10/30/09 Casual Friday

Dear Blog,

8:00 I started the day with an inspiring meeting with Wayne Rutledge, the owner of Uncle Harry's Bagel shops. Wayne has an interest in putting his business skills and talents into the efforts to revitalize the urban neighborhoods around downtown. There have been so many people stepping up to get involved. It is interesting how many people ask about how it will be possible to revitalize in this economy, while more and more people want to participate in revitalization.

The Downtown and Community Revitalization Dept. has 3 parts: downtown revitalization, neighborhood revitalization and local business initiatives. The local business initiatives are coordinated by Amy Huerta and Fernando Santillan. The purpose of the local business initiatives is to to help locally-owned businesses by helping the City to become more business friendly and to help to generate support and awareness for the benefits of supporting locally-owned businesses.

One of their initiatives is to organize businesses into groups: CPA's, community banks, licensed contractors, personnel and temp. agencies, and we'll be starting one for Independent Restaurants and Retailers. Another is on the way for the 50 largest local employers.

9:30 The Local Business Initiatives folks organized a meeting of our Technology Affinity Group. At our first meeting one of the group's priorities was to meet with the City's purchasing leadership and the people from ISD (Information Services Department). We'll have all of the members of this affinity group on our website within a couple of weeks. The discussion was centered on how the City can do more of its business with local tech companies. The companies were also interested in finding out when the City and individual departments were contracting or purchasing technology or services. It was a great start.

10:30 I had a meeting with the Fire Department, Code Enforcement and a downtown property owner. Most issues were resolved and the others will be pretty quickly. Progress!

12:30 I met Prof. Einsidler for lunch. Fresno State continues to get more and more involved in all of our efforts. Prof. Einsidler teaches lighting design. It is amazing how deep the university's resources are. How can a lighting design professor and his students help? We will look for a house in Lowell and a downtown building to show everyone. "Eyes on the street" is a key tenet to downtown safety and security. Good lighting makes this concept work. It can also show off the incredible architectural features of our historic treasures.

After lunch I had a quick trip to the doctors office to take care of a danged ear ache...thanks for seeing me so quickly Dr. Jones!

I met with our Managers: Amy Huerta, Elliott Balch and Elaine Robles throughout the remainder of the afternoon. Out by 5:30 and time to pick up some dinner and a prescription so that I can hopefully hear again next week.

Another good week...onward! Craig