Mesa Office of Economic Shifts from BIG DEALS to Fostering Small Business

Months ago your MesaZona blogger broke a 10-year record  for NO PUBLIC COMMENTS when yours truly spoke up at one of the poorly-attended and little-noticed early morning Tuesday monthly meetings of the City of Mesa's Economic Development Advisory Board, to make an observation that the major focus for economic development strategies was making 'big deals' for big companies that ignored or overlooked the more sizeable financial impact that thousands of small businesses produce in the local economic picture.
Individual and family entrepreneurs - owners and operators of 'small business' enterprises here - start-up doing business.
In a release three days ago of the quarterly Economic Reporter for Jan-March 2017, Mesa OED Director Bill Jabjiniak heaps praise on what resources and programs city government to claim some of the credit for the expansion of small businesses whether it's justified or not while some small businesses frequently chose to go-it-alone to succeed.

New Image: Bill Jabjiniak

SECOND QUARTER 2017

The Quick Jab

by Bill Jabjiniak

City of Mesa fosters small businesses' large impact on the economy

Small businesses are vital to Mesa’s economy. According to analysis of data derived from Maricopa Association of Governments and ESRI Community Analyst, of the City’s more than 14,500 businesses, 90 percent employ less than 20 people. That constitutes more than 13,000 micro and very small businesses throughout Mesa.[i] 

[i]The numbers listed in this article are approximations using the best available data from ESRI Community Analyst (ESRI) and Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG). ESRI data provided the total number of Mesa companies. MAG data provided employee counts for Mesa companies with five or more employees and less than 20.

Readers of this post can note the following programs and resources mentioned:

• LAUNCHPOINT, Mesa Technology Accelerator, currently has 12 members
• Maricopa Small Business Development Center (SBDC), coming soon in summer 2017, will begin holding office hours at LAUNCHPOINT two days per week
• Mesa THINKspot is a collaborative workspace and makerspace created by the City within the Red Mountain Branch of the Mesa Public Library
• City of Mesa Business Export Assistance Program (BEAP) is a financial assistance program that helps small to medium-sized Mesa businesses gain important information, training, marketing, and sales support to begin or increase exports to international markets.
• The Downtown Sprinkler Cost Assistance Program, which is designed to promote the greater utilization of vacant or underutilized space in Downtown Mesa

The City also provides strategic web-based tools to help Mesa businesses.

On the City of Mesa’s economic development website, businesses will find the Startup and Expand web pages.

Mesa adds "facelift" to enhance Downtown
As the City of Mesa continues to focus on the revitalization of Downtown, the City has created the Downtown Mesa Façade Improvement Program which provides grant funding to help property and business owners revitalize their storefronts. 
The City secured grant funding dollars to design and construct approximately 8-15 facade facelifts between the fall of 2017 and the summer of 2018.
 The City opened the program for applications from property owners February 1, 2017 and received applications from 22 properties. Of these applicants, the City initially plans to fund 12 properties . . .
Other sections of the Q2 2017 newsletter include:

• HIGHER EDUCATION ROUNDUP
• NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS

NEDCO launches business workshop series

The Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation (NEDCO) is launching the “Hack Your Business” Workshop Series. The free workshops cover subjects from business planning to branding and will be held in Downtown Mesa. The workshops are open to all business owners and entrepreneurs in Mesa. For more information and to register, please visit workshops.nedcoaz.org.

Stay connected with NEDCO on Facebook (www.facebook.com/nedcoaz) and by signing up for the newsletter at nedco-mesa.org.

Mormon Channel > April 2017 General Conference

Everyone hypnotized ??

Streamed live on Apr 1, 2017

Views: 1,069,861

The general sessions for individuals and families will be Saturday and Sunday, April 1 and 2, at 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. (MDT).

Subscribe to Mormon Channel for the latest videos: http://bit.ly/1M0iPwY

Changing The Face of Journalism | Akshobh Giridharadas | TEDxNTU

Content-on-Demand . . .
Has it been democratized?    Who is the change-agent?  Think about Woodward and Bernstein
Investigative journalism is now an out-pier, leaving us few options on the sidelines watching

Published on Apr 7, 2017

Views: 5,025

Journalism has become anachronistic in nature. In an era defined by a fast-changing economy and disruptive new technological innovation, the journalism industry has been caught off guard in some of its archaic business models. Various news outlets are finding that content has become a cheap commodity as they struggle to monetize their work. The same technology that has proliferated news and journalism has ironically disrupted the industry. The watchdog or the fourth estate of democracy that's meant to keep a watch on the other three estates, now finds its very foundations threatened.


Akshobh is a 29-year-old business news reporter and producer with Channel News Asia Singapore. He writes articles on diverse topics like geopolitics, business, and sports. His previous endeavors include working at ESPN STAR and FOX networks.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Janet Napolitano: VICE News Tonight on HBO (Full Segment)

Taking A Look Now + Then
Published on Apr 7, 2017
Views: 6,677

VICE News travels to Mexico with Janet Napolitano--who oversaw deportations under Obama--and now heads the University of California, with one of the largest undocumented college populations in the U.S.

Earth/Jupiter Align at Passover/Solar Flare/Quake Watch

Published on Apr 6, 2017

Views:41, 468

Update. April 6th 2017
http://www.BPEarthWatch.Com

City of Mesa Manager Chris Brady Looking For Another Tool To Do Budget Forecasts

Your MesaZona blogger just couldn't pass us this opportunity when Chris Brady mentioned at this morning's Mesa City Council Study Session that he should maybe "polish off the crystal ball".
No more bungling the budget, huh?

More details will follow when the Mesa Channel 11 video of the session gets uploaded.

Going Rogue with Jon Talton One Mo' Time

The Ideology of The Cancer Cell We Call Home
05 April 2017 
Link to The Rogue Columnist click right here
The closed-loop belief system of the local-yokels is that as long as Phoenix is adding people, it can't be that bad.
End of discussion.

Jon Talton

Thus, when the Census Bureau announced that Maricopa County was the nation's fastest growing for the year ending July 1, 2016, it set off earth-shaking, sheet-clawing growthgasms. The gain of 81,000 was still below the pre-recession trend line — even accepting the yokel "logic" — but there we have it. Everything's fine!


Phoenix has operated by this hugely subsidized Ponzi scheme for decades and there's no indication anything will change until the roof really falls in.






As in, when overshoot makes it impossibly costly to sustain such a large population in a frying pan.

• When the Republicans make retirement a pre-New Deal cruelty so that people don't have the means to retire, much less to the hot climes of "the Valley."
• When the GOP succeeds in cutting so much federal funding that welfare queens such as Phoenix slink to the national homeless shelter.
• When climate change makes the place unbearable.

The recent calamities of the Great Recession, where Phoenix was an epicenter, did nothing to give a moment of clarity. Even an outmigration wouldn't change things. The boat-rockers who advocated a different city and state were long ago run off or silenced.
As regular readers know, raw population growth is not an unalloyed good. It is costly, on infrastructure (few places in the metro impose impact fees on development and none commensurate with the expense of new suburban pods), the environment (particularly in a place where nearly everyone must drive long distances), and any sense of community.

Phoenix and Arizona are decades behind in making the investments for a place so populous. Growth doesn't pay for itself, particularly when the one-party political system insists that taxes must always be cut. The investments made mostly benefit the Real Estate Industrial Complex's sprawl enterprise, such as the shameful South Mountain Freeway boondoggle.

The schools are a national embarrassment, universities constantly bloodied by legislative cutbacks, the Republican congressional delegation does nothing to bring federal investment home, and not only Phoenix but some suburbs suffer from miles of linear slums holding a large underclass. We update the journalism on this crisis every week. An honest discussion of water is forbidden. Sustainability is a punchline. The beautiful oasis of old is nearly gone, buried under gravel and, uh, graced by skeleton trees.
A look at metropolitan Phoenix's standing beyond population growth yields a sad picture.
Generally, it ranks high on almost every list of economic and social woes and low on almost every list of achievement — certainly lower than its peers.
For all that growth, Phoenix is only considered a gamma metro on the influential Global and World Cities Research Network's rankings of global cities (ninth lowest out of 10 categories). Peers such as San Diego, Seattle, Dallas, and Denver rank higher. Slow- or no-growth metros Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Philadelphia rank higher. Clearly there's no connection between sheer population size and economic competitiveness and significance.

Meanwhile, the boosters say, "People will keep coming here no matter what." If this is true, then levy taxes appropriate to the urban needs of the region. Yet this is forbidden. So the downward cycle continues.
People keep moving here. But what kind of people? Certainly not hot young talent — Phoenix badly trails in college-educated adults. Not a variety that would turn the state even as purple as Colorado. We know the influx is retiree-heavy, which causes innumerable problems in what's left of the civic fabric ("home" is back in the Midwest). Also, non-college-educated people taking service jobs and seeking relatively inexpensive housing. And "Big Sort" types, Republicans seeking fellow travelers in the Kansas of the Sonoran Desert. Say's Law applies — supply creates demand, in this case housing. And, you don't have to shovel sunshine (with championship golf!).
All too many do not come to love the place and fiercely protect it, learn and cherish its history, help it advance. This is a deadly deficit for any city. It makes the heroic efforts of the Resistance particularly difficult.
If curiosity were allowed, it would be interesting to see rigorous research on who comes and why, and why all this population growth hasn't even given Phoenix the power and relative livability of Dallas, Houston, or Austin. Another big question is churn: How many leave each year and why?
The people in charge don't cotton to "whys." Shut up or leave. You'll be replaced.