By Dale Kasler, The Sacramento Bee
The Sacramento Regional Technology Alliance is folding.
SARTA announced Tuesday that its board of directors voted a day earlier to go out of business after 14 years. Howard Bubb, the group’s chief executive, said SARTA will wind down operations over the next few weeks.
Bubb said he felt SARTA was still an effective voice for young high-tech companies in Sacramento. But the organization was feeling a financial pinch as companies and other supporters decided "to allocate their economic development dollars in new directions."
He declined to elaborate, but the region’s economic-development efforts have undergone a seismic shift in the past year with the emergence of the Greater Sacramento Area Economic Council, a group founded and led by area chief executives. The Greater Sacramento group merged with, and essentially replaced, the 40-year-old Sacramento Area Commerce and Trade Organization.
Bubb, who was appointed SARTA’s chief executive just eight months ago, said the group runs on a core budget of about $450,000 a year. The Greater Sacramento group is building a multimillion-dollar annual budget.
SARTA said it helped 226 tech startups in the past year alone. "The mission of technology economic development in the Sacramento region remains critical and necessary in this exciting time for Sacramento," said business consultant Peter Van Deventer, the organization’s chairman, in a prepared statement. "SARTA has been here to drive this mission forward during many difficult economic times, and we encourage the other organizations in the region to maintain focus on the needs of entrepreneurs as Sacramento enters its next phase of development."
SARTA had gone through some management upheaval in the past year. After longtime CEO Meg Arnold resigned last year, her successor Kirk Uhler lasted just eight months before giving way to Bubb.
©2015 The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
