Story of Collaboration

Collaboration. Quite simply, it’s what made the Open for Business Agenda so successful.

Collaboration is “to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something.” In municipal and county government, collaboration is coordinating respective leadership efforts to provide a better outcome for citizens and taxpayers. It’s putting personal agendas and affiliations aside and working together to bring a better life for decades to come.

Before Mayor Mann entered office, little collaboration or vision planning existed. The city and county were engrossed in partisan politics, with gridlock and split votes the norm. Effects of the Great Recession became an excuse to exercise apathy, allowing anti-growth leadership to take hold and causing the county to suffer negative growth and loss of tax base.

Citizens deserved more and wanted to support a new vision for their community. It took a plan— the Open for Business Agenda—and a commitment to lead from Mayor Mann.

The county leadership was ready, too. They began to envision what we could accomplish by working together. Commissioners Amy Dalrymple, Tim Sloan, Cameron Sharpe and Robert Reives Sr. helped weave our agenda into the county’s plan of work. As their budgets improved, they engaged other board members, achieving staggering results for Sanford and Lee County, especially within economic development.

Once the county Board of Commissioners teamed with our praiseworthy city council, the Open for Business Agenda could not be stopped. Success is not a partisan outcome. It takes a bipartisan effort coupled with a great plan to achieve substantial and sustainable goals.

Collaboration is what got it done in Sanford.