Youth Goal
While this Southside Greenway plan will develop and empower new City & Regional Economic Drivers, we believe that its most important results will be the creation of......
...youth opportunity creation.
In her April 3, 2014 Bay Post Internet conversation Deputy Mayor Kanika Tomalin answered the question of What do you think is the key to growing strong neighborhoods in South St. Pete? accurately suggests the steps City must now take:
Commerce is absolutely important to any community’s surviviabilty, but we think it is only one component of what’s going to make South St. Pete work and be its best.
Equally important is nurturing neighborhoods by providing safety and quality of life with access to resources that define a neighborhood with ready access.
We also believe we must invest in opportunity creation, which is very different from job creation. We're talking about skills and training and education exposure that allows one to create their own opportunity. You give someone the opportunity and the right tools, and the job will take care of itself and you create natural demand that doesn't have to be constantly subsidized.
We envision with corporate sponsorships developing new & varied supplemental education exposure opportunities while also enhancing the Florida Safe Routes to School program (Florida Department of Transportation) & the City’s excellent Healthy St. Pete initiative through healthy biking activity on the Southside Greenway and our City trails & lanes.
HealthyStartBikeTrekks MuseumBikeTrekks ArtGalleryBikeTrekks EcoBikeTrekks HeritageBikeTrekks
Additionally, an exciting STEAMBikeTrekks program can also become an integral beneficiary of the City’s newest developing industry: innovation. Immediately south of downtown our Innovation District is a cluster of higher education, marine science, healthcare, business incubation, and media institutions with the focus on business development, real estate, placemaking and branding, and research collaboration and innovation. For more Information on the Innovation District
Emulating The Dallas STEM Environmental Center mission, our goal would be to help focus our diverse and many challenged learners to develop an awareness, appreciation, and concern for the environment, and to use 21st-century knowledge and skills to make informed, responsible decisions, solve current environmental problems, and prevent new ones.
Finally, Southside families will especially benefit when improved employment opportunities for their first-time youthful workers are now geographically expanded to include the Downtown & Gulf Beaches higher wage areas reached inexpensively via their Bikes & Scooters aboard the PSTA SunRunner Rapid Transit Buses. PSTA as also now extended FREE FARES for students and teachers.
It is NOW time for ALL of us to begin assisting in accelerating her vision by helping us to develop our Southside Greenway our plan.