April 15, 2024 – On Friday morning, April 14th, the heads of City Staff from the City of Clovis sat down at a workshop hosted by the Clovis City Council.
The purpose of the workshop was to entertain ideas of updating the City Vision, Mission statement, and certain goals that the City intends to have within the next ten years.
Led by Mayor Lynne Ashbeck, it was asked of all city department leaders to first simply “think” about the city and goals that each leader may have for their own departments.
Mayor Ashbeck continued the thought that within the next ten to thirteen years, City Council will “leave behind” the next piece for a future City government to build with and to continue to make Clovis, what Ashbeck calls, “the best little City in California.”
With the knowledge that growth in the city is inevitable, the first topic spoken about at the workshop related to a prior meeting held in March with certain stakeholders of the City of Clovis.
The City Council believed that these stakeholders brought to mind a feeling of an “underlying theme of pushing for the growth of the City of Clovis”.
With this came the issue of the workforce and City Staff’s inability to be able to recruit employees.
Fire Chief John Binaski reminisced on the time when he was an up and coming firefighter taking a test with 7000 other applicants and related that to the same test held this past year in which he stated only 70 applicants attempted.
A few members of City Staff aimed to blame the younger generation of employee hires and how most “aren’t willing to work” or provide the same “work ethic” as generations of the past.
However, Economic Housing and Development Director Chad McCollum stated that plenty of Millennials and Generation Z members are pessimistic when it comes to joining the workforce, citing issues such as unaffordable housing and having the difficulty seeing a future in employment if they can’t afford to live off the wages that they make, “…especially in Clovis”, McCollum added.
One member of the public, Jeff Harris representing Wilson homes, was present at the workshop meeting, and suggested the idea that while Clovis will continue to grow, they consider the idea of creating districts of Clovis that coincide with separate neighborhoods throughout the city such as Harlan Ranch or Tarpey Village.
While these neighborhoods already exist, Harris proposed that each have their own representatives that work with the City to provide their own regions necessities that may not be the same from one end of the city to another.
However, Harris also warned against possible pitfalls of the idea, citing District Representatives that do the same in Fresno.
The workshop members thought on that idea after a break and decided that having a spokesperson to relay certain items to Clovis could be beneficial in a number of ways.
The discussion then moved towards again, what type of City the members of the workshop would like to see in the next ten years.
Features of the future discussed included investment in quality life, building on the maintenance of high quality customer service, whether that be from the Police Department or the Public Utilities Department, and the ideas of consistency, timeliness, and the ever growing module of instant gratification that staff believes is increasing amongst generations.
Finally, the workshop ended with further discussion on what the updated version of the City of Clovis’ Mission Statement is to be and how else City government can get the residents of Clovis involved.
The idea of bringing up a Facebook Live Town Hall meeting or meetings was floated, just as Clovis Police Chief Curt Fleming had conducted the night before.
The meeting could be coming in the near future with the possibility for city residents to bring ideas of what they would like to see in Clovis and how they believe they can help it grow.
The City hopes to make this an official announcement at the Mayor’s Breakfast in May.