David W. Rowlands, City Manager

It is my pleasure to serve as your city manager and take in the beauty that surrounds our great city. It is my hope to work with the Fillmore-Gazette to provide guest columns discussing the happenings at City Hall. This first column will focus on economic development and communication.
Economic Development

The council will be adopting an Economic Development Strategic Plan to assist the city in moving forward with economic development activities in Fillmore at their Tuesday, October 28 meeting. The plan is a living document that establishes direction for Fillmore’s short and long-term economic development.

The Plan identifies actions for the city to pursue as it enacts business retention, expansion, and attraction efforts, supports a fiscally healthy government, and realizes key development projects across the City. The plan includes major objectives, specific goals, and proposed implementation actions.

Part of the plan calls for city staff to meet individually with business located in the Downtown core to hear their views on what is needed to make their business grow and be successful. Meetings have taken place with a number of Downtown businesses with more to come. In addition, staff attended a Downtown merchant meeting to hear their concerns. Through these meetings the city, plans to devise different ways to help attract additional shoppers to our Downtown core.

At the direction of city council we are looking at modifying the fees associated with developing in the Fillmore Business Park. I believe if we are able to make the necessary changes developers will strongly consider new development in Fillmore. We have heard the fees at the Business Park make projects difficult to start.

Communication Plan
The City recognizes the value of citizen involvement and the wealth of good information and resources that the citizens of Fillmore possess. It is important to increase the City’s understanding of citizen concerns, ideas and values so that they can be utilized to make better decisions. Much of the City’s overall success is shaped by the quality of its communication efforts. Therefore, a proactive approach is needed to foster effective two-way communication. The City is dedicated to improving the image of Fillmore and flow of information to its constituents through an aggressive communications and outreach strategy. The goal of the communications strategy is to identify opportunities to share the City’s message and streamline the methods by which those messages are shared. A key component to the plan is to ensure that all communication; printed, televised and electronic is bi-lingual as 58% of our residents speak Spanish as a second language in their homes. The City wishes to work with our residents, businesses, visitors and school district to keep Fillmore the “Last Best Small Town”.