Insiders reported this morning that SLO Mayor Dave Romero has made a final decision not to run for city council in November.

Romero, 81, will be termed out after serving eight years as mayor; previously, he served for eight years on the council and 36 years as director of Public Works.

Romero has been a great friend of local business and a consistent supporter of the SLO Chamber’s vision of a beautiful, safe community with a growing base of head-of-household jobs.

Romero’s 54 years of serving the city and his depth of knowledge are unparalleled.

An emotional Mayor Dave Romero made the motion last night to approve staff’s plan to begin a significant downtown beautification program.

Romero, along with the SLO Chamber, had been pushing this for years and had made it the focal point of his last campaign.

The council unanimously allocated $640,000 to improve three blocks on Higuera Street from Morro to Broad streets with new sidewalks, pedestrian lighting, trees, news racks and trash receptacles along with some major maintenance improvements.

These upgrades are essential if SLO is to remain competitive as a shopping and tourism destination.

April’s Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) numbers are up a solid eight percent compared to April 2009.

This is the second major gain in a row, and puts the year-to-date figure higher than the city’s projections.

TOT is considered a key barometer of the local tourism industry and is the city’s second largest source of income after sales tax.

Cal Poly generates $469 million in regional spending and a total of $29.6 million in tax revenue, according to the latest economic impact report from the California State University Chancellor's Office.

Other findings in the report: Cal Poly is responsible for the creation of more than 5,000 jobs, and Mustang alumni earn a total of $2.4 billion.

The $469 million in regional spending means that Cal Poly contributes more than 10 percent to the region’s $3.5 billion economy.

City Manager Katie Lichtig reported at last night’s council meeting on the results of a random survey of 400 city residents.

An amazing 97 percent rated SLO as an “excellent” or “very good” place to live. (That’s up two percent from the city’s 2005 survey.)

Eighty-one percent are optimistic that the city will stay as great in the future or get even better, and 72 percent rated SLO city government as “excellent” or “very good,” which is up four percent from the last survey.

This high satisfaction rating has very positive economic development implications.

After more than a year of planning, a San Luis Obispo-based business angel capital organization that mentors and funds early-stage technology companies has launched.

SLO Seed Ventures is partnering with Innovation Quest to host its first invitational boot camp starting on June 25.

Up to nine early-stage companies will be selected to participate based on applications submitted on the SLO Seed Ventures website by June 10.

Upon completion of the boot camp, SLO Seed Ventures will evaluate the companies for first-year funding in the $5,000-15,000 range and continue mentoring the selected companies.

With ridership steadily dropping and funding drying up, the city council last night decided to temporarily suspend the four-day-a-week trolley service that connects downtown with the Monterey Street motels.

It costs the city about $30,000 annually to run the service and there are now only about 20,000 riders per year who use it. After fare-box income, it loses about $23,000 per year.

The council asked staff to see if alternative sources of funding could be found. Until then, beginning Sept. 1 of this year, the trolley will stop running Fridays through Sundays, but will continue to run on Thursdays from 3:30 - 9 p.m.