Mayors upbeat at Reno meeting

RENO -- There's a mood of optimism among the nation's mayors who feel cities are on the rebound from the days when they were viewed as unsafe for residents, breeding grounds for ghettos and examples of broken-down government.

Crime is down, the economy is strong and a new federal highway bill has been passed to help restore crumbling infrastructure.

"The feeling is upbeat," says Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini, who takes over as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors when it closes its meeting Tuesday. "In my 6 1/2 years as mayor, I have seen a major shift in terms of attention the cities are getting at the federal level."

Mayor Paul Helmke of Fort Wayne, Ind., says, "There's a sense we can take care of our problems." And there are lots of success stories at local government, says Helmke, outgoing president of the organization.

"When we got together in the past, it was to lobby Washington, now Washington is coming to us," said Helmke, the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate in Indiana.

There are representatives from 22 federal agencies at the conference. And many of the mayors are crediting President Clinton with helping rejuvenate the cities.

Mayor Jeff Griffin of Reno, a Republican, says Clinton "has been a big supporter of American cities and he deserves a lot of credit," in the revival.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo told the mayors they should not be bashful about coming to Congress for more money. "We can't afford sprawl. It's eating up our farmland and polluting our air," he told the conference.

Cuomo's report on the cities said they are the strongest they have been economically in a decade and many downtowns are experiencing a renaissance as centers of tourism, sports, entertainment and the arts.

Violent crime has fallen by 19 percent in the large cities since 1993. Employment is on the rise and "regional economies, with the cities at their center, are now the primary engines of national prosperity," he said.

And the mayors believe they are coming up with their own initiatives to solve problems.

Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston gives city workers four free hours off to get tests for breast cancer. Corradini, although she has no authority over public education, holds monthly meetings with school officials to coordinate programs. She says at-risk kids are a major problem and "We have to get involved in education."

In Fort Wayne, a large pump manufacturing factory, was closed and it became the site of an illegal dump, dragging down the neighborhood. The federal effort at urban renewal failed with its big apartment houses, says Mayor Helmke.

But now local government is working with business, the Catholic and Lutheran churches and with the aid of some federal money to build a park and to refurbish the area.

It's many of these simple things, Helmke said that are leading to better lives for citizens in the cities.

Of course it isn't all peaches and cream in urban America. Older industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest continue to see their populations shrink. While those in the West such as Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Phoenix experience sharp growth.

School violence is concentrated in large urban schools. In the 1996-97 school year, 1,800 schools in major cities reported more than 5,400 fights in which weapons were used. Some school districts have been taken over by city governments. And there's the problem of crumbling schools that need to be repaired or replaced.

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