The Core Value for Economy is:
A strong, diverse economy that supports a wide variety of businesses.
ACTION AGENDA
Priority Policy 1: Provide for safe and reliable transportation infrastructure to move workers and freight to support both local and regional economic development.
Action Agenda: Bring more federal and state transportation funding to the region, while developing and implementing additional local funding tools and local authority for transportation decision-making. Expand both bus and rail transit options throughout the region and make bicycle and pedestrian means a viable form of commuting. Manage congestion through a variety of tools including transit, managed-lane strategies, better connectivity, carpooling/vanpooling and additional highway lane miles.
Priority Policy 2: Support collaborative regional and local approaches to business recruitment and economic development.
Action Agenda: Increase collaboration and interaction among all economic development partners to forge a stronger, more regionally complementary approach. Create additional certified industrial sites located in centers throughout the region and develop and implement additional strategies to enhance business recruitment and local entrepreneurship. Seek strategies to maximize multiple jurisdictions working together to recruit a core business, its suppliers and spin-offs.
Vision:
The region’s economic growth strategy includes not only growing industry clusters through recruitment, expansion and local entrepreneurship. It also encourages the growth of other small businesses. Regional industry is not so dependent on a single industry cluster that a downturn in that industry impacts the entire regional economy. The region is known for a creative economy as well as for excellence in technology and other disciplines. As with Value 2, reciprocity is an important component of the economy, in that employment opportunities should be available at multiple centers throughout the region, putting jobs and housing in closer proximity. Finally, employment opportunities are available for the full spectrum of the region’s workers.
Policies:
- Support the development of both regional and local approaches towards job creation, expansion and retention, including regional promotion and recruitment of both industries and workers of all ages.
- Provide for safe and reliable utility and transportation infrastructure to move workers and freight in support of both local and regional economic development
- Ensure adequate water resources for both industrial/commercial use and for the needs of the growing workforce
- Support approaches that value collaboration over competition in business/industry recruitment, so that every part of the region has the opportunity for economic prosperity
- Support advanced manufacturing applications to regional industries
- Foster entrepreneurship and “growing” support or spin-off industries from an area’s existing industry base, or from natural assets.
- Provide for the appropriate location of business and industry within communities throughout the region, which serve to attract those businesses and industries most compatible with the community.
- Support the vitality of the central business districts, and provide for the appropriate integration of jobs and housing in sustainable mixed-use settings.
- Promote workforce/affordable housing and housing choice across the region to create decent housing for a diverse workforce, in proximity to job locations.
- Support improvements in basic skills in K-12 to build an educated workforce for a knowledge-based economy, as well as to prepare for the diverse jobs needed to serve the region’s population.
A Sampling of Practices:
- Support early literacy/numeracy programs to ensure that future generations have adequate skills as building blocks for later job readiness
- Study and target development of amenities desired by the emerging intellectual/creative/entrepre-neurial workforce to attract and retain that talent
- Expand worker training programs appropriate to current/emerging industry clusters to meet the region’s needs now and in the future
- Create a regionwide network for workforce training broadly accessible to workers and businesses
- Develop and support specific transportation policies and projects designed to move workers and freight efficiently and effectively
- Provice adequate water resources and support commercial water conservation practices to ensure sufficient water supplies for economic growth
- Adopt collaborative practices regarding business/industrial recruitment and exercise self-discipline in intra-regional business recruitment
- Incorporate “on demand” economic development opportunities
- Work with local and regional chambers and economic development commissions to identify opportunities for synergy within and across jurisdictional boundaries (e.g., shared “green” industrial parks, proximate location of industries in a cluster, etc.)
- Support local economic development strategies based on local visions and assets through regional promotion and investment. Consider a matrix approach to assist communities in identifying businesses that are a good fit.
- Promote downtown redevelopment and work with communities and state and federal agencies to attract businesses (and residents) to downtowns and town-center type developments
- Sponsor natural resource and energy conservation programs in industrial and business support activities for both environmental and fiscal reasons
- Promote successful business support models and provide technical assistance through universities and colleges, community colleges and peer-to-peer mentoring
- Assist each community with defining its desired and necessary balance of jobs/housing for sustainability and with strategies to reach that balance
- Support housing in proximity to jobs and vice-versa, including creating multiple regional employment/housing centers in outlying communities
- Create plans for economic reversals as well as growth
- Measure income generation and distribution to gauge success
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