How We Created Real Change in Bremerton

September 2008

Cary Bozeman
Mayor, City of Bremerton

When we came to Bremerton six years, ago the city had been in an economic downturn for the past twenty years. We had the lowest per-capita family income of the top fifty largest cities in the state, 60% of our school children qualified for the federal lunch program, and 60% of our homes were renter occupied. The city administration had financial challenges and the citizens were not in a happy mood. It was clear that real change had to occur and we needed to adopt some principles that would lead us to economic and social revitalization. Six years later, I am happy to report that we have turned things around with over 500 million dollars of outside investment in our downtown, our schools have passed three straight levies, the value of our real estate has gone up by 35%, and the city now has healthy reserves in all our accounts. We have brought real change to this community based on the following beliefs.

First, we had to become a smarter organization and focus in on the most important priority which was the revitalization of our downtown which had literally died when all the retail moved out of town to the Silverdale Mall. Our strategy was to consult with some really smart people on this issue, hire people who knew how to work with the private sector, and learn as much as we could about how to access the funding opportunities with the State and Federal Government. We hired a very smart person to be our Director of Economic Development who had worked in the private sector and we hired a lobbyist to work on our behalf in Olympia who had great knowledge of the funding opportunities at the State. In six months we had become much more informed on the issues of revitalization, had good smart people in place and understood what our number one priority was. We were ready to bring real change to our City.

Second, we began to believe and understand that we if we made good choices we would make real progress. If we continued to make bad choices we would go backwards. In other words we would be a product of our own choices and anything could be possible if we got smarter, better informed, had good people, and made the right choices. We did not have to remain in the same place we were two years ago and we believed that real change could and would occur. The challenge would be getting people out of their comfort zones and willing to take risk. There are always winners and losers on the side of change and some people feel safer with the status quo. We had to convince our people that we could be better and to uplift our standards at all levels even to the point of growing bigger and brighter hanging baskets in our downtown. We had to adopt a company philosophy that we could be better if we were willing to do things differently, improve our decision making, be better informed, and not be afraid to reach for higher standards. We also had to be willing to really listen to others and to each other and be able to give and receive honest feedback. We don’t improve unless we understand how others feel about us and we are strong enough to listen and have real dialogue on the important issues.

Third and most important, we had a vision of where we wanted to go by turning our downtown from a once retail center, into a new urban lifestyle center where people live and work and enjoy a diversity of art, music, food, and quality access to our wonderful waterfront. We created a six year revitalization plan that brought discipline to our vision and identified the redevelopment partners we would require in order to bring this change to our downtown. These partnerships were critical to our success and were built out of professional negotiation and trust building. Everyone had to win for it to work. Last but not least, we had to have leaders who believed in our goal and were passionate about getting the job done. We all had to believe we could leave it better than we found it and so far we have done that.

P. Stephen DiJulio, a partner at Foster Pepper & Shefelman PLLC, focuses on litigation involving state and local governments, and land use and environmental law. Particular experience includes representation of jurisdictions on eminent domain, utilities (water, wastewater, storm water, solid waste systems), local improvement districts, facility siting and contractor litigation. More.

Carl Neu, author and consultant, is recognized nationally as an authority on, and an experienced practitioner of, the theory and application of governance and leadership to city councils and county boards, local government managers, and community leaders. More.

Paul McClintock is a Professional Registered Parliamentarian and Certified Parliamentarian, professionally serving organizations as parliamentarian at meetings, teaching workshops, and writing parliamentary opinions. He also is an active leader in the National Association of Parliamentarians and the American Institute of Parliamentarians at several levels. More.

Ann G. Macfarlane is a Professional Registered Parliamentarian. She created Jurassic Parliament to make parliamentary procedure easy to learn and memorable. She provides training on leadership, meeting management, parliamentary procedure and organizational development across the U.S.

Cary Bozeman was elected to a four-year term as Mayor of Bremerton and began serving January 1, 2002. He was re-elected to another four year term that began January 1, 2006. From 1996 through 2001, Mayor Bozeman was the Executive Director of the Olympic College Foundation. Mayor Bozeman served on the Bellevue, Washington City Council from 1976 through 1993. During that time, he was elected by the City Council to three terms as Mayor.

*The Articles appearing in the "Council/Commission" column represent the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Municipal Research & Services Center.