Aug 08, 2018 Economic Development Partnership Board on 2018-08-08 11:00 AM

Good morning. My name is John Baines. I'm the vice chairman of the Economic Development Partnership Board and I gladly announce that we have a qu orum. We will now call the work session to order at 1104. Our first order of business is item number EDP 18-046 which involves a sales tax discussion regarding the Golden Tri angle Mall. We have been informed that this particular item is being removed from the agenda and there's no need to have either a closed meeting nor an open meeting session that was scheduled for later on in the meeting. So with that being the case, I'd like to take a little poetic license and I'd like to welcome aboard Jason Tomlinson from Texas Women 's University. Welcome to the board, sir. Thank you very much. I look forward to working with you. The next item on the agenda for our consideration is the approval of the minutes, EDP 18-039 and I will take a few moments just in case you need to refresh yourselves. We have a motion on the floor to approve. Second. We have a second. Is there any discussion or any changes that need to be made? Hearing none, all in favor of approving the minutes as presented, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All against, same sign. Any abstentions? Okay. Thank you very much. Let's see. The next item on our agenda is EDP 18-045. We will receive a report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the 2018-2019 economic development partnership agreement between the City of Denton and the Denton Chamber of Commerce and this presentation will be made by Caroline Booth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is going to be a short presentation. It's a fairly straightforward item regarding the contract for the upcoming fiscal year between the City of Denton and the Denton Chamber of Commerce for the purposes of the economic development partnership. As far as background, this is a long-standing, long-term partnership between the City and the Chamber. The first agreement was entered into in 1986 and the contract allows for the city to provide funds for the administration and operations of the Chamber's Office of Economic Development and there are some bulleted items as far as what those funds cover and the Chamber this year has requested $238,000 approximately in funding, which is the same amount that was requested for the current fiscal year. In the current fiscal year, the agreement has been significantly different from prior years in that it included some specific goals, deliverables and metrics along with enhanced clauses on financial reporting, insurance and indemnity because we have an active legal department who wants to make sure that everybody is protected and to date this year, the Chamber has either met or exceeded all of the terms of the agreement. The draft agreement, which is included in your backup packet for the coming fiscal year, it follows the same format as the current years, but it is updated to include shared strategic initiatives, a revision of the goals related to website and social media marketing to revise the increase down from 20% to 10%. 20% increase is unsustainable over time. So we -- I'm sorry, I should back up and say that all of these changes, my office and the Chamber's Office of Economic Development as well as their board leadership, we met and conferred on all of these items. So these are agreed to items in the contract. So again, revise those goals related to website and social media marketing. We did add a new goal for contacts made at marketing events and the reporting of those contacts. That was something that was left in this year's -- as a year to establish a baseline expectation. So we're just adding the numbers in there. We did increase the number of site visits from target industry companies by one. So it's up from six to seven in the proposed contract. And then we also -- because one of the most important things that the Chamber does in terms of economic development is engage the business community in Denton with economic development through the partnership investment program. So we felt like it was important to recognize the fact that they have been doing good work in this area on an ongoing basis for a number of years. And we just tied some goals to that, again, with their input and agreement to what would be a reasonable expectation there. As I said, Chamber staff and board leadership was involved in the drafting. They reviewed everything. And there were no requested changes. That's it. So happy to answer any questions. >> Mr. Banks? >> I have a question. >> I have a couple of questions. First, the increase engagement on social media. I'm wondering this is just a thought as opposed to putting in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you know, throughout the year there could be something else that's more relevant or one of these could be phased out and something else. Is there a reason that there are these three versus just saying social media engagement? >> So those are the platforms that the Chamber currently uses. And I will say that there might be some of these questions that are more appropriately answered by Chamber staff. So Adam, do you have any contributions on this? I mean, we wanted to work with them as far as what they were using. They did not inform us that they have any plans to make any changes or updates to their platforms in the coming year. So you can speak from there as long as you talk towards the microphone. >> Currently we are using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is to kind of market towards the site selection community and C-level executives . Facebook is kind of geared towards marketing to keep the community, people engaged with what's going on. And then Twitter is to keep everybody apprised of what's going on with what we 're doing. We're open to using other channels as well. So we do other media outlets also, some advertising and things like that. >> And my thought was just to increase the flexibility because, you know, technology is constantly changing as well as social media platforms for all we know. Snapchat could be the business link of the future. We don't know at this point. So it was really just a thought as far as flexibility in where the focus is over the next year as new platforms emerge. >> It seems to me like since we have a history and can apply numbers and expectations to the deliverables because we have a history with what they 're already using, it makes sense to leave those in there specifically. However, that doesn't prohibit the Chamber from opening a Snapchat account. Whatever mysterious app is yet to come. And then if it's something that they find effective, we can, you know, talk about it and discuss possible inclusion in the future. Is that a kind of a compromise? >> It's not a sticking point or anything. >> We're open to anything related to marketing. Our job is to market the community, to get prospects here and get the site selectors to give us first look. So whatever it takes to accomplish that goal is what we're open to doing. >> Okay. >> And I'm just curious, why is this an ordinance? If we have an agreement between the Chamber and the city, that agreement will roll. I'm just interested why make this an ordinance that will then have to constantly change with the specific numbers. And included in that is, you know, I don't know that the Chamber would have any way and have any knowledge of how to -- the metrics involved or who is involved in the determination of business owners rating Denton as a good place to do business. >> Okay. I'm glad to answer both of those. Because it's an expenditure of funds, there has to be an ordinance attached to it. That's municipal law related. So that's why we have to do this every year. And then in terms of the shared goals that you reference that are stated in the ordinance itself, that was at a request from one of our council members. Those goals are something that's included in the city's strategic plan as long-term goals. And in our contract discussions with Adam and the board chair of the Chamber, Eric, we thought that it might demonstrate some alignment of purpose if we could say that we share these goals as stated in the ordinance. And my office has the responsibility for charting the progress of those goals. So that's not something that we are holding the Chamber to. That's something that we in conjunction with the city manager's office gauge and we have our methodology for doing that. As far as the survey that will be conducted related to business owners rating Denton as a good place to do business, that's something that was actually rolled out, I believe it was done in 2015 the last time. And it was a survey that was undertaken with the assistance of a national consulting firm by the city manager's office. They're going to be doing that again two more times . So it's standard methodology. It's used by a lot of communities. But that's what we're going to be using to gauge progress on that goal. Is that solicited through, you know, do they select businesses at random or is that something any member of the public, whether they're involved in business or not, could log on and -- The business survey -- It could be skewed, is my concern. It's specifically targeted to businesses. Okay. Thank you for that answer. Any other questions on this point? And your recommendation once again is? Well, my recommendation is approval of the contract. But this is an informational presentation to this board. There's no -- you all are not required to make a recommendation on this particular item. So that's questions and answers. And when you all are satisfied, then we can move on to the next one. Any other questions from the committee? There being none, we thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is EDP 18040, Receive a Report, Hold Discussion, and Make a Recommendation to the City Council Regarding the Economic Development Plan Grant Agreement Between City of Denton and Golden Triangle Mall. That item is being removed because of the request being removed. We now come to EDP 18043, Staff Reports. And the first is -- Did we skip one? Did we skip one? Yes, sir. It's right here at the bottom. It's kind of hidden. Oh, I did. Yes. Sorry, Michelle. She thought she was off the hook. Okay. That's what you get when you get a kind of a -- what do you call it? A backup quarterback? Give me a little time in there. Get my feet under me. EDP 18044, Receive a Report, Hold Discussion, and Give Staff Direction Regarding Nominations for the Upcoming Business Awards Breakfast. Michelle Cunningham will be making that presentation. It's that time of year again. We will be having our annual Mayor Council breakfast that is part of our Business Appreciation Business Awards Breakfast on Thursday, September, I believe it's the 27th. So that will be going out. We're fir ming up some pricing and things, so we have not announced to Council yet, but that will be in their Friday packet. And at that breakfast, we typically -- the Economic Development Partnership Board as well as UNT, TW, NCTC, the Small Business Development Center, and Downtown Task Force, et cetera, recognize businesses and appreciate them for their investment in the City of Denton. And this has been going on for quite some time. I think we're almost 15 years into it. But if you look at your packet, Exhibit 2 indicates the Business Recognition Awards criteria. And historically, this has been what the Economic Development Partnership Board had adopted as their award criteria. And so also I believe in there you will see that in the AIS it lists some of the past recipients. Almost all at this point, virtually all of the Denton's larger employers have been recognized at some point or another. And not just by the Economic Development Partnership Board, but again by departments, the airport, DME, police, fire, et cetera, over time also participate in this breakfast and have given recognitions to both large and small companies. What I've handed out is a matrix, and it's just a suggestion or an exhibit for you to consider. And on it, on the first page, are three of the larger employers. You may recognize Target and ACME Brick from the last go-round. And also on the second page, TRCA, I think John, last year you had mentioned looking at some of the smaller businesses as well. And we're certainly open to suggestions for those. When we come back to you at the beginning of September, we'll ask you to go ahead and nominate the business that you want as your recipient. But if you don't mind, I'll just briefly cover some of the things here. Winko, you can see the amount of investment. One of the things that's asked is what do these companies bring to the community? And Winko does participate. They're in the United Way. They're a North Texas food bank partner. And they also donate at a corporate level. If you get to them a month ahead, you can ask for school- related funding, fundraiser money from the corporate group. Where they've innovated is surprisingly a number of their stockers or actually millionaires. In their stock options, they have an employee stock option program that begins at, you know, for employees that are 19 or older that work a thousand hours, their first year. The company gives that stock to the employee. The employee's not paying for it. They have folks that started with that company because the annual growth in valuation on that stock has been 18 percent a year. And they actually have stockers that are millionaires and that are working there. So it's one of the wonderful things that they do for employees. And we will tell you from visiting Winko that they, on their own volition, got with Texas Workforce of North Central Texas and designed with the help of people with special needs an area to help them train so that they could actually work at the company. And their plant operations director states that they're some of the most inspirational people to the rest of the employees because they do hire individuals with special needs. And they are focused on providing that outreach to the Dent community as well. The valuation was 79.7 million in 2018. They have about a, it vacillates a little bit because they lose and gain, lose and gain, but it's the general employment is 150. And I will mention that on top of that valuation, we were just looking at the building, their business personal properties about another 63 million. So they are, they're a wonderful addition to the city. With Target Corporation, we talked about Target last year. They have again United Way Board, Serve Denton Board, North Texas Food Bank, Our Daily Bread. They do Denton ISD grants for field trips and things specifically with Wilson Elementary. And their employees have a goal of volunteerism. Target's the first company in the nation that provided 3% for education before taxes. So they were a leader in that kind of innovation or that giving back from a corporate standpoint many years ago. And you can read through the innovation information. 63.1 million valuation in 2018 and again about 150 employees. Acme Brick. And these last two, I've got 2017 valuations in because the 2018s should be posted to shortly because they've been ruled, but there were some ARB things in there. So with Acme Brick, I think they're going to come in at about 34 million. But anyway, Acme Brick of course has been here forever. They are premier, they're Berkshire Hathaway Company that has been a chamber member for many years. They donate to UT Arlington for a masonry program there. They're the largest brick producer in the nation. And of course they have that huge facility here. And they continue to grow and build new brick and tile products. So I think the tile products with all the things, the home shows that you see on television and all the innovations and design, a lot of those things are Acme Brick products. And then last year we had added Little Guys Movers and TRCA. And actually Little Guys Movers were UNT students previously. And so University of North Texas actually presented to them. We did not select them here. And when they were talking to us about folks that we might know that were UNT alums, we mentioned them and they did receive or were recognized last year. But in looking at some of the small to medium sized companies, the award criteria had been developed around the amount of investment and physical taxable investment in the community. And you like to with many, many of our companies, they're excellent, excellent companies. They are tireless contributors to the community, et cetera. However, their physical equipment, it's a knowledge based thing. So their employees may be spending in the community, but there's not a lot of taxable valuation there. So it becomes difficult when you're looking at folks like that to determine how far the board wants to move away from the larger companies and if you want to maybe at some point go to maybe more than one award, that's up to you all. But Technology Resource Centers of America is located on Virginia Circle. If you drive over the bridge, you will on 380, you won't see them because they're down by the railroad tracks. But this started as Telephone Resource Centers of America and they were rehabbing telephone equipment and reselling it. And now they are providing web and data management for a number of companies and you would be amazed. Anybody from Dick's Sporting Goods to not Pet Boys, O'Reilly, yes. And Fort Knox, they do some homeland security, they're former military. They have 53 employees that are here, that vacillates somewhat too because they send sales teams out to do the actual physical installation of the wiring and everything that they need to do, point of sale systems in companies. P .F. Chang's is another one of their clients. So they're, I believe number two or three in the nation for what it is they do in size and yet they're this quiet company that's here in Denton. So that's, they do own their building, they bought the former Baker Distribution Building and they're leasing half of it out at this point. And they have about 1800 employees that are contract employees, so they are not located here physically in Dent on. They are teams that go out that help companies when they're having problems. So they have stellar service records as well. So these are some folks that you may want to consider and I guess I'm looking for any suggestions that you all may have about anybody else you would like to see on this list for the September meeting. Michelle, do you have a timeframe that you need that information sent to you? Yes, if you could do that maybe I'd say by in the next two weeks that would be wonderful because that'll give me some time to interview some folks if I need to to try and find out about their community service. These folks do not know that they are on this list and we've not advised anybody. We typically try and find out the information that we can so that we can evenly present to you the criteria information. Michelle, we have a question from Councilwoman Briggs, please. Yes, ma'am. Not necessarily a question but more of a comment because I was looking at the criteria and I think you mentioned earlier the list of past award recipients and if the criteria stays the same we're going to have to just keep renomin ating the same people over and over again I think. I mean unless we get more people in, more larger companies in. So I would like to see either the criteria tweaked a little bit or another award added because I do believe we have a lot of other medium and small businesses that deserve it in my mind when I kept going through. Like I kept thinking of somebody who's been here for ages and ages and they have contributed to the community but there were some things that just weren't there on the other qualifications. So that would be my recommendation or ask to do either or. And I guess a question I have because I have been to the business breakfast and I wonder how the invites are sent because when I'm there I see the same people and then I think oh well I wonder why this business or these people weren't invited. Can you kind of go over how that is done? Yes, the Mayor Council breakfast is by invitation only because it is part of economic development's budget and we do have a relationship with the Chamber of Commerce to help support economic development at the Chamber. Chamber investors are allowed to bring a certain number of people as well dependent upon their investment as an economic development investor at the Chamber and typically we try to limit it to two representatives from the city's top employers and so that's why you see major employers there and when you see banks there that may be or real estate companies or whomever who have more folks there than two it's because they are Chamber investors and that structure right now lets them invite I believe up to four people. So are there any other businesses that aren't Chamber members that are invited? Not that aren't large companies or are companies that are in our targeted areas. No because again we're paying for breakfast and so you know we've there's so many medium and small size companies we are a service community. We have a number of you know vital service providers here as well but they're smaller they're not major companies so it's just the major employers that are asked. Councilwoman are there some in particular that you're interested in having attend? Well I just wondered about the process and how people are invited and I had when I posted people said you know well I didn't get an invitation and I had no you know response like well you know you're not a large you know employer or something so I'm just curious you know why and like I said as far as the criteria go and awards I just want to make sure that we are acknowledging our medium and smaller businesses on a different level besides just retention business retention visits because I that's a one aspect of it but I think that we also should acknowledge them in our community in other ways. Okay. Any other comments or questions? For the tweaking you might want to look at putting a percentage so if it's the economic impact based on the number of employees that might be a way to tweak it to be able to expand to the number of companies and how they have impact so if it's a company of only 20 or 40 people they can compete on a more fair footing with the Winko that has many many more does that make sense? Expand a little bit. If it's a percentage if you look at a percentage base if you look at a percentage base versus an absolute dollar amount certainly a Target or Winko should be able to always be the number one or number two but like a TRCA which has a smaller footprint because they can't hire that many people in Denton they still have a large impact and they also have the ability to have a large impact on our city and we should be able to recognize them for their contributions and that way we can compare you know at least maybe not apples to apples but at least you know apples to something that's close to an apple. I'm hearing a couple of recommendations from you Councilwoman and from you Mr. Rondele perhaps if you could communicate those to Michelle then that we can perhaps we can modify the selection criteria if you have time. Anything else? Any more questions? Thank you. Thank you very much and we look forward to having any other additional considerations to you by August 22nd. Let's see if the backup quarterback can get a pass completed now. Let's see. All right. Now we go to staff reports. EDP 18043 and we have five items here. Okay I'm just gonna do this from my seat over here and I'll touch quickly on the city economic development departments staff report items. The first thing in your packet is a letter in support of the Greater Denton Arts Council's application to the National Endowment for the Arts for a grant that's called the Our Town Place based grant and GDAC is looking to host an event in the form of a community block party in the fall of 2019 and one of the key elements of being eligible to apply for this grant is a partnership between a nonprofit organization in this case GDAC and local government in this case the city of Denton so we are supporting them in their application by assisting them in preparing the application and partnering with them in aspects of actually planning and executing the event. One of the things that is helpful in making an application like this is letters of support from various organizations and because of the deadline that we were on we communicated directly with Marty Rivers as the board chair in order to prepare and get him to sign a letter of support so this is the letter that he signed on behalf of the board and we just wanted to communicate to you that this was done on your behalf by your board chair and we are finalizing the application with GDAC at this point and I'm glad to answer any questions about this if I can. Any questions from before? Okay and then following that you will see the statistical trends and news of Denton report I'm not going to delve into that but would be glad to answer any questions if anyone has them it is the update that you will see every month. Carolyn I would ask if I'm sure that you have spent innumerable hours on this document so if there's anything you'd like to at least bring our attention to I'm sure that everyone read everything in the packet but if there's something you'd like to bring to our attention I think it would be great. I think something just to point out in general is Denton has had a spate of housing starts in residential areas around loop 288 and FM 428 lately so we're seeing just kind of in general an uptick in residential construction that is definitely one trend that we've seen over the past several months so I think that's just a general thing for people to be aware of if they weren't already so residential growth. Thank you. You're welcome. Following that we have our RFI summary and it's labeled June but it's actually the July summary and you'll find that on page 90 of your packet. It was pretty quiet in terms of RFIs or RFP requests that we received and we were unable to respond to either of the two that we received. The first one because we did not have the existing buildings or the size of property that was required and then secondly we did not have the ability to serve their water and wastewater needs for the second one so that is the update on that. Then on page 91, 92 and 93 you'll see our direct lead summary and as you recall this is a running list that we just add to as these new ones come in. There was a site visit on July 24th that I unfortunately was unable to attend because I was out of town but my understanding is that it was a very productive and positive site visit with a company looking for a 10 acre site at the Denton Airport and they were provided with a significant amount of information following the site visit and we will continue to stay in contact with them going forward and we'll update you on that as we have new information. And I think that moves over into Adam's portion. Let's do it from here. And through the Chamber's economic development department we had eight new projects in July totaling 44 for this current fiscal year. Just to summarize some of the projects that we're currently working on, not the most active projects as I call them and these definitely aren't all of them but the top four that we're currently working with, Project Redwood is a fairly new project. It's an aviation aerospace company which is a city targeted industry. We're working this one through a consulting firm out of Richmond, Virginia. It's 40 million capital investment. It will be 100 new jobs at $43 an hour so very high paying aviation aerospace jobs. They're looking for 25 acres to build a 180,000 square foot facility which will consist of hangar space, office space, back shop and support area. The site that we're looking at is actually a really good site that we don't have any other development on currently. It's a city owned property 150 acres on the west side of the airport runways so they would utilize that runway and that would be the first development in that area. So we think this is a very strong project for us to target. We have made the initial short list of several cities that have small airports and we've entered into an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement with the company. Project Conrad, this is one that I've been working on for 8 to 10 months now and I 'm sure you all have heard it several times from me. They're getting very close to loc ating here. They're going through the contract phase right now and closing. They're looking at, they currently have 20 locations across the United States. Here in Denton they're going to build 20 to 30,000 square feet. They'll have 30 new jobs so they aren't requesting city incentives or anything like that. They are currently closing on an 8 acre site out at West Park next to Anderson Merchandising. I'm sure you're all familiar with that location. It is not closed yet but we'll probably be able to announce that next month. Project Crown is another one that you have all heard from me for about a year now. It's still in the works. Once again this is another one that's going through, working on closing right now. It's 98% sure it's going to happen. We can't announce it yet but we're getting close . This company manufactures forklifts and small lift trucks. We're currently working with the brokers to get them in the north building at Westgate Business Park. That building is 171, 000 square feet. There's only 20,000 square feet left so the company would move into that smaller space while they're waiting on building three of Westgate Business Park to be constructed which will be 73,000 square feet. Move into the small space, get started and then once building three is done they'll utilize that whole building. It's another great project for us. Project Ingredient is a brand new one. I wanted to highlight this one because we do a lot of these marketing trips and consultant forums, trade shows with Team Texas and things like that. This is one that we met at the IFT which is the International Food Technology Expo and I'll get in next into the marketing activity why we decided to do this show. One of the projects located at this one specifically said they wanted to build 150,000 square foot facility on 15 acres here in Denton. Their customer is Tetra Pak so they need to be located as close to Tetra Pak as possible. We did a surge provided on with three sites already in close proximity with a one mile radius so we're currently working on that as well. Project Sagebrush, another new project. We're working this one with Newmark Night Frank out of Los Angeles and they have a Dallas office as well so we're working with four different consultants out of their offices. This one is advanced manufacturing so once again a highly targeted company. They're actually doing two projects. So one they want to locate the headquarter large office project in downtown Dallas within the city of Dallas city limits and then in Denton they want to do their advanced manufacturing project looking at 20 acre sites to construct a 250,000 square foot facility. We've located roughly six sites that we presented to them that are under consideration. We have a call another call with them Thursday. They are looking for they're going to be looking for city county and state incentives so we're working on that for them as well. This project will be 200 employees at $78,000 average wages. And then last just on some of those most active projects we're all aware of the multiple speculative industrial products that are currently working on closing here in Denton so we're going to have you can quote me on the number but I'd say somewhere in the ballpark of at least 2 million square feet of industrial spec space by the time all is said and done there's about five to six different Dallas development companies that are looking to develop these industrial spec spaces and these spaces are going to be ranging from all the way from 240,000 square feet up to 800 and so thousand square feet and I know Carolina and I have both been working on several of those as well and they're looking at multiple sites the site south of Winko is a you know 77 acre side they're looking at the site north side of Winko that's 35 acres they're looking at the 104 acre site on the west side of Western Boulevard which I think is going under contract pretty soon and in the site the 44 acre site correct directly next to where US cold storage is building their facility would be another location for them as well so a lot of action on on those things right now. I had a question. Sure. You said something 278,000 in wages what was that? I'm not sorry the product will employ 200,000 people at 78,000 200 employees I'm sorry 200 people. You're confusing me. I apologize 200 employees at 78,000 average wages annual average okay okay good good good 78,000 no that's good that 's good I get to talking too fast that's okay that's okay no you you're talking okay I was listening slow so no we're good we're on the same page. Thank you. The marketing activities from the last month we did attend that Institute of Food Technology or IFT Expo we did that one with team Texas the thought process behind that is to target these advanced manufacturing products that are food related you know for instance you know these companies would compliment United States cold storage or Winko foods or Target DC that does perishable items here in Denton Aldi's distribution center in Tetra Pak so companies that are in the you know the food industry so that was a great a great conference we had two separate booths we did we did a booth with team Texas where we had you know booth space we exhibited with them we also had a small boutique marketing firm called site location partnership where we had a second booth where we did a we sponsored a dent banner so we had two separate locations I was working back and forth we got double the leads 51 new contacts came as a result of the team Texas booth which we did have one very solid prospect which I touched on up there that where they want to be next to Tetra Pak to build 150,000 square foot building and then at the site location partnership booth 14 leads were cultivated where we did have one solid prospect come from that so far and we're still following up with all the support with all 14 but the one once is interested in building a are putting in a 50 to 60,000 square foot warehouse facility here in Denton. Next on the list we did the Southern Economic Development Conference which is a non-profit membership organization which serves 17 states in the southern United States. They host conferences and forums that consist of site location consultants, construction firms, architecture firms which are all working projects as well across the country so we target those also. FDI consultants foreign direct investment so consultants that work German companies or Japanese companies you know all across the board and then economic development organizations such as ours so we attended that and just highlight we did actually receive an award at this one a communications award of excellence for our website so you all see that so it's so it's not just me that's always telling you that we have a good website we actually we actually gained some some pretty good national exposure from from launching that website. Investor relations you know as part of the as part of the contract for this year we had to we had to have I think it was 63 or 64 private investors at about I think this year it was $64,000 was the rate that we had to had to keep tabs on for our marketing funds for private investment we're actually at $ 77,350 to end the year so well above that area this next year it goes up to $75,000 which currently right now we're still above that mark as well at $77,350 and we are at 64 current private investors no money left outstanding so we're we're good for the for the rest of the year. Upcoming marketing trips for the next month all we have in August is the net car or it's North the North Texas Commercial Association of Realtors Conference it is in downtown Dallas we do pay for a booth space to represent ourselves as Denton we have a big Denton booth that we'll market ourselves at and it's basically targeting all the Dallas Fort Worth site location consultants brokers realtors all those people so we we have our own booth you know they stop by we tell them about our sites and our great quality of life and all that good stuff and it's a great show that we've done every year for at least as long as I've been here for almost five years so that's all I have any questions? Awesome. Any questions or comments? Okay armchair quarterback let's see what you can do here. Let's see coming to the end of our report here let's see does anyone have any items concluding items that we need to address Councilwoman anyone else have concluding items? Yes ma'am. So I have a couple I have one request and then just one kind of information I took part in a focus group for a county hospital recently and in doing so I asked for some some data and received it and was a little bit shocked that well one our population is growing but we're growing older residents the college kids are kind of maintaining but our families and our senior community are growing and and with that we actually lack let's see health care is a growing industry and we actually lack the the specialty doctors in women's health pediatrics addiction and mental health so I'm just asking a chamber or you can our city if this needs to be a target industry what can we do to get these providers into our city we have community members that are leaving our city to go get the medical needs that they need and that is pretty concerning and so I'm not sure how how to fix it but we have on on the the specialty groups that I mentioned we are above national average for the visits in our city so it's pretty significant. You mean going elsewhere? Well yeah so the the providers here that we have are just bombarded with visits. The visits that are received in our city are above the national average because the the selection is is so small so I just wanted to kind of throw that out there with all of you in the room I'm sure you probably are aware of some of the issues here and I just kind of wanted to put that out in the public and also I wanted to ask okay Mr. Edgar. Where we do see an opportunity or we do have presence of some sub specialties we don't have a very deep bench and so it would be of interest on our part I'm sure from all healthcare's part and interest in working with the city in how we can develop depth in some of those areas as well because frequently they leave because the availability in town is there but you're going to be waiting for a prolonged period of time. The behavioral health mental health side is a big bucket in and of itself universally that we need to put significant thought around and I know the city has done a lot of work around that to to bring attention to it but in a number of those sub specialties and we can go through half dozen of them probably off the top of our head that each of us need the depth of it and the ability to have redundancy of providers is a real opportunity for us too. So thank you for waiting and if we can get some sort of partnership or a report on on what we can do we can work together on that. That would be great. That would be really good. So anyway I was just kind of shocked to see the gaps in our health care and to see all the people leaving our community for for health care. And so the request that I have is not is that the city in the chamber if you guys can work together and compile a list of businesses within our community that will hire someone with a previous record because I on the homeless leadership team part of the thing that we see once we get someone housed is they cannot get a job to sustain the house that they're in and not for not wanting to work but a lot of people have you know backgrounds in in a record for different things even you know trespassing and getting tickets for being in the park or you know wherever. So I would just like to have and I think the city and there were several non-profit groups would benefit from having a list of those businesses that that would give them a second chance or an opportunity to work. And that may take some time together. Yes. Oh yeah. No I'm yes. No I'm just it's something that's needed you know because it's hard to call individual people and I've done that and it's just not it's not sustainable and it's not working you know like so. Thank you Council woman. Any other questions or comments? Okay let's see. Today we do have two individuals on our committee who will this will be their last meeting day. Carol Ann Simmons and Jim Fikes. No. And we do have a card of appreciation that we'd like to give to each of you and personally I'd like to say I've known both of you for many years and I am tremendously impressed by both of you and have had the great pleasure of working with each of you in a number of settings and you guys have been great role models and great assets for our community and so you'll be missed here but I hope and pray that you will stay active. Jim told me he's going to work with the rodeo with the fair and how about you Carol Ann what are you going to do? Everything else. No pressure no pressure. I mean you know. Okay well good. And I plan to continue that because I enjoyed that. I've enjoyed this board. I've learned a lot. I told Jill she'd learn more on this board. The first year you drink it from a fire hose. It smooths out after that. Well good. Well let's see. John I would like to make a comment too. Please. I've enjoyed my time here. I hope that I've made a contribution. The growth of this city and the way we grow this city is terribly important and it's critical to all of us. We're a huge educational hub and with the number of people that are moving into the into the city we need to be sure that we're continuing to promote our economic development and bring more businesses to this town. I know we get chat we get asked a lot how do you justify some of the incentives that we provide to some of the businesses. I think you got to look at what those businesses are. Razor Ranch was a cow pasture ten years ago and the number of jobs that it has created and the number of people I mean Torchies is a good example. I think there are a number of employees and a lot of them are part time employees because they're students but over a hundred employees and Torchies and if you start looking at the restaurants and the stores and the contribution that something like that makes to the community it's huge especially with the universe us being a huge university town. So we just need to continue to get the manufacturing jobs in here that that are high paid so we can raise that medium income. Thank you. Thank you. Carolyn. I will thank Pete Camp for asking me to serve on this board eight years ago. Finished out a term for someone and then I 've served two consecutive terms and I hope as I said enjoyed that and I like to contribute to something. Smile. If there are no other concluding items we will adjourn the meeting at 1156.