There’s good and bad news, state and community leaders said at local roundtable
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Council Member Bill Hodge told KSWT that there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that Calexico and the whole Imperial Valley have a lot of problems.
“The Salton Sea – extremely important. Another one would be the New River. Third one, throughout the valley is jobs, of course,” Hodge said.
The good news, he quickly added, is that many people are working to fix them.
On Friday, state officials and community leaders came together to talk about ways of helping the area. They met at a local restaurant in a roundtable session organized by 40 th District Senator Ben Hueso.
“We’re bringing the state money to our district. These are all jobs that we need. We need to keep this activity going. And what we need to talk about is how we prioritize our efforts, how we focus our efforts on those projects that will give us the biggest bang for our buck and make the biggest investments in the community that we desperately need,” Hueso said.
State Assembly Member Eduardo Garcia spoke at the meeting, as well.
“Just talk about some of the questions and concerns related to the economy,” Garcia said.
Garcia said he was encouraged to see several business and civic leaders stand up in the meeting and share their concerns and their ongoing projects.
“Communication is key for the purpose of coordination of all of our efforts. Many times you’ve got a lot of people doing great work but without coordination, we’re not able to maximize the overall impact that we’re trying to make,” Garcia said.
Hodge said the leaders at the meeting didn’t just give empty words of hope but backed it up with ongoing projects.
“We’ve got Cardenas open. We’re working hard on gran plaza. And they made some promises. They just didn’t give hope,” Hodge said referring to the Cardenas Plaza opening where the old K-Mart used to be along Imperial Avenue.
“You’ve gotta believe them. They’re working,” Hodge said about the state officials and local business people who said they were working towards improving the area.
