Re-inventing Clovis

Whether he was joking about budget cuts — “leave your valuables on the table.” Or pointing out how Clovis was going green — look at our big quiet trash truck in the parking lot, just don’t crash into it because we can’t afford to fix it. His tone was measured, statesmanlike, almost deadpan.

Those are compliments. Clovis Mayor Harry Armstrong glimpsed the past, acknowledged current hardship and kept focus on the future, keeping with his theme, “Moving Forward … Together.”

Some 400 people, and an audaciously wonderful Clovis East High School choir, heard a measure  taken of their 100-year-old town at the annual Mayor’s Breakfast May 14. Armstrong talked of tweaks, adjustments, innovations, his manner much in keeping with someone who’s been mayor five different times.

He praised Clovis Community Medical Centers for the ambitious expansion that’s under way, that will add beds, offices, jobs and bolster the Clovis and Valley economies for years to come. Don’t know how you’re doing it, he quipped to Clovis CEO Craig Castro.

He talked about five new hotels at will open soon, adding nearly 600 rooms for the tourist economy — which got a shot in the arm from the recent Amgen bike tour. A new call was issued for citizen volunteers to help the depleted ranks of city staffers.

Here’s a link to the city of Clovis home page… http://www.ci.clovis.ca.us/Pages/default.aspx

And as part of re-invention in hard times, the Fresno Bee gave its “hard launch” to the online version of late, great, ink-on-your-hands Clovis Independent.  (By the way, as a former Bee reporter/editor, I’d be happy to help my financially stressed former colleagues by making an offer to buy the sign on the vacant Clovis Independent office — lemme know.)

Even in gritty times, it was hard not to walk out of Memorial Auditorium thinking, at least a bit, that this too will pass. The future will certainly be different, but the reinvented Clovis may indeed be better.