Mayor's Office

My supervisor set up a shadowing opportunity in the Mayor's Office for me today. I met with one of Mayor Stanton's team members and he gave me the rundown of how the office is structured and some of his responsibilities. He regularly deals with water, transportation, and the 62 city commissions (the Phoenix Sister Cities Commission included). We discussed several initiatives and various other programs that the mayor's office has tackled in the short time that Mayor Stanton has been in office. In addition, I had the chance to briefly meet with the mayor after some of his meetings. The mayor is constantly in and out of the office, day in and day out. His schedule is booked weeks in advance as businesses, departments, and people throughout the community consistently compete for his time.

At the end of the day, it was not only an opportunity for me to gain an understanding of how the office is run and how everything works, but to learn how the city is run. It was a really neat experience and I am very appreciative of the Mayor's Office for allowing me to tag along today and my supervisor for setting me up with the opportunity.

One Year Down

This year has gone by ridiculously quick! It feels like just yesterday that I was driving the grueling 11 hour drive to Phoenix from Colorado to start grad school. Now I am done with an entire year of it. I've had some great experiences so far in this program and I've met some great people. When I finished my undergrad, I was planning on finding a teaching job but I still wasn't sure if that was the route I wanted to go. When I started to think seriously about pursuing a career in public service, I realized that it was something that I would really enjoy. The next thing I knew, I was in my truck driving to Phoenix to start the MPA program. I was really excited but at the same time really nervous because I had never been to Phoenix before. Needless to say, I've had a great time and I've learned a tremendous amount of stuff this year that I look forward to applying in my future career as a public administrator.

Meetings

Last week I had the opportunity to accompany my supervisor to a couple of meetings regarding pending legislation and the budget. The first one we attended was the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce meeting. The meeting centered around reports delivered by the Budget and Tax issue committee and the Economic Development committee. The other meeting we attended was the Legislative Strategy Task Force meeting at the League of Arizona Cities and Towns. The day we attended those meetings was one of the most interesting days I have experienced in my time with Phoenix Sister Cities. Not only did I get to listen to different perspectives about legislation and the upcoming budget, but I got to meet numerous new people that were very passionate and committed about the issues being discussed. At the same time, I would be lying if I said that I understood everything that they were saying. At times, it felt like they were speaking a different language when talking about the pending legislation. I kept having to remind myself that most of the people at these meetings were lobbyists that obviously know there stuff when it comes to legislation and the budget. The best part of the day was the awesome catered lunch that was provided at the League of Arizona Cities and Towns meeting. Hey, everybody loves a free lunch!

Writing Effectively Workshop (Career Service Post)

Yesterday (4/19/2012 @ 3 pm) I attended the “Writing Effectively: Clear and Effective Sentences” Workshop administered by Duane Roen and Paula Schevers. It was a very interesting workshop because I went into it thinking that I already knew how to write effectively and that I was not going to walk away from it with any tips or new information to apply in my future writing. I was wrong. I learned numerous new things to incorporate into my writing. After the workshop was over, I started to think about my writing and realized that there are a lot of times when my writing consists of wordy phrases and is sometimes unclear. I found the main cause of my unclear writing to be that I am always trying to make my academic writing sound grandiose or pompous to impress readers. At the end of the day, regardless of the fact that I realized that I needed to incorporate a couple of strategies to improve my writing, I found that I am not too shabby of a writer.
The workshop went through a lengthy handout that consisted of several exercises that revolved around the concept of clear and effective writing. I will not describe each activity but I will give a few examples. In the first activity, we had to distinguish which sentence was “clearer” out of the sentences provided. The second and third activities had us eliminate unnecessary words and replacing wordy phrases, respectively. The fourth activity required us to replace nominalizations with action verbs and the eighth activity had us editing for parallelism in a series of items. Most of the exercises were easy but a few of them required a little more time and thought. Despite the fact that the workshop was a little lengthy, I thoroughly enjoyed. It was presented well and I can honestly say that I learned some great stuff that I can definitely use in the future.

Working on Website and Ramat-Gan

This week I have been working on several different things. I have spent quite a bit of time on the PSC website updating the corporate membership information and updating photos of board members. In addition, I have been making a big effort to obtain committee meeting agendas and minutes from the committee chairs in order to put them on the website and make them accessible to the public. Essentially, I have just been doing some maintenance in order to make the website look a little prettier. In addition to all of the work I have been doing on the website, I have been making some last minute adjustments to the Ramat-Gan Delegation Briefing Book that I finished developing about a month ago. We finally heard back from Ramat-Gan about what to include in the final itinerary which will be presented to all of the delegation members in a couple of days. The delegation visit to Ramat-Gan and the rest of Israel will take place from May 3 to May 16 and there is a lot of excitement about the quickly approaching trip. It is going to be an awesome trip. While I was doing a ton of research and putting so much time into developing the briefing book, I constantly had to remind myself that I am not going on the trip because I would get so excited about some of the places I was reading about. Jerusalem is a city that I have always wanted to visit and I truly believe that it is a city that everyone should visit at some point in their life. Not only is it one of the world's oldest cities, but it is the holy city to the three major religions- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Even though I am not a member of the delegation, I am very excited for the 26 people that are going. A few members of the delegation include Vice Mayor Michael Johnson and former city manager Frank Fairbanks.

Disabilities Awareness Committee Fundraiser

It’s been a busy week here at Phoenix Sister Cities. We have been preparing for several different fundraisers including the Disabilities Awareness Committee’s “Evening of Art & Wine” on April 14th and the “Sicilian Wine & Cheese Tasting” on April 21st. The Art & Wine event this Saturday is going to be a really neat event because there is going to be a big display of the artwork from the International Competition for Artists with Disabilities that took place last November. The theme of the competition was “The Power Lies Within.” A total of ninety submissions were submitted by artists with disabilities, nineteen years old and over. Fifty-eight pieces were received from Arizona residents and thirty-two entries from Phoenix’s sister cities, including eleven from Chengdu, China; seven from Hermosillo, Mexico; three from Taipei, Taiwan; two from Ramat-Gan, Israel; and nine from Grenoble, France. The coolest part about the event this weekend is that the artwork is going to be raffled and the proceeds from the art drawing will benefit the Phoenix Sister Cities International Artists and Writers Competitions for people with disabilities. I will be attending the event and help to set up and take down all of the artwork. At this point, I have only seen pictures of all of the artwork since I have had to incorporate some of the pictures into the newsletter, so I am excited to be able to see all of the amazing artwork in person.

State of the City

On Wednesday, as part of my internship, I attended the mayor’s State of the City Address. It was an awesome experience and not quite what I expected. My supervisors and I left City Hall around 11:15 am and walked to the Phoenix Convention Center located a few blocks away. When we got to the North Ballroom, there were numerous dining tables set up leading up to the stage. What I did not realize was that it was a luncheon. I had been expecting everyone to be sitting in some sort of auditorium, somewhat similar to the State of the Union. Anyways, a delicious three course meal was served leading up to the mayor’s speech and I spent time meeting and chatting with city workers from various city departments. The mayor delivered a great speech and touched on a lot of points that people were looking to hear about. It was exciting to hear the mayor emphasize his desire to pursue and increase business with cities in Mexico. Mayor Stanton has done a great job in the short amount of time he has been in office at being involved with Phoenix Sister Cities and showing interest in our international partners, which includes Hermosillo, Mexico. There were many at the Hermosillo Committee meeting that I had attended the night before that were definitely looking forward to what the mayor had to say, particularly about the city’s dealings with Mexico, so that is why I made it a point to listen for that. It was a great experience and I look forward to being able to attend more State of the City Addresses.