special promotional section
Q: What are the main issues your organization is addressing in Stockton?
What really reveals the true character of people is how they deal with adversity. Stockton
was able to make decisions and exercise discipline to get itself through the financial crisis,
and now we’re focused on how to evolve into the next iteration. To do that, we’re commit-
ting to local economic development priorities and making certain we’re paying attention
to the overall well-being of our citizens. We’re participating aggressively with regional
partners to develop regional strategies for housing affordability to move the needle on
homelessness and working within city government to implement best practices with per-
formance management and data analytics.
Q: What developments are you most excited about?
We have a fantastic waterfront, so we want to optimize its potential from a development
standpoint … (and) we’re putting on a full-court press to demonstrate why Stockton is the
most ideal location for a new CSU campus.
HARRY E. BLACK
City Manager
City of Stockton
Q: What are the main issues your organization is addressing in Stockton?
About 70 percent or more of our students (at San Joaquin Delta College) are on financial
support. Meeting students’ basic needs is critical — they need food to eat, a place to sleep
and proper health care to be able to focus on learning. If we want to solve bigger issues
in our community, like homelessness, we need to make sure our students aren’t sick or
sleeping in their car and still expect them to perform as well as other students. … Our pri-
mary function is education, but also economic mobility to help get students into jobs that
move our economy. To accomplish this, we reopened our food services this semester with
significantly lower prices (plus our free food pantry), and we got approval from the board to
explore housing options for homeless students.
Q: What makes Stockton stand out?
If you think of Stockton just from an agricultural perspective, you miss out on (its identity
as) a major distribution and transportation hub. We’re not just growing food, we’re also on
the cutting edge of logistics, robotics and automation. People are often amazed that at Del-
ta College itself, we have millions of dollars of training equipment, robotics and computers
to train our students. Stockton isn’t just where your lettuce and oranges come from.
OMID POURZANJANI
Superintendent and President
San Joaquin Delta College
Q: What developments are you most excited about?
The opportunity to have a CSU campus planted in Stockton is really exciting. The economic
impact of (having that type of school here) is beyond what people might realize. The brain
power that will draw to this area is immense, as is the funding that would come from the
state and federal governments. Financial aid to fund CSU students would bring millions — if
not billions — of dollars into our community.
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