Riverside County Featured On ICMA Panel
ICMA is the world’s leading association of professional city and county managers and other employees who serve local governments.
As part of Riverside County efforts to advance Opportunity Zone investments, they engaged Stacy Cumberbatch in a one-year fellowship via FUSE Corp to work via the Riverside County Business and Community Services office. From this purview she helped design and implement OZ strategies and speaks at ICMA on how to create OZ strategies, particularly from an equity based lens.
Key Takeaways:
Engage stakeholders early via listening tours, 1:1s, and more to attain key priorities across various groups, ensuring CBOs included
Take note of available incentives and look to federal and state available resources to layer at local levels (i.e. grants with OZ priority consideration or preference points, special financing districts, expedited permitting processes, etc)
Use OZ designations as a proxy for where additional aid may be needed when allocating emergency funding (i.e. Fresno example craving out a dedicated pool of capital for businesses located in Opportunity Zones from CARES Act small business assistance funding)
Leverage public-private partnerships to drive programmatic approaches and specialized knowledge (i.e., Mastercard City Possible, pre-underwriting & investor capital attraction, etc)
Details Here: Opportunity Zones in a post-COVID-19 Socially Just World