Marin Voice: Now is the time for a countywide economic strategy
By Mike Blakeley
The new coronavirus is causing severe disruption to the economy, especially for small businesses.
Governments and the private sector are responding to the financial threat, but we don’t know how bad it will get. Here in Marin, we are beginning to see our small businesses close, perhaps for good. The multiplier effect of lost jobs and reduced consumer spending further puts our local economy at risk.
Like all recessions before, there will be a recovery. How long and how strong is not known. But what is known is that a strong recovery can be assured with the right kind of planning. Unfortunately, in Marin County we don’t have an economic development agency that could lead such an effort. Further, it has been over five years since a comprehensive economic development study (CEDS) was produced for the county by the Marin Economic Forum. That document is now outdated and was never meant to be a strategy or to manage recovery from recession.
What Marin County does have right now is a network of business support organizations and Chamber of Commerce groups that can work with the MEF and the county to plan for our recovery. The time to allocate resources towards an economic strategy is now.
Local economic strategies need to be just that: local. We Marinites need to determine for ourselves what our economy should look like and how it serves our residents, whether that be in the goods and services we need or the jobs we want. Good strategies are a function of understanding the challenges they are created to address.
Currently, and in the past, the Marin economy has largely been oriented to its residents, with just a handful of companies serving outside markets. As a result, there is an imbalance of low skill service jobs versus high skill professional occupations, forcing many of our residents to seek employment outside the county.
This dynamic creates a need to import lower skilled workers, further stressing a transportation network that was never designed to accommodate major flows in and out of the County. An economic strategy would allow officials and residents to start thinking strategically about how we attract or support those businesses in Marin that serve regional and national markets and will provide higher skilled, and higher wage, job opportunities for our residents.
Marin’s economy is composed of a diverse number of sectors, from agriculture to biotech to construction and real estate, but none of them have been prioritized in a way that would result in regulatory incentives to support their development and growth. Further, this wide range of sectors makes it difficult for workforce development entities to decide where to invest resources and what talent pipelines to support. Identifying strategic sectors for future support will be critical in rebuilding and advancing our local economy.
Finally, we need to support our entrepreneurs by fostering an ecosystem that will encourage creativity and risk taking. This relies on partnerships between the private sector, education and government, which for a county the size of Marin should be easy to organize. There is a legacy of world-class company creation in Marin County and we need that to continue for our future prosperity.
None of these actions will occur without intent. That is why we need to encourage our leaders to think about a countywide economic strategy that will take us forward from the recession we are about to experience, but also with the aim of providing opportunities for future prosperity of our residents, many who are business owners themselves.
Urge your local leader to support our economic future with a plan.
Mike Blakeley, of San Anselmo, is the chief executive officer of the Marin Economic Forum.
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