Biggest issue we can fix?
Submitted by Tommy_Tower on Tue, 11/11/2008 - 01:39.
Dear all,
Now that the election is over, can we all get back to trying to make Fresno a better place? Regardless if you voted for Hank or Ashley or Barry or Johnny, we still have to live in this town. Enough with the posts relating to religion or politics. I don't care if you're Clarence Darrow, you're not going to change anyone's closely-held beliefs. But what you can do is make this cesspool a little nicer. We're up against a lot of apathy, and even more ignorance, so everyone needs to pitch in.
I'll start. What's the most important issue in Fresno that we can fix? Please, don't say sprawl or mormons. We can't "fix" those things.
Thanks.
-Tommy.
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Better Fresno
For public transportation (FAX) to run later than 9:30pm. in every other city that i have been to PT runs at least until 1:00am if not later..
fixes
more recycling bins in public areas.
recycling for apartment complexes.
cigarette disposal containers @ intersections, especially those where is major foot traffic. this is something i saw in downtown indi, and thought, 'why doesn't fresno do this to discourage people throwing butts on the ground?'
i'd say relaxing of downtown nighttime noise ordinances but i'm not sure what they currently are.
When I say you can't "fix"
When I say you can't "fix" sprawl, I mean we can't undo the existing sprawl. But we can reduce future sprawl, although I doubt we can eliminate it altogether. Hopefully the future mayor will be less beholden to developers (she received less money from developers than Henry T.) and will implement some incentives for infill projects.
Creating more bike paths would be huge. We have excellent weather for year-round biking, yet we refuse to set up our community to facilitate biking. We also live in an environment that is amplifies smog, so it makes sense that we would want to reduce our emissions. The city of Chicago has one of the best bike path systems in the country, and the weather makes them essentially unusable 6 months out of the year. There's really no excuse for our inaction.
I don't think installing bike paths would be a huge cost. Many of the existing roads are wide enough to accomodate painting a path on the side of traffic.
I also think there's not enough trash cans in commercial areas. In my neighborhood, it's hard to find a trash can, which is part of the reason I see so much litter on the ground. How much would it cost to have a trash can on every block? So what if the trash guy has to get out of the truck?
One of the things that the city has done great is the grafitti clean-up program. In our complaints, we sometimes forget what the city does right.
Bike Trails
I would like to see more bike trails. I ride my bike to college each week, and the bike trails that lead to Willow International are great in Clovis, but once you reach willow, on the Fresno side, the bike trail is only built in segments, with huge gaps making it impossible to use them. So I fight with traffic.
Can't 'fix' sprawl?
Well, maybe we can't turn back the clock on 50 years of WildWest development, but with a new mayor coming in that really seems to care about town, and the fact that the subject is actually nearly 'mainstream' these days (what with various multi-county commissions being set up...not that they all wanna play nice together or anything)---I think now is a good time to keep the subject up in front of our elected officials.
I think we should all teach them to say:
"Urban Growth Boundary".
...
Like I said, we can't change the last 50 years, but we should be able to keep it from stretching into 100.
Two more biggies
All of the successful pedestrian mall I have seen around the world include space set aside for restaurants to serve food on the mall where people can get together to communicate or at least see each other. One example of this is the Santa Monica 3rd Street Promenade. (see attached picture)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rjf_photo/sets/72157608888376412/
The other big one is restoring the fountain in front of the Bank of Italy Building. I think this could even be named the "Autry" fountain. It is a fine piece of public art and is large enough to make a nice water feature. It might not cost any more that the leggo building exercise. Restoring the fountain will also create an opportunit to have a big party on the mall.
Two Biggies
1) We can improve air quality by lowering traffic congestion. That can be accomplished by increasing telecommuting, 4 day work weeks, keeping errand trips minimal, continuing to favor fuel efficient vehicles, and increasing fines on people driving like a horse's ass.
2) We can introduce personal finance into our high school curriculum so that our children aren't as bone-headed about debt as we are.
But these issues don't involve race or sexual orientation, so put them lower on the list.
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