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May 19, 2003
Mayor Autry Meets
Big City Slicker
Howard Hobbs PhD, Editor
& Publisher
FRESNO -- This City
played host to one the foremost business writers in New York City
this week. Lynn Cook of Forbes Magazine was here for a few
hours and Mayor Alan Autry eagerly explained his economic vision
for a bigger and better roadmap, and of privatizing many of the
City's functions. It is Autry's idea to downsize the enormous
City
governance.
Cook is a widely read business writer with
Forbes, the preeminent bi-weekly New York business journal, and
it has become the voice of free markets around the world. Forbes
attracts
a fiercely
loyal community of success oriented entrepreneurs and executives
which continues to grow.
It is in this context Mayor Autry presented
some of his more original ideas for dismantling city government
functions. So, it seems, that the Mayor plans to shift some public
functions away from local government and into the hands of local
investors. But, as Cook listened and watched the Mayor, he began
to mentally compose a different sort of Fresno story.
The story would be about okies coming to
Fresno in the 1930's looking for a better place in time. Those
who
made it had escaped the dust-bowl only to discover they landed
in an economic
death valley. It and Fresno was shriveling up like
a California raisin in the sun.
The big city writer got it right. Agriculture
is the cash crop of the San Joaquin Valley. The source of successful
farming is water. But, if the farmers like J.G. Boswell can't make
a living on producing food in Central California because of a
shortage
of water, they are going to pack up and move to Mexico where there's
water and cheap labor aplenty. We get the picture.
This straight shot of reality checking
comes directly from Forbes HQ via the friendly advice of Lynn
J. Cook,
a good man.
[Editor's Note: Independent
documentation by the Wall Street Journal indicates that
favorable mention in Forbes has sent companies stock prices soaring.
Forbes
Magazine Burlingame telephone number: 650-558-4800.]
Letter
to Editor
©1876-2003
by The Fresno Republican Newspaper.
All rights reserved.
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