 |
 The
City of Brownsville is embarking on an ambitious and important project
entitled, “Imagine Brownsville -- It’s Our Future.” The city is producing a
comprehensive plan that will guide and direct our community’s growth over
the next ten years. The process is underway, and each of us has the
opportunity to sit back and watch it happen or to play an active role in
what transpires.
The Brownsville City Commission, Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation
(GBIC) and Brownville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC) are to be
commended for their commitment and leadership in taking a major step
forward.
I have never been one to watch from the sidelines when so much is at stake.
Twenty years ago, the City and many of our citizens embarked on a planning
effort named Vision 2000. A total of 575 community members participated in
the process over a period of 18 months. This project
took the City through a community-wide goal setting process that led to the
creation of a main public library; significant additions and improvements to
our port, bridges and airport; and I am proud to say, the creation of the
University of Texas Brownsville in partnership with Texas Southmost College.
Twenty years ago we could have never imagined that UTB/TSC would now be home
to a world-class Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy; engaged in the
largest wetlands restoration project in the United States; or, named Chess
College of the Year by the United States Chess
Federation. The same holds true for many of the transformations our City has
undergone over the last 20 years.
Although we have many assets, we also have many more challenges now to
overcome that are sometimes by-products of our own success: traffic
congestion, lack of enough good paying jobs, and lack of access to
professional schools and doctoral programs, to name a few. The Imagine
Brownsville project is designed to address these challenges and go beyond
the Vision 2000 effort.
My belief in the need for this work is so critical that I have agreed to be
part of the community-based task force along with Mayor Pro-Tem Charles
Atkinson, Commissioner Ricardo Longoria, Chairman of BCIC, Fred Rusteberg,
President of IBC Bank, Irv Downing, President of Chase
Bank, Jose Herrera, Chairman of GBIC, and other notable individuals in our
community such as Dr. Roberto Robles, Dennis Sanchez, David Merrill and Ray
Lopez.
The first step of defining our aspirations will help identify our goals,
priorities, challenges and opportunities and translate them into a series of
measurable objectives. From there we will create a blueprint of how to make
those initiatives become a reality; and we’ll establish a process for
tracking and insuring accountability of our progress towards the selected
objectives.
The process will be guided by professionals in planning, engineering,
architecture, economics and public involvement and will provide a greater
emphasis on strategy, implementation and tracking. The end product will be a
comprehensive plan that will help our city leaders match priorities to
resources, and enable us to achieve a common set of goals over the next ten
years.
The City is extending to all of us an open invitation to work together on
this important planning process. We have conducted several interviews with
various members of the community to solicit input about the growth and
development of Brownsville. Now it is time for the public to participate.
We must come together again to determine how we can leverage our assets into
the future to help us build more economic wealth and create a better quality
of life without increasing the tax burden of our community.
Beginning the evening of Monday, August 27, we are holding a series of four
community workshops in each of the four districts of the city so that we
hear from everyone; the same workshop over four consecutive nights allows
you the convenience to choose whichever evening works best for your busy
schedule.
You can go to our web site at www.imaginebrownsville.com for more
information about each of the four workshops. The purpose of the workshops
is to learn more about the project and have an opportunity to tell the city
what you think would make Brownsville a great place to live in the future.
This is an important part of the process because it gives each of us an
opportunity to be a part of creating our future, together.
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Brownsville, Texas 78520