03-15-10 Monday

Why is it that on Sunday I could've fallen asleep in a heartbeat, but when I went to bed...wide awake.  No running for me today.

First meeting at 8:30 with a property owner representative from the area south of the stadium, who wanted to know more about what was happening with revitalization.

10:00 I'm hoping to buy a home in the Lowell neighborhood.  It's a beauty but a real fixer-upper.  I met with the home inspector and he confirmed that there was a ton of work to do, but that it wouldn't fall over on me anytime soon.

10:30 We had a press conference for the opening of the first house in Lowell to be purchased and rehabbed with the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) money.  It's a beauty.

11:30 Rudy Plecencia is an intern from Fresno State working on his Masters in Public Administration.  He is helping to create and organize the Downtown Academy along with Fresno's Leading Young Professionals.

1:00 We had a web-based training for a great new tool.  In fact, we're the only city with this depth of information in the country.  This web based system of demographic, economic, social, institutional information is incredible.  Once we get more used to it, it will help us to measure where are needs are more clearly and also to track progress.  My description here is not doing it justice.

2:00 I had a meeting with Terance Frazier and Steve Hosey who are helping us in the Lowell Neighborhood and are working with the Housing Authority's portion of the NSP contract (see photos above for NSP reference).

3:00 I recorded a couple of public service announcements at the KJWL studio.  They are part of an awareness campaign to let people know why they shouldn't use unlicensed contractors.

4:15 We had a meeting with the Facilities Dept. of the City to go over some of the needs for City owned properties.  The City has not done a good job of maintaining its facilities for many years, so now there is a bunch of backlogged work to do.

5:30 I attended the Lowell Concerned Neighbors meeting at the Dickey Youth Center.  There were far-ranging discussions from policing issues to job training programs.  These meetings are open to the public and they have a facebook page if you'd like to keep up with the group.

7:00 I met Preston Prince from the Housing Authority to discuss some of his projects that we have in common like NSP, Droge Building, SRO Housing in Chinatown and others.

Home about 8:30...too late for blogging (at least that's my excuse, since the winter olympics are past).

No spell check, the photos won't allow it to work.