Happy New Year! - No, I am not confused (at least not about the New Year thing). Today is the first day of the city's new fiscal year, when the 2007 budget kicks in and all of the departments have new appropriations. It's also a good time for me to get back to this Blog on a more regular basis. I'd like to say I haven't posted recently because I've been traveling the world or something like that, but it's much more mundane; we've been pretty busy down here at City Hall the last couple of months. So much for the dog days of summer! It doesn't seem long ago in Southwest Florida when nearly everyone packed up and headed north for the summer, including many of our retailers and restauranteurs, and things really did slow down. Although I've heard from retailers all over downtown that this summer was a bit slow for them business-wise, here in the city it was as hectic as ever with the spring training complex project and many other things.

Nonetheless "The Season" lies before us, and it should be an interesting one which will include a City Commission election. So Happy New Year to all, here we go. Now if it would just cool off a little bit more...