Three top legislators host meeting at Beaver Street Enterprise Center

Three of the incoming Speakers of the Florida House of Representatives traveled to FreshMinistries’ Beaver Street Enterprise Center in mid-November for a two-hour meeting to gather ideas for Florida’s future.

Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio asks for input from someone attending the Idea Raiser at Beaver Street Enterprise Center, the inner-city business incubator that is one focal point of the work of FreshMinistries.

Rep. Marco Rubio of District 111, Rep. Dean Cannon of District 35 and Rep. Ray Sansom of District 4 represent the next six years of legislative leadership in the Florida House. They are the speaker-designates through the year 2012 and they were at the Beaver Street Enterprise Center to hear what Jacksonville residents had to say about issues facing Florida in coming years.

Among those issues raised by 25 people attending were health care for the uninsured, educational opportunities and scholarships for low-income students and the importance of supporting the work of nonprofits in the state that are working to improve communities.

Rep. Rubio said this was one of the first “Idea Raisers” he will hold in cities and towns across the Sunshine State to encourage citizen participation in legislative direction.

He brought with him a stack of “legislative agendas” that lawmakers receive from various interest groups and remarked that the Legislature, too, needs to have a legislative agenda based on things citizens think are important.

Reps. Cannon and Sansom committed to the process, ensuring that over the next six years, starting in fall of 2006, legislators will work on the priorities they hear from citizens during the “Idea Raiser” process.

Beaver Street Board of Directors Co-Chairman George Robbins attended the meeting: “My suggestion to them was that the state adopt a formal long-range plan with the force of law and in this plan establish measurements (accountability) and periodically report their performance versus the measurements to the public.”

“I think it’s great that they are going around trying to collect ideas about how to run the state,” Robbins said.

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