Stanislaus 2030: Prosperity for more than just a few. Now that’s a goal worth pursuing

Why should Stanislaus 2030 make your heart beat a little faster?

Never have we seen a more promising approach to better jobs in Modesto, Stanislaus County and the neighboring region. Not hundreds of well-paying job — thousands. Tens of thousands.

Never before have so many local leaders of every stripe — hundreds of our heaviest hitters in business and government alike — come together in a united voice to clearly proclaim that we deserve better.

Never has there been a more sophisticated approach to the age-old question of how to actually move from stagnation to vibrancy.

This is happening. Stanislaus 2030 is real. The unprecedented effort has earned the support of The Modesto Bee, and deserves yours.

Eleven months ago, this newspaper’s Editorial Board declared Stanislaus 2030 worth watching. What have we seen since?

Impressive accomplishments

Two major milestones:

First, a comprehensive analysis earlier this year of our economy’s strengths and weaknesses — with unfortunate emphasis on the latter. There is no way to sugarcoat the most depressing finding: that 65% of our people on the edge of poverty are working their tails off but getting nowhere.

Second, the just-released Investment Blueprint — a detailed road map showing exactly how we might go from gloomy to zooming.

The first provided a sad look in the mirror, concluding that only 13% of Stanislaus jobs can be considered “good,” with another 22% “promising.” That means nearly two-thirds of our workers — 124,000 of us — are in or near poverty despite having jobs.

There is a certain power in numbers, even bad ones, when the data force you to see things how they really are. You have to know where you stand if you want to start fixing something. For that, we owe a debt of gratitude to the vaunted Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank and research giant, as well as the Stanislaus Community Foundation, the lead local entity driving Stanislaus 2030.

Armed with these numbers, a consortium of business and government leaders set about developing the second — the newly unveiled blueprint with concrete goals and steps toward prosperity. Key among its aims is creating 40,000 jobs with wages that won’t leave workers wondering how they’ll get by until the next paycheck, or about $29 per hour.

Meeting that goal would mean reducing the number of our children in struggling families by half. That would be no small feat.

How do we get there?

Not by accident, that’s for sure. Stanislaus 2030 is a declaration that we won’t slip into prosperity by waiting for it to come to us. If we want this, we must approach it intentionally.

Why this time is different

Can we get there by investing $75 million?

That’s what the blueprint envisions. Yes, it’s a stretch — and yes, it’s doable.

The silver lining to COVID-19 is relief money coming to our county and cities, which have collectively received hundreds of millions of dollars that would not be here if not for the deadly pandemic.

“We have a window, an opportunity if we spend public money wisely and strategically,” said Marian Kaanon, the Stanislaus Community Foundation’s chief executive officer.

The most tantalizing part of the blueprint is a 10-page section on bioindustry, or turning leftovers from farming — trees, almond hulls and corn stalks — into products you can sell, like plastics alternatives, soil additives and cement. It’s done cleanly with microbes, not petroleum products. The emerging niche business could be worth $2 trillion in two decades, the report says, and with targeted work, we could become the bioindustrial capital of the nation, if not the world.

“We are one of only a handful of locations uniquely able to become the center of gravity” for bioindustry, Stanislaus CEO Jody Hayes said when meeting with the Editorial Board.

Stanislaus is poised to seize this rare opportunity by virtue of proximity to feedstocks, or farm byproducts, as well as Bay Area brains developing the technology needed to turn feedstocks into serious income. Our pitch could be stronger, the blueprint says, if San Joaquin and Merced counties join Stanislaus in a tricounty force majeure in both bioproducts research and manufacturing.

Call to action

Any plan of such magnitude can expect plenty of scrutiny, including from the newspaper. In particular, the Editorial Board will look for:

• Accountability. Leaders spending that kind of public money must show exactly what we’re getting, in full transparency.
• Retaining talent. Too many of our children and grandchildren have grown up and gone elsewhere for better jobs and better futures. Stanislaus 2030 must show, empirically and otherwise, how the brain drain is being reversed.
• Effective workforce training. California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock and Modesto Junior College must produce more graduates with realistic hope of landing local jobs in growing fields of the future — like bioindustrial manufacturing. Our schools of higher learning must become more responsive to the needs of our area employers.
• Reskilling workers. This effort must not leave behind those who have labored to build our current economy, underachieving as it may be. Workers of color and underserved communities must be included. Economic mobility must become more than an empty promise for anyone willing to work.

Transforming a regional economy is not an overnight task. Stanislaus 2030 is named that because real success will take a decade of hard, intentional work, and more. Leaders will see that people can be patient — if they see consistent, steady, measurable progress.

Many eyes will be on the Stanislaus Board of Supervisors as they convene a Dec. 5 workshop to talk about priorities for spending much of the $30 million in COVID relief money they previously set aside for economic development. Many more will watch as the board takes a formal spending vote, likely in late January.

Time will tell if such an audacious dream can become reality. Stanislaus 2030 deserves credit for giving all of us a fighting chance at a promising future.