- Thank you for coming today, we are starting, the cameras actually are on all of the time,
so just to make you aware that you are being live streamed at all times to the entity that
handles all of the cameras and microphones. However, they did turn it on at 11, so just
to be aware that we are all, if you are seated at this table-ish, that you are being recorded.
So at this point we do have forum and I would like to begin the City of Sitton's Economic
Development Partnership Board meeting for Wednesday, February 9th, 2022. I want to thank everyone for
being here and I also especially want to thank Erica and the staff for the board orientation
that we had prior to this meeting beginning. It was very helpful. These slides have gone out
and there's also a handbook that she mentioned that the state puts out that I think we're all
going to get a link to and I encourage everyone to look at that. There are a lot of firms that we
end up tossing around and it's a really great reminder of what the different types of economic
incentives that we have available and what is available to our surrounding cities.
We will begin with our items for consideration starting with AEDP 22-006. Consider approval of
the minutes of November 10th, 2021. Of course, all of these were included in your packet that was
sent out prior to today's meeting. I hope everyone has had the opportunity to review those minutes
and at this time I will entertain a motion for approval in a second so we can get into discussion.
Second. All right it has been moved and seconded to approve the minutes of November 10th, 2021.
I'm sorry I do second at that please. Thank you. Are there any edits that are needed? Are there any
comments regarding the minutes as they were distributed? Hearing none all those in favor
of approval please signify by saying aye. All those opposed please signify by saying nay. And
the motion carries unanimously. We are on fire people let's keep going. Item B EDP 22-010. Receive
a report hold the discussion give staff direction and make a recommendation to city council regarding
the city of Denton's policies for tax abatement and incentives. No small task. Take us through it
Erica. Good morning my name is Erica Sullivan. I'm the economic development program administrator
and I'm going to be providing a presentation on incentive policy today. So our objective today is
to overview the recommended incentive policy changes that update and align with our new strategic
plan and council priorities and seek direction from this board regarding those changes and updates.
We're going to be talking about four areas today. We're going to be talking about the policy history,
the economic development tools that we use, the proposed changes and then the internal processes
and the next steps. We begin with the policy history. The city of Denton policy for tax abatement
and incentives. The first tax abatement policy was created in 1989. This was followed with updates
that included green incentives in 2010 and again refined in 2012. The policy also was broadened to
include chapter 380 at the local government code and address a wider range of programs in 2014.
Retail was addressed definitions were added these were sales tax definitions and then two of our
programs our investment fund and aircraft incentive were incorporated into the policy
with the 2018 update. 2020 was the most recent update there were very minor changes because we
knew we were going to incorporate our strategic plan. We'll go over some economic development
tools this will help frame it for those of you that were in the orientation. It's just another
refresher but it'll frame why we made some of the changes and what the policy details.
So the first is tax abatement. Tax abatements are regulated by chapter 312 of the Texas tax code.
They can offer a partial or full exemption in property taxes for a 10 year period.
How it works a property owner receives a statement from the appraisal district it's a reduction of
the percentage that they received in their abatement agreement and then they pay that net amount.
We have currently 11 tax abatements our most recent with tyson foods in 2019.
The next is our chapter 380 of the local government code chapter 380 is very broad
this is literally half a page of regulations for chapter 380 local government code and this gives
the city the ability to offer loans and grants cash grants for different services and to stimulate
economic activity. How it works they must be budgeted in fact we prepare a five-year forecast
the current budget and five years out to plan. After the grantees met their threshold
and they pay their property taxes is when we will rebate and actually pay a check for the
Here is a summary that kind of goes over the different type of things that we've discussed.
So the first is the tax grant type so you have tax abatement and this is property taxes that
it's dealing with then you have a rebate so we discussed a rebate that can be property sales hot
which is hotel occupancy tax it can also be mixed purge we have one case of that.
We have expansion grants these are cash grants and we have a job-based grant it's also cash
grant so then you have the agreement type so the first would be a tax abatement agreement
and that's under chapter 312 and then we have our chapter 380 for the next three. The third
column has our program it's our tax abatement program our rebate or chapter 380 program and
then we have our entrepreneur tech and business expansion grants and then we have our entrepreneur
tech and business knowledge and high wage jobs grants and then the fourth column has our source
of funds so again we talked about tax abatements it's a reduction in your bill and then we have a
cost share of property sales hot from these beverage taxes and then the source of funds for
our expansion our cash grants is our investment funds so our investment fund receives 150 000
every year and that comes from mixed beverage taxes. We try to keep that nexus kind of closed
and then we have the statutes that I mentioned these are the regular regulatory
the tax code chapter 312 for tax abatements and the local government code for chapter 380.
The proposed changes of the policy we're going to go by them step by step in each area before we
move on the most significant change to the policy and the reason we went over some of the economic
development tools is we've separated our tax abatement and incentive policy for a tax abatement
policy that just addresses tax abatements and our chapter 380 policy now this addresses three
things our rebates our cash grants and our job-based grants as well as incorporating all of
our programs under one single umbrella so we have our airport grant we have our investment fund
grant and our entrepreneurial grants under one umbrella and it also makes it easier if you have
one entity that only needs one type of policy they'll only receive one and they're written so
they can stand on their own. So some of the tax abatement considerations we talk about chapter
312 that regulates tax abatement it requires us to have policy criteria or guidelines every two years
that's why we keep seeing these in the history we have to remove renew them every two years and
we can't grant the tax abatement during that two-year period if we want to amend or repeal it we
need three-quarter we need a super majority vote in order to do that which makes it a little bit
more difficult not impossible but a little bit more challenging to amend during that two-year
period and then the government body must hold a public hearing these are new this particular
policy update and the last policy update in 2020 incorporated the new policy changes to 312 where
we have to hold a public hearing now and then I also want to highlight and note that Jett and
Canyon will participate in tax abatements but they will not participate in chapter 381 which is a
county equivalent of chapter 383 cities. So those are some considerations that led to some of the
changes that we proposed. Sure the public hearings is that something that is mandated by state law
or is that that's the Texas tax code chapter 312 great thank you. Erica on that is the governing
body or the government body is that city council then since the county is not participating that's
exclusively city council the city council is our governing body yes. So the proposed changes one of
the first changes that we made is incorporating the city values so these are integrity transparency
inclusion fiscal responsibility and outstanding customer service these are public resources we
want to make sure that we're including our city's core values. The proposed changes of policy dealing
with the strategic plan so if you were here for the orientation you know a little bit about these
so we've got our five guiding principles this is what establishes the framework and this is
our core resiliency we want to be future focused we want to be inclusive have inclusive growth in
the city entrepreneurial spirit and cultural vitality in addition to the five guiding principles
of the strategic plan we've also incorporated into both policies the three major goals so we
want to accelerate recovery we want to foster growth and we want to strengthen community inclusion.
Where did these come from is this direction from council to include in our economic development
policy or is this from staff's recommendation or a little bit of both Jessica did present to council
when we she presented our strategic plan that we will be aligning our policy we are now aligning
our policies it was approved last year this is the current time that we'd normally update our
policies it's actually set to expire at the end of march so these are the five guiding principles
from our strategic plan that we're incorporating into our policy and also the three main goals into
our policies. And so we are to incorporate these as we consider recommendations that we make to
council is that the intent yes just to be have this combined effort we've never included the
city goals as well we're trying to make it all inclusive. In order to implement it it's better
if we include it in all of our policies and people can see what our framework and direction it is.
So proposed changes also involve strategic growth areas we're used to targeted industry sectors in
our policy our strategic plan instead has strategic growth areas now they after council direction they
did create a document that combines the industry code and it makes with these strategic growth
areas and we're going to go over each one individually but they're connective creative
sustainable and competitive. You have this center table because it is a little bit hard to read you
will go over it in each section but you can see how you have the strategic growth area on the left
you've got your industry code your NAICS and then the description of what that would be and this is
at the three digits NAICS can go much much deeper but the list would have been way too long so there
may be some businesses that aren't don't appear here in the description that are in the same family
that we call. So our first one is our strategic growth area connective so this will be your
electrical this is your telecommunications it also has support service transportation as well
you'll see all the different NAICS codes I won't read all of them here but you can see these are
involved in cultivating connective. Our next strategic growth area is creative that's really
important for them so we have our printing services our publishers our engineering architectural
services the first one is our largest the next three will be a little bit smaller.
The third strategic growth area is sustainable we want to be great this ranges from utilities
like Denton Municipal Electric to solid waste processing as well as some things in between
construction and furniture manufacturing. Then we have our final strategic growth area competitive
so you have financing you have insurance you have educational services and you have your medical.
So we're incorporating the strategic plan there's certain things that need to be addressed in
understanding the strategic plan so of course we included some definitions so you have the ecosystem
that talks about the different elements anchor institutions for cultivating these strategic growth
areas. Then we have the North American industry classification system that defines that system
that we're using for our strategic growth areas. We have some proposed changes our job-based grant
this is our our entrepreneurial program and our job-based grants and they've been incorporated
into our chapter 380 policy. So we have an expansion a relocation grant this is a one-time
grant and this can be used for relocating reimbursement for furniture fixtures and equipment
permitting fees necessary site upgrades it could be infrastructure like fiber for example for
our entrepreneurial grants. Job-based grants this is a performance-based stratified job-based grant
based on the different wages that they have and this is provided once per year on each new eligible
job added and then in addition to that we've established a residency bonus grant we want the
people that we employ also to be residents of Denton we want to encourage that so that may be
granted for each eligible new job with a primary dwelling in the city limits of Denton during the
coverage period. Before we move on I've got a question so job-based grants is that just
I mean anyone that adds a position can apply to be to receive a grant for having a new hire?
No okay so in our investment fund there are three criteria currently you have to be a targeted
industry center now it's strategic growth areas you have to have a capital investment 15 million
and you have to have knowledge based or high-end jobs you're required to meet two of the three not
all three but two others the next slide will actually go over the wage thank you thank you
okay so the three criteria is a targeted industry sector which is now because we're updating that
policy is now strategic growth area to be in the line with that once this is approved with the
strategic plan we also have to approve that ordinance it goes along with that but we'll
discuss that later in the presentation so then we also need a capital investment of at least 15
million and then oh how many okay so oh high-wage jobs so what we're going to discuss right now
those are the three they have to be two of the three so at here we're talking about the high-wage
jobs you're used to seeing this in our policy means having an average annual wage of 65,000
or greater for all positions or at least 25 making 75 or greater there is one change to this we've
increased it so it used to be 55 for all positions and 65 for all 25 having that upgraded the only
incentives that we've awarded have been 65 or higher and we think that that makes more sense
when the investment policy was approved it was in 2016 so we've adjusted that and
we'll see how it works if we need to adjust it we can but so far it's worked well at 65 or higher
yes so i have a quick question have you worked with the with twc they have that website that
has helps you calculate uh child care cost etc etc you know because i think we sometimes get into
to a top line revenue number and then it you know you it subtracts out kind of some of those other
costs to give you a kind of feel for what hits the bottom line to if that incentivizes people
to come back to work or if it's cost prohibitive we haven't directly worked with that we have
addressed child care in the incentive which we will get to later we do look at living wage you
used to have city-wide goals that would go with hud living wage requirements we don't have those
city-wide plans that we're implementing now okay but we will go into child care and we'll get
great so we talked about the higher wage now we have two different things for uh we talked about
our bonus like a residency bonus council actually separated the idea of the residency bonus that
this board recommended so with safran they wanted to to establish a higher wage for those that were
established residents versus new residents so we we came up with these definitions for those particular
agreements so we have an established resident so this is eventual hired by grantee with a primary
residence in the city limits at the time of employment and then we have a new residence
that was hired with a primary dwelling outside the city limits at the time of employment and then they
moved here later and they received different levels 300 and 700 in case of saffron the staff
recommendation from this board was 500 and it's split to encourage more from local local hires
so we have a stratified job-based grant table that we've used where you've seen for the technology
grants that we've brought forth but we want to put it in the policy so that they it's clear to all
that want to apply for the program so we have a stratified job-based grant you see the different
cohorts and then as the weight is increased so does the eligible grant for new job
and then we have the proposed changes our factors in consideration to use to seeing these in the
policy they've been updated and more closely tied to the strategic plan and the council priorities
so you have an evaluation matrix at your table this is the first matrix that we've ever created
for scoring and it combines our strategic growth areas remember this replaced our targeted
industry sectors our public benefit factors and then our priority considerations we'll go over
each section one by one as well but i wanted you to see the document it's hard to read here
so you have a point structure assigned to each of these and the total points is 120 a lot of these
won't be met by every project and we'll see how this works and we might need to adjust it later
and is this for staff's use is this for our use in consideration or is this something that has to be
presented is this advisory or is this compulsive i guess is my question okay so if those of you
are familiar with the downtown reinvestment grant program they have a score sheet we're
proposing a score sheet for the first time ever for our incentive programs here it's a more
apples apples comparison if people have questions we have a document we can rely on and this is the
first document that we've created so i expect that we'll need to adjust it and if you have
recommendations for adjustment this is this is where we'll be doing that as well who fills us out
who makes the judgment on this staff will be doing part of it we'll use it internally
we normally do something like this internally anyway we have a component like with all of our
analysis we put on the bottom what because we have a section of our application that has what they
need as far as being priority considerations are they environmental are they using local
contractors that type of thing and so we already checked that and that usually gives them a higher
rate in our calculations and then we have a table policy that we look at per year so we do some of
this internally but now we want to make it to where everyone can use it the whole board can use it
and we're organizing synthesizing things and we want to make sure that you can be utilized by
everybody like i said it went from more apples to apples comparisons probably so with hypothetically
each of us on this board would fill this out for a potential incentive and then do these then get
put before council is this something that as chair i would collect and we can collect and we can
score and then the total score would be presented to council similar to what we do at the downtown
program and what i did in the past working for a council of government when we did school grads
but ultimately are you trying to look for some type of threshold to say invest minimally be
acceptable we do have thresholds the tax abatement policy has a valuation threshold we do have
threshold requirements in our investment fund staff is not going to make you have to make sure
it's complete before you receive it you won't receive something that doesn't meet the requirements
now it might not remove obvious that they're not going to meet every requirement
right it just seems to hamstring a bit our ability to give more weight to certain
areas is my only and we can do that right now we can do that if you think that uh
as opposed to like 10 10 10 well maybe this is a 50 you know on this and it might outweigh
you know that they're not maybe as balanced uh anyways but those are just my initial thoughts
were i initially put more weight to um i had 15 points on higher wage jobs but then revised it
since we had knowledge-based jobs as well so we played with it a little week i sent it out
internally as well you'll receive comments back on that and that's where i want your
your feedback and we'll go over it individually and it might be easier to get feedback on it then
but this is something place to start from i want to do most of the work for you before you receive
it and then we can adjust is work i would i would just add i think the benefit of having
you know we can have a policy conversation of what how we rank these and what weight you
want to put on it the benefit of having a policy and the scorecard is when we're having those
conversations with folks coming in and looking for these incentives we can say here's what we're
looking for and it's not a case-by-case situation it makes those conversations at the staff a lot
easier if we have it they're finding the policy here's the way we're going to put on each of the
attributes i definitely couldn't see the value of that my there's just um in real life it's a
little more fuzzy than max 10 max 5 that was my only concern but i i think there's of course
there's going to be a way that we can meet somewhere to make it work for the board and
if we just adopt it with the 380 policy we can adjust it within the two years relatively easily
so that's and is that something that we vote on or something that council then votes on to
impose on this board it depends how we want to structure it okay and i'll look to guidance here
we can have it as a formal attachment right now for example our application our incentive application
is included as an attachment but we can amend it not the policy in the interim you know if we have a
a new distribution a new sector to add in the past or do some minor things well one of the changes
most recent changes we made was we wanted to know that truck trip traffic how many truck trips
truck trips in and out particularly for jim crystal in our industrial area so that's one
question we added so we had the ability to do that but we couldn't change the policy in there
in the room i see this being more like that although i would like the half council adopted
at least with the chapter 380 adopt the idea and the point structure and they then you know we make
a recommendation to council council may revise that but at least we are the advisory body with
the background that we have already chosen for the economic development partnership i think the key
point that maybe just we're trying to make here is council is going to have a little discretion
in what they do and someone might score really high on this and council still turned it down
someone might score low on this and council still approves it for a higher amount so i think maybe
we need to build that flexibility in the policy to say this is a tool that helps guide it and make
it fair it gives us some basis to review these but it's not going to be something that is going to be
held against the applicant or against councils really and how they vote on any type of incentive
i can give you an idea so what peterville is going to expand the tax base they're going to
receive very high points in that particular area but an entrepreneurial grant team of defenders
is not but they are going to score really high in knowledge-based jobs so it's going to vary
depending on the project and like i said we may need to adjust it in the future we might need a
separate scorecard for small grant programs or entrepreneurial programs but at least we have one
that we're starting from being that we haven't had a scoring structure i guess i just want to
make sure we have some flexibility as well as council as far as saying hey it seemed to score
really low on a certain area however we get an a plus even though it didn't score numerically
the way that the matrix set forth i'm sorry that's a really good point um so when we're picking
movies to watch with the kids we use a website called common sense media and it reviews parents
get to review the movies and the kids get to review the movies i don't know who these kids
are who are reviewing movies but but they do and the kids say it's appropriate for these ages and
the parents say it's appropriate for these ages and sometimes the kids tell you yeah you shouldn't
let your kids watch this movie but my point is there are two different groups of people with two
different perspectives and they're both really important for the decision i'm wondering if it
wouldn't be useful for the council to get uh the staff score staff scored this this package at
this and if you want to see the sheets or you want to see the averages or whatever you can look at
that and see what staff thought about each of these areas the edp uh eppb excuse me scored it
here when they were reviewing the incentive and if you want to see their averages you can
then maybe council can get some additional information from that by seeing what two
different sets of eyes with different perspectives how they scored it and then ultimately like max
said or and uh jill kind of reiterated i mean council could say well yeah great you you scored
in this range but but really what we're looking for today on this council from this policy body is
this kind of this kind of business or something that just isn't measured here or whatever
but i feel like the more data council's provided from various perspectives it maybe helps them
better better hue to the strategic plan and the uh the reason why we have these these areas
defined in the first place and that's an excellent idea it could be as simple as having a comment
section so we can say although this isn't reflected we would like this considered i think we've got two
comments first with mr gains and then mr edgar go ahead sure i i think i in correct when you're
asking that threshold question you're kind of saying is there a number that it has to be over
i think a benefit of not having a threshold as we're talking about where to lay on the 120
is that it allows more flexibility where you can have okay hey this didn't hit whatever came over
the threshold there could be one that comes forward that doesn't hit the threshold based on
the numbers but you can have all the considerations so i think we just know the max is 120 here's how
it's scored but then you're you're taking everything in your account yeah i was trying to make sure we
stay away from a threshold right because you're i'm not a big fan of points system because it
really should all still lead you to the strategic plan and where we're trying to go rather than the
flat and then hopefully this is not decent enticing people to not go and get incentives or not come
here because of something because it might scare people away master edgar yeah that's actually
i agree and that's my concern is if you score low that company or that industry can say
no need to take it forward if this is your scoring mechanism and i scored this low
there are other cities for me to look at and and just pivot that would be my concern and
approaching it on purely a point basis as well and maybe somehow couching it as advisory other than
two plus two equals four or you know you're in or you're out right we do something similar when we
evaluate businesses that we select business awards we don't assign a point structure we could remove
the point structure and these are just the criteria that we look at historically with the incentive
policy at one point we had that you the base policy particularly of tax evasion was 25 and every one
of these considerations that you meet limit five previous limit policy prior to the 2020 i think
prior to 18 i've been here a long time but then you it would increase that percentage your abatement
percentage so it would take us a long time to get someone up just up to 50 to give you an idea so we
kind of got away from that and we've done some of the case by case but we still internally utilize
some of those programs so we could do it similar to the way that we do our awards and not assign
the point structure but let them know that these are the things that we look at we could simply
take off that column and the points listed there you know i i agree that a point structure can be
really limiting but i also feel like i don't think it should be at all dispositor i don't think you
should if you don't meet the threshold you're you're out and there's no there's no other policy
consideration to be taking into account but at the same time i worry about taking it out because
i think the benefit of the exercise we went through over the last couple of years getting
the strategic plan together is strategic long-term uh you know they may be adjusted but they're
generally going to be the same uh the same values the same criteria the same targets
over a long period of time i feel that there's not a point that there's not some kind of guideline
of here's how we here's how we rank these things or here's how we consider these things in the
process then it it turns into by the time it gets to council i like this one i don't like this one
i like it for some external reason that's specific to my particular policy interests or i like it
because it's a cool sector i think didn't not have more of that even though nobody else has thought
that for however long you know like the issue that i'm trying to be delicate with is when the
council is ultimately making the decision it's a body of laypeople different professions it
changes every every may you're going to get potential for a new council and if there's not
something that says here's here's the vision we all agreed upon at some point in some way to kind
of gently remind that we're following a path that we've decided already otherwise it's a little
unmoored in our direction so i like points as an advisory advisory thing i'll just say i think
that's a good point and maybe one thought would be to say as opposed to like pass or fail you've got
like you know from 80 to 100 very strong the next section strong neutral you know lacking in some
areas the way that it's couched i think we had a couple people comments we'll start with the
mayor hits us and then we'll go to mr yeah no i think that what i'm hearing and great points i think
maybe it's uh there's a bare minimum so you keep the points but it's like whatever 20 points goes
on to the next level so you know then that all the points are there but it doesn't disenfranchise
someone they're like oh i can i can meet the minimum threshold to go forward and i think we
have a great product we'll do well but it's not discouraging if someone says hey you know
it just kind of gives them a hey please apply the barrier is low to move forward in this process but
uh kind of you know maybe there's a way to just set the prompt the points very low to move forward
and and that then doesn't discourage anyone and and i if you don't like points i wish you
would have been my high school teacher you know i think i tend to agree with if i was i try to
put myself in your shoes sitting on council and looking if you're not intimately involved in these
meetings right so if i'm sitting on council like you're trying to make a decision it would give
me some guidance from what staff says and if if we as a board you know kind of agree on this you
know or fill this out individually or as a group make that decision so maybe one comes from the
group from us to say okay this is kind of the points that as a group we agree on for this incentive
so you guys get one from staff one from this board cohesively so you're not looking through
but i think it's important that we don't we make it advisory only we don't do anything that says
this is concrete because this can be interpreted in so many different ways and another thing i
think would be is a comment section you know i know there's lots of comments that come out of it
but if we're if if i'm sitting on council and somebody's handing me something and i as a board
we've said okay this is how we're rating this company there may be some objective things that
we have an opinion on that need to be put out there i don't know if that's head would be hopefully
you guys on council in making those ultimate decisions because we're advisory so i believe
this should be advisory also not something concrete or have a minimum i don't know y'all's
thoughts on that who you guys have said on council but i'd like to hear that all right we've got
just to add i think where you were going all of you is rather than a number of points it's at
that point hit if we say hey this is where the points are at it falls in a range so when it goes
to the city it's a range to say red yellow various right right very broad in general this is what it
needs for the strategic plan mr gore i like the uh the idea of the comment section but it would be
good to have comments under each of the different categories rather than one blanket comment so it
won't be so clustered i would like to see what your points are on the public benefit but the
comments why they are not higher or greater so three different comment sections uh i think could
be helpful as well and you know we might also reach out and see what other similar boards are
are doing and that's something that um chair uh i would like to do and i've not done just yet but
you know hope to it's great as this partner has pointed out in the past not to reinvent the wheel
if there's something else out there and i know that you're aware of other groups and what they
do so we will definitely include all that so i just want to say thank you for this really great
conversation i think this is exactly what this board is for to have those that are out in the
public and private sector that are not you know solely in economic development giving a different
point of view as to how this can be received by businesses coming and so obviously a lot of work
has gone into this and it's um incredibly i think useful for a lot of the different reasons that
we've heard and i just want to again say thank you to erica and your staff and
erica you have a comment or question yeah no just uh whenever whenever are you i'll allow it okay
i mean i think it'd be helpful uh to lee's question to speak to that and i don't know
where councilman davis falls but erica could you touch on um what was it freeland the meat the
butcher or meat place that we so it's approved right whatever it's free ranchland there you go
there you go yeah i want to go to but actually discuss that under due diligence yeah but no i
but i think it's a great example for for lee because it is absolutely a blind corner uh once
you go to 215 east mckinney because that's city hall so so i think it's a great example though
because it came through the process and scored well it went to council and was approved but then
when it hit the newspaper everyone turned on it right it's like ah you know so i think it just
one of those things where the the answer to the question is i think you can you can do the best
possible and it cost us no money right i mean it just didn't meet the thresholds didn't get
any money back but it's one of those things where the comments and after the fact you thought uh the
we didn't have a process in place at all and so that's the challenging part uh from my perspective
is just um even when all parties agree and sign on if it takes a left turn still you know it could
have repercussions or hey you want this or some other layer of security that's going to get
ignored so that's really the challenge i think is to try to how to how to balance that and at the
same time understand it's it's a living breathing thing that that has its own process i don't know
if you have anything different but that's that's my look at it i i agree with that observation of
course the county ran in the same thing with the salivary building and just sometimes that things
don't pan out the way it looked like through the process but um but i really like the comment
section because i'm thinking about to your point lead you know what's going to be helpful up there
on the dais reviewing an industry that i don't know a lot about or a process that i may or may
not know a lot about and and knowing here's kind of where staff put it and here's a staff comment
staff says you know we scored it low but here's here's how it really hits a lot of other boxes
that are on the sheet and then here's edpv's average score and here are all the comments
from the members who said gosh this would really open up a whole other set of opportunities and then
or you know from my perspective in my industry we've been looking for exactly this thing even
though it doesn't hit some uh even though it's scored low on the sheet uh whatever those comments
are and whatever the a plus on one area not so much on that area so that i think both the ranges
and the comment section could be really really really helpful just a little report on the thing
with everybody's perspectives i think that's an excellent idea um i originally had one um under
the public benefit that was for a board or council and other considerations we have it in the policy
itself but it wasn't on the score sheet we could definitely include it under each so like our
targeted sector i could think of okay so maybe it's not in these targeted sectors but we want
to diversify and it's something we don't have here maybe that's my comment from staff so yeah i
i definitely see some truth to that and then you were talking about different policies we look at
policies across the state and even in other cities uh we look outside the state boulder for example
we have green programs and boulder for their entrepreneurial programs so we've looked all over
we've done indc as far as a scoring matrix austin by far has the most detailed scoring matrix and
they shared it with us and we incorporated some things that were in that here so we've looked at
a number of things to come to to where we are right now thank you okay so the first one would
be strategic growth areas remember these are replaced our industry sectors for those of you
who've been on the board so we have our connected creative sustainable and competitive and that's
also at your table that shows the different nicks families if those fall under and then
we're proposing and it doesn't have to be scored but uh that they would receive 10 points if we
had another section like i mentioned you could discuss why you might think they might be there
like it diversifies our our tax base so then of the considerations this goes over the first four
considerations uh generates new utility customers with dme this is important this also goes along
with the growth writer goes along with our sustainability efforts encouraging new business
suppliers and entrepreneurship
engages in sustainable practices we already had these in there but again we want to continue that
and it also goes along with our strategic plan we want to increase high wage jobs again
we discussed that at length earlier the remaining considerations we want to encourage
knowledge-based jobs things that require certification college some level of training
moving forward we want to spur info development directly from the strategic plan we hadn't really
addressed this before redevelopment uh headquarters that's something that we've looked at before of
course you want to encourage that as well and that kind of goes along with the suppliers that they
bring uh with them and then um mayor hutchpitt the final item i added last week for your benefit is
the child care assistance so we did some research on that um so we're looking at possibly doing
vouchers for other finalists if a business does that um we want to encourage that financial
assistance backup services if all of a sudden something happens they have covid they have
whatever it is some emergency they have some type of backup flexible or remote uh work accommodations
you know we've learned how to adapt with covid and maybe we can encourage businesses
that promote that and then flexible spending accounts of course for paying for the expensive
child care and the other things that we looked at we want to encourage that do we know if we have
any current employers that have on-site childcare or do any i don't know one that has on-site here
but as far as flexible spending accounts i'm sure a bunch of them do flexible work accommodations i
think that would be probably pretty common now we actually have looked at child care for different
and the problem with providing that as a company is there's all kinds of insurances that come with
that and liabilities come with that um so it for us those are the reasons that like hey that adds
a whole other level of liability so that may be something to think about maybe um instead of on-site
child care maybe more payment assistance encouragement or those kind of things it just
the amount of real estate it takes and not knowing how many people are involved and
insurance and all those things it's really prohibitive but you know if there is some kind of
relationship with the child care facility that could be incentivized or you know whatever some
kind of part of their payroll or something like that i think that could be and i think that
addresses that in here anyway but i think that's kind of the boundary of entry that we've found
thank you i was just curious i just want to set reasonable expectations however i agree that
child care assistance is something that is very important to our economy to tackle so that we do
have everyone in the workforce that wants to be in the workforce so but i was just curious wanting
to make sure we were setting appropriate expectations for groups that might be coming in but i think
you've included the vouchers maybe we'll just switch that so they don't look at that and
think we don't have on care what do we uh one of the other things that we've done we work i've
mentioned with our workforce solutions partners and we we uh talk about the skills development
fund well now with business retention we're incorporating going to child care facilities
so that's a new thing that we didn't seek to do and we're going to actually be promoting through
our workforce partners eric that we invite with us um all their programs because they have child
care programs they have a recent one they just announced the deals with such it's specifically the
code so that's one thing we can do right now to help our our businesses out there so we're going
to go ahead and do that and then we've incorporated this to where if a business is doing this and most
of these would be large-scale businesses maybe not for the vouchers but for on-site child care
but yeah insurance is is a is something that you definitely need to look at but at least we
if they have it we would like to incentivize it absolutely thank you what if it is a child care
business you know that's a company can you know i mean there's a yes that would just be like our
environmental if they're generating if they're storing if they're manufacturing in 2010 we
we did include manufacturing we went back in 12 and changed it but yes we could definitely address
that and that they would score high based on this on this one i think the threshold will probably
keep them out of you know as far as individual have some kind of really huge headquarter for a
national yeah child care one of the things we did is we structured our tax evasion policy which we
have historically to be five million but we didn't with our chapter 380 there is a minimum threshold
safran wouldn't have met that minimum threshold that we just approved they met the jobs
but the expansion they wouldn't it was a two million dollar expansion
no to that end i think that's a that's a thought i had when i sat in on the texas workforce
commission presentation if somehow didn't could become a hub for entrepreneurs that want to work
in that child care space i think it then would bring uh companies as well so i think there's
something to be said around that around developing kind of a a foundation or didn't being out there
supporting that those type businesses and being intentional about it uh so we'll figure out i'll
burden david and parks department to look and maybe that's just an add-on right it's like rec
centers these other cities that that that support our community uh so i'm i'm i'm thinking that
you're onto something some of the research showed uh councils of governments partnering with texas
workforce solutions um hot cobb we're actually used to work i knew about that program brazos
valley golden crescent so i sit on the economic development district board and that's something
i'm going to bring up a founding community partner but we definitely want to make sure
that we're not duplicating services we want to encourage we don't want to recreate the
way with another program that might be i'm doing the same thing that other entities are so we
got to manage our resources carefully so yeah we were talking about these this is the second set
of the uh so this is a public benefit section okay so we went through both sets of the
considerations and now we're on to our public benefits so our public benefit is expanding the
tax base so we always want to expand the tax base diversify our tax base we for the first time
include the fiscal and economic impacts we provide that information to you but we hadn't scored it
we provide that information to council as well community investment that's something that we've
had and continue to do uh public private partnership this is from the strategic plan
if we can encourage other entities to participate it's going to make for a better project
and then the use of local contractors and construction members we want to support
our local businesses whenever possible this is the due diligence we touched on this a little bit
with branch line so we created a due diligence form to help us address these issues so this
enables the city to gain information they have to sign this form authorizing us to get financial
statements creation documents credit rating information one of the things we were already
doing is the secretary of state certification so before we get to the contract stage we have to know
what entity it is how they're structured those of you who've worked with us we'll ask you for
your creation documents so we understand particularly if you have multiple entities
so we'll continue to do that to make sure they can operate here tax record verification we have
an appraisal district we've often looked at their value in other in other areas if they're located
in other areas and we will continue to do that and now we're going to look at max make sure they
actually exist this is the ranch land but i don't know if that would have helped us with range line
because it is ad so i don't know that we've ever seen anything so that it's a unique thing but
i can say and mac may want to add more is that our agreements protected us from what happened
with ranch line that they wouldn't have been able to receive payment if obviously they didn't move
here and they didn't need the requirements yes i just have a question are these things that we
were not doing before is there all new the due diligence form is new we have asked for credit
information on a few occasions we did with the convention center for example that was kind of
a unique project and we've had very different we had many iterations of it but that was one of the
projects that we looked at credit rating we can get from reference usa which we rarely have access
to we when we create our business directories that we've distributed in the past we have our
own internal and that has the things that you you know credit rating would include when we distribute
it but we actually have that information so even before business retention visit we pull a reference
usa and we know who our competitors are we know their credit rating we have an idea before we
even set foot on the door and then tax worker verification we look at this a lot of times for
comps we want to know hey how much value are they really going to create this much value you know
never look i mean some of the different areas and see so we did the last two we didn't have a due
diligence form although we have looked at those particular projects so they actually have to sign
this with their application before e-sport question okay yes erica just so i'm clear on this
on the orientation side we were looking at the different opportunities to incentivize or reimburse
are these things that we're presenting and reviewing specific to those districts or is this
an opportunity throughout the city that if someone came in or wanted to be outside of those identified
tours or outside the airport that there would be an availability we do incentives both inside and
outside the terms it's a little bit different particularly with our worst part terms we'll use
tyson as example the council and believes that we're already giving them an incentive with the
turds we're spending you know 13 million in infrastructure improvements in the turds we've
actually had our engineers quantified it's about 700 per linear square foot so we would only
incentivize our business personal property in the turds whereas the same business was outside the
turds then we could look at the business personal property too it's a little bit different so we it's
a little bit complex in that particular area but this would be citywide whether you're in the turds
or in a public improvement district or not our downtown turds is structured a little differently
than our west park tours our west park tours is what one developed and they're supposed to do all
the developments our downtown tours was designed for transit oriented different development projects
or projects that enhance public safety so those are a little bit different structure okay great that helps
some minor changes and updates we have a census tract with the economic distress
and the qualified census tracts and there we updated that based aircraft incentive had that
the aircraft be based here for majority of the year which didn't make sense was not in the policy
itself because it has a separate resolution associated with it we have third-party verification
to the dense central appraisal district and they value it on January 1 so i want i propose to review
that so we are subject and now i have to go and check this for the majority of the year when that's
not actually how its value goes off and then we definitions pertaining to sales tax and use
tax is pretty complex especially with the texas direct pay permit i talked about for the orientation
so we removed those from the tax evasion they don't apply to that but we retain those in the
internal processes and next steps
we need to update some of our internal policies the investment fund had the three criteria i told
you about targeted industry sectors are now strategic growth areas once we adopt this if
this moves forward we would go back and change that and this is done by ordinance and then we
have our utility line fund this is a project that we've used only for one project wing co so we have
wastewater and water funds that are dedicated to support infrastructure projects this goes through
the pub we're proposing it will go through us as well when this policy was written we're updating
this uh pdp didn't exist so we're adding us in there and updating other entities but essentially
it will be a very similar policy and discord will see it moves it moves forward but again none of
these are going to move forward until we finalize uh the policies themselves but these are the next
steps that you need to do so then we're going to have to update our applications we're going to
need to update our regular incentive application this is done in excel format for those of you
haven't seen it makes it a lot easier to perform our analysis doing it in that format but we need
to update us again our it has industry sectors we're going to update it with our strategic
growth areas we're going to update our considerations they've changed same with
the entrepreneurial tech grant they need the new considerations to be updated
so we've covered a lot of grounds i wanted to summarize the changes again for you
so uh both policies is presented in this slide so we have both the tax payment and 380 we're
incorporating our city values we're providing the framework of the strategic plan our five
guiding principles as well as our three major goals we're replacing our industry sectors our
targeted industry sectors with strategic growth areas we're adding strategic plan definitions for
better clarity we're going to align public benefit and priority considerations to the strategic plan
and council priorities and we're going to provide an incentive evaluation matrix of some sort
and then address due diligence which we've discussed and then update census maps so these
are the same for both policies and specific to the chapter 380 policy we've now included our
orange critical program and job based grants they weren't in our policies correct they're
pretty new we were developing them at the same time the strategic plan we're working on that
provide job based grant definitions and stratify job based grant tables so people can know what to
expect when they apply we're going to make necessary third-party verification updates to the
aircraft policy you don't have to update the policy itself um and then retain definitions
pertaining to sales and use tax for better clarity these are options and recommendations
i'm hearing a lot of changes particularly to the score sheet so we're going to add considerations
for each of the three categories we're going to have staff if we present with
a numeric score we're going to have full staff and the board score and maybe even without the
numeric you have staff recommendation in addition um what other things would you all like to see
i have a comment and a with some of the things that meredith was missing i mean or mentioning
earlier as far as say um something that passes and gets approved from here and then goes to
council and is approved and then the public is not really accepting of the actions i'm wondering how
to best communicate this whole process and if there's some kind of way that we could assist
with that i guess one of my concerns is that in the matrix we give a max of 10 points to the fiscal
and economic impacts but when i talk to people outside of the economic development world
that's what they're looking at they're not looking at all of the public private partnerships they're
not looking at all of the other matrix items they're looking numbers right how much did the
city put in how much did the city get back and so i guess this i don't really have an answer to
my quandary but i just wanted to put in that two cents that somewhere i think communication to
our citizens needs to be somehow part of our policy or how best to because i think right now
the newspaper can say you know what i mean it's numbers to numbers it seems like the general
public when i speak to them it's numbers and numbers it's not any of these other things that
i know council is looking at and we are looking at so i'm just trying to in my mind try to make
sure that everyone is successful when we take something from the beginning to the end while
we're looking at this broad policy and some of the things that we've done so you know when we
present something to council the considerations that are met we place there if it's a targeted
industry sector we let them know that we've even instituted what almost looks like the scoring
criteria with saccharin if you go back and look at it we're trying we weren't we didn't finalize it
we were we were testing it out a little bit so they received that information one of the reasons
that the score sheet has over 100 points is so that it doesn't look like someone's failing
because we know no one's going to meet all of those that was my idea so that it wasn't failed
because and then maybe get away from it being like an a i've heard though great
most people may not even get to an 80 so i mean until we implement it it's it's going to be a
little bit hard to tell like i said we've tried to incorporate it with like our blast incentive
where we literally had those ideas and checked the boxes when we were back so we were kind of
getting used to it and testing it out but even with all of ours before if we were put in our action
statement our ais what we call that they met this you know they're a targeted industry sector they
met this certain criteria these priority considerations and this is why we're we're
recommending them from funding eric if i could just have it real quick i think i think that
changing the amount that we put to fiscal impact is a i think a worthwhile consideration for the
board i want to increase that as we look at the scorecard that could be one that is really worth
more than 10 points i think it probably gets more weak than that is it's considered i think to your
other point and as far as kind of showing the benefit and put some of that is that net revenue
report that erica does every year where we show what the net worth of revenue and what the return
investment is essentially i think thinking about how we can promote that more and maybe even show
it more on an individual basis is a worthwhile thing as well so something we can consider it's
we're already doing it it's making sure it gets out there we're promoting that because
that's the net result of all the conversations we have whenever i give a presentation i usually
include that in there but yes and you received it as an informal staff report and i think council
gets that i just i'm talking about the unofficial communication that is out in the community and
their opinion of economic development and some of the things that we talked about earlier in the 1996
vote so that that is kind of more of my concern is getting citizens to understand all of these
benefits they're not going to read this matrix city council will and consider it but how do we
get um whether it be the dead record chronicle or facebook you know when when people are having these
uh conversations how do we communicate all of the things that went into these decisions
um is just my kind of sidebar so yes i was just going to say you made a comment about not really
going to know until you have people with the scorecard to kind of look like points why don't
you use past ones go through some exercises to give you some confidence that makes sense
i can do that i can bring it back i can bring it back this particular document back to you
incorporating some of the comments that i'm hearing and i can maybe have two or three examples of
projects we've awarded and how they would have scored and then you can kind of see engage better
gauge and i'll try to pick them from different areas one really high in tax base maybe one
entrepreneur maybe an expansion grant because expansion grants are unique and we found that
the valuation thresholds for those it they don't necessarily meet the investment because they may
not be classified by the cab as a new use in order to increase it for example so the intent of this
document to be internally i mean if you're talking about concerns of the media is there value for
this to be i mean is there a concern that someone may get scored 50 and then this the score gets you
know made public and there's no context around that i mean and then if you would have a failing
score yes if you did the feeling score it's going to benefit to saying that this is an internal
document like for internal city council staff and i think it is an internal document my my concern
was with the general citizen that gets bits and pieces of information that they are not
getting the information of all that goes into whether or not we would as this group recommend
an incentive and what all other than the apples to apples the physical impact is is my concern is
that that is what most of the conversations when i have with people outside of you know the interest
of economic development they're just looking at the numbers and so how how how can we express
what all goes into what kind of benefits we're looking for for our citizens other than
how much tax abatement did they get how much did they pay back we can focus more on those
multiplying effects direct and indirect like on jobs we provide in the backup to council and
to this board we provide the the net benefits and the rate of return how many years is it going to
take to pay itself back we can try to highlight a rule i think it's maybe thinking on what your
ask is i think it's and and david's going to stop because he hears us all the time maybe a graphic
right and i think i like the graphic on your training right component but then also where
it's going and then utilizing the discover dentin feature of the comment section so what it to me
what it would look like is this graphic a specific deal and then the image of where it's going right
so it's like uh um peter bill here's where it's located here's how much there's a you know piggy
bank that says this much money in how much out you know that's uh jesse running down the street with
bags of money and then something like that so just a one page graphic that then goes up on one of our
discuss dentin or something or link to social medias it says hey this is pending and that's
in the by document it's documented hey we'll post this and give it two weeks to kind of let people
know it's coming or you know i think that's a because that's really what people are going to
go through all of this but they might see a graph and go okay that makes sense okay we've got mr
ramseith and councilmember davis i think this i think this should be an agenda of a topic item
on how we present tax incentives to the public because i've been involved in a lot of these
through you know different barriers in different cities over the years when and i don't want to
get off this tangent right now but just a couple highlights is a lot of times i said the city is
giving this and this is what the developer is getting well really that's that's what's happening
overall but the city doesn't give this until the developer does this and meets these requirements
and i think to to sit in your field's chair and get the phone calls oh my gosh well the city
didn't actually write a check you know and say for the most part in a lot of these incentives
it's over time the there has to be this amount of taxes paid and then it's reimbursement i would
like to recommend we have an agenda item on how we present that to the public and have some
discussion around that because right now how it's presented it basically says the city's given this
this is the roi or what they're giving they're going to have long term if you understand the
tax incentives that's the best way to present it because now you're looking at the return on
investment but most people don't fully understand what how they work and because they're complicated
right and be like me walking in a hospital trying to understand how a hospital works i would have a
clue and so it's not a negative just most citizens don't understand that so maybe if we standardize
our presentation in that and look at it through eyes of people who aren't in this every day and
understand how complicated these are our presentation of that i think that could
filter a lot of the problems say oh the city gave this to this company so i would recommend we put
that as a future agenda item to look at that presentation to try to help how that's presented
to the city because sitting on council or even on this board people calling you up going what are
you guys doing well you got to understand the whole deal so that would be i think that would be very
helpful sorry we could certainly do that a great example i i think that's received a lot of negative
detentions buckies buckies is a caution buckies is a partnership project of about six different
entities for a total of 28 million dollars but we didn't sell it correctly so that would be a good
example i mean you have the city you have the county you have text on you have cog uh regional
transportation funds you have all that and the public uh private entity you know buckies all that
coming together and that's probably the one i think of the one receiving the most negative and then
even if once we had that together we presented it to some people who know that would be reading the
dent rec chronicles brought some people in that have never heard heard of that and we present it
to them and say what tell me what you heard from that you know i think that could with some of the
grading we're doing back to the due diligence we're doing i think we can say as a team like hey we're
really looking at steps forward to one make sure that those of us that know what's going on we're
doing the best due diligence we can do and then two we're putting in a format like the mayor said
to present it in a way that is a real understanding of what's going on rather than the city just wrote
a check for 20 million dollars you know i think i think there's some better presentation
not better that's the wrong words if you understand our presentation is really good but if you're not
familiar with the industry we could probably present it a little differently i think that's
a great idea i mean the city is us the city is all of the residents and citizens here and so i do
think it's important with discussions that we make it easy for people to understand what we do
and what the city's trying to do so i think that's a great idea council member david yeah i i can't
second that more heartily i think i'd like to really know what we're doing now kind of what the
what the current kind of pr strategy is and i'd also like to know when we come back to that agenda
item my future agenda item i'd like to know kind of what the lead time we build in is because i
think to the mayor's point prior to consideration because the way that it often just happens by
default now is there is one person who as part of their job not their whole beat but one person in
the drc covers the city and they do that in addition to other things they have to cover
and so they watch the meeting and they write up their uh their piece about how the city had
three different things they had to consider they're all really big they were all really
controversial and everybody was at each other's throats about it and then next thing you know
this economic incentive is this big controversial thing when actually it's got a whole process
behind it like the mayor was talking about so having people know ahead of time and in ways that
no no offense to drc they just don't have the staff in the column inches to properly cover
these issues um having it in a format that can be shared on social media that people who are
acting on social media can push around instead of the the day after the fact article that doesn't
get all the nuance and everything so i think that'd be really really helpful i would agree and i
i very much appreciate how lee presented that that as i'm looking at this as we're discussing
tax incentives or relief or reimbursement and then i look at expand the tax base and what we
score did it's the lowest score but to me that would be the reason for tax abatement or
reimbursement would need to expand so if anything we're looking at that i don't know if i'm looking
at this correctly as an edp but that's how i look at edp is if we're going to do something
where we have habitat building houses and we're going to have to figure out infrastructure you're
gonna have to have more taxes to do it so i think that that part of it is we're looking at these
opportunities is what is the one year five year to 15 year down the road of what this really means
from a tax base expansion what we're able to draw economic right right economic that's appropriate
for almost all of our incentives except for the entrepreneurial tech that's human capital yes
but i'm hearing that i'm going to bring back the um score sheet so we're going to talk about that
at length we're going to bring back an item and how we present our incentive items i'm going to
bring back some comp some comps to show you how they score um i wanted to address the policies
these are the major changes to the policies do we have any recommendations there are there any
changes there do we need to bring them back so i guess one of my questions would be so if we
incorporate these things into your policy i mean how do we i mean how is transparency something
that we can look at when a group is asking for a reinvestment or a chapter you know i mean i'm just
trying some of these didn't kind of correlate equally to me to make sense in the implementation
so is it when we adopt transparencies with the city staff and this board or is it transparency in
any entity that comes in and how do we judge that i guess there are certainly more requirements
that mac can speak to uh sales tax for example that you can't disclose that type of information
in single entity tail sales tax no but you can be transparent on other areas and i think the
way that we present it will help that transparency transparency of the entity that is asking for
things that are transparency and if we're moving in and send it forward right now
when we bring it forward they have the application that was submitted to us they have the ais backup
they have the presentation backup that goes with what how they met that criteria what we think are
the benefits to the community as well as the net benefits we give them economic impacts we tell
them about jobs and tell them about those type things we talk about the tax base we include tables
within that so we are doing what we do that is what i would consider transparency now we can't
divulge certain information even in in in the net revenue report we can't diverge individual sales
tax so i can't do it i can't present a table that has buckies or riley on it i could do an aggregate
of all the sales tax intended same with our developments raise a ranch i can't do one tenant
sales tax but i could do aggregate that's how we receive the sales tax is an aggregate from the
control if you have to have a minimum four you know or for the controller to send to you unless
you're financing you have access to them i was just looking what the subject was of the implementation
of what i yeah i think i think an important context on the transparency as it is a city
um and that's just an example of the in one of our core values we take for a number of years or at
least the past four or five years we take we are more public with all of our economic development
incentives than we have to be than other cities are and that can elaborate on that to the specifics
but we make everything public to the point of when we talk to developers we're clear that this is all
going to be public whereas they may be used to other cities where they do things in closed sessions
that we have out in front in the public so that's a benefit of having the policy is we're making it
clear to them up front that this is all going to be out in the public and i would make i'll use that
as one opportunity when we talked about the score card earlier you know it's really there's really
no way for it to be an internal document it's going to be public it's going to be as we make
up the image it's just going to be out there i just want to make sure yeah it's built in the policy
right now we just i'm sorry i said the score card is built in the policy it's an attachment
too we should be able to amend it internally that we do with our application but i still would like
council to see it and approve of it and adopt it one of the things i was going to mention is our
transparency stars we just completed an application with the comptroller public counts
for transparency stars so you have to meet certain criteria and of our incentives so now we can make
that public in a way that the state would like us to do that it's currently under review but we're
really excited about doing that and i can send you a link to it because we've temporarily put it up
on our website but it's still under review by the comptroller and at first you have to have your
finance department that does that and then other departments can apply and so we're excited to have
completed that and that would be an excellent example of transparency
it's a little off topic but is this is it the great application the same for
taxes that is it as it would be for like land or we don't incentivize land okay that's one thing
that we haven't done the application is the same for every applicant except for our entrepreneurial
tech they have a separate application but they still have to fill out components
so they still fill out the wage worksheet okay but they have a separate application
i want to be in that meeting i mean i love this meeting
go ahead it has to be recognized so we can strike that
i just want to make sure that we're moving forward and i wanted to know do you want me to bring back
the policies or do you just want me to bring back the two policies the tax bitumen and the 380
or do you just want me to bring back the score sheet it seems that's where the majority of the
items that we're considering today are if we think that the considerations are going to change other
than the other priorities maybe but right now it just seems like we're going to prioritize and
look at the those considerations differently i just want to keep us moving forward i think what i've
heard and please speak up everyone um but what i've heard is i think it's just the score sheet we
would like to have some additional comments on i believe the the rest we are on board with unless
someone wants to speak up now i want to add some to the score sheet use of local contractors
i'm not seeing any incentive to help grow small businesses we want to use local contractors but
every business uh uh most of their products is is uh coming from outside of their business
they're coming from outside of the city it comes from outside the state i like to see something
where we're encouraging the big businesses just for example Peterbilt built up 3,000 parts
and most of those parts are coming from a business on outside of the state of Texas maybe
or some of them may be inside what are we doing to encourage the businesses to help develop those
small service businesses that could help grow small businesses and didn't as far as even the big
companies giving those small business grants and contract to develop within grow within so to speak
there's nothing to say come come to didn't as a small business uh incentives for that your your
your uh tax base is too small your income base is too small so we don't want to incentivize you to
come to get as a small business and grow uh and when we only want to use local businesses we're
making we're limited to those local businesses growing bigger and bigger but not having smaller
business to come and develop within the city Peterbilt's an excellent example of a business
that has attracted a number of other businesses that support Peterbilt and their peer locally
the second item here encourage new business markets suppliers for our big business and
entrepreneurship we also had grant programs that gave additional incentive additional percentage
amount to entities that recruited suppliers for our major employers all of our major employers so
that's something we look at doing and we try to do and sometimes they are large enough where they
can get uh garner and incentives themselves mr kane's did you also have that on the scorecard
the use of local contractors yeah that's what he started discussing under public benefit but i think
to your point i think that that is an area as far as um what the city is tackling at each at a time
so there's the business retention aspect there is the marketing to other uh businesses whether
they're smaller big coming and and where those advertisements go to try to collect people where
the communications the different kinds of not conferences what i can't think of the word i'm
looking for but uh where there is outreach trying to get all size businesses to come so
i think that's something that we should continue to talk about where that fits into the plan but i
think that it it's one of many items that i believe that the city is concerned about and wants uh
tackle sometimes they're something i think if you made early then it's not a business
friendly title and i think it's coming from the small business sector than the large business sector
we're doing some different programs not with always with incentives so business retention
so business retention on our rewards we've just now we've added new programs right so we have small
business awards that wasn't always there we had different categories we have minority now we also
on our business retention visits will encourage them to register as a hub a historically under
utilized business so that more entities will know about them and will use them more readily
so register for the state so a lot of this is behind the scenes it's more of a business retention
so we do some of that internally
that's what i was just saying i agree that um i think most of the conversation is around the
the matrix and i don't i think we can move forward do you want to vote yes or what do you want to do
i don't know do we need a vote for that yes in order to bring it forward to council you need
a recognition i second that all right so it's been moved and seconded to recommend the policy
changes that have been presented today holding back yes we couldn't quite hear it there's a lot
and the second was mr riker thank you all right so holding back to make available other comments to
include on the matrix uh but other than that approving uh the policy changes to council does
that correctly state the motion all right it's been moved and seconded uh is there any discussion
before we take a vote it's a quick question yes counseling so the matrix your your intentions of
the matrix would be an attachment to the policy so it doesn't it could be changed internally it
could come come back to us it could be changed by staff over time um are we going to see the matrix
again before council sees it or would the policy go forward and evpb is looking at the matrix too
because council is going to have input on the matrix well we are going to have a work session
with council first so they won't be approving it we don't want to introduce it get feedback
and we can get feedback from both entities before we bring it forward because this process is going
to take a little while so at the work session if we if we approve this motion today would council
get um this matrix and and the kind of caveat that we've gotten good input from evpb go watch
that if you want to council what's your input or is council going to get an updated draft that
incorporates our comments uh they can take their time and then we'll see what comes back from them
like just what's the workflow i'm going to update the draft that's going to go towards council based
on the comments received today you will receive this again along with some example scoring from
two or three different probably three different entities um so you can see how they score and we
and we can tell them that we're going to do that we plan this is a comments received this is what
we're going to do this is our plan and then we're going to bring it back but concurrently so we can
incorporate bulls moving forward i think we'll have the best policy documents if we do it that
way thank you yes i would like to structure it with y'all's comments first thank you
any other questions or comments before we take it to a vote all right all those in favor please
signify by saying aye aye all those opposed please signify by saying nay and the motion carries
we will move on to item c edp 22-009 receive a report hold a discussion and give staff
direction regarding board meeting dates and times for calendar year 2022 let's see if we can find
that page all right so i believe it's page 76 of your packet if you are looking at your packet
either online or um i mean digitally or hard copy and meetings are held on the second wednesday of
each month all meetings are scheduled to begin at 11 a.m second all right it's been moved for
approval and seconded are there any red flags so that anyone is seen with these dates that we need
to consider at this time okay with that we will call a vote all those in favor of adopting these
dates as our meeting dates for this next year please signify by saying aye aye all opposed same
sign and the motion carries moving on to item d edp 22-017 staff reports beginning with the
2021 business retention and expansion program report and is that you again yes just briefly
you'll see the 2021 business expansion program report it highlights the different visits that
she's had some of the different issues that have happened as well and you see that and then we also
have the 2021 first quarter report some of the activities you saw in the orientation that we've
been undergoing you'll also see in that report including updates to the strategic planning
and then we also have fiscal year 2021 through 2022 first quarter edp report
and i covered goals i'm sorry oh i'm so sorry yeah that's also in here and yes everyone is busy
it does look like that okay so concluding items uh anything else that you have for us today
okay i would like to mention it does oh okay i just to give a couple of gaffing updates to everyone i
don't know um everyone here is aware but well we've had some changes in our in our economic
development department five we have three agencies right now or soon to have three agencies uh dan
who is our economic development analyst is going to work with the chamber so um if he'll still be
involved and still be involved in the process kate patrick who we just mentioned on business
retention our business development administrator uh took a very position with the city of graham
prairie it makes a lot of sense for her so happy for her in that and then we're still going through
the process on our economic development director uh we went through went through our first round of
uh of interviews and um thought we had one good candidate didn't work out and didn't find the
right person in that in that go around so we're back out we have the that closes again at the end
of the month but i'm encouraged we're going to find somebody good um but certainly not going to
settle for anything other than the best so have some vacancies we're working through it and um
certainly glad to have erica and christina here to help get us through along with erin in the chamber
yes ma'am can we work on a non-compete with the chamber i'll be with you
matt is chair of this board uh please don't pick it up
and then there has to be on the playground i actually want to give a compliment to
erica and david we had a meeting that mayor has helped us set up the other day with a small business
in deadon and to to carry give you some insider baseball i guess erica put together a wonderful
portfolio for them of all of the small business local state and national grants that they would
be available that they would qualify for so obviously it was just a small group meeting that
took place and that's really the behind the scenes stuff that's not super glorified or anything that
we're looking for credit for but it's absolutely what we are doing in the partnership every day
that helps advance small businesses and that's what absolutely erica christina david the chamber
side on the marketing team are here for that was a wonderful meeting and mayor thank you for
the recommendation but any city council member or any business that sends us that recommendation
we're happy to put together or any type of information so that businesses no larger small
we're here to serve them so erica that was fantastic and david and i were really just there
to cheer her on um but carrie please know that if small businesses are here locally that need
assistance we're going to put together anything that we can do to support them so that's definitely
happening i have another comment too i want to brag on christina a little bit so christina davis
and k came up uh k brown patrick uh our business development officer came up with a small uh
business blog that they are launching as well so we're excited about that program and the person
that we were visiting with will be one of our first uh people to be in the top list to be in
interviews and be on that blog and is a miss patrick brown has she already um left or is
she still here this week her last day's friday last day's friday okay you're sorry uh to lose
her she's been a great asset more staffing announcements our office the city attorney's
office we fired scott gray he started with our office last week and is out of dallas he worked
in their economic development section so happy to have him here and to help out so uh look forward
to scott coming to a lot more of these meetings miss mac but we welcome scott i bet matt comes he
doesn't want to miss this fund we appreciate it and we appreciate you being our city attorney
back thank you um i did want to let you know that um the chamber of commerce does have a number of
small business awards and the application deadline to nominate anyone you can nominate yourself you
can nominate another business and i sure would want as many businesses and as many as many voices
um as possible um and just let you know we have a small business of the year for-profit business
we have a new business of the year small business community investment family-owned business of the
year minority-owned business of the year and a woman-owned business of the year uh most of
these i think are are generally 20 25 employees or under but this is a way that the chamber wants
to highlight those that have overcome adversity those that have made creative changes or those
that have invested heavily in our community um and it's not a popularity contest so you don't have to
ask people to nominate like 75 000 times one nomination is more than one nominated your
nominee yes yes you don't have to call every family member or friend or family just one it one solid
nomination is enough we want to make sure that we have a cross-wide section of all of the
so if anyone has questions see jill or myself or the lady who's on our board is fine that would be
great thank you jill for announcing that appreciate it and a big thank you to all of you for um your
participation today your background your intelligence your personalities all come into
making this board as effective as possible this is very important to our city and i very much
appreciate the seriousness and the dedication that you have to your city and a big thank you
and we are adjourned