Voting for the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge, a nationwide competition for the best ideas to improve cities, began Feb. 20 and will run through March 6. Lexington is one of 20 finalists in the competition.
Bloomberg Philanthropies will award one $5 million grand prize and four $1 million prizes to the five cities that put forth the boldest and most replicable ideas.
The 20 finalist ideas were rated on four key criteria: vision/creativity, ability to implement, potential for impact, and potential for replication.
Lexington was selected as a finalist based on its innovative idea to create CitizenLex.org, a new media platform designed to tap into the source of new solutions and ideas the nation has always relied upon in challenging times: its people, its citizens. CitizenLex is designed to engage American ingenuity in city problem solving and planning, through robust mining and connecting the dots among studies, reports and ideas, all designed to build a great American city. The CitizenLex.org project was selected from a pool of 440 submitted ideas.
The Huffington Post is sponsoring the vote and features an essay by Gray about CitizenLex. Click here to see the 20 finalists and vote.
Click here to see Mayor Jim Gray's essay about the challenge and CitizenLex.org.