California’s inland region key to statewide vitality

PUBLISHED: June 21, 2019 at 6:24 pm | UPDATED: June 21, 2019 at 6:24 pm

When it comes to investing in California, the smart money is heading inland, home to one of the most robust employment, innovation and opportunity centers in the United States. That might surprise those who still view the Inland Empire and Central Valley as distant outposts — barely mentionable in the same sentence as coastal California. In fact, not only has the inland region long served as the industrial and agricultural backbone of the state, it’s where investors are placing their bets and, in the process, helping build what we can now legitimately brand as the new California.

Inland California, which includes the Inland Empire and Central Valley, is home to 30% of the state’s population, and growing significantly faster than the state as a whole. The economic output of Inland California is also massive. At $436 billion in GDP (2015), the region’s economy equals the 15th largest state in the United States and the 25th largest country in the world.

We’re also younger, with one third of the population is under the age of 25, providing employers here with a pipeline of workers they won’t find anywhere else.

These are some of the reasons why so many emerging industries, from healthcare and transportation to alternative energy and advanced manufacturing, look to places like the Inland Empire for their next wave of major investments.

The state sees it too, which is why the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is investing more than $400 million in a state-of-the-art vehicle-emission testing and research facility at the University of California Riverside.

In San Bernardino County, state grants will help pay for what will ultimately become North America’s first zero-emission passenger trains as part of the Redlands Passenger Rail System.

In addition, the region has won two major grants from the Strategic Growth Council, totaling over $55 million in investments that provide for affordable housing and community development in key transit corridors. More broadly, these kinds of investments represent a growing recognition — in the public, private and philanthropic sectors — of how important the Inland Empire is to the state’s long-term vitality.

Indeed, private philanthropic foundations have significantly increased their investment in the Inland Empire over the past several years, from $61.3 million in 2013 to $115 million three years later. This increase has mostly been driven by investments from outside the region that more than doubled, from $46 million to $98 million. Our Center for Social Innovation was created from these kinds of investments, with nearly $2 million in seed investments from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, and Weingart Foundation in 2018, and an additional $1.2 million since.

We are not resting on our laurels, however, and neither is the region. Last month, officials and stakeholders from throughout the Inland Empire, Central Valley and the state gathered in Riverside for the first regional summit of Inland California Rising – an unprecedented effort to find common cause and attract even more investments to regions like ours that represent the future of California.

Importantly, we were not simply talking amongst ourselves. Senior leaders from the Newsom administration, from economic development to higher education and planning, used the occasion to announce a major statewide initiative called Regions Rise Together where Inland California will play a significant role.Foundation leaders attended, too, including four CEOs and senior program officers from Southern California funders like Weingart, to statewide funders like the James Irvine Foundation, to national and global funders like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All are interested in learning about the progress being made, and are committed to increasing public, private, and philanthropic investments in the Inland Empire and Central Valley. And we are already seeing tangible signs of progress, such as the creation of Opportunity Zone fellowships from FUSE Corps that will benefit Fresno and the Inland Empire alike, and engagement from Milken Institute and others to build a stronger tech ecosystem in the region.

California’s future is inland. Critical investments in the region’s innovation economy, civic leadership, health, and education, are vital to ensuring prosperity in the region and fulfilling the promise of “California for all.”

Original post can be found at https://www.dailybulletin.com/2019/06/21/californias-inland-region-key-to-statewide-vitality/?fbclid=IwAR31dNgtm3x94zD9OigyAu4MQtjo9hvZ-Csy5HC5FPLIUA5LScBYzMpv3MM

JUNE 04, 2019 BY STUART VAN HORN, ED.D.

Preparing the Way for a Central Valley Renaissance

Recently, Governor Newsom announced his new “Regions Rise Together” initiative. Launched in partnership with California Forward and the California Economic Summit, this initiative is in recognition of the fact that the substantial economic and job growth that the state has experienced since 2010 has been concentrated in the state’s coastal areas and has largely passed over the state’s inland regions.

In fact, by the Governor’s own calculations, residents of California’s inland regions have seen their per capita income drop dramatically while 70% of job growth in the state during this same period has occurred in the state’s coastal regions. With the Regions Rise Together initiative, Governor Newsom intends on turning his “California for All” slogan into a strategy to design a comprehensive economic plan that will ensure sustainable and inclusive growth across the state and benefit all parts of California.

The announcement of the Governor’s new initiative is welcome news for those of us who live and work in the Central Valley. West Hills Community College District covers nearly 3,400 square miles of Central California, primarily in the western portions of Fresno and Kings Counties. The District serves over 8,000 students with two accredited colleges: West Hills College Coalinga and West Hills College Lemoore. In addition to its main campus location in Coalinga, West Hills College Coalinga also operates the North District Center in Firebaugh, and the Farm of the Future located at the north end of Coalinga. We are very proud of our students and our graduates and we have an 87-year history of serving students in efficient, innovative practices such as Prior Learning Assessment that promote student success and completion.

We also know well that our students face more social, economic, and structural obstacles to student success. Many of the students that we serve are first generation college students that must balance work and family obligations with their educational goals. They are hindered by the region’s higher unemployment rates, fewer jobs, and one of the highest poverty rates in the country. While Fresno County is California’s single most productive agricultural region and one of the most productive in the world (providing more than half of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States), Census data show that it is also the poorest metro area in the state and the second most impoverished region in the nation.

This data also show that Valley areas (Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield-Delano) are among the top five U.S. regions with the highest percentage of residents living below the poverty line (one of every four). In Fresno County, median income fell from $46,479 to $42,807 during the last Census period while unemployment rose to 16 percent. In addition, food stamp use climbed to nearly 18 percent.

Beyond these economic statistics, our students also suffer from the lack of broadband internet in much of rural Fresno County. This broadband inequity makes distance education impossible, severely limits tele-health and tele-medicine opportunities, and significantly hinders educational attainment and economic growth in the region. The inequity of broadband access is a key reason why poor communities stay poor, chronic illness manifests, and social mobility is stunted. This fact is borne out by statistics. Our district has 12% of the state’s population but only 6% of the state’s bachelor’s degree holders. In addition, only 11% of the population ages 25 and above possess an associate’s degree or higher. This compares to 41% statewide.

West Hills is not intimated by these statistics. We are working every day to close these achievement gaps and increase educational attainment in our region. We offer Career Technical Educational programs that build a skilled workforce for our regional employers. We assist our students financially through our President’s Scholars program and by offering free Open Educational Resources (OER) textbooks. And we are helping eliminate the broadband inequity and ensure that reliable, high-speed broadband service is available in our region by ensuring that broadband infrastructure is built throughout the West Side and by raising funds to augment the monthly internet subscription fees of our student-led households.

The Governor’s initiative promises to build on existing locally driven initiatives in our state’s diverse regions while also leveraging the investments and policy priorities of the state. West Hills looks forward to representing our students’ and our communities’ needs in this conversation and working toward a future in which educational attainment soars, infrastructure supports growth, skills gaps are eliminated, and the quality of life increases for all residents in Fresno County.

Stuart Van Horn is chancellor of the West Hills Community College District.

Original post can be found at https://caeconomy.org/reporting/entry/preparing-the-way-for-a-central-valley-renaissance