A look at Citrus Heights’ new plan for business retention, expansion efforts

By William Anderson–
As part of a new five-point Economic Development Work Plan designed to revitalize the local economy, Citrus Heights has outlined several steps toward achieving stronger business retention and expansion.

The business retention and expansion plan’s key focus includes growing and strengthening relationships with existing businesses, enhancing public safety for businesses, supporting workforce development, improving regulatory efficiency, and increasing business visibility through marketing strategies.

Meghan Huber, Citrus Heights’ economic development and community engagement director, describes the program as “extremely important to create relationships between a jurisdiction and its businesses.”

What’s planned?
In an effort to “keep and grow” key businesses, the city plans to reintroduce welcome kits for new businesses, create an outreach program to existing businesses, and develop an online database that will include surveys and support requests.

A second focus area aims at improving efficiency, strengthening partnerships, and resource sharing. Strengthening city-to-business relations creates more jobs than recruiting new businesses, according to Huber, with about 80 percent of job creation and investment in a community coming from existing businesses rather than new business attraction.

To this end, the city plans to conduct regular business outreach programs to help maintain a “real-time understanding” of the challenges faced by businesses so the city can “efficiently produce solutions.” This will be done by creating a resource hub, which will centralize business data and funding opportunities.

The third action item planned is the creation of a Business Safety Hub. In partnership with the Citrus Heights Police Department, the hub will be an online resource that streamlines business-related safety concerns. The hub will include business emergency contact information and allow police to more easily take reports, with police also designating a business safety liaison.

Additionally, in hopes of driving more foot traffic to local companies, the city wants to promote local business visibility through increased marketing by launching a quarterly business recognition program, sharing success stories, and organizing shop local campaigns.

The city also aims to support workforce development by bolstering workforce retention through collaborating with educational institutions to offer training in target industry clusters, promoting available skills-based programs to the community, and enhancing career pathway and apprenticeship opportunities in growing fields.

Timeline
Business Retention and Expansion program implementation will take place in three stages over the next few years, according to the work plan. This year, the city intends to implement foundational programs, begin streamlining government processes, and develop clear communication with businesses.

In 2026, the program will scale up, using the previous year’s data to refine policies and initiatives. In 2027, the program will “re-gear” in order to sustain success. Ideally, with improved retention, development, and recruitment, the program will only need to “maintain the new status quo,” Huber said.

The Economic Development Work Plan also lists goals and metrics to measure the success of the three-year plan. Goals listed in relation to business retention and expansion include:

• Maintaining a strong local business base and achieving a 95 percent retention rate for the top 50 employers.
• Measuring, benchmarking, and increasing business satisfaction, targeting a 4.5 out of 5 rating in annual surveys.
• Conducting proactive outreach, including 50 business retention visits annually, to identify growth opportunities and challenges.
• Enhancing business safety and engagement by launching the Business Safety Hub.

The full Economic Development Plan can be viewed in the City Council’s Feb. 12 meeting agenda packet here.

This is part of a series of articles on the city’s Economic Development Work Plan. Subscribe to The Sentinel to stay up-to-date on stories like this and other local news.