Louisville Mayor Reviews 2015

Louisville’s Mayor, Greg Fischer, today released the following assessment of his administration’s achievements and challenges during the past year:

Steve Jobs once said that it’s impossible to “connect the dots” looking forward. You can only connect them looking back, he said, and “trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

You have to trust in something, the Apple co-founder said, “your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

Now, as Mayor of Louisville and a former entrepreneur myself, I am not inclined to simply leave things to destiny, life, karma.

But I would agree that looking back is an effective way to “connect the dots” – to understand where we came from, what worked, what didn’t – as we move on to the challenges of a new year.

So let’s take a look at Louisville’s 2015:

Our unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, down from 10.3 percent when I took office in 2011. In that same time, hundreds of businesses have opened, and others expanded.

This year alone, Ford announced a $1.3 billion expansion at its Kentucky Truck Plant, adding 2,000 new jobs. UPS announced a $310 million expansion, while Thorntons has a new $28 million headquarters under way that will bring 110 new jobs. Small- and medium-size business growth also has been strong.

We announced this year a partnership with Google Fiber to explore bringing super-fast internet to our citizens. A $300 million Omni Hotel/apartment/urban market development will start construction in January, with the promise of a new skyline and sizzle to our downtown. Expansion of the Kentucky International Convention Center will start in the fall.

Our city’s financial condition is in good shape, with a year-end surplus that we plan to use largely to retire debt.

Our citizens’ commitment to helping all of us reach our potential was highlighted by the 165,000 volunteers and acts of compassion during the Mayor’s Give a Day week of service.

And of course, the new Abraham Lincoln Bridge is open, and the new East End crossing is not far behind.

When I took office four years ago, I promised we would help Louisville become a city of lifelong learning and great jobs, a healthier city and an even more compassionate city.

Connecting the dots from 2015, I see impressive progress on every goal. We are striking that crucial balance of creating opportunity for Louisville citizens today, while laying the foundation for citizens in the future.

Adapting to the changing needs of industries and consumers, we’ve rolled out a strategy to grow jobs in five key business clusters in the Louisville region that have both an established reputation and strong growth potential for increasingly higher paying jobs:

Advanced manufacturing

Business services

Food and beverage

Lifelong wellness and aging care

Logistics and e-commerce

We’ve been working with the leaders in those industries to recruit more complementary businesses and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, while also aligning our education and workforce development efforts so that citizens have the skills they need to excel in 21st-century jobs.

Earlier this year, we launched our Cradle to Career lifelong learning initiative, a system that defines the necessary steps for success at each stage of a person’s education and career journey, from early childhood to adulthood. We’re partnering with stakeholders like Metro United Way, Jefferson County Public Schools, 55,000 Degrees, and KentuckianaWorks to find ways to give our citizens the information, education and training they need to flourish in a rapidly changing, globalized economy.

Public-private partnerships such as Code Louisville are crucial to this effort. In 2015, hundreds of citizens turned to Code Louisville to improve their technology skills. They included a group of teenagers who met weekly after school at the Beecher Terrace housing complex and eventually founded Beech Technologies, a start-up offering web and social media services to area small businesses. These young entrepreneurs’ success not only helps them, but also paves the way for more efforts to create similar opportunities for citizens all across our city.

Highlighting our progress in the tech area, President Obama’s 2015 Louisville visit featured our work as a Tech Hire city and included a briefing on the innovative work of Code Louisville.

There are, of course, still challenges for our city. And we will continue to take them all on.

Like too many American cities, we experienced an unacceptable number of homicides in 2015, and we must stem that tide. We can move faster on efforts to ensure an even more skilled and educated workforce. To ensure that all of our citizens are benefiting from an improving economy, we will continue to promote economic development in all neighborhoods, including those in the south, the southwest, and west of Ninth Street. And we must continue to improve our physical, mental and environmental health.

My team and I are hard at work on all those challenges.

I see tremendous energy and optimism in this community. People feel our city’s momentum, eagerness and confidence to take on big projects and initiatives to benefit us all.

When I reflect on this past year, I believe an event that started badly ended up showing our truest strength as a city – our ability to come together and rise above a challenge.

This event began with a phone call that came like a kick in the gut. Someone had spray-painted hate-filled graffiti on the walls of the Louisville Islamic Center. The center is a place of peace, an institution whose leaders are among our most civic-minded volunteers, and to see the destruction levied on them was simply disheartening to people of all faiths, and an affront to America’s cherished value of freedom of religion.

But by 8 a.m. the next morning, dozens of community and religious leaders showed up to denounce the vandalism and make plans for a community cleanup, which drew nearly 1,000 people – men, women and children; people of all color, nationality, religion and political leanings.

Together, we painted away the hate and built stronger community bonds.

That moment illustrates the “social muscle” that we’re building in this city; muscle that we can rely on in times of difficulty.

As we close one year and begin a new one, this sense of community continues to give me great hope.

Unlike Steve Jobs, I don’t believe we can rely on outside forces to realize that hope.

We need to get every citizen involved in building that social muscle. No matter your age, race, neighborhood or size of your paycheck, there are ways you can help. I humbly ask that you do, and offer just a few suggestions:

    Bring your expertise to a city board or commission: Louisvilleky.gov

    Join the 55K movement: 55000degrees.org

    Volunteer to mentor a young person through Right Turn or ReImage: 502-574-4115

    Organize your family or workplace to get involved in the Mayor’s Give a Day week of service: mygiveaday.com

    Hire a young person for a summer internship through SummerWorks: kentuckianaworks.org

    Plant a tree: louisvilleky.gov/Brightside

In closing, a special thank you to our military and public safety officials, whose work and devotion allow our country and city to carry on every day.

Thank you for allowing me the honor to be your mayor. May 2016 be full of blessings for you and yours.