Mar 24, 2023 Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee on 2023-03-24 1:00 PM

Hello everyone welcome to the sustainability framework advisory committee it is March 24th and 102 we are in the City Council work session room and we do have a quorum today. I do want to wish Adam a happy birthday. We will go ahead and get started for items for individual consideration item a committee members will draw straws to determine one year and two year membership terms. Catherine if you want to kind of go over why we're doing this before we get started. So this is just part of the establishing ordinance for the committee to set the inaugural terms we're kind of long in the process to be setting the inaugural but this is where we are so these will be to set the two year terms and one year term so there will be four two-year terms and three one-year terms whatever we draw straws so whichever straw isn't drawn would be the leftover would be for the vacancy. Okay all right so you're gonna walk around and we just draw them. Take one pass around whichever. Well we can do whatever we can make it random. There you go and then there's one leftover so the the short straws would be the two-year term. Okay so Mr. Stevens and Adam are long. Yes, long straws. Got it. Okay. Sasha will you make a note of that? Long straw equals long term. And the absence seat is? It would be the one-year term. Okay thank you. So the interpretation of long straws for the longer term is four years? Six years. The long straw is one year and the short straw is two years. Is that what you said? Yes. Okay fine. Or is that not? That's correct. Yes. You're gonna reuse it? Yeah. All right so are we good on that item? We are. Okay thank you everybody and we will move on to item B consider approval of the February 24th 20-23 minutes. Anyone have a clarification for that or is everybody okay with the minutes from that day? Good all right I have a motion to approve. Bren? Second. All right Paul? All in favor? All right. Minutes are approved. Now we'll go to item C receive a report and hold a discussion regarding economic, statistical, trends, real estate, growth projections, and implementation of the economic development strategic plan. Good afternoon. Wayne Emerson director of economic development. Thank you for having me here. Before I dive in here I'll just give you a brief rundown of myself. So I'm relatively new here to the city. Not yet a year. I have not met any of you I think other than Mr. Meltzer. But I come to you from the city of Dallas where I work in the redevelopment section of economic development. Before that I was with the Allen Economic Development Corporation as a research analyst. And then before all that I was a teacher of economics and geography and public affairs officer in the United States Army. So that's been my background kind of done a lot of things but I'm happy to be here in Denton. I'm a UNT alumni. So I've studied history here at my undergrad and then got my MBA at UT Austin. That's my background so thank you for having me. All right I'll dive in here. So I have a presentation but just like my background in teaching feel free at any moment if something confuses you, piques your interest. If you have a question please don't hesitate to interrupt and ask that question. I'll be happy to do my best to answer it for you. Okay today I'm just going to do a bit of an economic overview of the city. What we do here in economic development. Take a brief dive into the Street strategic plan. Take a look at how that strategic plan has implemented some sustainabilities. And then actually I don't know if we have return on this in this presentation but we'll see. Okay so what is economic development? Number one we want to expand on Denton's economy through the location of new businesses and then the retention and expansion of current businesses. We want to foster Denton's thriving culture, business technology and specifically that artistic and innovation that I think it's known for. And then we wanted to attract develop and retain skilled and talented workers to support not only our existing businesses but any future businesses we have. And then of course building relationships with our businesses and residents through outreach, education, engagement. Helping businesses navigate and be a liaison to the city. So this is kind of the ecosystem if you will that we kind of interact in. So one of our primary partners that we're going to see is the Chamber of Commerce, the Denton Main Street Association. We have partnerships with our local universities at UNT, TWU. We also have a strong partnership with Denton County. Stoke Denton, this is our kind of entrepreneurship hub. And then Workforce Solutions is kind of really where we do a lot of our workforce development. So this is the partnership that I was alluding to with the Denton Chamber of Commerce. So here in the city we have the Economic Development Department. And then the chamber has their organization and really what we do is we come together which we call the Economic Development Partnership. And the way that, do we have a slide for that? No I'll go back. So I'll kind of explain how that works is we kind of have shared relationships. The EEP is kind of out front and really looking on the business attraction side. They do some some business retention with us. And then on the city side we're really more focused on policy implementation, research, and financial incentives. So what do we do? So we're assisting the existing businesses. So particularly you know downtown you have challenges down there for a lot of our businesses. You've got construction projects of those natures. So we're out there communicating, letting businesses know what's happening. Assisting them if they're having trouble with permits, construction, all those types of things. Our partners over at the EEP are attracting new businesses to come to the city. We help startups through Stoke. We have one particular program there that it's part of their co-working. We've incentivized a group called Team of Defenders as a direct result of our our starter program them out of Stoke. So we'll take a look at our strategic plan. So the strategic plan identified three main goals when this was adopted in 2021. So this was just in the height of COVID-19. So the first one was accelerate recovery. Really this is today we're not where we were at that time but this is really basically our BRE program because really a lot of stuff we were doing is assisting those businesses. So our main goal and as it stated here is accelerate recovery out of the pandemic. We're still facing problems from the pandemic. It's a little bit different. Right now I would tell you that what our businesses are struggling with is getting enough employees to run those businesses. The second goal is to foster growth. So our first one's about keeping our first our businesses that we have here. The second one is about attracting more businesses into the city. And then our third is strengthening community inclusion. So to make sure that as our economy grows that we do so inclusively and that everyone is growing with us. So the strategic plan identified four strategic areas we call them. The first one being connectivity. So DIT is a transportation and logistics hub. We're strategically located at the split of I-35 where it goes east to Dallas and west to Fort Worth. And then we have great access from 35 on to Austin and San Antonio to the south and of course up north that links up with Oklahoma City. So there is strong interest from a logistics and transportation hub to locate in the city of Denton. And I'll have some data here that you can you can kind of see that that interest is pretty high. And so the strategy here is we want to obviously support some of our businesses such as Peterville which is kind of two-fold than that. Not only they manufacture the trucks that are doing a lot of this logistics but they're also a major manufacturer as well. So we want to continue and attract new investment in that area. And I don't have any data in this this one but I can tell you I'll just go ahead and tell you right now. We have strong demand so we just did when I first came into the city I did an analysis of our industrial class A product and our vacancy was virtually zero. So it was at 3% which is essentially zero. Whereas if you look at the broader DFW Metroplex that number is probably closer to 12 to 15 percent. Now just recently that vacancy spiked to about 27 percent and that's because we had a 1 million square foot facility just just come online last week. So typically you know people always kind of associate vacancy as bad but in this case this is an opportunistic vacancy. This was vacancy that was not there prior and so if you can imagine if let's say our businesses were traveling down I-35 before the sign said no vacancy and so those businesses just passed it and right on by. But now we have vacancies so we're in a prime position to attract more of those and then after that we're expecting I think something about another 3 million of industrial product to come online within the next two years. So we'll definitely have more product available and we'll want to attract more of those businesses to get that in. I have a question. Is that 3 million square feet? 3 million square feet yep. And that's coming when? About two years. It's hard to predict but the last I saw is that we have that either under construction or planned. And these are warehouses? Correct or could be warehouses could be cold storage it's just in the Class A industrial piece but the type of Class A isn't that when not only think about warehouses in the past this can be usually converted to high tech manufacturing it could be distribution but it is a the type of facilities that are come on are much different than the warehouses of old so they're you know. Are they flat roofed? Yes yeah I would say so so they they typically have about 30 foot clear height so that they can you know adjustable for whatever kind of operations are going to be in there. Thank you. I would just say all right my question is so this is a sustainability committee and when we hear industrial we think like heavy polluters so how how would that do you do you think that offsets we think high energy users heavy polluters is that what we're talking about here are we talking about something different? Well I think so we have zoning in the city and so I don't think any of this is zone for heavy industrial this is all zone for light industrial and so you have pretty much what's called clean manufacturing as well so I don't know the particular zoning of that but this is just a presentation on the economic development strategic plan and there will be all spoiler alert our last strategic area is focused on sustainability so we'll have we'll highlight on that. Okay our second area our target area is creativity so hopefully as you all know we have a very unique culture it's driven by entrepreneurship and the creative community so when you have that you've got some good vibes that these startups like to play off the city it gives a lot of energy so one of our things is we've actually done this already I've talked about a stove we've launched our accelerator support these growing existing companies and then really we want to promote our creative brand so doing anything we can to maintain that culture and promote that to kind of recruit a lot of these growing startups in the DFW region because there's a lot of startup capital that is flowing to DFW. Our third strategic area is competitiveness so this is really kind of more focused on our development piece is making sure as I said before if for businesses and you know cities are really nothing but collections of people all right and people need places to go and they need places to work so if you don't have places for people to live you don't have people in your city and if you don't have places for people to work you don't have or for places you don't have places for people to work they can't work there right so being competitive means that we we have development for a city to give our citizens an opportunity to work and then lastly is our oh yes is that is that still true is the office space market coming back kind of cratered for a while didn't it it depends so what we're looking at is what it's called flight to quality and so certainly there are jobs that you if you're a manufacturer can work from home right you get you got to kind of be there you got to be on the line to make that product if you're a white-collar worker some of those jobs can be done at home but what we're seeing is especially in DFW if you're an office and you're highly amenities your class a and you're located in a walkable mixed-use district and people want to be there people work there if you're in a office building and you're off a highway and you're in a sea of parking lot and there's no place to walk or eat they're struggling right so it's kind of this the ship the flights of quality and we're seeing it and so if you look you look at places like legacy West the Frisco South Frisco area the star area the amount of office space is absolutely exploding Los Colinas there there have high occupancy uptown downtown Dallas is seeing resurgence equality is walkable walkable play yeah amenity base right so it could be could be lots of things but generally yeah the walkability is is key there and just even here our Wells Fargo building is is not the most beautiful building but it is nearly fully occupied at this moment because you know our our downtown is a great amenity okay sustainability so this is our fourth target area so major strategies that we're looking to do here is integrate some of our economic development efforts and incentives into sustainability plan and we we've done that to some extent and I will I will show that to you we want to target some environmentally conscious businesses for attraction and recruitment one of these strategies is adopting the SDGs the sustainable development goals and then incorporate some sustainability efforts into our marketing materials oh and this is I this is ours some of the things we've done strategically some of our strategic implementations I'll go back to the sustainability piece in just a second so the big thing that we did when I first came on is established the Denton Catalyst Fund without getting too in the weeds on this essentially this is a little different than the way we've incentivized projects in the past in the past all of our incentives sort of came in on the back end of projects which doesn't really move the needle for startups and projects that that are having facing cost of capital issues it's really kind of shows up on the back end whereas a catalyst fund kind of can kind of help some of these startups these smaller businesses that face financing in the traditional sectors the catalyst fund can kind of help us get through that we also updated our infrastructure financing policy with our utility line fund which included mixed-use development so before mixed-use development was not eligible so really trying to get some more of that walkability in there we did a rewrite of the tax abatement and our incentive which is our technically our caller 380 policy which you'll see here in a second but implementing some of these target areas and to make sure that our incentives are aligned there and then of course the tech and entrepreneurship program so that I've mentioned multiple times so this is some of the things we've already implemented here I'll let you just your eyes kind of gaze over that for a little bit I'll point out some of our own here so we're marketing didn't sustainability is a business advantage we're targeting some environmentally conscious businesses and let me just kind of show you through here how we're doing that so this is some just general economic numbers so you can see our unemployment rate is super low so this goes back to what I was talking about one of the greatest challenges our business are having is they're just not enough employees right so what's the healthy number I don't know back when I was like in school they said five percent was a healthy low unemployment but I think over the past years it's been you know much closer to you know three four percent and so I know we are a historically low unemployment rates sales tax collections have been up in 2021 I think a lot of that might have been inflation driven but we're we're doing well our sales tax have grown and we're recovering from the pandemic go back I can go back yeah yeah just like checking in that as I recall in the past pre-pandemic debt and unemployment rate was also low lower than the rest of the state which is lower than the rest of the country but our wages were not high mm-hmm and that the goal of economic development explicitly was to increase wages do you have any insight into where we stand on that so I know at the county level we're about 65,000 for household income I actually get you're getting it next slide maybe I heard let me see there's there's income okay I guess I was off there yes okay so all right yeah so per capita you have worth 43,000 medium families at 112 so you can kind of see you know the city lagging behind in the county there and lagging behind in the state on a per capita population growth percentage were projected to grow to about 146,000 by 2025 so about a 2% I think the numbers just came out yesterday and actually this this number 2% actually I think came in closer to like 3 I think I was looking at that yesterday all right so here are some of our top employers so obviously UNT we're all well well aware of there are largest employer but there are also a our public employer Peterbilt over on the private side and then we were strong in the healthcare regions that Texas Health Presbyterian Medical City of Denton and of course Denton ISD is always the ISDs are always one of your largest public employers no matter what city you're in okay so this is an analysis I like to do this is called our employment gaps so basically what this is showing you is if we look at all of our occupations we see that in the City of Denton we have about 86,000 residents who are living in Denton and are working and then over on the left column we see these are the folks that are actually just working in Denton and so there is a gap of about 13,000 so that what that tells us is that we do not have we're exporting jobs to other cities right so doesn't necessarily mean that everyone who lives and works at all and all in the city so some of it some of it comes in some of it goes out but on a net we're exporting about 13,248 jobs and so for us this this you know represents loss and potential taxable value because folks are going to other cities to work they're they're spending their their sales tax dollars elsewhere they're driving further they're they're spending more money commuting whereas if we had more jobs here in the city they could be living closer to home and not having to go to other cities and we wouldn't have that that economic leakage so I did that this is something that I found we have some job analytics software so as I was putting this presentation together I found a job cluster called green jobs and so green jobs are defined by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and so I'll just give you some of these examples of what's what's kind of considered green jobs once again you can see we have the same problem we have an employment gap so folks that are in green jobs they're they're getting those green jobs elsewhere right so we need to do a better job of providing them here in the city so some examples are our refuse and recycled material collectors wind turbine service technicians solar photo I don't know how to say this installers photo belt installers farmers and ranchers are actually I guess considered green jobs and that's actually our largest green job employers environmental scientists and then architectural and engineering managers are some of the examples that we have on here we're also projected to have about 20,000 total green jobs by the year 2030 so you know that's a projection and I think that's a good baseline for us to look forward as we go so if we're the goal right would be to shoot we'd want to push those projections up over 20,000 because then that means that we're actually closing that gap yes oh yeah I was just curious how important do you think that DME's green sense from renewable energy incentives how important are they where did they fit in this can you can you give me a little background the structure of them well it's people who want to get solar panels and get a significant credit from the city yeah so I I can dive into a little bit when I when I talk about pace financing but you know without looking at the numbers to me it's one of the main problems you're gonna have and I'll talk about this more with pace is you have this you know it's a cash flow issue right so typically greener sustainable things are more expensive right so there's a there's a higher on whose card first for someone who's making those investments right so if if you're if I got solar I'd be in trouble financially I'd have to pay more well currently it's so like right now my house doesn't have solar panels on it so right now I can get power but if I were to install solar panels that would that would be an extra cost and then there would be take there to take time for me to recover that cost yeah it starts making money for you anyway it's like a certificate deposit but I was just wondering if that sort of incentive was a selling point for the city I think it is thank you yeah part of this is targeting environmentally conscious businesses so I just recently got to go to Peterbilt our largest manufacturer and they are starting to produce electric vehicle trucks so right now they represent 15% of the market in the semi truck market just as you know I'm sure Tesla has pushed the whole industry we're really starting to see a tipping point with Tesla entering the market the other manufacturers were lagging but now I just read that I think 10% of all cars right now are electric vehicles and so we're starting to see that more in the truck game and so Peterbilt is looking to be a leader in that and so to me this is exciting especially when I think about attracting green jobs because a lot of our other businesses out in the manufacturing area are suppliers to Peterbilt so this is going to be a target for us is identifying the supply chain for these electric vehicles and as Peterbilt ramps up its its manufacturing of electric vehicles bringing in those employers suit to supply them leading that electrical transformation yes question I got several questions with this one targeted to this particular slide or process do we have or how are we producing those potential employees for this targeted new business or do we have any partnerships universities yes develop folks and that 13,000 you know the gap that you had mentioned how can we target these individuals or or even our young students come on I really believe that our young people are our future obviously and how can we target them I'm drawn from my own high school experience well we were targeted to get into technical school programs to learn welding and carpentry electrics I do understand markets are coming back to that kind of thing but specific to this do we have a partnership plan we're working to produce our own potential employees to get into this business yes so we obviously have partnerships with UNT and TWU NCTC is our partner as well and so that's not going to be your degree programs but maybe more so these these technical these manufacturing line folks right so really the way that that kind of works is the the education looks to know what labor is doing to what employers are doing right so they're not in the game of creating programs and educating students who can no longer have a job and so they're asking industry what is it that you need where are those gaps and then they're they're filling those gaps so the way that we get more of those types of programs into our schools is by recruiting the types of industries that require those skills it where is that document how many do we project that we would need in order to make sure Peter Bill you know is in great shape we can present to them through this process and I'm thinking part of total transparency former consultant to the workforce development for the state of Missouri okay this were some plans that we put in place to really really help protect the sustained I use that word to sustain the employers that were in the state as well as to invite and market to companies who were planning on coming we have a solid plan and we can show them the employers that is going to help meet that gap that may exist in order to sustain the company so that's what I'm looking for now yes so is that can you summarize your question is do do we have a document that it states the type of gap for for these types of jobs right now yeah pretty much starting with to start with the company and says hey you're going you know you're leaning towards you know this environmentally yes so it's a question I don't think that document exists but that's something I think we could research and look into I would really recommend that we start with the employer what does the need look like and how can we help you get there okay so that we can help to sustain the business and keep it here it didn't because the reality is companies look for educated people train people and will move cover I've seen it happen move companies out of state across state lines because there's a state right government that is willing to address that and so rather than just being this a topical overview of what we want to see I would really like to see the plan that will support that there is an end goal here we're not just stating this but we have this plan and probably have partnerships workforce development partnerships with the UNT's TWU's what do we have a plan you know that is going to put more teeth to let me put it like that you know because as I see this now it's just a presentation we'll talk about this ten years from now I believe we need a plan the further drill down what's really going on how many employers they're going to be can universities help us train develop that number of people over the next five years whatever the case would be to meet that corporate need to sustain them that business here in the community Tetra pack so Tetra pack is a pioneer and sustainable packing solutions and so my specialist who she specializes in the economic development over here Matilda she helped me with some of this presentation and she added this little line here says you may even have a Tetra pack carton in your fridge right now and I said you know I don't know about that sure enough I went home I was looking at my kids they've got these juice boxes and stuff in there turned over it was Tetra pack so you were right about that Matilda so this is a company that we they received an expansion of payment from us in 2015 and so when you think about these types of cartons right so these are more environmentally sustainable products then you know made of that paper carton instead of your plastics just a quick note on Tetra pack we didn't recycle cartons until our relationship with Tetra pack they initiated at the city didn't oh really we also we also had an open house for their solar panels that they install okay ground breaking something yeah so they have solar panel I didn't I didn't know that so the other thing that I noticed when I first came in I guess it was ten months ago is we started looking at our piece and I came around everyone told me was talking about DME said hey did you know that DME is 100% sustainable energy I said no I didn't I didn't know that and so I started googling things and apparently nobody else on the internet do that because it's you really can't find it so this is something that I want to start doing this is a big push for me as I go in to the new fiscal year is we started putting marketing putting these things on our own marketing pieces but it's really going to you know we can talk about ourselves all we want it's not so other people start talking about us that the message is really going to get through and to me this is probably the big single biggest asset we have to position ourselves to be a sustainable you know community moving forward because there are many companies that have sustainable energy into their their policies right and so what they're doing already is they're paying they got to pay to offset that energy and we're already doing that for them and so we really need to communicate that value market ourselves as a 100% percent sustainable energy city and push that out to the market so do you put it in there that we're a hundred percent sustainable by the purchase our energy of wrecks of renewable energy credits not actual energy yeah so I'm not an expert on that by any means so when I did the research because I think you're correct right is that when we flip on our switch right all the energy kind of goes into one big bucket right and kind of gets mixed up but the idea and this is just my research that I've done on it is especially out in West Texas where most of our sustainable energy is being produced if no one buys it then we don't get more of it right so someone's got to buy that energy and bring it in and Sierra Club was one place you know did a lot of my research and I said you know it's like is this really sustainable and I guess the Sierra Club thinks it is so I I assume that the energy community does and that's how we market yeah there's a bit of controversy about this because wrecks actually do not curtail fossil fuel usage and they certainly don't limit their production and it's as you say it's not like aircott has two big transmission lines one which says green energy renewable energy and the other one says fossil fuels take your choice we are dentin is burning fossil fuels works takes that so I'm just I mean just the idea what would I would think it would be important to to really take a deep look into this so if somebody does come to you and say do you have your own solar farm do you have do you have a community solar is that where it's coming from no you say no it's from renewable energy credits because there's a big difference yeah and I think I would if someone were to ask yeah I mean we were talking about this and you showed an old email that 98 percent 99 percent is from power purchasing units not renewable energy credits so that's the big difference so yeah that you keep saying that's not it's we're on I just I know we're being recorded no I get squared we're not we're not on wrecks they've got the best kind of wrecks you can buy which are bundled wrecks and through power purchase agreements I'm not arguing about that I'm just saying that dentin still is reliant on fossil fuels the aircraft grid is predominantly fossil fuel full of fossil fuels that's all I'm saying right then we're putting the equivalent amount of energy onto the grid that's green to offset our demand that would not be on that's we can talk about this all right any further okay um okay wait yep let me go back so I want to look at some of the green prospects we have so I'm creating this chart and these are the businesses that are coming to didn't right now saying hey we'd like to do business and didn't we'd like to move to didn't doesn't mean that they are coming but these are the types of businesses we're recruiting so I think I want to look at this first chart and you can see my eyes are kind of messed up here but that's purple which is are connected right so this is these industries they're related to us being a strategic logistic and transportation hub and then these are all of our other areas so as you can see it's really not even close as to what the market thinks of did define what we're saying is a prospect are those businesses who are committed to developing here are there people who you approach so they approach you um it's a little bit of both so we have you know when you look at the you know that businesses that are looking at it right those leads come through various places come from site selectors they come from brokers they come from the regional chambers it could be direct you know an actual business calling up so it could come from a multitude of channels and it doesn't mean that they are saying yes we want to be in didn't they're saying hey we're looking at it right so that the goal is right I would like for every single one of these prospects I want to convert them all right probably not going to happen the reality is is maybe we convert five percent you know five out of a hundred of every prostate is actually going to come to us because generally the way it looks is first they want to you know decide a broader market so if they're talking to us they're probably talking to quite a few other cities in DFW and then our job right is to give our value proposition to why they should choose Denton over any other city in DFW yeah so part of our charges is the resiliency aspect of both like development and also like urban form and the physical conditions of how people live in town and so I guess since all four of these categories are goals for your department do you see this breakdown as something to keep pursuing and I know that you don't get to select who comes to you or necessarily who you can talk to but with this sort of really uneven distribution of the types of sectors or these different subcategories you've defined that are interested in developing here do you see that as kind of a long-term problem that we seem to be kind of clustering into one of those sectors you've defined so what this tells me is that when I look at recruitment and attraction this tells me I don't need to spend a lot of my staff time or a lot of my efforts into this right because I think there's just we have natural geographic competitive advantage in this area so when I'm trying to push the needle when I'm trying to look at how how what are the things that you know when we look at incentives right because what is an incentive it's I'm going to give you an incentive to do what I want right the development I want the jobs that we want right the city and then the City Council wants when I don't get this type of data and I go back to even I told you about the industrial piece our vacancies near zero so what does that mean if it gets built people come right now we still want to market that we want to do that but I don't think we need to focus all of our efforts strongly this here this tells me hey these are the areas that my me and my staff should really be taking a look at because these are the ones that need the most help with this is the ones we don't necessarily have the greatest competitive advantage but I go back to you know our lively discussion we just had and to me that is the single not we're the only city not just in DFW but in the state of Texas that they can make that contested claim right so Georgetown at one time I think they were the first but then there I think their futures contracts or something blew up on them and they can no longer make that claim so to my knowledge we're the only one they can right so to me when I think of resources if I want to put some resources in the marketing I want to put it here when I want to think about creative I want to preserve the culture I want to think about like downtown didn't I want to put my focuses there right I don't you know to some extent it takes care of itself over on the other side of the freeway and then competitive is really just going back to our our development stock right same thing if we don't have any buildings from for people to work then they're not going to come so making sure that we're getting those types of things just as a reflection number of businesses not necessarily number of employees or dollars invested and so I get this is just like one way to present what you're looking at but I appreciate your feedback on that so you're saying data that maybe if the you know tracking of the prospects with a number of potential employees my initial question was kind of spurred from that group that it looks like a lot of that development sector was leaning toward those transportation connectivity related businesses and then it seemed a little uneven as far as the distribution and it's very yeah you know your intuition is very quick the way that we weather those economic changes and still allow people to live here and that was where that motivation was coming from but again to this is just a number of business not necessarily the number of dollars invested in our city or the number of employees that they're hiring so I guess it's just one way to represent that brain yeah and and carrying that's helpful because we have the data so for the same reports that I pull this I could pull how many prospective employees that could have been right then you know hopefully we have the data then says how what those wages were so those are different ways I could definitely pull the same report and make it more for future presentations yeah I just wanted to throw in a comment there's a difference between what should we be doing the question of what should we be doing to improve our actual renewability of our energy and that's a very important question and a different question of how do we communicate that we actually have that commitment because the other places they're buying Rex or anything right they're not increasing the returns on renewable energy you know so you know this is about how do we attract employers that would share that commitment it would probably help bring the resources to actually prove where we do buy our mills so I you know I'm just separate that those issues this is about I mean I think that's quite chocked as I mentioned you were to find that this thing that we've you know really hitched our wagon to is invisible to the rest of the world no wonder the numbers are so small do you are you familiar with our simply sustainable plan very high level well I mean just it's another thing to throw in there you know when you're sending packets to perspective people that are sustainability interested companies that's very I did actually since we're on this topic I did write down a question that on one of your I'm sorry I can't reference the number but you had said that you wanted to align development goals with help integrate those with the sustainability plan I wonder if you from at least your perspective and the way you would approach that conversation how you see that overlap mature I believe yeah hold on let's see I think yeah I there it is I can talk about it if you wait just a few more slides here okay so lead buildings in Denton so as it turns out probably the single largest incentive and investment the city has made has been in this in the embassy suites hotel and convention center and it is a lead gold gold certified building it's only one of do we have was there three is that right of lead buildings in the city there's six okay so one of three of private yeah I'm sorry I was just I was I was asking her so so it's one of three of privately owned businesses is lead certified and so I know then there's gold and platinum we know this one's gold because I was able to go to the website but that the database we have doesn't really break it out to there but reducing 57 metric tons of co2 annually and they do use this as part of their marketing when they're trying to bring in corporate clients letting them know that hey we have a lead building and if you want to stay in North Texas that this is a sustainable option for you yes I learned that I learned that just probably last week because I was talking to the general manager and he told me that they had be high so it's a complaint from a guest okay so when I look at and so when I came from the city of Dallas I did redevelopment and really redevelopment is kind of like my passion when I look at economic development and this was I was also was called a pace manager property-assessed clean energy and so I didn't get into economic development I'm not can't say honestly I'm like most of y'all on here have a passion for sustainability for me I was always interested in finance and so when I came in they said oh you're the finance guy you're gonna be doing pace and I was like well I don't quite understand this and it took me a while to wrap my head around it but to me this is probably our single greatest tool that that we have as an incentive to reduce co2 within the city I've read a report and I tried to find it to put in this presentation but at one time I came across that said something like 60% of all carbon is associated to buildings older buildings within cities and that's due to the energy consumptions and those types of things so to me retrofitting some of these older buildings is key okay but there's there's the problem right and so if you look at this graph right here this kind of talks about when we said hey is it you know we're having this discussion earlier right there it just you know sustainable systems are more costly or if I already have an existing system if I'm just upgrading to a newer system I'm saving more energy but once again it's more costly right and so the problem that has business owners property owners is if they make out they put in this this this investment out front right well they immediately are cash flow negative which is not beneficial to a business when they're when their cash flows go down and so what do they do they don't see the the breakeven point or the return on investment so sometimes 10 12 20 years out so they just never make that investment that never happens what pace does pace is a unique financing tool in which the city or the county places in its an assessment equivalent to a loan on these sustainable investments and because it's an assessment and it uses the power of the government to make that assessment it stretches those payments out to about 25 years which results in an immediate cash flow positive investment thereby incentivizing buildings and businesses to go ahead and make those and so right now the county has a program unfortunately it's kind of same thing as we have with our 100% energy number one hit the pace program is just new to Texas in general it's been out in California for quite some time it does have some limitations to using this it's not a cure-all so one of the things is you got to find the lenders who want to do these types of loans and typically it's not financially beneficial to them unless the loan is five hundred thousand and then there's legal requirements that a pace loan can't represent more than 25 percent of a building's total value so then your building needs to be at least two million dollars or your improvements and so that it turns out most of the older smaller buildings are ineligible so there are some issues with that but I think there's the Texas Pace Authority who really kind of led this legislation in Texas they're working on some of those things they're looking at bringing more small lenders in to kind of solve that problem and then with the county as well you know I call the county to say hey I want to know about your pace program and they're like I don't know what that is and let me find out who that is and you know I still haven't really found out who that is who's running the pace program they do go to a third-party administrator but it's just one of those issues if there's not someone out there marketing it and putting it out there then we don't know about it sounds like you had quite an issue Catherine has been trying to get that information for us and you know and to me is like you know one issue that we could look at is it maybe the city does its own pace program right so you can you can have competing programs that the city wanted to do its own pace program you can even it could be a revenue generator in Dallas we charge the origination fee to run that program so it does make you less competitive if you're charging origination fee but then again if no one you know no one else is really competing against you but yeah just I see its property assessed clean energy the emphasis seems to be on you know kind of an energy energy use reduction which is very important for sustainability if it's if they're on fossil fuels but would it also apply with the existing pace program for for switching to electrical which has the potential to be sourced through renewables you're saying if there's like something that's like fossil fuel or like a gas power yeah let's say like electrocute versus gassy right so I'm using last I think it's long so what they'll do is they'll send out an engineer right you know this is where it goes above my pay grade but they'll send an engineer out and if it reduces energy right or it reduces water you know so this is the point reducing energy evidently a good thing especially if the energy you're using is some kind of fossil fuel let's say you're eating with natural gas okay so reduce energy reduce use of natural gas but if let's say you didn't reduce energy probably better if you did but even if you didn't but you've made the investment with the pace financing to switch to electrical are you saying it's like something's like okay gas power versus electric power so that so the other thing that they do is that there is what's considered to code and that in that instance like hey here's what the code says the standard and so if you make these investments and they're above and beyond code then they are eligible as well the other key thing is that those savings have to actually be a net positive over whatever your debt service is so I mean we could we can go into the nitty-gritty of it but that's I think that might actually say your money and utilities you have to actually save money versus what you're paying you have to actually say that you can't just make all these things and then actually not be saving money okay so an opportunity for a Denton specific pace knockoff might be something that would you know help finance you moving to more sustainability whether or not it's necessarily a lower cost well it wouldn't be a knockoff it would still be a pace program it's just it would be the city's oh yeah yeah it would be under the state the same statutes and everything that the state's program has yeah so in the interim of more legislation bringing on smaller banks in this banking industry right now that's not going to happen to well thanks failing and examiners looking at real risky ventures is that an opportunity where we can educate our this particularly where a small business owner had a retired business person can we add a component to the plan that particularly in lieu of businesses that cannot take advantage of this can we add a component that looks simply like we still do the assessment energy assessment on your business and help them determine from a cost perspective how they can save money because that's the key word saving money when I did similar type programs in the several businesses that I own and I was able to reduce energy cost by as much as 50 percent it meant less energy usage less co2 carbon emissions so we can achieve the same goal but from a small business perspective if you can present it in a way that individual or individuals can save tremendous amounts of money now we can see them being able to finance or better finance a larger plan you know installing you know completely new you know electric panels and so forth so is that a is that possibly something we can consider we can have some greater impacts can you clarify your question about what's possible because I'm not okay I'm not I'm not understanding how that way you're suggesting is outside of what the pace already does yeah I ran a program in McDonald's I'm a former McDonald's restaurant franchisee I owned and operated six franchises we implemented a plan that the goal was to reduce energy usage and we were able to quantify that with the dollars or quantitative information with actual dollars yes so that's that's what the engineering does when you do the pace program you bring in an engineer who does an engineering assessment right yeah and so then so then the the Texas Pace Authority and then Lone Star Pace is actually who the county uses right so then so you've got two sides we've got the engineering who says hey here's here's what's possible and then you got the finance side so here's I'm just gonna cost you and then they you know they they do that cost benefit analysis and say and then then they go out to market right and they go to the banks and say here's here's what the package here's the improvements they're looking for what can we do right and so to your point you know there's an arguments made that these these these loans are actually more secure right then than any other loan right because it's that the assessment stays with the building and you do see the rates are actually and then this is the problem to speak of is that the rates are actually higher right debt service is lower but the rates are going to be higher than you would see in a traditional loan because it is technically mezzanine financing so that so that's kind of what the program does if that yeah if you could clarify yeah we're both you're not on the same page up to the point where the bank says no yeah for its reasons what does the business owner do at that point so are you saying it's a possibility for the for the city to step in and fund something like that no what I'm talking about is a component where the city has a plan where we can do the energy assessment and then be able to help the business owner understand that if you can reduce this cost you can say X amount of dollars the reality is business people make decisions based on money these are some field goods you know energy energy make your business energy efficient but if it doesn't put more money on the bottom line you're gonna have a very difficult time selling and for a bank to say no what does the business hey I tried what I'm saying is our goal is still to reduce that carbon emissions that have been admitted by reducing energy can we look at an additional component to the pace plan where okay when the business does not qualify you know for the phone for the loan when the bank is denied it let's take this option and not to dive into the details of the right now but my goal the hat that I wear from small business owner perspective is how can I help that business owner save money put more money on the bottom line and achieve energy efficiency yeah I think the short answer to your question you know without getting you know getting too off of it yeah if there's an opportunity to save money to affect the bottom line and say you know get clean energy and be more sustainable then I think it's something we should definitely be looking at yes so what do we do tingle back and look at that as a possibility how do you guys well I guess and that process once again I think I don't know you run into I don't know what that looks like because that's the same problem right is it the bank says no if we can't get this type of financing then then the owners got to make that decision right on the bottom line when do they make money right so I think we could go back and look at it but I can't answer to you right now I don't yeah that particular doesn't but something we could definitely look at something yes that's what I'm looking for is there's something that we can look into and then come back and present you know to this body you know here's here's how we want to speak to what I believe is very valuable you know concern that you're going to run into we won't achieve the goal under this current plan and the way it appears the way it's been presented to me today all right and then the economic growth writer deep this is a program that DME has and we put this out with all of our prospects as part of the clean energy we partner that with that to say hey if you come and you choose didn't you're going to get the clean energy and you're going to get these these reduction in rates over over five years with that clean energy so you're actually here you're saving money by choosing DME over other options okay so back to your question about how we are aligning these types of things so when we do an application for a tax abatement or 380 we this is basically part that we put in there is like what are you doing is that part of are you engaging in sustainable practices so we have a few things here then we're going to actually put that into our scoring metric in our application so when we're evaluating companies we have all of our growth areas and so we try to add up all those points and to get to our targets and so really what we're using this is kind of gauge what type of companies are coming in once again to go back to that that data that we're collecting earlier okay now this one this is our SDG suspect sustainable development goals by the UN United Nations thank you and so this is the strategic plan there were like 15 of them if I believe and the strategic plan said that this city should call out these four so you guys might know more about these than I do but these are the four that the strategic plan challenge us to have the city adopt as a priority through through here so that's affordable and clean energy so I think we're moving along there decent work and economic growth industry innovation and infrastructure and sustainable cities and communities all right so that's it I have for you today any further questions for me very important part of the presentation I would like to see is return on investment what would this thing cost us what would the projected return look like I see you don't have that that would be something I would definitely like to see yes so the the ROI so I think that was a holdover from and I apologize I apologize for that from another presentation so what that is that's the ROI on the incentives that we put out Jason worked on that so we're working on that updating that at this moment and we're gonna have that new report out and I can send that to Michael and basically it's not anything specific to this presentation it's just the ROI on any of our incentives that we've done in the past but I'd be happy to share that with Michael and he can share that with you as well all right just one additional question and then I'll be out the way from the mindset of the sustainability perspective with regards to the small business operations do we know how many small businesses we lost pre-code and the reasons why we lost them and can part of the sustainability program address those kinds of things that my business operation the best way to to increase the revenue is saying you know expenses and so we can save companies that are going like you will cost a factor than even spending big bucks trying to generate so the question is do we know how many small businesses failed pre-code pre-code is an anomaly yeah it's it's actually we know the business has failed right so what we can really see is on net and so on a net we've actually gained businesses right but we know we've lost some and in particular if you look we're gaining the the gains the losses have not been equal right it's been there's distribution geographically right so for instance if I look we look over to the square I've seen they can see rise where a lot of our small businesses are but if we look north we see more businesses right and so on a net we we've gained right but to answer your question it's kind of muddy on that and so your second question what was your second one well the first question is do we know the number of and then more importantly do we know why we lost those businesses there's something that we could have done to help sustain that business that that you know primarily is what what I'm looking at therefore can we oh we developed you know any type of plan to address why we would lose whoever we lost from the square yeah and then the second I actually had a point for your second one and the other problem we have is this is a split incentive right is so you have typically with small business owners they're going to be renting their space right they're not going to be owning and typically here in debt and your smallest business owners are going to go over the reap the rents the cheapest and so that's typically your older business your older buildings with out the investment in there right and so that is a problem right because they're they're the ones paying for this high energy cost right if you go especially some of these older buildings I've gone in there in the summertime the AC blasting yet it's still hot in there right so it's just constantly running but the property owner right as long as he's collecting that rent he's got no incentive to make those improvements whereas the business owner is the one paying the bills so that so that is an issue that we are aware of what we want to do is we want to create a program where we incentivize businesses to be property owners right so their owner operators right that's what I would like to see because if it kind of goes back to the pace right is that if they're they can show to a bank hey look I'm making these rent payments right I'm making these utility payments and if I have a business plan and I want to make I want to purchase this building I want to make these improvements and I'm actually going to lower you know my cost and rent I'm going to lower my cost and utility they've already proven that they can make these payments as is and so maybe setting a program which we could do that yeah that's what I'm looking for is how can we help sustain businesses to stay in business where they may need it how to clean condensers on a regular maintain equipment would be the headliner to reduce that utility cost win-win for everybody I'm a living example of it cut by cost 50% in six restaurants it was phenomenal I just think it's education opportunity I'm sorry I just want to say this is really a great presentation well thank you yeah full of information I didn't know and I appreciate you sharing your expertise with us I just had one question is there an actual schedule of the amount of abatement based upon a specific sustainability initiative there is not no could that would that be a possible um it's possible so I'll say that for me the way that I look at incentives I look at incentives on a gap-based financial gap-based right so number one well because we're talking about real estate we're talking about bringing in a business right that capital is flighty but we're looking at real estate right it's here it's not going anywhere right and we look at development I want to analyze that on a gap basis so gap meaning I'm so when finance so we have if I want to go get a building I've got to the banks gonna say hey you you need to your cash flow needs to be 1.2 for 25 percent higher than then your debt right then your debt payment so that's number one and so what could happen right is we could want to put in these sustainable improvements and what that does is then that that means now we're eating into that cash flow and now we're like one point one and so to me I think it's more effective to say hey if you put in these sustainable improvements we'll help bridge that gap right we want to bring that gap to one point two five whereas if we have a schedule right we could be doing two things we could be not incentivizing at all like hey this does nothing for me in this particular instance or we could be giving too much on the table and thereby missing out on other investments so to me I would I would prefer to do it on that gap basis as opposed to a schedule this is on topics I know ROI was not a component of this presentation since we discussed incentives I would like to dig into it a little bit I guess since we are talking about these sustainability goals and I like read a couple of those ROI documents that you put out and I know it doesn't always account for some of the goals that you know our committee is chiefly interested in especially in terms of these sprawl prohibitive development forms that I wondered like what what would make it a more accurate reporting in terms of the incentives that we're putting putting down from an EV perspective that would account for things like infrastructure maintenance that would account for things like assumed liabilities that would account for for fire and the other services that we pay for for these projects that would it still encourage the economic development particularly in the in-pill setting but that also helped me some of these environmental and preservation and open space goals that our committee is interested in so it's the first party quick can you just clarify so yeah what residential development and for these commercial projects as well like where we're we're putting money down for a project that that maybe geographically isn't necessarily where we want it to be because if we're not accounting for those types of connective services that we have to put up to it like water and wastewater roads maintenance fire services does that get factored into those ROI reports so I don't I don't think so as the way the ROI report right is this is basically saying hey here's here's how much investment we're putting in here's how much revenue we're getting back but but we are starting to track we just launched today actually our our strategic dashboard and we have these initiatives right it says hey do this right it's like check we've done okay that's great but I think to your point there needs as we check these things off and they're ongoing we need to develop and that's what it says right that's where we're in the state time develop metrics on this right and so that's that's something that needs to be done right so we're the strategic plan is adopted in 2021 we're 43% through so we've got a lot of stuff we got to do and as we build out to 100% we've got to check those boxes but then we've got to develop ongoing metric metrics so that we know hey we've done this but are we succeeding or are we not and then within that we have those sustainability pieces and then even in the competitive I think it's kind of where you're talking about because we can talk about mixed use development walkability development so that's actually in the competitive it's not in the sustainable section and so those are things that that we're not tracking but we are going to start building in metrics to do that just one I guess on that because you mentioned mixed use a couple of times and I know that in our city all of our planning documents call for that everybody likes it but I don't see a lot of it actually to be candid if you look at the development it almost seems like where we're going is what I would call high density car dependent development which is bad and I think that both counts so you're building more multi-family housing but it's segregated from any place they need to get to so everybody still needs a car so we're packed in more tightly with with the same need for cars so I'm just wondering if there's anything and what you all do do you well two-fold questions you get feedback from people that they want mixed use moving and you all have any leverage to make that happen yeah so so yes so key remember right economic development and we have the incentives the incentive is this is the type of development we want to do and then there's the United States of America this is what you can do right so the two the two things to different differentiate there right so do we get feedback yes and that goes back to Paul your question is hey isn't office and all this taking a meeting well what is succeeding is the mixed use development we had I had a meeting gosh six months ago with a pretty large employer there was looking in the area and they pulled me in when we got to get this company and you know I knew there's no we didn't have a shot at getting this company because we didn't have the product right we did not have what they need and then I went so well you know I'll go to the meeting we'll do it and then the the decision-maker you know looked at us and said here's the deal you're not even on the list and then they just ticked off you know you don't have enough you know apartment housings within proximity to an office you don't have class a office you don't have the you know everything all located that our employees are looking for so to answer your question we want to incentivize my department wants to incentivize that type of development and not say not because it's not sustainable because it's sustainable it's because it's what's competitive and it's what the market wants right and so but and sustainability to me is this is another added bonus right so it's just part of that circular piece it's competitive it's sustainable that's what the market wants and then we have incentives for that and then the option then of course what else can we do to make it greener right you know you know put in knowing that we're going to this this building is going to be here 20 years from now let's let's put in those green those car electric chargers right so that we're getting that infrastructure built in and those are type of things that we look at Paul yeah couple questions for you I don't remember if I hectored you about this when we first spoke sure you did but on the theme of you know what I was asking about and what you're saying the market wants is heck for on your radar is something to advocate for I will translate taking the area south of the square out of the floodplain so that it could be densely built with public space live work play walkable accessible extension of the square experience yes so I mean peck for right is and I think there is a bond it's going through the bond package for that so I don't know too a whole lot about it right but the idea is you bring it out of the floodplain which would make that land more developable you could be a vertical structure yeah we're getting close to the edge of getting outside okay so my other question is in the areas where your to-do list you shared at the end overlap with the objectives of the sustainability committee what would you like to see as next steps what's your ask well I think first of all this is great hearing hearing the types of feedback going back to metrics right what what's important to y'all what what actually moves the needle right because then we can start to have these deeper conversations about you know because it could you say so it all comes out of the bottom line right so what how can we bridge the gap like that I'm a gap type person let's identify those gaps y'all probably know them better than I do and then what can we do to a create those baselines and know where we are so we can start tracking them and then figuring out is there an incentive that we can provide to move the market to fill those gaps so so you'd like ideally you like this committee to define some objectives that could become that could have incentives built around them yeah and I can share all of our I think we already have shared those with you but those are within the strategic plan so it would be beneficial to me right because I've got to do those types of things so how can I do better about those and then certainly if you got other ones that's great but for me you know that's what council has set as their priorities and their strategic plan and those are the things that I'm testing but I think more importantly it would fit with meshing the goals with the simply sustainable framework and I believe actually simply sustainable is mentioned in there or yeah okay and so the idea is to try to figure out how we could have a look at our greenhouse gas inventory are you aware that we have that so I know the EPA and I looked at this in the pace on this is the exact same thing but it was this is for our committee oh yeah so like transportation is one of the highest polluters and so when we're talking about all the incentivized I guess the buildings the warehouses the logistics so that's why I brought my comment up at the very beginning just so you may want to take a look at that that might be helpful for you and then we have climate action plan and carbon reduction goals which may be also helpful for you as you're going out looking for these sustainability sustainable businesses and then we have our green business program that you may or may not be familiar with as well that might be something for you to look into and then just a comment we obviously our committee and economic development have several overlapping goals so I appreciate you coming and speaking with us and I think we have a lot of opportunities here all right well thank you once again for having me and I had not planned on speaking this long so thank you for your time thank you all right all right so we will move on to item B stack reports Bird City Texas update data center the electric memo and the matrix yes and you have a memo from Dan and your backup about Bird City Texas update close but not yet interesting follow-up conversation with them and I think we're set for next year I think we're in a good position for next year and then you have the memo about the data center electric usage request and the matrix so any questions yeah on the data center one have we asked core scientific or if we told course scientific that there was this request and that we that the information will only be shared if they requested it to be shared do they know that there's an interest in having this information I mean I think we could have probably saved a month if we didn't ask them that question right we could have just asked them there I don't think so we don't go and ask because when we we get records request for people's records utility records on a somewhat regular basis we don't as a practice go and ask them you know you haven't consented before before your for your information to really be released you know will you consent now so it's it's not a practice and it would in this case to stick with practice would it be a bad thing to do something different than the practice it would be well I do think it could be with the things that are that are going on with that so that's not something I would advise any staff to do is to go outside with the city Lee normally does when a request like that is made was my ass but I just read it like it seems like kind of bureaucratic answer it's like a dead end when there's a legitimate interest in knowing the information okay anybody else not about this Bird City matrix go ahead yeah have a few specific things and then kind of a broader thing we've talked about at length about the solar rebate and one thing that occurred to me and had conversations with that about it tough with Dominus the set battery walls may play an entirely different role I'd be very interested in staff's assessment of that whether battery walls because they enable the use of renewable energy at times when it isn't otherwise happening that might have a differential impact might be worth subsidizing that just because you're you know you're then shifting we're doing with usage in time and in fact California and as pointed out to me has a rather elaborate program based around that premise their needs may be different but some indication that it's not a totally unique thought anyway so that that's the items it's would there be any sustainability point to subsidizing battery storage even for people already have solar panels who didn't invest in the battery walls so that's one yeah a second are we I think you might just tell me we'll take this up when we get to water which is coming up I see on the matrix but the question is have we looked at and could we look at what zero scaping incentive plans have worked in other areas if we end up saying that from a resilience point of view that water usage is important objective yeah so zero scaping incentive plans which have worked I see building culture on the last two canopies on the list I have a oh okay one to put on the list of transmitting from bike ten is there interested in consideration of whether there be merit to subsidizing electric bikes as you know more efficient means of transportation and it might it might be people wouldn't necessarily get into a car they might know that's the question is there is there's a sustainability merit to incentivizing electric bikes and then I have a broader question which really just comes to the fact that I'm late to the party and I don't know the framing conversations you've all had but it isn't obvious to me on my third visit that there is that there's a process with a clear goal that we're going toward my what I imagined having been on council and then Councilmember Briggs and I urged the formation of this group was that this group would be moving methodically through the sustainability framework each of each of the categories to evaluate the tactics you know and to prioritize and you know then prioritize against each other you know in order to make a recommendation to council but I don't know if there's a time certain that you're trying to get to or that we are trying to get to so if that is the goal if I've actually described it right then my secondary question is are we moving a pace toward that goal or now I asked this with some trepidation like the kid in school says teacher you've got to give us the homework assignment but you know if we're not moving a pace toward that goal we meet every other week instead of once a month or even if it's just not to put an extra burden on staff but just to allow this group to discuss the areas that are the pillars of the sustainability framework so said a lot now pause they say step back well I think that was just up to add to the matrix correct well yeah then there was like the broader that kind of process thing but you know okay that could be done just like I think in that matrix is are we moving toward a goal should we meet twice as often anybody else have anything to clarify take off add to the matrix yeah I just want to reiterate the importance I think I know it's on their transportation and hoping that and the more I've been thinking about this and I'm not sure if this is reflected in the matrix but it would be nice if you could hear from and think about this from a city planner perspective it's the I don't know if we we've had that conversation about the way things get zoned and built it cuts across so many of the pillars in our plan that from transportation to building codes you know air quality you name it would I think it might help us like say it was a climate action plan to know how high level planning decisions are made about the way the city develops this was useful but when we got to like zoning things I could see that that wasn't his you know cup of tea or bailiwick so that's I'd like to see we could add that I think at one point we we have development services coming again this summer to talk about some of the building codes and development codes and parking minimums so we can refine that yeah I would like to ask for a special call meeting with DME for some further discussion actually some unfinished business regarding the green sense program and the reason why I'm requesting this is my approval of option four was contingent upon further discussion about grandfathering options and this was also recorded in the minutes of January 27 23 and I can give you the times if you wish for when this happened in the meeting and also I can give you the chairs summation of what went down in which it was said that it was the final vote from myself was contingent upon further discussions about grandfathering grant what what the status of grandfathering was so that's why I would like to have the opportunity to discuss that because it has not been addressed and to me right now my vote really is inconsequential because I've not gotten the information that I asked for so if we could I don't know if we could do a staff report on the grandfathering or if they need to come back but if we could add that into the matrix somehow to answer the questions that we had from the previous meeting and I thought that the recommendation from this committee was option four with further discussion about grandfathering but I didn't hear come back to this committee with great mother I think what we're asking for is if we could hear more information on their thoughts about the grandfathering because we left it off at that is that what you're saying yeah and I would like what I would and until that discussion happens I would like my vote to be rescinded or put on hold for option four that first of all it's not on the agenda to do I understand and that's I mean the minutes will reflect what was made in that meeting yeah so you know a vote at that meeting can't be rescinded okay thank you so is there any any opportunity or chance that we can have a meeting on this a timely meeting do you want to get would do me and then email us yes we can talk about how we can address that okay thanks thank you I just would like to see if we can have there was a lot of talk about the pace program today if we can have just a presentation so that we can have discussion and questions more so on on that or have someone from the county come and talk to us or the state of Texas I'm not sure but that seemed to be a very important topic and new information for us and so that would be helpful it's a good tool yeah and that was going to be exactly my my ask is that we can get more presentation on the program by his own testimony it currently is ineffective in terms of the problems that they're running into getting banks to support it and half a million dollars in value of the property and it can exceed 25 percent of you know so forth so long it sounds like that plan is not working in its present state so I would like to get a deeper presentation to include what does a secondary plan look like that can help even the small business owners who wouldn't qualify under the current presentation you can if we can make that happen then one other item I had is that over a year ago there was a presentation of the LG SW project and one of the questions that I had was the amount of greenhouse gas that would be produced under that new project and we haven't gotten that answer as of yet it was scheduled to come today from the staff we didn't have the update yet okay I want to third the pace thing along with mr. Stevens because it's that was I thought the most important thing of this presentation so if we could find because in my mind there's so many people out there that would like to have efficiency upgrades or to electrify your home but the upfront costs just make it not work but if there's a way to do this the commutable game-changer so I think it's definitely working soon the other thing and I don't know if this is concluding item or matrix but last time mr. Stevens had this clarity of training the trainers or talking about the presentation in the box I'm just wondering if there's any updates on that I'd like to start doing those presentations at first just with my students but then more generally so I don't know that's not necessarily a matrix item but we'll just close the this item and move on to last number two concluding items and kind of just reiterate that training the trainer for concluding items is that something that we can get started on it's available now so just one real short thing can we get an update on the response to the survey yes all right we will conclude our meeting thank you everyone for joining in 242