Hey! It's Time For The Holidays + Time For A Year-End Wrap-Up

Your MesaZona blogger is starting to see some year-end reviews from corporations and businesses, but only scant 411 from elected or appointed officials for the City of Mesa - What's the story?
What have they done, started and finished in the last year? ... and yes, please don't go on and on about things like "challenges" and "opportunities" in the future.

Where has the tax payer-funded-and-approved $2.1 billion bond issue gone with its 10% annual bite out of the total budget to pay off debt service accrued during the Smith-Giles administration and the current City Council?
Have cost-benefit analyses been done? Have programs gotten evaluated for efficiencies?
These questions are made in good faith to spark open data, transparency, and accountability in local government - not just for elected and appointed local government to note in measurement and strategy for the future, but for your audience to see if they maybe missed some of your best stuff.

Is This Open Government in Mesa?? Pay To Hear The Mayor Talk About The-State-of-the-City?

Outrageous!
It's been the mayor's job for about a year now riding on the tailwinds of former mayor Scott Smith's initiatives. 

John Giles is employed and gets paid by Mesa taxpayers. We pay him to get things done on his own . . . and now businesses, organizations and residents [notice residents come last in the solicitation from the Mesa Chamber of Commerce for a breakfast] have "a great opportunity" [HUH?] to hear his "vision for Mesa's future" but it comes at a price:
Cost
Chamber Members: $50 per attendee  
Non-Members: $60 per attendee
Just like what he says, or doesn't say, in a recent article in Phoenix Business Journal stuck behind a pay-wall, you can find out if you pay.

Heads Up > Good Reading for Mesa City Council Officials

(Re)Building Downtown: A Guidebook for Revitalization is a resource for local elected officials who want to re-invigorate and strengthen neighborhood centers of economy, culture, and history through a smart growth approach to development.
This guide uses Smart Growth America’s seven-step approach to:
Understand your community
Create an attractive, walkable place
Diversify economic uses
Plan for equity
Improve government regulations and processes
Finance projects
Establish on-going place management

These seven steps are fundamental to fostering a successful downtown district. Your community may decide to use some or all of them, depending on where you are in the (re)building process.
This guidebook will discuss each of the above steps in detail, and provide specific ways for communities to implement each.
Any community, of any size can use this approach. Through public engagement, strategic planning, public commitment, and ongoing support, you can create a place that unites your community, attracts visitors, and supports businesses for years to come.
http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/guides/rebuilding-downtown

READERS PLEASE NOTE: THIS DOWNLOAD IS FREE . NO PAY-WALL. NO COST.

Smart Infill Development > Here's A Tool

Infill Score offers local governments and developers 30 strategies to build the foundation for livable and sustainable communities & overcome obstacles to achieve smart infill development. 1:16 You Tube video

The tool helps establish priorities, policies & actions, build strong public support, create new partnerships for change, and leverage public investment while attracting private capital. Calculate your Infill Score today and join a growing group of civic innovators across the globe who are taking the first step to revitalize their community.

Category:     Nonprofits & Activism

A Gift That Keeps On Giving > Rent-A-Bed @ MUG

Image: Tim Hacker/EVT 2/12/2013

These two "muggle-dudes" [tip of the wand to Harry Potter]David Crummey and Ryan Winkle don't look anything like Santa Claus, but once upon a time - three years ago - they organized to start an all volunteer grass-roots movement as an off-shoot of the Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation [NEDCO] called RAIL with one project called Mesa Urban Garden getting established and on-the-ground in a plot of land at 212 East 1st Avenue next to Republica Empanada and the Mesa Family Healthcare Center. It's grown and flourished in the last three years and has good reason to celebrate all the volunteer efforts for an upcoming 4th year with a Full Moon Festival next month.
This community garden harkens back to the time of the city's founding when 1.25-acre lots were allocated to encourage urban farming.
Now 135+ years later, thanks to Creative Place Making and Pioneers in The New Urban DTMesa there's fertile ground in raised beds to rent and reasons to celebrate and help fund another year.

Looking for a creative gift idea that keeps on giving?
Beds Rentals are Available and would make a great gift for someone ready to plant their spring garden in January.
More 411 >>
http://www.mesaurbangarden.com/





Mission Statement: Mesa Urban Garden is a community organization that provides fresh produce directly to the community and local food banks. Anyone can sponsor plots for communal or individual use. We are dedicated to making the garden a point of pride for the residents south of Main, and a feather in the cap for the City of Mesa.

MUG's Most Recent Facebook Updates:

Mesa Urban Garden

19 hours ago

Final reminder! If you haven't already donated to Mesa Urban Garden's grant competition to help us win a $600 grant, please consider a $10 donation now. The deadline is tomorrow at midnight.
It's tax deductible, goes toward a great cause and helps those who are less fortunate eat more fresh veggies. The community garden with the most individual donors wins and at last count, out of 322 teams, we are in 11th place in the country!!! #mesaurbangarden #iheartmesa

 

 

Reason to Celebrate:

LUNA LLENA FESTIVAL: Inaugurate and Irrigate our 4th year at MUG

January 23, 2016, 4:00pm

Mesa Urban Garden

Come join our gardening community for a Luna Lllena (Full Moon) Festival! Gardeners from around the Valley join us for a potluck from 5-6pm and then stay for a huge community CELEBRATION from 6PM-? Enjoy door prizes, live music, art, art activities, food, children's activities, food, drinks and much more!

 



See The Difference You Made > When The Public Speaks Out + Gets Engaged

Encouraging words from Mantill Williams, Voices for Public Transit Community Coordinator:
Over the past several months, you helped us deliver our message to Congress by speaking out in a variety of ways.

Your efforts helped us make it impossible for Congress to ignore this issue or delay taking long-term action any longer.

Tim,

We’re still letting the news sink in—Congress actually passed a fully funded, five-year transportation bill with increased investment in public transit!

December 4 was a milestone for American public transit—and our nation’s entire transportation system.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Congress passed a long-term transportation bill—the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act or “FAST Act.” President Obama signed the bill into law just hours before current authorization of transportation programs expired. Voices for Public Transit advocates helped break the impasse in Washington.
We made it clear that the status quo was unacceptable.
The steady escalation of communications from the Voices for Public Transit community over several months made fixing public transportation an issue that Congress could no longer ignore.
- See more at: http://voicesforpublictransit.org/blog.aspx?id=12-10-2015#sthash.Hfl04N8y.dpuf

 

The Internet of Things > Future Now @ 17% Compound Annual Growth Rate 2015-2019

In a press release on December 11, 2015 from Press Release Network:
According to a new International Data Corporation (IDC ) Spending Guide, worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) will grow at a 17.0% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from $698.6 billion in 2015 to nearly $1.3 trillion in 2019.
IoT = a network of uniquely identifiable, autonomously communicating endpoints (or “things”)


An Explosion of Connected Possibility

The Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide forecasts country-level IoT technology spending across more than 40 use cases including automated public transit, remote health monitoring, digital signage, connected vehicles, smart appliances, and air traffic monitoring, among others. Unlike any other research in the industry, the comprehensive spending guide was designed to help vendors clearly understand the industry-specific opportunity for IoT technologies today.

Here are some snippets:
- On a geographic basis, Asia/Pacific is the clear leader when it comes to IoT spending with more than 40% of the worldwide total coming from this region in 2015.
- North America and Western Europe are the second and third largest regions with combined spending of more than $250 billion in 2015.
- The regions that will experience the fastest growth in IoT spending over the five-year forecast period are Latin America (26.5% CAGR), followed by Western Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe.
- From a vertical industry perspective, Manufacturing and Transportation led the way in worldwide IoT spending with 2015 totals of $165.6 billion and $78.7 billion, respectively. -Over the next five years, the industries forecast to have the fastest IoT spending growth will be Insurance (31.8% CAGR), Healthcare, and Consumer.
- The fast expanding Consumer IoT market will be the third largest IoT spending category by the end of the forecast period.

Because the Internet of Things is being applied in so many different ways across industries, it’s not surprising that the fastest growing use cases vary from region to region.
• In Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Middle East & Africa (MEA), the fastest growing IoT category is smart buildings
• In Latin America, the fastest growing IoT category is maintenance & field service
• In Asia/Pacific, insurance telematics is being used to monitor driver behavior through a vehicle-mounted device and the data is rapidly being employed as a means of determining insurance policies and rates.
• In North America, in-store contextual marketing is growing rapidly as retailers seek to capture continuous, real-time streams of data from mobile devices, online customer activity, in-store Wi-Fi routers/beacons, and video cameras in order to gain insight into customer behavior and desires.
In addition to the IoT use cases identified above, connected vehicles – a broad category that includes emergency, infotainment, security, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), and vehicle-to-infrastructure V2I) applications – was among the fastest growing use cases across five of the six geographic regions.