Cooperation isn’t a tough word to pronounce. But it can be tough to build cooperation between cities and the federal government. That’s changing in Sacramento, in a big and positive way. At City Hall today (January 28, 2010), we gathered more than 30 representatives from three federal agencies – housing, environment and transportation – and their counterparts from the city. They shared ideas and worked on developing best practices toward creating jobs and economic development in the Sacramento region.
This is the part of government work that excites me: taking a cultural issue that’s existed for years or even decades, and changing it to benefit our city.
The feds are good people. So are the people who make decisions on the state and local levels. But getting them all to cooperate has never been easy.
For years, the simple way for federal money to pass down to cities was through state agencies. The feds liked it because it was easy.
The problem was, a lot of money never trickled down. States found a million ways to pull a dollar here, a dollar there, away from cities.
Now that’s changing. Thanks to help from Congresswoman Doris Matsui, we are establishing direct relationships with our federal friends.
Today, we toured them around our major downtown infill developments at the railyards and Township 9. And they met with our Sacramento First Task Force for a new entertainment and sports complex.
As President Obama said in his State of the Union speech last night, there’s nothing more important than jobs creation and economic development.
There’s no place where jobs creation is more important than Sacramento. Our unemployment tops 13 percent.
The development of the railyards and Township 9 is all about jobs. Same with a new entertainment complex. These are the biggest infill projects in our region. As our city builds out and becomes stronger, our region will prosper.
The work ahead is difficult, but will only get easier with more cooperation between City Hall and our friends in Washington.
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