Over the past three decades, Ace has invited the incoming Mayor and Council to contribute an essay to our “What Lexington Needs” space that began as an Ace tradition in the 80s.
What Lexington Needs: Vision
By incoming 6th District Councilmember David Kloiber
Too often the problems that are right in front of us obstruct our view of the issues down the road. For most of us, this last year has presented an entirely foreign set of obstacles to overcome, making it a constant struggle just to get through each day, let alone trying to think about things we might face in the coming weeks. When you are unexpectedly thrust into the position of teacher’s aide, or lose the ability to work for months on end, it can be hard to do anything but apply triage to your life while waiting and praying that things will finally return to normal. This is to be expected when everything shifts as suddenly as it has, but hopefully as we turn the corner into 2021 we will find a bit of relief from the year we all just endured.
However, unlike us as individuals, our city needs to be held to a higher standard. We cannot afford to take a wait-and-see approach when being tasked with making decisions that will affect the lives of everyone for many years to come. Our leadership needs to be prepared to address whatever situations the world may throw at us, while still keeping their eyes towards the bright future we all desire. It is in service to this end that we need to develop a clear vision for what we want our city to become, and march toward it even when adversity strikes.
There will certainly be bumps along the way, since it would be impossible to plan for every eventuality, but as long as we make decisions focused on the long term health and prosperity of the city, we will be better prepared at any point in time to handle them. In trying times it becomes easy to inadvertently sacrifice the opportunities of tomorrow by solely focusing on the issues of today, so as a city what we really need is to ask our leaders to keep their eyes pointed squarely towards the horizon. Hopefully in doing so, the future will turn out even better than we planned.
David Kloiber is president of the Kloiber Foundation. He has helped fund projects for community improvement, most notably in areas that impact children including technology for area schools and construction of the Kloiber Pavilion at the YMCA in Hamburg.
The 6th district is home to 17 neighborhood associations, nine public schools, Hamburg Pavilion, and seven city parks, including the Brighton Rail Trail, a shared use trail from Man O War Blvd, connecting to Pleasant Ridge Park and Polo Club Boulevard. The major corridors in the 6th District are Paris Pike, Winchester, Liberty and Bryan Station roads.
This essay appears on page 11 of the January 2021 print edition of ace magazine.
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