Millions Spent Planning the North Coast’s Economic Future — Now Comes the Hard Part
Leoni Fohr of the California Center for Rural Policy (CCRP) at Cal Poly.
The North Coast region has gotten millions of dollars in state funding for a North Edge-led jobs creation effort, with support from the California Center for Rural Policy at Cal Poly Humboldt, that helps projects advance through predevelopment phase, but future funding is uncertain.*
Progress of Redwood Region RISE, the North Coast’s piece of a statewide economic development initiative, was updated during a Feb. 4 online presentation to the Community Economic Resilience Consortium.
Part of the California Jobs First initiative, Redwood Region RISE has brought together 150 North Coast community organizations and more than 1,200 residents to coordinate planning of economic development projects.
“We aim to strengthen what we’re calling project readiness, alignment, and regional visibility,” said Leoni Fohr of the California Center for Rural Policy (CCRP) at Cal Poly. “So in a nutshell, we try to be the connective tissue that helps projects succeed.”
So far, $13.2 million in state funding and $2.5 million of philanthropic funding has provided planning assistance for dozens of projects in Humboldt, Mendocino, Del Norte and Lake counties. Amanda Pecanha Hickey, also of the CCRP, said a “results-based accountability framework” is driving the effort.
Amanda Pecanha Hickey of the California Center for Rural Policy
“In 10 years from now, will we see poverty rates decline? Will we see median household incomes go up? Will we see affordability come into check?” she asked.
The projects being planned span several sectors including arts, culture and tourism, health care, energy and “working lands and blue economy.” The effort poises local projects for future implementation funding.
Gregg Foster, executive director of the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission and the meeting’s host, noted some challenges.
“What we’ve seen with past regional efforts is that there was planning, but without much in the way of ability to get resources to the ground afterwards,” he said. “Not more planning funding, but the actual tangible project.”
The structure of future funding is “an open question,” said Hickey, but further discussion led to Foster’s mention of the North Coast Resource Partnership, which has implemented water-related projects with voter-approved bond funding.
Hickey said the Partnership “has always been a model for us.”
Redwood Region RISE is funded through September and state funding beyond that isn’t guaranteed.
But projects can be funded in a variety of ways.
“I think we finally have a vision getting fine-tuned to create that brain trust of folks who understand lending and how can we get projects that are fundable in front of people who know how to find funding,” said Susan Seaman of North Edge, formerly the Arcata Economic Development Corporation. “So that’s where I see our our role being after this without funding and then with funding, it’s a whole other discussion.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s term ends in January 2027 and while Foster alluded to political change, he suggested there could be progress.
“The next governor will be I think the sixth or seventh governor of California since I’ve started in my career and you know, those winds do change,” he said. “But but each time I think we move forward a little bit – we’re certainly way ahead of where we were when I started my career.”
*Note: This article has been updated to clarify the leadership of the Redwood Region RISE initiative and to adjust wording related to project financing.
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Sawmills? Biomass?
Gravel extraction. Maybe 150 jobs.
Lower Eel River should be dredged out to it’s ‘historic’ depths.
Gravel loaded on barges for export.
‘Greenies’ are blocking that one. Have no er… ‘reasonable’ idea why.
I suspect the don’t want any economic development up here.
Recycling bums into Soylent Green?
There is a biomass plant in Mendocino among the projects they’ve given funding to. Also a plant in blue lake producing mass timber products, and a project of the blue lake rancheria to develop markets for non timber species’ wood products like traditional carved goods and woven baskets.
Does it pay for labor and fuel enough to make landowners rake the forest?
I’m not sure what their operational plans are, they claim that they will use inputs derived from fuels reduction efforts so…maybe?
https://ccrp.humboldt.edu/catalyst-projects/red-hills-bioenergy-facility-central-wood-processing-plant
I do think I mistakenly said it was in Mendocino but the link says it’s in Lake county.
So ,lots of talk, and more talk, and some planning, and more plans for undefined projects. Near as I can tell, the only jobs created are for talkers and planners. Paid for by the taxes of actual workers.
$13.2 million in state funding and $2.5 million of philanthropic funding? Someone got rich.
It’s easy with someone else’s money, ask the government, they’re specialists. These guys are still in training.
IMHO:
>”The effort poises local projects for future implementation funding”
Going after ‘grant monies‘. That’s what this is all about.
No decent highways into this region. EPIC (and cohorts) blocks that one.
Limited timber.
No fishing.
Limited Agriculture.
Newsom (and cohorts) will be blocking transportation (in progress). Rural Humboldt residents will be forced into Brutalist concrete structures (in progress). Backcountry will be empty… reserved for ultra-wealthy SF/LA Newsomites (in progress).
It is a grim future for the remaining residents.
Grant funding is a Humboldt business.
The Lilly Farm? gone
Fish farm? Pissed away
Wind farm manufacturing station? gone
Weed? LOL
.
but we do have:
Low income apartment complex? Full on short term construction.
Bike lane and bumpouts? Cant do them fast enough, short term.
Amazon hub? jobs transition
State and federal jobs. Lots of that. But they dont generate any income for the county.
Protesters? As long as Trump is in office!
Bozo has it correct, the planners sucking up the GRANT( tax payer) dollars to do studies that go nowhere. But what else are the people that have a masters degree in grant writing going to make a living ?
Toil in the mines. The future is grim
Hummm. Lake and mendo counties? That snot the “north coast”. Caution! This could be the foot in the door for the “great redwood trail” fantasy being cooked up.by Mike McGuire and his cult.
How is Mendocino not the north coast?
I agree that Lake County isn’t technically the north coast, but i also understand why they would be lumped in with us when the state is making districts.
Millions wasted. Talk talk talk. Nothing comes of it but these talkers get fat paychecks. There is a rigid thinking bunch of people here who want us to stay backwards and out of date as we have always been. People need jobs. Goods. Services. Our population is large enough now that these things are a total logjam without some progress.
For the North Coast to economically prevail, the government needs to be restricted. High fuel cost, high TAXes, and all the other oppressive government restrictions, need to change. California has lost BILLIONS because of this progressive theft government. Why do business here? Do they even acknowledge this problem in there study? $$$
California continues to have the highest rate of small business operation of any state of a comparable size. Even higher rates than Florida, with no state income tax.
The only states that have higher rates of business operation are small states that have corporate location as a cottage industry like Delaware, Wyoming, and Nevada.
I’ve owned several small businesses across a couple industries so I fully understand the issue of the state government being a nuisance and liking to nickel and dime you, but the hyperbole in your comment (and most conservative rhetoric around the topic) is just insane.
Instead of screaming that california is destroying small business (when available data says otherwise) let’s come up with some concrete issues that could actually be advocated for that would improve conditions.
Thank you for a little taste of sanity in a sea of nonsense.
Rates of what? You have to define that more. Start-ups per 100k people? Bankruptcies? Still in business after 2 years?
Active businesses per population.
Then why do we have so many empty storefronts and commercial buildings? They were full at one time. I mean-they weren’t built to be empty…but they are now. Arcata Plaza is now hosting lots of thrift stores. That’s a sure sign of decline. Weed dispensaries? Those aren’t a sign of a healthy economy lol…and half will be gone very soon as they are only riding on fumes…
Our area has seen a definite economic decline since the weed industry, which used to bring billions of dollars a year into our small community, collapsed.
I’m sure you’re aware that our area is a pretty small part of the california economy though.
Small businesses in northern California have been supplemented by weed profits for decades. Lets see how the next few years play out , humboldt has lost quite a few businesses as the weed market falls. Newsome defaulting on federal loan on unemployment has left a huge burden this year and next year on small business.
I dont think that rural northern California has ever been a major driver in statewide business numbers. But we will see for sure.
I certainly agree that California seems intent on making itself less appealing to businesses every year
The last major industry in Humboldt, cannabis, had to exist outside the law to thrive and did not survive legalization. Business formation, employment formation, comes down to an individual or small group deciding to risk their capital and toil to make a go of it. Why would any rational person make this choice in Humboldt where what industry there is must operate in perpetual stealth mode to avoid being shut down by so many different political factions. You can’t manufacture bullishness with an NGO committee.
Stumped by “blue economy”? Me too. Turns out “the blue economy, or the ocean economy, is a term used to describe the economic activities associated with the oceans and seas.” https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/explainers/what-is-the-blue-economy/
All I see is lots of people getting paid pretty well to go blah blah blah. Paid with OUR tax dollars…extracted from actual working people…to go blah blah blah
Maybe that’s all you see because you haven’t made an effort to engage with the process. From what I’ve seen out of RISE, they are working to develop small businesses that can last in our communities and are especially focused on supporting businesses that could facilitate additional opportunities for local business once they’re up and running.
What have you seen, besides this article, that makes you think it’s just talking?
Endless grift and never anything for the poors, just new jobs handing the dispersal of other peoples money to the poors, its the new middle class.
Hmm… geeze… let me think…
Empty storefronts ???
Empty storefronts are your evidence that an economic development program that is 18 months into its “implementation phase” is just talk? You realize that small retail storefronts is not the key to economic development in our area right?
A couple projects they’ve funded so far include a usda meat processor in crescent city, a biomass energy and biochar plant in Mendocino, a Healthcare workforce training facility in Lake county, a mass timber production manufacturing facility in blue lake, a program through ncga to identify key local food systems infrastructure and finance it, and programs to develop markets for local fiber and non timber tree species products.
I will never understand the impulse to criticize programs that you’ve apparently made no effort to understand even a little bit.
IMHO:
Hmmm… because I’ve seen the results ?
>”… usda meat processor in crescent city”
>The project is expected to create five full-time jobs, with revenue supporting Hmong Association programs…
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>”…biochar plant in Mendocino”
Sure, creating coke. (Carbon cooked from wood). Done for 150 years here.
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>”… a Healthcare workforce training facility in Lake county”
Where at ?? All I find are government facilities… and a nursing home ?
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>”… a mass timber production manufacturing facility in blue lake”
Eh ? Schmidbauer + Green Diamond (Old Simpson Korbel Sawmill).
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>”… ncga to identify key local food systems infrastructure and finance it”
Hmm… Dairy. That’s it. Maybe some summertime farms.
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>”programs to develop markets for local fiber and non timber tree species”
Alder… Chinkapin… Timber companies tried em. All failed.
>”…programs to develop markets for local fiber”
Hmm… so… what local fiber do we grow here ?
This stuff is COMICAL.
Yes, a meat processing plant with 5 employees that creates market opportunities for local farmers (including in humboldt because Crescent city is closer to many humboldt county farms than the current closest processor, since redwood meats closed).
Your objection to the biomass and biochar plant is that it was done in the past?
The lake county Healthcare workforce center isn’t built yet, but its intended to get interested high-school kids certified as EMT, CNA, and MA as well as providing adult classes in those certifications and continuing education for existing local Healthcare professionals.
Again, the mass timber facility receivef some funding, it is not built. The fact that this program was only funded through its initial phase is literally the point of this article. Ideally there will be some follow up funding, but if not there will be some projects that have progressed far enough to be ready to access private financing. A mass timber facility run by the rancheria might make it to that level.
The two things I have seen ncga working on are a community cold storage facility to allow existing vegetable farms to expand production and potentially distribute to the bay area and a corn mill to allow a start up to begin producing masa from local corn for local restaurants. I don’t know what else they’re doing but I believe they list all the projects and the funding they’ve provided on their website.
I get that you have some sort of fixation with shitting on programs like this for your own ideological/psychological reasons, but please stop pretending it’s based on anything beyond that.
Theguyinarcata…..And what is your job description working for RISE? It’s pretty evident that the energy you’re putting into these comments indicates you are trying to justify whatever it is you’re doing there. Now take a deep breath, relax, take care of yourself, be well and understand that the majority of us thinks this is a god awful waste of time, money and a lot of other things.
Pushing into insult territory.
I’d love if people wanted to raise some actual criticism of this program. I don’t work for them, but I do care about my community and recognize that we need help in terms of our local economy.
I don’t think, and have never claimed, that this program was perfect. There’s definitely some stuff they’ve chosen to fund that seems like a waste to me. But I’m also an adult who realizes that I’m not king of the world and part of being involved in a community is accepting that sometimes choices get made that aren’t the one’s you’d make.
And no, I don’t work for RISE or any organization that has gotten any money from them. My closest relationship is volunteering on some garden work for the people who are trying to start the local masa company. That’s how I know that they have gotten some funding to afford their corn grinder. The rest of the stuff I’ve shared I either got off the RISE website or picked up over the course of living here.
IMHO:
>”Crescent city is closer to many humboldt county farms than the current closest processor, since redwood meats closed).”
Hmm… ah yes… not built yet.
The plant will meet ‘culturally specific needs’ of the Hmong community, which currently lacks a reliable source for these products. Will empower marginalized communities, with a focus on the Hmong and Latinx populations. The facility will be owned and sponsored by the Hmong Association. (RCAA wording)
Spending $500K… on an er… ‘design’ for a project owned by the ‘Hmong Association ?
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>”Your objection to the biomass and biochar plant is that it was done in the past?”
If producing char/coke was a ‘viable outcome’… and was economically doable, people would have continued it from long ago. As it is, a wildly inefficient use of time and energy. Reasonable humans gave up on producing char/coke a long time ago.
—
>”The lake county Healthcare workforce center isn’t built yet”
Ah… yes.
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>”Again, the mass timber facility received some funding, it is not built”
Ah yes… not built yet.
By the way… so where are they going to get the ‘timber’ from ?
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>”ncga working on are a community cold storage facility to allow existing vegetable farms to expand production and potentially distribute to the bay area”
Ah yes… ‘not built yet’.
Yup… sure… heck, let’s take ‘meager’ amount of vegetables raised here on a 300 mile journey to er… ‘compete’ with produce raised in the Central Valley… that has good climate, great soil, and good water availability. Then of course, it is only 50 miles from the city.
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>’… corn mill to allow a start up to begin producing masa from local corn.
Who raises seed corn here ? NW California has a bad climate for even thinking about that idea. Who came up with this ?
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>”I get that you have some sort of fixation with shitting on programs like this for your own ideological/psychological reasons, but please stop pretending it’s based on anything beyond that.”
I don’t ‘shit on’ decent programs.
What I shit on is seeing millions and millions of dollars being completely pissed down the drain. Money is being siphoned off to various committee meetings and being disappeared into non-profits.
I have seen this before. Public money being wasted on nothing.
By the way… this pisses me off.
It will piss off most ‘reasonable people’ too.
Great counterpoints! I’ll sit back and let you two debate….
You seem like you’re angry about the program because you’re choosing not to understand it. I’m not going to pretend that it’s some sort of flawless program and every penny will be part of some panacea for our regions economic struggles, but that’s because I’m an adult who realizes that nothing in this world is perfect and I am comparing this public economic development against the private economic development that we’ve got going on instead of some sort of mythical perfect scenario.
Yeah, the meat plant will be owned by a Hmong organization. Because they are the people who came forward demonstrating an interest and a market. How do you think this process works? Are you imagining that RISE is just making up their own projects and handing out money? You can read about the actual process, you could have been involved in it a couple years ago when it was just starting and exploring projects that fit it’s goal. And yeah $500k for the architectural and engineering design and technical assistance to get a permitted meat processing facility approved. You won’t catch me defending the layers of bureaucracy that go into planning, design, and approval of most building these days. That’s not waste on this grant project though, that’s decades of changes to government processes.
As to the biomass/biochar plant, it sounds like you are mistaking biochar (a soil amendment) with charcoal. The plant in question, being built and operated by a tribal utility, sounds like it will be using a gassification process to generate burnable fuel to produce power with a by product that is called biochar. This is a highly porous carbon structure that has been shown to improve things like water retention and soil biological health and to decrease nutrient leaching from ag soils. It’s increasingly popular as a soil amendment for commercial ag as well as an input for commercial scale composting. It’s an interesting opportunity, for our region, to potentially create several revenue streams from the by product of fuels reduction. We’ll see how this project goes and maybe it will be a blueprint for future similar projects.
As to the seed corn, there’s lots of it grown locally for cows. You can see it down near fortuna right along the 101. I’ve grown it in my own garden (including very close to the actual coast) and a number of small farms have grown some. The whole point of getting a local mill established is to create a bigger market for farmers that are interested in growing it here. Our farms aren’t big enough to grow most grains at commodity scales, so having a local market that will buy more modest crops is the whole point of this kind of economic development. I’d recommend you get your dictionary out and look up those two words, it might help you understand programs like this more.
This will do for a start: Federal grants – “The federal government awards hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to state and local governments each year.”
And “The federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, according to GAO’s government-wide estimates based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022.”
https://www.gao.gov/fraud-improper-payments
https://www.gao.gov/federal-grants-state-and-local-governments
I don’t know what you’re responding to or what you’re attempting to communicate with those links. Could you give me some idea of how you’re meaning to connect that data you shared to the conversation about this economic development project in our region?
You asked “What have you seen, besides this article, that makes you think it’s just talking?” This article touts North Coast Resource Partnership, which is, as far as I can see,almost totally funded by grants. RISE is too. Maybe they intend to allow local business to start but it is likely those business, even if they get SBA loans, exist in turn by grants. It is a churning of grant money and that churning is itself has become a “local busihess.”
And such setting out of government money rarely has checks before it is passed on. Instead, government spends even more money on investigation and prosecution after the money is gone. And rarely, since the coining of the term “undeserved community does that give most people a real return for the tax money they pay..
https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/september/overcoming-roadblocks
Wait, what were those first links supposed to be pointing us toward?
Are you simply disputing the idea that government investment can ever help launch or expand successful businesses?
You seem to just be speaking in vague generalities about issues of government waste. How do you think that applies to this program? And how would you change programs like this to reduce that problem?
Have you been to any of their meetings? I went to one and that was enough for me to see that its a waste of taxpayer money. How many of the primary people in charge have actually started a small business in Humboldt county and turned it into a big business in Humboldt? Those are the people that should be running this show.
All the committees who talk and meet and talk and meet. But I just read some of your comments below where you point out things that they have done and made happen. I do not know this group. You explained them pretty well and you changed my ignorant mind on this group. I surrender my original complaint! Thanks for speaking up and informing we who have become cynical of all grant-writers and committees! Have a good tomorrow….
Glad to hear it Farce. I’m not super rosy on the world of government programs, but I try to be pragmatic.
Private economic development, locally, has mostly looked like, “exploit the natural resources locally, exploit the local labor pool, send as much of the wealth as possible to the city based financiers, leave a degraded and sometimes toxic environment and a bunch of unemployed people behind.”
At least with a program like this there’s some effort to develop businesses that will actually be based here and serve the needs of people here.
Cuppla points lotta comments are missing..IMHO
1.Humboldt county has Only Ever been a Resource Extraction colony. (district 12) Its the Only thing Capitalism Ever does. Steal shit from somewhere, (strip mining, strip logging, strip fishing, strip farming,personal data”mining”)anywhere and convert said shit into Wealth then take that Wealth back to the Billionaire Mansions and gloat.(the Capitol)
2. All resources have Already been extracted, stripped, stolen, plundered and pissed away. The future already got consumed and no amount of “studies” and “proposals” and consultants is bringing “back” anything.
The only resource not completely stripped and stolen quite yet is oil and that is happening as we comment!
PS pot growing was never an “industry” it was a legal crack in the wall of capitalism that let the smarter of the hungry unemployed working class people live life a step up from working class despair and outright poverty. The not so smart did the twmporary “grower” rich thing briefly (consumer buying frenzies) before succombing to economic reality. No market, no income, no job.
First big wave of generational tweakers came from unemployed mill workers. Especially night shift workers.
Second big wave of generational tweakers has come from unemployed pot growers.
There are alternatives to rural despair but these expensive bullshit studies are not it!
Oh well…
Rural despair? Extraction economy? Capitalism only steals shit? Hello? How afunctional can academic philosophy get?
Every single ideal of a structured version of any utopian society fails sooner or later, usually very much sooner, because humans are not fond of them. Utopianists usually push too far and the pushed rebel. Most humans are highly intolerate of other people’s individuality. Reformers dream of imposing their own on everyone. Capitalism thrives because it is flexible to that nature. Every other system else fails because it is not.
But the happy news is everyone can leave as much capitalism as they want behind. If they are content with the consequences.
This article is so depressing. Millions in grants to support these people using the grant money to train other people to apply for grants. The stupidity here is head bending. Massively head bending.
From what I’ve seen first hand, RISE isn’t training people to apply for grants. Its training people to pursue commercial lending as a teaching them other small business skills.
The only thing I’ve seen with a grant focus is identifying key pieces of infrastructure that could be grant funded and then create more viable small business opportunities once they exist locally
Give some examples of something that is not grant funded. Something that has earned its own way. Because ideal mentioned, NCRP, is all grants. From government mostly.
You’re asking for examples of local businesses that aren’t grant funded? I’m not clear in what you’re asking for
If a person cannot figure out how to apply for a commercial loan, then they have no business trying to start a business. And these people are being paid by grant money to try and educate people how to apply for a loan. Good God this is even more head bending.
Most of this grant money has gone to seed projects that aren’t appealing to conventional lenders because they don’t have a big enough projected return (like the meat processor in crescent city or the biomass/biochar plant in Mendocino) and to projects that are looking to develop new markets like fiber, mass timber products, and traditional woodland products made from non timber species.
But I’m really confused about your objection to training for people in obtaining commercial financing, how do you think people learn to engage with commercial lending if they don’t get training? Is your opinion that commercial lending should only be available to people that are introduced to it by their family or that go to business school? Do you also oppose the SBA?
If these projects are not that profitable, then of course they are not attractive to commercial lending. Which is why they get government grant funding. The government has other objectives than profit because it can tap a bottomless purse. There will not be a return on the investment. Why shouldn’t the tax payer object. Or at least seriously demand answers. It’s their money that is not giving them a return. Maybe it benefits those not paying but then those who don’t pay tend not care about what they’re not paying. This should not confusing to anyone.
Just because a project doesn’t have a big enough return on investment to appeal to commercial lenders doesn’t mean that it won’t be profitable.
Have you ever started a business? I’ve started several. A recurring issue, one that I’m actually trying to navigate right now, is that lenders in the commercial space don’t want to make “small” loans. The business I am currently involved with has run our numbers and found that we could expand conservatively and be in a good position without being out over our skis if we could get a loan for about $40k. The commercial lenders we’ve spoken with consider that too small for their effort and the private investors that might do it want such higher interest rates that it doesn’t pencil out the same for us.
That’s the kind of situations these sorts of programs are designed to address. The USDA has been running operations like this for years exactly because commercial lending has become so consolidated that it fails to meet the needs of many many many small businesses that are profitable.
Small business to become successful takes desire, and best be a wiz at math . Takes alot more that just getting financed. Takes alot of 18 hour days , 7 days a week something the younger generation isn’t capable of.
You don’t think “the younger generation” (no idea what age range you’re indicting here) has successfully started any businesses?
Places like the EDD and CalWorks already do this. And the SBA, Dept of Rehabilitation, Uplift, and other groups. What is more money going to do other than hire more people to help others fill out paperwork? Perhaps job or career coaches are the ones people should be going after? I mean it’s possible. I do distinctly remember the county putting up a couple million to hire folks to help others fill out marijuana operations permits.
I haven’t seen a lot of help filling out paperwork. More like help seeding start up funding and connection with existing groups you’ve listed, among others. They’ve also funded some programs to develop plans to launch new industries in the region, which is a novel resource for potential entrepreneurs.
I definitely don’t remember the county spending millions to help with cannabis applications though. Thats a new one to me.
Project Trellis was one of them. $18.6 million went to that.
Proposals for people to bid on to market weed. Marketing, not growing. Microgrants from PT could be used to pay someone to do all the licensing paperwork. I know of two ops (not listed on my links) that did just that rather than sit and fill it out themselves or spend their own money.
Money spent to hire people to do paperwork. Your money. And the person next to you. To dovetail what others have already said, somebody else is making mint off these investments and not the businesses nor the employees that may never materialize.
Project Trellis wasn’t to help people fill out applications. It did a number of things, when it came to giving money directly to farmers it was for things like increased water storage or cost sharing for things like solar to help them get into compliance.
The marketing stuff was definitely a poorly thought out plan from the county to create a marketing pitch for “humboldt cannabis” generally, after they rolled out legalization in a way that seemed designed to kill local cannabis production. But again, nothing to do with helping farmers complete applications.
So it seems like maybe you’re misremembering this whole event.
The way you keep coming back at any and everyone would make someone think you have some extra special interest in this! Methinks you protest too much.
I’ve engaged a couple of people in back and forth discussions. The only special interest that I have in this is that I plan to live here for many decades to come and so I do enjoy this kind of economic development. And I see a lot of asinine commentary on here that seems to come from a place of total ignorance about the program this article is about.
You’re kidding me correct? You don’t have to take a class; just read the form. And have a business structure. If not, don’t bother trying to start a business. You sound like you’re being paid by grant money. Take care, be well.
I don’t understand your aversion to any kind of education around running a business. Why shouldn’t people be able to access training around the various aspects of starting or running a business?
And I have never received a grant or worked a job who’s salary was grant based.
I have worked for and owned small businesses my entire life. That’s why I appreciate when there is some public funding to counterbalance the overwhelming power of large corporate business in our society.
With all due respect Mr Arcata, I think you totally miss the criticism that is being leveled. For instance, I have no aversion to anything except for wasting taxpayer dollars on things that if you were really interested in starting, you’d pick up some books read about it and put together a plan. Also, you would have or should have a great deal of experience already in the trade or the service area that you want to open up. I have a small business too, and made it quite successful. I do not understand your comments about counterbalancing the overwhelming power of large corporate interests. It makes no sense to me since if you have a good product or a good service you don’t have to worry about that with a good business plan. And there are plenty of local lenders in this county willing to support a good business model. If you do not have the knowledge going in, you’re not going to get it in the manner that you are suggesting. So in the end, we will have to agree to disagree.
You seem to be imagining that this program is just handing out money to random people who showed up with a half cocked idea.
And your comments about the willingness of local lenders to “support a good business model” tells me that you have never pursued commercial lending locally (or probably anywhere). If you don’t have some serious wealth or assets to put up as collateral or a functioning business that already has a robust cash flow commercial lenders are not interested. This is a well known bottleneck in small business and one that people around the world have been trying to find solutions to for a long time. Commercial banking doesn’t like dealing in small loans and it doesn’t like dealing with startups. That is the gap in the commercial market that programs like this are designed to fill.
Next time one of these community development grants comes around you should engage the process at the beginning and see for yourself what they’re actually offering. You might learn a thing or two.
The future should be directed at quality, not quantity. Its too full of people right now.
Most countries do have that as a criteria to allow immigration. The US is a rarity in that it only adds special categories for that purpose to admitting without regard to it.
I wonder who the person pictured at the top is.
Maybe because it’s a sort of human-interest story, they figured they’d put a human up there?
My error. I forgot the caption. Fixed now.
Thanks, Kym!
Okay so they have burned through $15.7 Million so far. Planning. Driven by a “results-based accountability structure”. But after $15.7 Million spent what are the results?! A few ideas about stuff to do? I know that biochar project down in Mendocino on RFFI land and we got involved until we saw there was no possible payback from it, not even breaking even was possible. Great idea. Fun. But not economically feasible. Might as well clearcut and pelletize the trees for sale to Europe like the southeast US forests are doing. Yeah- not a pretty idea either. Anyways…$15.7 Million already gone. Gonna give a meat plant to the Hmong? And grind masa for local use? Train people to be able to write loan requests for such businesses? Pretty sure you can take a business class at CR for that and read books. What is this program really doing with all that taxpayer money??? Somebody please educate me….