Official Publication of the National League of Cities OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES
NATION’S CITIES WEEKLY
Volume 34, Number 20 | may 23, 2011

IN THIS ISSUE
www.nlc.org
PAGE 2

PAGE 3
NLC Prescription Discount Card Brings
Big Savings to a Small City
PAGE 3
California Cities Develop Recommen-
dations for Evaluating Gang Initiatives
PAGE 5
Leadership Summit Scholarship Honors
Councilmember’s Legacy

City Teams Convene in San Francisco to Advance
Postsecondary Education Success Strategies

by Jonathan Rogers
Teams of city, community
college and school district part-
ners convened in San Francisco
this month as part of the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation’s
Communities Learning in
Partnership (CLIP) initiative,
for which NLC’s Institute for
Youth, Education and Families
serves as managing intermedi-
ary. The foundation has pro-
vided $3 million grants each to
San Francisco; Riverside, Calif.;
Mesa, Ariz.; and New York City
in an effort to help these cities
increase postsecondary comple-
tion rates among low-income
students.

San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee, center, with colleagues Carlos Garcia, superintendent of San Francisco Unified School
District, left, and Dr. Don Griffin, chancellor of the City College of San Francisco, at a meeting for the Communities
Learning in Partnership initiative.

the college completion rates of
high school freshmen from 30
percent to 50 percent by 2020.
“We need to make sure
students can see the way to
graduate from high school and
the bridge to City College [of
San Francisco] and all of the
other college opportunities that
they have, and that they have
the support to stay there,” said
Mayor Lee, who was accom-
panied by his colleagues Dr.
Don Griffin, chancellor of the
City College of San Francisco
(CCSF) and Carlos Garcia,
superintendent of San Francisco
Unified School District, at the
cross-site meeting.

see page 7, column 1
‘Complete Streets’ Legislation Introduced in House
by Leslie Wollack
Newspaper Handling
Last week, Reps. Doris Matsui
(D-Calif.) and Steve LaTourette
(R-Ohio) introduced the Safe and
Complete Streets Act of 2011 (H.R.
1780), a bill requiring that new street
and transportation projects undertaken
by state departments of transportation
(DOT) and metropolitan planning
organizations (MPOs) be designed with
“pedestrians, bicyclists, public transit
users, children, older individuals, indi-
viduals with disabilities, motorists, and
freight vehicles” in mind.
The bill calls for consideration of the
“safety and convenience” of all users
in “all phases of project planning and
development.”
Currently, 23 states, the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico and more than
2,000 regional and local communities
have adopted some form of Complete
Streets policies. Communities have
adopted such policies to enhance pub-
lic safety, lower transportation costs
and promote walking, bicycling and
public transit as sustainable alterna-
tives.