Increase City Revenues by Promoting Business not Redevelopment Agencies

By Lance R. MacLean

Stop the use of redevelopment agencies and promote all businesses located in Mission Viejo to increase revenue to the city.

Unfortunately, the council has put all of their eggs into one basket, concentrating on the big three retail projects with mega businesses and virtually ignoring the remaining businesses including medium, small and "mom & pop" operations throughout the rest of the city. This is patently unfair to all the businesses not located in these pet projects. Moreover, upon reviewing tax revenues collected by location, in the last completed fiscal year 1998-99 the big three accounted for $2.34 million of a total of $10.22 million that represents only 23% of the total sales tax collected. Through the first two quarters of this year the big three have brought in $2.07 of a total $6.37 which represents 32.5% of total sales tax revenue collected.

Obviously the medium, small and "mom & pop" businesses bring in over three times the revenue to the city than the big three projects. While I do not encourage nor is it practical to abandon the investments made into the big three, clearly I advocate for the city to increase their efforts in promoting all businesses in Mission Viejo through the implementation of a business loyalty program. Effective use of the City Outlook newsletter encouraging resident loyalty to city businesses would be cheap and effective start. I would work with the Chamber of Commerce to develop other business promotion programs such as discount cards, customer loyalty rewards, coupons and other programs to bring equity to the promotion of all businesses within the city. Only through the successful PROMOTION OF ALL OUR CITY BUSINESSES can we expect to realize increased revenues to the city for essential programs and services.