Blessey challenges leadership award winners with to-do list

By MARY PEREZ/SUN HERALD

BILOXI —Leadership winners came away from the March 19 awards ceremony with a trophy and Gerald Blessey’s “to-do list” to improve education and the economy on the Mississippi Coast.

“He’s laid down a challenge,” said John McFarland, marketing services director for the Sun Herald. “The people in this room definitely have the ability to accept that challenge.”

Blessey, the Gulf Coast Housing director and former Biloxi mayor, was the guest speaker at the ninth annual Outstanding Community Leaders and Top 10 Business Leaders Under 40 breakfast at Beau Rivage Resort and Casino. The event is sponsored by the Sun Herald and the Journal of South Mississippi Business.

“I challenge the outstanding leaders here today, especially those under 40, to lead us to excellence,” Blessey said, “to nurture and sustain this human ecosystem that we call the Gulf Coast.”

Ron Barnes with Coast Electric Power Association was named one of the Top Community Leaders and said of Blessey, “I think his vision was great for the Gulf Coast.”

Barnes especially liked Blessey’s plan for U.S. 90.

“Make Highway 90 a true parkway,” Blessey suggested, by purchasing unused properties and creating either parks or mixed-use projects for jobs and housing that uses traditional architecture.

The changes he has in mind are sweeping, from broadcasting every government meeting live on the Internet to having neighborhood grocery stores that residents can walk to. Most important, he said, is education.

“All else depends on it,” said Blessey. “Education is the oxygen of a thriving, happy, sustainable community.”

His list of reforms starts with demanding that schools achieve graduation rates of 95 percent.

“A 30-35 percent dropout rate is unacceptable,” he said. “If a football coach never won more than 65 percent, never had a championship, the system would not stand for it.”

He also wants to see charter schools that require excellence in math, science and reading, along with charter schools that teach technical skills in shipbuilding, health services and the hospitality industry for students not college-bound. Blessey offered several steps to preserve and renew the local culture, “the thing that makes us who we are and what we are.”

He said the Coast leaders know what that is, and he suggested public waterfront facilities not just on the beaches, but on the bays and bayous for fishing and sailing.

He also suggested:

Venture capital for organic farms to sell to Coast casinos and New Orleans restaurants

A park, grocery store, a mass transit stop and farmers’ and fishermen’s market within walking distance of populated areas

Entertainment districts with restaurants, coffee houses and places for young adults to gather in every community

“Have a long string of pearls of these kind of places,” he said, and stretch them along the Coast from Pascagoula to Bay St. Louis.

One of the Top 10 Business Leaders Under 40, Jessica Crosby with Wetland Solutions in Gulfport, said she was proud of Blessey for taking the platform he did.

“I think he said a lot of things the people in that room needed to hear.”

She said she hopes the leaders take action, especially on education.

“We need to get some people fired up,” she said.

For the full text of Blessey's speech, click here to download (PDF)