Economic development is a team sport. Sometimes it feels like a solid rushing offense, steadily grinding away, down after down, to score the touchdown business recruitment project. Other times it’s a quick and nimble basketball team that expertly addresses its existing business community needs to capitalize on expansion opportunities. Occasionally, it feels like a strong farm system, ensuring a steady supply of talent is readily available to meet employer needs and promote innovation. Regardless of your preferred sports analogy, city/county managers are in a critical position to design and execute strategies that foster robust environments conducive to economic development.

Leverage Local Spending

A significant portion of our budgets include contracting for purchases of goods and services. The volume of procurements and specifications may result in purchasing from large national or global businesses. However, local companies may offer better service and higher quality products due to their proximity and vested interest in maintaining a good reputation within the community. Buying from local businesses helps sustain and create jobs within our communities, stimulating our local economy.

Many governing bodies have adopted and refined local business procurement preference programs as awareness and advocacy for the potential economic impact has grown. For more than 30 years, the city of San Antonio has implemented the Small Business Economic Development Advocacy (SBEDA) program, which encourages local spending by giving preference to local small, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses in city contracts.

This program helps ensure that a larger portion of municipal spending benefits local enterprises. In 2023, approximately 57% (roughly $330 million) of the city of San Antonio’s contract payments went to 517 different local small, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses. Contracting with these businesses helped build their capacity, resulting in business growth and job creation.

These policies may at times seem at odds with efficiency expectations of public managers, but these concepts are not mutually exclusive. While prioritizing local companies, public managers should ensure transparency, fairness, and competitiveness in procurement processes to avoid potential downsides like favoritism or inefficiency. Balancing these considerations can help maximize the benefits while maintaining integrity in procurement practices.

Build for Growth

The planning, design, and delivery of capital projects is a significant portion of our work as public managers. Although the primary beneficiaries of these projects may be our current residents, infrastructure development is also a cornerstone of economic growth. Upgrading and maintaining roads can reduce transportation costs and improve access to markets, making a city more attractive for businesses. Developing efficient public transit systems can enhance connectivity within the city, making it easier for employees to commute and for customers to access businesses. Ensuring a stable and affordable energy supply is crucial for businesses, especially those in manufacturing and tech industries.

Originally a military base, Brooks City Base in San Antonio was transformed into a mixed-use community through strategic planning and investment in infrastructure. This development included upgrading roads, enhancing public transit options, and ensuring a robust energy supply and telecommunications infrastructure. As a result, Brooks City Base has attracted a variety of businesses, from biotech firms to educational institutions, creating over 7,000 jobs and demonstrating how thoughtful infrastructure investments can drive economic growth and community revitalization.

Companies often cite development costs as key factors influencing their expansion decisions. Like the private sector, we must also prioritize our infrastructure investments. Our opportunity rests in adding an economic planning and development lens when evaluating and prioritizing capital projects.

Built It and They Will Come

One of the few factors that may outweigh infrastructure limitations is a community’s talent pool. Local governments can play a pivotal role in promoting workforce development to help close skills gaps and create opportunities for hard-to-serve groups to improve their economic standing, while cultivating the talent needed by local employers. Some simple straightforward approaches to financial support include grants, scholarships, and low-interest loans to individuals seeking training and tax incentives, or subsidies to businesses that invest in employee training programs.

While local governments often lack the resources to support financial investments in workforce development, San Antonio voters have repeatedly approved sales tax ballot initiatives to invest in education and training that benefits individuals from early childhood through adulthood. The program PreK 4 SA provides high-quality prekindergarten education to three- and four-year-olds, laying a strong foundation for lifelong learning. Celebrating its tenth year, this program is championed by the local business community and incorporates family well-being and social-emotional learning as distinguishing characteristics.

Another program, SA: Ready to Work, provides training opportunities and wraparound support to residents, helping them secure better-paying jobs and advance their careers. Since its inception just two years ago, this initiative has placed over 1,100 residents into high-quality jobs. On average, their wages are three times higher than before they entered the program, and nearly 60% are under the age of 35, with plenty of years to continue growing their careers and wages. Together, SA: Ready to Work and PreK 4 SA create a comprehensive approach to workforce development, addressing both immediate job training needs and long-term educational foundations.

Leveraging our role as community conveners can also make meaningful progress within our community’s workforce development ecosystem. As public managers, we can work with local businesses to identify skill gaps and collaborate with schools, colleges, universities, and training providers to develop curricula that align with local industry needs. We can establish industry advisory boards to ensure training programs are relevant and up to date. By addressing the specific needs of local employers and creating opportunities for all residents to develop skills, we can foster a more resilient, inclusive, and prosperous community.

Conclusion

My professional experience with economic development began 15 years ago with a temporary assignment to support a project in need of additional resources. To conclude the sports team analogies, this experience might best be described as dropping a quidditch player onto a soccer field. City executives saw the transferability of my skills to the economic development realm and over the years, this work has helped me understand my community’s assets and opportunities. Most importantly, it’s allowed me to leverage public management skills and practices to influence the economic well-being of our residents. Whether budgets and resources are significant or scarce, focusing on improving economic outcomes is the key.

 

ALEJANDRA "ALEX" LOPEZ is assistant city manager of San Antonio, Texas.