposal had some dollars attached. Five years later, Peter Meinke was our sacred scribe at no cost beyond the paper it took to write the proclamation. That said, the city should be willing to spend money on all forms of cultural improvement. My argument is that these early manifestations reveal the continuing value of such work and create a more conducive environment for fundraising of all kinds.  

*Write a draft of a pitch, or even a proclamation, that minimizes work that other officials would have to do. I rarely use the word bureaucrat. It has a negative, condescending connotation. I respect municipal works for what they do to improve the quality of life in the places we live. Such workers, in my experience, tend to be cautious. Their answer to proposals is not always a quick yes, nor should it be. It is my job to help them see advantages and to minimize risk. Writing is my profession, so my inclination is always to draft a proclamation. This allows folks in the city administration to see what something new might look like. They can accept it, reject it, or revise it. In most cases, a text they can see helps ease their inhibitions.

*Share the credit and the benefits. Even if I and my pals propose an initiative, the greatest praise should go to those who make it a reality. In the pelican project, it was the deputy mayor, the cultural administrator, the mayor, and then individual council members, then the whole council who could proclaim on January 9, 2020, that the brown pelican had been designated the Official Bird of the City of St. Petersburg. To reward the administration I stood before the council and recited what I think may have been the first limerick ever proclaimed in such a sober setting: “A wonderful bird is the pelican / His bill will hold more than his belican / He can keep in his beak / Food enough for a week / But I’m damned if I see how the helican.”

If your wooing can make the city smile – even laugh – you’ve got a good chance of moving from the woo stage to real love.  

Roy Peter Clark has taught writing at the Poynter Institute for more than 40 years.  He and his wife Karen live in the Greater Pinellas Point neighborhood of St. Petersburg.