The Ave Maria Civic Association Unites Residents for Community Solutions

Commercial trucks and tractor trailers were crowding a peaceful residential neighborhood. Homeowners were frustrated and baffled to know where to turn for information. This is exactly the kind of neighborhood quandary which precipitated the need for the soon to be unveiled Ave Maria Civic Association.

Collier County Commissioner Bill McDaniel plans to establish a Civic Association which he announced in January after residents confronted community problems and were unsure who to talk to. At the January town hall meeting, the plan was set. As McDaniel explained, “We needed a way for the community to feel they have access to governance, to get answers to questions affecting their subdivisions.”

Five residents who attended January’s town hall volunteered to lay the groundwork for organizing the group. By late March they will announce the official start date, appoint officers and set up the meeting schedule.

Civic associations play a distinctive and vital role in a democratic society, developing core virtues and values that enable individuals to contribute to public life and maintain the political institutions of a free society. When the young French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the early 1800s, he observed that democracy in America had been especially strengthened by broad participation in a wide range of civic associations, including clubs, churches, nonprofits and community groups of all types.

MCDANIEL

“As Ave Maria continues to grow, there is a need for the community to have a voice,” McDaniel said. There are numerous subdivisions and often there is no way to communicate between one subdivision and another.” The Civic Association will highlight those issues that affect all the neighborhoods as well as the town of Ave Maria as a whole. “This way communities can come together and know where to turn with questions,” McDaniel explained.

Large features like the hospital facilities, commercial entities, schools, roads, water park and playgrounds are overseen by the Ave Maria Stewardship and town developer, Barron Collier Companies. But Ave Maria’s subdivisions will now have a uniting body to discuss residential day-today concerns. McDaniel shared. “This will prevent feelings of fragmentation between the HOAs and separate neighborhoods. It is an alternative method to communicating with the government.”

The goal of the Civic Association will be to act as an umbrella group for united discussions of community issues. It is the necessary mid-point for a community of this size which is not yet “at the incorporating or municipality stage but has reached a point where a mechanism is needed to answer the needs that are cropping up,” McDaniel concluded.

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