State of the City

Sat in on Mayor Cole's State of the City address today, catered by Great Boars of Fire and attended by many of C'dales movers and shakers (shifters and tremblers?). Over half the city council showed up as well, with Corene McDaniel and Steven Haynes choosing to sit at the mayor's table, while Chris Wissmann and Joel Fritzler opted to join the hoi palloi.

For the number of people there, Cole's speech was pretty devoid of any major announcements. He recognized some of those in attendance, recapped May 8th and the aftermath, then discussed some of the grants and awards the city had received, as well as the revamps to the city and police websites.

He then moved on to the city's activities in the areas of climate and sustainability, which ought to make those throwing the Sustainable State of the City Address happy, and development in the city in the year, about $52 million worth. He also noted the relatively low unemployment in the city, 6.6%, as compared to 7.8% for Jackson County and 9.9% for Williamson County.

Moving on to new stuff, he announced the arrival of Chili's (another chain restaurant, yes!), to be built in the area in front of Dick's Sporting Goods and several new businesses occupying empty storefronts in the University Place strip mall (couldn't say what they were yet).

He touched briefly on his six budget options from last month, got the impression he acknowledges lack of support for selling off the water system and indicated he figured the city council would probably vote to raise taxes, though he indicated a preference for cutting city jobs and expenses. In line with this, he proposed turning the Eurma Haynes center over to a local not-for -profit, albiet with some city financial assistance for programs. Design is still going on for the new fire and police stations and the mayor put out a call for developers to contact the city with proposals for the large chunk of empty space along Washington Street as well as other parts of town, as well as a "Bank on Carbondale" initiative designed to bring together banks and low income families to make it easier for families to purchase homes.

Finally, the Mayor reminded the audience he was running for the Republican nomination for Lt. Governor and announced that even if he didn't win, he would not run for a second term, saying he believed in term limits and wanted to open the office up for new ideas. All in all, a pretty quiet speech with no major new announcements given to a pretty quiet crowd