About 25 residents of West and Southwest Philadelphia attended a Citizen Voices forum Saturday, Jan. 30, at the Hickman Temple, 50th Street and Baltimore Avenue. Louise Guigliano and Julia Rota were moderators.

On this sunny Saturday afternoon, as people streamed in and out of this neighborhood church, the focus of the Citizen Voices present was on citizen action and citizen empowerment. That had been a theme of the forums throughout the month of January, but never so strongly as at Hickman Temple this day.

At the heart of the Oprah panel’s vision for a livable Philadelphia in 2010 was the goal of, in one panelists words, “a citizen-driven city.”

This group was convinced that City Council and the school district’s leadership in 1999 were arrogantly deaf to the needs and wishes of neighborhood residents.

So their vision for an improved Philadelphia grew out of a plan for radically expanded citizen activism and input. They envisioned creation of a citizens’ advisory council, made up of representatives of the various neighborhood organizations, who would serve as paid advisers to City Council and city agencies, explaining what the people wanted and how city government policies and performance were going over in the neighborhoods.

The advisory council members would serve three or four years, and would rotate into a different liaison assignment every year.

District council seats, the panel said, were a thing of the past in 2010 Philadelphia. All council people were elected at large. So were appointed school board members; all school directors were elected. (David Hornbeck, not a popular person with some in this group, was, according to the panel, long gone as superintendent by 2010.)

Skeptics in the audience wondered how citizens found the motivation and time to be so involved, and how the old political power arrangements were circumvented. Panelists said better civics education in schools helped kickstart the change, and so did a citywide PR campaign to get citizens to do the little things to make their neighborhoods better, like picking up trash. By the year 2010, 60 percent of citizens did some volunteer work to make a better city.

As for the politicians, a panelist said, “It was hard. It used to be true that politicians with a big power base got things done. Now only those who can collaborate are in charge. The emphasis is on civic pride.”

The panel’s plan to improve the schools hinged on longer school days and years, streamlined bureaucracy that freed up money to pay teachers for the longer hours (plus merit pay), and an emphasis on life skills training.

A byproduct of the longer school day and year, one panelist said, is that is made day care money for welfare-to-work clients go a longer way, since the schools were truly taking care of children for a larger portion of the year.

The major audience concerns included how to get greater accountability for teachers and principals in the schools and to take politics out of the schools; how to address neighborhood quality of life issues such as trash, potholes, vacant lots, loitering and public drinking.