A. The full employment of residents of the City, and the prevention of unemployment and underemployment of such residents, serves a vital and compelling public interest of the City and promotes the public health, safety and welfare of the City by reducing the incidence of crime, improving the mental and physical health and well-being of the City’s residents, alleviating the financial drain upon limited public and private resources for welfare programs and unemployment assistance, and enhancing the financial resources of the City.

B. The encouragement of industrial and commercial development within the City serves a vital and compelling public interest of the City and promotes the public health, safety and welfare of the City by increasing the employment of residents of the City, increasing the tax and revenue base and thereby enhancing the financial resources of the City, and preventing physical deterioration and abandonment of industrial and commercial areas within the City. In addition, the City’s participation in the financing of such development serves the public interest by ensuring that such development will reflect the needs and objectives of the community more so than if such development were undertaken without City participation.

C. Basic utilities such as gas, water and electricity are necessities of life, essential to public health, safety and welfare and to industrial and commercial development within the City. City assistance in financing and refinancing improvements to gas and water transmission and distribution systems and electricity generation, transmission and distribution systems throughout the region will reduce the costs of providing such utility service within the City and thereby reduce the rates of providing such rates to be paid by industrial, commercial and residential utility customers within the City. The City’s participation in such financing and refinancing also ensures that the City’s future gas, water and electricity requirements will be served as regional growth places heavier demands on such services.

D. Encouraging industrial and commercial development and the provision of basic utilities pursuant to this chapter (1) will promote the health, safety and welfare of the City, including those public interests enumerated above, and will improve the social, moral, economic and physical condition of the community thereby, and (2) constitutes a municipal affair of the City, a valid exercise of the police powers of the City, and a public purpose in which the City has a peculiar and unique interest. (Ord. 2669 § 1, 1996; Ord. 2498 § 1, 1992; Ord. 1970 § 1, 1982).