Matt Artz has a good blog post about the meeting at Warm Springs tonight. He basically says that the consultants are recommending they develop the area as I’d suggested, not what Anu nor Mayor Wasserman had in mind. Matt’s sense of humor isn’t lacking here.
Matt Artz’ blog post about Warm Springs
I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to this meeting.
I just posted a position paper on the future of the NUMMI site. The conclusion is below. The full text can be found here.
NUMMI provided Fremont and the surrounding area with several thousand manufacturing jobs. We need to focus our efforts on replenishing these manufacturing jobs.
I gave a speech on May 1st about NUMMI and the possibility of bringing green jobs to Fremont. The event was called “NUMMI 2010: A Tribute” and was held at the Clean Tech Institute in Fremont. The event brought together NUMMI workers and a number of representatives from the green technology sector. It was noticeable that there were no representatives from the City of Fremont at this event.
The full text of my speech, which I figure is good enough for a position paper on the subject, can be found here.
At the City Council meeting on Tuesday, April 13 a number of people made comments that were critical of the City’s handling of the NUMMI closure. Matt Artz posted on his blog that it was “Bacon Vs. the Council“. The discussion is pretty interesting. With the exception of a couple of people, the sentiment in the comments is well behind me. First, people are correct to point out that the Council is saying I said “The City did nothing to save NUMMI” when that’s not what I said. Secondly, people are noting that Council didn’t do much to save NUMMI, nor did they do a good job deciding what should be done next.
Just for the record, here is the full text of what I said:
As a member of the Alameda County Workforce Investment Board, I was invited to a conference today entitled “Manufacturing, Exports and Job Creation in the New Economy”. It was put on by the U.S. Department of Commerce. While it technically was about manufacturing in general, the topic was largely how to generate manufacturing jobs to replace those that had been lost by the closing of NUMMI.
The main host was Ro Khanna, a lawyer from Fremont who now works in the Obama administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Domestic Operations. Ro noted that the President himself is very concerned about manufacturing. Indeed, much of the stimulus funding has been focused on this. Congresswoman Barbara Lee spoke and noted how generating exports via increased manufacturing are critical to a healthy economic recovery. She also stressed that the NUMMI site should be kept for manufacturing. I couldn’t agree more.