Published in the March 16- 29, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By John Horner
John Horner
Balanced, smart development in Morgan Hill is a topic of great interest to your Chamber of Commerce. As with many things, the nature of balance depends greatly on one’s background and point of view. For us the biggest concern right now is how to ramp up Morgan Hill’s professional jobs to keep pace with our residential growth. In recent years we have experienced residential growth well in excess of job growth. Fortunately, the non-sustainability of this situation is well understood by individuals and organizations throughout our community.
Consequently, the city of Morgan Hill has beefed up its job attraction and retention efforts through the recent addition of a second Economic Development staff person, John Lang. Lang’s first major initiative is managing the development of Morgan Hill’s Economic Development Blueprint. We are participating heavily in the Blueprint development process alongside an impressive array of accomplished business leaders in our community. The end goal of this is to have a set of principles and initiatives which will guide us toward a long term balanced and prosperous future. Feedback at the first discussion focused heavily on the need for job attraction and retention efforts on par with the Downtown Morgan Hill revitalization efforts of the past decade.
Additionally, the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce has its own job attraction initiatives operating in parallel with the city’s planning and outreach efforts. These efforts are spearheaded by two of our newest board members, Ken Murray and Bill Gardner. Both of these gentlemen are highly accomplished local technology executives who live in Morgan Hill and want to have more professional opportunities here. Murray has already made great strides distilling our community’s value proposition for businesses. Gardner has focused on bringing international opportunities to our city. If you have an interest in supporting these efforts, please consider joining us at one of the monthly Economic Development Committee meetings held at 8 a.m. the fourth Thursday of each month, at Union Bank, Tennant Station. Alternatively, if meetings aren’t your thing, send me an email with your thoughts ([email protected]).
Finally, we have all become acutely aware of the role water plays in our economic viability and quality of life. As Santa Clara Valley Water District Director John Varela says, “businesses grow where water flows.” Ensuring the longterm viability of our water and sewer infrastructure requires a multifaceted approach. One promising partial solution might be from some of the very interesting on-site gray-water recycling and reuse technologies coming onto the scene. These technologies can radically reduce the water and sewer system demands of new commercial and residential projects while preserving the capability to have the natural plant growth (grass, trees, etc.) which add so much to our quality of life.
Murray has been convening targeted meetings of developers, architects, city planners, water district staff and recycling technology companies to investigate the possibility of encouraging use of these technologies through appropriate adjustments in water and sewer system construction impact fees. Convening people across multiple disciplines and organizations to collaborate on real solutions to problems is an important role for the Chamber of Commerce, and we are thrilled to have some opportunities to do so.
John Horner is the CEO and President of the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce.
