This morning I woke up to a Facebook wall post from Mayor Julian Castro saying “It’s been 25 years since Target ’90, the last time San Antonians came together to answer the question, ‘What kind of city do we want to be?’ It’s time to envision our city’s future together again–and to act on it.” Wow, he’s a busy mayor. You see, he had just spent 5 hours the night before listening to public citizen commentary about the CPS’s planned expansion of the STNP. Oh, did I mention that message came in around 6 a.m. this morning? Yes, we have an active and engaged mayor. What is interesting is that this very idea is what essentially kicked his campaign off over a year ago through an editorial piece in the Express-News. But how do we get a plan after 20 years?
I blogged about the need for a strategic plan during my visit to Kansas City for the NCAA Sub-regionals. A strategic plan helps set direction and projects for a city in the years to come. With so many critical needs facing San Antonio such as transportation, energy, housing, rebuilding the urban core, education, and job training you really need something that can be used to help set priorities and stitch all this together. Sure you can come together and just pick some things to do but after a while you end up with a hodge-podge of projects that don’t really leverage the community or funding.
The biggest thing you need to pull something like this off is community input. Mayor Castro started that with his Facebook entry where so far 53 people have left comments. However, that’s not really the best way to sustain the conversation. Sure there will be citizen forums and town halls but with the technology available it’s time to bring it to the masses through the Internet. One approach is to leverage collaborative tools like Idea Scale, currently being used by Open Austin a crowd sourcing group who is redesigning the City of Austin’s website.
This is where the ideas can be collected and pulled together for others to see and comment on. It’s where we can really engage the city in a variety of areas and talents. But even that won’t be enough. Citizens will have to take this exercise seriously and not pull the stunts that some did during Obama’s transition process where birthers tried to hijack the site and change the discussion. To really create change and develop a plan citizens will have to self-police and take the process seriously.
So I’m ready to dig in with the mayor and bring about a solid strategic plan for the next 10-20 years. Hopefully he’ll be able to use any talents I have to offer. I encourage others to jump on this effort and help where they can. I’m sure there will be more coming in the months ahead. There’s a lot to get done and everyone is needed.