A City on the Rise

Dear Mount Vernon Friends and Family -

Earlier this week, I was honored to be a featured speaker at Microsoft’s annual Envision conference. Our city, and the transformative work we are doing, was recognized in the New York Times and is now getting recognized around the world.

We chose to accept Microsoft’s invitation so we could tell our story on a global stage. It is a story of a great city with a character, culture, and connectedness that other cities only dream of. It’s a story of incredible people doing hard work and implementing change. It’s a story about a community that is accelerating change and leapfrogging others to become the next hot edge city.

Above is a video we presented to the Microsoft team and the conference attendees. It tells the story of us, and our digital transformation. It shows our new investments in public safety, training, and technology and details our plans to do more. At the conference, Ford Motor Company and VOLVO each described their efforts to accomplish the same objectives we set out to do, optimize operations and achieve economic growth. It is no secret that Mount Vernon has decades of past mismanagement to correct. It is also no surprise the pushback we are getting from forces that want to keep Mount Vernon down.

My pledge to you is to keep standing up, fighting the good fight to change the apathetic culture into one of action. My administration will never ever quit on making City Hall work for you. We understand that we must diversify and expand the tax base. Our participation at Microsoft’s conference confirms that we are actively recruiting global organizations to consider bringing jobs back to Mount Vernon. We know that “Rome was not built overnight,” and will keep soldiering onward to develop and implement our strategic economic plans to bolster industry in our city. We will work harder and smarter, exploring and experimenting with new ideas, while continuing our best practice of convening stakeholders to work together to lead Mount Vernon forward.

Respectfully,

Mayor Richard Thomas