Jun 13, 2018 Economic Development Partnership Board on 2018-06-13 11:00 AM

Good morning, I'm Caroline Booth. I'm the Director of Economic Development here with the City of Denton and we do have a quorum for this meeting of the Economic Development Partnership Board and I will call the meeting to order at 1104 AM. Our first order of business today is going to be to ask our board members to nominate a temporary chairperson for today because our chair and vice chair are both absent. So I will open the floor for suggestions of a temporary chair. Ms. Carol Ann Simmons. I would nominate Jill Jester to be our temporary chair today. I will second that. Okay, second from Councilwoman Briggs and I will call for a vote. All those in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Okay, looks like that carries. So I think I'm going to scooch out of the chair chair and let Jill Jester come and take this spot. I have to go up to the podium anyway. I've been preparing for this day obviously for a long time. I do have a song just in case this ever happens that I've prepared. I am going to need some backup so I have called on UNT's 1 o'clock lab band. They should be here. They didn't know. They're marching here. That was my request. Health is so important and I thought for them to move a little more might be good. Thank you very much and we will begin going down the meeting agenda of the Economic Development Partnership Board. Today is Wednesday, June 13, 2018. We will begin with our items for consideration. Approval of the minutes of our last meeting which were dispersed prior to today's meeting. If anyone has any comments, now would be the time to speak up and those were the minutes of the May 9, 2018 meeting. If not, I'll accept. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Carolyn. I just want to make sure that everybody remembers that we are going to be actually recording not just the numbers when we take votes now but we will be recording the way each member votes. This has become standard procedure for council meetings and other boards and commission meetings so that's just a change to make you all aware of and if we have any discussion or questions about it, we're glad to entertain that but just so everyone knows going forward. Thank you for that clarification, Mrs. Booth. So at this time, is there a motion concerning approval of the minutes of May 9, 2018 meeting? So moved. All right. You're taking all this down. Okay. I think we have Mr. Eames down. Is that right? And then a second. We have a second over here. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. I guess we need a raise of hands for okay. I think we're good. All those opposed, same sign and the motion carries. Moving on to items for consideration B, receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the fiscal year 2018-19 budgets for the City of Denton's Department of Economic Development and the Denton Chamber of Commerce 's Office of Economic Development. I'm assuming since our director of the city's economic development group is here that we will begin with you. Thank you very much. I appreciate the introduction. And as I just so recently said, I am Caroline Booth, director of economic development with the City of Denton. And I will be walking you through our departmental budget presentation. The slides are included in your backup. So please feel free to follow along there if you would like . We are going to get started by talking about the exciting year that we have already had in fiscal year 17-18 with some of the accomplishments that we have achieved to date. The first one that I want to mention is that we did transition the management of the Stoke Denton Entrepreneur Center to a company called Hickory and Rail Ventures, which is a Denton owned company that has deep ties to Denton's tech community . We are going to be providing a mid-year update regarding the performance of Stoke to the council I believe on Friday of this week. And we can also make that available to this group if you all are interested in seeing that. Again, this group is going to be familiar with these couple of projects, but we did locate US Cold Storage and expand Fisher 59 here in Denton. And both of these are great examples of the collaboration between the Denton Chamber of Commerce and the City of Denton through the economic development partnership, especially with US Cold Storage project that worked exactly like it's supposed to. The contact came through us via Adam and Karen's work at the Chamber and then was carried through the process by city staff with collaboration throughout. So that's a very positive project. And I think it's important to point out that together these two projects are going to add about $40 million in new value for the City of Denton. So that's a very significant accomplishment that we can be proud of that we worked on together. We've also increased the year-over-year participation in our small business programs, including the Shop Here On Purpose Denton program. We have launched a couple of new outreach efforts this year , including Denton Development, which is our video series that the economic development department works on with our public communications office, and those air on DTV and are also available on our YouTube channel. And I write a monthly column for the Denton Business Chron icle, and we've done about 10 of those this year. So those are fun efforts for us to work on because it's very important as economic developers that we are educating our community about what it is that we do and the role that we play here in Denton. We also have implemented new performance measures for the department. I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but we're going to have a question or comment from Councilwoman Briggs at this time. So on the articles for the Denton Business Chronicle, is on the economic development website under the city, is there a link to those? We don't have a link up there. That's a good suggestion. So I think Christina Davis is watching somewhere out there in CVLands, and I can ask her to help us out with getting those linked. It would be nice to have those archived somewhere so people could just go back and read them. Okay. Thank you very much for the suggestion. And while we're stopped, I just want to say that I really enjoy those, and I think it is very important to educate the public as to why we do the things that we do and tell the whole story. So I think they've been helpful for me personally, so I can 't think they've been helpful for lots of others too. I appreciate that. So just wrapping up with the accomplishments, we did implement several new performance measures for the department this year for a total of 17 total performance measures. Some of the ones that we added for the first time this year include tracking the business assistance that we provide, and that is a separate and apart category from our recruitment or our business retention. But these are when we're contacted, we have walk-ins, we have folks who email us, we have we field phone calls, and I'll show you the numbers on that . But that's been a great thing for us to purposefully track to just see how much time we're investing in providing those kinds of services to our community. We've also added tracking of the number of workforce development activities that we're engaged in, as well as the number of business retention visits both inside and outside of downtown. And here are some of the numbers that are attached to those particular metrics, and this is not obviously all 17, but these are some that I would like to highlight for y'all. We do have a target of RFPs returned in our target industry sectors that we respond to from the state leads and the Dallas Regional Chamber leads. The target there is 20, and in the first two quarters of the year, we have responded to 7, and those are, again, specifically in our target industry sectors. We do work direct leads as well, as we have discussed before with this group. We have got 16 of those in the first two quarters that we have worked, and we've actually, from those direct leads, we have actually scheduled and completed four site visits. So that's a great number to be able to share with you all. As far as the workforce development activities, you can see that our target is 12, and that in the first two quarters, we have actually engaged in 31 of those activities, which is a lot more than we were even shooting for. But what we realized is that every single one of our business retention visits that we go on, workforce development needs to be a component of those visits, and so we are talking to or bringing our workforce development partners with us on those visits, and that's how we've been able to achieve that high of a number. Just to update you guys on some of the grants that are actually in place or that have been applied for as part of those efforts, Jostens has received a $600,000 workforce training grant. Peterbilt has received a $500,000 training grant. Applications have been submitted by some of our smaller businesses, too. It's a little bit of a different program than the larger businesses are eligible for, but Tommy's High Tech Auto, Sleeping Lizards, and Basals Off the Square have all applied for those workforce development grants for smaller companies, and those three are directly a result of business retention visits during which that topic is discussed. So we're very, very pleased to be able to connect people with those resources on those visits. Downtown redevelopment, we are shooting for six. We've already got six that have been done in the first and second quarter to date, and you can see that we're working on our BRE visits. We've had a number of those in the third quarter, but we're not completed with that quarter yet, so we'll have to hold off on that for an end-of-the- year report. But we're getting to the business assistance provided number there, and you can see that we're logging that in at 239 instances of business assistance provided to date, and that's everybody on my staff who is fielding those calls, walk-ins, answering emails, and again, I think this is a great service that we're providing to our community. We've also seen a significant increase in participation in small business programs, almost a 30% increase over what we saw in fiscal year '16 and '17. That's primarily due to increased recruitment for participation in Shop Small Saturday, and we were just very pleased with the increased participation there in that program, and we'll be shooting to do the same thing again this November on Shop Small Saturday. Does anybody have questions? Oh, sorry. The chair recognizes Mr. Fikes. In the participation of small businesses, the percentage of increase, how many of those are new businesses and how many of them were existing prior to? You mean brand new businesses in the community? I would say it's a pretty small number. I don't have that right at hand, but it's primarily we increased our outreach to existing businesses all around the community. I think in the past, more of the focus for Shop Small Saturday has been on small businesses or Shop Small Saturday has been in the downtown area, and so we purposefully went out to some of our other retail centers and wanted to seek participation there. We even had folks who are small businesses located inside Golden Triangle Mall participating this year. So I think it's, to answer your question without having the exact numbers, it's really more of an outreach to existing businesses and other parts of the community. Councilman Briggs? On the small business programs, does it also include the participation in the small business group development at the library? We don't count that in our numbers because that's a program at the library. We do collaborate with the library on their business programs. We refer back and forth and try to do cross promotion, but we're not counting what they're doing in those numbers. So we do have, of course, goals that we have set for this upcoming fiscal year. One of those is to complete the revision of the public improvement district guidelines, which this group did recommend to council at your meeting last month, and we plan to be bringing that to the city council on June 19th for a work session. And then our hope is to bring it forward for a vote shortly after that so we can complete that process. We're also going to be working on leveraging Denton's designation as a music-friendly community and a film-friendly community to just kind of see how we can grow and emphasize those particular aspects of arts and culture in Denton. We are working very diligently on streamlining the operations of the Public Art Committee. This committee came under our direction in February of this year, and they have significant authority over both funds that come to public art through the hotel occupancy tax program, as well as through bond programs from 2012 and 2014. So it is a recommending body, but they do have a significant responsibility in how those funds get spent in the community. So we are working hard with them and working projects through the city's purchasing process to make sure we see those public art projects come to fruition. We are also working on the Texas Commission on the Arts Cultural District program. We have an informal advisory committee that's been formed, and in fact, they're having their second meeting this evening. And what that program will do is open up a new avenue for promotion and for grant funding for arts within the cultural district, should that be something that we end up moving forward with as a city. And then of course, we're going to continue implementing and expanding our business retention and expansion program, which has just been so ... It's been so great to build up existing relationships, establish new relationships, help businesses feel like the city is invested in their success. So we're definitely going to keep moving forward with that. Yes. I'm sorry. We've got two questions or comments. We'll start with Councilwoman Briggs. So I guess it may be something I need to request later if you don't have it, but I'm curious about the Public Art Committee, because I think it's a great fit. But if someone says, "Well, public art isn't an economic development part of the city," what would you say to them, or how can you correlate the two for us? That may be something you follow up with us on, but that was kind of a conversation that was had recently. So if you could weigh in on that. Denton is an arts community by its identity and by its economy. We have a huge asset in Denton as far as UNT's College of Music, but there are so many businesses that support our arts and music scene here in Denton. And it's not just the performance venues, but it's music stores, it's recording studios, it's artists who are making and selling visual artwork in the community. So something that I would like to do is actually work on building a business case for commissioning a study of both our nonprofit and for-profit arts and culture industry, so that we can actually back up what we sort of all know anecdotally to be true with some hard numbers about the significance of arts and culture to our local economy. So I think there absolutely is a tie. And in fact, our office is already shepherding the music- friendly community program, the film-friendly community program. And so I think adding in the visual and performing arts locally is a natural tie. So we've also looked into some other departments or some other economic development departments in other cities that are similar to Denton. And a number of those departments of economic development do have direct involvement with arts and culture. So I think there's a precedent here with things we're already doing, and there are precedents in other similar communities. There's a follow-up? And would that request for a study come from this board? I'm not sure of the answer to that. I mean, I think perhaps it could, but I don't think it necessarily has to. I haven't-- this is just something I started kicking around in my mind a couple weeks ago, so it's not really fully formed. OK, thank you. Mr. Fikes, did you have a question or comment? Yes. Of the goals that you have up there, what percentage of time and resources will be devoted to all of those individually? I don't have an answer to that. I'm going to show you a slide later on that kind of breaks down my department's area of work into six different areas. And we really strive to balance those different areas. And some of them will take priority at different times and consume a little bit more of our time. But because we do have a broad range of responsibilities, we have to consistently evaluate how we're spending our time within our department to cover all the responsibilities that we have. So I have a breakdown internally for my management purposes of my staff about how people allocate their time. But I haven't allocated the time that we're going to spend on goals in that same way. My concern is that we water down one of the big things that we should be looking at, and that's the business retention and expansion. I think that should be number one in the goals and objectives of the economic development group. And I'm afraid that while these other things fit, do they have the same level of economic impact as the expansion and retention of businesses? Okay, I appreciate the comments. And these are not intended to be sort of priority listing. That just happened to be where retention and expansion fell on the list. But I appreciate the comments. And as I said, we do strive to appropriately balance and allocate our time. And my personal opinion is that none of our activities related to arts and culture are in any way detracting from our efforts in business retention and expansion. I think Mr. Michael, did you have a question or comment? I know that we have economic development and research capabilities at the university related to arts, both college of visual arts as well as music. So if you're looking for people for helping with that study , we would certainly be willing to entertain how we can work together to help them. Great. Thank you. Steve Edgar? On the bullet around the public art committee, streamline operations, that sounds to me like an expense management or expense reduction. So is that trying to identify what other departments within the city can perhaps take on or realize some economies? No, it's streamlining really in terms of time, which ultimately equates to money. That committee, unfortunately, records were not being kept. The meetings weren't being run efficiently. So we're correcting processes and making sure that we are being efficient with both staff and volunteer time in the running of that committee. So it really comes down to a time savings issue and making sure that we're doing appropriate record keeping and managing our interactions with the purchasing department in the process of procuring the art appropriately. So, okay. Anybody else? No. Okay. Thank you. So the budget emphasis is a new slide this year that the finance department has added to our presentation. But I think that it's a really important one to make sure that each department is thinking about why they do what they do and what motivates them to do their work. And our department promotes economic vitality and shared prosperity in Denton. And we do that primarily by working in these six areas that are shown up here. I'm not going to read through each of them. You can see the slide. You have it in your backup. But I did add a little bit of detail about what fits under each of these categories. So you can see that we are definitely balancing a lot of different types of activities. But they're all important for the overall economic health and vitality of the community. Does anybody have any questions about this one? Okay. FTEs. We have 5.75 FTEs. I think most people are familiar with the fact that Erica Sullivan, our economic development analyst, is a three quarter time employee. That increased to 6.75. That was shown in 1516 and 1617. That was a position that was authorized, but we never filled it because we didn't end up needing to. So even though the FTE showed up, we did not hire it. And we've readjusted it back to 5.75 for this current year and the year going forward. Our staffing is the same as it has been for the past few years. And I did include a little bit of detail about how we are in general allocating people's responsibilities within those six areas that we work in. And I want to take this opportunity to make sure that I recognize my staff. They're all phenomenal. Only a couple of them are in the room. But they work very hard. They're dedicated to what they're doing. That's part of why only a couple of them are in the room is because they're working on other things. And we have to be very efficient with our use of our time. And when folks in this group need support from each other, they are willing to ask. And everything we do is a great team effort. So I'm very proud of my staff. We also want to make sure that we're talking about our cost containment strategies. Because we already run very lean and we try to operate efficiently, some of these are going to be similar to the ones that you saw last year. These monthly meetings that we have between our Department of Economic Development, Finance and Legal have been incredibly beneficial. Again, a lot of it comes back to saving time and being efficient with the use of our time. So that communication is just invaluable. We've been doing those for a couple of years. And as of this month, we are actually adding engineering into that monthly meeting too, because of all of the large scale projects that we either have underway or see coming down the pike. So they're going to be joining us in the future. And then we're also, of course, doing cross training between economic development and finance staff. This is related to the administration of incentives. We want to make sure that we have backup and verification between departments on that. As you heard me mention, our staff backs each other up and supports each other. And that is a result of some intentional cross training that we've been working on and continue to do and will continue into the next year. And again, fully leveraging our existing staff by looking at people's workloads, how they're allocating their time and making sure that we have everything evenly distributed and appropriately matched up with people's skills and abilities. Process improvements. We developed a system using an access data or using access database to track our performance measures because we do have so many that we have. 17 is a lot. And we need to make sure that we're logging those things in . That also allows us to share information through that system instead of having to rely on as asking someone a question in case somebody is out. We can't talk to them directly. We can go to the database, pull up the last business retention visit with Morrison Milling and see what the notes were and the outcomes were on that. So that's been really great. And it was developed in-house. So that was a significant savings instead of going outside to purchase something. As far as our future process improvements, we are going to be intentional about documenting standard operating procedures for some of our critical functions. What I have found is a lot of the information is already there. It's just not pulled together in a centralized location in a standardized format. So we're going to be working on that this upcoming fiscal year. Anybody have any questions about any of those things? So we will move into revenue and expenditures here. These are just some of the things that I want to specifically emphasize out of the budget. We did have to terminate three Chapter 380 agreements. So those have fallen off the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. We are seeing some significant budgeted increases related to Chapter 380 incentives, WINCO, Razor Ranch, because the Southside is going to be coming on . And good news, you all might have read in the paper about the opening of Alamo Drafthouse. But what that does, besides giving us another great place to go enjoy movies and food, is that it takes Razor Ranch over their minimum threshold for the Southside to initiate their Chapter 380 incentive. Their threshold was 300,000 square feet, and Alamo Drafth ouse puts them at 310,000. So we will be meeting with them next week to discuss all of the documentation that we need to get from them to verify that. And then their incentive reimbursement will initiate on the Southside. O'Reilly, as you all know, is a complicated incentive with several different tools that make up their total incentive package. Their property has fully come online this year, so that's why you see that $1.3 million budgeted increase on this slide here. And then we are anticipating that Buc-E's will initiate in fiscal year '18-'19, and we're projecting about $187,000 that will be needed for their incentive in this first year. As I always like to point out, my departmental operations budget minus the Chapter 380 rebates is only about $100,000. State law mandates that Chapter 380 rebates be budgeted somewhere specifically, and so our method of doing that here in the City of Denton is to put them in the economic development budget. I'm so sorry. Yes, ma'am. Councilwoman Brooks. No, well, yeah, it's also the other screen, because that explains why I was like, why is that $5 million? That's why. Okay. Yeah. So that $5,099,000 is incentives that are going back to businesses? Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. So again, this is kind of the summary budget slide, but down there in the corner, the bottom line is $5.9 million for our fiscal year '18-'19 budget, and as Councilmember Briggs pointed out, $5 million of that is related to Chapter 380 incentives. Any questions about that? Mr. Fikes. Back on the other slide, how much did the canceled agreements return back? Oh, let's see. It was not a significant amount. I mean, I think those incentives probably ranged from $25, 000 to $40,000 each of them, so it's not a significant amount overall. Victor shows the biggest, as I recall, of what it was. Yeah, I can follow up with, I'll send the group an email with that specific information. I just don't have it right here in my fingertips. I'd hate to misstate the total number, but it's not large. All right. Okay. And because everybody is understandably always interested in the detail of the Chapter 380 rebates, I'm pulling those out here for you so that you can see the specific amounts that we're budgeting for this coming year for each of those. And again, this is in your backup, but just wanted to bring it to the forefront. Is it Denton Crossing falling off soon? It is. Fiscal year 19-20 is the last year for Denton Crossing, so that's going to turn back or prevent us rebating a pretty significant amount, $589,000. And also, fiscal year 18-19 is the last year for Slumberge 's incentive, and that's not a significant amount in the grand scheme of things, but $60 ,000 is $60,000. Any other questions about any of this? Okay. And then because this is a great part of the story that often gets overlooked, this is my favorite slide, Chapter 380 Project Net Revenue. Please look at Denton Crossing and note that cumulative net revenue over the life of the incentive to the city, this is net, this is not gross, $19 million. That's a good thing. Now I also want to make sure that everybody understands that even though for Denton Crossing, Unicorn Lake, Razor Ranch, those incentives are sales tax- based. We can't forget that those developments contribute a significant amount of ad valorem value as well, so that ad valorem value is included in this net revenue, even though the incentive is based on sales tax. So just that's the full picture of what we have going on here. So down there at the bottom, over $51 million have been generated from incentivized projects over the life of these projects. I think that's a great thing to realize and to bring to the forefront. Yes, oh sorry, Chair recognizes Mr. Fikes. Is there any way that you could get this into one of your newspaper articles? I think we could probably do that, yes. That would be awesome information to get out there. And when you get something on Buc-E's, if you could get that in there too, that would be good. Did you have a... Councilwoman Britz? I was going to do some math, I'm just curious if the $589, 000, almost $600,000 came back each year since 2005 on DIN Crossing? I'm sorry, I don't think I'm understanding what you're asking. So 2005 was the year of the incentive? Uh-huh. Okay, and so since then, every year we've been giving them back almost $600,000 since 2005. Is that anywhere, do we include what we've given back? I mean, is that net? Yeah, that's net of the incentive payment. After all that. Yeah, so this is the gross minus the incentive payment is what you're looking at right here. Awesome, thank you so much for your time. You're welcome, sure. Okay, that is the end of my presentation and I love all the questions that we've had while I've been going through it. You guys are always very engaged around the budget presentations and I appreciate that a lot. I would be glad to answer any other questions that you might have before I turn it over to Adam for his portion. Councilwoman Brooks? I have one more question because we didn't go over it, but on your actual budget there was a line item for rent and I'm just wondering what our department, your department is paying for rent since we're housed here? Just the Stoke facility rent. Oh, okay. Got you. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions or comments for Mrs. Booth? Thank you very much. Thank you. Adam with the economic development part of Denton's Chamber of Commerce. Hello everyone. Good morning. Good morning. Karen is passing out our, we had a small, a few pages that we had revised since you received your other packet. We have two full-time employees at the Chamber's Economic Development Office starting with the, well, starting with the Board of Directors and then there's a Vice President and then Karen is our Administrative Assistant who does a fantastic job. It's important to note that all of our funding from the city for the economic development budget only goes towards the Vice President and the Administrative Assistant's salaries and operations. So the Chamber and the President of the Chamber is completely separate out of a totally, two separate total accounts and everything is kept completely separate from them. Goals and accomplishments for 2017 and '18 fulfilled all deliverables in the City Chamber ED contract. 29 prospects and leads were generated with a response rate of 93.1%. Six site visits from six different companies came as a result of those 29 prospects. Out of those six site visits, U.S. Cold Storage and Fisher 59, as Caroline had mentioned earlier, were located and expanded here. It's important to note that those are direct results from a partnership between the City and the Chamber efforts. I wanted to make note just on how aggressive we are as a marketing organization and venue for the city. Recently we were, there's a group called the Team Texas group, which is a statewide marketing initiative. It's about 104 communities. It's pay to play. We pay into a state organization that's run out of Austin and we were recently asked, or I was recently asked to accept a board position on there and to accept that board position, you have to be one of the 20 top most aggressive communities in the state and you have to maintain activity and involvement with them as well. So I will accept that this coming Friday. Congratulations. Thank you. That's a great feather in our cap. Thank you. Also recently accepted a position as TDC's Workforce Development Committee representative. TDC is Texas Economic Development Corporation, which is also run out of Austin. We have three annual events, so I'll be working on their Workforce Development Committee as well. Conducting target marketing forums, conferences, events and professional development activities. As you all know, we do a lot of outbound marketing events, trade shows for target marketing missions, conferences, you know, everything that's mainly geared towards targeting site location consultants and anybody that works an expansion project that might have interest in the state of Texas and then further, you know, the expansion interest in DFW and then in Denton for that matter. Raise the number of private investors this year by four and the private investment by $3,500, which brings, I think we're at 66 total private investors now and we're somewhere around $68,000 in private investment. Increased involvement in website and social media activities. I have a separate site coming up on all of those separately . Continued networking, chamber events, EDP events, community involvement and professional development. It's a constant thing that is ongoing. We're constantly in front of the public and keeping companies like Peterbilt and Winko Foods surprised what we're doing and, you know, keeping them involved in the community and economic development and things like that. Then we completed the redesign and update of the DentonEDP. com website. Hopefully all of you by now have had a chance to look at that. We put a lot of time and effort into that and we update that every single month. We have about a 60-point checklist, two pages that we go through every single month, making sure that we have the most up-to-date data and contact that a site location consultant or a company executive would need in order to consider us for a future expansion location. Goals and accomplishments. Our comprehensive marketing plan for next year was presented to all of you here at the EDP board on November 8th. It was approved at that time. Monthly activity and cities, director of ED reports are due . We send those out to Caroline every single month. Those are specific reports that were requested of us in the city chamber contract, so she gets those every first Thursday or before of every month. Quarterly budget performance statements are -- we send those every quarter. Prospect leads as part of the city chamber contract for this year. We have to generate 42 new leads that were generated in terms -- or coming from marketing initiatives, I should say. Sorry. We're at 29 so far, and we are at two-thirds of the way through the year, so we are definitely on track to hit that number. Site visits out of those 22 -- or out of those 29, as I mentioned earlier, we're at six site visits so far, two-thirds of the way through the year. I think the contract goals for that were seven, so we are definitely going to hit that number as well. As a result of those six site visits, we did land U.S. coal storage and Fisher 59, and there is -- I think I mentioned this in the last meeting, but there is -- we have a significant amount of new potential industrial speculative space that will be coming online. We have three different developers that are looking at different sites. The site on the south side of Wynco is currently supposed to be going under contract, and they are looking to build three new industrial speculative spots . The 600,000 square foot building, a 400 and a 300. This isn't under contract yet, so it is -- we're hopeful. And then there's another one next to U.S. coal storage that they're supposed to build a 600,000 square foot facility, and then another site that 's a 104-acre site just north of there where they're looking to do two 600,000 square foot buildings. We will keep you all apprised of those. Improves and accomplishments again, as part of the Chamber city contract, we were asked to increase the DentonEDP.com website hits by 20% overall. Those were separated into page views and unique users. You'll see on the under accomplished page views, we have increased that by 23.6%. Unique users, we have increased by 33.1% currently, well over the 20% mark. I've got a quick question for myself. Unique users, is that a new person that's never come to the site before clicking on the site, or can you tell me what that is? That's total visitors. That's total visitors. Correct? Each time someone visits the website. Okay. So if I visited one day and -- Sorry. So if I visited one day and you visited the website, then you're not going to be able to get the website. So if I visited one day and you visited one day, that's two visitors. But if I go back multiple times, it'll only count me that one time. It's unique visitors for that month. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And we have access to the back side of the website metrics, so we can give you guys all the metrics that you could ever want on that. Probably more than you would want in the future. And then social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This year we were not given a specific metric to beat. More or less we were supposed to collect baseline data for next -- to kind of establish next year's goals. But the numbers are looking good. Facebook, we're up 7.1%. And that's total likes. LinkedIn, we're up 16.4% on connections. And Twitter, 5.7%. Goals for '18 and '19. Fulfill the city chamber goals. Maintain constant interaction with site selectors, consultants, and brokers. That's an ongoing effort. Continue to conduct target marketing and prospect development activities. Increase social media by 5% and web-based communication by 10%. That's our goal that we're hoping to maintain. Increase the private investors by two additional. So we're at 66. We would hope to increase that by two more for next year, ' 68. Maintain economic development partnership private investor relations. So that's business retention, you know, retention for the private investors. Right now -- or this year we retained 97%. So 60 -- 62. Some examples of the contacts that are made from some of these marketing trips that we do, you know, from the area development consultant forums, you know, just all these trade shows and target market events that we do. These are just five top examples that I wanted to, you know , make sure all of you knew about. But Collier's International is a site selection consulting firm. They have toured sites here in Denton this year as a result of marketing activities and marketing events that we've met them at. And they are the ones that are -- they're one of the ones that are currently planning a large-scale speculative development project here in conjunction with another development company as well. They're the brokerage group and then there will be a development company partnering with them. CBRE, you guys have all heard that name several times. They did United States Cold Storage here. They brought us Winko Foods. They were the brokers and consultants in charge of the Sally Beauty expansion tour maybe three years ago now. Hickin Associates New York office who represented two products this year that we have worked on and we have made the short list on as well, which we're still working. The European American Investment Council, they did bring a German delegation of aviation companies to the DFW area and it was in Fort Worth where we all -- there were about 10 of us communities that they asked to come in and make a presentation to. So I was there for that as well. We met them at a Southern Economic Development Council marketing trip. Project WIC, I wanted to give you an example of a company that we met at a trade show. So not a site selection consultant but an actual company executive. Project WIC was a company and we identified them at an aerospace trade show. They were looking for 400,000 to 500,000 square feet here in Denton to create over 100 new jobs and we did go out and visit with them directly. Proposed performance measures, perform duties of the office per the city chamber contractual agreement, act as the gatekeeper with site location consultants and prospect activity, conduct target marketing and prospect development activities. It's an ongoing event. Update and maintain the ADP website, social media accounts, marketing materials and promotional items. Maintain economic development partnership private investor relations. Promote performance measures, perform duties of the office per the city chamber contractual agreement for '18 and '19. Attend and participate in activities with local, metro, state, regional and international organizations stipulated in the annual agreement. Continue target marketing activities and attend as many site location consultant events as the budget allows. Raise social media and web-based activities by 5%. And raise economic development partnership private investor relations by once again two investors this year. Currently we're at 66 and once again with a 97% retention rate. On budget emphasis, our plan and vision is to actively promote an environment to encourage commercial and industrial development by expanding and diversifying to tax base, creating jobs and improving the quality of life. This is one of the slides that the city provided for us. That is driving your need for funding to maintain an office of economic development at the Chamber of Commerce geared towards targeted external marketing efforts and prospect management and keeping the community, the business community and D itten engaged in economic development efforts. A summary of cost containment strategies. Constant evaluation of forums, conferences, and conferences along with all other marketing activities focus staff solely on incoming prospects generated through marketing activities and from site selectors and brokers. So our staff is focused just on the recruiting prospects and marketing towards site location consultants from marketing events and things like that. The city economic development office handles the leads coming in from the state and from the Dallas regional chamber. Community projects, constant evaluation of marketing trips and narrowing down the ones that have provided results in the past. We replace those with newly advertised events. Consistently update and refresh marketing materials and other branding collaterals. Updating and maintenance of the DittenEDP.com website and social media with up to date information. As I mentioned, we have that 60 point checklist where every month we're updating the data to make sure everything is completely accurate and up to date. Monitor improvements, constantly analyze marketing results to make continuous improvements, and consistently monitor and update the website and social media outlets. On budget highlights, you'll see that we are requesting the same amount as last year, so another $238,836 from the city, which comes from the -- partially from the general fund and partially from the utility fund. We just wanted to make note that our private revenues, we 're -- we wanted to make sure that we -- all of you know that we're keeping a baseline of 75 grand that makes up our targeted budget for the year, even though that number right now is at about 70 -- I think 78,000, 79,000. Brings our grand total budget to $313,836. Any questions on that? >> No, but it seems like you're doing more with less. >> Thank you. We try. >> Yeah. Very busy. Very busy. >> Thank you. >> But looks like you guys are able to accomplish a lot with what you're given. >> Thank you. And then the last slide is the budget highlights. You know, things relatively -- kind of speaks for itself on that. The only thing that really changed is the board meals went off, and that's because we're not doing -- we're not doing meals here anymore since it's televised. Any questions on that one? No? Okay. >> All right. Any questions or comments before the floor is released? No? All right. Well, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> That was a lot of information, a lot of really good information. Interesting. All right. We will now move forward to item number EDP 18-037, receive a report, hold a discussion, and make a recommendation to city council regarding changes to the downtown reinvestment grant program's funding source, policy, and procedures. Julie, take it away. >> Okay. Okay. So we've been talking about this grant fund for a while. I know every -- it seems like I've done this presentation several times, several different groups. Just to give you a little background, this downtown rein vestment grant was created in 2007. It provides grants for capital improvements in the downtown area, specifically right now what we call the DTIP, which is the downtown implementation plan area. It's tied to historic preservation through the restoration of the buildings. And to date, for every dollar invested by the city in the grant program, $34 of private investment have been made in downtown. >> Just a moment. I'm sorry. Councilwoman Briggs. >> I need to let the chair know that I have a meeting at 12 that I need to leave to go to. And so -- and I just wondered if I could -- I'm sorry. My child keeps calling me. I'm wondering if I could go ahead and ask the questions before I leave, if that's okay. >> Yes. So just to make sure everyone has heard, Councilwoman Br iggs does have to leave as of noon. As of that point, am I correct in that we will not have a quorum? >> No. >> I'm sorry. We will have a quorum because Mr. Edgar joined us. >> Okay. Then we can take the necessary vote. So sorry to interrupt. Is that all right with you, Ms. Gliver? >> Sure. >> All right. >> I apologize. >> Councilwoman Briggs. >> Everyone out there is waiting. Okay. So I'm really glad to see this come forward. I know that there was a -- I just want to say I know there was a lot of -- a lot of people in the community that were concerned when we changed the funding. But I think that this has actually opened up to more opportunities for this grant. And I think it's a wonderful program. And just me personally feel like a lot of the revital ization that we have seen have come from this grant. And so I would like to know if we can increase it from 25, 000, where that cap came from, and if there's a possibility -- because I see that since it 's moved to the tip, the orders have expanded as well. And with the new development design standards that council talked about recently, and we have moved it from just facades to actual internal things as well, there's a great opportunity there for people to spend a lot of money and way beyond 25, 000. So is that a possibility? >> It is a possibility. We are taking this to the -- to Board Next? Council Next. I don't -- >> Council Next. >> Council Next. So council can make that change. The reason we capped at 25,000 is because we were getting 100,000 per year, and that kind of gave us an opportunity to do four grants at max. So money is always kind of the answer, right? But the council can make that recommendation to the tip. The tip board will bring a recommendation to you guys. You can change it the way you want. >> So just to clarify, the $25,000 limit is the limit that one group can request at that time for a certain project. The total amount available to give in a year was 100,000. >> Right. And it's 25,000 per property. So if a building only got 5,000 in the first year they were open, then someone else bought it and needed to do some more work, they would be eligible for another 20. So it's tied specifically to the property, not the project. >> Well, maybe council will want to increase the budget so we can increase the amounts we can give. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Okay. And continuing here with the -- during the fiscal year 17- 18 budget deliberations, council directed that the grant program be funded through the downtown TURS number one fund. So that led to looking at a review of the current policy and procedures. The downtown task force has reviewed this twice and made recommendations. The TURS number one board has reviewed and made recommendations. So the changes that have been recommended is to fund the grant through the downtown TURS number one beginning fiscal year 2018-19 and in future years throughout the life of the downtown TURS. We're going to modify and review the review approval process so that grants first are reviewed by the downtown task force, then the downtown TURS number one board, then city council. I just want to point out that in the past that every -- grants over 10,000 came to this body and we are taking that out of the process right now. We're replacing that because everything -- state law requires that everything must be -- all funds through the TURS must go through the downtown TURS board and then city council. We kind of felt like keeping this board in there was just adding another layer and you could make a recommendation to the TURS board or the downtown task force could, one or the other. So I'll pause here if anyone has any comments on that. We'll be happy to bring you reports, let you know what's going on, what kind of grants are coming through, what they're asking for. >> That would be good, but I think you're saving time. We don't need to see it up to people. >> More changes was to add a scoring category for interior code improvements, which council member Briggs just mentioned. In light of the couple of fires we had towards the end of last year, beginning of this year, we've added fire suppression systems as an eligible category. We took location out of it because everything is going to have to be located in the TURS district to be eligible. We added including but not limited to the other category and put longevity in the other category. We did not define longevity. It's going to be kind of up to them to decide. By taking the location out, that dropped us five points, so we made the other category worth ten points instead. So that still gives us the same amount on the scoring. It was pointed out that sometimes smaller projects have a hard time getting to the top range to get higher amounts of money. So by making that other category a little more flexible, they feel like this is going to take care of that. In that direction, the task force looked at it. They recommended these changes ten to one. May 23rd, the TURS board recommended these changes five to zero. So we're looking for a recommendation to city council for M IEU regarding the changes to the funding source, the policy and procedures for the reimbursement grant. So I just want to remind for those that are new to this board that the downtown task force is subcommittee of this board and that it does represent quite a variety of business owners, employers, as well as employees over different industries as well that have concerns. You don't have to live downtown or necessarily work downtown, but most people have an interest that are a part of this group. This topic in particular has been the subject of more than a couple meetings as well as a retreat that we had earlier this year. I actually serve as the chair of that downtown task force and would be happy to talk to anyone offline if you have any questions about this. But at this time, it doesn't seem like as much work when you present. It's a lot of conversations and trying to utilize the TURS fund, to utilize the downtown task force and monies that can be used to this very important economic area of Denton. But if there are no questions or comments at this time, the chair would entertain if someone wants to make a motion to further recommend the recommendations to council. All right. All those in favor of these recommendations, please signify by saying aye. All those opposed say nay. And the motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Ms. Clever. All right. So it is afternoon noon. Are we moving to -- >> I have the follow-up piece of information. >> Caroline Booth has a follow-up note to her earlier presentation at this time. >> Mr. Fikes, you asked about the amount of money that was coming out of the budget because of those three terminated incentives. Total amount is $141,000. So there's a number for you on that. >> Okay. Moving on to EDP 18-038, staff reports. Shall we move to staff reports at this time or table those? >> I think depending on what the body is interested in doing, you all have the staff reports in your backup. We'd be glad to answer questions, but in the interest of time, we could forego the presentation up to the group. >> All right. All in favor? Okay. Well, with that, I don't believe there's any need for a closed meeting. Am I correct? Okay. Well, with that, unless there's anything else, I believe we -- yes, Mr. Fikes. >> With the continuation of property sales in the industrial zone, I'd like to have a review of industrial property available within the city limits, not in the extra. So we can see where we're growing and where we need to grow to next. >> Okay, I think we could pull together a map of the currently zoned areas for industrial and with the updates to the code and zoning, kind of do a little bit of future projection about where that's going. So we'll put that on the agenda either for July or August. We might have a very full agenda in July with incentive requests, so -- but we will add it to the future matrix. >> We need to look because one of the things that's going on, Sanger has got several buildings, spec buildings being built right now north of the Walmart distribution center and Gainesville is continuing to push hard for their economic development as well. And they're growing up there. And then McKinney in their 2040 plan this week announced that they're looking at enlarging their city limits and how they're going to start allocating property. >> Lots of competition. All right. With that, if there's no other business, the regular meeting is adjourned at 1206 p.m.