What are you directly doing to promote, encourage, and protect small businesses in our community? Everything being done from all levels seems to be focused on benefits to individuals. This area is hard for small businesses and they are suffering.

— Anonymous

Response

Natalie Arroyo

Thank you for inquiring about this. Counties are statutorily obligated to provide quite a number of services to individuals, so it is certainly the case that individualized services to those in need are a large part of what we do. However, there are also many small business and economic development-related efforts going on. Local government’s role typically includes planning, carrying out permitting functions and other requirements for businesses to operate, and partnering with local organizations on programs to support small, private sector businesses.

Here are some highlights:

* New tourism and marketing strategy - We just released this document after months of work with community organizations like Chambers of Commerce and visitor-serving groups. There’s more to come on this, but we know tourism continues to be an area of strength and there are clear steps we can take to enhance this. 

* One-stop permitting location - In addition to the goal of realizing long-term savings by consolidating several departments, the intent here is to make it easier for businesses to get things done in one place. For example, if a new restaurant is opening, they might need a business license, to schedule a building inspection, to submit some planning documents, and to review environmental health specifications, and the proprietor would ideally be able to do that in one place. Additionally, these staff would be able to communicate with one another more readily. 

* Funding for entrepreneurial ventures - The County partners with the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission to administer Headwaters Fund grant and loan dollars as well as serving as a part of RREDC to provide loan opportunities to businesses who are not eligible for conventional loans. We also partner with organizations that offer small business development, strategized with Chambers of Commerce and trade groups, and have sought and administered funding for the agriculture and cannabis sectors. 

* Partnering on large projects with economic value - While the direct impact may not always be obvious, we partner with so many folks in the community to help bring construction dollars and big contracts to Humboldt. By having large projects underway here, whether it’s a Hollywood movie or a big broadband construction project, there are workers spending money locally, benefiting our local community. 

* Economic development strategy and Economic Development department capacity - Our Economic Development team work collaboratively with the state, other local agencies, and business representatives on both near-term requests (like information requests for potential big projects here, which again, help our local community when we can attract them) and longer-term strategies (like our Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy). We also provide some funding through hotel bed taxes to support economic development in collaboration with a wide variety of different organizations who do this work every day. Sometimes distributing grants to partner organizations is the right fit to tailor services to our geographically diverse community. 

* Air service recruitment and big successes - Thanks to years of hard work by the County and our community partners, our airport has multiple new service routes that connect us to more varied destinations and connect more people to us. This is huge for tourism, but also for recruiting and retaining people to work or live in our community (for example, medical professionals to fill key roles, or students to attend local higher-education schools who are a big part of our community).

These are top of mind, but I encourage you to reach out to me if you had something more specific in mind and I didn’t touch on it. We will really be focusing on next steps for tourism, marketing, and economic development in the next couple of years, so it’s a great time to share your thoughts. Feel free to email me at narroyo@co.humboldt.ca.us!

 

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