Professor Steven Hackett: ECON 309
The Prosperity plan is the current economic development plan for Humboldt County, which has developed out of the need of a changing economy. As the face of the economy changed in the county so has the economic plan to guide the development. This paper looks at the strengths, weakness of this current plan as well as the threats facing the plan and the opportunities that have been developed as a direct consequence of the prosperity plan.
The Prosperity Network and the Prosperity Strategy that it employs foster economic vitality within the regional North Coast community. Considering the geographical and demographic constraints of the region, the Network has inherently ascribed “sustainable” values into the Prosperity Strategy. The innovative strategy of Prosperity is to connect various entities within the region, ultimately serving to benefit the entire community. The greatest strengths associated with Prosperity and the Prosperity Center can be attributed to the role that it plays in enhancing knowledge and awareness by fostering communication, while serving to benefit the community and natural environment.
The agencies that make up the Prosperity Network primarily serve to benefit individuals and businesses within the community. To foster a sustainable level of economic vitality within the region, the strategies associated with Prosperity acknowledge regional and local interdependencies. Recognizing regional challenges, the primary strength associated with Prosperity is its’ role in facilitating democratic processes and fostering local communication. To accomplish this, the North Coast Small Business Development Center (SBDC) offers planning services and educational workshops to current or prospective business owners in the community. It also administers BizNet, a program that provides information services to the community, integrating the interests and practices of the local Base Industry Clusters. The program aims to improve the conditions of the base industries by fostering healthy competition and maintaining adequate channels of communication within them.
As an integral member of the Prosperity Network, the College of the Redwoods is serving to enhance the knowledge of its students and benefit the community, by offering specialized curriculum and resources that can be directly applied to the current job market. This beneficial aspect of Prosperity serves to support the regional economic base by assessing market conditions and providing students with the knowledge and skills necessary to satisfy those conditions. While many University graduates leave the area to obtain high-level employment, College of the Redwoods recognizes that the curriculum it offers may be directly applicable to the needs of the local community. This service not only enhances local business and industry by providing knowledgeable employees, but also allows those people, and the dollars that they earn, to remain in the local community.
Organizations that comprise the Prosperity Network such as the Arcata Economic Development Commission (AEDC) and the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission (RREDC) offer lending and technical assistance to prospective business owners. Seen as an overwhelming asset to the region, financial and technical assistance allows small businesses to function efficiently upon startup, while providing a needed service or item to the community over a period of time. In conclusion, it is clear that the strengths associated with the Prosperity Network can be attributed to its function as an overarching facilitator of communication between constituent organizations, individual community members, local business owners, and industry representatives.
Weaknesses
Although the strengths of the prosperity network are predominant, some
weaknesses do exist. The weaknesses are
different from threats for the weaknesses lie within the network and are a
direct effect of the network and its actions.
Threats, in contrast, lie outside the network and are not a direct
effect of the actions done by the network.
The first weakness of the prosperity
network is, the lack of partnering with environmental organizations. There is not a strong balance of local businesses,
especially in polluting and environmentally degrading industries, working along
side environmental organizations. If
the prosperity network could have a more specific plan in which they actively
encourage the needed dual participation, it would make the plan much
stronger.
The second weakness of the
prosperity network is their ambiguous plan of linking high school curriculum
with that of the skills needed for the job opportunities in this area. The network has a plan to create this linkage,
but no plan on how this plan can or will be implemented. There are not a lot of job opportunities in
this area so this skills that are to be included into this curriculum must
include some high technical difficulty or the network will come across the same
problem time and time again- high school students leaving the area to obtain
more difficult higher paying jobs elsewhere.
The last weakness to be discussed is
that of keeping the private sector involved with the networks plans. Problems arise between local businesses, our
federal government with its rules and regulations and groups like the
prosperity network. Some examples of
this are the Dairy industry and private property owners. A weakness in the networks plan is no
defined rules of exemptions for businesses voluntarily doing one thing to help
the mission of the plan and then being penalized for the same thing by, for
example, the federal government. If a
private property owner wants to help the tourism industry by converting part of
their land to wetlands, they now will lose many rights to decide what to do
with their land by the federal governments’ rules and regulations. It is
obvious that the prosperity networks plan has some weaknesses, but they can be
strengthened.
Along with the apparent strengths and weaknesses
associated with the Prosperity strategy, the Prosperity Network is faced with a
number of threats. One of the main challenges for economic development in
Humboldt County is transportation and isolation of the communities in Humboldt
County to larger markets. There are
plans to create a by-pass around the highway 101 slide area so that traffic can
move more freely. Bulky low cost items can be barged up or down the coast and
some items can be shipped by plane. There are some committees looking at
expanding the port and restoring the railroad as ways to improve the
transportation barriers. The other option is to ship products by plane, which
is very expensive not to mention that the Arcata airport is very limited
regarding services areas. Even though these issues are being looked at,
transportation will remain a critical issue because of our remote location.
On the positive side of the transportation issue there is a focus on value added goods, meaning that there is a shift away from exporting raw materials such as lumber. An example of a value added product is handcrafted furniture. The furniture can be sold to an outside market such as to the Bay Area for more money than selling the raw lumber. In doing these more expensive products will be shipped rather than low cost materials.
Globalization was seen at both as threat and a positive influence to the Humboldt County economy at the Prosperity Network meeting. On one hand jobs are lost as companies move to locations where labor is cheaper. The so-called race to the bottom is also responsible for relocation as international cooperation’s seek out location where environmental regulations are less strict. On the other hand as was pointed out at the Prosperity Network meeting that higher paying jobs are sometimes created in the area as in the case with Yakima when they kept their headquarters in Humboldt County.
Another threat that was identified at the Prosperity Network meeting is the complication of environmental regulations. Although this was identified as a problem in Humboldt County, most counties (especially in California) have to deal with unclear CEQA and NEPA regulations as well as a number of others. Some of the problems that industry faces are the lack of clear guidelines. Different regulatory agencies vary in what they want and some times regulations can even counteract each other. (Such as the State Water Board Regulations and the California Regional Quality Control Boards Regulations.) Not only that, but standards can change from regulator to regulator in some cases. Private industry finds it difficult to make a profit when the rules are changing on them.
An example of this frustration is the Dairy Industry need to clean up the local watersheds and keep the manure out of the water. To comply with regulation a settling pond for the manure was built. The regulating agency (I’m assuming it was the California EPA) then came back and insisted that the Dairy Industry mitigate the loss of wetlands that was a result of building the facility for the cow manure. The Dairy Industry did not know about this in advance, thus adding an unforeseen cost to complying with regulations.
In order to avoid these kinds of problems environmental regulations need to be clarified for businesses. To address these kinds of issues the Dairy Waste Management Project is working on streamlining the permitting process. This is a grate attempt at solving the regulation issues, but as science changes so will the regulations hence there will always be a gap in keeping up.
Considering the weaknesses and threats of the network, opportunities to improve and enact the plan are possible. The most obvious of the opportunities that have been created by the Prosperity Plan would be the development of the industry clusters. These clusters tie together a number of resources as well as private and public interest. Through these clusters services that are needed by the community are identified. The hospitality cluster for example needed food safety and culinary training. This cluster identified a need and then the College of the Redwoods stepped up to the plate and developed classes that fit these needs.
Another opportunity is the development of small businesses. Small business started by community members is the hart and the sole of the county. Because small businesses are so important, there are a number of services that have been developed by the Prosperity Plan. The goal is to develop a network for entrepreneurial success for individuals who want to start a business. For example HSU hosts an entrepreneur day on campus. BisNet is another service for entrepreneurs, which provides support services as well as answers to a number of questions that small business owners might have. College of the Redwoods had developed course work to help individuals get their business off the ground. The list goes on regarding the opportunities that have developed out of the Prosperity Plan.
Where small businesses bring money into the economy at a local level, the restoration of our watersheds and protection of our forests is bringing capital into the economy from out side sources. Grant funds for environmental projects are making its way into the Humboldt economy. Included in the Prosperity Plan is the goal to invest in the restoration of our local natural resources, but what isn’t recognized is that the restoration of our natural resources is drawing funding form a verity of outside sources.
Another opportunity for economic development that come from our unique natural resources is the tourism industry. The Prosperity Plan identifies our community as having that small town feeling, an appreciation of natural beauty and as having a unique forward thinking population. All of these qualities are selling points in the tourism industry. Many businesses can also have value added to their products by creating that small town image; some even have tours such as going to one our small town dairy operation. The Prosperity Plan is committed to keeping this image and quality of life that is helping to create these kinds of opportunities.
The most unique thing about the Prosperity Plan is the notion of sustainability that is built in to the plan. The fact that the quality of life and sense of community is identified in this plan is very important. The environment quality is also acknowledged as being the responsibility of the community, government and private industry. The most important tool in accomplishing these goals is communication. As good communication is developed between residents and private industry the economic development of the area will become more sustainable.
All though we have covered the strengths, weakness of this current plan as well as the threats facing the plan and the opportunities this plan has created this is by no means a comprehensive analysis. Unfortunately we simply do not have the room to do that in only four pages. More simply this is a look at a few key issues that our group identified as needing to be addressed. It is also important to note that the prosperity plan is unique combining both sustainability (including quality of life) with the need for community economic growth. Being the Prosperity concept is relatively new there will be bumps in the road as this plan is ever evolving to meet the current needs of the community. Thus, many of the things we identified may change in the future.