Business Development in Lake Forest

EXISTING PROGRAMS

In the plan, the city proposes to continue its current  programs (e.g., “Shop and Dine Lake Forest”, “In Business” newsletter, “Business Recognition Program”, “Business Visitation Program”, ”New Business Reception”) and workshops (e.g., “Media Marketing Made Simply”). City staff believes these programs have been “very productive and successful” and noted that 100 new businesses, including two large companies (Applied Medical and Alcon) recently moved to Lake Forest. 

Of course, no one talked about how many companies failed, nor how many companies moved out of the city, nor what percentage of our retail and office space is vacant. So, while it’s good to add 100 new businesses to the City, it’s really hard to evaluate how successful we are unless you take a wider view of what’s happening. Moreover, without a comparison to other cities, it’s hard to see how good or poor our performance really is.

(I’ve pointed out on many occasions that the City does a poor job evaluating how we allocate our resources, and this is another in a long line of inadequate presentations. Is there any businessman out there who only looks at one side of the ledger to evaluate how well their business is doing? Why would we accept less from the City?)

I’m not saying that these programs aren’t good ideas, nor that they aren’t achieving some success, which they obviously are. But it’s clear that the City has not done a proper evaluation of the business environment, and is only giving us a distorted and truncated picture. Should we continue doing what we’re doing? Who knows? If we had better data from the City, we might be able to answer that question. We might decide that some programs are doing well and should be increased, while others are a waste of time or possibly even harmful, and should be reduced or eliminated. Instead we are left hapless because the city has failed to perform a proper assessment.

NEW PROGRAMS

In addition to continuing the existing programs, the city proposes to add four new initiatives.

GROW in Lake Forest

GROW (Growing and Retaining Our Workforce) is an idea that has yet to be worked out. Staff offers a list of things they could do which they think could help attract and retain businesses, but it’s not clear how this is any different from what they are already doing. Nor is it clear how much this would cost, nor how they would evaluate the results. I hate to be opposed to something that sounds as good as “grow and retain our workforce”, but without the specifics, it’s an idea in search of a plan.

EXPEDITED BUSINESS ASSISTANCE

Rather than being a “new” program, the “expedited business assistance” appears to be a continuation of what the city is already doing.

WORKSHOP ON GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING

Here’s a really new initiative and we have Councilman Dwight Robinson to thank for this one. It’s a workshop to help local residents and businesses figure out how to get a slice of the $35,000,000 pie that the City hands out each year. Up until now, less than 5% of the City’s considerable spending has stayed at home, and Robinson wants to change that by teaching locals how to apply to the city. It’s a great idea. The only thing missing is the performance indicator. Let me suggest that every time the City produces its spending report (twice a month) they should include statistics on what percentage of the spending stays in the City. That way we’ll know how successful this effort is.

DEMOGRAPHIC MOBILE AP

There’s an ap for just about everything, so why not “data and visual graphics of Lake Forest’s population, housing, major employers, and economic indicators.” Sounds like a good idea, but the staff report gives us no information on costs and no suggestions as to how to evaluate the results.

SUMMARY

City officials are to be commended for paying attention to the business needs of the City and for the wide variety of activities they engage in to attract, support, and retain businesses. But the lack of evaluation of these activities and the failure to develop key performance indicators is a major deficit and ultimately means that we are spinning our wheels. Better evaluation and better cost accounting would better serve our needs. We have two new council members, Nick and Robinson, who are business men and both have promised to help businesses. Let me suggest that the best thing we can do for business is to get the City to start doing a better job.