Word: fresno
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...more endearing things about Fresno is its combination of optimism and self-deprecation: when it turned up at the bottom of a list of cities ranked according to "livability" during the 1980s, it went along with CBS's spoof of Dallas, the mini-series Fresno, starring Carol Burnett. Citizens, including the former mayor, took parts...
...city government is no laughing matter as Fresno faces new problems like pollution, which has been added to the seasonal scourges -- droughts and freezes -- that always imperil Fresno's huge yields of cotton, grapes, nuts and cantaloupes. The struggle for water is perennial here, as elsewhere in California. Russell Fey, a former city planner in Modesto who now teaches urban studies at California State University, Fresno, thinks the city should prevent "leapfrog" growth by instituting zoning regulations. But the electorate resents regulation; residential water meters are only now being installed in older Fresno homes, in part because voters have been...
...Humphrey presides over the other six members with enthusiastic informality. Her council includes two Armenians, one Hispanic and one African American. Mayor Humphrey sees the new $33 million city hall being constructed as a riposte to those who write off the downtown or who cling to the image of Fresno as an agrarian market town. Despite her claim about the place's Midwestern qualities, she sides with those who believe the city can meet its challenges only if it thinks in terms as cosmopolitan as its new population. The city hall is the very model of a computerized managerial center...
...mayor's critics say Fresno should not get too big for its britches. It remains a hick town in some ways, short on cultural resources. The main entertainment events are football games in the Fresno State Bulldogs' stadium, / to which towns people flock, all wearing red shirts, and tailgate parties are the nearest thing to a town meeting...
...flashy new city hall a space vehicle that has crashed in a deserted spot, or a civic control ship about to take off? The populace is divided on that. But even the gloomy ones are surprisingly good-natured as they grumble. For in Fresno even root-canal work can be dentistry for smiles. If loopy optimism and defiance of the odds are what made this state in the first place, then un-Californian Fresno may be the last real California left...