Partnerships a missing element in local cities

As every cook knows, a missing key ingredient can weaken even the most expertly crafted dish.

Cities depend upon help from various sources — taxpayers, state and federal grants and private investment in its structures and lands — to thrive.

To be sure, finding and keeping businesses that attract jobs and provide sales tax revenues is crucial. But partnerships are the glue that many cities seem to miss.

Partnerships matter because they help in two ways: leverage and synergy. The latter is a word that Webster’s generally defines as two or more independent agents acting together to create a result that is greater than if each agent acted alone.

Partnership means more than joining a board or commission. It’s about bringing together stakeholders: businesses, schools, residents, even county and state government.

To reach that synergy, some cities engage stakeholders in partnerships. When the Renton School District decided several years ago to remodel Renton High School, its various stakeholders came together in a city version of an old Amish barn raising and pitched in millions of dollars. The result is the Renton Performing Arts Center, a facility run by the school district but funded with help from the city, individual donors and small businesses as well as large companies.

Renton’s example may be unusual but it shouldn’t be. Such partnerships happen because stakeholders are able to set aside age-old resentments and work for the common good. And it doesn’t hurt to get naming rights once in a while.

Partnerships help most when the most is on the line — and for cities, that usually means large-scale projects like facility renovation, land preservation or parks creation.

Lynnwood’s stakeholders — its businesses, colleges, the Edmonds School District, fraternal organizations — are powerful potential City Hall partners that should get together more often and put any differences aside for the greater good.

Stakeholder stew. Now that’s a dish we all can enjoy.