WE CAN DO THIS IF WE WORK TOGETHER!
Thanks to the over 400 people that turned out last week for the TEAM Punta Gorda Annual Community Meeting. Due to Fire Marshall regulations we had to turn some people away. We deeply apologize. If you'd like to see a clip of the action, here's a link to a short video of the highlights.
TEAM Punta Gorda is committed to stewardship of this community and its future and that's what this year's meeting was all about. The topic was and is development. In 2005 TEAM Punta Gorda and its residents wrote the Citizens' Master Plan. It was a guiding document that was gifted to and accepted by the City in designing their land development regulations. During the following years many of us, and many of you, were deeply committed to restoring our town, and the Citizens' Master Plan served us well. Then came a deep recession and no-one was building or developing anything. Well, its not 2005 or 2009 anymore and our community must grow with the times.
We know we need a healthy, year-round economy in order to survive. We're going to need to build our tax base with more commercial development and that will bring new jobs. We'll also need attainable housing for the families that work in these new jobs. But what kind of development is appropriate? What can we do without sacrificing the things that make Punta Gorda special? Our position is, and will remain, that we will not take positions on individual development propositions. Rather, we want to find forums where we can engage the community in civil discourse about these issues.
We'd like last week's Annual Community Meeting to serve as a kick-off for healthy conversations with the community about development. If you belong to a group that would like to have us come and lead such a discussion just let us know. We'd love to hear what you have to say.
We can do this right if we work together. We did it before and we can do it again!