Richard Vinroot aims to make Charlotte a model city

The 1995 Municipal Leader of the Year forges partnerships to work for the common good, replacing competition and conflict with cooperation to develop a sense of `connectedness.’

Two years ago, two Charlotte, N.C., police officers in their twenties were gunned down in the line of duty on the same night. During a period of city-wide mourning, Mayor Richard Vinroot met with the dead officers’ families, other police officers and members of a stunned community.

“It was,” he recalls, “the low point of my career. These were two young, idealistic men, ministers in their work, attractive, talented, college-educated men who could have done anything they wanted but chose to be police officers in the inner city.”

Yet, as he met with the families, it became an “uplifting experience,” for the second-term mayor, who was born, raised and schooled in the city he would one day lead. “These were good people to create children to love their neighbors and want to serve them.”

The 54-year-old Vinroot, who was re-elected to a second term in 1993 with 67 percent of the vote, might well have been describing his own decision to put public service before personal gain. Despite a draft exemption for his height — he is 6’7″ tall — Vinroot volunteered for service in Vietnam. Returning in 1968 with a Bronze Star, he became a scoutmaster, took on an array of civic jobs, served on various boards and lead the city’s 1979 Charter Review Commission. Somehow he juggled career and community service with raising three children.

Those who know him well pepper their descriptions of the son of Swedish immigrants with the word “good.” “He’s truly a good person,” says Stan Campbell, who served on the Charlotte City Council with Vinroot. “I just can’t think of another word. His popularity in Charlotte is tremendous.”

“First-rate Mind”

Another admirer, Ted Arrington, professor of political science at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, speaks of Vinroot’s “first-rate mind and character,” describes him as “very interesting, a deeper thinker than we usually get in politics, a very genuine person,” and then adds, “He’s just a good person.”

Vinroot’s public career, which began with election to the city council in 1983, has spawned numerous accolades. When the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) honored Charlotte in June with a first-place livability award, it praised Vinroot for forging “collaborative partnerships between city government, businesses and citizens … calling upon Charlotte citizens to “replace competition and conflict with cooperation.”

Fellow mayors, such as Columbus, Ohio’s Greg Lashutka, admire him for his vision and leadership. “Vinroot knows what to do to position a city for the 21st century,” Lashutka says. “He realizes neighborhoods are the strength of a city and that federal funds are not there to help.”

Recently Vinroot received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award and the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.

Programs initiated by Vinroot in transportation, public safety and human relations have also drawn national attention. He was instrumental in developing a public transit center, putting more police on the street, attracting a National Football League franchise by urging construction of a $160 million stadium and creating 14,000 new jobs in the city last year. At his instigation, many programs have been funded by money saved through privatization of 46 percent of city services. Partly as a result, taxes in Charlotte have remained stable for eight years.

Yet, Vinroot downplays the honors, noting that, although gratifying, they are, nonetheless, “programs, efficiencies and things. People make our city successful in a country where many cities are unsuccessful, even dysfunctional. Our first concern is to get everyone in this city on a fast track to success. We have 27 inner-city neighborhoods, not that much different from other cities. But we see no role model of what we would like to be when we grow up.”

Uniting people

If he has his way, Charlotte will become that role model. He sees the mayor s office uniting people, developing partnerships and working with “neighbors who believe we are all going to solve our problems.”

Vinroot’s admirers say he is ideally suited for such a role, because he can persuade people that sacrificing individual, short-term goals for the common good will ultimately work for everyone’s benefit.

“I have never seen a guy who could take a group of people 180 degrees apart and bring them together the way Richard does,” says Arrington, referring to Vinroot’s years on the city council. “The council is a wide-ranging body composed of a liberal wing interested primarily in social programs and a conservative wing anxious to privatize everything. Richard was able to get people from those backgrounds to move away from their agendas and make decisions in the best interests of the city.”

Campbell believes one key to Vinroot’s success is that he “doesn’t let petty arguments bog him down. He sees the big picture. He works to bring out the best in people, not the worst. Richard is above that.”

Arrington attributes that skill to Vinroot’s style, which he describes him as “cautious, carefully moving ahead, trying to see what makes sense. He truly uses reason, not emotion, to bring people together.”

But, unlike other politicians who have a penchant for compromise, Vinroot will take a stand, even an unpopular one, says Campbell.

“He calls things as he sees them,” he says, “He has the courage to stand up in a group of friends and disagree with them and say `Here’s why.’ He is one of the few people who can do that and make it stick. I have never seen him take the cowardly way out as many politicians do.”

Vinroot has never hesitated to tap the business community when he has to. For example, when a parks and recreation referendum that would have funded construction of a community center in the inner city was defeated, Vinroot asked the head of a bank headquartered in Charlotte to build it. “It was in an area that needed reuniting as a community,” he says. The facility, funded by the bank and built on land donated by the county, opened recently.

Private-public programs

Additionally, with cooperation from the private sector, the city started a summer jobs program, putting 2,000 underprivileged youths to work; built a public transit center financed by private capital; and created a way to use private funds to build the stadium for the city’s NFL team.

Those programs all reflect the willingness of city residents and businesses to work together. Other initiatives, however, unmistakably bear the mayor’s stamp and reflect his philosophy that “when you personalize rather than institutionalize, you get results.” To help inner-city folks, Vinroot created the Charlotte Works And Cares (CWAC) committee, which doubles as an acronym for City Within A City. The committee helps create jobs and urges churches, civic clubs and small businesses to undertake a variety of projects such as outfitting a park, cleaning up an old building or decorating a right-of-way with flowers. “Private groups are connecting themselves, almost like sister cities (to inner-city neighborhoods), bringing the haves and have-nots together,” says the mayor.

Seeks Regional Solutions

To Vinroot, bringing people together also means regionalization. He believes Charlotte is not just a core city of a half-million people who can solve problems while remaining insulated from neighbors. Rather, it is a city in a region where 1.4 million people live within a 25-mile radius of each other.

Vinroot’estimates that 50 percent of the region’s work force crosses jurisdictional lines daily on their way to work, to shop or to attend cultural and sporting events. “They don’t care who the mayor is,” he says, “they just want systems to work.

“We must get over guarding our turf, our parochialism,” he says. “If we have a poor road system, poor schools, unsafe streets and poor neighborhoods in our region, we all suffer. We will all go down together.”

Reflecting on his two terms as mayor, Vinroot calls them “very satisfying I have good feelings about people, the progress we have made in transportation, public safety, the care and treatment of the poor.

Looking ahead, he is optimistic. “I am sanguine that we’ll be able to solve our problems.” He has no illusions, however, about how difficult it is to be the mayor of a large city in America today. But, he adds, he is used to the pressure. “As [legendary UNC basketball coach] Dean Smith once told me, `If the postman stopped for every barking dog, the mail would never get delivered.’ People bark at me all the time.”