Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Since I am in the business of advocating for local businesses, I often wish I had a crystal ball. A bit of notice on issues coming down the pipeline would be helpful, but I have to give our team credit for jumping on challenges that seem to appear out of the blue, like SkyWest pulling out of Chico in December. To be honest, we've been aware of this possibility for years and weren't really surprised when the announcement arrived, but it has been all hands on deck over the last few weeks as we've accelerated the development of a public-private strategy to potentially restore commercial air service with a best fit carrier. It's amazing how quickly we can reshuffle busy schedules when our members are asking, "what's next?"

To that end, I'm cautiously optimistic that our alarm stakeholder group's recommendations for an alarm response ordinance will be favorably received by the City Council on September 16th. We've worked closely with the Chico Police Department and members of our business community to meet two goals: 1) restore police response to burglar alarms, and 2) lower false alarm calls for service which were unnecessarily draining limited safety resources. I hope that everyone sees this as a good faith effort to find middle ground. We're looking for a win-win solution here.

Looking ahead, I see the City finally positioning itself for modest growth in the coming years. We will need the right set of leaders to craft this growth responsibly and innovatively. Please attend our City Council Candidate Forum on September 3rd to hear what the current pool of candidates brings to the table. I love Chico as much as anyone else and I want to see a genuine focus on vitality through teamwork. It's what makes our community so special.

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