How can we ensure that we build an ample and affordable supply of housing, while at the same time, protect valuable open space, protect our air quality and avoid gridlock on our region’s roads and highways?

Once in a while, a small business succeeds just by accident. However, as every first-year business student can tell you, to continue to be successful and grow, a business needs a plan. A business plan provides the owner, managers and employees with a blueprint, a common vision that guides the group in their combined efforts to build a better business and create additional prosperity for all.

Just like a business, a region can grow overnight—especially if it happens to be in the right place at the right time. But also like a business, in order to be successful and grow, a region needs a plan. Where should the homes, schools and parks be built? Where should the factories, the stores and public buildings be? Where will the roads, sewer lines and other infrastructure be built?

Just like employees and investors, a sound regional plan provides residents and business owners with a greater sense of surety, encouraging families to reinvest in their neighborhoods and communities, and convincing businesses to locate, expand and grow.

According to SACOG, the Sacramento region expects to add one million people over the next 20 years. A majority of these new residents will be our own children. Where will they live? Where will they work? How can we ensure that we build an ample and affordable supply of housing, while at the same time, protect valuable open space, protect our air quality and avoid gridlock on our region’s roads and highways?

Unlike a business or a city, a region has no single governing authority that develops and approves its “business plan.” To guide the future development of our region and maximize existing and future transportation resources, the SACOG Board of Directors has approved the development of Blueprint: Transportation/Land Use Study. Because land use decisions are inherently local decisions, Blueprint proposes to provide local officials and land use planners with a “tool kit” —resources they can use to make planning decision that indeed complement their neighbors and take full advantage of transit, roads and highways.

Just like a successful business or community plan, a successful regional plan must start with a vision. Starting this month, Blueprint proposes to begin to develop a common vision for the future of the Sacramento region by inviting people from all aspects of our communities to attend individual community workshops. In this way, SACOG officials hope each community within our region can come to some general consensus on how their community should grow over the next 20, 30 even 50 years.

Recently the Sacramento Metro Chamber Board of Directors, representing more than 180,000 employees throughout the six-county Sacramento region, voted to help support the development of a “regional vision”— a shared vision that would help guide the future growth and development of the greater Sacramento area —preserving our region’s quality of life and enhancing our economy.

As business leaders, we have a great stake in ensuring that our local decision-makers approve land use plans that provide for an ample and affordable supply of housing. Our region’s growing workforce—our employees—deserves quality homes, with quality schools in quality communities. Our region’s continued economic prosperity demands that we not repeat the mistakes of the Bay Area, which, because leaders did not build enough housing to meet the demand, has seen housing prices skyrocket, forcing tens of thousands of workers to hours-long commutes to the jobs they need from the homes they can afford.

The Metro Chamber Board of Directors strongly supports the Blueprint Project and salutes the SACOG Board of Directors for its bold and thoughtful leadership in helping foster a shared regional vision.

However, to be successful, the Blueprint Project must have input from individual members of the business community—from business people in every community in our region. We encourage business leaders in all six counties in the Sacramento region— Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Sutter, Yuba and Yolo—to sign up for a Blueprint workshop in your community. Visit the Blueprint website www.sacregionblueprint.org, and commit to shaping our region’s future today.