ACAR Watercooler

Communication is Key – Guest posting by Laurie Barrera – ACAR President-Elect

Posted on June 7, 2010. Filed under: Uncategorized |

I need to give Lisa Stephenson of Group One a huge shout out for quick thinking! She was at the Mayor Bieter’s State of the City address last week, and fainted. No way to get attention, Lisa, but thankfully you are a-ok! However, the Mayor’s office followed up to find out how she was doing, and asked what questions she had that they could answer. She replied that, no I had no specific questions, but some agents from my office may, could you please stop by Group One?

To Mayor Bieter’s credit, he and his economic development staff person, John Burnell, came by Group One last week for a Q&A session. How refreshing was it to hear (1) what he and his office have accomplished, (2) what their plans are and (3) what their passion is all about.

For instance:
 New companies are coming in and existing companies are growing.
 The first Boise library ever built from the ground up has been such a success that foot traffic in the area has increased and that the shopping plaza has been renamed Library Plaza. The shopping center has invested in their own upgrades.
 The city owns a fair amount of industrial acreage in SE Boise and a CCDC study determined that the city is not the best entity to develop that property
 Another major focus is the airport that is critically important. We are the most remote urban area in the country so our airport is vital to keeping up services and helping us grow.
 Since February we have seen construction picking up. Of course values are lagging but permits have come up considerably
 We are focusing on things as diverse as airport to recycling – we increased recycling by 100%!
 We have done the legwork ahead of time to handle budget reductions.
 Downtown is another focus – 18 businesses closed – but 36 opened. Macys closing is certainly concerning but there is interest in the building.
 Mass transit is an important part of what an urban area means and it will continue to be even more important. It is clearly a competitive issue. Salt Lake City has a phenomenal system; their capacity is equal to an entire interstate. We are looking to the future on this.
 We hear on a weekly basis how people go about deciding where they want to live, where to take their business, where to build a company. They start with a dozen cities, narrow down to Boise & maybe another city. They come here based on our recreation, weather, university, and so on – but they chose to come here.

 We did the trial run with F15. There will not be as many F35’s. We only had about half a dozen calls of complaint in trials. It seems easy to complain, but just weren’t that many, mostly from neighborhood meetings. Only about 4 or 5 vocal people who get a platform in the news. The economic effect is HUGE. The $60 million payroll of the National Guard would double. The effect on non-civilian jobs cannot even begin to be estimated.
 When local community housing and nonprofit housing failed, the city took it over. We know that shelters are not a solution, they only provide a bed and it runs counter to trying to reduce homeless, and in fact, facilitates the lifestyle. We have a pretty involved strategic plan for growing units. We don’t want to simply grow more shelter space as it generally makes homelessness worse. We just finished a detox facility that is a big part of a solution; we must attack causes.

These were just some of the important topics covered in our 1.5 hour session with Mayor Bieter. I encourage other offices to call the Mayor and perhaps other Mayors to show up! And, I am asking the Agent 2 Agent Committee to consider a Mayor Roundtable for brief updates from each city and the rest of the time to be slated for questions and answers.

I want to thank Miguel Legarreta, our Government Affairs director from ACAR that was on hand to clarify some issues with Mayor Bieter. Miguel gave everyone in the room additional insight to just how important our RPAC dollars are for local and state issues and policy!

Laurie Barrera
2010 President Elect

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