Those of you that have been following our blog know that we officially launched all of our infrastructure initiatives last year. Our work with infrastructure is by no means complete, and we are constantly monitoring, adjusting, and even adding to our initiatives. However, we are no longer solely focusing on this priority.
We are excited to announce our second priority area: Economic Opportunity. More specifically, ensuring that people have the resources, environment, skills, and tools necessary to pursue their life goals and make a living sufficient to support a high quality of life - in keeping with one’s own potential, and irrespective of their starting point on the social and economic ladder.
We’ve been conducting immense amounts of research over the past several months, and have been looking at how this challenge presents itself in the community both qualitatively and quantitatively. Since economic opportunity is quite a broad topic, we have been working to narrow our focus and identify ways that the City government can specifically create pathways and reduce barriers to economic opportunity for its citizens. We are still in the final stages of identifying our specific challenges, but some areas we have been examining include: safe and healthy homes, thriving neighborhoods, ways to address citizen financial constraints, local hiring practices within City government, and access to City services. Additionally, we are already partnering with other organizations external to City government, who are active in these fields.
Our concentration on economic opportunity comes at a unique time in our community. This is not only our focus, but the focus of many other individuals and organizations. As decisions loom over the fate of Interstate 81, a city county merger, and the Upstate Revitalization Initiative, economic opportunity is a topic that is on everyone’s mind. How can Syracuse and the Central New York community improve the lives of populations that have historically been marginalized? We are excited to be a part of this movement and to see how the City of Syracuse can play a role in improving its constituents’ lives.
Over the next few months we will be updating you about the direction of our focus and the progress of our work. Over the summer and fall we hope to start rolling out our economic opportunity initiatives.
If you have any suggestions for us, please let us know in the comments section below! Economic Opportunity is clearly a big topic, and we will benefit from as much input as possible.
