Chula Vista’s director of economic development, Michael Meacham, presented a business cluster analysis to the Chula Vista City Council Tuesday for ways to bring more businesses to the city.
Chula Vista City Manager Jim Sandoval said the city is no longer in a dire financial situation, and the next step to gain financial sustainability is to add more high-paying jobs in the city of Chula Vista.
“With your support, you might recall this past year we went out with an RFP (request for proposal), to determine what type of business clusters that we needed for our city, what type of businesses we should go after based upon a number of factors, all of our many positive attributes,” Sandoval said.
Adding more businesses is a need for Chula Vista because many residents leave the area for employment or schooling, as evidenced by the 2007 and 2010 census.
Meacham pointed out that in the 2007 census, approximately 70 percent of adult residents leave the city to go to work or school each day.
That number grew to 72 percent in 2010.
Meacham said the secondary impacts caused by residents leaving the second largest city in San Diego County comes financially with the loss of sales tax dollars.
“That large migration of intellectual and financial capital from Chula Vista each day contributes to the loss of businesses to consumer and business to business retail transaction that put Chula Vista companies approximately $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion below the county average,” Meacham said.
The purpose of the Chula Vista business cluster is to identify the “best fit” business clusters for the city, a readiness for recruitment of new businesses to attract and expand quality jobs and to provide recommendations for positioning and marketing and business recruitment.
Councilwoman Patricia Aguilar said she supports funding for a business cluster setting because Chula Vista cannot continue to lag behind the rest of the pack in bringing in sales tax revenue.
