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Colleagues, family, friends and staff here today – good morning and thank you for taking a moment to share this personal milestone with me.
First, I want to once again express my gratitude to
Governor de Jongh and Lt. Governor Francis for offering me the opportunity to serve in this capacity, and to my wife
Janice for her support. There is nothing more fulfilling than working for the greater good of your community.
Today, I reaffirm my commitment to serve the people of this territory to the best of my ability. The hallmark of my leadership has always been to do what is in the best interest of the people of the virgin islands and
I pledge to continue along this path.
Through the vision of governor de
Jongh and Lt. Gov. Francis, and support of our legislators, a strong foundation has been set for us, not only to be prepared, but also for us to foster a more resilient community.
In less than two years, this administration rebuilt an emergency management system that had been decades behind jurisdictions across the united states. Today our newly-reorganized system meets federal standards for incident management and rivals many in the mainland.
The groundwork has clearly been set, and now it is my task to build on these successes. For me this means, engaging and planning strategically through our public and private sector partnerships to ensure that we can efficiently and effectively respond when disaster strikes, that we can sustain ourselves for a period of time, and that we can quickly return to some semblance of normalcy after an event.
To the this end, I have developed key short and long term goals and objectives, some of which include the following:
To ensure that all VITEMA
employees and volunteers continue to receive training and continue to be responsive in their daily duties and responsibilities.
To create redundancies in our alert and notification system by completing the installation of a territorywide tsunami warning system and re-implementing of the emergency alert system
(EAS) to complement our current vi alert system.
Additionally, to educate the public about
VITEMA’s role in management of emergencies, to raise awareness about the importance of preparedness, and to ensure that our community outreach includes our special needs population and
non-English speaking communities.
Over the long term, my uppermost and over-arching priority for the agency is to improve the delivery of services in times of emergency and to ensure that the territory is prepared and can be self-sufficient. This is important because geographically we are so far removed from the united states.
Finally, I would be remiss not to mention my ultimate goal of developing a facility on
St. Croix comparable to our St. Thomas headquarters.
It is my hope that in the near future we will recover from the grips of this economic crisis. When we do, with the support of governor de
Jongh and Lt. Gov. Francis, I will set my agenda to build out the
Hermon Hill facility. This will allow us to manage major incidents more efficiently and effectively territory-wide.
I ask for your support as we continue to strive towards meeting these objectives and welcome your suggestions and feedback.
To close, I leave you with one of my favorite affirmations: “challenges are what make life interesting, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
Thank you and I stand ready to
serve.
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