BoldFuture for the Coastal Bend Vision for the Community
We envision a vibrant, prosperous Coastal Bend that balances its growth and quality of life, blending big city attractions with a small town feel. Building on a diverse mix of industry and small businesses, our economy provides an abundance of family wage jobs and opportunities for our youth. Access to excellent education, from early childhood to graduate programs, prepares our students for learning, for work and for life. The “best and brightest” are increasingly drawn to – and remain in – our community.
Coastal Bend growth is well planned, with vital urban areas, ample parks and open spaces, excellent transportation and modern infrastructure. We have great pride of place in our redeveloped downtowns, revitalized Bayfront, lively commercial centers across the region, and safe, clean neighborhoods. Our region is more “green-minded” and sustainable than ever, committed to conservation and recycling; protecting our natural resource coastline and beaches; and providing alternative energy.
Our residents enjoy active, wholesome lifestyles, increasing individual and community wellness. We celebrate our diverse heritage and enjoy a culture rich in music, arts and entertainment. Citizens are engaged in and proud of their communities. Forward-thinking elected officials and business and community leaders work together for the best interests of the region. Together, we are unified behind a shared vision and have forged greater collaboration in achieving our BoldFuture for the Coastal Bend.
Just wanted to remind you all to save the date for Wednesday April 21st from 5:30-7:00 at the Solomon P. Ortiz Center for the release of the BoldFuture Costal Bend action plan. Its an opportunity for new comers to learn about BoldFuture and for current members to get updated on what the next steps for BoldFuture will be. We hope to see you all there.
It just goes to show where a couple of glasses of wine with good friends can lead. The genesis of BoldFuture more than two years ago was just that simple — a back-porch brainstorming session with friends, wine, and, yes, a little whining.
Our topic?How do we help our community move forward? So much time and energy was being wasted in a swirl of negative emotion, controversy over … well, just about everything …, and the accompanying inaction that comes from turf wars and the “you didn’t consult me first so I’m gonna deep six your project” syndrome.
Thought: if we could just get all that energy and effort moving in a positive direction, what could we as a community accomplish?
Conclusion: Just about anything.
So that was how BoldFuture was born and grew into the two-year visioning and action plan development process. By getting a broad swath of the community involved in crafting a shared vision for our future, we helped create a voice. And that voice came from us, the people … you, me, the neighbor down the street, anyone who wanted a say in the direction our community would take. From the voice came goals that can be embraced because they are our shared goals. Hum … Shared vision, shared voice, shared goals – maybe now we can hone our efforts towards the positive. Maybe now we can make our efforts count.
I served on the Well Planned Region Action Committee; this was one of six committees charged with taking a portion of the initial 146 vision elements identified through the year-long process and crafting action items to support their implementation. Job one of our committee was to research what was already happening around the community. Since the original concept of BoldFuture was to help the area move forward, we wanted to make sure anything the final action plan suggested built on what was already underway. No point in duplicating efforts. To our surprise, we found a wealth of wonderful projects already researched, planned, and drafted -- some were even in the implementation stage. Yet these were projects that the thousand of community participants had identified as major priorities. Talk about validation of efforts!
I have heard it said that nothing comes of visioning projects. I would like to point to the Texas State Aquarium, certainly one of the major success stories of our community. Here we have the Official Aquarium for the State of Texas in our back yard. It is not-for-profit receiving no state, city or county funding for its operations, yet it is a successful education and entertainment venue that has a $40 million annual impact on our economy. It took a dedicated group of volunteers to VISION this facility and then work decades to make it happen. And the work continues to make it better every year. This is what community visioning is all about. I cannot tell you that the Aquarium was ever an action item on a previous vision project – I just don’t know. What I can tell you is that the positive, forward-thinking, empowering energy that community visioning processes engender result in projects like the Aquarium.
Success of just one project can provide the impetus to move to the next … and the next ... and the next. Keep it going, and we will have turned the tide on that negative swirl with a positive, decisive, invigorating forward movement for our community.
And to think, it all started with a glass of wine.
Mayor Joe Adame has a huge heart for his hometown Corpus Christi. As mayor, he wants to do whatever he can to aid Corpus Christi in pushing forward to a bolder future. “Our community needs to be a place that all Texans can be proud of, because as Texans we are proud people”, offers Adame.
When Adame heard about the BoldFuture community visioning process he felt that it would be ideal for the Coastal Bend. He shares the belief that Corpus Christi as a whole has been held back from flourishing due to the lack of growth and missed opportunities. The BoldFuture for the Coastal Bend initiative is an eighteen to twenty-four month process that encompasses four phases. The first phase entails observing where the community stands, through collecting and analyzing data about the community answering the question Where are we now?; this also involves identifying leaders as well as interested parties which designs the visioning process. The second phase gathered the community’s input answering where do we want to be? - creating a collective community vision; phase three is developing the plan for how to achieve that vision - How are we going to get there? and the final phase is an ongoing, assessment of progress toward the shared vision - How are we doing? Unlike other community visioning processes that are lead and managed by city officials, BoldFuture for the Coastal Bend has provided opportunities for lots of public involvement from all areas of the community.
“All of us have a stake in the future of our city and region. We share dreams and concerns, and we need to let others hear our voices”, shares Adame. He encourages the community to get excited about BoldFuture and become involved. We cannot do this alone it’s a community effort. With this call for involvement, he especially calls out to the young people of the Coastal Bend. Adame explains how the young people of Corpus Christ have been some of his largest supporters and among those that encouraged him to seek public office believing he could lead the city into a positive future. He wants to be able to provide the best for them and all Corpus Christians. He feels that young people are one of the most valuable pieces to the puzzle, “They are the life line of the future”. He hopes to be able to help create a city where the graduates of Texas A&M Corpus Christi and Del Mar College are able find jobs and are proud to make the Coastal Bend their home.
Mayor Adame is optimistic about the BoldFutre initiative and the opportunity it offers. As a city, we have come a long way but still have a ways to go. One of the first steps to laying a foundation for change is building awareness and preparedness for change. Adame feels that as a community the Coastal Bend has acknowledged that change is in order.
Bill DeFries, teacher Richard King High School (CCISD)
Every once in awhile, a project emerges from a series of gatherings with just regular folks; people who know a community and yearn for it to become better, those who know how things can and should work, to find forward, and find it in a meaningful way with a positive vision. It was out of that frustration, knowledge, yearning and, yes, hope for Nueces and San Patricio counties that the small initial gathering of BoldFuture turned into the large input and follow-up gathering and became again a number of small gatherings working in six areas to find that vision. Not folks with money or political clout, necessarily, but folks who live and watch, take notice and wonder, and consider ideas, possibilities and potential partners for making some things happen; people who don’t need political buy-in, because they live and work here and have already invested, through their mortgages, careers and lives to making it work in this place.
What a large charge working with the Sustainable Environment action team participants on the work areas of the BoldFuture for the Coastal Bend project. As facilitator, I found myself for a few hours every other week for a few months surrounded by some of the brightest minds in the region on issues such as water, air and land use, and how we can keep them viable (and us along with them) far into the future. Lively discussions across the table about everything from urban sprawl to more and better recycling, from voluntary beach and bayfront clean-ups to where that dirty oil from your driveway oil change goes when you pour it down the sewer, from what new and existing industry does to the air in the Coastal Bend to what new, viable energy resources are available and can be utilized here. And because the folks at the table weren’t part of any particular governing body or had any political agenda to bear, the discussions were always about what’s best for the natural resources of the Coastal Bend and, therefore, all of us who benefit from them. Listening to folks who’ve watched the region develop and parts of it deteriorate, but who work in areas to fix the bad and sustain the good in those resources made me appreciate what can happen in a room which is full of wisdom and brilliance and absolutely void of ego. How refreshing!
It’s the stuff that makes an old career community newspaper guy see the glimmer of multiple lights at the end of a myriad of possible tunnels and regain the hope that these neighboring bayfront communities can again find their sea legs and engage in some activities together, with the help and assistance of local governments, industry and multiples of individuals with their sweat equity, which will carry us into new and viable futures offering better possibilities that this place will be here and healthy for our retirement as well as offering a place where our children and grandchildren can build a future.
BoldFuture makes me hopeful, and the work of the Sustainable Environment team reminds me of the wealth of folks who have ideas and answers, even to those questions nobody is asking, but should be. I look forward to the April 17 event at American Bank Center and for the “what next” that grows out of the hundreds of people offering input and wisdom over the past year or so in this grassroots effort. It reminds me that it isn’t about the size or make of the car we drive, what end of town or what side of the bay we live in, who we vote for or how much money is in his or her bank account as much as it’s important for the residents of the Coastal Bend to be about grabbing hold of the challenges and becoming part of the solution. Talking about these issues as we’ve begun to do and finding partners to help make things happen does a lot for us taking personal responsibility in what happens here. It’s time for a BoldFuture, if for no other reason than the fact that none of us really want to consider the alternative.
But there is a better reason… We don’t have to consider the alternative. We can do this.
The BoldFuture for the Coastal Bend vision initiative, begun more than 24 months ago, has grown to a broad coalition involving thousands of Coastal Bend residents. Initial funding from the City of Corpus Christi, Nueces County and the San Patricio Economic Development Corp. launched an intensive community conversation about the future of our region.
Three questions guided the community conversation: "Where are we now?" "Where do we want to be?" and "How will we get there?" Two Phase I deliverables to key funders were completed by August 2008 - a telephone survey which captured 750 responses and a Community Profile which identified emerging trends and current statistics - and they provided the impetus for Phase II and more than 80 community meetings and special events to determine how residents felt about the Coastal Bend and its future.
More than 1,800 residents - diverse in backgrounds and ages - responded to the vision and values survey, with others completing an on-line survey. The thousands of ideas generated during Phase II became the cornerstone of what would become the six focus areas.
A Vision Summit held in February 2009 enabled 300 community leaders and residents to validate the draft vision statements for the six focus areas - Vibrant Economy; Thriving Education; Arts and Entertainment; Well-Planned Region; Sustainable Environment; Safe Healthy Communities; and Community Identity and Leadership. In Fall 2009, six action teams were formed, and intensive work began with more than 130 volunteers devoting countless hours to crafting the draft Vision Action Plan.
The Vision Action Plan captures the essence of the community's expectations for the future of the Coastal Bend. It's a roadmap that will serve the region well for the next five years. With its more than 250 draft actions and with the commitment from more than 50 public and private entities and organizations, the Vision Action Plan will "bold our future!"
BoldFuture for the Coastal Bend is a community visioning initiative for Corpus Christi, Nueces County and San Patricio County. Its mission is to engage citizens and stakeholders
from throughout the Coastal Bend in developing a long-term vision and action plans that can guide the
community in working together to achieve a preferred vision for the region in a time of rapid change
and local challenges.
The initiative is focused on developing answers to four key questions:
Where are we now and where are we going?
Where do we want to be?
How are we going to get there?
How will we monitor our progress?
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