Jobs creates city revenue
August 12, 2010
August 12, 2010
The Community Voice:
RP’s City Council soon faces a decision on the funding of the Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster. The Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster (SMBC) is seeking redevelopment funding from the City of Rohnert Park, funding that can only be used for redevelopment and cannot be repurposed for things like public safety or education.
The funding is for business and economic development. SMBC remains the only organization of its kind: a nonprofit organization focused on the creation of high value jobs by enabling and accelerating the success of technology startups and emerging growth companies. Their goal is to assist in at least 100 startups and creating more than 2,000 jobs over the next 10 years. Most of these new businesses will exist in Rohnert Park, Cotati, northern Petaluma, and throughout Sonoma County.
When one job in high tech is created in Rohnert Park specifically, due to supporting businesses, Sonoma State University and other organizations in RP, 2.7 total jobs are created. Imagine if 2,000 new workers were employed in new high tech companies in RP. A new job in grocery retail creates a total of 1.3 new jobs. Ironically, a new high tech job creates almost another job in retail based on the incomes and jobs created to support the new high tech firm without expanding the number of retail outlets. More than 84 percent of new firms from incubators locate their new business within five miles of the incubator: RP and Cotati would see more than $12,000 of new tax revenue per job created by SMBC.
Business incubation is a cost effective means of creating jobs. Providing a space where ideas come to life and entrepreneurs can be mentored and financed by experienced CEOs, speeds progress toward commercialization.
The School of Business and Economics at SSU is working with SMBC on building bridges between ideas, innovation and commercial viability, as well as economic development support for the entire North Bay region.
We hear a lot about “Go Local” as a community development strategy; it is a good strategy to go local when you can. The funding of SMBC is an investment in local firms that will export products to the rest of the world when they commercialize their products. They will fill commercial real estate, specifically industrial space and repurposed retail and other vacancies, enhancing Rohnert Park, Cotati and SSU graduates along the way.
Every May, SSU graduates about 2,000 people; this year many of my students wondered where they would get a job. SMBC grows jobs as if it were a community garden where high technology firms are harvested. This is a nonprofit organization that acts local and thinks global. It is precisely the type of organization our communities, both business and residential, must support for the North Bay to remain competitive into the next decade. As a lifelong resident of Sonoma County, SMBC is something this county needs and should be replicated throughout the North Bay.
Robert Eyler, Ph.D.
Professor SSU
RP’s City Council soon faces a decision on the funding of the Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster. The Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster (SMBC) is seeking redevelopment funding from the City of Rohnert Park, funding that can only be used for redevelopment and cannot be repurposed for things like public safety or education.
The funding is for business and economic development. SMBC remains the only organization of its kind: a nonprofit organization focused on the creation of high value jobs by enabling and accelerating the success of technology startups and emerging growth companies. Their goal is to assist in at least 100 startups and creating more than 2,000 jobs over the next 10 years. Most of these new businesses will exist in Rohnert Park, Cotati, northern Petaluma, and throughout Sonoma County.
When one job in high tech is created in Rohnert Park specifically, due to supporting businesses, Sonoma State University and other organizations in RP, 2.7 total jobs are created. Imagine if 2,000 new workers were employed in new high tech companies in RP. A new job in grocery retail creates a total of 1.3 new jobs. Ironically, a new high tech job creates almost another job in retail based on the incomes and jobs created to support the new high tech firm without expanding the number of retail outlets. More than 84 percent of new firms from incubators locate their new business within five miles of the incubator: RP and Cotati would see more than $12,000 of new tax revenue per job created by SMBC.
Business incubation is a cost effective means of creating jobs. Providing a space where ideas come to life and entrepreneurs can be mentored and financed by experienced CEOs, speeds progress toward commercialization.
The School of Business and Economics at SSU is working with SMBC on building bridges between ideas, innovation and commercial viability, as well as economic development support for the entire North Bay region.
We hear a lot about “Go Local” as a community development strategy; it is a good strategy to go local when you can. The funding of SMBC is an investment in local firms that will export products to the rest of the world when they commercialize their products. They will fill commercial real estate, specifically industrial space and repurposed retail and other vacancies, enhancing Rohnert Park, Cotati and SSU graduates along the way.
Every May, SSU graduates about 2,000 people; this year many of my students wondered where they would get a job. SMBC grows jobs as if it were a community garden where high technology firms are harvested. This is a nonprofit organization that acts local and thinks global. It is precisely the type of organization our communities, both business and residential, must support for the North Bay to remain competitive into the next decade. As a lifelong resident of Sonoma County, SMBC is something this county needs and should be replicated throughout the North Bay.
Robert Eyler, Ph.D.
Professor SSU
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