By Mara Knaub | Eloy Sun
The Yuma City Council on Wednesday adopted an Economic Incentive Policy, but first removed any reference to retail businesses.
During Tuesday’s work session, Mayor Doug Nicholls asked that retail businesses be struck from the policy. “Typically, we don’t incentivize retail, actually almost never do we incentivize retail, and I think it would just be better to pull it out in its entirety out of the document,” he said.
He explained that the goal is to attract new businesses and create new jobs in the community. “That’s really based upon the idea that we want to incentivize new jobs coming into the community. Doesn’t necessarily mean new companies. It just means jobs that create new dollars to the economy,” the mayor noted.
“The Yuma community can only consume so much retail so we’re not creating more dollars. We’re just moving dollars around,” Nicholls added.
On Wednesday, the mayor moved to amend the policy, noting that it’s specifically directed at “larger companies that bring dollars into the community.”
However, Nicholls noted that the city will also look at ways to help small local businesses grow. “It’s one of those things that a lot of times it’s overlooked because it’s not super, super glossy or sexy to talk about a local business adding three jobs, but to that local business, that’s a big deal,” Nicholls said.
