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Text Size11/10/2004 Atlanta Regional Commission State of the Region Breakfast
Prepared Remarks of Governor Sonny Perdue
Atlanta Regional Commission – State of the Region Breakfast
(Note: The Governor sometimes deviates from prepared remarks)
Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you this morning to talk with you about the future—the "Shape of Things to Come".
Accurately forecasting the future is always a tricky business. Just ask an exit pollster.
Or recall the great business leader Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of IBM, who around 1948 reportedly said, "I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
Even the smartest, best informed and most daring among us, inevitably comes up short when we try to gaze into that crystal ball.
The future is not ours to see. But the future is ours to create.
The possibilities for tomorrow fall upon us—the leaders of today. We have to imagine what our future can be and how to work together to build the future that we imagine. So in discussing the State of the Region today, I want to talk about the foundations we are laying for our future generations. My grandchildren, your children and grandchildren.
Has anyone read the paper this morning? You may have noticed that Honda is moving to Georgia. Fedex is growing in Georgia. And Intercontinental Hotels is prospering in Georgia.
What does this mean? Jobs, jobs and more jobs.
Why are these business leaders choosing Georgia? I believe it is because we have a cornerstone location to the nation and the marketplace.
We are expecting 2.3 million more people to be living in the metro region 25 years from now. But geography isn't everything. Our quality of life, our system of higher education, and our commitment to preserving the environment speak volumes as well. As my friend, Lonice Barrett says, you don't see people retiring to the north.
As evidenced by the amount of ink on this topic this morning, success builds on success. The best way to have a strong economy that creates good jobs in the future is to create good jobs today. That's what we're doing.
Georgia's economic recovery has begun. We added some 30,000 jobs in the last 12 months and posted a 6% economic growth rate. My priority on my watch is to keep our job engine moving forward.
I've spoken before about the pillars of our economic development strategy.
One, support the growth of our existing industries.
Two, encourage entrepreneurship and small business growth.
Three, invest in the growth industries of the future.
One existing industry we're giving high attention to is growing Georgia's travel and tourism industry. I know that's important to the Metro region, where our hospitality and travel industry took a huge hit after 9/11.
We are moving in the right direction now. Georgia is currently the 7th most visited state in the nation and we posted a 9% increase in hotel revenues during the first half of this year – an additional $103 million over the same period in 2003.
Tourism is one of the engines we want to rev up. Earlier this year, I created the Georgia Tourism Council to improve coordination and cooperation among state agencies and the private sector.
And I signed legislation giving the Department of Economic Development more flexibility to form partnerships with private sector partners for tourism marketing.
I have also made tourism the focus of my term as chairman of the Southern Governor's Association. In fact, if I am looking a little red eyed this morning, it's because I was out past my bedtime, attending the country music awards in Nashville. Now while some of you may think I was just hob knobbing with celebrities, I was actually working. My Chairman's Initiative is to promote heritage tourism throughout the region. And a critical component of that is music. Music is part of our cultural fiber and, more than ever, a key economic driver for this state.
On the convention and business side, Atlanta is a leading contender for the FTAA headquarters. This past summer I spent a considerable amount of time traveling to Latin American nations touting the assets of Atlanta and Georgia at large. I was well received and amazed at the level of curiosity about our culture and way of life. The one area I recognize we need to improve upon is selling our logistical infrastructure, our hospitality, and our quality workforce. We are marketing ourselves as the Gateway to the Future.
With a more futuristic flavor, we're also making significant investments in life sciences and nanotechnology.
This year we allocated $2 million toward a $45 million state commitment to construct a world class Nanotechnology Research Center at Georgia Tech.
Nanotechnology is projected to be a $1 trillion industry by 2015.
With projects like this, anyone can get excited about the manipulation of atoms. And, it astounds me how resourceful we have been in attracting some of the best minds in the world to our research team.
The life sciences will be another growth industry of the 21st Century. Georgia already has the 8th largest life sciences industry in the nation, with much of that activity clustered in the Metro region.
We want to ensure that we invest in the people, facilities and availability of capital to extend our leadership in this critical industry that will, again, offer some of the best jobs available between now and 2030.
And we have a state bioscience seed capital fund in place. As venture capital funds go today, it's small. But the fund can make direct investments of up to $1 million in Georgia companies and serve as a catalyst to leverage private source funds.
So we know we have the people—how do we move them to and from work? I know that ARC members are familiar with my Fast Forward transportation package, which commits $15.5 billion to improve transportation infrastructure in the Metro region and across the state.
To date, much of the attention has gone to the short-term congestion relief components of Fast Forward. Traffic signalization. HERO unit upgrades. Incident response.
Many of these elements are already coming on-line to provide immediate congestion relief. But by 2030, virtually all of the projects included in Fast Forward will either be completed or well under way.
That includes the $1.4 billion we will spend to expand HOV lanes on critical congested corridors like I-75 in Cobb County and GA 400 north of 285.
The drivers of 2030 will thank us. I'm pretty confident there will still be plenty of cars on our highways 25 years from now. I also believe those cars will be smarter, safer and cleaner than the cars we have today.
Georgians will never give up their cars entirely. But more Metro residents will be riding buses and other transit options in years to come. By 2030 our network of rapid bus transit, new express bus routes, and new local bus routes will be fully deployed.
And we will have completed several Bus Rapid Transit lines, starting with routes along I-75 between downtown and Town Center and across the top of the I-285 Perimeter.
These investments will help us reach the goal of a 73% increase in transit trips over the next 25 years, outpacing the projected rate of population and employment growth.
I'm strongly committed to investing in mass transit as a critical component of our transportation strategy. When you have 6 million people living in the Metro region, a robust transit system isn't just a good idea…it's a necessity.
I can tell you that I'm confident that my Fast Forward plan moves us in the right direction.
Well, we've got our friends in the future moving. Let's talk a little about where they might go. I've got a strong feeling a surprising number of Metro residents in 2030 will not be driving to work every day.
Not because they don't have jobs but because many jobs of the future will be knowledge jobs that readily lend themselves to telework, virtual conferencing, and even to remote control and monitoring of manufacturing processes taking place a dozen miles away or a thousand miles away.
In just one year of our state Work Away program, 29% of state employees are utilizing telework and alternative work schedules. We will continue to expand these options for state workers. And major private employers, along with the Clean Air Campaign and other partners, are also encouraging telework and other options. I believe these trends will only accelerate.
Many of our forecasts, both good and bad, about transportation, air and water quality, and other needs all assume that today's work habits and economic arrangements will simply carry forward into the future, just with more people.
I don't believe that is the case. For instance, instead of looking 25 years ahead, let's glance backwards for a moment, 25 years into the past, to 1979. Most of us were around then.
How many of us took into account in 1979 all the ways that fax machines, mobiles phones, email, web pages, high speed Internet connections, laptop computers, and Blackberry pagers would shape our work habits here in 2004?
How many trips to the mall have eBay and Amazon eliminated in just the last ten years? My wife, who doesn't see herself as being Internet savvy, seems to have adjusted quite well to online sales!
We have created an image of how people may be working and moving in 2030 but how will they be playing?
I grew up on a farm with an abundance of land. As a young man, my father always told me, if you treat the land well, the land will treat you well. I believe this and I want my grandchild to share the same luxury whether they live in rural Georgia or metro-Atlanta. That means conserving our air, water, and land.
I'm pleased that Metro Atlanta now meets the federal one-hour ozone air quality standard. That means our clean air efforts are paying off and we can move forward toward achieving the more stringent 8-hour standard. We're making good progress and I believe that by 2030, our air will be as clean and breathable as we want it to be.
Water is obviously a critical resource for the Metro region and its future growth. As it becomes increasingly clear with every new business or neighborhood that hooks up its pipes, our water supply is not infinite.
We face tensions with our neighboring states over the use of shared water resources.
We can no longer afford to meet the water needs of one locality or region without considering the effects throughout the state. Georgia needs a comprehensive plan to tie all of our water management programs together. This year, I signed legislation to move us toward such a plan.
By 2030, we will also see the results of our land conservation efforts. The Georgia Land Conservation Advisory Council that I appointed last year has reported back to me with their recommendations for improving our current land conservation efforts.
We are now ready to act on some of their top recommendations by implementing a Georgia Land Conservation Partnership Initiative. This is a major evolution of Georgia's land conservation efforts.
The initiative will initially target statewide conservation efforts to protect water quality, prime farmland, and cultural sites. Local governments will identify community conservation projects and DNR will identify state projects. ARC will be an important partner in this effort.
But it will be a comprehensive approach to preserve ecosystems, foster stewardship of natural resources, and help sustain both economic growth and a high quality of life for this and future generations of Georgians. I am strongly committed to preserving, and even expanding, available greenspace in the Metro region and across the state.
And as our land conservation plans take shape and move forward, they will reflect that priority. So I believe our residents 25 years from now will enjoy even greater access to greenspace, healthy ecosystems, and recreational areas than we have today when they switch off their virtual reality computer monitors for the day and head outdoors.
In fact, by that time, I expect to have a lot of time on my hands for both long walks and surfing the web. An interesting forecast I noted in your report was the projection that the 60-plus age group will double its share of the regional population by 2030. And the 85 and older group is the fastest growing segment.
I read it and thought, "That's interesting". Then I realized – in 2030, that's not just interesting, that's me!
So let me say a little about how we're going to care for our booming elder population, now and in the future. Georgia was part of a National Governor's Association task force on this issue last year to identify best practices in caring for our older citizens.
One practice is a move from institutional care to community care, facilitated by an increased use of technology for health monitoring and care assistance.
Another is focusing on disease management. I know the ARC is doing innovative work in this area, with prevention and wellness programs. We have seen that there are steps we can take to prevent nursing home institutionalization.
A third area is introducing greater self-determination and consumer driven health care. Giving our seniors more choices in our community home-based services.
My coming budget will reflect these priorities and we will be doing more in this area over the next two years. Believe me, I want today's seniors and those of tomorrow to enjoy the best care and the best quality of life possible.
I appreciate again the chance to share some of my thoughts with you on the "Shape of Things to Come."
We truly do not know all that the future holds for us. That's part of the joy of life – finding out what tomorrow will bring.
But one thing we know is this – we've all got to work together to create the future we want. I believe in building strong regional and state partnerships. And I'm proud of how closely my office has been able to work with the ARC in many areas to strengthen the Metro region and the state. We'll continue to do so.
As I said earlier we are truly the Gateway to the Future.