MesaZona > Table of Contents : Here's The Menu. Enjoy

Friday, January 12, 2018

Electric Systems/Orion/M6 Earthquake | S0 News Jan.12.2018

The earthlings are realizing the universe is electric

Published on Jan 12, 2018

Conference Registration and Our Books: https://otf.selz.com

Thursday, January 11, 2018

How the US Failed to Re-Build Afghanistan

Trillion$$$$$$$$$$ wasted

Published on Jan 11, 2018

Views: about 35,00- already

"Where the road ends in Afghanistan, the Taliban begin."

The Mayor's Challenge: Get Real + How To Score Points

AN OPINION PIECE: Game On
OK it's hard for a mellow guy to be bold, but let's say for argument's sake that your MesaZona blogger is motivated to wipe the slate clean to start off The New Year on a level-minded playing field where all's fair in love, war and politics.
Admittedly Mayor John Giles is one of my favorite local holders of public office to hit on - he does score some well-earned points sometimes, but does he have the right stuff for Big League Dreams running the highest elected office here?

With Giles' base rooted in a generations-old political machine, it was easy to succeed pinch-hitting for former mayor Scott Smith who took time-out to lose in a campaign for the seat of Arizona Governor won by Doug Ducey. Giles was an automatic shoo-in with an appointment to fill Smith's unexpired term, gaining the seat later in his own right by a 75% voter approval (of those faithful who did vote). Now in-office for two years, his track-record on delivering more than "lip-service" is turning into a scramble of sorts where he's been "in-training" to gain the skills and strengths to rise to the challenges of Bloomberg Philanthropies' Mayor Challenge. . . but What is Giles into?

People who live here in Mesa, with whom the mayor self-admits are not engaged in city government, do have hope that his performance this year 2018 hits a few home runs out-of-the-ballpark . . . is Giles smart enough and bold enough?
Does he have all the right stuff?

Has he learned on-the-job while getting higher education at The Harvard School and in Washington D.C. at the behest, generosity and invitation of Mike Bloomberg?
Mayor John Giles and the City of Mesa were chosen to participate for the last two years.
Let's see now what he delivers back home.
Time will tell - very soon.

SPOILER ALERT: Mesa ain't winning any prizes for being open, transparent and accountable. We are all still wondering exactly what might be next in the keystone public relations campaign of John Giles election called NextMesa.
At this point-in-time and in the mayor's third season, he's up-to-bat on his home turf.
Perhaps the following Intention Association upload to YouTube of an interview with Adios' Mike Allen - that's not been seen by many people - is a sneak preview:
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Mesa Mayor John Giles Talks About Running A Twenty-First Century City

Published on Nov 15, 2017

Views: 27 (as of upload time to this blog site)

Mesa, Arizona Mayor John Giles wants to make his city a place for tech companies to come and innovate. He sat down Axios’s Mike Allen at Internet Association’s 2017 Virtuous Circle Conference to discuss how Mesa is using data to create transparency, attract jobs and innovation, and more.

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2017 Mayors Challenge: The Time is Now - Bloomberg Philanthropies

The time is now! U.S. mayors face bigger challenges than ever before. Innovation is no longer optional; it's necessary so cities can continue to deliver results and improve life for residents. The 2017 Mayors Challenge, sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is designed with this urgency in mind.

Link > http://mayorschallenge.bloomberg.org/

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James Anderson on the 2016 Mayors Challenge

Published on Dec 1, 2016

Views: 94 (no likes or dislikes)

James Anderson of the Government Innovation team at Bloomberg Philanthropies discusses the 2016 Mayors Challenge process.

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QUESTION: How's Mesa Mayor John Giles doin' on this?

Take Me Out > Time To Get Your Crazy So-Much-Fun On

Yep folks it's almost that time again! Excited already?
How many days to Pre-Season Spring Training for the Chicago Cubbies here in Mesa?
Joe Maddon and the 2018 Cubs: Manager’s people skills will be tested from Day 1

Steve Greenberg@SLGreenberg

(Opening Image credit: Cubs manager Joe Maddon on a festive "Thanksmas" night. (Photo by Madeline Kenney/Chicago Sun-Times)
Let the fun begin again - here's the start for this play-ball season 2018 with some snippets from The Chicago Sun Times. . . and please take a look farther on in this post about how the local mad mainstream media got its game-on last year stating that Mesa will be at "the center of the baseball universe."

Blogger Note: The Chicago Cubs 16-week pre-season training is a revenue booster for the City of Mesa. It's Christmas-in-July, according to City Manager Chris Brady, for sales/use tax revenues who spear-headed a campaign to get taxpayers to underwrite a mega-million bond issue to build a sports complex renamed Sloan Park for billionaire Repub Chicago Cubs B-Ball franchise owner Ricketts

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"Close your eyes, if it helps, and try to imagine the sight of 63-year-old Joseph John Maddon Jr. driving the highways of Arizona next month, holding steady at 85 miles per hour but every now and then pumping his slick new ride — you only live once, baby — up to 90. . .

Rock-and-roll on the stereo. A breeze steaming in through rolled-down windows and mussing the Cubs manager’s gently dyed hair. Maddon is Mr. Cool. Mr. Excitement. Just wait until his players get a load of him behind the wheel of his — are you ready for this? — 1985 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon.
Dear God, it’s true. . . If that won’t rally the troops after a grind of a 2017 season in which they reached the NLCS for the third straight time but seemingly nearly died trying, what will?
And yet rally them, Maddon must, because the Cubs were a soggy blanket last year compared with the eternal flame that was — is — the World Series-winning squad of 2016.
“I don’t know that we had enough fun,” Maddon said Wednesday . . .
WHAT'S HE TALKIN' ABOUT?

Maddon is talking about “energy and enthusiasm,” too, words he paired often enough Wednesday that it’s obvious they’ll be at the core of the message he preaches from Day 1 of spring training on through to what everyone hopes will be a fourth straight October run. “Energy and enthusiasm” doesn’t have much of a ring to it, but Maddon, ever the shticky sloganeer, will come up with a better way to put it.
(For my money, the bar was set with “try not to suck.”)
“I’m not ready to reveal it,” he said. “But it’s going to be kind of fun, I think.”

And there we are on the F-word again: fun. Did the Cubs ever seem to be having it last season? . . . And there was a disconnect, at least compared with the seasons before, between Maddon and some players.

More than once, for example, they vetoed his calls for dress-up themes on road trips...
Can he reach his players as effectively as he did before? All he can to is put the pedal to the metal and try."

Follow reporter Steve Greenberg on Twitter @slgreenberg.
Email: sgreenberg@suntimes.com
READ MORE > https://chicago.suntimes.com
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How Mesa is capturing the Chicago Cubs' magic this year: 7 in 2017

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/.../chicago-cubs...mesa/95663988/

Jan 18, 2017 - Let me repeat that: The Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Sure, it took 108 years, but our lovable Cubbies are now World Champions. Enter the city of Mesa. Starting Feb. 25 (OK, technically pitchers and catchers report in mid-February), we will be at the center of the baseball universe when we host one ...

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

NOT from The Brightest Minds Inside Mesa City Hall

Your MesaZona blogger really hopes that Mesa Mayor John Giles gets his act together before this year's performance in the State-Of-The-City Speech on February 6, 2018.
He's had the all the opportunities to learn on-the-job getting invited to Harvard and Washington, D.C under the auspices of Mike Bloomberg... It's easy to get elected, hard to perform
Report June 2017

Advancing a new wave of urban competitiveness:

The role of mayors in the rise of innovation districts

Julie Wagner, Jennifer S. Vey, Steve Davies, and Nathan Storing

"Over the past year, the United States Conference of Mayors and the Brookings Institution, along with Project for Public Spaces have worked together to capture a new model of growth that is emerging in cities and the particular roles that mayors can play.

This handbook offers concrete strategies for mayors and their administrations to facilitate the rise of innovation districts—small geographic areas within cities where research universities, medical institutions, and companies cluster and connect with start-ups, accelerators, and incubators. They reflect profound market and demographic dynamics that are revaluing proximity, density, walkability, and accessibility—in other words, the natural strengths of cities. . . "

Rooftop Solar Power > Good News Here In Mesa + California

This blog site - MesaZona - is inspired by where your blogger lives: right here in The New Urban DTMesa in the first new apartments constructed in over thirty years, that opened in December 2013. This place called home is named 'Encore On First', developed by Charles Huellmantel and Todd Marshall [Mesa Housing Associates] and awarded an Arizona Real Estate Design Award in 2014. You can't see the solar rooftop installation from ground level, but it is one of the many outstanding features incorporated into the design.

One of the main focuses of this blog is the Re/Generation that can get activated here when public and private partnership find common ground to finance and build the future going forward.
On 15 November 2017 there was a Grand Opening Celebration for another innovative equitable affordable housing unit named El Rancho Del Sol, two separate buildings in Phase 2 of plans from Community Development Partners on Main Street. As you can see in the image to the right, both have rooftop solar installations in progress.
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. . . and here's some more good news from Next City
California Will Spend $1 Billion on Low-income, Multifamily Solar

By Josh Cohen | January 8, 2018

"California is ready to spend $1 billion over the next decade on rooftop solar installation for low-income residents. In December, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved the creation of the Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH) program. Funded by the statewide greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program, it will provide $100 million in annual solar installation incentives for the owners of affordable multifamily buildings. . .

The new program has been in the works for several years. The broad framework for the program was created by the state legislature in 2015. The bill made clear SOMAH is meant to help California meet its climate goals, help reduce energy bills for low-income residents and ensure that green energy infrastructure isn’t just for the wealthy. . .

“Generally, I think it’s a good idea,” says Ethan Elkind, climate program director at University of California Berkley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. “We want to encourage more solar adoption and deployment and we want to make sure low-income people have access to it. One of the knocks on our climate programs and clean energy programs is they tend to be skewed toward wealthier consumers.”

“Often times when you’re encouraging building owners to put solar on the roof, you want to encourage them to consider a whole range of energy technology and services,” he explains. “

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Josh Cohen is a freelance writer in Seattle.
His work has also appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, Pacific Standard and Vice.

Follow Josh Email Josh

Link > https://nextcity.org-solar

Mesa City Council Study Session Thu 08 Jan 2018

Another brief 'Study Session' - same agenda as Monday.
NOTE: According to City Manager Chris Brady in an announcement about an event - A PUBLIC EVENT @ Mesa Arts Center - The Brookings Institute has a discussion planned about Innovation Districts ...He doesn't seem to know than that