Newsom announces stimulus plan for S.F.

The Annual Mayor's Economic Forecast took place on the 11th of February, as planned.

This is what came out of it : "San Francisco officials are preparing an economic stimulus package they hope will spur spending and job growth to loosen the recession’s tightening grip on the city" says the San Francisco Biz Journal on the 11th

The newly unveiled local stimulus program will include a "new jobs payroll tax credit", " loans available to small companies", essentially "micro-loans" and "larger no-interest loans to businesses", property tax rebates (50%) for "unsecured property - things like new machinery, equipment or office furniture - if the goods -were bought in San Francisco".

In a recently published white paper
(http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/mayor/PressRoom/NewsReleases/White%20Paper.pdf), Newsom goes into more details about his update plan for the city:

"While San Francisco is widely considered one of the strongest urban markets in the county, with solid long-term prospects, economists also generally agree that the current recession is beginning to hit the City hard, and San Francisco, like the rest of the country, will not come out of this recession for some time." he starts out with.

" San Francisco’s economy is driven by the success and growth of (i) advanced knowledge-based services, like financial and professional services, life sciences, digital media / IT and (ii) tourism." These sectors should therefore be strategically developed.

The strategy for stimulating and supporting the local economy is fivefold, (nothing new here) :
"(i) accelerating capital spending, (ii) keeping local dollars local by investing in local businesses, (iii) reducing the burdens, local government places on local businesses (iv) supporting our workforce and (v) attracting more foreign investment in San Francisco.

Without going into details about the 4 first steps, these are both attractive and interesting for local businesses and good incentives for non-local companies to set up and hire locally, thus making step V much easier. For instance, they plan on working on the "bottom line issues
regarding how expensive it is to do business in San Francisco versus other cities", which will improve the city's busines reputation. They also plan on "expanding the Utilization of Existing Tax Incentive Programs".

Here's what Newsom says on foreign investment, btw :
" San Francisco’s role as an international City helps drive business to San Francisco in both the tourism and commercial sectors. Through the Office of International Trade and Commerce, the City has long had a number of international programs targeted at bringing business and tourism to the City and fostering cultural and economic exchanges." These activities include the "new Paris Investment office", " supporting the Sister City program with economic development emphasis" (reminder : Shanghai has been San Francisco's sister city since 1979); and more.

The ChinaSF initiative has quite a long blurb dedicated to it :

"However, until recently the City did not have any overseas offices focused exclusively on increasing commercial business opportunities with San Francisco. In November of 2008, the City launched ChinaSF with potentially its biggest trading partner – China. ChinaSF capitalizes on the City's inherent strengths – 150 year-old ties with China, a very large Asian population, a large Pacific Rim airport, a strong international reputation- to firmly establish San Francisco as the premier gateway between Chinese businesses and North America. ChinaSF opened offices in San Francisco and Shanghai in November 2008. This initiative aggressively pursues bringing Chinese companies in the City's key growth industries (cleantech, life sciences, digital media, professional services) to San Francisco, as well as Chinese commercial product companies looking to establish a stateside presence to sell into the North American market. ChinaSF also helps local business seeking to do business in China. Already, ChinaSF is reaping major dividends. Through the work of ChinaSF, two major Chinese companies have selected San Francisco for key business operations. Trina Solar, a NYSE listed Chinese solar manufacturer, recently chose San Francisco for its North American Headquarters and China Daily, the national English-language newspaper of China also recently selected San Francisco for its West Coast operations office. These offices will bring both jobs and revenue to the City, as evidenced by the City’s experience with Suntech, a Chinese company that is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. As the result of a focused business attraction strategy led by the Mayor and OEWD, Suntech chose San Francisco as its North American headquarters in 2008 over Boston and Chicago. Although Suntech America started with only 5 employees last year, it has already grown to over 50 employees in the City. A number of other Chinese companies are in ChinaSF’s pipeline and should be finalized this year. In addition, ChinaSF recently helped a local architecture firm, Heller/Manus, win the largest contract in the firm’s history on a major project in China. ChinaSF is supported by private contributions from local business and is operated in partnership between OEWD and the non-profit San Francisco Center for Economic Development. "

All quotes, unless specifically mentioned otherwise, are from the Mayor's press room white paper.

For an executive summary of the white paper on the stimulus plan, click here: Executive Summary, straight from the Mayor's Press Room.