The North Bay Jobs & Prosperity Project aims to educate your employees about local issues and upcoming elections—and get them to the polls.
When North Coast Builders Exchange CEO Keith Woods visited Oklahoma last year, he discovered the Oklahoma Prosperity Project, which helps employers encourage employees to vote and become more aware of issues affecting economic development and jobs.
The program’s goals are simple: To provide resources that help people make informed decisions on business-related issues and encourage them to vote however they may choose. Woods’ question was: Why don’t we have this in the North Bay?
“I was also impressed by environmental and other groups that have reached out to get their messages across to the public and wondered why the business community didn’t do this, too. The others have been so effective,” he continues.
Upon his return, he presented the idea to the North Coast Builders Exchange board of directors—they enthusiastically supported it. So he took the next step and spoke with Lisa Wittke Schaffner, executive director of Sonoma County Alliance, as well as Cynthia Murray, president and CEO of the North Bay Leadership Council, about creating a similar project, but on a local level. “Cynthia and Lisa are two of the most action- and results-oriented people I know,” says Woods. “I knew this proposal was something they and their organizations would be interested in. I knew they could quickly assess if it would be a fit for the North Bay. It was a good decision. They’re terrific.”
Once they had the financial backing and moral support of all three organizations, Woods, Wittke Schaffner and Murray were ready for action. They hired Terry Darcy, former city manager of Cotati, as project coordinator, and The Boylan Point Agency in Santa Rosa to build the website. Soon, the motivation and tools were in place.
“It stemmed from years of frustration over no one talking about jobs and the economy during local elections,” says Wittke Schaffner, who presented the project to the Windsor Chamber of Commerce in September. “It’s about jobs. If we can’t get people talking about them in this economy, it may not happen here,” she says, stressing that this is an important way to increase revenue and impact the value of our communities.
“I was very excited because it made complete sense to me. If people are encouraging employees to vote and be informed, it’ll help the community become stronger,” says Murray. “Politicians pay more attention to communities that vote. It’s a combination of civic vitality and economic vitality. And the North Bay Leadership Council is interested because it tries to approach things from an employer’s point of view. We know how important it is to have a participating democracy. Helping people be more informed voters is right up our alley.”
The project is also looking to stimulate the North Bay’s economic competitiveness: How do we keep the businesses we have? How do we draw new, good businesses to the area? “The North Bay’s reputation [beyond its borders] as far as business-friendliness goes, is horrendous,” says Woods. “It’s perceived as being an extremely difficult, costly and time-consuming place to get a business established. The permitting process has become slow and cumbersome, and credit markets are tight. That’s changing, but it needs to change faster. We need to streamline and make changes to repair the damage of its bad reputation.”
“One of the things we don’t do as employers is talk politics,” says Wittke Schaffner. “But this project isn’t asking you to tell employees who to vote for. It’s asking employers to encourage employees to get out and vote; to get educated.”
“We have to keep it pure, and we absolutely do not endorse candidates,” says Woods. “Critics say there’s a hidden agenda, or that we must be promoting business candidates only. But our agenda is educating the public. How hidden is that? If you think voters having more information is a bad thing, you won’t like the program; if you think it’s a good thing, you will.”
Currently, the project centers on Sonoma County. “It’s a pilot program right now, but we’d eventually like to expand into Marin, Mendocino and Lake counties,” says Woods. “We don’t currently have a direct relationship with Napa, but we’re interested in that area as well.”
To create the program, its leaders used the base of what the other prosperity programs are doing, but took it to a more localized level. “All the other programs aim at state assembly or senate races,” says Woods. “We decided to focus solely on city council and boards of supervisors races.”
Tools that make a difference
First and foremost, the project’s website is the central tool for making things happen. It features tools for employers to help educate employees, as well as links and resources for employees to find information themselves. The first call is to make sure people are registered to vote. The site has a list of requirements, a voter registration form people can download (and information about where to pick one up) and reasons why reregistering may be necessary.
Next is an employer’s toolkit, which provides what you need to help employees register to vote and make informed decisions. There are full-color posters you can print out to post in your office, email blasts you can send to your entire office, talking points you can use for staff meetings and payroll stuffers about the project that you can include with paychecks or hand out personally.
On the right-hand side of the website, there’s a regularly updated list of links to local news stories that relate to voting decisions. There are also links to election resources such as the registrar of voters in several North Bay locations and a nonpartisan site called smartvoter.org, which provides localized election information. There are also links to contact information for currently elected officials throughout Sonoma County.
Candidate information
The project sent a questionnaire to each candidate running for local office, and the results are now posted on the site. They include the candidate’s names, office sought, campaign website, email address and the answers given to each of 33 questions. “We looked at a half-dozen nationwide sites [to develop the questions],” says Woods. “They gave us an idea of where to start. We wanted to come up with questions that would interest the business community and also tailor some of them to local issues.”
Question examples include:
• How strongly do you believe there’s a close relationship between the economic vitality of a community and a healthy, fiscally sound government?
• How important is job creation and retention on your priority list if elected to office?
• Do you believe your jurisdiction is doing enough to attract businesses that provide jobs?
• Do you support the expansion of the Sonoma County Airport to allow more commercial air service?
• Do you believe it’s important for your jurisdiction to provide flexible land use policies?
• Do you believe salaries and benefits for public employees should align with the private sector?
• What ideas do you have for creating new jobs?
The last question on the list is the only one that asks for an essay answer, and the responses give interested parties a good look into each candidate’s personality and views on job creation.
“We’ll never grade responses or endorse candidates,” says Woods. “We work to make sure employers don’t ever tell people how to vote. We provide the guidelines that tell them what they can and cannot do legally. We want them to direct employees to the website so they can make their own, better informed decisions.”
“The website is easy to navigate, because you can enter your ZIP code and see who your representatives are and who’s up for candidacy in your area,” says Murray. You can then see how each person answered the questionnaire.
The value of a job
One of the things the project highlights is how jobs have value not only to the people who have them but also to others in the community. “It’s a ripple effect,” says Woods. “Part of what I earn goes to those I buy things from—restaurants, retailers, services. It creates more jobs for other people.”
When you visit the website, you’ll find a link called “value of a job,” which explains the concept in detail—including real numbers based on Sonoma County wages and tax information. “I originally saw it done in Los Angeles on a statewide basis,” says Murray. “So I asked Rob Eyler [Sonoma State’s director for the Center of Regional Economic Analysis] to translate it to Sonoma County, which he graciously did.
“The basis is that one job has multipliers and creates other jobs. Some create more jobs or more tax revenue in different areas. When a job is lost, that revenue is lost not only to the individual but to the community. When jobs are created, it’s a benefit to everyone.”
The charts show different things each type of job outlined generates, including salary (averaged for the area), how many jobs it can effectively create as well as the revenues for state and local taxes and fees. It’s essentially an illustration of what one can expect from many of the jobs created in our area—and how those numbers can add up.
What the future holds
While it’ll be years before the project will be able to see its effects, what strides it makes now will serve to make a difference. Voter turnout in Sonoma County is relatively high as far as getting people who are registered to the polls. For example, according to the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters, 93.4 percent of those registered actually voted in the last major election (2008). Getting more people to register means more people’s voices will be heard.
“We’re trying to make it easy for people to vote,” says Woods. “We’re fearful a lot of people in the business community aren’t registered. So this is our way of saying, ‘Come on, get in the game!’” The project offers help for voter registration drives within companies to support that as well as all the other tools the website offers.
Current efforts are focused on getting companies and organizations to support the project. “Goodwill Industries was the first to sign on,” says Wittke Schaffner. “There’s been a great response from nonprofits and business organizations.”
“This is a year-round effort,” adds Woods. “It’s not just for election time.” He notes all supporters will be listed on the website, and that the project hopes to partner with as many organizations as possible. Codding Enterprises and Redwood Credit Union are two of the first companies to have joined the effort as partners.
To get the word out, the project has created press releases, email blasts to supporting organizations as well as posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They’ve also made several presentations to business organizations—and received a lot of positive feedback.
And even though by the time you read this, the election will be upon us (or even completed), the effort doesn’t stop. When it’s not an election year, the project will shift gears. “We’ll track votes and compare candidates’ actions to what they said on the questionnaire,” says Woods. “You’ll be able to see who votes on what. It’s also been suggested to give already-elected officials the questionnaire, so we can track their actions as well. If people do something different than what they said they would, we’ll point that out.”
As the project moves forward, it’ll be able to expand and/or alter the questionnaire. “Tougher questions will make it harder for candidates to give answers they think people want to hear,” says Woods.
For now, it’s “far better than I envisioned our first attempt would be,” says Woods. “But it’s still not anywhere near as good as it will be over the next couple years. We truly want it to become permanent because it has real value.”
“It’s a good tool that can easily be used and expanded,” adds Murray. “The more people look at it, the more feedback we’ll get, and we can use that to make improvements. This is just the beginning.”
