03-03-10 Guest Blogger-Matt Schulz-Shadow for the day

A Day in the Life of…

by Matthew D. Schulz


As a participant in Craig’s “Shadow Program” I’ve been given the second opportunity to write a blog account of our day. I’ll come right out and say it: I don’t know how you sum up a day that starts at 6:45 a.m. in the dining room of Club One for breakfast, and ends at 8:15 p.m. in the Paris Café in Chinatown.

I don’t know how to adequately represent the many “mini-conversations” Craig and I shared while hopping from one meeting to the next, the 13 meetings I actually observed, or the many conversations I had with staff in the Downtown and Community Revitalization Department (DCR) or other departments.

So I took a step back. I started jotting down the many impressions I was left with from those meetings and shared conversations about what it takes to breathe new life into Downtown Fresno, whether in the business sector, or in the vibrant community that exists in the Fulton Corridor and Lowell neighborhood (one of Fresno’s first neighborhoods). Here’s my account.

In describing his journey as a poet Gary Soto wrote, “I believed in walking and paying homage to the dusty ruins of Fresno, namely every beautiful house that was torn down by our City Fathers in the name of Urban Renewal.”

Soto’s impression perhaps sums up the charge of the DCR: New life.

The task is not an easy one. Not when business sectors and neighborhoods have been neglected for 50-plus years. It’s not an easy task when you’re committed to partnering with local businesses and citizens. It’s not an easy task to first sit quietly and listen to their problems, then to go back and start down the long road of putting the City to work. Making Progress, or bringing about Change is not easy (yes, they are capitalized intentionally).

Progress through partnership is a long and hard road, but it’s probably the only one that will really take you to where you want to go.

So what does Progress look like? How is Progress really made? The answer: Incrementally, and with much perseverance.

Progress is made through taking the time to plant and then water the seeds of Change. It isn’t often experienced in the magnificent or glamorous. It’s not always publicly recognized and applauded. It happens in small moments of victory shared between a City’s civil servants and its citizens.

Progress happens when you take the time to celebrate the one-year anniversary of a downtown restaurant (congrats to Kebab Express!) by being a busboy for an hour. It happens when you seat an elderly gentleman, notice that he didn’t get a napkin, and so grab one for him. Or later on when you refill his drink. Progress happens when you share a laugh and a hug with a friend who responded to the invitation to come celebrate Kebab Express’ first 365 days of doing business Downtown. Progress happens through shared smiles.

Progress happens when you make a big deal about an upcoming open house for a home in the Lowell neighborhood recently renovated using new funds made available to help increase the owner-occupancy rate that currently sits at 15%.

Progress is made through establishing Affinity Groups to help Downtown business owners address their issues collectively, discovering how they can work together, and how the City is able to partner with them to help fuel their success.

Progress is made through the internal collaboration of City departments at a weekly Directors meeting to discuss codes, regulations, policies, and procedures that need to be changed (or to review those that already have been) to bring about improved living conditions.

Progress is made through ensuring you have Spanish and Hmong translators at your first Downtown Neighborhoods Community Advisory Committee meeting to help ensure participants have a voice that is heard and responded to appropriately. It’s through every staff member of the DCR attending that meeting.

Progress is made through ending your day meeting with a group of young professionals from FLYP (Fresno’s Leading Young Professionals) to help them develop the Downtown Academy program, a 10-month curriculum that will expose, educate, and empower the next generation of business leaders and citizens toward civic engagement.

All of these “moments of Progress” are the watering of those seeds of Change which have been planted. They are the moments that when added up (over time and with much effort) result in Change.

I think Craig summed up Progress best when he said “It’s about behaviors, Matt.”

I agree.

So what was my final impression from my “A day in the life of…”?

It’s this: That Progress and Change are not made or realized through the efforts of one department. They aren’t even accomplished through the sole efforts of a city government. They aren’t about meetings and minutes in and of themselves.

Progress and Change come about through relationships, collaboration, perseverance, and a willingness to partner with others.

True Change requires reaching across department lines within the City, and about reaching across a “line” in our city created long ago in the name of “Urban Renewal” that hasn’t been adequately or properly addressed in decades.

On second thought, it’s less about reaching across the line and more about wiping the line out completely.

In my 13 hours I didn’t see how a city government and its civil servants work. What I saw was how citizens (be they public or private) work together to better a City.