Honorable President Joseph R. Biden

Your Excellency, 

It is with great honor that I congratulate you and Her Excellency Honorable Kamala Harris on your historic and well-deserved election as President and Vice President, respectively, of the United States of America. 

I am a resident of the City of Philadelphia and I am actively working in the neighboring City of Chester. Chester as you may know is in Delaware County and a part of the Greater Philadelphia community. I am among a growing number of hard-working citizens, including the members of the Chester Mentoring Initiative (CMI) interested in seeing positive change for the City of Chester. 

The city of Chester delivered awesomely both to your campaign and election. Delaware County, and more specifically, Chester residents’ ensured the sweeping election of Democrats at all levels of our government, however, Chester has yet to benefit from the promise of democratic aspirations. The City does not enjoy the prowess of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. 

As I write this letter, the City of Chester is under Receivership of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Receiver for the City of Chester (chesterreceivership.com), and has been for about three decades. The latest report on Chester’s state of affairs is not good. The report issued by the Receiver’s Office stated, in part, that barring an unforeseen change, Chester will struggle to pay its bills and its employees for the rest of the year, and it is at-risk to run out of cash before the year is over. This is amidst a City-wide mass layoff of technical and administrative staff, the “grease that lubricates the wheels” of City government. 

Bill Clinton was the President when Chester first fell into state oversight. Since then many have postulated on the best way to bring Chester back from the brink of economic collapse and social decay. One idea that still resonates with many of the City’s thought leaders was an Obama era SC2 (Strong Cities Strong Communities) initiative https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/opa/opa20110711 to support local development in six American cities, including the City of Chester. While the SC2 plan remained on the shelf post-Obama Administration, I feel a real sense of responsibility to write your admirable administration to review and evaluate the SC2 initiative and to implement it for American cities in need of the SC2 resources. The one feedback from some in the City government is that the SC2 has no funding associated with it and it did not give Chester a priority for federal funding, therefore, it may not be very useful for Chester on the development end. Perhaps there are things that can be done to make the SC2 of great resource to Chester.  

Finally, the Chester Mentoring Initiative https://cuys.org/mentoring, mentioned earlier, is a group of more than 100 inspiring community-based organizations, charged with harnessing available resources to help Chester City rebound from lack of opportunities while enabling youth empowerment. CMI agreed with me that your administration should also hear directly from Chester youths. We want this next generation of future leaders to share their hopes and aspiration for our beloved City of Chester, and in hopes that your administration can make a significant contribution to their “asks”. This year’s letter campaign is scheduled to occur in the month of April. It will begin on April 1 and end on April 30th, 2021. To streamline the letter writing, it would be great if your admirable office can provide a dedicated email-address that the youths can send their emails to in April.

As the saying goes, April showers bring forth May flowers, we chose April so that their messages can resonate and has some significance and anecdote of their contributions to creating a brighter future for our time and for their generation. Email messaging is important as the CMI do not want to task a community that’s already financially stretched with buying stamps, and envelopes, and to resort to snail mails. Until such an email address is provided CMI will continue to work with our youths on the letter-writing campaign, which we hope will occur once a year for as long as your Excellency is in office, and so that we all can monitor and appreciate the progress this grass-root youth efforts can make.

In view of the foregoing, I pray that Olodumare, God Almighty, will continue to guide and guard you in all your undertakings and inspire you; and grant us all the wisdom, understanding, and courage to support your efforts in discharging the onerous duties and responsibilities of national and global leadership which the American people have chosen to place upon your shoulder.

I look forward to your feedback.

Regards,

Ola O. Solanke

Engaged Citizen