Mayor Stephen J. Wukela delivered his seventh annual State of the City address Monday at Victor’s restaurant downtown.
The Mayor announced that “our Renaissance is accelerating.”
He went on to say that “Amid this activity, we can still hear the shrill and incessant voice of division.
We can still hear hateful words full of lies and fraud. Words designed to exploit the acial divide, intended to inflame anger, to obtain some petty personal benefit.
Still, we must remember that even the most foul lies contain half truth, and the frauds that deal in them prey upon their victims’ disappointments.
The hard truth is: our city long suffered a racial and geographic divide. That divide ran through an abandoned downtown, left to rot and decay.
We must not forget that, for too long, our own citizens living North of the divide had their most basic expectations–that infrastructure
and housing would be maintained in their neighborhoods–disappointed.
Instead, roads there crumbled and flooded, housing codes were left unenforced, and markets fled – along with most residents who were able.
Slum lords and crime found opportunity. Division and distrust followed, and opportunists thrived. This was reality. This was the truth.
We must not allow our contempt for the opportunists that exploit this past to serve as an excuse to ignore its existence.
This was the truth.
This wrong is being righted–with action, not empty rhetoric; with unity, not division.
The Success of the our whole project, the success of our grand renaissance depends upon our acknowledging this neglect honestly and repairing it aggressively.
Downtown and the neighborhoods that surround it must be rebuilt – they are being rebuilt; not only because of economic necessity, or historic nostalgia.
