Civic Responsibility Task Force

The Task Force's study led to the recommendations linked below. They are grouped into four themes -- Education, Enforcement, Communication, and Collaboration.The recommendations reflect the following guiding principles:

Guiding Principles

1. Civic responsibility emanates from a sense of shared ownership and responsibility on the part of all residents built upon basic levels of mutual respect, availability and response of services, engagement in civic dialogue, and attitudes of cooperation.
   
   
2. Increasing civically responsible behavior involves addressing the root causes of ongoing patterns of irresponsible behavior in addition to event-based, acute behaviors such as what occurred after Halloween 2003. Focusing exclusively on one event, like Halloween, risks ignoring the root causes of ongoing behavior.
   
   
3. An ongoing, sustained partnership between the City and the University is an essential element to success. This partnership should include strategic and tactical elements and should provide the framework within which the broader array of stakeholders – students, permanent residents, landlords, and others – can work toward mutually acceptable solutions.
   
   
4. Successful building of civic responsibility will involve establishing clear expectations through education, defining and communicating likely outcomes of those behaviors in conflict with expectations, consistently delivering on the expected outcomes, and sustaining the effort over time.
   
   
5. Communication efforts surrounding civic responsibility are best executed when they are mindful of the target audience, coordinated, planned, consistent, and delivered using multiple methods.

- Education
- Enforcement
- Communication
- Collaboration