East Bay
EDA's Annual meeting to be held January 10, 2008
Registration is now open
for the 2008 Legislative Reception and East Bay Vision Awards,
which will be held Thursday January 10, 2008 from 5:30-7:30 PM at the
Oakland Museum of California. Members are encouraged to attend and take advantage of this annual opportunity to meet with
Federal and State legislators representing the East Bay and to join East Bay EDA in the recognition of two local leaders who
will receive the East Bay Vision Award.
Members will soon receive a formal invitation by mail that will include the names of the 2008 Vision Award recipients as well
as directions to the location and other information. View highlights of past events
at eastbayeda.org.
Business Continuity Planning program
provides information necessary in an
emergency
The City of Pleasant Hill has teamed up with
the Pleasant Hill Chamber of Commerce to
organize a "Business Continuity Planning"
program aimed at assisting local businesses
in their emergency preparedness efforts.
The program flyer, now available through the
City and Chamber, includes ready-made
checklists to aid in creating a business
continuity plan; disaster kits for the
office and car; emergency numbers for
Pleasant Hill and other Contra Costa County
agencies, and a place to jot down personal
emergency contact numbers.
Originally designed by the
Pleasant Hill and Lafayette Chambers, the
flyer consists of non-copyrighted information adapted from a number of sources, including
the American Red Cross and ABAG - meaning it can be
adapted to meet your organization's needs. For more information about the
flyer and business continuity efforts underway in Pleasant Hill, contact Kelly
Calhoun , Economic Development Director for the City, or Charley Daley, Executive
Director of the Pleasant Hill Chamber. Download flyer (571k).
Innovative program attracts high profile businesses
to the City
How does a community attract high
profile sales tax revenue generators? Livermore has accomplished this through their General Plan by
creating a focused incentive tool for specific economic opportunities. The City’s General Plan
establishes that all new development shall pay its fair share of new public facilities, equipment, and
services necessary to serve the development. Experience has shown the “fair share payment”
can be prohibitively high for some projects with unusually high and front loaded infrastructure improvement costs.
The General Plan provides the Livermore City Council with
the ability to consider alternate means of financing mechanisms, such as loans, including land dedications,
road construction, utility improvements, and payment of development fees by contributing public funds for a
limited number of commercial and industrial development projects that bring a unique and significant financial
benefit to the City. Qualifying businesses must demonstrate and secure their ability to generate a minimum of
one million dollars in annual local sales tax revenues. The long term fiscal benefits to the City far exceed
the initial cost of required public improvements, which is one of the findings City Council must make to use
this program.
The Council must adopt specific findings and approve an agreement between the City and a developer.
Where the City Council cannot make the specific findings, then no appropriation of City funds may be made.
An example of how the program has
worked in Livermore: The City offered developers of the Livermore Auto Mall the General Plan tax incentive
to fund portions of the project’s public infrastructure costs. The auto mall was operating in Livermore
but had outgrown its existing site and needed to relocate to a larger, freeway fronting site. The auto mall
owners found a desirable site in Livermore but the unusually high cost of developing the long but narrow and
constrained site yielded a low value to loan ratio, necessitating additional upfront funding. Through use of
the tax incentive, the development improved a long stretch of outdated roadway, extended the City’s
regional trail system, and significantly expanded the City’s economic base. Use of the City's General
Plan incentive package allowed the City to retain and significantly expand this vital business.
Specific language may be referred
to in Livermore’s 2003-2025 General Plan, Chapter 11 Economic Development and Fiscal Element, Goal ED-3,
Objective ED-3.2, Policy P5 at
http://www.ci.livermore.ca.us/general_plan/general_plan.html.
Thank you to Neal Snedecor, City of Livermore, for submitting this article.
Help support IDB funding by offering your comments
The California Debt Limit Allocation
Committee (CDLAC), which determines how the annual federal tax exempt bond allocation will be distributed to the various financing
programs, is currently seeking public
comment regarding proposed
changes to their 2008 program guidelines. One change proposed for the IDB program would
streamline the IDB process by transferring all of the IDB allocation
to the California Industrial Development
Financing Authority (CIDFAC), the agency
that approves and recommends the IDB
projects.
CDLAC is also recommending that some small program allocations under the IDB that had been used in the past (equipment
and energy financing) be deleted as they are no longer viable, and we concur.
Your support is needed regarding the IDB allocation set aside for 2008.
Indications are that the amount to be reserved for IDBs for 2008 will not will be sufficient to meet the projected
demand, which is expected to exceed $150 million.
The IDB program is the only true incentive we have to encourage manufacturing business investment in California. Since
IDBs are available to businesses in other states, not making it accessible to those who qualify is a further disincentive
to investment. Not only does the IDB program create public benefits via manufacturing job creation, tax generation and a
boost to the local, regional and state economies, it also provides
a living wage to the 1,600 people projected to be employed by these firms.
You can
send your comments regarding the proposed procedures and the 2008 allocation by
January 5, 2008.
Send comments to: CDLAC, 915 Capitol Mall, Room 311, Sacramento, CA 95814; or go online to:
http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/cdlac/news/procedures.asp
For more info on IDBs, contact Keith Sutton or view our IDB Brochure.
East Bay EDA co-sponsors "A Brave New World"
this Friday December 7th
The legislative impacts of the Global Warming Act (AB32) & the CA Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) are being explored by Bay Area businesses, organizations and municipalities at a special forum, Friday, December 7
entitled A Brave New World, AB32 & CEQA,
Confronting Climate Change.
The forum, hosted by SAMCEDA, the San Mateo County Economic Development Association, and 15 other co-sponsors, will be held at the Oracle Conference Center, Redwood Shores, from 11:30am to 1:30pm. For registration and further information see
www.samceda.org.
Members are encouraged to submit stories, event listings
In an effort to make East Bay EDA News
more valuable to our readers, we'd like to ask you to submit stories and event listings from your city, organization or business.
Stories should be between 1 and 4 short paragraphs in length, include at least one contact name and/or website link for more information, and should be submitted by the first Friday of the month in which
you would like the story to run. Stories can be submitted to stephanie@eastbayeda.org.
Finally, don’t forget to place your organization’s events on the East Bay Regional Events Calendar.
Just login to the "Members Only" section and select Post to the Regional Events Calendar.
Visit the East Bay Economic Development Alliance section of our website to find the member login and calendar links.
UC Berkeley economics student assists in website data updates
We are continuing to update eastbayeda.org and create new reference charts with the assistance of our new intern, Daniel Matson, an economics student at UC Berkeley. For a sneak preview of what the data sets will look like when this process is complete, please visit the following pages at eastbayeda.org:
Annual Sales Tax by County,
Bay Area Labor Force
and Payroll Employment by County.
Once updated completely, eastbayeda.org users will be able to select, view and download data sets on a number of economic, environmental and social topics pertinent to the East Bay.
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