Argus strongly impacted 2019, looks ahead to 2020

One week ago today I celebrated five years with The Argus Foundation. I am very proud to be a part of such a great organization that cares deeply about our community and our future. This organization has been a catalyst for change and had a tremendous positive impact on our quality of life.

The Argus Foundation has had a strong 2019 and we accomplished a lot. We tackled important community issues through business leadership, had a strong year for educating our community through our columns and prominent guest speakers, and we are financially healthy with a secure and quality growing membership.

From preserving administrative review and adhering to the promises of the downtown masterplan, making sure mobility fees were properly implemented on the county level, co-founding and implementing a workforce training program in Newtown, getting the county to adhere to its priority of water quality and allocating dollars to septic tank replacement, to accountability in our school system and local government, we were there and taking strong positions.

We brought some amazing decision makers and thought leaders to town to meet our community. In 2019, we heard from Florida Senate President Bill Galvano, Senator Rick Scott, Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, Reason Foundation and a joint meeting with Gulf Coast Builders Exchange featuring The James Madison Institute. Additionally, we held a well-attended water quality summit jointly with South County Tiger Bay.

Our significant impact on issues and educating our community led to over 30 local news articles on issues in our community and state. This is in addition to the 20 columns published in local media authored by The Argus Foundation in 2019.

The community responded to these important civil discussions and events, with over 2,000 of you attending them in 2019. This is a record for our 37 year-old organization. The media also responded to these discussions, and many of our events reached state-wide media.

I would like to personally thank our Argus 2019 President Keith Mercier, who moved to the role of past-president last Friday. He was unafraid to take strong stances on heated issues as long as it was the right thing to do and we could make a positive impact for change. I learned a lot from him and his leadership made our organization stronger.

Moving ahead, last Friday also saw John Wagner — our new president — take the helm of the Argus ship. He will be taking over as we are in the thick of policy and events.

At our annual meeting, we kicked off the year hearing from former Congresswoman and Google executive Susan Molinari and former Congressman Bill Paxon and their perspectives on Washington and federal politics. We have two great speakers ahead of us: Florida Chief Science Officer Dr. Thomas Frazer on February 4th and former ABC 20/20 co-anchor and current Fox News Business and Fox News Analyst John Stossel on March 12th, as he talks about the effect of $15 minimum wage laws.

This year we are urging local governments to begin to plan for the 2022 surtax referendum and to plan their infrastructure projects with prioritization and careful thought. We are also participating with the EDC visioning, working on water quality, studying jail bond policy related to overcrowding, looking for affordable housing solutions and educating on the practical effect of the proposed minimum wage amendment.

We have a full plate already ahead of us for 2020 and we are prepared to deal with other issues as they arise, in addition to the ones I have already listed.

Our membership is dedicated to improving our community through sound public policy and proposing forward-thinking solutions to today’s problems. We offer no membership services, our members join and contribute to make our future better, and we are doing just that.

We look forward to working with our partners in the community and in local government in 2020. We apply business leadership to important community issues and will continue to be a positive policy force in the future.

Christine Robinson is executive director of the Argus Foundation and was on the Sarasota County Commission from 2010 to 2016. Contact her at christine@argusfoundation.org.