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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Candidates Speak Up About Business

In the City of Santa Clarita municipal election April 8, five candidates are competing for two positions on the City Council. To determine how business-friendly the contenders are, the Business Journal asked each of them the following five questions related to local business concerns: 1. What in your background enables you to address the needs of the Santa Clarita Business Community? 2. What are the major concerns you believe the Santa Clarita business community has? 3. If elected to City Council How would you address these concerns? 4. Discuss the city’s Enterprise Zone. Has it been helpful? 5. Is there anything else you want to add? Maria Gutzeit , Vice President of the Newhall County Water District Board of Directors and owner of Compliance Plus. 1. I started my career with Fortune 500 businesses. My specialty is environment, California compliance. I worked with Fortune 500 companies like Anheuser-Busch and Waste Management of California. I worked there until I went out on my own in 1994 with a consulting business I have been doing successfully since 1994, basically consulting to medium- to large-sized businesses on environmental compliance issues. Also, my husband owns his own business in Santa Clarita. 2. One of the things I have heard is a need to streamline permitting issues. Generally, the staff is extremely helpful, but when you’re going for permitting in, particularly, building projects, the requirements tend to vary. There’s not a lot of certainty, and it takes longer than it should. 3. I would like to see a permitting checklist and some consistent policy on design and also external requirements and mitigations that are required. And, again, that’s for larger permitting uses. Another thing I would add for small businesses is right now we’re doing a redevelopment in downtown Newhall. A street was closed off that has businesses on the path of bankruptcy, and it was not handled well. The City needs to handle that differently. I would have relocated the businesses, as the redevelopment consultant suggested, but the city hasn’t offered that. 4. It would be a help if it was structured so that more businesses could qualify. We’ve had a tremendous amount of PR, but only one business has been able to take advantage of it. So, I would love to make sure it was structured so that more local businesses could take advantage of it. It’s been a lot of excitement and not a lot of benefits so far. 5. I have been active with the Chamber of Commerce since 2003 and chaired committees there for two years. Bob Spierer , Retired Sheriff’s Chief 1. I think there are two things that stand out in my background. As a high-ranking member of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, I was part of the management team that handled the department’s 13,000 personnel and $1.2 billion budget. My own divisional budget was between $80 and $100 million, so I understand large finances. I understand budgets. I understand how we have to deal with money issues. 2. I think one of the primary concerns they have is a safe environment to work in. They’re very much concerned about business development, economic development and the city’s attitude towards business. I think the city has the responsibility to step in and assist them. 3. First, I would simply assist in the process of opening business. As business-friendly as the City is, there are still some major hurdles. There needs to be a one-stop counter along with people who are there to help through the process, not merely to take the documents but to actually help them. The small business development center operated by COC [College of the Canyons] and the Chamber of Commerce,they can help businesses take a look at how the business model is working. There’s also COC, which can provide training for employees and can work with companies with their ongoing training needs. I think those are often overlooked, and I think the City needs to work with businesses to make them understand what those opportunities are. 4. The feedback I get is there are still not enough people who are taking advantage of it. What the City is doing is essentially good, but it could do a little better. 5. I think that we often overlook the fact that cities can’t exist on property taxes alone. The real source of income that runs the city is the sales tax revenue that businesses bring in. There needs to be opportunities for people to work in the community and to bring in new people to shop in local businesses but also to do their business in. It’s really in the best interest of the city to work as hard as they can in economic development and to allow businesses to thrive in a situation that is crime-free, the type of atmosphere people want to come in and shop. Diane Trautman , Planning Commissioner, educator and business owner 1. Well I am a small business owner. I have been owner of Study Pros In-home Tutoring for five years. I’ve been a member of the Chamber. Business communities are really important. We need to make sure we’re creating economic stability in the future, or we’re going to be in big trouble, and that means helping businesses of all sizes, including small businesses. 2. Well, for a lot of the small business owners, rents are an issue. We’ve seen a lot of small businesses closing. I think that planning becomes an issue, as far as having access to facilities for businesses and making sure there’s not just visibility, that people can get to places they need to get to, that you’re not creating barriers that way. Traffic congestion is a huge issue here that has to do with movement of goods but also with making it more difficult for people to get where they need to go in a timely way. 3. Well, transportation we need to address from a variety of perspectives. We need to be working on increasing mass transit, both in the Valley and outside of the Valley. We need to expand parking facilities, Metrolink stations, making bus service more efficient, getting more people to ride the buses outside of the area, too, so people can get to places we need to go. We absolutely have to work on housing to help employers have access to employees who can live here or who can easily get to their jobs. I want to work on housing. That definitely is an issue for Valley Industrial Association and the Chamber of Commerce. We’re having more and more issues with people recruiting employees because of housing. I’d like to talk to some of the landowners and find out what we could do to encourage small business out here. Maybe we need to talk about policies we could create that could be more business friendly, too. 4. I’ve heard mixed things about it. I heard it’s getting off to a slow start. I think when you create programs like this, you really need to do a lot of marketing to make sure people are aware that it’s out here. I don’t know if the City is not just working effectively with the Chamber to get the word out [but] the Small Business Development Group is trying to promote this without a lot of success. 5. I want to make sure we have adequate [crime] protection for our businesses. This goes to planning. Being Planning Commissioner for five-and-a-half years, we have to be careful in the way we develop housing and commercial projects. If you create walkable communities where you have retail and commercial and you have mixed-use, you have people who have a vested interest in protecting the neighborhoods they live in. As our population doubles, we really need to look at creating safe neighborhoods, not just for residents but for businesses. Bob Kellar , Mayor 1. I’m past-president of the Canyon Country Chamber of Commerce. As a local businessman and staunch member of our Chamber of Commerce, I know the importance of a healthy business community. It is the fiber that provides all a quality of life here in the Santa Clarita Valley. Without a good strong business community, simply nothing else occurs. 2. Without question, the economy. Overall, we’re talking about local business here, but the economy on a national basis, on a state basis, has huge impacts, and, furthermore, that is the very reason that the other night at a council meeting I expressed concerns and encouraged everybody to shop local. If there ever was a time to shop local, this is it because our businesses are hurting, and we should support our local business first. 3. I will continue as I always have,to work closely with the Chamber of Commerce. I always work with our Economic Development Office at City Hall and encourage everything we can to keep our businesses strong by keeping contracts in the Santa Clarita Valley and anything else I can possibly do. 4. I think the Enterprise Zone is a tremendous opportunity for our businesses. City Hall has been running an ongoing series of information on how businesses can benefit from utilizing the Enterprise Zone. In large part, I feel that its ultimate success is going to be businesses taking advantage of those benefits, so we at City Hall have to continue to do an outreach program. 5. All of our citizens should recognize how important this subject is, and they need to recognize they are as much part of the solution as we are at City Hall or the Chamber of Commerce. Laurie Ender , Parks and Recreation and Community Services Commissioner 1. Professionally, I was a television producer for 13 years straight out of college. I never had an eye on public service. I was in TV. It was a competitive field. I worked at “Entertainment Tonight” for 10 years. I left there to go to NBC, where I helped, along with our executive producer, create and develop “Access Hollywood.” We brought in over 100 employees and helped to oversee a multimillion dollar daily television show. I met budgets and deadlines working under pressure in a highly competitive field. When I had my third child, I decided I needed to stay home and focus my efforts on parenting and really get involved in the community. What I have managed to do is to take my professional experience into the nonprofit world and basically treated every volunteer leadership opportunity that I’ve had as a job, whether it’s recruiting members or fundraising or handling the finances, so I think that the background has made me very successful in my new career in public service. 2. I think the biggest concern is shopping and keeping everything local, really focusing on locally supporting our economy, and that’s everything from eating in local restaurants, shopping in local stores, also using local resources. 3. No. 1 is to be open and communicative with the business community, addressing their needs as they come up. We’ve started the process of creating a one-stop [shop] for planning and new businesses starting out, but we need to be supportive of existing business, especially in these economic times. We need to make sure all local businesses utilize the opportunities they’re given. I’m strongly in favor of the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial expansion which will create a number of jobs locally, so I think that stands to be an economic boost to the community. 4. Well, for those who are utilizing it, it’s been very successful. l think the City staff has excellent outreach, and, so, it’s a matter of helping businesses understand how they can use what fits their needs as a business. 5. I’m so impressed by the strength of both our Chamber of Commerce and the Valley Industrial Association. Their leadership in bringing businesses together,it’s priceless. They support one another. I’m just impressed by those two organizations and their leadership and their efforts.

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