Business View Magazine | September 2019

199 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2019 that residents can eat and have fun locally while keeping their sales tax in town.” Keeping sales tax dollars within the Fountain Valley community is all part and parcel of the city’s broader vision. “Our council is very methodical and far-thinking,” Houston states. “We have a 20-year, sales tax measure that got passed in 2016, that added an extra one percent on purchases as a temporary measure to help the city’s finances. So, another goal of the Crossings is to be one of the tools that, over the next 20 years, would reform and revise our revenues and make them higher, so that in 2037, when that one percent sunsets, the revenue that would come from this new area (as well as from other things that we’re doing in the city), would help us have enough revenue to not need to renew that tax effort.” As mentioned, planning ahead is embedded in Fountain Valley’s DNA. Nagel relates that the city is currently in the middle of revising its General Plan – a 20-year document, required by the state, which charts what the city is going to look like, how it will be laid out, and where development will occur. “We’re right in the middle of that community discussion; it’s a two, probably almost a three-year process,” he explains. “We’ve identified a number of properties where developers are saying they’d like to do something. Those are in discussion; there will be development, but we don’t really have the final vision of that, yet. We know we’d like to maybe put some higher density housing in there to allow affordability for young families; our THE C I TY OF FOUNTA IN VALLEY , CAL I FORNI A