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Minutes from the March Shady Sands Development Council Meeting
I swear, this heat saps the life right out of you. I'm used to March being a somewhat chilly month, not 95 degree heat (35c) in the middle of the day. Anyway, I'm sure a lot of this is going to be retreading old ground from Bailville. We've been left playing catch-up, after all.
The lack of natural shade in this desert is deadly, so a lot of citizens have been planting trees to offer some semblance of respite from the heat. As a precautionary measure, I've already forbidden lawns as a city-wide mandate. While a team of engineers did find a fairly large aquifer beneath the ground, it's all saltwater from the bay. That really limits our options when it comes to planting anything.
Moving on, a lot of development has occurred in our fair community as more and more company workers are choosing to live here rather than face a long commute.
Late October, in particular, saw council construction crews laying the foundations for what would eventually become Amber Springs.
Rather than create a maze of streets, my city planner felt - and I agreed - that a simple road layout was best. The curved roads are especially attractive.
Like always, neighborhood shops being on the closest road to main street is just good planning.
Though it may not hurt to have a few smaller stores in the "lower" roads, just to better serve the folks living down that way.
(Caption: Amber Springs aerial shot, early November)
Just like Bailville before it, Shady Sands had a dirty industry problem. Had being the operative word. Until just recently, I didn't have the political capital in the company necessary to kick out these ego-stroking middle manager projects.
(Newspaper Clipping: Big Bite, Big Business for Amber Springs)
Not everything is sunshine and rainbows. I've had to had discussions with the town's chief of security about better training for everyone. The GECK is supposed to be a secret pro-- I mean, I have no knowledge about a GECK, what are you talking about?
Early December saw the town passing 1,000 employees.
It also saw a developing problem - our clean energy is unreliable.
The wind speed on the coast apparently varies and on a bad day, we can go from having a comfortable surplus to being deep in the red.
I have a mandate from the CEO that the city must be 100% powered by clean, renewable energy. So we can't just slap down a natural gas or coal power plant. He didn't have an answer regarding waste-to-energy incinerators, but he did see the potential in using them even if they do technically violate the "clean" part of the mandate. It's hard to argue with the ultimate in garbage recycling.
Until we have better options, I've added more wind turbines on the coast for redundancy.
While planning an expansion to Amber Springs, the city crept past 1,500 employees. We've actually gotten big enough that non company folks have expressed interest in moving in. They pay taxes like anyone else, so I'm fine with that. Regardless, we once again have access to parks, industrial areas, and landscaping.
(Caption: Drone-eye view of Amber Springs expansion, mid February)
I don't plan to have any individual neighborhood to be larger than two sets of streets.
So 80 tiles. Old Town and Amber Springs are both 40 tiles across, so a single expansion for each means they won't get larger than 80 tiles. It'll keep the city uniform and somewhat grid-like, while keeping the unique shape of each neighborhood.
As a thought, do you - the esteemed members of the development council - think there should be a road bisecting the arcs in Amber Springs? Just straight down the middle of the neighborhood. Or do you think the longer roads are better?
Regardless, the city has grown quite a bit in a very short time. And there's no mistaking where you are.
Also in mid February, I finally had the political capital necessary to kick out the dirty industry. Some middle manager somewhere in the company apparently was planning on taking over my job by showing that I was incompetent. Just to mess with him, I declared Palm Square to be a lumber processing district.
I also forbade any lumber from being imported. Petty? Sure. But that's corporate politics.
Speaking of industry, we really should be thinking about what industry we want to make money on. Because we're in a bay, we have a somewhat unique opportunity. This graph shows the makeup of local sea life. Let me just zoom and enhance here...
The waters in the bay are teeming with shellfish of all sorts. Crab, oysters, clams, lobster. If you can get overcharged for it at a Red Lobster restaurant, you can find it in the bay. There's also a statistically significant number of anchovies closer to land. And...
Those pink stripes right next to our wind turbines are where salmon have been spotted, in large numbers. I don't want to be accused of guiding the council's hand in matters like this, but we could have a very profitable fishing industry here in Shady Sands.
Likewise, there are several farmers petitioning my office to break ground on a large industrial farm on the meadowland up on the hill just on the edge of town.
Finally, just northeast of town is enough existing trees that we could set up a small palm wood lumberyard.
The town is also big enough that we've got both elementary and high schools. High on my agenda before the next meeting is setting up a proper campus. We're actually using a higher capacity elementary school because the old one, less than a year old, was already stressed beyond capacity. It's a good problem to have, to be honest.
Anyway, that's all I had prepared for this quick meeting. So, I'd like to open the floor up for discussion.