Jan 08, 2025 Economic Development Partnership Board on 2025-01-08 11:00 AM

All right good morning everyone I have just after 11 o'clock and I believe we have established a quorum so we're gonna go ahead and start the meeting it is 11.03 on Wednesday January 8 2025 we're gonna start with the review of the ADP board minutes any questions for those that were for those minutes that were shared if no questions I'll receive have a move and a second second any discussion around them hearing done everyone a favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed so carries thanks everyone let's move into item B which is 24 - 0 8 9 reappoint members at EVP and to the to the downtown Economic Development Committee any questions on that this is a reminder of the dedicated committee of this board so we are you do oversee the dead at board directors and so Vanessa and the exhibit had listed more members that are seeking reappointment so Scott I believe it could be one appointment and then also we're asking you to vote nominate a chair from this board to serve on the dead at committee and that's something that Jeremy Pikes was serving on for the past year and you may recall last meeting possible and so anyone that's maybe willing to serve on the dead at core as chair for the room next year that's what we're seeking to vote on - any questions on that just because you've knocked off your nameplate so no one can see consideration all right so first do we need to do first the the board members and get it for the reappointment I'm sorry and then from that choose or nominate a chair that appropriate reappoint the people who are eligible for reappointment and then their vacancy thank you okay so three steps is that right first is recognizing voting for reappointment of those who are already established and those names are on the monitors at this point so each member needs attendance requirements for reappointment so Peggy caps Hank Dickinson Rita Maloney with the county and Brock McKnight are seeking reappointment thank you is there a second to that thank you I'll bet you do and any discussion on it all right if ready to vote all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed that that carries thank you for that and then the second is to nominate folks to continue the urge to fulfill like chair has to be a member of this body so the first four were second year reappointments those two it sounds like those are also reappointments another motion to reappoint the people to continue that term okay all right so that's Jill and Pearson Kristen rather so I'll take that again second thing Jeremy any questions or conversation around it hearing that all in favor say goodbye but signify by saying aye aye any opposed that carries as well and how many do we need for completion of that board nominees we've successfully renominated so we've addressed the the board needs and now we need to identify and nominate a board chair from that and that comes from this board thank you all right the chair will accept nominations or that I'm not doing this but you can nominate yourself right yeah yeah I think I might even return the favorite Tony's I might even know what I tell you this is my last meeting when you meet it's the every other month I believe the next meeting for daddy is in February it's the first I'm sorry every six is every other month the first Thursday Thursday Thursday the first Thursday at 830 and it's usually for an hour in the morning a third background she was we're looking at ways to consolidate as you recall what we discussed last December we have four boards direct economic development board so we have three downtown boards that we're working with right now and we some of our the content that we're presenting every month is repetitive and so this position it may depending on how the board consolidation looks it may not be the full year right there's other members willing to I'm sure serve us maybe fill in during those meetings if you can't make it we have a nomination by your second it's in this same room break you're comfortable with the nomination thank you we'll move forward with a vote all in favor of nominating rec who has agreed to participate as such signify by saying aye aye accepting you know objections no objections noted thank you we appreciate you stepping in and Jeremy thank you for serving as well thank you all right that was supposed to take 15 minutes and it felt a lot longer but I think we're done with it thank you all all right work session we're ready to go into all right we'll begin the work session with the item a EDP 24 - 0 and 9 0 Erica Sullivan will be presenting this well Erica gets ready I had a couple of folks asked me what the other person looked like and the other person looks like my dermatologist so always bet on the dermatologist and any direct consultant good morning my name is Erica Sullivan I'm the economic development administrator here at the city and I'll be giving a joint presentation today with Paul Sherman he's the economist from impact data source so I'll be conducting the first part which is a presentation and he will follow with a live demonstration of our impact model so impact dashboard from impact data source on it is an Austin based company it's an economic development modeling tool that's fully customizable it allows us to perform economic impact analysis to see over here as well as an incentive analysis period prior practice we used a formula from UNT Center for economic development research that anticipated those spin-off effects but this is much more detailed and provides much more information which we're going to go into some of the key inputs that staff puts into the model or jobs the average weighted salaries the NAICS code capital investment we include other things like sales tax sales tax spending a number of truck nights they might be spending for to estimate hotel occupancy taxes for example and so the way the model works is you have an event so it's either a contraction of a business or it's an expansion or a new business locating we're going to focus on the newer expanding business so you'll see the economic impact here which is the direct impact today we're using Southwire also called project orange which we approved in the fall as an example project so the direct impact or the direct jobs are created by the project so in the case of Southwire that's 95 derived jobs so then you have your indirect impact and you're induced these are your ripple effects or spin-offs so indirect as a jobs and sales output companies supplying goods or services to the new expanded industry if they hire a consulting firm or they hire a CPA for example induced impact the jobs and sales output created with an employee from the new expanded job spends their money at another establishment so in this case we have an expanded manufacturing facility they might be spending money at a restaurant and then that restaurant hires employees so those together is our spin-off and that's 64 for a total of 159 jobs and they use a rims model from the Department of Commerce to come up with the multipliers for both the number of jobs and for their wishes and then the fiscal impact is a tax revenue generated by the project so that would be your sales or indoor property and that's why the businesses and the households that are created from the employees that are relocating so then the fiscal impact also includes and we that's one of the things we really liked about this model is the cost for utility and governmental services particularly since we have debt municipal electric our own municipal utility so fiscal impacts we'll go over the benefits a little bit more detail so the public tax revenue we talked about ad loan or property tax sales tax sales tax can include a number of different things so you have sales tax that they a taxable spending from the business that taxable sales that they generate hotel occupancy they also are spending money while they're staying here sales tax purchasing items while they're here gas and food other public revenue so utility revenue franchise fees building and permit fees now we look at the fiscal impact cost after we looked at the benefits the cost providing municipal services and utility services and of course the incentive so the property tax abatement or rebate so ad valorem sales tax that could be a Texas direct pay permit for the construction of the facility or it can also be the sales tax cost share they generate and then DME our municipal electric utility growth rider so that's a five-year demand charge billing that's reduced from 50% for the five-year period at 10% decreasing and then we have a cash incentive so through our catalyst fund we can offer relocation expansion our new headquarters grant we can also do our job based grant residency bonus and then infrastructure so utility line fine for water and wastewater plan lines and here we're going to get into the model and into summary sheet a little bit and Paul will go into it in more detail but the net benefits that's from the business or workforce you look at the additional revenues created so it is a less the incentive and the government services and so the net in general should be positive if you see here over the ten-year period you've got a chart as well as on my hand side you've got all the benefits listed out and you also have it in your backup materials but the net benefits less incentives is in yellow and then the net benefits are orange and you'll see that's about the chart there and on top here as well so it's 1.7 for that 10-year period for this project for the net benefits less the incentive and so we have the rate of return and payback period and keep in mind that this is quantitative right we have qualitative things we look at as well fine arts is a good example of that but right now we're focusing on the quantitative so the rate of return the larger the rate of turn generally the better it is for the city and the payback the shorter the term the better is so in this particular project we had a rate of return of 22.9 percent and a payback period of 9 years which is ideal so if you see the chart over here you can see that the cumulative net benefit and the total incentive in that Nexus where they meet that's your payback period and then I'm going to hand it over to Paul Sharon who's going to do the live demo and then we'll both be available for questions when we tested you Paul can you hear us Paul can you yes yes I can how's it going we're gonna turn a demonstration over to you now ball okay cool let me see if I can get do you want me to share the the slides or you have those that you're showing we've done the slides it's just the demo so if you could just share the okay yeah okay all right so I think you can see that so I just to let you know I couldn't hear earlier I can hear you now so I apologize I know generally what went through on those slides but I don't know exactly what was said and maybe questions that were asked but I'll just kind of go through what we're looking at here with impact dashboard in the actual app so one of the outputs that you saw was the summary report for the city of Denton so that's kind of the page that we're looking at here we're in the software impact dashboard it's set up where you can get different iterations or different scenarios for a particular project so this is our project orange slash south wire and it this the one that we're looking at is called scenario one the selected one here right now again we're on our reports tab and we're on the kind of one page summary report from the perspective of the city of dent this this project included aspects of an existing company planning and expansion right now we're showing the results that zero in or focus on just the expansion impact you have the ability to kind of take the broader view to say what's the total impact of this company if we were to include the expansion as well as the company's existing activity so kind of that retained business but right now as we look at this we're noting 95 direct jobs and that's we're kind of clarifying that here where we say 95 new jobs at that $62,000 salary and we're clarifying the summary does not include the impact from the company's current activity which includes 324 retained jobs as well as some other property and so forth so everything we're looking at here as we present this version of the report it's just on that expansion or the new activity we're projecting the impact over the next 10 years that's just kind of a variable that depending on the circumstances you can adjust but again these blue boxes in the upper right hand corner are kind of capturing those economic impacts as we think about impact dashboard there's the economic impact which will drive the fiscal impact and then from that point you can analyze different incentives so these blue boxes in the upper right the economic impact with the 95 jobs 63 spinoff did this was information that was on the slide go ahead yeah okay sure go ahead just in regard to the 90 plus new jobs how many employees does that actually translate out to is that 95 full-time jobs or is it a series of part-time are these benefited jobs yes it's 95 benefited jobs it is full-time jobs okay okay thank you thanks when we don't have full-time we use to part-time for a full-time equivalent okay yeah and it can that's a good point to clarify on a given project I would anticipate in most of these situations like I think this is a manufacturer we're probably going to be talking in terms of full-time positions and I don't know if it comes up in the indent and but I know for some of our other clients if we're looking at other types of development like a retail and restaurant and you're kind of trying to run something like through here there are going to be a higher number of part-time and so you can either reflect for example the head count of jobs so if that's full-time then that that's truly the head count but it would be reflected maybe in the average salary so this is kind of saying that 95 and the average across with 95 would be $62,000 per year when you see like a retailer a restaurant project that you put head count where the head count includes a lot of part-time folks you might see an average salary that you know maybe 17,000 or 20,000 or something and that just reflects the fact that there's a lot of people making you know part-time wages there but in this one we are talking about full-time folks at 95 again I apologize if I'm kind of retreading some of the things that were mentioned in the slides the 95 direct jobs will from our modeling is going to support an estimated 63.8 spin-off jobs so spin-off we're just saving some characters there that includes the indirect and induced impact so if we were to write that out it should really say indirect and induced but we're lumping it into say just spin-off indirect being jobs supported by suppliers for this business so the local supply chain the induced representing the workers spending so when these 95 workers get paid their salary they're going to go re-spend some of that money in the community and supporting restaurants grocery stores and all that sort of thing so in total we're estimating the total employment impact from the expansion to be about 159 jobs let's call it we're noting the average salary just to kind of show the quality of jobs so to speak so the average worker makes direct worker makes about 62 or almost 63,000 spin-off workers make a little bit less across the average of all of the workers the 159 it's about still about 61 almost $61,000 per year the other note that we make here is capital investment of almost 70 million dollars as we think of just the new buildings and FFME investments as we go over to this graph here this is where we capture that fiscal impact and it's almost easier to kind of take this in chunks the first step that we're going to be doing is looking at the benefits the cost and then boiling it down to the net benefit so the benefits really represent those additional revenues that we're estimating for the city so in the case of the city of Denton that includes some local sales taxes that are that the city will collect different amounts of property taxes and then some other revenues kind of related to utilities and some other things that's the benefit part of this as we look at this graph here the dark blue bar is showing us that benefit so as we kind of go across here you see this dark blue bar every year we add up all of those dark blue bars that's this five point six five point seven million in net benefit or excuse me in benefit the costs in this case are really reflective of just what we think of as costs to the city so we've got two of them in this case the cost of government service of kind of municipal services so police fire EMS those sorts of things as you have a new business coming in or I guess in this case an existing business expanding you have the potential for an increased demand on city services you also have the potential for workers filling those jobs that might relocate to the city and so that would be some residential costs to provide services to those new residents so that's kind of what we're reflecting here we're taking a look at in the background this is information that we update kind of on an annual basis we're looking at the city to try to understand from the general funds perspective what are the types of services that the city provides and then coming up with kind of a marginal cost for the city services to new businesses or to new households and so that's the reflection of what we're capturing there the other cost that's listed here for the city would be this cost of utility services this is intended to represent city-owned utilities so if we're trying to identify not only the you know the revenue that the city will collect from the increase in this company using more electricity more water and more solid waste and sewer services but also the fact that there's going to be a cost for the city to provide those services so that's what we're reflecting there so it's a lot of our clients you know you could kind of look at this and say well there's city-owned utility revenue coming in and then there's city-owned utility costs going out and so the net there this is a lot of flash but there is a little bit of a net as we're capturing here and so that's what we're seeing it when we see this 2.6 million in costs again going up here to just focus on these first three little icons the benefits the cost and the net benefits the cost would be these lighter blue bars that I'm hovering over now there's kind of a second level to that so we'll talk about in a second so the cost being adding up to about 2.6 million so just putting those two pieces together we get a net benefit of about three million dollars over this 10-year time period that sets us up to to kind of just say what's the value of this project now in this case we have an incentive that we're modeling which in this case happens to be just a property tax abatement in other instances if you were to do a property tax abatement and a grant or maybe some other other incentives you would see kind of different line items listed but in this case it's just a property tax abatement and the value that we've estimated for that property tax abatement to be is to be about 1.3 million dollars so we're kind of taking a look at that here in this graph we're also reflecting it up here so we see the 1.3 million in incentives and then we're backing that out of that net benefit so we're taking our three million of net benefit and if we were to give up those incentives tax abatement we get down to a 1.7 net benefit less incentive and so graphically what that's doing here is we're starting from our net benefit with the orange dot that we see each year and then we backed out that incentive amount the abatement each year and we see that abatement amount in the lightest blue here and so that brings us down to this kind of yellow diamond for the net benefit less incentives each year so that's kind of this graph is a lot when you're jumping straight to the end here where we have the you know all of these different things calculated but that's that's where we're ending up now as we think about the idea that this project is going to generate three million dollars in benefit net benefits for the city and that will accrue to the city over this ten-year period this orange line is giving us a sense of that cumulative net benefit over ten years so by year ten we're stretching up there to three million dollars now this tax abatement that we're considering in this case is getting modeled for each year there's a certain amount of taxes abated and so in year one we can see the value of the abatement is about 195,000 in this little box down here it's a little hard to see and then in year two it's a hundred and eighty one thousand in year three it's a hundred and sixty six and so on but across if we add up all of the incentive it's the 1.3 million that we're noting here we're also reflecting it here with this dash reference line and what we're trying to consider here is where does that line intersects and the cumulative net benefit and the total incentive and in this case we were kind of marking it for us at two point nine years so that's telling us that go ahead I want to interrupt just pause for a second in case anybody has any questions or any further demonstration questions yes yeah this is a you know very slick and full framework I wonder if two things one is is there like a discount factor for what percent of the new jobs you assume won't result in residency here you know I mean not everybody moves directly to debt and right it could be saying or a fire bound or wherever you know outside so which would affect both the cost of services you know and the tax revenue that's one question that that's right yeah so I'm gonna jump around a little bit so if we go back we're gonna be able to plug in when the jobs are created so we have this 95 jobs it's actually 19 jobs in year 2 and 76 jobs in year 3 the next question we have is what percent of those new direct workers will represent a new household moving to the city and in this case we're using I'm guessing this is our baseline default that we build in there for cases where you don't just have more information so this is something that can be adjusted depending on the circumstances but at a baseline we're plugging in an estimate that it might be about nine percent of those 95 workers would represent new households that means that most of the jobs are either being filled by existing Denton residents or people who commute to the city of Denton to work there so they don't necessarily live there but they live close enough and they'll just commute to fill some of those 95 jobs so if we go to again I'm gonna jump around a little bit here we have in our detailed report the the number of new residents in the city of Denton sorry workers who will move to the city this first one being the 8.5 we are capturing a few spin-off as well so in total we're capturing out of the hundred and fifty eight total new jobs being created about 14 worker households moving to the city and then as we assume that each household might just might have you know maybe two and a half or 2.6 residents per household that's going to drive a total population or total new residents in the city 36 37 there that's an impressive level nuance built in that's cool question was just whether you're you have any experience of and is there any structure for you know tracking how much of this comes comes true you know over time at least the parts not so much the some of them some of it would be very hard to track right the new residents part but I mean the enterprise specific you know tax revenue and so on is there any kind of you know tracking over time to see if it bears out yeah right now I'm so it's come up in the context of maybe a in another city where the the company didn't hit their goals and they're in the position of a clock clawback and so then we need to go back and say this is what was projected and expected and then this is what actually happened and so we've done that sort of thing the the the thing that I would suggest and typically when a when one of our clients is using the model for this sort of thing there's usually if when I say this sort of thing when they're sorry when they're using the model to do in it to estimate the impact on an incentive or the rate of return on an incentive there's usually an agreement and the agreement is going to dictate the company needs to invest whatever if it's six seventy million dollars and they need to hire ninety five workers by this point in time and those are usually the big things that are going to be driving this in this case the other kind of element here is this idea that this investment will come on to the tax rolls at a certain value and drive the property tax so those would be the things to follow up on and I think a lot of times depending on the incentive agreement and the type of incentive that would be you know what you are checking in on with the you know the performance of the projects of speaking those performance reports so we also have and as I look at this one we also have a return on investment report or net revenue report that tracks all that information and like he said everything's in the contract the other thing that I'll point out if we step back on this when I look at net benefits of three million I want to understand where is that coming from what are we depending on to happen and so kind of a important step of this is just trying to drill in and say okay well a lot of it a million almost comes from real property and one point seven comes from FF&E so those are kind of our major major moving things there's some back and forth with utilities as we see here and there's some other calculations that we do around franchise fees and you know other tax revenue that we estimate but the the major thing that's driving that three million in this case is really the property tax aspect of it so in that case I would ask myself you know you know is our agreement kind of solid around well they have to invest this property and do we feel good about those any other questions before I also talk very fast right now and so I want to make sure that the chair are you okay do we want to continue ask questions go through the are there any other questions not specifically on this but I have a question to them before we leave this door closed okay thanks yeah I think we had 15 minutes allocated for it we're right at the 15 to 18 minute mark on it so a couple more minutes to wrap up is that fair okay so just to kind of put a button on the incentive part we're looking at that total 1.3 million incentive or in this case relative to this cumulative net benefit we see it intersects here around year three and we calculate that it'll take the city 2.9 years to collect enough in net benefits to pay back or to cover that full 1.3 million dollar incentive we we put it in this payback framework because it's easy to think about for an abatement it's important to keep in mind that you're never actually out of pocket that full amount up front you're you're as you see here kind of paying it out over time so this is the concept of 2.9 years is just the idea that it'll take the city 2.9 years to pay the entire incentive but you're never it's not like you're out of pocket the 1.3 million up front necessarily at least the way that this model or this incentive is modeled the other calculation the kind of key calculation here is this rate of return and we're just doing simply that the annual average annual rate of return and so we're saying okay look we're gonna get three million dollars over ten years that's about three hundred thousand dollars a year on an investment of 1.3 million that's about twenty two twenty three percent average annual rate of return this is more or less just kind of a benchmark for you to think about it as maybe you compare the next project to the last project and that sort of thing so this is helpful just to kind of understand you know like is this a ten year ten percent rate of return or is it a twenty five percent rate just helping you kind of conceptualize that as well the per job incentive gets reflected here which in a lot of instances doesn't necessarily make sense you're not you're not deciding this incentive based on a job count because this is a tax abatement and it just kind of is what it is in terms of this job calculation but but it's reflected there as well just I'll click on one more screen for you on the public support tab this is where you're actually able to model that incentive so in our case we had put in fifty percent on the building and FF&E over the ten year period and so that was how we were getting that abatement value of 1.3 million but presumably if there was a question and we wanted to say well what if we did seventy five percent for ten years we could go and adjust that sort of thing I'll leave it there if there's any questions I think I mentioned the the ability to look at this either just the expansion or to kind of also incorporate the existing activity I'll click on that button real quick so we click total combined that's going to give us so to speak give us the context of the company's existing activity projected out over the next ten years as well so now when we look at our direct employment we're showing 419 and that's reflective of the 95 new jobs and the 324 retained jobs so again when you take that broader view the benefits and ever all of this kind of looks a little bit different quite a bit different in this case as we capture the ongoing benefits of the existing activity but in most cases a lot of our clients are going to want to focus on just the expansion because let's say that the incentive is just tied to providing the you know the company to to do that to kind of incentivize the company to expand as opposed to kind of you know compare it to the total value of the company there are instances I think with some of our clients where maybe it's a real retention type of project where it's all or nothing either they're gonna add this manufacturing line here in our city or they're gonna go somewhere else entirely and we're gonna lose the existing activity and so in those cases it might be more reasonable to look at the total combined but in this case I mean I think this is kind of a reasonable way to present it and it's definitely between the two options this is a more conservative way to look at it and it still shows a pretty quick payback period thank you for that presentation any questions from the board that there's no vote required on this this is for information only correct I think it's very good presentation do we do the very same thing for a city entity on your aviation representing on this board we're in the process of looking at fees as we go forward to make sure the airport pays for itself and one of the arguments I've had recently with them is they have never assessed all of the impact that the airport brings this community we don't have a clue what property tax is paid on the properties out the airport because it all goes to General Fund I'm okay with that but when we have a really big project like 35 million dollar runway we had to replace this year and this FAA pays 90% of our big ticket items how it returned to the community but the city still has to come up with three and a half million and those kind of projects our revenue has covered that without considering some of the other things like we know that this company here is here because we have an airport all these years ago that they can bring people in from Mexico and visit and those kind of things the indirect economic impact is also not measured for the City Council when they have a bill come to them for lots of money to say okay not only are they paying cash but in the future the economic benefit to this community is so large we're happy to come up with a million or two million dollars out of the general fund to support these kind of things when the airport needs money I don't think that's been looked at seriously and I'm arguing now with the airport staff and it's before the council so I'll be making a presentation there at their upcoming workshop but I think that's an issue that I want to bring up here and until this came up I didn't know how to get it on the agenda but I hope the city and I don't know of another entity in the city that generates kind of return at the airport does but I think we ought to use this very kind of thing to examine what it is. We have used this model for other departments. One of the things that I like about using impact data source is that Paul works with us to buy customized services so within municipal electric he's done a customized input output model for construction workers because that was key to the project. He's also given step-by-step instructions how to do modeling for development services when a large housing development comes in. It doesn't exactly fit but he's helped us with that. As far as the airport in the past not with this model but we've done sales tax reports going through the council to see what the sales tax impact is of that and now I'll move it to now that you know the departments to Paul if he has anything else to add about the economic impact in case you didn't hear at the airport. Yeah we we looked at it and you can probably do it I think what you're talking about is kind of the all of the activity there at the airport I think you could do something like that. We've had experience using the model to try to reflect you know a business that's going to locate at the city's airport for example and a lot of times the types of revenues that we see come through the model there will be the company having to pay like lease payments for like either a building that's owned by the city or hanger leases those sorts of revenues are new things that you would see pop up on the list of benefits. The other thing would be like fuel taxes or maybe fuel fees that are charged if the city's the fixed-base operator there that getting revenue from there's going to be a different set of revenues for example like the typical ones on a project like this are sales taxes and property taxes maybe hotel taxes those kinds of things but at the airport there's are there are some probably other revenues that might come into play like fuel fees and just other charges that are specific to sites on the airport and so those could be reflected as well either for an individual project or maybe you know which we try to look at you know the annual impact of all of the activity at the airport for example. Is the lack of that process kept the airport from growing or expanding because the City Council hasn't? Fortunately it's not because our request today the FAA funds so much that when it comes to them they're almost embarrassed to turn us down. So I guess I'm trying to I'm not just trying to reconcile what what's missing from your being able to go there. And they're raising fees they're raising I mean a hang of rents gone from $250 a month to $900 a month effective in the next few months. That's pretty hard on general aviation. Now we're gonna have more commercials because they write it off. But Joe Smith has a little trouble writing it off and the reason we've grown is because general aviation has helped us grow. I think that may be a good discussion for the second item here. Any other conversation? I just have a common question and I don't know that it pertains really to all but so how much of a factor is employee count to this model? And the reason I'm asking that is what if we have a business that needs to do a lot of expansion to stay competitive but isn't gonna necessarily add new employees but it's a decision of keeping employees that we do have or keeping 80% of those employees versus losing all of those employees. He was demonstrating that with the total combined so if it was an all or nothing when he toggles between the expansion only and the total combined that's when you recapture that information. And yeah we have different projects sometimes like for engine tech you're investing in human capital rather than actual capital so there's a different concept and I'll let Paul speak to that. Yeah it's a little bit of a judgment call I think if if your mandate or your goal in economic development is to kind of make jobs that comes into the play to play with how you'll evaluating kind of what rate of return and payback period you'll accept for a particular project when you're trying to incentivize it. The model you know as you think about you know putting different projects through here and like let's say it was a company where they're going to invest a lot of taxable party but they're not going to have a large head count well just based on the local tax structure and that's something that's a little bit out of out of our hands but based on the local tax structure you're you're gonna be driving a good bit of property tax on a project that has a big capital investment and few jobs. So that would that would show very favorable if it's just kind of a you know light head count but there are times when you know we see this with some of our clients that they're trying to get like a headquarters and it's a large head count but relatively small capital investment maybe it's just some build out because they're leasing tenants in a shop because they're leasing a building and so there's not a big property tax impact from that but there is a high number of jobs so you're gonna see a lower payback period or lower I should say on a project like that just because it doesn't have kind of the average amount of property per employee those kind of ratios that you would expect you know you know in a typical business. So the model is going to reflect that but typically higher capital investment and honestly higher taxable sales just based on the local tax structure are gonna drive higher net benefits. So there's a little bit of judgment that's needed to just kind of direct things in the way that you want right. So if you the example that I give sometimes is you know if you if you wanted to run a Chick-fil-A restaurant through here we could do that and it would show tons of taxable sales lots of sales tax revenue that'd be you know that'd be a good project so to speak from a position of net benefits but you know do we take a step back and say are we gonna incentivize a Chick-fil-A in that's not what we're trying to do here. So there is that added layer of kind of you know directing the types of projects that you're focused on which I think is kind of part of what Eric is already doing there. So are you saying that number is in there when you toggle that? When he toggles between it like if you're talking in all or nothing. So this would be the facility and the expansion when you toggles to that combined is that. So if they were going to leave all together without the incentive that's what that would capture. Yeah. So they leave all together it's what? And this is also set up for contractions that you say FEMA is going to leave and we want to see what that impact would be. So what is that 11 million net benefit versus the one million on the other? What's the 11 million show? Yeah let me flip over to this other table here. So the this table is going to show us that same information the benefits, costs, net benefits, net benefits less than cents and but it's putting it in columns in terms of what the impact that is associated with the current activity versus the expansion and this is all projected out over the next 10 years. So if we assume the current level of activity continues on for 10 years this is the total kind of sales tax, property tax, different types of revenues that it generates. If we just want to look at the expansion which is kind of where we started where it's going to generate 3 million in net benefits and then after we back out these incentives 1.7 this is just the expansion over that 10 year period. And so the total column is kind of saying okay look the company sticks around that's going to drive 8.8 million of net benefits for the city if they do this expansion. I don't understand that, that wasn't really the question but we're fine we can move forward. In this case zero jobs. My question is is a little different because from an elected standpoint right I trust staff to crunch the numbers that sort of thing right that that y'all do very well. My question would be adding to your visibility. So my question is does a tool do that and and to put that in perspective what I'm thinking is like a Yelp review meets Carfax report for businesses right. Do you have a historical look at businesses either they performed under form you use the example of one business that under perform do you archive that information to give us visibility because in an environment we're in now where you may have a startup that can present well in paper you know and and all those things but then having business records or archives or that sort of thing that then speaks to if they can because if the tool crunches the numbers I give you great numbers right I know the answers producing those producing those results is the hard part so and all they've done it in other cities productive presumably do you crawl networks do you leverage that information to understand kind of a scoring system for these businesses to the viability of them that sort of thing. Are you asking that specific business or that industry? That business so business comes to us and says hey we have one million locations we're gonna bring you one million dollars we're gonna hire one million people immediately but that same business failed to do so in eight other cities or they submitted different numbers to different cities that that sort of thing does is there a fact check component or a historical crawl? I don't think for impact data source and Paul you can I'll let you chime in but we are working on our CRM system you like you working track incentives that whenever what engine type for example we'll be able to track what we started their apple worm fact is that and track it over a 10 year period so we can measure how they actually met those criteria and Erica does as far as our compliance every year as well but we could also include sales tax dollars and other. We actually include sales tax in our net revenue reports so we do track that information we also have reference solutions we have a free membership through the library where it gives business credit rating so when we do retention visits you can get a summary from them a one page summary gives their competitors gives their information their credit rating everything you need when you go to that visit so that's key in having that information in hand. We can look at that as well like we can see other because it's a US database so we can compare with other cities you know that are comparable like a Waco because they're college down we can look at a business in another city and see as well and you can immediately get their headquarters too when you click on one button on the reference solutions. Yeah so that would be critical to me just to understand the numbers present right because if you present these it presents well that doesn't mean it's there's you know it's good to go so I I would think those two need to work in concert somehow to say before we get to this phase that other phase to kind of process the numbers understand those and then before we go if we were to proceed plugging the numbers etc. We looked at other models too. We looked at Remian and Plan and this one is more conservative in the ripple effects. You're right to your point it's underwriting the business and what they've done in other cities to make sure what we're forecasting if they have ever done an incentive did they meet the incentive in other cities. Yes yeah because that that that beef place the guy showed up the next day had business cards everything said good to go right. It was an industry too even if you Google it you're just going to see farmland because they were raising cattle yeah so that one was very hard to check. Sure sure but you know just what have we learned from that and how do we then I know we've done a lot and shirred up a lot and we didn't lose anything on that deal right but but but that's just making sure that continues to be the case. That's beyond the business too or that person or that entity it could be the industry as well so I think it goes back to underwriting the staff. You're not going to be able to pull that on whatever you're gonna have to actually do research and call and try to find that out and that's gonna be where you're going to have to do that. Yeah just a little bit more about that it's just yeah right now we're in a we're in a situation where I mean I can watch a bird on YouTube talk to me and it looks really real right I mean technology is such that you know they those that are doing bad things have stepped up their game there's and there's a reason because they're successful right and so what are we doing to continue to stay not ahead of that curve you're never gonna get ahead of it I ask the cable companies but you at least you at least try to keep up. I look at the valuation in other counties or parishes if you're looking at this to see if what they're telling me looks right. Yeah. And do we utilize this on Google too? We usually try to research and then make sure that they're legitimate. We don't want to be embarrassed and give incentives to somebody that's not legit. Sure all right good conversation we appreciate you timing in with us all. We're gonna close the conversation and certainly can come back I'm sure that we're gonna arrange this as well. No vote needed. Thank you. I think we maybe just did these in opposite sequence, is that right? So that was 91 and we're going to 90 now. That was 90 and we're going to 91. All right. Thank you. Perfect. All right so in December actually early last year we discussed completing an incentive study and so we now change the name to competitiveness study and so this session we want to get your feedback I know that's something we also discussed in this December meeting we want to ensure before we release this RP to find consultants to complete the study that we are covering all basis and so a brief overview and then we'll revert to getting your feedback. The objective of the study is to evaluate Denton's competitiveness based on top-site selection criteria considerations and provide recommendations to staff and the board on areas of improvements and opportunities and so right now we have a current deadline to submit for the consultants to submit the RP proposals on February 28 2024 and so as soon as we get your feedback we'll release it next Monday. I'm gonna skip that slide real quick. There are three deliverables that we're asking for and the number one is city comparisons. We're asking the consultant to collect and compare data based on the criteria section from cities in the Dallas/Port Worth region including Denton, Fort Worth, Dallas, McKinney, Fort Warney and surrounding counties as well as cities in other parts of Texas and the US that are comparable to our size or population, attributes, geography, demographics and other relevant factors to determine successes in recruitment of businesses and creating new jobs. The second deliverable is evaluation of existing incentives and ROI so analysis of existing incentive policies to ensure competitiveness and evaluation of existing incentive agreements and short and long-term ROI for the city's general fund. Evaluation of commercial first residential land within the city limits and tax revenue generated per acre or other metrics compared to other cities and the reason being is multiple state and county government entities on land within the city limits therefore averting Avalorum taxes collected for the city. And consideration of other development limitations including existing zoning or other factors. The third deliverable is recommendations and so the consultant will provide recommendations for improving all aspects of economic development practices, policies, developer environment and incentive structures in the city including the implementation of new facilities and infrastructure improvements if relevant and identify top trends impacting the facility location decision-making process in Texas, US and nation. So I'm gonna go back to this slide. Deliverable number one city comparisons, this is where I need your help. So these are their type, site selection criteria that we're asking the consultants to compare us to or evaluate and so number one is workforce labor availability and that's the average wage comparisons, cost of living for employees. Number two availability of development-ready sites. What do we currently have available in terms of land with ready infrastructure and existing building availability. The cost of doing business, how do we compare to other cities. That's local property tax and sales tax rates, development permit and impact fees, development timelines and other related costs. Incentive evaluation, that's comparison of our current incentives and funding mechanisms to other cities and economic development policies of top performing cities. So why do Fort Worth have a better funding incentives for or funding pools for incentives? Yes, right and so that's something that they're gonna identify how we can improve and then fiscal and economic impacts of top incentivized projects awarded to comparable cities including what not limited to revenue recovery timelines, new revenue gains, new job gains, tax base diversification and other relevant factors. Of course utilities is very important when companies are looking to relocate so we're gonna look at utility rate comparisons and access infrastructure and number six transportation supply chain risk mitigation and number seven industrial and office market outlook. So on your table you have a draft of the RFQ and if you wanted to turn to page two please there are additional considerations on there which we will either eliminate today or keep depending on your feedback. I already heard Rick that we need to add airport development policies so if you look through seven through 16 there's other considerations that we could add that's political elections, project financing, cost of capital, climate change, environment and sustainability, geopolitical risk, federal and state legislation and policy, public opinion regarding projects, diversity, equity, inclusion, quality of placemaking or other factors. I will pass this to you are you okay? Everything listed in bold is something that we would definitely include in the RFQ. Is there anything else that we'd like to consider maybe that we have missed? Yes Councilman Meltzer. Well actually prior question is are we also asking you know in the RFQ for the provider to to give us information on what the top factors are to impact site selection or refill. If you know that we just want to do the evaluations. We are it'll depend on how they evaluate top site selection criteria so I believe we pulled this from the site selection guilds their report from last year what their top considerations were but on deliverable number three and we're listening then we're asking them to list trends that they see in the site selection world. Second of three questions what does quality of placemaking mean? It could be order redevelopment standards are we is this a great place to live? Are companies are we a competitive place where companies want to really relocate their company their employees here versus Frisco or Fort Worth or Arlington? Okay so not knowing exactly what that meant it sounds like it might mean what I was saying. No I would think quality of life factors maybe that means the same thing and and it's going to be different you know different definitions of what quality of life but I know historically where the CEO wants to live has an out-size effect on the location you know may well be due to personal factors or just general quality of life offered by that location. We'll add quality of life factors CEO housing availability. I use the CEO as a way to illustrate quality of life factors matter. Couple of things I would think about as far as I wouldn't necessarily compare just to cities that are our size I would compare to cities that we compete with. Northlake is a much smaller city but we compete with them against industrial users all the time. So Fort Worth obviously the Alliance Corridor Alliance everything around the Alliance I would pick who are we competing with for Frisco's not on here. I know there's been a few businesses we've lost to Frisco because they pay per employee right that you move into Frisco. South of Dallas you know with all the industrial down there I can't remember the name of the town but for industrial we compete with those guys all the time. And it's just I can't remember and then of course around the airport we're competing for businesses around the airport back to how can we you know what improvements do we need at our airport to be able to compete with DFWs. We need a distributions industrial building that has runway access you know is that something we need because we have the whole west side of the airport to be able to do those. You're not going to get that. Yeah I'm just well you know we can't land those size planes well. No because the FAA isn't going to fund them. Yeah well maybe privately though I may go build that building right. Oh the building? Yeah the building is what I'm talking about. The runway is about all we're gonna get. Yeah so anyway there's different things that we could do. Who is our competitors? The other thing I would say is we really need to look at is what land which you mentioned in here in infrastructure but if if we have a 300 acre parcel which I currently have that we're working on developing is the sewer capacity is the water capacity enough to quickly go develop that. And the third thing I would say is not just looking at what our city reports say our timeline is to get a preliminary a final flat a building ready to go. What's the actual timelines and you know we're serving on a board right now that we're looking at all those things but look at say okay how long does it really take us from the time somebody has a pre-app to the time they can turn dirt and not not what the flowchart says. Or the time they finally walk away. Yeah because that's I know several. And so I think those those things talking with businesses are the major things right. They don't plan 24 months to get a building permit you know and you know especially raw land if they're willing to build a building you know there's you go through all the processes. So I think those are three things that I think are really important. What about development fees? Do you think that we're competitive in that nature? I think that's definitely a thing we have to look at is our impact fees which is a hot topic right now but we have to look at that and go what's the cost to get a permit in the city. And how does that compare? Again I don't know that it's I don't think our mindset can be comparable size cities it's our competitors which may not be our size. 15 years. I don't want to be negative about this whole process but I've been a den for 30 years in developing chamber. I can I don't know if I can count on one hand. It's a number of times we've done this. The last one we did was my I guess I just joined this board. You probably have it in your file. Was it six years ago? Seven years ago? I think so. I mean it was a very comprehensive I don't know what it cost the city. You know they came up here and interviewed business people and they came back with a massive suggestion. At the end of the day as Lee said every city almost every city in the Dallas Fort Worth area that we compete with big small medium. We don't compete with from an economic development standpoint because they had the sales tax they had the economic development tax. We are so underfunded compared to our competition that this almost seems like a moot point to me. We've done it so many times the results are always the same and we never do anything about it. I don't know what these costs the city to do. You know it's our revenue ability. It's our competitive revenue. It's the process that the city goes through for permitting and getting deals done. We have probably one of the worst reputations in Texas for that process for people to come in and build stuff in our city. That's been that's been the same thing for 20 or 30 years. So I guess this has to be done for five or six or seven years but it seems like it's it's like the definition of insanity you know when you're doing the same same thing over and over again and inspecting different results. To me that is exactly what this process is. As I walked out the door as a member of this board and someone who's been you know who's had kind of a front row seat to this process five six seven times throughout the last 30 years. Maybe some things have changed but for the most part it hasn't changed. Nothing's changed. Do you feel like the specific to the permitting because that comes up with most anyone trying to do work either new or extensive? You talk to developers. You talk to developers coming in from outside the city. Is it the policy side of permitting or is it the resources that we have to actually move the permitting along? To speak to that a little bit with Scott McDonald being in his position now I think very highly of him and he's working very hard to try to make some of those changes to get there and it's probably the first time since I've been doing business here for 20 years that I feel like the needle can really move and I think we got the right guy in that position to look at that and I think the other thing to your point on this you're hundred percent right on we've done this and done this and done this. I think we have to go to City Council and when City Council or whoever has to final approve this I think we need to say hey are we all on board to making some changes because Tony's right there's no reason to go spend this is not gonna be cheap this is gonna be very expensive and I just think I would like to see this presented to council and say hey guys if we get this report back is this something we're interested in looking at if councils view overall is like yeah I think we're kind of where we want to be on city incentives then there's no reason to spend the money if council goes hey yeah we're on board we want to see and we're willing to make action on these changes then let's do it but let's not let's not waste our time or money if we don't have support of our leaders. City Council just say yeah we're open to that from a political standpoint and then we get we spend the money good and they're not gonna change their mind. Well then we get them reelected. I was I was I was the treasurer in 2000 the last time I guess the only time I know of that the economic development sales tax was we spent a lot of time and money as a business community to get that on a ballot if you remember if you were here Bill Patterson was chairman of that committee I was I was a treasurer and it was destroyed by the voter I mean it was winning close when we voted for that and for whatever reason whether it was the political climate whether it was the City Council at the time did not support it but this this community said you know a very effective no to that they didn't want that development here they didn't want other people coming in to our community helping pay for that which is ludicrous man and so we sit back for the last 25 years and we watched everything around us grow Flower Mountain, Lewisville, McKinney, Crisco, Sanger you know all these communities that have this this ability to raise funds to compete and and we're just sitting here in this little bubble and we were playing with you know with with almost play money now you know we do have certain avenues for incentives but it's so far from what our competition is doing and and I'm likely if the City Council is going to approve spending this money which they've done five or six times over the last 20 years and the results always come back and tell us what our problem is and they're not going to do anything about it it seemed like as a taxpayer we're just throwing money out the door so that's all the proposal here I believe this is not for us to vote on to give recommendation to from a board standpoint is the recommendation almost to reverse engineering understand that there will be an acceptance and an action taken by the recommendations before we make recommendations to these additions that Britain is asking for I would like to say listen RFP did that right so we're not wasting council's time so respectful that and take that to council and say this is what we're about to do and then get council's feedback to say you know we support this and we're going to take action you know consider action for sure on what the results of the report are one is going to be the train right we all everybody knows where I stand on this thing and we're spending our EDC dollars there and so I think that needs to be a topic and be able to say okay are these we pretty much know what recommendations this report are going to be I mean if you remember that that study we did five six years ago yeah no I was gonna say to your point I think there probably needs to be a look back to see the changes to then answer because I think your questions valid what's changed why would we do this again right and I think credit to Brittany her staff and some others components there that give me hope now you know if there's an elephant in the room you might as well it's a pet right the council is absolutely crazy right like that what they're gonna do nobody knows right like we held up a school project for a neighborhood of 20 people right like we're gonna lose a year of a school being open Borman so that we can go back and talk to 20 people that makes no sense to me I'm on the record that that's not a shock to anybody in the room but what I'm saying is yeah so no we're not we're not clicking on all cylinders at all it's but even in spite of that I'm not encouraged by the council layout I'm encouraged there's an election every year but what I am encouraged by is that Brittany and her staff and the people that actually do the work are bringing in results irrespective of that right they that the engine tech the the Schultz people those sort of things and that was very compelling right and understanding that and so credit to them credit to and just the energy of people wanting to be indenting and that sort of thing so there's there's an organic desire to be in didn't in spite of these dollars we don't have and the other thing that kind of in that kind of review of what's changed you do have a ability to have that staffing that that human capital that Frisco doesn't have that the colony doesn't have and so you're we're able to leverage some of those unique opportunities now and that's been even more pronounced and and so I think you know grants gate is as shiny as nice as all of them but I'm hearing they're struggling during the week and booming during the weekend and and so we're all kind of fighting those same fights and so I think the ground has leveled a bit right and so then it's about being intentional about what we go after having the right staff the right tools that sort of thing but I think it's fair to say what's changed if we look at the previous and look at now and to the railroad component the DCTA train they they project now we'll see if it comes to be but next year or two they'll speed up the train and can sync up with the silver line so now and then if I can say 40 bucks a day and not have to park at DFW not have to be on the train for eight hours to get there now it begins to you know now should have been done a long time ago playing down a long time ago certainly you know but I'll have to say I think we owe it to answer the questions concerns you have Lee is spot-on with Scott McDonald he's putting out fires left and right but as we know that top-down approach isn't the most efficient but it's it's what we have right and so trying to change that culture but yeah I think there's there needs to be a breakdown of who's new in place what new policies in place for the board to consider and say okay yes or no do we feel like enough change to but but I also tell you I'll say this the money I don't know what it's gonna cost but we're $200,000 into a marijuana litigation of taxpayer money that we're going to lose right and we're gonna come back for more right we're gonna we burn through to what it came so when you talk about fiscal responsibility it's not there and so and all these things are well documented I'm just your straight shooter I'm a straight shooter just give it to you to work with yeah well I'm just leaving it this I would love for any for you to read that report and you know maybe even since a lot of these members of this board have not seen it maybe you come back with a high-level you know summary of what the previous report said our strengths and weaknesses were at the time and what they recommended just as a benchmark you know for what this report is probably gonna say the same thing but at least you know I have those bullet points I will say that one of the things I learned while working for the city of Arlington is that although the same issues will be persistent over time you have different leadership and I do think that at the CMO level Sarah Hensley the three ACM I really do enjoy working with them I think they're visionary and they want change in the city and I think that matters what I've heard in the past is that's been challenging and then City Council even though they don't always get along or see eye-to-eye I do feel like all of them want the best for the city and they do see that other cities are benefiting from sales tax corporation right other funding mechanisms that we don't have and so the way that our stuff is looking at it is the next five to ten years because as you said we're already behind right like we're never gonna catch up to what the sales tax money that Frisco has but in five to ten years we're still gonna be behind if we don't do anything about it so that's kind of where we're looking at it and yeah the same thing is Tony have you had a chance to read that last report I have not okay then I that was what my recommendation is I would like to know if you still think that is still relevant and if it's still relevant if there's if there's bullet points in there that we did not do then I would say let's address that if you think it makes sense as opposed to spending that money because we may have all the tools that we need to do right there I mean unless you think in the last I don't know how many years six seven years is what you guys are saying unless you think that field has changed that much but it sounds like we're so far off anyway if we start with the starter pack and we already have in the desk drawer that'll probably get us along the way redistribute that to the board members that are gonna be continuing so don't tag Tony with it again but so we can all be familiar with it that was right around 2021 right it was right and I think the other thing that I mean we kind of mentioned I feel like several meetings and I go to different city events or chamber events just various community events we'll have a panel of people up there they all work here none of them live here so how do we fix that I mean we'll start with the city how many of the city management office live in the city then and then we go to every employer and how many of the top level people live in the city so it's not a cross issue because those people can afford to live here why do they choose not to that's right I'm going through it right now actually I understand yeah I'll write that down all right Paul last question and then we'll wrap on this if everyone's agreeable well I think it'll surprise no one to hear that man I don't have the same wouldn't characterize council and attitudes of the city the same way all right and I'll share with you you know so obvious observations that when I counsel is elected they're elected and they're reflecting what people want you know versus the alternatives that are presented to them and I suggest to you that it overwhelmingly people go down that proposal it's because they didn't want it but what is it that they don't want and you know I'm I'm not here with a raft of statistics I've just a lot of doors that would suggest that the difference between what you know you see as obvious and what people aren't responding to is they explicitly say to me I don't don't frisco my dent they don't want to be frisco they don't want to be far around all these things that you say look at all this great stuff that's happening it's not what they want but it doesn't necessarily mean they don't want that and to develop they want then to develop in ways that are better building on the aspects of dead in bed they proceed to be special and so that then becomes even more special as they grow possible to do but you know I'll also highlight to you I don't think there's been an incentive proposed in the last five years it's been turned down so that characterization is just not born out by the facts but why is it true that you know in a council environment that you might perceive as hostile to business that they're approving incentive after incentive after incentive they're doing it because things that are brought to us reflect some you know pure economics plus some contribution or resonance with the character of Denton you know some you know they're bringing it's a little hard to define I mean you know but the things that make Denton special and you probably all know them without my saying it and they're looking for that they're not looking for cookie cutter suburban North Texas they're just not so you know the developers were smart about it and I would include people in this room no to bring things that build on that character that's it's it's hard to define but it's they're they're not just going off while the crazy they're responding to the sentiment of the voters and the more that we can find the common ground we're going to be able to move forward you know there's the support for the downtown design plans huge a couple of big distinctions you don't want to get rid of the pool neither do I but you know the center polls slated to all you're doing a great job okay so in conclusion you know I would say look for the common ground with the population there's an appetite for Denton you know getting character development okay the final request I think is give yourself an opportunity to see that report and perhaps circulated to the returning members the 2025 members of the world as well the other thing that I would just note we started off in a conversation around trying to remove some redundancies of economic development boards and I think that plays in well and the more cohesive we can be in tighter we can be in those conversations we want to agree on and can put our support behind I think that hands out in this too so anything else for us to bring to the table today we still have staff reports right we have seven minutes for staff reports on the month of December it's only one slide we attended the Dallas regional chamber breakfast and luncheon with the state economic development team and so the Dallas regional chamber invited all the economic development agencies in the region to attend a breakfast to meet with the state economic development team so clay Parker business recruitment specialist attended that meeting in Arlington and then I was invited to a private lunch with the DRC along with Sherman McKinney and Frisco to in Frisco actually to meet with the team so that was nice to catch up but they were really interested in learning more about didn't and of course it's always marketing right it's great to make those connections they're the ones that are sending us RFIs every month and we want them to ensure that they are selling didn't when they're talking to companies talking at the state level and so we also hosted a site tour a project server this was a lead that came in from a site selection firm in the Dallas Fort Worth region they contacted us at the beginning of December and said hey we have a prospect coming in can you host them in the next two to three weeks and so this is the thing the last week of Christmas clay myself and Jamie and Matilda hosted the team and they also went all over the state of Texas I think toward other cities that for a two-day period and so we're currently working on incentive proposal hopefully in February we'll be able to bring it to you for review we're working with our procurement legal and transportation departments to develop a mobility test pilots for the city the city of Austin is known for being a test bed for mobility startups and so they have assisted many EV related companies autonomous vehicle technology pilots in the city and so we're also working in that direction as well so Matilda is leading that effort and hopefully we'll be able to launch that sometime this year and on December 17th City Council approved hers one the terms one boundary and term amendment so they are on the same page so we're moving forward right now that means that we secured 50 million dollars of the next until 2041 for TERS related and Senate projects so that was that was great it was a good start so that's all for December and actually I'm Kristen if you want to quickly go over the downtown small business utility grant program sure if it's okay I'll stand here Chris and Polita Main Street program manager you'll remember back in September we worked with the city manager's office to initiate the downtown small business utility grant and so we mailed out over 500 letters we hosted in person and virtual sessions for everyone to understand how to process all of that working with the grants team we had 28 businesses that were approved for the reimbursement so it was a reimbursement up to a thousand dollars the average reimbursement about seven hundred and forty three dollars so businesses downtown received their reimbursement on their December utility bill and so we spent a total of $20,000 for that utility grant all of the downtown businesses UPS update last meeting last month we talked about what happened with UPS so I was able to speak with their leadership you know a little history they've been around on Shady Oaks Drive since 1991 it was a 30,000 square foot facility over the last 34 years they only applied with the city for one commercial alteration permit 2003 was finished in 2004 they had not applied for any alterations in 20 years they had 69 drivers at that warehouse and 50 warehouse loaders workers just general workers less than 50 in their warehouse they closed on October 7th 2024 part of the closed part of their national campaign called Network of the Future where they're closing 200 distribution facilities around the country they want to increase automation and reduce operational costs obviously they want to save some money through automation on this this was their five initiatives the one to focus on was other 200 facilities that closed around the country 70 have already been closed 200 are going to be closed and then an expansion which is kind of key here I'll talk about the second in 2028 they've got 63 automated warehouses in the country which could be hope for us one day I'll mention just a second so why they leave them had a chance to speak with Nick DeAndre who's vice president public affairs for UPS he filled a lot of these calls from cities around the country no fault they loved him they want to write the UPS ship he stayed that over and over mr. mayor he gave me a cell phone number so if you want to call him he'd love to talk to you also and let you know that you really love this the workers love their time here and then but they want to be more efficient focus on automation and their buildings for sale and they were looking for help so they were able to talk with John weather to stack and they've come back and told him that they're gonna hold on that building a little bit which leaves the door a little bit open for maybe that becomes an automated warehouse at some point but they own that building they're gonna hold on to it for a while the drivers were able to keep their jobs not though like I said the warehouse workers or loaders or whoever was working there less than 50 employees there's 69 drivers 60 went to the independence facility which is their crown jewel down a fourth automation six went to Sherman 3 went to Wichita Falls so I won't get anything else but that's kind of a recap it was asked about you know what happened with UPS was it arguing the city was the permits it wasn't any of that was just automation and they're going down that route to save some money in the future but with them holding the rights that building their hope is you know maybe they will retrofit that facility and come back that's where we are that hopefully every month we can give some updates on some business retention similar to this to give you guys some key nuggets what's going on everybody real quick I think last month my comment was that doesn't look at the issue here but going forward I still would like to get a process in place where that if there is or at least to consider it if there is a decision that a department within the city of Denton makes on a business over a certain number of employees that as that decision is being made that they bring it to economic development to discuss that so that if there's something that economic development do to kind of offset that burden this group has the opportunity to hear that and I think that department head should present that you know to explain it really why they're saying what they're saying so and that may be part of Jamie's that's probably not an immediate deal okay that's more of a long-term deal but I think it's important for city staff that's making that decision to make that presentation here because they're making decisions based on rules and guidelines that they have that only their department knows about Rick thank you for bringing the this topic forward and the last week appreciate it Jamie thank you for anything else to be brought before the board only just brief comment not to talk now but you know we talked about the uniqueness of the square we talked you know we made comments over the last six months about issues on leasing I continue to open although the paper less but whenever articles are sent to me about then then I read them can we you know balling boards gone Andy's is gone voodoo I heard is not coming that was coming before is that true that's correct so that's three buildings on the square I've heard that there's you know obviously two of those businesses have common ownership I don't know if there's future businesses are really in the square associated with that so I guess my goal or my question is is our goal to have a unique square or a vibrant square and if it's unique but vacant I don't think that's really what we're going for so I think we need to figure out how we stop or fix or help that area it is on our radar Jeremy because it is very concerning that's on a fun thing to read in the last quarter that's three we agree and so we were aware of some of the issues behind the scenes right and so we have a strategy in place that we're still kind of putting together we have a general idea what we're gonna do right but it is on our radar we're gonna start on business pretty soon and we're probably gonna look at unique businesses right that are going to ensure that we keep our eccentric nature downtown that probably have a larger capital step behind them but regional and general that's something I'll do that it's a really good point and I would imagine those decisions yeah in the paper it's becoming it's a trend let's figure out what's causing that trend and if there's adverse factors that are affecting those businesses people don't want to go there my personal shopping patterns I don't go downtown much anymore and I can't really explain why that is but it's something we need to address and I want to support it and probably more than anybody next year any other completely take your point I just just have one data point and said I understand for brilliant board there's another one behind it so that won't be naked but I don't know if the situation is just in the paper yeah yeah this week anything like they have to go yeah all right it is 1233 we'll adjourn at this point thank you everyone Tony thank you for your service on this board appreciate you