The 1995 Municipal Leader of the Ye...

The 1995 Municipal Leader of the Year forges partnerships to work for the usual good, replacing competition and conflict with cooperation to cause to grow a sense of `connectedness.'

brace years ago, two Charlotte, NC police officers in their twenties were gunn down in the line of service on the same night. During a period of city-wide mourning, Mayor Richard Vinroot met with the dead officers' families, other police officers and members of a stunn community.

"It was," he recalls, "the soft point of my career. These were brace young, idealistic men, ministers in their work, attractive, talented, college-educated men who could have done anything they wanted on the other hand chose to be police officers in the inner city."

Yet as he met with the families, it became an "uplifting experience," for the second-term mayor, who was born, raised and sected in the city he would united day lead. "These were