|
Helping Businesses Prosper and our Community Thrive!
Your investment in the Oceanside Chamber is making a difference in our community! The Chamber's mission is to "provide advocacy and resources that help businesses and our community thrive." Here's a quick overview if what your investment in the Chamber allowed us to accomplish in the recent weeks...
Workforce Development
SOCAL Workforce Development
Project Launches
The Student Opportunities for Career Awareness and Learning, or SOCAL, is a joint project of the San Diego North Economic Development Council, Tri-City Medical Center and the Carlsbad, Vista and Oceanside Chambers of Commerce. The project originated over two years ago at Tri-City Medical Center as a way to advance its long-standing priority of strengthening North County’s Healthcare workforce pipeline. TCMC originated the concept of occupational videos on demand, the name, the logo and look of the SOCAL brand. Last December, the website, www.socalworkforce.org, went live and featured nearly 40 different occupations.
The project team has created a variety of packages for businesses that would like to add their occupations to the video library. Businesses in Oceanside interesting in participating should contact Victoria Carlborg at 760-722-1534 or victoria@oceansidechamber.com.
Oceanside Students Recognized as Rising Stars by Local Business Community
The Oceanside Chamber launched a Rising Star student recognition program in November to recognize high school seniors at our city’s high schools who have overcome significant challenges in their life, but who have managed to keep, or get back on track with their education.
Honorees at the monthly Rising Star breakfasts are eligible to apply for $20K higher education scholarships provided by Genentech that will be awarded in collaboration with the Chamber’s Workforce Development Taskforce at the end of the school year.
Congratulations to January’s Rising Stars: Zitlali Valverde Gomez from Surfside Educational Academy, Daniel Cruz from Oceanside High School, Marlen Benites Venegas from El Camino High School, Johnny Dolores from Pacific View Charter School.
Rising Star events are open to all community members who want to show their support for our students. Presenting sponsors are Genentech and Tri-City Medical Center. Event and Venue sponsors are San Diego Gas and Electric and Frontwave Credit Union. More information on Rising Star Oceanside.
Advocacy
As the State legislature reconvened in January, the Oceanside Chamber joined several coalition efforts led by the California Chamber of Commerce to weigh in on legislation impacting our business community.
- Oceanside Chamber joined a coalition of 122 Business Organization in opposition to CalChamber-identified Job Killer bills AB 1400 (Kalra, Lee and Santiago) and ACA 11 (Kalra and Lee). The bills would establish and raise taxes necessary to fund a single payer health care system called CalCare in California. The bills would create a new and exorbitantly expensive government bureaucracy, which would control and finance a state-run health care system (CalCare), ultimately resulting in significant job loss to California. Similar proposals in the past have been estimated to annually cost more than $400 billion (see SB 562 (Lara), 2017 Senate Floor analysis), which is a financial commitment four times that of Medi-Cal. Successfully standing up to a new function that would be twice the size of the existing state budget is highly doubtful, given the state’s recent experience with benefit delays and massive fraud in the unemployment system. The crippling tax increases required to pay for this massive new bureaucracy could be as much as $200 billion annually and would be increased in the future by a simple majority of the Legislature. The bills failed to advance in the Assembly.
- The Chamber joined a coalition to oppose SB 213 which creates a presumption of industrial causation for all hospital employees that provide direct patient care who manifest a blood-borne infectious disease, tuberculosis, meningitis, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), cancer, musculoskeletal injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, or respiratory disease during their employment, and for a time period after employment. The practical impact of creating a presumption of industrial causation is that hospitals will have a higher burden of proof when attempting to contest a claim that they believe is non-industrial.
- The Chamber supported SB 627 which would require the CA Coastal Commission to approve a public agency’s or homeowner’s application for erosion mitigation efforts for planting, drainage and seawall or shoreline protective device installation if they meet certain streamlined requirements for coastal mitigation. Furthermore, SB 627 requires the Coastal Commission to respond to local requests in a timely manner, an important step in ensuring critical safety measures are implemented as quickly as possible. SB 627 would help preserve our coastline and prevent tragic loss of lives and property.
- The Chamber joined a letter of support for Governor Newsom’s budget proposal regarding the outstanding unemployment insurance (UI) loan from the federal government. The Governor has proposed to pay $3 billion towards this outstanding UI debt. California’s UI program is funded exclusively by employers via state and federal taxes on wages. Employees do not pay any UI taxes. These employer contributions are deposited in the Unemployment Trust Fund (UI Fund) of the U.S. Treasury Department. Generally, the contribution rate for an employer is 0.6% of wages, up to $7,000 of wages per employee/per year, which is $42, assuming the state is in compliance with unemployment insurance laws and the state’s fund is solvent. However, if a state’s UI Fund is insolvent for more than two years, that tax rate increases by 0.3% each year or $21, until the fund becomes solvent, creating a steadily growing tax increase on the state’s employers. If the fund remains insolvent for 18 years, the maximum rate is $420 per employee per year. Because California’s UI Fund will have been insolvent for two years, as of January 2022, all California employers will face a per-employee tax increase of $21 in 2023 and increasing tax increases every year thereafter. Those per-employee taxes will hit the labor-intensive fields such as restaurants, hospitality, and tourism the hardest.
Economic Development
Ocean Kamp Presentation Available on Chamber YouTube Channel
At the Chamber's January 6th Emerging Issues Forum, Michael Grehl, Vice President - Real Estate for N4FL Worldwide provided an update on the proposed Ocean KAMP Project, slated for the old drive-in site on Highway 76. His presentation covered the status of the project and how it will support Oceanside's economy.
In November, the Oceanside Chamber Board of Directors voted to offer its support to the project that will be located across 92 acres along SR 76 and Mission Avenue. Ocean Kamp will feature a wave pool, a 300-key resort hotel and airstream glamping village, 126,000 SF of office, retail and restaurants and extensive indoor and outdoor meeting space.
This project creates a new destination for both locals and visitors and has a tremendous potential to attract high quality employers to our city. Over the next ten years, Ocean Kamp is projected to contribute over $80 million in revenue to the City of Oceanside and will immediately create more than 1,500 new jobs, improved infrastructure, and a state-of-the-art wave pool that will generate international attention.
|
