Feb 10, 2021 Economic Development Partnership Board on 2021-02-10 11:00 AM

good morning everyone my name is John Baines and I have the privilege of being the chairman of the economic development partnership board and we want to welcome you to our February 10th meeting you will notice that we have a number of folks on the meeting here with us and they're all smiling and they're all happy and we're going to talk about the good things that are going on in the city of Denton there's a lot of things that are really positive and excellent and we're going to get into those in just a moment the we want to consider 80 excuse me first item on the agenda is EDP 21-001 consider the approval of the minutes of the December 9th 2020 board meeting if there's someone that could provide us with a motion we'll get started okay we have Lee Ramsey with a motion a second second this is Jill Jester okay Jill Jester is the second do we have any conversation or any consideration concerning the minutes okay hearing none we're going to do a verbal vote and we're going to go across the board here Bob Ames okay let's see Lee Ramsey, Mayor Pro Tem, welcome aboard Tina Albert your first time with us thank you can you hear me okay we can do you accept the minutes as presented okay Jill Jester aye Jason Tomlinson aye Tony Clark everybody aye Steve Edgar on the phone can we hear you Steve can't hear you you're on mute okay while you get yours together there Mark McClellan aye and John Baines is aye so the minutes pass unanimously and we'll move on to EDP item 20-057 receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding implementation of the economic development strategic plan but I'm going to break protocol here for a moment and before we do that Tina could you tell us a little bit about yourself and we want to welcome you properly to the board yeah great thank you very much and welcoming me to this I am Tina Albert and I have been with PACCAR for 21 years I am a CPA most of my history here at PACCAR has been in our controllers or accounting group and I did move to Mississippi about eight years ago and I just recently moved back two years ago and when I moved back to Peterbilt I went into operations so I left my accounting field and moved to operations so now I'm the plant manager and Chris Davis who was on the board prior and he was my boss so he's moved off to Chillicothe, Ohio to work for Kenworth and so now they're taking place so it's very very honored to be part of this committee well thank you Tina we we love and respect Peterbilt very much and we look forward to a wonderful long-term relationship with you of course thank you okay thank you and let's see Jessica is this going to be the city manager's last meeting so yes Todd will just a quick announcement so Todd Hollman will be leaving the city of Denton he's accepted a position in Palm Desert so I don't think he was able to join us this morning he has a lot going on with the transition I think David Gaines is on the phone with us who's our assistant city manager David will continue to be our assistant city manager and will be who I report to who I report to now so so I don't think Todd was able to join us this morning okay well hopefully we'll get a chance to extend our best to Todd before he leaves us for the wonderful job he's done and helping the city of Denton during these past few years so coming back to EDP 20-057 we have who's going to handle that presentation for us Jessica so that's me and we don't have a presentation for this item mainly because I was up last night putting the finishing touches on the strategic plan and sometime around 8 o'clock 830 mayor Pro Tem can correct me the city council formally adopted the economic development strategic plan by a vote of 6 to 1 so I really just want to take this time to first say thank you to this group you participated in a lot of hours of a lot of meetings over the past year helping us get that plan providing your expertise and your feedback even those of you I don't think who were on the board when we started the plan Lee was involved in the plan in some other capacities so you guys represent really some some great industries great fields and gave us all the input we need to make sure that for the next three to five years that we can continue to represent and support Denton businesses and grow our local economy so I want to say thank you to all of you for for that commitment in time that you put into this and then with that just give you a quick update is that what I told city council last night is yes we did a lot of work to get where we are today but our real job started this morning and that is as we move into the implementation plan there's a lot of work to be done as it relates to policy and program decisions so over the next few weeks we're going to be mapping out sort of a timeline of how we're going to workshop those various elements and bring those back to this board before they come back to city council so there's still a lot of work to be done with Jessica I did have one question I did see the implementation matrix there did you want to say anything about that or should we move on to the next agenda item so the implementation matrix summarizes that key actions activities and sort of a timeline of when those will take place those really covered the the sort of strat the strategy related items we also have a lot of operational things that need to get addressed those are the things that are in the capacity and resources section of the strategic plan so we're going to work on sort of our organizational and operational things as well as starting implementation of that those first few items in the implementation matrix that are identified as our initial implementation items and last month I sent you our first revised comprehensive quarterly report there is a section of that report that is dedicated to providing updates to this board related to the implementation matrix okay so should we proceed to the next agenda item I think you have one question okay we have a question okay from Jill Jester please you um and forgive me Jessica I did not watch the entire city council meeting I was able to kind of go back and look at some snippets can you fill us in a little bit on the discussion if any regarding funding a economic development fund that was discussed and seemed to be kind of the last little piece that seemed to be up in the air concerning as far as council deliberations is that still tabled or was that addressed and voted on as part of the package so what and David's here and can kind of add to this so when we were working on developing kind of the pro formas for that and what that would look like we realized that that has a really significant impact as it relates to the overall city budget process so we didn't want to have that conversation completely separate from the budget process and believe it or not we're actually we've already started our budget process for next fiscal year and so we're integrating that catalyst fund discussion into that budget process so there'll be a full picture that council will be able to review and make a decision on so no they didn't take a final vote or incorporate that catalyst fund decision into their approval of the plan and can you let us know or do you know what when is that process does that is that the summer that that really kicks into high gear or when should we start paying attention and talking to our city council members and and so our fiscal year for those who don't know goes from October through September but we actually get started on our budget process specifically the utility funds early in the process right now really we'll be going to council here in the next few months to start those preliminary looks at the utility funds and really the purpose of pushing this or incorporating the budget process is if we increase those ROIs teach us funds it has a significant impact obviously in those out years so as far as the timeline we're going to have those initial discussions with council and really the decisions will be made all the way up to September by city council but those the budget uh the proposed budget will be submitted to council around August 1st and so that'll be the first time the council really gets a chance to to dig in and start giving some direction on what they what they want us to to bring forward in the ultimate budget. Mr. Chair could I add something to that? I would be happy for you to do that. So from a from a council perspective as well you know remember we've got two two new folks on the council as of the November election and then finally December when we finally wrapped up the last of our runoffs the council was set those two new folks had not been a part of the conversation regarding the catalyst fund and how that's going to be funded and where it's going to come from and I think overall it's a really good thing that we're talking about a catalyst fund which is the term term we're now using for the type of fund we've we've kind of coalesced around. It's a really good thing that we're talking about in terms of the overall budget. Imagine talking about a budget and never talking about road maintenance. Imagine talking about a budget and never talking about future staffing needs. We're finally talking about economic development in the context of the overall city budget and I think that's the appropriate place for it to be. I didn't know that was going to be Jessica and David's response this morning to the to the question a very good question but I for one appreciate that it's going to be put in that larger context and that way not just the current council we have now but the councils going forward will hold it in that context and they'll understand the place that the critical place that that catalyst fund holds in our economic development activities and hopefully in future years we just keep budgeting that line item and working through that fund the same way we do all of our other funds just like fixing streets and paying the police and fire and all that kind of stuff. It just becomes part of the landscape. Thank you. Thank you councilman Mayor Pro Tem. I also wanted to underscore a point here in our in one of our recent discussions I asked the question about members of the of this board being more proactive when it comes to supporting the economic development issues for the city of Denton because this has been somewhat of a point of controversy where some in the city were very interested and others were not as interested and so I asked if I should become more involved before the council when it comes to supporting the economic development issues and also discussing them periodically and in that discussion I was told that if I do go before the council I need to go as a representative of this board and with your approval so that I'm not there independently and as a simply as a citizen within the community but representing the premier economic development arm of the city of Denton and so I wanted you to know that as this process continues I will periodically make presentations to city council supporting the economic development and especially this fund that that councilor jester had talked about so any anytime you'd like to talk to me about it please feel free to send me an email or give me a call so that we can make this a paramount issue before the council so thank you for all of your input and I believe we're going to go on to the next agenda item now that's edp 21-002 receiver report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the Denton business allies program well I'm going to pause one second again and take it off script I'm sorry mac but I want to introduce Sarah Hensley who just joined us in the meeting so Sarah Hensley is the interim city manager Sarah's our current deputy city manager she's been with the city about two years I'm not sure time has seemed to stop in our life as of late but I just want to introduce Sarah to the group and Sarah we will be serving in the city manager's ex officio role while she's serving as the interim city manager so yes thank you and I look forward to working with all of you what was Sarah I have not had the pleasure of meeting you probably everyone else has but I have not but for the sake of us that have not could you tell us just a little bit about yourself and some of your background it would be interesting okay be happy to well I've been here for about two years once started out as the assistant city manager then moved up to the deputy city manager before that I served as the interim assistant city manager in Austin Texas for two years over a variety of departments and over some major team efforts dealing with people experiencing homelessness working with mentoring young employees and served on a variety of council appointed committees as a staff liaison before that I've worked in Phoenix Arizona and San Jose California as a department head over either a parks and recreation department or a large conglomerate of departments including animal services grants community services neighborhood services and things like that well thank you Sarah and we welcome you to the board here and look forward to your input and participation well thank you so much right and I will turn it over now and to Kay Brown Patrick who will do the next presentation and she'll have to let me drive the presentation so as soon as I get it up and shared Kay you can get started no problem thank you Jessica good morning everyone this is going to be a very brief presentation more as an FYI in regards to I know I've previously discussed the didn't business allies briefly but wanted to come back and provide some additional details of what's been going on with that group so for those of you who have not heard about the didn't business allies it was established in September of October of last year to establish and build relationships amongst local organizations that provide business support and resources and the purpose of that was so that we can one try to avoid duplicating efforts but also maximize all the organizations in the network in the city that provides support to the business community one to connect our businesses with those resources and that support support being any type of training technical assistance access to capital meetings networking opportunities all of those opportunities that the businesses may have individually with these organizations just bringing all of those resources together into the table and we're already seeing those efforts pay dividends we were able to assist one of the businesses rose costumes the school district stepped in to provide her with free services that she needed to continue to maintain her business regarding photography and online presence and then some of the organizations within the dba have connected to support one another so it's been an awesome an awesome awesome connection for the for the businesses and so far we're we're making you work the list of the participants include the didn't business chamber the didn't black chamber of commerce the university of north texas their murphy center but also they have a business development director on the committee as well and then we have twu's women entrepreneurs center and several other organizations you'll see there we've added the economic development partnership board they were not previously on the list but in an effort for information gathering and sharing miss jill jester has offered to serve on the on the dba for to represent the edp i think that was the next slide that's okay yeah to serve as representative for the edp as we want to serve provide that information to you all as well so i said it will be brief and and and chair bangs i think that is the proactive approach you were talking about miss jill jester was being proactive in her offer to to serve on the dba as a representative so and now i'm open to any questions or comments from you all please don't be shy great great thank you k for your work and your effort and i look forward to to hearing more about your outreach and the activities of the of the particular committee that you're overseeing thank you very much absolutely the next item on the agenda is edp 21-003 staff report statistical trends and news of the dentons well i don't have a lot lot to report other than you do have um what's really our sort of summary of economic development stats and that we produce every quarter and so i'm going to pull it up real quick because there is an interesting um addendum that we made to the report so if you'll recall in our strategic plan the first goal was about strengthening uh accelerating recovery from the covid pandemic and a key part of that is making sure that we're tracking indicators of um our economic recovery effort and so we've added an addendum to the stand report so the last page of the report which has a section that's titled economic recovery data and so we went through i don't know dan how many data sets that we've kind of whittled it down that we're tracking but we've cut it down to about the top seven we felt gave a good perspective um in summary of the um you know whether it's retail um impacts or development impacts or business impacts um so we've tried to pick our our top indicators to to put in this report and so we've started tracking um and reporting on how our sales tax collections doing how our home sales hotel occupancy office rents um the unemployment rate the number of jobs that are available or in our community and then consumer spending and so all of those come from um various sources whether internal or external um to our department but we track all of those and that gives us the ability to assess if there's anything that we need to do um or outreach that we need to do in any particular area so that's really the only thing that i wanted to call out that's changed in the report and we did make our initial 2020 update so some of that data that's annual data um we were able to incorporate the 2020 data and get that loaded into the report um but you'll see this report every quarter and as long as we're continuing to see the impacts of covid on our local economy we'll continue to report on those metrics um and and track how we're doing and jessica you had a report uh that you showed us it was a quarterly report so that was that for the fourth quarter of 2020 that we looked at so we we prepare our organizational comprehensive report so the report that you saw or that i emailed out to you in in lieu of our meeting in january that was reporting on um our organizational operations so whether it was um corey or myself or a member of my team sort of what we were doing um what our office is doing the stand report is a demographics statistical based report it's it's information that we're publishing and that businesses can use or that other even other city departments can use um as they're doing analysis so it's really just a dat a data dashboard report so let me and the reason i was asking was is it going to be quarterly or is it going to be monthly that was really the place both reports are both reports are quarterly so this report both of these reports represent the first quarter of our fiscal year which is the fourth quarter of the calendar year so both reports cover october to december okay thank you very much and so that way i wouldn't be looking for another one until the end of mulch so yes okay good yeah um and i believe we're on concluding items and and i'm gonna i'm gonna walk out on the plank here for just a minute and and if you guys could indulge me a few folks could indulge me i'm gonna read this little section because i i don't know if we've been taking advantage of this uh this area so if you'd go to that last item it's on the second page it says under section 551-042 of the texas open meetings act respond to inquiries from the economic development partnership board or the public with specific factual information or recitation of policy except a proposal to place the matter on the agenda for an upcoming meeting and under that section of the texas open meetings act provide reports about items of community interest regarding which no action will be taken to include expressions of thanks congratulations or condolence information regarding holiday schedules honorary or salutary recognition of a public official public employee or citizen a reminder about an upcoming event organized or sponsored by the governing board excuse me governing body including information regarding a social ceremonial or community event organized or sponsored by an entity other than the governing body that was scheduled to attend excuse me to be attended by a member of the governing body or an official employee of the municipality announcement involving an imminent threat to the public health and safety of people in the municipality that has arisen after the posting of the agenda so all that being said there's a spot on here where we can say some things talk about some things recommend some things for future agenda items or acknowledge and give expressions of appreciation so i hope that as we move forward we will take advantage of this opportunity because each of you are very unique in your perspective from the business community and i benefit greatly when each of you let us know of your areas of interest your areas of concern and then your areas where people need to be acknowledged and celebrated so i hope that in the future meetings we all take advantage of this opportunity and i will open it and see if there are any items that we need to address under this section now there's one thing i would maybe add you know just as you guys are um talking to different businesses throughout the city if we could keep an kind of an ongoing list of you know from small businesses to large businesses what are what are those needs you know is it peter build says we need more industrial space for our suppliers is a small business saying hey we're having a hard time getting co's you know for our ti you know you know just kind of keeping an ongoing list and that i think that could open some topics of discussion of how we can maybe make a bigger influence as a board in helping make those decisions as you guys are visiting one-on-one with these businesses get some feedback and then maybe have that on the agenda i'm just kind of as an ongoing list absolutely so we actually uh track a lot of that data uh through our bre program what you're referencing and so i know k has started the 2021 visits i know she's gone on a few of them and so we're certainly keeping track of that information and that's exactly why we've built in an evaluation period um and data analysis component of the bre program is so we can do just that yeah i think once we we're hearing those topics back i think that that gives us some direction to go okay how can we make a difference as a board what do we need to be incentivizing um and just helps give us some more information from people we can include that we'll give a bre update in that quarterly organizational report it looked a little different this past quarter um because we hadn't started the 2020 visit cycle yet um but going forward we can make sure to include that on a quarterly basis and if we need to have those discussions we can schedule that with the board thank you anyone else chairman this is steve edgar uh just a quick question can you hear me oh yes absolutely steve thank you uh actually i need to ask some questions around uh the get in business uh allies so uh k whenever as i read it it looks like we're trying to identify what resources employers are needing to address their their current need um in the community whether it's from staffing or technology or space or am i understanding that correctly um that's a component of it um that group also assists like entrepreneurs um small businesses even some businesses that may not even have a concern but just needing some training so it's it's multi-level in regards to those organizations and the support and resources that they provide to the business community but that's definitely a component of it okay so i guess my question is um how are you getting that information of what the need is so one i'm one way i'm getting it is through the business retention um visits that i've had so if they're i've gone on a couple of visits this month we have our gba meeting tomorrow so some of the concerns that some of the businesses may have if i know that there's a organization that may be able to assist those those businesses i will mention that um texas workforce solutions has gone on each of the visits with me so if they are having any workforce or training or recruitment issues we're able to identify those immediately because they've been on those meetings with me um but also just word of mouth so i'll use rose costumes as an example so there was someone on the didn't business allies meeting that mentioned um during the meeting that she was having concerns in um in regards to having to restructure or reimagine her business and so i reached out to her and asked her what were her exact concerns so when i got those concerns i presented those to the group and her concerns was she needed photography because she's now selling her costumes that are renting them and she also needed assistance with her online presence well when i told the group that didn't isd stepped up and said well their communications department can provide her with that assistance um and that information came from another dva um organization member so it's it's a it's the information sharing there um is kind of the way that we've gotten information on top of our bru visits and emails from businesses that we get steve were you interested in having a visit well i'm always available for a visit certainly and willing to share any thoughts i might have uh i just it was interesting to me um these are wonderful resources i just didn't know how we're reaching into the business community to to draw out what the needs are universally or individually so thank you i appreciate that and i would also say this group kind of with your general awareness of this if you come into contact with a business in your day-to-day operations and you're not sure where to send them get them in contact with k k can talk about it with the dba group and we probably can find a resource through that group and so the more we kind of spread and say there is a group that is working to assist businesses and we know this is an incredibly challenging time period for so many businesses there's a brain trust that's behind the scenes meeting i've gotten to participate in a few of those meetings and and the information that shared um and the connections that are being made behind the scenes is going to really benefit benefit businesses so if if you hear of anything or you know of anything um please call our office and and we can help yeah great thank you thank you all know absolutely if you all know of any business that you would like for us to add to the list um and in the category startup small medium large um we can always add we have space because of the virtual meetings that has allowed for the calendar to be flexible so we can add a lot more businesses to the visits so please do did we have any more input from the economic development partnership board i'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting okay all right steve thank you we need a second second second okay all in favor signify by raising your hand okay thank you all for your time thank you for your participation and we look forward to more of your input thank you have a great day you too