Dec 11, 2024 Economic Development Partnership Board on 2024-12-11 11:00 AM

Okay, good afternoon everyone. I believe we have a forum so we will go ahead and get started. Welcome December 11, 2024. It is 1102 and I will call this meeting of our Economic Development Partnership Board to order. Items for consideration. Do we need an approval of minutes? We have a motion. Thank you. And a second. Thank you. Any discussion about the minutes? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And any opposed? Hearing none, that passes. Thanks y'all. Let's go on into the call for items for work session. We will begin work session with item A, EDP 24-087. Good morning Board of Directors. It's great to see you as always. This time we have a microphone so I'm going to step back a little bit. I feel like I'm yelling. We are, I'm here today to present tax increment reinvestment zone number one, a boundary term and PSE amendment overview. And I've been told this presentation is pretty lengthy so I'm just going to summarize. But the TERS was first created on December 10, 2010. Over a series of the past few years there have been multiple discussions on improving the TERS and trying to amend it in some way or manner or form. In May of 2023 the amendment was presented to city council after staff hired a consultant, David Pettit Economic Development Group. David Pettit has been helping with the amendment thus far and so prior staff took the amendment to council in May of last year. Direction was provided by council to postpone the amendment until the downtown master plan was completed and other outstanding questions were answered. In September of 2024 the downtown master plan was approved by city council and the master plan included recommended a TERS one boundary expansion and also an amendment to the term and also it included catalytic project recommendations. In September of this year the amendment was presented to the TERS board and November 19th we presented it to city council during work session and on December 3rd we took it back to city council and they approved the ordinance amending the boundaries and the terms. The current downtown TERS parameters has a term through January 1st 2039 or when the revenue of 24.8 million has been reached. We're the only taxing entity that is participating. We participate at a declining rate and so we're currently participating at 90 percent for years 11 through 20. The boundary has approximately 226 acres and the base value when it was first created has had was 79.4 million dollars. The consultant that first put together the project and findings and plan for the TERS estimated that it would create 24.8 million dollars and so the consultant put it into four different funding buckets that included parking, complete streets, support for downtown projects and utility drainage improvements. From 2010 to 2023 the TERS certified tax values for all the properties including their Avalor valuations increased by over 182 million dollars and that was due to natural rising properties rates rightly and we did have a few catalytic projects including lease development the rail yard project and the TERS fund had an increase of actually has generated 6.6 million dollars over the term of the fund since 2010 and the current balance is 4.4 million dollars and lifetime expenditures is 2.2 million dollars. What we did not include in the in the proposed expenditures or upcoming expenditures are the fine arts theater which we have a budget of 1.5 million dollars. So why are we taking this amendment? Why are we taking to the council for approval? Number one we have catalytic projects and we need funding mechanisms. The downtown master plan consultant the MEN group recommended that we do expand the boundaries and so on their map to the right there is a the current boundaries and the proposed boundaries which has uh which is the dotted line and so the MEN group recommended that we include Carroll Street all the way up to university just including the rideaways including some of the commercial areas on North Locust and Elm also including Quaker Town Park and further south southern downtown and I'm just I have a cold right now I'm just warning you so I'm a little bit out of breath and and so we're basing this amendment based off the recommendations we want to make sure that we have uh we're we have incentives to support some of those projects that were recommended in the plan. So city council approved expanding the boundaries to include TURS 1a on December 3rd. The new boundaries will have a 2024 base so next year we will be able to uh start collecting increments. And then termination of the zone was extended to December 31st 2040 with the final year's tax increment to be collected by September 1st 2041. On December 17th we will go back to council and they will review an amended project and financing plan and that will include boundaries revenue projections and project costs. In the amount amended project and financing plan we work with the consultant to provide development assumptions so we gave them a list of development that was currently in the works for downtown and we estimated that that would generate by 2041 800 to 41 million dollars and so we have a few multi-family line items we have retail and hotel a theater that's a fine arts theater some of the multi-family that's listed includes the rail yard laying program uh apartments there's three phases and so the second and third phase has not hit the tax rolls yet and so we're assuming that that will hit pretty soon and that will go into the turds the great news about that development is that we did not provide incentives up front and so that their development is within the turds and we will start including increment. In total the consultant estimates that we will generate 50.2 million dollars within the turds so we'll have additional funding mechanisms to support the catalytic projects. And the consultant has a list of guidelines and funding buckets that he divvies up the 50.2 million dollars into recommended funding buckets and so this is not a concrete list any item can be changed in a moment's notice and so we have a few water facility improvements a few infrastructure improvements open space park and recreation facilities economic development grants and administrative costs so we don't propose that there will be any infrastructure updates in the near future but maybe in 2039 there could be and any items that are funded by the turds would be supplementary to our capital projects team whatever they're working on at the time if they have funding available we will work with them because I don't believe that we'll have enough funding to cover an entire infrastructure project and so our as I stated earlier we will go back to council on december 17th and we will hopefully get their approval on the amended project plan and next year we'll have the funds available and we can start planning for projects new projects downtown so we're excited any questions I saw on the breakout there was five million or so in parking and uh what is it transit funds what's what's the what's going on with the park situation or what's being projected or talked about downtown that's not a big challenge for us it's a great question so the city is in the works of completing a parking study I haven't been I was closely involved in those discussions here from our business owners is that parking can be an issue to attracting patrons I believe the downtown study Mr. Meltzer may know a little bit more because he hears it directly he can probably comment on that that there may not be a parking issue that there are available parking spots it's just not directly in front of business fronts and so when the original project and financing plan was created I believe that the consultants I work with staff they were proposing a parking garage that was back in 2010 and we now we do have a parking garage with NCTC and I believe there's another one that's proposed right now and so I think that was our initial thoughts is we did have a briefing it's not done yet we got a briefing at the gentlemen code review committee for example yesterday before yesterday yeah and then I found that a really surprising result that even at peak which I think was like saturday and you know kind of going to the bar time the utilization of downtown spaces is 79 percent I don't know a single person who feels like that so some of the things that they're talking about are uh you know enforcement which there really isn't enforcement now like uh time limited parking so the spaces open up uh improved signage and just this is just a you know just a little uh appetizer of it the thing that caught my eye which is viewed as like a little longer to get to is uh but not totally far away it's smart signs you know how like when you go to the airport to park in the garage you know this a sign that that in real time says there's 18 spaces this way there's five that way uh they're they're looking at first of all having sensors at the spots anyway so that they could use it for enforcement because like I said there really isn't any once you do that it's not a a big stretch especially using available wi-fi uh to to uh connect that to an app or even better to smart signage so instead of spending 17 minutes to find that 21 of spots that are still available you get directed right to it maybe it feels more like you have the amount of parking there really is that that's great uh so we're working with our transportation department on implementing cold technology um so hopefully that will solve our parking issue but that's all coming together right now great question thank you this is for information only right right any other questions before we have the next topic which is uh e2p 24-085 um good morning um my name is julissa amador i work over in the environmental services and sustainability i work in the sustainability division um i'm the senior program coordinator so i'm going to be doing a presentation on the green business uh update so a little bit of background if you guys um may be familiar with it or have heard about it in the past um there was a pilot program in 2019 where nine businesses participated during that 12 month period um of course uh we did have to put the program on hold due to the pandemic and staffing shortages but we are going to be launching the program january 1 of this upcoming year 2020 a little overview of the program so the intent of the green business program is to educate and encourage businesses but it's also able to highlight things that they're already doing so sustainability practices practices that they've already implemented within their business and so this gives that opportunity we will be breaking that out into different focus areas so um the focus areas mirror the sustainability framework uh water energy transportation materials management wildlife and community resilience as part of the green business program it is going to give the opportunity for businesses to be able to network with each other share information about what they're doing what they're implementing at their business um they can also talk about corporate policies that they've uh you know that their corporations have already implemented and be able to share that information so here's some program specifics so to participate um in the program you first have to fill out the questionnaire so the questionnaire kind of gives us a baseline for what the business is already doing and that is the only requirement to join the green business program and you would join in at the lowest level which is a bronze level to go up in levels of participation you would have to come a business would have to complete additional steps so those additional steps can look like joining cohorts community engagement and then also ongoing participation to touch a little bit on the cohorts so a business can join a cohort and that would be based on a focus area so let's say a business is interested in reducing its waste they would join a materials management cohort and then also join that cohort with similar businesses as well so those would be businesses that would meet once a month for a three to four month time frame and it gives them the opportunity to be able to learn a little bit more about that specific focus area and there will also be the opportunity to have to be a part of community engagement so for community engagement a business can post on social media of what sustainability practices are already doing they can also host an event they can host a cohort class if they would like to they can also host a volunteer event community engagement can also look like signage so signage within your business just talking a little bit about some of the sustainability practices that your business is already undertaking and then ongoing participation so we would check in with the businesses at six months and then have an annual report where they can just tell us a little bit about what they've done within that calendar year this is what that questionnaire looks like so this is what the only requirement that you would need to join the program so it's broken out into some basic metrics so for the resource conservation like energy water and materials management that's going to look like a lot of the utility billing that you already have so your energy consumption your water consumption your solid waste service as well so to include the basic metrics and then a checklist so this isn't all encompassing but it's just to give some options of what your business is already doing so for this example this is the water focus area and so are you did you already install low flow faucet fixtures do you you know do you utilize zero escaping at your business do you conduct water audits those are just some examples of what a business could be doing and it gives them also some ideas as well but we also do include a short answer opportunity for the businesses to be able to tell us their story if the other if the previous sections don't cover what they're doing this section will hopefully be able to provide them the opportunity to elaborate a little bit more so recognition and awards we want to recognize the businesses that are participating in the program with window clings so if a business is a green level business for example they would get they would receive a window cling to put on their business but we also will have awards as well so the awards will be based on the following categories and also be broken out by employer styles so those categories are resource conservation which include water energy and materials management transportation wildlife and community resilience so we want to see within that calendar year what businesses are having the biggest improvement based on those following categories and the employer sizes that we have are small medium and large where we're considering small one to 75 employees medium 76 to 300 and then large is 300 plus employees we're also going to give businesses the opportunity to talk about a project of the year which is going to be its own separate application and the project of the year will just basically be if a business has taken on a sustainability initiative that they're very proud of they're able to provide that information and include it in there as well so we would be able to give them an award based on the categories and then a separate award for a project this year we of course want to spread the word and be able to utilize our partners so we will definitely be working with economic development very heavily and other community organizations to get more involvement for additional businesses but also to spread the word about participation in the program so next step uh january 1 is right around the corner so uh launching the program of course spreading the word that the program exists launching the cohort classes just based on the businesses that we get and what they are interested in seeing and then reporting ongoing participation do you have any questions hearing no questions thank you we can come we can come back to with you on that one for the program to have this program what's the annual budget for that a lot of it is more of staff time because we have some of the printing costs associated with it but it doesn't compare to some of the other programs that we have different incentives for and things like that i don't know what that means exactly compared to what what's the what's an average then what's an average cost for an average program then so um our solid waste and recycling uh education that we do within our department has a different budget than um the green business program for example i don't know off the top of my head but i can get that number to you later i think it'd be good just as a general rule like whenever we have programs that we're talking about that we had an annual cost to the city for what that what that program is and and i wouldn't exclude the cost of time for the employee because the city has to pay that employee for their time and it would be elsewhere otherwise it may be a good idea for us to have that on an ongoing basis when we're looking at when we're being informed about this i would tell you as a large employer that stuff like this is needed it helps with community relations and everything so i appreciate the effort i would even say you might as this goes on if you might even consider a separate awards application just to kind of offset some of your costs people might participate in that just little things like that that's not uncommon and it might be expected this place i believe we started coordinating with um our environmental services whatever you did propose an award program or some type of recognition for businesses other practicing sustainability measures so thank you i mean it that's our i mean HACVAR asks every year for every different environmental award that every division gets i mean so it's a big deal thank you all right thank you no vote needed on that either so we'll move to staff reports and uh just end the quarter thanks rick so last month matilda weed and our economic development specialist attended the texas economic development council basic economic development course and so this is something that was really excited she got to attend because when you go you're immersed in a week long training program you get to collaborate with professionals all over the state of texas and learn what they're working on you have people that have been in economic development for over 20 decades 20 years the same decades 20 years that are teaching these young professionals what the economic development career is all about and so i was really excited that she attended um and then she also attended the texas music office sounds and cities conference matilda manages our music friendly certification every year with the state and she won an award this year she won the excellence award so congratulate matilda we also held a small business boot camp workshop this is something that i mentioned briefly mentioned during last meeting it was a partnership with the city and score fort worth it was coordinated by our office development services and community services and we also also did work with the edp in the chamber we held two workshops in a business fair this started because bob sifferman he's the chairman of score fort worth it is a network of volunteers that are retired executives that are just looking for something to do but they have all the skill sets and wisdom to share and so bob's a chairman he's based out of fort worth i used to work with him at the city of arlington and so when i moved to the city of ditten he said hey we want to work with ditten and so it's a free resource they provide free mentoring to entrepreneurs for business plans accounting marketing you name it so the first business workshop was just a general overview of what a business plan consists of in the second workshop was a social media breakdown and also an accounting overview so that was really nice i really enjoyed the accounting overview because i think most small businesses need help financial assistance and understanding their profit and loss statements a little bit better and this was all made possible by courtney and our community services department there was a grant that was from the icma economic mobility grant program that she applied for and so she volunteered to assist with putting these workshops together and this is our cohort there was more people i think the first session how many people originally signed up matilda i'm like 17 17 showed up the first time and i think they kind of turned on the second our new community profiles over the past few months we have been working on updating our marketing materials every community in the dfw metroplex has a community profile with demographics and general stats about the city and so we have updated our profile and that will be printed next month and we will provide this to you we can also send you a digital copy so this will be helpful for developers if you're talking to clients you can provide this document to show them what we're all about for the next one to two years we're going to be using the tagline where creativity meets commerce we thought that was fitting of denton we have to find a way to stand out from the other cities and i think we are unique right we have to embrace our uniqueness so we we figured that we would highlight that in our graphic design and this was also kind of a collaboration between the edb colors the lime green and also the city of denton colors our quarterly recruitment stats over the past quarter we've had 18 active projects two of those received incentives one announced an expansion and four currently planning potential site visits um rfis kristina's been working hard on responding to rfis that are submitted to the dallas reno chamber we're in the state economic development governor's office and so we had a total of nine submitted one that aerospace two automotive supply chain and two green energy and four manufacturing and then we have four active projects currently in the downtown reinvestment grant process for this year we've had a total of 76.9 million in capital investment generated and 438 jobs thank you for your support this is all due to your efforts so let's everyone have a hand i think this is a good start for 2024 i'm excited about it i don't know about you but we have stolts air technology systems we didn't put their capital investment numbers on there because we want to ensure that they're okay with us releasing it to the public but we also engine tech north america their incentives were approved by city council and so we have estimated 5.7 million capital investments line art theater and south wire what's not included on here is core scientific's new deal it's a 6.1 million billion or billion i think it's a billion actually deal of course scientific has least space from the city a few years ago for data mining they kind of had an up and down uh flow of other business operations they went bankrupt and then they were they came back online but it was a slow start but now they are renovating their facilities and expanding and we'll lease it out to a large user and so we're excited about it and the capital investment amount is estimated at 6.1 billion dollars and 300 jobs so if you add that that's a little over 700 jobs that we've created for the city of ditton our upcoming opportunities for last year 2023 staff structure we had erica sullivan our economic development program administrator christina davis business development program administrator matilda leeden economic development specialist leading the department last year after the former director left in october they were just kind of managing the department on their own there was a an economic development analyst at the time and then he left and so it was a small team working on economic development projects this year now we have a full staff you have myself that joined in march christen feluto who joined in november of last year main street program manager if you can recall the department did not have a mainstream manager solely focused on downtown but that was in partnership with downtown main street association where a mainstream manager was brought in to our department and we also have clay parker now who his position was formerly a business analyst and now has been transformed to business recruitment specialist and so we have a full staff and we're ready to go for next year we also work closely with development services charlie rosendahl business services manager we work with him all the time anytime that we have a prospect visits where company's coming in for a site tour we bring charlie in to go over their development services program where their their processes because as you know it's not always as easy right so he's able to break it down for them to let the prospect know how how quickly and easy they will get their permit and he was actually instrumental in getting wing launch at the loop 288 walmart and help them do the permitting process so very thankful for charlie also we owe big thanks to venice exparsa administrative assistant number two because she helps us get all of our boards uh coordinated our catering she gets our minutes on our documentation she does everything and this is only she manages multiple departments so we're very thankful for her and carly also she's been helping out as well we get one more i'm sorry the one with the businesses on it it'd be good to see the economic impact of that if we have a summary like that okay it's like the s usually your same model saying this is the economic impact i like it all right this is i mean that's really to me it's more important than the capital investment too even right it's like that's interesting but this is what it's going to do for dinner i think that needs to be the tagline right at the end of the day yes you can put that up there i like it thank you so opportunities for uh next year recruitment strategy we're working on a recruitment strategy uh right now we're identifying sites we already have a few sites available if you go to downtown tx uh dot org right dot org there's a list of downtown properties but we're constantly thinking of ways to redevelop and areas to redevelop and working with those landowners so our key targets for next year where we're actually going to reach out to these prospects will be around retail entertainment um fast casual was a recommendation by christen paloo there our mainstream manager because where is there is there a spot where you can go downtown where you can just grab a food item right where it's quick yeah there's there's a lot of sit-down restaurants but is there any fast casual and we're not talking about franchises we're thinking of unique concepts housing the downtown master plan recommended 1500 units and so that's something we're looking into i think town homes downtown would be would be great i would personally look into something purchasing one of those uh catalyst projects uh we there's a few catalysts that are recommended one of them that i'm most excited about is a redevelopment of city hall west the city owns that property and also owns a parking lot behind it as well and so there's a lot of opportunity with um development services there's also the cross timbers site that is for sell um directly behind development services so there's a lot of opportunity in this area and we've had a few developers reach out to us we've toured them at city hall west and so that's something that we are going to start working on a q1 of next year and of course growing our existing businesses there are tons of small vendors and we have a large entrepreneur ecosystem here so we want to make sure that we're supporting those businesses and maybe supporting them to get into brick and mortar facilities and the current vacancy rate is 5.2 percent recruitment strategy for industrial next year we're really going to hit the emails hard at linkedin profiles where we're directly reaching out to company executives clay parker or business specialist will be leading that effort and so we are identifying companies right now to start reaching out to based on this our site availability we will attend the verticon aviation conference and q1 of next year that is held in dallas if anyone would like to go please let us know i think we have two free passes that we can let you into so if you're interested let us know again we're monitoring our start database continually updating and then we'll continue working with our partners our universities we're still working really closely with unt to build a u.s ecosystem here making sure that we are a landing pad for some of those companies that want to come into the u.s or maybe just start their their u.s company so that we are working with the research and development department and with dr harrison keller that just joined on board i think that he'll be supportive of some of those efforts and then we're working with the airport ryan adams the director we're looking at land around the airport to recruit prospects in and again we're working with him on u.s innovation projects we're continuing to work with dme with all their efforts with with data centers and electricity in general there's a lot of opportunity there and of course working with our partners jamey adams at edp stoke dmsa the downtown management is uh did i get that right downtown mainstream association and the chamber and the vacancy rate for industrial is 17.1 according to co-star let's talk about our challenges this is what i love to talk about i'm kidding we have quite a few boards in total we have six board boards that we report to four that are direct and two that are indirect now we love our board directors we appreciate all your support and your wisdom that you bring to our efforts it's more of the administrative side that is kind of eating our lunch right now and so we're looking at ways ideas options and we're open to hearing your ideas on how to improve the process for boards our posting turnaround time for example and this is i'm going back to the administrative side for this meeting for our january meeting for edp b we will have to go uh create a draft agenda item on december by december 23rd and then by december 30th we will have to launch the next agenda and finalize it for posting and so as you can imagine that's two weeks from now with christmas all the holidays activities that would be the following actually next week that we prepare so estimated staff time for preparing for the boards is about 20 hours per meeting for all the staff members and so it's taking time away from working on projects and networking with some of our partners and we're having to plan for the administrative side so that's just one board and we just wanted to highlight that it's it's so that you're aware and if you have any ideas please let us know we do have three town boards that we currently report to and i know for instance jeremy has probably heard my tourist presentation quite a few times he's he's our dedicate chair and he starts on other boards so that's kind of the issue that we're running into is a lot of our board members are serving on other boards too so they're hearing the same presentations over and over again so we are open to any ideas on our board structures also the dallas business journal every year releases best the top value of deals done in the dfw metroplex and so they reach out to the economic development agencies and ask them how many deals have you supported or how many deals have been passed in your city and so unfortunately didn't was not listed we did submit our capital investment numbers at that point we only had the fine arts theater and so we weren't on the list i think there was a total 18 economic development agencies but next year we will definitely be on this list and my hope is that we will be in the top three next year so fingers crossed and that is all we have questions any ideas any ideas for us to work anything that you would like us to work on next year i had mentioned to the staff in early october that the word was ups was going to remove its distribution center from dentland which they did on october the 15th so we lost over 100 drivers making over 100 grand a year plus 50 or 60 support people because they've been trying to negotiate with city then over five years to expand their facilities so they could do more automation i'd like some kind of report on what are we doing with the businesses here that are really good partners in this community to help them solve problems and help them stay here as a result one of my son's works out there and he's going to have to move because he's now located out of sherman and a bunch of the rest of them are out of the north fort worth distribution center i just have a concern where after all these new people what are we doing to help our current people that's a great question and i'm going to maybe ask jamie adams to come up here because he manages our business retention expansion program and erin maybe you want to comment that's a part of that program is ensuring that we are pertaining to or helping our existing businesses grow and stay in the in the region sorry city uh jamie would you like to comment on i know that jamie had reached out to ups but i'm not sure yeah no with ups it was on the radar and uh it just didn't seem like you know they want to stay they want to be a part of here and they wanted to press to work something out it just didn't seem like it was going to work out and so uh they were moving i think a lot of those drivers are going to fort worth a lot of them are but yeah 10 percent of them are going to sherman yeah uh part of from business retention standpoint 80 of a growth in the city is retaining businesses and having helping them expand uh this is one that we hate that we lost i don't expect an answer today yeah no no but you know it's not we've heard it we've heard that they were looking to lose uh move we tried to uh to help them address that and we didn't so um hopefully hopefully it doesn't happen again the problem was five years ago when they started talking you guys are new yeah there's your predecessor that dropped the ball but please don't drop the ball now on your successor yeah that's a long time so i think something important i didn't know that they had moved but i think something important is to analyze that and say the answer of hey there's just restraints we all have restraints in our everyday business right so that's not for me personally it's like hey we got to figure those out i'd like to see her answer of what what those issues were why we couldn't overcome those and then look at that on our business moving forward on our other businesses were they really big enough that we couldn't or did we not allocate the time and they just have a real answer to that right and that was five years ago yesterday who cares you know because i think we can use that to build on as a learning uh because a company like that i worked to ups when i was in college you know i would have made it through college without ups working part-time there and so those are those are things that bring value to our community help they pay health insurance they paid a lot of things my tuition that i couldn't afford when i was there so i think we really need to analyze that i'm glad you brought that up because that's that's a huge learning curve we can apply going forward yeah we'll do that just say from a larger business or a corporation i think there needs to be probably and we could help with this some understanding of steve probably the same way of how capital budget processes work in private corporations because if they're trying to put a five-year plan together and they've got capital that they have to spend on a certain budget if you say no or you become a roadblock it goes somewhere else because they're always looking they've got a list of you know 500 projects that each have an roi and they're like hey if this one i can't do i'm going to the next one i got to get my shareholders their value it just is it is what it is i just think you have to everyone who plays in that ecosystem needs to understand that um and i think you know we've had some issues you know a lot of people have helped because we escalated them where we could have lost some capital that was associated with the city so i think a lot of it has to do with how long permits take and how long we have to allocate capital and all these things can really drive uh didn't losing business versus somewhere else because they every corporation ups you know these large corporations they have a list of thousand plus probably capital projects that they have to do so if if you move all always have to do our due diligence everything it's not like saying you have to say yes but it's kind of you have to understand hey i need to get these things through in a timely matter because they have to commit so much money in a certain amount of time i think that's that's where a lot of the it's just we don't speak the same language sometimes it's a good point because you look at like a business we can move quickly right in my business i can make a decision today and it can start being implemented tomorrow i've not been involved in corporate structure like you and steve right i don't i don't understand how far ahead those things are planned and i don't think i think it'd be very hard for a city staff to understand that so an education on that that is so important so you can have a little look around the corner of it really might be that decision might have really been made three years started five years ago made three years sure and that sounds like clocking that's what made me bring it that sounds like a classic example of yeah hey we just missed the mark five years ago and that money's gone it went to some it went to four words it went somewhere else i wasn't on this committee but i was aware that they were having trouble with the city five years ago and it all had to do they were trying to expand to the east and i don't know what the problem is over there but it appears from just looking at the dirt there was a solution i don't know what it was but it appeared there was a solution but i mean this has not been they just oh my god it happened yesterday i think you're right they had money that needed to be committed and we weren't ready yeah and from our standpoint we want to make sure we go out and visit these people face to face you know one of the biggest problems you can have is you just email them or you just send them a form and ask them to fill them out we have to build relationships like what brad was saying i wouldn't know that unless we went out and visited with him and talked to him so we're going to be able to get in the door with ups and these other companies and say we're here to help we're here to be the person that helps get you with the right people to to make sure you stay and make sure you can get done what you need to get done because we're going to grow it seems like we need the distribution center here not sherman and not north for worth because it's going to be gigantic we're doing this conversation kind of reinforces your comment about time and the management you have you know i am on that in some of these videos and i do hear the same thing over and over so you don't think about it when you just hear it one time but their time is being stretched so they they can't focus right now probably on the things they really need to focus on so i think from brady and christine's standpoint to look at what really our priorities are the feedback that we're giving them right now is probably very beneficial in that regard so they can and and the committees need to have an understanding that hey maybe we need to meet once a quarter once every other month or something like that because there is so much redundancy and there's not enough material to do it monthly so dedicated next year they did a calendar it's going to go every other month essentially is that right yeah so i appreciate them looking and making that decision to do that so they can't focus on other things because the other day you only have so many man hours and the answer is not always let's hire more people so thank you thank you and i do think there's so much wisdom experience in this room that i want to hear more from you and what we need to work on i don't think we're utilizing your time as well as we should so you get to hear my screechy voice every month that's not fun and i wouldn't want to hear from you i'm sure it's it's awesome jeremy runs it but but i confess i don't know what does denik do that's non-overlapping with what you know this body does well they proved that downtown grants uh for that and they're on the ters they're specific to downtown we need to unravel some of the history there because they do the first scoring for the grant facade and sprinkler grants so we've been working on researching with legal how do we get to that point is that something that can go somewhere else so there's some additional research but their primary purpose is a specific task task force to downtown and then their role right now is pre pre scoring those grants prior to going so this is decision making but there is just the people on the committee are they have invested interest in downtown in one way or another whether it's bankers or business owners or real estate property owners and i think just they want to have they want to know information about what's going on so i think it's a good conduit for them to get that information so it is a challenge there because you want to keep those people informed because they are kind of the lifeline for downtown as well i apologize i have to step away thank you for the conversation tony has agreed to pick it up we'll still maintain quorum with that but happy holidays merry christmas everyone thank you for your engagement throughout the year and i look forward to seeing you in january i don't think there's any more questions jamie adams economic development partnerships going to give a little recap of the year also answering any questions you may have you know as we're approaching our 49th year the economic development partnership was entered in the formal agreement in 1986 so approaching 40 years on 38 years now and hopefully continue to talk about four different things over the course of the year from our investors from events we did a little bit went website analytics we kind of talked about how we're telling our story and how we're engaging with our business community and then three key plans for 2025 the private side of our partnership right now we have 129 as of december 1st yeah investors were able to grow about seven new ones this year we're in a healthy place from an investor standpoint the people who are investing are helping to grow businesses in denton from us being able to put on events from us being able to tell our story in different ways with the website social helping to recruit so we're very thankful to to our investors and hopefully continue to grow that number the second thing events over the course of the year a lot of you were able to attend some of our forums from our investor forums from our industrial round tables from our hr lunch and learns we were able to have the edp help put on 11 events this year we write at 800 people attending those 11 events i was able myself go out to about 14 community presentations i'm for hire i'm cheap i'm free but if you want me to speak i'll come to civic organizations or anything you have going on to kind of tell the story done and be able to answer questions about what's going on and rick like you were talking about those kind of events are great when people say hey i'm looking to come to denton hey i want to find out more hey we're looking to leave hopefully going out to the community presentations are really key for us and hopefully we continue to do those as the year goes on i want to share this this is the third thing talking about our website analytics i don't have a year in report i won't get that till january but it's kind of a show adapted how we changed kind of our our way in june of 2024 and we grew our website in our social media channels we made a point starting in june of 24 to our social channels tell the story of what's going on then where the community events would be our investors whether it be businesses coming to town by doing that and being more active from the website standpoint from our social channels this is website numbers will grow about 61 percent in users over that three months over from q2 to q3 new users like i said the focus of those areas we're just telling our story promoting our website so when people are looking you know we talk about recruitment a lot but like i mentioned earlier 80 percent of business that grows in a community is from retaining and expanding those businesses we're telling our local people in denton city of denton denton county dfw texas about what's going on in our great state so providing tools and resources on our website is very important when you look down the links people are going to interactive map that economic put together along with tool kits that we have and so hopefully helping to help people not only be here in denton but to grow and then the fourth thing i want to talk about you know three different big plans for 2025 you know once again business expansion is number one making sure we keep as many people as possible we've been dealing with a lot of them help them find a space or help them find some space to grow and expand and take care of them but there's there's that relationship that we need to build throughout the city and making sure that we we do business expansion and grow that program uh something simple little program maintain our investor base to me that's that's first and foremost that we're growing it make sure that everyone who is investing in our need to be paying that money feels that they're getting something out of it everyone we talk to wants something different whether it's events whether it's networking whether it's uh just engagement from our from our weekly emails uh making sure we take care of our investors and more events Aaron and I have talked a lot and in 2025 we hope to have a great staple of forums of round tables to speak to um we got one if they worry about it there's intelligence hopefully i don't want our water i really say just grow it's internal workforce but be on the lookout in 2025 but the end we want to be engaged at there you go see about any questions that you guys have or any points one thing i just it's kind of a breaking point too i think we can work on is if you want to talk about maybe how to work with boards in general everyone being more efficient is kind of like the question i asked about like well what's the bottom line right we make this much economic value it's like what are the two or three main drivers or metrics that we really need to be paying attention to right that and then you can report out on those in a more standard format you obviously have a little color behind something but that it just makes everyone more efficient right if they're it makes you more efficient setting up power points it makes you ever makes you know and it makes us all on task as far as like hey these are my kpis this is how we're driving if we're not hitting one for the hit you're hitting ones in the green you talk about it you're hitting ones in red you need to you tell us what we're doing about it right so um maybe just something to think about i don't know in general i just like i was thinking about you know the marketing metrics if i don't have anything to compare that against it's not it's like me watching a cricket game i know nothing about cricket so you couldn't tell me if the cricket score was good or bad i wouldn't know right because i just don't have a contact so maybe you need like a sister city to bounce it off of or compare it to you got to give you know some some context so you kind of say hey we're doing good we're winning are we winning or losing are we on track not on track if you start if we start thinking about stuff more in that way i think we can all be more efficient right since we're all on the same page of what we're going to see this is what we're tracking this is the goal like maybe it ties back to the strategic plan that we that we all had or had the consultant come in just some just general advice i think it'll help make everybody more efficient because you know exactly kind of what you're going to get going in and y'all know exactly what to so a lot of your time is probably creating stuff or trying to guess what we want if anything like anything i deal with for anyone though that works right so just maybe get some of that out and be helpful just a thought on can i start going back to what we talked about a minute ago if a company is having an issue with your development department and let's say in that case with ups it was five years in depth then someone in the city is aware of that because they they probably went to the development department or whatever the the stopping point was in the city i think there should consider at least can we have that person come to here on a regular when there's an issue or some kind of roadblock that they're dealing with and they're gonna have to based on their current parameters they have to tell that business no we can't do it they at least were informed about it and see if there's a way to work around it i mean if we're economic development i mean the key to that i think we talked about is retention and then we work on the growth and it may not just be the development the head of development it could be another department that that's the issue on so i don't know maybe we come up with a de minimis employee count whenever there's a business that is here with x number of employees or above and there's a decisions being made that that gets presented here one way or another from that department head just let me consider great and that's essentially a vre program too because when you're going out talking to prospects um you want to be able to collect qualitative data and report that back and so at the end of the year they can say these were the top challenges uh workforce or it was you know maybe supply chain at some point that's what happened in corpus christi when i was there um but that's our role as economic developers is we have to wear both hats is the city hat development services right and then also the business hat because sometimes you're right the development services folks are not always thinking of what business uh folks are thinking about and so we have to be kind of a liaison between both and so that's what the re um that's what your very progress for but i get that but if but on with jamie and him going out talking to random businesses you know he may or may not he's like hit every business in debt right so if he didn't hit ups when they're having that issue and ups comes to the city or did come to the city in this instance if that's the case or not we don't know then the city has that information not jane right so there needs to be an avenue for them to inform this committee because there may be another way to get around it we may still get that done but there may be an incentive to help get that done once your point there's those of us that do business in lots of other cities i got a pnz meeting today and whether right this afternoon and how other cities are doing things or maybe peter built's been through an experience at another factory that said hey there's some incentives out there there's some guys in from ohio yesterday looking at it and they were explaining to me how some things are done there that i never thought of they were genius and so there's experience in the room that maybe we can offer up some outside of the box value and that but if we don't know we can't you know we can't apply that so i think to your point this it makes sense for us to spend a quarter million dollars to bring 20 jobs to dens does it make sense to spend a quarter million dollars between jobs and debt and i don't know if those numbers are right i'm just an example but that's the point i'm trying to make and it seems to me it'd be a lot easier to keep someone than it would attract someone because if i'm going to move every city in this if i want to move to texas every city in the state of texas competing and i'm big enough so but if i'm already here then i'd rather stay here if it's possible in general people want to stay because it costs a lot it's got to be pretty pretty start i just want you guys to see if there's a way that we can get feedback or input from other departments in this committee so that we know when those issues come up above a certain employee count or whatever whatever you guys think is a good metric to follow there absolutely is i think like we'll leave this and go look at data like pull denial reports see is that 5 000 or is that 200 like figuring out what is the right mix of information and how does it align with maybe some of the larger employers or ones that are having retention issues that way we can narrow it down but i think we can look at we're all on the same thing so that's certainly information okay thank you thank you hello everyone i'm matilda weeden and i'm going to be preventing this economic trends report i'm also sick so excuse me this is for last quarter july august and september of 2024 and i presented this back to you guys in september with the previous quarters numbers so first off we have residential permit values is a three-year comparison with green being 2024 september rounded out with 29 million dollars in permit values you can see some of the big peaks are from subdivision type development where there's multiple homes being built at once i believe last time i presented this somebody asked if this includes multifamily it doesn't but it does include things like town homes or duplexes which are not like a big apartment complex moving on to commercial permit values green again is 2024 in september we ended with 74 million in permit values this graph does look a bit concerning with zero dollar values in certain months i asked for further clarification on this and it accurate some months we have zero permits so it equals zero dollars that doesn't mean we're not working on development services isn't working on things it just means sometimes the process takes a while so we don't permit that month if we were to include non-tax paying entities like churches or schools in this number then every month would have a permit value but they don't pay taxes so we don't include them in this number and then the big spikes in 2022 or more covid related projects that had been pushed back that finally got to be passing through the finish line so then the next two years 23 and 24 it kind of settled down moving on to sales tax collection this time the present year is in red not green in september we finished with 5.2 million in sales tax collection which was higher than last september and then july's numbers were also higher than last year and then august stayed about the same i don't know about you guys but i'm excited to see next quarter's numbers with october here we're looking at the unemployment rate in denton green is 2024 and then here it's a little hard to read but this chart at the bottom compares us with the county the state and then the national level so last quarter our unemployment rate was higher than in years past but this can be attributed to several things like election uncertainty in the summer we always have fluctuation because of students and then our teacher educator population there are more people in the job market so there was more competition so that's just some of the explainers for that this slide is still my favorite the cost of living index in this data set 100 means average so denton cost of living composite index is 97 this past quarter which means we're three points below average kind of meaning that we're an affordable city to live last quarter we are at 99.9 so our cost of living actually went down planos ohio so 108.9 this is just texas by the way so planos ohio's cost of living city that participates in this research at 108.9 and then harlington is 82.2 so lowest about 20 points below average you can see on utilities this summer council approved the utility rate increase our utilities did go up and our our utility index went up but you can still see compared to our other cities in texas we're still doing really well and are below what most of their indexes are and then our housing also went down i wanted to point that out last quarter we our housing index was 100 in this quarter it's 91 so with more forming complexes coming online and different housing developments being completed and more options our cost of housing has gone down this is the same data but compared to other cities in the us um decatur illinois is the lowest cost of living place to live in the us at 79 as their index this is a very rural area and you can see their housing index and their goods and service and probably skewing that composite their cost of housing in that area is very much less than new york manhattan at 499 um just to remind you again 100 would be average so new york is almost 400 points above average um another thing i wanted to point out is i've included some other college towns like kalamazoo and oxville waco they all have a lower cost of living than us and then my favorite thing that i've noticed on this is the last two quarters denton and nashville have had almost the exact same numbers so the next few slides are residential real estate information from the greater denton wise county association of realtors um it's kind of similar to that of last quarter but the median home price jumped in august um but other than that they're pretty much similar with minimal changes um the active listings and closed sales for july august and september stayed about the same with the decreased in closed sales in september and then um days on market and days of close home started to stay on the market a little longer and took a little bit longer to come towards the end of the quarter and then finally for the residential section we have months of inventory september had a bit more inventory which correlates with the previous slide um especially with active listings and days on market next i have the commercial real estate um with our industrial availability this is from our site database which we worked on throughout the year we have 23 available properties and seven available lots with 3.7 million square feet and 572 acres available respectively and lastly for you i have our downtown real estate britney talked a little bit about our vacancy rate and she mentioned this website downtown tx this is the texas main street provided website for us to input data and promote available real estate in downtown so we have 32 buildings for lease in downtown and 15 for sale of those for sale we have three lots and 12 buildings and that's all i have for you if you have any questions or if you want to see something else in this report i have my pencil i'll just let you that's a good job it's good work that uh that has comparables and he was just mentioning that's kind of what i was getting at yeah very good i agree with that sentiment uh just want to make sure i'm understanding something correctly the multi-family permits for multi-family they're not reflected in the residential side they're not reflected in that there's a whole question and they're not reflected in the commercial side is that right so the multi-family isn't represented uh so there's two different like multi-family excuse me two different residential numbers there's the one with multi-family and without it made me when we saw one that included i think it was in the commercial reception is i think i think it's in there because you have that biggest spike that's got to be a multi-family so yeah it was really do the graph but multi-families in the commercial right it's included i believe so i will double check for next time you know the person driving around general you know layperson uh characterization of real estate activity is lots of apartment buildings going on so you'd expect to see that reflectives i think that's like like everyone but that's the activity so i will get a solid answer on that next time and tell you where it's included or if it's not included and why anything else thank you continue up maybe yes uh so what i heard a lot from today is the only items we have right now on the next agreement is in january we'll be bringing forward our economic development partnership agreement and jamie has done such a good job i know we talked about in january when we made that amendment we brought him on board he has brought so much data and dug in so we'll be renewing that contract what i'm hearing though in general is maybe bringing forward work plans where we talk about what we're focusing on and making sure we're aligned with what the board wants to see and then i heard your item about ups a lot that is a future work session i have to bring back kind of the after action what potentially would have run then any other items um you can let the chair know or let you know tony and we can work with staff to bring those forward yes sir i would like to take a look at um the number of food trucks that impact what do we want to do there just the more i think about it right i don't know that we're getting our right amount of sales tax i don't know if you don't know there's one commissary kitchen that corners the market for everybody right so i'm curious i want to make sure that's functioning well and then from a just a goal do we want to take a position in any way about just throwing the food trucks in place and calling it done and that effect on brick and mortar restaurants and dollars spent and that sort of thing it's just a low barrier to entry and i at the airport it's done great i hear great things from people that makes sense but do we want to be more intentional about that from a from a strategy standpoint uh so that's a great one and we were having that conversation offline with staff and trying to figure out which floor to kind of start with is that zoning or the question came up as we look at halloween there were few trucks that came in to are we collecting that sale are they reporting the sales tax and then so yes that's on the radar and that's a really good one to talk about so i will add that one thing i would say about future agenda we're here to support you guys right so a lot of boards i've said all in the past and this one has been this way a little bit it's all an update right so i mean we sat in here listening to the update i could just read the package and not show up to the meeting and so i would just keep in mind that we're in a place of support we're here giving our time because we think we have some value and if we don't we shouldn't be on this board or even waste our time with it so i would recommend you guys as a group say what are your challenges and bring and allocate some time to discuss those specific challenges and get to less of an update then and let's tackle some challenges right because that's where we feel fulfillment to be honest with you i want to get here get something done i just if i just sit in here and listen to an update i mean it's i gotta go to this meeting listen to something but if we feel like we bring value then it's more engaging right and plus maybe we can solve some problems so that would just be something i love that then i'll just go ahead and throw an agenda out for you we put in the budget we want to do an incentive study and we've talked about it making sure we're competitive to the incentive tools we have so we're working on what what do we want to look at so i think that's a credit one to bring back in january and talk through here's where we're seeing our competitive issues what else are we missing what else should we put in that scope and keep you along the way of the incentive study that's good any other thoughts or questions for staff before we adjourn happy new year thanks for great new year we appreciate you all happy new year merry christmas to everyone thanks for all your support this year come in these meetings and thank you the staff as well so unless there's other issues or other comments i'll take a motion to adjourn so i'll move all right thank you guys