When I came to office I made a pledge: Do not succeed at doing nothing. In working to make changes, you will brush against opponents who want the status quo to go on.
Teddy Roosevelt said it best: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit goes to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face if marred by dust and sweat and blood.”
As we leave office, we leave this city in better shape. Seventy acres of park created, and/or enhanced in the urban core; we created green space wherever we could.
In addition, more than an acre of park space has been created on Edgewater with good partnerships with the newly constructed buildings right on the water. The high-rise buildings in the urban core will reduce traffic and will allow those residents to work in close proximity to their jobs. Vertical infrastructure allows for greater services and reduced greenhouse gases, which cause global warming and sea level intrusion.
We leave with a fully functional 90,000-square-foot movie studio just completed and operated by Viacom, one of the world’s largest media companies. We partnered with the Venture Hive to incubate tech startups, bringing jobs and opportunities where none previously existed.
We ensured that everyone has access to arts and culture to ensure that history will record our time here and what we did when we were here, but equally for the economic drivers they have proven to be.
You do not make change without upsetting the status quo ante, and in doing so you will attract critics. Governing and making changes has been our achievement in office. Truth will be the Daughter of Time.
Marc Sarnoff,
Miami commissioner
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