What do you think are the major challenges facing businesses in West Sacramento and how do you plan to address them? What type of business recruitment and retention programs should the city have?
Jim Cahill
Email: jim@jimcahill.org
Website: www.jimcahill.org
Phone: (916) 531-6264
To be a successful business owner, one must overcome obstacles on a daily basis. When government is considered “business friendly”, it is because it provides more solutions than challenges.
My entire career was spent in the private sector. I’ve served as a Director on the Boards of four different companies, and successfully built and sold my own business. I’ve also served on the Board of Directors of this Chamber. I understand the difference between an entrepreneurial and bureaucratic mentality.
As a consultant specializing in Venture Capital financing, I have studied and assisted numerous businesses in their path to successful growth by dealing in hard facts, not rhetoric. For small businesses on West Capitol, the hard fact is that the City could do more to fight
· Vandalism
· Prostitution
· Blight
Over the last fifteen years, the same promises to “fix” West Capitol have been made repeatedly. The incumbents have had a chance to demonstrate progress, and have succeeded only in coming up with more consultants’ studies and grand visions, but little in the way of bricks and mortar.
Our control of the Port is a good example of the bureaucratic mentality at work. The operation of the Port’s cargo handling facility continues to operate at a loss, as the capital improvements needed to be competitive go unfunded. Massive sales of the Port’s land holdings are being used to balance the bottom line and create an impression of profitability, but these funds are not being returned to the Port for re-investment.