Here are some of the highlights from today's inteview:
The city council will discuss the allocation of Jack Hopkins Grants - a social services funding program that began in 1993.
"I saw that whenever there was an economic downturn, social service investment and education always seem to be the first two targets. If times are bad - that's what you cut. And it struck me as exactly the opposite of what we should doing. That's the time you should be investing in social services and an education to get yourself out of the economic downturn and to prepare yourself for the inevitable future uptick in the economy."
Volunteers have been looking for solutions to the city's homelessness problems since the Genesis Summer Shelter did not open this summer. The city sponsored the South Central Housing Network charrette which recently issued a report on homelessness in the region.
"I've read through the report a couple of times. Sadly, I think part of it was boilerplate. Part of it really left an awful lot of questions unanswered where it would talk about ideas that I had hoped that the study itself would answer. Instead it posed the questions - the very initial questions."
The city is in the process of installing new parking meters.
"The vendor will begin very soon to replace parking meters that have been on Morton Street for years . . . This will be an opportunity for us to do a live test for this technology. I have high hopes for it.
I think they will provide quicker service than the meters that are currently there or meters that are in our parking lots . . . Probably you'll start to see many of them going in by the end of this month and certainly throughout the month of July. Then in the first two weeks of August you'll start to see the signage that goes with them up and the meters themselves will be up but will have a message on them that says that parking is free currently and that the live date (is approaching).
Then we'll have a couple of weeks of grace period where it's really an opportunity for people to become familiar with them and become educated as to where they are, how they work, and then they'll go live when classes have started."