upgrade our infrastructure for the 21st century

Our most recent financial recession has exposed all our ugly economic warts as well as making most Americans angry with what they see. From the inaction in Washington, to finding consensus in our State Legislature, to the leaders in our local government with the vision and leadership to diversify our economy from the 20th century tourist, agricultural and building development industries.

Diversifying our local economy/market place can make us the destination for choice for businesses in the 21st century; upgrading our infrastructure systems therefore must be addressed in order to give us a leg up in the other communities in Florida and the country for 21st century hi tech, medical and manufacturing base corporations can see the benefit to relocate to our region. To be able to be attractive we have to have certain infrastructure modernized to work properly for the next 50 plus years. President Eisenhower hardly a liberal visionary showed his courage and character when in the 1950's when he was our President, signed the interstate highway system legislation enabling our economy to become more efficient in transporting goods.

This blog is set up to be a conduit for ideas, for people of our community to share best practices and to think of and communicate those ideas. I was so amazed at the animosity; hateful, angry name calling that was expressed from this blog’s mission, vision and value statement expressed. The main theme for the statements comes directly from the themes, vision and leadership of the American businesses, developers, architects and engineers that are members of the Urban Land Institute, hardly a bastion of liberal socialist membership. For the past decade the reality of our nations infrastructure system failing and in need of modernization has been a topic of great concern. Forgive the messenger for giving facts when the idea was to create a blog for positive discourse.

Mr. Lytle was mistakenly labeled as the author on this title page. I am amazed at the anger expressed to another human being. You of course have the right to your ideas and I do not mean to insinuate you do not. This blog though is created to share positive ideas; hateful angry discourse while you’re right, will be ignored; that is my prerogative.

The inability to make private public investment to rebuild/repair and plan for, as well as to build the necessary infrastructure for transit, water and sustainable energy has literally put us behind the eight ball for the 21st Century. If we plan on competing with China, India, Brazil and Western Europe we need to find the leadership, have the courage, and as a community and country display the character to leave our children and grandchildren with a functioning economy.

How and why we have gotten ourselves into this mess while important is a topic for another commentary; today’s discussion is not about exciting the hateful name calling that is happening on both sides. We need to have thoughtful dialogue that will exchange ideas on how to make our country, state and community become competitive for the 21st century. This blog is about education, inventive ideas, solutions and finding the leaders for our great country, state and community that can solve these issues. I look forward to your response.