Business View Civil Municipal - Sept 2023

108 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 9 As well, there are also GMC Roofing, Grimmway Enterprises, J.D. Rush, and Richland Chevrolet Company, The Shafter Research Station, Very family-oriented Then there are the parks and recreation components. They’re among the most popular parts of Shafter, as Meadows tells us. “Shafter is very family-oriented and very sports- oriented,” he explains. “Our parks are not only heavily and regularly maintained, but also, they’re all well- lighted and well-landscaped. We just added an exercise facility to one of them. We are adding more basketball courts and more covered areas for picnics and family gatherings. Our parks are a major attraction.” Shafter Parks and Recreation Department will also soon break ground for a 40-acre multi-sports field. ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act; advanced in the wake of the COVID scare) and California Clean Grant funds have been invested in parks and other city infrastructure upgrades. For example, the City is spending some $2 million over the next couple of years to upgrade its aquatic center. This includes cleaning up the Shafter Aquatic Center, located on Poso Avenue, and revitalizing it so that swim teams can come back and have competitions. “We were very judicious with that,” Meadows says of all grant funding. “That will be invested back into the city.” Such efforts, he adds, will only serve to make Shafter all the more attractive to families and to prospective new businesses as well. Shafter, he reveals, is the safest city in the Central Valley. It has the lowest rate of crime (just one murder in the last six years). “We are also the most fiscally sound city in the Central Valley,” he adds, “and we’re in the top 10 of all the cities in California for our fiscal stability.” Shafter has no pension debt, he continues. In the year ahead, the City will be taking on more staffers, including in economic development and hiring branding, development, and retail consultants to spread the gospel of Shafter around the country and the globe.