At the end of the 19th century, Santa Barbara struggled with the transition from a regional to a national economy. Over the last 25 years, we have struggled with the transition from a national to a global economy. Santa Barbara has thousands of people in the hospitality industry, but its biggest employers are now in Education, Government, and Health Care. Unlike most cities its size, Santa Barbara has not had an “Economic Development Plan” since the 1990’s when the City Redevelopment Agency was a robust government department.

After a decade of silence, we need a new roadmap to the future - a comprehensive 21st Century Economic Development Plan for our community that reflects all of these trends, and then aligns our budgeting of resources around these benchmarks. We need to be in agreement with what kind of community we want to be, where the jobs will be to support our people, and what our financial base will be that underwrites the services we need.