TO: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
FROM: Tom Kisela, City Manager
1. SUBJECT
title
Presentation of Economic Development Strategy.
body
2. SUMMARY
Presentation of Economic Development Strategy to guide City efforts to expand economic opportunities in the community.
3. RECOMMENDED ACTION
recommendation
Receive and file.
end
4. FISCAL IMPACT
None.
5. STRATEGIC PLAN GOALS
Goal 2: Be a fiscally healthy community
e: Create an environment to attract, retain, and expand economic opportunities.
6. DISCUSSION AND BACKGROUND
Economic Development efforts focus on expanding economic opportunities, ensuring a broad revenue base to fund City services, creating and retaining jobs, providing a wide range of retail, restaurant, and service amenities for residents and visitors, and providing sufficient housing to support economic activity.
History of Economic Development in Orange
In the 1980's, the City of Orange created the Orange Redevelopment Agency (ORA) and designated multiple project areas in the City. The tax increment generated from ORA allowed the City to fund infrastructure improvements, business improvement programs, and affordable housing development; and hire staff to conduct business attraction, retention, and expansion efforts. As part of the 2011 Budget Act, the California State Legislature approved the dissolution of redevelopment agencies statewide, effective February 1, 2012. Deprived of its funding for economic development, the City of Orange disbanded its Economic Development Department and reassigned the ten staff members to various departments.
In the 11 years since the dissolution of ORA, the City has generally had one staff member assigned to business attraction, retention, and expansion efforts, although that staff member has also had other job duties that occupy a significant portion of their time. The annual budget for economic development efforts allows for the design and printing of one to two marketing brochures, an...
Click here for full text