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Sandoval Economic Alliance highlights BR&E, microeconomic gardening and conservative job estimates
Summary
Fred Shepherd of the Sandoval Economic Alliance told the council the alliance's business retention and expansion and microeconomic gardening efforts produced conservative projections and some actual hires; Shepherd said the alliance counts roughly 1,400 actual-plus-projected jobs and that the organization uses conservative residency multipliers when estimating local impacts.
Fred Shepherd, president of the Sandoval Economic Alliance (SCA), told the Rio Rancho governing body the alliance's contract with the city focuses on business retention and expansion, site-readiness support and microeconomic gardening for smaller firms.
Shepherd said SCA had taken part in state site-readiness assessments for multiple parcels and that several local sites received bronze-level or featured listings on the state site site-readiness portal. He described BR&E outreach that includes in-person engagement with large local employers and said SCA uses conservative residency assumptions when converting announced hires into local job impacts.
"We use very, very conservative estimates when we have a project that we've assisted," Shepherd said, noting SCA reports a mix of actual hires and projected positions and typically assumes a portion of announced jobs will live locally. Shepherd reported that, through 2025, projects SCA assisted accounted for approximately 1,400 actual and projected net new jobs and that SCA estimates roughly a $5 return for every $1 of city funding they received over the contract period.
Shepherd described microeconomic gardening pilot programs and small-business training series with UNM Health Sciences and CNM, and said the alliance had assisted a small company that added nine jobs this year. Councilors requested SCA's BR&E survey results and a copy of the microeconomic gardening report to better evaluate outcomes.
Shepherd stressed that outcomes depend on private decisions and that many recruitment and expansion projects include stops and starts; he asked for continued collaboration and patient, measured reporting on outcomes.
