Politics & Government

City Councilman Launches Plan for UCSC Students to Spend Flexi Dollars Downtown

Councilman David Terrazas has opened talks at the University and in town for a program that would help capture more student spending.

UCSC students already pay for food on campus with Flexi Cards which contain money stored on their student IDs, like a prepaid credit card or a medical Flexible Spending Account.

City Councilman David Terrazas said Friday that he would like to see those cards used downtown as well in an effort both to spark business and to show the buying power of the students to the rest of the community.

"Other universities have a long history of this kind of program," said Terrazas, who had talked about doing this as part of his campaign for his seat three years ago.

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"It would make us a much more welcoming community for the students."

Terrazas spoke about the program with Robert Gibbs, the retail analyst hired by the city to make suggestions about how to improve business downtown. Gibbs said that the city is only capturing 5 percent of the $3 million students spend annually.

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Gibbs proposed before the city council more exotic ways to bring in more money, such as making Pacific Avenue two-way and encouraging big box stores to move downtown, but said Terrazas, the Flexi Cards are a more simple step to capture large revenues.

Students spend more than $1 million on the cards in campus dining halls and campus eateries such as Joe's Pizza and Subs and Tacos Moreno, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Terrazas said that creating a program where they could spend the cards in town would help them find new businesses. A healthy relationship between the town and students would also be a selling point to prospective students, who might not like the isolation of the so-called city on the hill.

"How many more would go to the Yacht Harbor and try a coffee shop there?" he asked. "This would develop new partnerships."

Students could also be directly marketed to by local businesses, which could provide discounts for using the cards, he said.

Terrazas is speaking to people downtown and up the hill to encourage a system and said he hopes to have it in place by the next academic year.

The expense would be for merchants to purchase card readers, like they use with credit cards, he said. But the benefits could be significant.

"I think the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Association should pick up on this," said Terrazas.


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