SA2020--Your Chance to Shape the Future

The next SA2020 Forum, What Does Success Look Like, is this Wedsnesday, December 8, 2010 at St. Mary's Bill Greehey Arena.  Click here to register.  This is the fourth meeting and if you haven't had the chance to participate yet, now's your chance.  Let SA's leaders know what YOU want San Antonio to look like in 2020.

Have YOU Filled Out the Community Survey Yet?

SA2020 held it's second meeting last night at McCollum High School with an overflow crowd.  If you would like to see the meeting check out the recorded webcast here. If you didn't get to the meeting, you should check it out to see the word art formed by the surveys.  They are pretty remarkable.  At the meeting people were divided into groups to discuss each of the separate issues facing San Antonio to come up with a vision for the future. 

The next meeting will be on November 20, 2010.  You can sign up to go to the meeting on the SA2020 website.  If you can't make the meeting, like me last night, you can watch the live webcast and participate in the meeting on the chat moderated by NowCastSA, during the meeting. 

So far over 3,000 people have filled out the Community Survey and more than 65% of respondents were highly satisfied with Arts, Culture, Affordable Housing, Safety, Health Services, Sense of Community and the Quality of Public Service in San Antonio.  But we definitely have a lot of work to do.  Areas that received the least amount of satisfaction were Transportation/Traffic, the Ability of Regular Citizens to Influence Local Government, Opportunities to find Well Paying Jobs, the Quality of the Physical Infrastructure and Education.  These were the topics that were discussed at the meeting last night.

Ben Warner of JCCI, the facilatator of the meeting, puts together meetings like this in cities all over the country.  He said getting 1,000 survey responses is about a much as a city can expect.  Well, so far we have proved him wrong.  Have you filled out your survey yet? 

SA2020, Next Meeting

The next meeting to plan San Antonio's future is coming up October 28, 2010 from 6:30 to 8:30pm at Mccollum High School.  All are welcome to participate, just RSVP at SA2020.org.   If you can't come (or even if you can), fill out the Community Survey to put your two cent in.  The survey isn't just for adults, here's a link to the Youth Survey.

What's Your Vision of San Antonio's future?

This morning I went to the launch meeting for SA2020, a series of public planning meetings to come up with a vision of San Antonio for the next ten years.  A very enthusiastic crowd was there, and I do mean crowd.  The event planners originally expected about 700 participants, over 1300 people signed up to go.  They managed the crowds by spilling over from the TriPoint YMCA at US 281 and N St Mary's to the SAWS building on the other side of the highway.   In order to enable all those people in different buildings to interact, the meeting was webcast by NOWCastSA. The webcast also made it so that not only could people at the conference participate, but also anyone online could as well.  The conference received over 1500 comments from the online community.  One man even tweeted fromt the Denver Airport while in transit.

The major themes that the attendees felt San Antonio needed to work on were:

• Education at all levels but especially school readiness and job and vocational training
• Health including magnet hospitals, lowered obesity rates, and accessibility to health care
• Sustainable Growth including revitaliztion of older areas, water policy, and more controlled growth
• Infrastructure Improvements
• Transit options from drivable streets to bicycle lanes and better mass transit
• Making SA more Hip--this particularly for the young singles out there
• Combine Growth, Progress and still keep the history of the city
• Improve Livability in the Inner city and keeping a balance with tourism
• Job Equity and bringing better paying jobs

But not only did we talk about what needed to improve we also talked about what's great about San Antonio.

• The Big city with the Small town feel
• Strong support of the military, not just the bases but also for disabled vets and retirees
• Cultural Diversity
• Historic Traditions and conservation
• Food
• Fiesta
• Economic Stability
• Strong work ethic
• Accessibility to more state parks than any other city in Texas
• Higher Education options
• Cooperation between the civilian and military Biomedical community

and many other positve qualities.

There are four more public meetings planned

October 28, 2010           Creating a Vision for San Antonio
  7-9 pm
November 20, 2010       How will we Measure Progress?
  9am-12noom
December 7, 2010         What Will Success Look Like? 
  7-9pm
January 22, 2011           Putting it Together:  SA2020
  9am-12noon

If you would like to participate in these meetings, check out the SA2020 website.  If you can't attend, the other meetings will also be webcast live and you can participate by posting comments during the meeting.

Brakenridge HS Mariachi Band

Now the people who came to the conference are probably the most engaged people in San Antonio when it comes to civic issues, but what about your average San Antonian?  SA2020 wants to hear from you as well.  They've made it easy for you by setting up an online community survey and a special youth survey to engage the youth of San Antonio to find out what San Antonio needs to do to keep them here.  So what do YOU think?

How will San Antonio look 10 years from now?

The kickoff event for SA2020 is this Saturday.  If you want a say in San Antonio's future get involved.  Register for the free event here.