A move in the right direction

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A move in the right direction

Opinions

Saturday, 06 February 2010 01:08

The East 192 Enhancement Advisory Committee, which the Osceola County Commission established in 2008, has been replaced with the Gateway Advisory Committee.
The new committee, approved Monday, will focus attention beyond East U.S. Highway 192 between Kissimmee’s Michigan Avenue and St. Cloud’s C31 canal to include other “gateways” and “corridors” leading into the county, such as West U.S. Highway 192, Orange Blossom Trail and Narcoossee Road. Some corridors are doing better than others but all need attention.
The committee’s job will be to identify the concerns that residents, businesses and institutions located along these corridors might have and to determine what resources could be brought to bear to help these same areas survive and prosper.
The initial board members for the group include Henry Rohde, Domingo Sanchez, Larry Walter, Bob Whidden, Bill Hansen and Sylvia Zapico, all former members of the East 192 committee. This core group will bring various areas of expertise to the new committee, as they did the old. In addition, the cities of Kissimmee and St. Cloud each will appoint two representatives to the committee, since the corridors on which the committee will focus run through these municipalities.
In addition, we applaud Commission Chairman Fred Hawkins Jr. for insisting that there be subcommittees to the new advisory group comprised of additional representatives from each corridor area. These representatives would be able to provide insight into their respective areas.
We editorialized in the past that our cities had to cooperate with the county in the effort to keep buildings occupied along U.S. Highway 192 and that the condition of any particular corridor reflects the economic health of the county overall, to some degree. This new committee, we believe, is a step in the right direction.
We agree that we want to make sure first-time visitors using the “gateways” into our county get a good first impression, but we also want to ensure that all areas of our county have the tools needed to be viable communities.