In the past, Osceola County’s message has been about moving on to the next thing, and being the first ones there. Specifically, “Be First to What’s Next.”
Inherently, the future is what you find if you keep moving forward, the county boldly called its newest vision, “Future Forward,” at Thursday’s annual State of the Osceola County address at Osceola Heritage Park.
“It is more than a catchphrase, it’s a call to action,” said County Commission Chair Viviana Janer.
Affordable housing, economic development, stormwater conservation and transportation investment, “provide us the roadmap that guides us,” she said at the event.
As transportation — and traffic — are hot topics of conversation locally that won’t go away, the county touted its recent summit among partners like the Central Florida Expressway Authority and Metroplan Orlando to get all stakeholders involved in improve infrastructure.
Within the next year, the county will be embarking on over $2 billion in road projects, including the widening of Neptune Road, Simpson Road, Boggy Creek Road, Poinciana Boulevard and Partin Settlement Road.
While the road cones and barrels will harken that work, Janer revealed two other steps to improve commutes and safety: traffic light-timing software for the U.S. 192 corridor, and an artificial intelligence (AI) systems to monitor intersections for safety hazards like wrong-way vehicles, crashes, illegal pedestrian crossings, and higher vehicle counts. Thanks to a Florida Department of Transportation Osceola County will be the first county in Central Florida to use this technology, which will monitor some of the most busy 192 intersections (John Young, Hoagland, Old Lake Wilson, Formosa Gardens) for both car and pedestrian traffic.
NeoCity was a topic of conversation Thursday; from a reminder of the $51 million federal Build Back Better grant for semiconductor research, a research partnership Memorandum of Understanding with the Korea Institute of Advancement of Technology bring Korean companies’ semiconductor technology capabilities here, state funds given to build NeoCity Way to connect the tech campus directly to Neptune Road, and a feasibility study to create a autonomous shuttle service between downtown Kissimmee and NeoCity.
The County Commission, as part of the fiscal 2023-24 budget, has included funding to continue the Osceola Prosper project, where county graduates can attend Valencia College or Osceola Technical College for free; it started in 2021 funded by federal pandemic recovery funds.
That is an employment initiative in and of itself, attempting to keep bright students at home to train them; another is the purchase of 62 acres near 192 and Florida’s Turnpike, on which the county intends to deliver an employment complex.
Janer said it all comes down to commissioners making “great efforts to continue to improve … all of us are passionate about what makes Osceola County a great place to live.
“All in all, we are well-poised for the future. Some of our results will be visible tomorrow, while others will bear fruit years from now. That’s part of the challenge of being an elected official; doing things that bring immediate change, but also working so that the county functions with an eye on what’s best for tomorrow.”
