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CITIZ
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r still underway in
Boston.
Toledo ighborhood 0 nizers y
that CVC said "no" to d ali with e -
. tin Ie rship until they found it to be
in their interest.
hile dissati faction
with City Venture is
ri in in II its tar et
cities. it does
have IIi . Stro est of i friends are
busines men a'nd politicians. Within city
I there are planners and bureaucrats
who beli e that, d pite failin and a
bit grandi ity, evc has 10 to offer.
John Claypool, for example, of
Phil d lphi 's Department of Housi
nd Community Development, said,
"T bi thing they bri is the presenc
o corporation. T y are m in a
r investment in t urb n re wher no
on had dre med th would find cor-
c
" r
I,
par ti . eve
corpor ti ns Ii Bell T ele , Rohm
and H , or APCO, who on't co in
ithout anoth r corporation first."
Of all the "City Venture cities," only
Baltimore ems to have chieved th
equ 1 partnership sought by
nei hborhoods in Minneapolis nd
lsewh reo Mar Sissman, Deputy Hous­
in Commissioner, explains it this way:
"W don't have the problems of other
citi becau 'we hired CVC as a con­
tra tor to handle parts 0 a development
process which a local community-based
d velopment corporation has already
d fined and begun. We intentionally
picked a very stron net hborhood for
th m to work in. City Venture is a part­
ner with that community organization
and profit will be shared on a project-by­
project basis."
Seip said, "Th y're goin into a very
well-d veloped neighborhood and
they'r oing to have to deliver on their
promi of 2500 jobs." Morris I , presi­
d nt 0 the community-developmen
illS ,'\tI dolla ) 0 r th pa t I month.
Private inv tm n . on th other hand,
'come dribbling in. T aledo is the only ci­
ty wh re written commitments have
be n m d by industrialists. Th only·
privat commitment mad thu far in
Minn apolis is by Control Data. .
City V ntur and Control Data are
now runnin a job trainin program in
Urb nEat, :alled Fair Break, that is
funded by th ed ral government. An
internal m morandum from a progress
evalu tor re eals that evC' Fair Brea
training cos taxpayers almost- three
times more tha t vera e cost 0
federally-funded job trainin . Fair Brea
pends ,339 for a succ ful trainin .
th Compre nsiv Employment Train­
ing Act (CET A) programs spend $3,555
per success. To make n ters worse, Fair
Brea had � job-placement rat ° of only
29 perc nt, significantly lower than the
6 percent avera e of other programs.
The average CET A job-train increased
her previous income by 1.0 per hour
while City Venture's upped hers by 62
cen per hour .
. (n th ... impc rtant lrl III
to clustc r .1Tt m f eve. Penns lv niJ\
Gov. °Ri °h.ud Thornl urgh Jrr�)n' f .1
.100.0() tate -rtlnt t( r cve to pi n fur
tilt; c t P r· ",f in
c
rporation in
tional neighbor­
hood groups such
A ( tional
Association of
. eighborhoods and the eighborhood
Training and Information Center, well
as the ational Council of Churches'
Programme to Combat R ism, have
launched inquiri into CVC's eff ts on
n i hborhood movements for self­
determination. Accordi to Cal Brad­
ford, a professor at th U. of Minn.
"They ar concerned that City Venture's
scope is so large that evc will be gain­
ing control over money intended to be
used by ·neighborhoods, or
n ighborhoods. U
I(,IfflI Br", III is " cOfitrilmtiH
BluePrint, , worl- lu
Mother Jones mul Good H
1<(11 Mtftr; ,r frttlmlCt wri .
J<,JTtn Ltlm,,,,, pro ·,Itd reSt",,1 I
I£t.
a
CVC's
in-
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