I was cautiously impressed with Mayor Jim Schmitt's State of the City speech last night. He had a number of proposals that we can get behind as people and as a business, including: providing incentives for industries that manufacture green technologies to locate in our area, funding a new economic development recruiting position for the West side, cracking down on the bad landlords, transforming Leicht Park (that almost toxic stretch of brown grass just North of the Main Street bridge on the West side), into a downtown festival ground, moving the coal piles at long last, creating new improvement zones, and a bunch of other stuff that will be decent for the city. Naturally I'm skeptical, I'll believe it when I see it. But I was very happy to hear someone articulate a positive vision for downtown Green Bay last night, because it's not the downtown that I remember as a kid. Remember when it was HARD TO FIND PARKING DOWNTOWN? That's what I want for Green Bay's future. Here's a link to where they will hopefully post the text of the speech later today, if we're lucky they'll also post the ridiculous powerpoint presentation that went along with it.