Vision 1 - Ethnicity and multi-culturalism will require close attention to service levels.St. Charles County seems to represent a relatively affluent ethnic community, the members of which are widely distributed. There appears to be less impetus toward locating in historically ethnic neighborhoods. Existing ethnic neighborhoods have been virtually unchanged for years, and function as essentially closed communities. There further appears to be distinct differences in sentiment toward roles and participation between long-time ethnic residents and the new arrivals to the county. New arrivals are more broadly demanding in their expectations of government and quasi-governmental agencies; more focused on the improved quality of life that led them to the County, and more likely to participate in county-wide issues. Ethnic business development has increased, with the important note that many businesses located in the county are owned and operated by people who live elsewhere. Demographic trends seem to indicate that business owners see commercial opportunity and thus locate in St. Charles, but have not yet moved their residences here. As a result ethnic diversification has not been strongly driven by business development.
Vision 2 - New residents will need introductions to the county and its servicesMany new arrivals know where major institutions are located. They've scouted the community before buying or building and know where their children will go to school, can probably find the grocery store, medical care, the post office, and the gas station. Realtors do a pretty good job of providing clients with information about the area, but as new residents get their bearing on essential services, they will need information and guidance about utilizing parks, libraries, governmental services and life enhancing services. These agencies should, and must, increase the amount and quality of public information. It may be marketing, it may be public relations, but the elemental point is that people motivated to move to St. Charles by a prospective improvements to their quality of life will need guidance on how best to succeed in that objective. Cable channels, newsletters, media efforts, and networking among the entire community will be needed.
Vision 3 - Outlying areas will generate increased demand for services
This is a double-headed issue. Outlying areas in St. Charles County will be increasingly needful and demanding of levels of service equivalent to more urbanized areas. Because their property values are often relatively high, they pay commensurate taxes to support such services, and are keenly aware of what they perceive as disproportionate payment to service ratios. Service levels must, at the same time, be balanced against population. There is, for example, a faction that believes the Augusta area should have a library equivalent to a general-purpose branch, though less than 500 people live in Augusta. While it is not feasible to put a 50,000-volume facility there, it is incumbent on the library district to make sure that residents can get basic service locally, and are fully entitled to all services at larger branches. One of the motivating factors that led people to St. Charles County was, and rather still is, the country atmosphere. As the area develops further and loses more of its rural character, there will be increasing need to ask where people who tire of urbanization will go. What will happen, for example, if the continued commercial development in north St. Charles does indeed become an Earth City? Will people stay in the eastern part of the county and say its good enough, move back to St. Louis County, or leave the area entirely. Eventually there will be increasing numbers of people leaving St. Charles to go west and southwest in the County and possibly into Lincoln, Warren, and even into Pike. This migration, added to extant population, will place St. Charles County into an increasingly central role as a big-time player in the western metro region. Those who lived in this county and its cities, with their relatively complex and comprehensive service hierarchy may find things lacking the further out they move. They will find themselves, of necessity, having to come back to the eastern and middle parts of the county for services and goods. Lincoln and Warren county residents have shown true disdain for taxes for libraries, governmental services, so the number of non-resident cardholders in this library district may increase significantly. Since countywide planning is nearly non-existent, addressing these issues on a broad scale will be difficult. There are few institutions that are comprehensively countywide, the Library District, the Ambulance District, and the Community College for the most part, but additional direction and facilitation is going to be needed. People are going to need changes in the community architecture to increase contact between neighbors, among neighborhoods, and among cities and towns.
Vision 4 - Telecommunications and Technology will drive changes in all aspects of life.
The potential for advances in this area is enormous, yet that potential is virtually untapped. To tap into potential, the county is going to need infinitely more cooperation, concentrated direction, and leadership than it has had. The Westplex Information Network is one of few examples of multi-organizational technological cooperation in existence. WIN brought the resources, interests, and skills of many entities together to deliver an essential service, interfaced with a primary technological backbone provided by the State of Missouri, and administers its services cooperatively among the voting members.
Contrast this with the multiple municipalities, special service districts, school districts, administrative boards, and county government each operating in their own sphere with proprietary interests primary to their operations. Unfortunate reality being what it is, this is unlikely to change easily or soon. Despite the pending availability of big-bandwidth carrying power, fractionalized administration will retard distribution of services. Without a unified technological backbone, and some degree of central coordination, the county may find itself with multiple providers of widely varied products with little coincidence of quality or affordability, and fragmentation will become even more significant. County government, as the broadest administrative body, should likely provide the central coordination of county technological advancement. A coordinating board will be essential to maximizing both potential and distribution of bandwidth to homes, businesses and institutions within the county. No one is challenging the rights and prerogatives of municipalities to manage their own political affairs, but there are public policy issues that require more comprehensive thinking. St. Charles County does not have an excellent track record in joint project management and the reluctance to pursue alliances and confederations can be severely limiting to future progress. At the same time, it is highly likely that technology will advance, perhaps in spite of government, perhaps facilitated. But personal access to resources will rise logarithmically in the coming years. Greater public availability will require more of schools, libraries, economic development agencies (a particularly likely target to be hard hit) and colleges to provide training and expertise to guide public skill and use development. When there is every chance that information access of the quality and speed now available in branch libraries will be available in virtually every home within a few years, institutions must be prepared to handle and respond to more online requests; to accepting and providing services electronically; and to assisting the technologically illiterate or unprepared. Uniquely, meeting this need may well include providing public gathering places. It is entirely possible that many of those life-chores that require people to leave their homes will be accomplished over network and fiber optic transmission lines. People may well need a reason to leave home and will expect and demand a pleasant, safe environment in which to assemble. Public institutions will be increasingly focused on meeting the need for public commons.
Vision 5 - The educational landscape will change significantly.
St. Charles County will continue to be relatively affluent with stable and rising tax-bases to support educational institutions. Some areas are approaching saturation and will not get steep new growth, but at the same time, school population in those areas will level off to some degree. The cost of delivering a quality education will not decrease however. More resources, expenditures for capital programs and equipment, teacher and staff development, and more sophisticated skills will all be needed. Adding to the expense side of the ledger will be managing state and federally imposed mandates for accessibility, course work, and standards. The nature of teaching will further change. With each succeeding year schools will be faced with imparting both skills and knowledge since it is not possible to make an either or choice between the two. The technical vs. academic dichotomy of education will become more acute as the educational process wrestles between providing students with marketable job skills, and furthering the perspective that a high school diploma should be a minimum educational level, not a terminal degree. Schools will have to provide technical and hard science training in order to keep students on a relative world par, but at the same time, will and must cultivate thinking skills, critical analysis, and creative approaches to problem solving. European countries have long recognized the success of joint school-business partnerships in providing essential apprenticeships to secondary school students. Major industries should work with local schools and schools with industry to secure similar opportunities in St. Charles County. Far too often alternative programs -- those for at risk, exceptional, or non-traditional students -- fall when dollars are short or when pushed aside by higher perceived priorities. Partnerships would make much better use of available funds, staff, and facilities. As mentioned before, cooperation is not one of the county's great traditions, and it is difficult to have much optimism about regional educational programs, multi-jurisdictional resource sharing, or combined learning programs. Schools at all levels will have more opportunities to provide services to more and more varied people. Continuing education, job-specific training, personal development, remedial and basic education reinforcement will continue to increase as roles for educational institutions. G.E.D. programs, programs to refine and improve reading, writing, and computational skills, and programs to prove competencies will be placed under greater pressure as more non-traditional students participate in adult education, enroll in community colleges, and enter proprietary trade and technical schools. There will be increased emphasis on "the paper", the diploma or certificate as proof of training and substantiation of skills to get or maintain a job. It will be ever more difficult to purport skill to be later demonstrated on the job. It will take school-based proof just to get the job.
Vision 6 - Improved infrastructure and economic diversity will be required to maintain growth and the quality of life.
St. Charles County will continue to attract and build on a strong middle-income base. The county is strategically located, centrally to the nation, at the junction of major east-west state and interstate highways, only twenty miles from the I-55 north-south corridor, and about the same distance from accessing the I-44 southwest thoroughfare. It is crossed by rail lines running east-west and north-south. It is, at is nearest point, ten miles from one of the 25 busiest airports in the world. It abuts the Missouri River only twenty or so miles from its confluence with the Mississippi River, one of the world's busiest waterways for heavy-load barge traffic. The metro region boasts of world-class health care, recreational facilities and academic institutions. The county cannot assume, however, that its location will secure its future because many of the advantages listed above contribute to its difficulties. Lambert Field needs re-development to handle increasing demand for air travel and freight. Whether W1W is the plan for the future is yet to be determined, but the issue remains central to the county and the region. I-70 and 40/64 can be nearly impassible during rush hour. Any of the interchanges on I-70 from the Blanchette Bridge to Lake St. Louis can be so congested that traffic backs up well onto I-70.The county's primary roads -- Highway 94, Mexico Road, First Capitol Drive, Highway K -- can be nightmarish at any time of day. I-370 carries traffic to north St. Louis County, but hasn't diminished the flow across the Blanchette at all. Mass transit is minimal, and is not likely to expand anytime in the near future. St. Charles County will therefore be an automobile based community. Therefore traffic management becomes one of the county's foremost and most critical problems. Traffic can't flow on interstates if cars can't exit at major interchanges. Interchanges can't flow if cars can't travel smoothly along major roads. Major roads can't empty if secondary roads aren't designed to handle increased traffic. Secondary roads can't deliver people to their homes if too many cars are competing for turn-in space at the same intersection. Solving the transportation problem will take a great deal of cooperation and planning among virtually every governmental agency in the area. Cities, the county, the state, the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council must all consider moving people and goods as the region's must-do priority. One of the more important ramifications of transportation infrastructure is the foundation it lays for economic development. The area has a relatively effective, though fragmented, corps of economic development personnel who do all they can to attract, inform, and aid business considering locating in the area. The relatively flat land is fairly conducive to development, big and small; the population is relatively well educated and skilled, providing a good local labor pool. The area is a comparably affordable place to live and provides direct or proximate access to virtually any service or institution. Unfortunately, the county must compete with other areas that have equally positive traits. Therefore, incentives may be needed, Tax Increment Financing, abatements, tax incentives, infrastructure preparation such as sewer and water lines, roadways, and utilities. Businesses will locate where they get the best deal, and walking the fine line between giveaways and inducements puts county and local governments on the spot. There will have to be equal attention paid to cultivating small and micro business as is paid to bringing in big number employers. Again, a regional perspective will be necessary, and cooperation among theoretically competing political subdivisions will be needed to maximize development. Ultimately, it may well be either access or lack of access that convinces a business to locate here or somewhere else, and that puts the county back to square one and the need to deal with transportation.