City of Santa Cruz Awards Joby “With USD500,000 Forgivable Loan” for Local Job Creation

This lat­est Joby Avi­a­tion news is yet anoth­er sign that the eVTOL indus­try is already mak­ing an impact on local com­mu­ni­ties around the world.

Accord­ing to santacruzsentinel.com, the city’s coun­cil has approved a motion at a recent meet­ing, to pro­vide Joby with a for­giv­able loan of USD500,000 to help estab­lish an employ­ment cen­tre and incen­tivise the com­pa­ny to remain in the city of San­ta Cruz until 2038.

Pro­vid­ed by the local Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Trust Fund, a for­giv­able loan is a type that allows bor­row­ers to have the bal­ance of their loan either par­tial­ly or total­ly for­giv­en if they meet cer­tain con­di­tions. All Joby has to do is employ a num­ber of local peo­ple at its HQ in the Har­vey West area of San­ta Cruz as well as its facil­i­ties in Mari­na and San Car­los.

Sure­ly, this is a win-win for the eVTOL com­pa­ny?

Joby Avi­a­tion Opens New HQ in San­ta Cruz

Bon­nie Lip­scomb, Direc­tor of the San­ta Cruz Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment, said at the meet­ing, “Joby is cre­at­ing rideshar­ing net­works, which is one of the things we are excit­ed about in the city, par­tic­u­lar­ly with High­way 17. The com­pa­ny also fits in with our com­mu­ni­ty val­ues of pro­vid­ing sus­tain­able solu­tions to today’s chal­lenges of con­ges­tion and cli­mate change.”

The arti­cle explains, “The loan would be pro­vid­ed to Joby on a reim­burse­ment basis based on an annu­al sur­vey of its job gen­er­a­tion and employ­ee reten­tion. The agree­ment is meant to incen­tivise the hir­ing of 250 new, full-time employ­ees in the city in total, which includes posi­tions for tech­ni­cians, engi­neers, machin­ists and man­agers, among oth­ers.”

Lip­scomb added, “That’s real­ly the crux of what this agree­ment is about. It is all  about the cre­ation of local jobs in our com­mu­ni­ty.”

The report points out this for­giv­able loan is tak­en from the Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Trust Fund and does not impact the city’s gen­er­al fund, where the loan “will be used for test­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and safe­ty equip­ment, includ­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions, safe­ty, and oth­er advanced spe­cialised man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment for the facil­i­ty, such as CNC machines, lasers, and grinders,” explains the arti­cle.

Joby HQ at San­ta Cruz (graph­ic image)

The terms of the employ­ment incen­tive is for the mon­ey to be dis­bursed over no-more than five years and with instal­ment pay­ments based on the annu­al employ­ment sur­vey. For each full-time employ­ee that Joby hires, the city would loan the com­pa­ny USD2,000. How­ev­er, Joby can­not claim more than 100 new employ­ees in a year, which means that the max­i­mum loan amount award­ed for a year is capped at USD200,000.

The arti­cle con­tin­ues, “After Joby pro­vides the annu­al employ­ment sur­vey, and shows that it has eli­gi­ble expens­es, the loan is for­giv­en. If the avi­a­tion com­pa­ny sees a reduc­tion in employ­ment in the city for five years and not growth, or if it relo­cates its head­quar­ters out­side of the city before 2038, Joby will be oblig­at­ed to reim­burse the city for a per­cent­age of loan fund­ing on a pro­rat­ed basis.”

George Kivork, Joby’s Head of State and Local Pol­i­cy, remarked, “We have spent the last year mak­ing sure that the agree­ment and the pri­vate part­ner­ship that we enter here togeth­er would be for the pub­lic inter­est. We have placed a very long range time­line of us not going any­where for the next 10 years. We are com­mit­ted to San­ta Cruz.”

The City Coun­cil approved the motion by a 6–1 vote.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jobyaviation.com/

https://www.facebook.com/CityofSantaCruz/?locale=en_GB

(News Source: https://www.santacruzsentinel.com)

(Top image: San­ta Cruz May­or Fred Kee­ley (cen­tre right) pre­sides over a rib­bon cut­ting in June 2023 for Joby Aviation’s new HQ at Enci­nal Street. (Cred­it: Nick Sestanovich/Santa Cruz Sen­tinel))

For the lat­est news, insights and con­tent regard­ing the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, please join the fol­low­ing eVTOL Insights chan­nels: What­sApp, Sig­nal, Face­book, Insta­gram, Spo­ti­fy, Apple Pod­casts, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.