Clovis City Council Hosts ‘Vision, Mission, and Goals’ Workshop

J.T. Gomez

jt21gomez@gmail.com

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

CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE religious freedom, fleeing a system where they were relegated to poverty, or just wanting to make a better life for themselves and their families. My immigrant story began in 1849, when my great grandfather Andrew (Andreas) Bessinger came to America with his family from Germany at the age of 14. At the time, Germany was a tapestry of feudal kingdoms and those without title or property lived their lives in poverty and servitude. Andy served in the Union Army in the Civil War, and was later a fireman in Newark, NJ. My mother’s side came from Ireland in the 1870’s joining the hundreds of thousands of Irish that fled Ireland to escape famine and servitude. stakeholders brought to mind a feeling of an “underlying theme of pushing for the growth of the City of Clovis”.

“Big Andy” Bessinger is the engineer in the 1894 photo.

Many people have become interested in their own genealogy so that they can learn about the lives of family members they never knew, or things they never knew about people they did know. I know people who found out through DNA testing that there were family secrets. When I was young, my father spoke of an uncle who moved to a town called Madera in California. Through DNA, I found my great uncle’s daughter in nearby Raymond. I hope to visit with her soon. My father, who was a WW2 POW in Germany, died when I was 13. He was part of a generation who lived through the Depression and war and chose not to speak about the challenges. If I had a pocketful of granted wishes, I would want to ask him about his war experiences.

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.

With the trend of late to “cancel” and topple the statues of historical figures who were imperfect people in an imperfect time, we lose the opportunity to understand the evolution of our nation and our culture. I am concerned that public discourse, the right of Americans to agree to disagree about issues, is becoming a thing of the past. People holding divergent opinions are harassed, menaced, and labeled with hateful names. Our media, including social media, is awash

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STAFF REPORTERS: Samantha Golden J.T. Gomez Carole Grosch with anger, accusations, and demagogy that appeals to the biases of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument to make their point. One has only to look at 1930’s Germany, as the rise of Nazism sanctioned the attack and silencing of all opposition, took over public institutions, and identified, deported and later killed millions of people they deemed “undesirable.” Other “Pogroms”, the officially mandated slaughter of people, have targeted peoples

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FOR ADVERTISING AND SALES: Office: 559-324-8757 Email: info@clovisroundup.com throughout the world, including our local Armenian community. We all need to be on guard for the incrementalism of extremism in all forms. We need to teach our history and the history of our world, especially an unbiased report of the uncomfortable “messy” chapters, so that we never repeat the painful remnants of the past. Those that fail to learn from the past are destined to repeat it.

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April 17, 2023 - Clovis Donuts, the donut shop located off of Fowler and Ashlan Avenues in Clovis was vandalized sometime during the night of April 13th.

Upon discovery of the vandalism on Friday April 14th, Clovis Donuts was forced to close its business to the public as electricity became an issue.

Thieves stole parts of a circuit breaker running electricity to Clovis Donuts that now disallows any electric current to be run to the building.

The parts stolen were upwards of four to five thousand dollars each, and Clovis Donuts say that two parts were stolen.

Dy Hen of Clovis Donuts suspects that the burglary was conducted by a professional electrician, as the panel that these specific parts were stolen from was “hard to open”.

Clovis Donuts has been in contact with Pacific Gas & Electric and says that PG&E believes that several other buildings in the area have been targets of the same attacks.

“This was definitely a targeted crime,” says Dy Hen.

Clovis Donuts will shut down for an uncertain amount of time, but hopes to be back to business within 1-2 weeks. They are also unsure about what this loss of income will do to their business.

On a Facebook post, it was recommended that a generator be brought in to keep the business going, but Clovis Donuts believes