Home / Archive / El Dorado County: Getting Healthy
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Regional Focus: May 2008
Getting Healthy
The county stops to take its economy’s pulse
Story by Christine Stanley
It took Matt Harmon and his development team for Montano de El Dorado, a 36,000-square-foot retail complex, more than 18 months to wade through the county’s permitting process for its El Dorado Hills project.
“There is a process, and it should be somewhat simple, but there is a lack of organization in the county offices,” says Harmon. He began construction on the first phase in 2006 and is now looking to begin the second phase at 150,000 square feet.
“Optimistically, I would like to think the process for a zoned piece of property should take six months, maybe a year at the most. A good solid process is what the county needs. That would be a huge benefit.”
And it appears the county is listening to gripes like Harmon’s. The county has signed on with Metro Pulse, a Web-based program backed by the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce that links economic development directors and resources to local businesses. The program aims to expand and retain small to medium-sized businesses — from improving permitting to workforce development initiatives.
Sam Driggers, economic development coordinator for El Dorado County, says his county is a hot market with potential to burn, and developing established businesses and attracting new companies aren’t going to happen without a fresh and proactive approach on the part of the county.
“The county has been in sort of a frozen state for 10-plus years, and because of that — because the general plan was in dispute — we are still working on updating ordinances, zoning, streamlining permitting and things like that,” Driggers says. “It’s a problem because businesses are suffering.”
Metro Pulse, a year-old program still in infancy in El Dorado, Yolo, Placer and Sacramento jurisdictions, seeks to provide seamless access to various resources for small and medium-sized businesses. By stockpiling business and resource information in one user-friendly database, government planners and agencies can cherry-pick the best two or three resources a business needs to meet its needs in a timely and cost-effective manner.
It’s a tool economic development professionals can use to be more effective and provide better customer service, says Driggers. It’s been slow to roll out in El Dorado County since early September but has been sought out by nearly 85 local businesses since.
“In the past, as a business owner, any time I had a problem as simple as getting our trash taken care of to something as complex as training my workforce, I didn’t have a single resource to go to. I had to play the telephone game — call as many people as you can until you find someone who can help you,” says Michael Faust, senior vice president of public policy and advocacy for the metro chamber.
Doug Braaten, a Placerville business owner, says he went through the same fiasco when his shop, CandyStrike-Olde Tyme Candy & More, wanted to start whipping up homemade fudge in the months leading up to the holiday season. Permitting took more than eight months on top of his being required to re-floor his shop and install a problematic ventilation system. Braaten went without fudge for the holiday.
“When Intel needs help, they pick up the phone and the resources are obvious because they’re such a large account, but small and mid-sized businesses don’t have that kind of access,” says Faust. “Metro Pulse provides all that in one location.”
The resource opportunities in Northern California are practically endless, says Matt Yancey, the metro chamber’s director of business and economic development, and for as many resources as there are, there are also as many professionals who know how to navigate those resources.
“We’re talking about workforce development, access to capital, educational resources — anything that a business could want or need to fill a gap in their own resources or to promote their success,” he says.
To connect local businesses with robust resource networks, officials in El Dorado plan to conduct hundreds of visits to area businesses in an effort to learn about the specific needs of industries and individual companies.
“By going out and talking with businesses about what can be done to improve things, we can make good public policy decisions and connect the business community to the services that are out there,” Driggers says.
But Metro Pulse is just one piece of a larger economic development puzzle in this part of Gold Country. Six months ago, El Dorado County put forth a comprehensive strategy that seeks, among other objectives, to reform and improve regulations that are complicated, opaque and often contradictory.
Driggers says the county hopes to achieve its goals by streamlining permitting processes, offering “fast-track” options for employment-generating projects — those businesses that employ three or more people in 5,000 or more square feet — and by offering business ombudsman services.
By implementing such changes, Driggers says, companies like CandyStrike and developments like Montano won’t have to deal with unnecessary runaround.
“We’ve got a lot of these issues out there because it’s a very linear process, and things aren’t running congruently like they should,” says Driggers, who says his goal is to alleviate these challenges and streamline the system. Not only that, but Driggers has put himself out as a sort of small-business concierge.
“I’m running the traps for [business owners] through the government. If they’re having issues getting water, I work with [the El Dorado Irrigation District]. If they’re having an issue with a permit, I’m their officer who will help get them in. it’s high-touch customer service,” he says.
“[If we can get] regulatory reform and business retention and expansion right, the entrepreneurs are going to want to come, stay and grow. Businesses are little seeds and you have to nurture them; it’s very similar to economic gardening.”
Faust says this is the first time the greater Sacramento region has had an area economic development plan where the cornerstone is business retention and expansion.
“The jurisdictions and service providers have come together to improve the business climate of this region. If you’re going to do business in California, we want you to do business in the Sacramento region, and Metro Pulse allows you to do business more efficiently,” says Faust.
The bottom line for the business community is to grow revenues, employ local people and sustain a well-balanced economy, says Betty Gorman, president of the Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce.
“We have a need to diversify our economy. I want to meet the businesses that are already here to ascertain why they came here and what they need for further development,” she says.
The growth is going to come, Driggers says, and the county wants to be poised to welcome that economic activity. “The vision that I’m getting back from the community is that they want a historic and rural sense of place, but it’s not about the hokey gold-panner vision, it’s about the entrepreneurial attitude of those pioneers. It’s incumbent upon the government to put together the framework to balance that with the needs of the business community — and the natural environment that makes this place so attractive,” says Driggers.
“We want to see business that is sustainable that fits with our heritage. We’re going to get more business, we’re going to create more jobs and we’re going to get more interest in the community.”
