Editorial: Drones could still bring billions despite FAA setback
Ventura County’s bid to become a Federal Aviation Administration test area for unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, came up short on Dec. 30, when the FAA announced that six other states had finished first in a competition that attracted 25 applicants.
Five tri-county economic trends we’ll be watching in the New Year
Conventional wisdom holds that with a federal budget in hand, a financial system on the mend, rising housing prices and steady job growth, 2014 ought to be a pretty darn good year.
Editorial: Big banks commit to local communities
Rabobank announced an investment of $1 million into a small-business loan fund run by the Economic Development Collaborative of Ventura County and Union Bank unveiled a multimillion-dollar investment that allowed the Channel Islands YMCA to return the nonprofit’s regional headquarters to downtown Santa Barbara.
Year of awards and new hires positions PCBT for growth in 2014
Pacific Coast Business Times has undergone a substantial expansion during 2013, so I thought I would exercise my editor’s prerogative and talk a little about what we’ve accomplished this year and where we are headed in the New Year.
A speed bump on the way to creating a chamber-led vitality group
The most concentrated effort to date to create a Santa Barbara County economic vitality organization has hit a roadblock. And that roadblock appears to be the Board of Supervisors’ bitterly divided vote on the Santa Maria Energy project, where South County supervisors banded together to impose severe carbon emissions limits on an innovative onshore oil and gas development that had broad support in North County.
