By Dean Calbreath, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Originally published March 18, 2010 at 6:47 p.m., updated March 18, 2010 at 9:54 a.m.
Federal taxes, state budget problems and local contracting preferences were among the topics on the table Thursday when San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders met with the leaders of more than a dozen small and mid-size local businesses.
After an initial session open to the media, Sanders and the executives went behind closed doors to discuss particular issues of concern to the companies, ranging from whether the city should give preferences to local contractors over outside firms to how they can cope with changing policies in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.
“In a lot of ways, they’re facing the same issues the city is: how to deal with a downturn in revenue and rising expenses during a rough period for the economy,” Sanders said after the meeting. “They’re trying to stay afloat in tough times, and so are we.”
The meeting was arranged by Vistage International, a San Diego organization that brings groups of chief executives together to address issues of common concern. Among the attendees were the CEOs of such entities as the Del Mar Fairgrounds, Easy-Turf, Biomet San Diego, McMahon Steel and Wardell Builders.
“Many of the people felt that officials in the federal and state governments just aren’t listening to them at all, and they’re concerned that they’re going to be impacted by a lot of policies that are being developed and that they don’t think have resources to deal with a lot of them,” Sanders said.
He said his staff is trying to streamline local regulations to make things easier for businesses, but that city laws represent only about 14 percent of the total regulations that businesses face.
One area of city regulation that drew attention was the issue of whether the city should give preference in awarding contracts to local companies rather than those from outside the area. That’s an issue of contention between the mayor and the City Council, with Sanders pushing to award the city’s data-processing contract to a company in Gardena rather than the city-owned San Diego Data Processing Center.
“Several of the businesses told the mayor that it could be more advantageous to the city, in terms of building employment, to award contracts to local companies instead of companies in Utah, Montana and Arizona,” said Vistage CEO Rafael Pastor.
Sanders said he’s open to compromise on the issue, by giving a local preference worth 5 percent to 10 percent of the value of the contract instead of what some of his critics are pushing for now, which would amount to a 50 percent preference, which he says the data-processing-center bid would represent.
Reid Carr, CEO of Red Door Interactive, said that a number of questions came from executives involved in construction, who wanted to know about the commercial projects that the city is involved in, including the stadium, convention center expansion, civic center and library.
“They wanted to know who they need to have our eye on in terms of who’s supporting what project,” Carr said.
Rachel Laing, a Sanders spokeswoman, recommended that those executives contact the mayor’s Economic Growth Services Team to find out about city contracts and other business issues.
Sanders said he was impressed by a number of the businesses that he came into contact with, particularly the host company, One Roof Energy, which has combined photovoltaic technology with roofing material so that homeowners can get solar power from their own roofs rather than having to buy separate solar panels.
“It’s a fascinating example of what technology what to do,” Sanders said.
“They’re getting really busy because they’ve got a design that they thought was groundbreaking, which is supposed to be much easier to put up than solar panels and less expensive than a lot of roofs now are.”
Sanders, who last month visited solar paneling production lines at Kyocera, sees clean technology as one of the drivers that can help pull the local economy forward.
