St. Augustine Vision Already Working, by Vice Mayor Roxanne Horvath

Guest Column: Vision is already working in St. Augustine: Thanks to you all
Posted: August 14, 2015 - 11:38pm
By ROXANNE HORVATH
St. Augustine Record
The community came together, selflessly, in the effort of creating a new Vision for St. Augustine. So many people are to be thanked for their involvement.

Starting with our city commission, our city staff, our vision committee and, of course, so many people from the public who filled out surveys, came to meetings and shared their hopes and dreams for our future. Once again, the citizens of the city of St. Augustine have demonstrated the value of our system of democracy, open government and the value of listening to one another with civility and grace. It has been a joy watching this process, and its end product, develop.

The thoughtful suggestions offered by our many community members who took the time to attend our Vision Committee meetings were much-appreciated, and added important additional perspectives. The citizens’ suggestions enabled our group to look beyond the challenges of today and plan a better quality of life for generations to come after us.

The many hours of work by some of our “best and brightest”, have been distilled down to a very useful document. The timing of this document’s completion, after more than a year, was perfect. The city has used it to help create our strategic plan, and we are currently using it in our budgeting process.

It has been directly responsible for adding a mobility coordinator to city staff in order to address our No. 1 priority — traffic and parking. We are hopeful that energy spent solving these problems will make our city even more livable for our citizens, and a pleasurable Historic destination for our visitors.

The vision plan is currently on the city website: VisionStAug.com

This kind of effort, of working together, is one of the reasons St. Augustine is such an outstanding place to live. This process is ongoing.

If you have any interest in working on any of the areas we have covered in the vision, please feel free to contact me and I will find a way to get you involved.

Again many thanks to all who have participated to date. This is a special birthday gift from all of us. Happy 450th Birthday St. Augustine!

Horvath is chair of Vision 2014 and Beyond and vice-mayor of St. Augustine.