Economic Prosperity Element

The purpose of the Economic Prosperity Element is to ensure Santa Ana’s local economy, and its role in the broader regional economy, expands, maintains, and enhances job opportunities; attracts and retains a balance of business types; provides sufficient revenue for public services; and contributes to the overall quality of life experienced by the city’s residents.

Santa Ana is a unique, historic, urban city with significant opportunities to capitalize on its many assets: a diverse and multicultural community; a great location to live, work, and do business; and high quality public facilities and services.

To thrive, the City must continue to diversify its economy to realize more jobs in the community, more urban renewal, and expanded revenue to support the growing demands on City services.

Key to the City’ s success is making budget decisions that balance the needs of the community with the City’s long-term viability. This will require prioritizing spending through annual City budgets and preparing for increased demands on the City’ s infrastructure and more services as this community grows.

The goals and policies of this element will inform and guide decisions across City government. The City intends that its allocation of resources, the operation of its agencies, and the application of its regulatory authority will cause the local economy to grow and diversify. The City further intends that local economic growth and diversification will reduce and ameliorate poverty, increase overall prosperity, improve health and wellness outcomes, expand housing opportunities, and increase quality of life choices available to city residents.

Through the community engagement process for this General Plan, participants identified numerous economic considerations and values that they believe should form the basis of and be addressed by this element. Specifically, participants highlighted the following topics, areas of concern, and community strengths:

• Developing local talent and a skilled workforce
• Broad economic goals
• Maintain a business-friendly environment
• Attract industries with living wage jobs
• Invest in downtown and citywide
• Highlight the city’s unique and attractive qualities
• Expand employment opportunities for youth
• Support small businesses

Foster a dynamic local economy that provides and creates employment opportunities for all residents in the city.

• Policy EP-1.1
  Protect Industrial
  Protect industrial uses that provide quality job opportunities, including middle-income jobs; provide for secondary employment and supporting uses; and maintain areas where smaller emerging industrial uses can locate in a multitenant setting.
  
• Policy EP-1.2
  Attract Business
  Strengthen and expand citywide business attraction efforts in order to achieve the city’s full employment potential.
  
• Policy EP-1.3
  Living-wage Employment
  Promote new and retain existing job-producing businesses that provide living-wage employment opportunities.
  
• Policy EP-1.4
  Job Skills
  Pursue available financial and tax incentives to improve residents’ employment skills and workforce preparation.
  
• Policy EP-1.5
  Access through Education
  Support education and employment training on a citywide basis to improve access to higher-wage and emerging occupations.
  
• Policy EP-1.6
  Comprehensive Approach
  Collaborate with chambers of commerce, educational institutions, and other partners to prepare residents to seek and thrive in current and emerging employment environments.
  
• Policy EP-1.7
  Targeted Resources
  Target business attraction and retention resources to firms with high positive net revenue implications for local government, particularly those engaged in business-to-business taxable sales transactions.
  
• Policy EP-1.8
  Growing Tax Base
  Collaborate with the chambers of commerce to promote fiscal stability and growth of sales tax and employment generating businesses in the city.
  
• Policy EP-1.9
  Avoid Conflict of Uses
  Avoid potential land use conflicts by prohibiting the location of sensitive receptors and noxious land uses in close proximity.
  
• Policy EP-1.10
  Creative Class
  Target the attraction of arts and culture related industries to create jobs, attract investments, and stimulate the local economy through tourism.
  

Maintain and enhance the diversity and regional significance of the city’s economic base.

• Policy EP-2.1
  High-growth Businesses
  Promote economic development opportunities in high-growth business clusters that match the changing skillset of the city’s resident population.
  
• Policy EP-2.2
  Deliberate Investment
  Pursue business attraction and retention prospects in sectors which broaden and strengthen the local economy.
  
• Policy EP-2.3
  Complementary Businesses
  Encourage the development of mutually beneficial and complementary business clusters within the community.
  
• Policy EP-2.4
  Community-led Economic Development
  Support community-based economic development initiatives, such as buy-local campaign, marketing strategies, and worker cooperatives.
  
• Policy EP-2.5
  Sufficient Industrial Land
  Ensure sufficient availability of industrial zoned properties and businesses that provide employment opportunities for the city’s resident population.
  
• Policy EP-2.6
  Small Business Assistance
  Support and encourage small business development, incubators, and microenterprises through start-up assistance and identification of fiscal resources for entrepreneurship.
  
• Policy EP-2.7
  Infrastructure as an Amenity
  Provide state-of-the-art infrastructure systems with sufficient capacity to attract emerging businesses, encourage efficient public service delivery, and foster a sustainable community.
  
• Policy EP-2.8
  Emerging Businesses
  Pursue and grow emerging business and industry that further fiscal and environmental sustainability of the community.
  
• Policy EP-2.9
  Energy Conservation
  Collaborate with utility providers and regional partners to encourage business and industry to improve performance in energy efficiency, water conservation, and waste reduction.
  
• Policy EP-2.10
  Green Business
  Support the growth of a diverse green business sector that facilitates and promotes environmental sustainability and creates a competitive advantage for business attraction activities.
  
• Policy EP-2.11
  Goods Producing Sector
  Support economic development initiatives and land use strategies that preserve and foster an environment that allows the goods producing sector to thrive.
  
• Policy EP-2.12
  Resiliency
  Collaborate with governmental agencies and businesses to develop, maintain, and deploy physical and financial strategies that enable businesses of all sizes and their employees to withstand and recover from the acute impacts of flooding, extreme weather events, and public health epidemics or pandemics.
  

Promote a business friendly environment where businesses thrive and build on Santa Ana’s strengths and opportunities.

• Policy EP-3.1
  Leverage Historic and Cultural Assets
  Market the city’s historic and cultural assets to increase the attraction of businesses and their employees to Santa Ana’s places and destinations.
  
• Policy EP-3.2
  City Branding
  Promote Santa Ana as a “Smart City” and regional leader in sustainability, equity, innovation, place making, collaboration, and community pride in products made in Santa Ana.
  
• Policy EP-3.3
  Mitigate Impacts
  Promote the development of sustainable and equitable new land use plans that proactively reduces negative health and economic impacts on existing residents and businesses, especially in environmental justice communities.
  
• Policy EP-3.4
  Complete Communities
  Encourage the development of “complete communities” that provide a range of housing, services, amenities, and transportation options to support the retention and attraction of a skilled workforce and employment base.
  
• Policy EP-3.5
  Simplify the Process
  Provide a streamlined development process and assist businesses with permit processing.
  
• Policy EP-3.6
  Responsive to Trends
  Maintain flexible and up-to-date land use regulations that are responsive to changing business trends, best practices, technological advancements, and community needs.
  
• Policy EP-3.7
  Facilitating Investment
  Promote a solution-based customer focus in order to facilitate additional development and investment in the community.
  
• Policy EP-3.8
  Comprehensive Analysis of Land Use
  Pursue a balance of fiscal and qualitative community benefits when making land use decisions.
  
• Policy EP-3.9
  Civic Culture and Community Service
  Facilitate a business culture that encourages community service and wellness programs for residents and employees.
  
• Policy EP-3.10
  Rethinking Strip-commercial
  Promote the creation of distinctive neighborhood serving districts through the renovation or redevelopment of existing strip-commercial development.
  
• Policy EP-3.11
  Improve Image
  Create vibrant public spaces through arts and culture projects that enhance urban quality of life, expand the tax base, and improve regional and community image.
  

Promote strategies that create an economic development mindset integrated throughout City Hall.

• Policy EP-4.1
  Economic Development Responsibility
  Promote a spirit in which economic development is the responsibility of each elected official, appointed official, and City employee through ongoing quality customer service.
  
• Policy EP-4.2
  Economic Development Training
  As financial resources are available, invest in economic development training for staff, elected and appointed officials, and key community stakeholders.
  
• Policy EP-4.3
  Business Visitation
  Encourage frequent dialogue between City representatives and owners and managers of businesses operating in Santa Ana.
  
• Policy EP-4.4
  Economic Development Strategy
  Adopt and regularly update a comprehensive economic development strategic plan, either as a stand-alone plan or as part of the City’s Strategic Plan.
  
• Policy EP-4.5
  Economic Development Partners
  Collaborate effectively with regional economic development partners to achieve specific measurable goals for Santa Ana.
  
• Policy EP-4.6
  Public-private Partnerships
  Prioritize municipal initiatives and investments in areas in which private sector businesses and property owners are voluntarily providing private funding through special financing districts (such as assessment districts and business improvement districts).
  

An implementation plan is a coordinated series of actions the City desires to take in the future that are intended to advance, over the long term, the City’s Shared Vision, Core Values, and the General Plan goals and policies. An implementation plan is thus a follow-up measure for this element. Taken as a whole, these programs represent the City’s best thinking today on what actions should be taken to address the considerations and concerns of the community and make sure that the plan’s aspirations are achieved.

Implementation is in large part contingent upon adequate funding. Many of these actions can be pursued through initiatives already underway. Other programs will require additional resources. Therefore, the exact mix and timing of programs the City may pursue will in part be opportunity driven, dependent on the availability of funding, staffing, and other necessary resources. The Time Frame in the Implementation Table below is the target for completion of the Action.

This element may be implemented by amendments to existing plans, ordinances, development standards, and design guidelines; capital investments/projects; and interagency/interjurisdictional coordination. The following table identifies the implementation action, the responsible City agency, and the targeted timeline for accomplishment.