11/19/09 Budget Cuts

5:00 I was up and on the road for the morning jog. No shooting stars this morning, just the first glimpse of fog.
7:00 I had my weekly meeting with Preston Prince and Eileen Neely (Housing Authority), Keith Bergthold (Planning Dept.) and John Raymond (Redevelopment). I had to leave early this morning but we had a chance to talk about a local preference policy that we'll follow-up on.
7:45 Newsroom Cafe. The budget cuts have affected the entire City and have eliminated the Office of the Film Commission. Ray Arthur our Film and entertainment Commissioner is a real pro and a gentleman. He has done a great job with establishing the Film Commission in Fresno. He is an asset to our community and I hope that we can keep him around. After hearing about the cuts he said, "All right, let's get to the office, I have too much to do today."
8:30 We had an impromptu staff meeting to talk about the proposed budget cuts and to answer as many questions as we could.
9:00 We have Primetime for Business in front of the City Council and John Shegerian did a great job of representing his company, as always. The Mayor presented her proposed budget cuts to the City Council. I had to leave early.
10:00 I was a speaker at a Small Communities Downtown Revitalization Workshop. The group of 70 people attending the workshop in Fowler represented communities from six Central Valley counties. Merced, Kings, Tulare, Kern, Madera and Fresno. Many cities and special districts were present. I spoke from 10:15 to 11:30 about the principles of downtown revitalization. I hope that it was helpful. Given the morning's events, I don't think that I was at my energetic or comedic best. The Federal Reserve Bank was an organizer and sponsor along with the Local Government Commission, San Joaquin Valley Housing Trust, and the California Coalition for Rural Housing. Favorito's Restaurant in Fowler was great too. I loved the Fowler Mayor's comments at the beginning. We need to clone that guy; every Valley town could use one of him!
By the time that I got back to the office it seemed a little like everything was beginning to unravel with some of our key downtown pieces. They looked like they were working themselves out, but things are always so darned dicey. You can never think that a project is done until it is really done.
3:00 The Urban Entrepreneurship class met in City Hall today. Today's class was the dress rehearsal for the semester projects. Everyone had a chance to go through their project today and to get feedback from their peers and from me. They have two weeks to put on the finishing touches. The look really good.
6:30 I had dinner with Lena Robinson and Elaine Robles (Neighborhood Revitalization Manager). Lena is from the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco. We spent the evening updating Lena on the progress in the Lowell neighborhood and we requested assistance with developing and keeping data to monitor the effectiveness of the revitalization process. It will be key to have measurable results and also key to learn what is working and what isn't. Lena is a wonderful resource, I appreciate the work that they are doing and the interest that that are showing in Fresno.