02-18-10

I got a jump on the day, up at 4:15 and on hit the road for a jaunt with el perro at 4:30. I saw four others out at that time...who knew?



7:00 I met with Preston Prince and Eileen Neely from the Housing Authority and Marlene Murphy from the Redevelopment Agency. It was a very productive discussion on how the City, RDA and HA can better layer their resources to be able to get more done. We need a clearer understanding of what each source of funding can and can't be used for and when particular finding sources are the most useful. Some trigger prevailing wage, some are targeted at very low income and some serve more middle income residents. This coordination is critical to our overall success.

8:00 George Smith and I reviewed a draft of our budget which we will submit next week. This is part of the process that will result in the official budget which will go to the City Council in May.


9:00 Randy Reed is hosting a Community Access program that will inform people about activities within the City. I taped a spot with Randy at the Fresno County Office of Education studios downtown.


10:00 Wilma Quan, Elaine Robles and I met with members of the Downtown Neighborhoods Community Plan team. They are in town for three days accumulating base information.


11:30 Mayor Swearengin and I drove out to the Young Executives group. She was the lunch speaker and I am a member of the group. The name is a bit misleading, since I am the youngest member of the club (I'm 48 if you were wondering).


2:30 I taped a "newsmakers" segment at Comcast, which will be available to Comcast customers who use On Demand. Go to Local Programs, and you'll find two 4 minute interviews about downtown Fresno.


4:00 The Downtown Plan team met with our folks in Information Systems to discuss ways that a map could be integrated into the website for the plans and could be used to track information as downtown revitalizes.


5:00 Amy Huerta and I headed to Full Circle Brewery to meet with Don and Bill to ask if they would host the next Independent Retailers and Restaurants meeting. They said YES!


6:00 Amy Huerta and I met at the Downtown Club with the Regional Jobs Initiative's Tourism Industry Cluster (read more about cluster theory at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cluster ). We were there to present the Fresno Food Show concept and how it supports the Food/Agriculture tourism concept.


8:15 I met with Darius Assemi and I met to work out some details of the project slated for Van Ness and Mildreda in the Lowell Neighborhood. We also discussed his Fulton Village project's timelines and the reasons behind our opposition to chopping up a single family home in Lowell to convert to multi-family.