Our best hope for a booming economy rests with bold Stanislaus 2030 initiative

Imagine having supreme confidence that your grown children will find jobs in Modesto or Stanislaus County paying enough for them to comfortably raise their own families here.

Imagine businesses competing to move here because the quality of our workforce has a terrific reputation and not because we pay rock-bottom wages.

There is a lot to like about our beloved home community. But the above scenarios unfortunately do not ring true for most of our people.

That can change, if enough people decide they want it to.

Some of the most dedicated among us say they want things to change. And they are laying a foundation to make it happen.

It’s called Stanislaus 2030. It’s big, it’s bold, and its initial effort has earned the support of The Modesto Bee.

In simple terms, Stanislaus 2030 is a collaborative of leaders across every sector — business, education and government. They are driven to be intentional about building a vital economy, they say. No longer will our success rely on an accidental slip into prosperity, because that approach just isn’t realistic.

Being intentional means having a plan. The Stanislaus Community Foundation deserves credit for pulling together the pieces needed to create a good one.

For more than two years, the community foundation has quietly enlisted key players in our community, plus some from without. Perhaps most important is the vaunted Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank and research giant that already is hard at work compiling data on every conceivable portion of our economy, from workforce training and labor to costs of production and export opportunities.

This is a big deal, people. Brookings isn’t known for working with populations as small as ours — 558,000 in Stanislaus County. They must see something we might not even see ourselves.

“There are seismic, sea-level changes in our community,” said Marian Kaanon, the community foundation’s chief executive officer.

Stanislaus landscape shifting

For example, all these years we have lacked what are called a community development corporation (CDC) and a community development financial institution (CDFI). A mouthful, yes, but absolutely critical for boosting underserved areas. Think of them as ATMs dispensing money for low-income services.

Just a few months ago, we finally landed a CDC when a local nonprofit, South Modesto Partnerships, evolved into Stanislaus Equity Partners, and in just the past month, two local credit unions — Valley First in Modesto, and Rolling F in Turlock — became certified CDFIs.

Another unexpected blessing came this year from Washington, D.C. in the form of COVID-19 stimulus money. Our county and cities suddenly have funding like never before — collectively, hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I don’t think this is our last opportunity. I think it’s our best,” said Mani Grewal, a county supervisor and Modesto businessman.

What if some of that money could be used to reshape us? Can we decide that being just a bedroom community to the wealthier Bay Area is no longer good enough?

We can. But again, it won’t happen by accident.

Some of our strongest businesses put up $220,000 to develop a plan. County leaders kicked in $450,000, using stimulus money from the American Rescue Plan Act. That’s a good start. Modesto and others cities are expected to contribute as the initiative gains momentum.

A couple of months ago, Stanislaus 2030 began a 10-month sprint to develop the plan, as revealed by Bee reporter Kristina Karisch. Its first milestone is expected in February, when data gathered, crunched and analyzed by Brookings will be unveiled.

Stanislaus deep dive coming

A word of caution: It won’t all be pretty. Some of this profile, this honest look in a mirror, will be downright disheartening.

It’s no secret that our region suffers from chronic high unemployment, high obesity, low wages and low education. The Brookings report will put all that and much, much more into context, because you have to know where you stand if you want to start fixing something.

The grand plan should be ready by summer. It’s called an investment agenda, because it will set priorities for spending the money to which we suddenly have access, plus additional funding that will come our way as our region begins to rise.

“A couple months in, we’re very excited, we’re driving the ball down the field,” said Dillon Olvera of Modesto’s Beard Land Improvement Company. “It feels like success is just in front of us.”

And yet it’s natural to harbor reservations. This isn’t the first time the brightest among us have looked around and wondered why we have underachieved.

Remember the Stanislaus Countywide Visioning Project of the 1990s? Forward Modesto, another effort, did not gain much traction either, nor did the Blueprint process. The Modesto-based Great Valley Center made excellent strides in focusing attention here, and lasted more than a decade, but eventually waned. In recent years, county-led Focus on Prevention has helped break down the silos that prevented various community stakeholders from collaborating.

“I don’t see them as failed initiatives,” Kaanon said, “because we learned from them all.”

Perhaps the key lesson is recognizing the power of joining public and private sectors. The early stage of Stanislaus 2030 is doing that. It must continue if this initiative is to flourish where others faltered.

How to change the game

For this to work, players must see beyond short-term benefits to themselves and hold fast to the greater good of a broad-based, robust economy.

The vision must take us beyond our fertile fields while maximizing their potential.

It must provide more than lip service to workforce development. The vital economy we strive for requires that we educate and train the rising generation at a much higher level than we have, with specialized skills, so it’s encouraging to see Modesto Junior College, Stanislaus State University and U.C. Merced on the ground level of Stanislaus 2030.

This effort must welcome scrutiny and accept accountability. The Bee will play a key role in that.

It must find ways to draw in all of our people, in all of our wonderful diversity.

It’s a tall order, a big ask, a monumental challenge.

And it’s about time.

Stanislaus 2030 deserves a fighting chance to transform our region from something special into something spectacular.

This story was originally published December 12, 2021 at 4:00 AM.