At his weekly presser, Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves discussed the new 10-year strategic plan that Anna Muessig of Gehl will present to the Pensacola City Council during its agenda review on Tuesday, Nov. 12 and later to the community under the auspices of CivicCon at the Bayview Community Center from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
“Gehl talked to more than 1,700 citizens for what I expect to be the guiding document for this administration and the Council about what the city wants,” he said.
The eight main goals in the final report are:
- Attainable housing for all income levels
- Safe streets for all mobilities
- Support for youth experiences
- Resilient waterfronts and neighborhoods
- More walkable, mixed-use districts
- Public spaces that connect communities
- Thriving innovation and business
- Neighborhoods that celebrate culture and honor legacy
The mayor says he wants the goals displayed in city offices and workplaces.
“For the first time, we can now say we’ve got a guiding document and a vision for the city fully authored by the folks who live here,” he said, “hearing from 1700 people, being very intentional about making sure that we’ve heard from every age, every gender, every race.”
Mayor Reeves continued, “I’m excited to see the response and feedback from the community and these guiding principles that should help us with every decision.”
The mayor has asked to assess his first two years in office.
“I’ll never stand up here and say we’ve got it all figured out,” he said. “We can get better. We try to get better every day internally, try to get better every day as the seventh floor at the mayor’s office. I have the utmost confidence that we’re moving the ball forward. We have a more engaged workforce than we had when I started. They do an amazing job.”
Mayor Reeves added, “I’ve never taken the position that I think we’ve got everything solved. It’s always going to be a work in progress, but certainly, I’m happy with where the city of Pensacola is right now. And I promised everybody that I would give ’em everything I got and that we would treat this with intentionality and be aggressive about making this the city that we know it can be.”
REAL NEWS
On the radio show this morning, Mayor Reeves said he was happy to see the USPS announcement about finding a new location for a downtown post office.
“That’s big for us, for downtown businesses and residents that use it,” he said. The mayor mentioned that city staff had had conversations with USPS about loading zones for a couple of possible locations. “We were absolutely amenable to that. It shouldn’t be too far away from the old location, but I’ll let the post office sign a lease and decide what they want to do.”
The mayor wanted to inform residents near the old Baptist Hospital campus that he would seek public input about its future.
- “We’re already having conversations about the Baptist project at the city about engaging early, and the point being before there’s a wrecking ball coming in,” Mayor Reeves said.” We’ve already had conversations about bringing on a firm as soon as possible to go ahead and start conversations. I appreciate Baptist having those conversations, but that is a completely different dynamic than when they were engaging in the community three years ago.”
