12-15-09 Well, we knew it was going to be a doozy of a week.

No run today. 1 whole Clariton floors me. I know, not much of a drug tolerance, I know.


8:00 we started refining our presentation for Thursdays’ City Council meeting. I walked in with great news. We are on for a press conference for Wednesday morning at 9:15 to announce the sale of the Bank of Italy building. While it was good news, it also put strain on an already strained crew. We knew that it would be a full week, but guess what? We're heaping more fuel on the fire.


8:30 We changed our focus to the list of invitees for the State of Downtown breakfast. Let me know if you want in invite.
10:00 Marlene Murphey, Georgeanne White and I met with representatives from the local IRS offices and a representative from the General Services Administration. It was a positive update on how many jobs the IRS has consolidated in Fresno and especially downtown Fresno.


11:00 Amy Huerta and Fernando Santillan hosted a seminar on best practices for enforcement of unlicensed contractors. The contractors chose Visalia and Sanger as the best examples. They had a great turnout.


12:30 Elaine Robles and I met with Supervisor Mike Hanson and his cabinet to talk about the incredible resource coming from Fresno State into the Lowell Neighborhood revitalization effort. Resources are a funny thing, they require planning and management. We have a responsibility to the neighborhood residents to do this really well.


On top of everything else, one of the tenants that we have been trying to bring downtown will vote whether or not to choose downtown on Thursday. I'll let you know when I know if they are coming downtown.


2:30 We had an abbreviated staff meeting. We had a quick overview of everyone's week. There was leftover Me&Ed's from the contractor's meeting, so that helped keep morale high.


I met with Carl Jones, Cynthia Sterling's Chief of Staff to keep him updated on the Specific Plan and Downtown Development Incentives.

We also worked on the press announcement for tomorrow morning's press conference. Join us at 9:15 a.m. in front of the Bank of Italy Building...did I say that already?


5:15 I met with Crystal Smith, Jane Sumpter, Lee Brand, Andreas Borgeas, Larry Westerlund, Georgeanne White and Renena Smith. usually we meet with council members in one on one or maybe two, but this worked out with everyone's schedules to get together this evening. It was a good opportunity to present some of the information about our downtown revitalization efforts.


6:30 I met with Elaine Robles and Elliott Balch joined us for a debrief of the day.