Stephen Goldsmith, Professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Manhattan Institutes visited Warsaw June 18-19.

Goldsmith, a former Mayor of Indianapolis, gave a presentation at the Embassy titled “Managing Cities for the Future: A Look at Recent World Wide City Innovations” on June 19 for 75 local government officials and others involved in city management and opinion and policy leaders including a group of Polish Alumni Association members from throughout Poland. The International Visitor Leadership program alumnus Mayor of Sopot, as well as other mayors of cities like Gdynia, Koszalin, and the Poznan region came for Goldsmith’s talk.  Goldsmith focused largely on privatization of government services as opposed to privatizing assets, offering observations on when such schemes are effective and how they should be managed.  He noted that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions and offered examples from various U.S. cities of what has worked and what has not.  Questions concerned governance of larger municipalities, cooperation with non-governmental organizations, revenue issues and the role of city managers. Since Poland and Ukraine will host the final tournament of 14th European Football Championship there were questions concerning the influence of sports facilities on city development and investment.  As a result Alumni were able to establish contacts with other Polish leaders in that field as well as with American officers.