as my vice chair or whatever committee so welcome to economic development partnership board
it's wednesday june 25th we do have a forum so we will call the meeting order at 1106
now begin with presentations from members of the public if any
same guy all right i guess all right we'll now continue with items for consideration
we'll now begin with the first item item a which is edp 25-016 consider approval of the economic
development partnership board minutes for may 14 2025 i think everybody received those prior to
meeting were there any questions or comments motion from rick second from jason all in favor
say aye all right opposed motion carries and then i'll move i'll let you hand it off yeah
item b so we're going to receive a report
now item b apologize everyone for being late edp 25-018 receiver reports for discussion
and consider recommending approval to city council regarding an incentive agreement for panel ray
a subsidiary of grupo pro max for an ad valorem rebate over five years on real property
up to $47,419 in business personal property up to $122,938 a job-based grant of $16,500 on qualified
job jobs and a relocation grant of $50,000 under chapter 380 of the local government code for an
amount not to exceed $236,857 the chair recognizes britney saltello to present thank you for all those
tongue-tied amounts of money you did a great job uh good morning board of directors great to see you
we're here to present an overview of panel rays incentive application panel rate is based in
monterey mexico and this is a true recruitment project and so those of you may know that we
received leads from the state of texas economic development division and that there are specific
companies looking for specific site requirements and it's our role to respond to those leads and
so christina davis manages our r5 proposals um so she submitted a site in ditten and from there the
company ended up wanting to move to ditten so they were still and they're still considering other
cities and they do have different advocates but they're pretty much finalizing um a building here
but i'm going to pass this christina davis she's a primary project manager and she'll present the
presentation and i do want to mention that juan carlos ruiz an engineering manager for panel rate
is here as well as elliot christy he's the electrical design chief staff so thank you
for being here and they'll be prepared to answer questions right welcome
so christina davis business development administrator
so as as britney did explain a group of pro max is the parent company of panel ray
panel ray and group of chrome max is a family-owned 100 year old business they have 17
manufacturing facilities in house five countries and customers in 40 plus countries
and you can find their joint compound and drywall and more than 100 distributors in texas
this project will be panel race first compound manufacturing facility in the u.s. they were
attracted to denton due to our strategic location and the housing growth in north texas
they're considering a 60 000 square foot building for phase one of their expansion into the u.s
and this incentive would help to minimize the risk for entering this new market
this is a location that they're considering it's in the industrial area south of airport road it's
aligned here with the yellow and the pen mark there around the corner shelby lane and dakota lane
uh panel rays considering a 60 000 square foot building on shelving land they'll invest
2.7 million and renovating the building to manufacture the joint compound and the
improvements will include expansion of the electrical system installation of two silos
and manufacturing or covering the area to the east of the building with a 34 000 square foot
patio to protect the trucks for their loading and they plan to start manufacturing one shift
and they've gone to three shifts and what's interesting about their project is that
the construction or the the creation of the joint compound is completely enclosed
so review of the actual incentive application they are investing 15 million in capital investment
that includes uh purchase of the building 2.7 million will cover improvements so the improvements
of the patio the um the silos the electrical that'll be part of the improvements there and
then seven million will include improvements of bringing new personal business property
so equipment and specialized machines
we'll also create 20 new jobs
as their incentive the proposed incentive would be 60 percent of real property for five years
60 percent of business personal property for five years job-based grant for 11 qualified jobs for
four years and a one-time relocation grant of fifty thousand dollars for total estimated value
of 236 857 dollars in the lower table you see the investment in revenue so current valuation of the
property is 4.7 million the increased valuation is estimated at 9.7 and the total estimated valuation
will be 14.5 million as far as revenue the current city revenue for that property is twenty eight
thousand fifty two dollars the increase would be 56 thousand seven hundred eighty six and that's a
total revenue of eighty four thousand eight hundred thirty seven this slide outlines the jobs for this
project this job um hell ray will create 20 new jobs 10 year 10 and job 10 jobs in year one
five year five jobs in year two and five jobs in year four um in the highlighted the color
highlighted area identifies the 11 jobs that qualify for the jobs-based grant with a weighted
average salary of seventy two thousand seven hundred and thirty three the city's average wage
right now is 65 651 this shows the impact the economic impact for this project net benefits
less the incentive over 10 years to the city will be six hundred seventeen thousand dollars
to the county will be 241 000 to the school district 612 000 the payback period is two years
at a rate of return of 3.8 staff recommendation is a 60 rebate on new business and real property
taxes for five years for up to 170 357 a job-based grant up to 16 500 expansion grant
of 50 000 for total mattress a 236 837 dollars next steps if you approve the incentive would
be to go to city council with individual consideration on july 15
do you have any questions for myself or the representatives from pal ray
any questions
how tall is towers gonna be how tall are the towers gonna be
extruding out of the top of the building the silos this oh the silos yes
that's a good question maybe or juan carlos or la would you like to
the meters and meters 33 this one make sure they want to stick in that oh yeah stick up
for the airport i i could add that they did we did already have a pre-application conference
meeting with city staff to review um the changes they'd like to make to the to the building and
make sure they were properly zoned for things like to to to create here we all see any permitting
risk or anything like tceq wise that would potentially slow this project now just no one
about what we deal with i'm just curious so i know that staff we met with our environmental
services department um and so he recommended contacting tceq but for the most part i think
that there shouldn't be a concern but i think they're still in that process right now christina
do you want to add on to that yeah we've provided information for air permitting and the timelines
um environmental services was part of the pre-application conference and so their product
when it goes into the silo it's all transferred clean it's protected and then when it goes through
the production line and comes through the top and gets it's all enclosed to protect it because they
not only want to protect any dust from going out to the environment they want to protect their
product as well it's a room it's an unloading room the closure of the total unloading zone
from the truck it's a pneumatic vacuum from the truck to the silo and the height of the silo can
match and we can redesign only to match the correct height of the existing building that's another
way that we can make make i'm not i mean i'm i know you all engineer that i'm more concerned
about the do you have a permit by rule or something that makes sure it doesn't delay your project
that you can get any kind of tceq or just underneath any kind of limit for that it depends
on the product i mean i know we paint stuff so we have to worry about that so we don't have an
external issue that can that end the day the point is there any asbestos material used
any asbestos material no sir no sir main main material is calcium carbonate and water
almost 90 percent of the product that is dry wood mode is is made of calcium carbonate powder
and and water and the final product is a mix of it so it's not dusty or it's like a somewhat
so what we posted their um side visit they showed us a video of their facilities in mexico and
they're really they look really clean and i expect the same thing at the facility um we did
gosh i forgot my thought go ahead sorry oh they have some of the largest contracts with the
largest construction suppliers in the country so even the largest homeowners would be our horton
as well do we know the impact that we think this will have to miami as far as revenue
um they did not meet the guidelines for growth rider
so it's lower impact okay how long is the lease
they'll be purchasing the building purchasing
that's good great did i see your presentation
20 positions we're looking at are the qualified but there's over subsequent below that
um so over the over the five-year period of the grant four years they'll be hiring staff so year
one two and four and out of those 20 positions 11 followed by for the grant gotcha um
is there projections beyond that as far as just job opportunities for the future
that the company has looked beyond in the five years we've just we've discussed expansion with
them and adding additional lines of products um at this location but apparently we're just
looking at phase one which is one line of the gypsum production but they would like to expand
here for their second and third lines uh maybe want to elaborate on carlos yes we will start with
one line of drywall more and expected to have a metal stock line and the following year
and having in a five-year period two more lines four metal stock lines and one slitter machine
that got the steel four dots uh metal stock lines so that is the that is the plan
we're going to use number is just for one drywall more time those expansions to fit in that
facility yes it marks in the same uh 60 000 square feet area two questions how did they
or us get familiar with them how did it come into the economic development referral yeah so
we received this lead from the state of texas um so what happens is when companies are looking to
move to texas in general they'll contact the state economic development division and they'll
wait list out and say we need um x not as our fleet we need when we buy a lease when we move
close to airport uh we receive those leads which i'll in my direct support i'll show you where we
capture the that data um and then christina and myself evaluate if we're going to respond or not
and so if we have an available site then obviously we want to submit that so that's how we um first
yes and then we they contacted us that was in january they contacted us in uh march for a site
visit so jamey came in and uh he owes to them as well we came in met with him toward around the
building uh met with our development services teams our workforce teams as well and that's
when they decided that they didn't want to move forward with it the same question on the in a
purchase situation or an existing building situation when you're doing your return on
investment are we just looking at the incremental tax revenue or the full revenue
look over a 10 year term so we have a head slide i think on this one we can show you
um i'm saying like right now the property is already on the tax rolls so are we just in the
return aspect of it are we just doing that as a baseline and everything above or are we doing the
full amount correct we we evaluate the improvements we also value with the new pp because what happens
i think the current owner um had a tenant and so they're both leaving right now so the tenant is
going to take their equipment so then therefore they're we're going to if we don't refill that um
uh the lease then we'll leave that on the vpp because they're taking their equipment
and so with them coming on board then we're retaining the vpp but also probably adding
a little bit more this is personal property okay and get that for equipment i'm talking about the
real estate the real estate is going to be there either way on the textiles are we including that
in return or are we not we are with improvements though because that will be an additional ad valorem
valuation added the third column of the bottom table the estimated increase in valuation that's
should be entered into the model correct right so the first line here is the current land value
but we didn't add any increase to that on the current land we we captured the improvements
in the vpp yes you have thank you okay sorry
when does the new business property property tax
basement kick in that's uh it goes up to what 125 000 i don't know what it is now but it's going up
at some point that was just passed when does that kick in and and when do we update our formulas
yes that's a good question i think any of those new legislative items will come into effect maybe
in september right scott i'm asking our attorneys yeah yeah september first i'm not sure what the
what the amount of the exemption i'm not sure either i want to say for i've heard small business
i don't know if it's all for commercial property or not i'll have to do some more research i'll do
some digging what's the new law it's uh it goes up to 125 000 that you can uh you can get waived on
your probably using the wrong vernacular but you can get waived on your taxes and then if
you're if your business property tax property taxes are under 125 000 total you don't even
have to file but it's above that seven million to six million a 25 if my understanding is right and
if to her point if it applies universally to all business property personal property tax but i do
believe it does but that's outside looking in is that a safe deal yes so just so he signed it but
then there's there's a two steps i guess there's the governor signing it and i think that makes it
active current whatever timeline and then there's where it gets codified into the uh that i yeah the
i'm gonna say chart because that's the vernacular i'm used to them most bills passing the state
legislator take back september the first unless specifically later got there you go some of them
have the rider that if it's passed by more than two-thirds or whatever it comes to thank them unless
so yeah i would just forward it for you i just want to because if we're planning to out years it
certainly ended applies i just want to make sure that's captured and we're we're tracking
all right any other questions for the gentleman from panel rate
any other questions about this topic if not can i get a motion to recommend approval
uh for recommendation to city council for approval for an incentive agreement for panel rate as
presented i got a motion from lee ramsey and i got a second by leo did i give you a second leo
morales on a second any further discussion on this item just want to say thank you for being here
appreciate it thank you thank you all all right hearing no other further discussion can i ask
that question yeah how many how many different cities areas did you look at in texas well not
in texas but in another in other states okay in texas uh we're looking for the big from the beginning
for them okay and what what drew you to then what made you take them in texas we supply south of texas
from another plants so this market uh we don't cover we don't have coverage of this market in
north texas or oklahoma or arkansas so that's why denton is a is the perfect site and logistic wise
manufacturing wise and obviously uh the building that we were looking for thank you
all right hearing no other discussion i'll call the vote all those in favor please say aye aye
any opposed say nay hearing none motion passes
so we've got how many i got i got to have do i got to say the numbers
don't want us to do that okay that was unanimous all right it's unanimous
thanks again thank you all again welcome
all right next we're going to move to our working session i'll call item a adp
25-020 receiving various staff reports first i'm going to hear about water infrastructure from
you good morning i'm kyle pentel uh planning and engineering division manager for water utilities
and i'm filling in for steven gay today um so i'm here today to provide some insight into how the
utility plans for and addresses infrastructure need uh for the btj so as a water rights holder
the city of denton interacts with the regency water planning committee our involvement hopes
ensure that the regional water plan reflects a broad range of interest and accurately addresses
water needs across the region so as far as the utility service area currently the utility serves
around 171 000 people through 45 000 utility service connections and our current water usage
ranges from 18 to 42 million gallons per day that 18 number is what we utilize in winter which
doesn't take into account any outdoor water and irrigation and the 42 million gallons per day are
the demands that we see on average throughout the summer so that more utilities is prioritizing
its uh extraterritorial jurisdiction so the area outside the city limits but within the planning
authority to safeguard its watershed we safeguard the watershed by following addressing the following
risks within our planning efforts so water risks within the tga include supply and so do we have
enough water to accommodate our projected growth dependence on wells how do the plan wells impact
the groundwater table what happens if and when they dry up our water quality what sources or
development cause can contamination within our surface waters some wastewater risks include
the proliferation of packaged plants so how do these plants are these plants managed and regulated
and to ensure that they don't cause any downstream impact our stream and river water quality so how
do the varying wastewater discharges affect our local streams and rivers and our reuse supplies
how do we maintain our water rights by through a robust reuse program by maintaining access to that
so a common entity that we work with in the etj is the municipal utility district or mud
muds are created to help provide infrastructure to a specific development
area and can annex into the city following the repayment of bond funding
so this is a map and list showing the muds that we're either working with or that we're aware of
within the etj so you can see there's heavy development interest in areas surrounding them
so how ultimately how will this impact city water utility so accounting for the
known muds by build up the city's population will be increased by roughly 110 000 people
that's roughly a 65 percent increase compared to today's population so that increase directly
influences the amount of infrastructure that the utility must plan for and construct so
this infrastructure can either be localized or regionalized if the water utility doesn't address
this on a regional basis then we need to deal with the widespread impacts of localization
so this map shows the existing and planned regional water reclamation plants in green
the existing local water reclamation plants in white and the current proposed local water
reclamation plants in yellow and blue depending on their phase of development so compared to the
surface water intakes shown in purple near each lake you can see that localized approach to
wastewater treatment introduces many variables that can have regional impacts on our water column
since everything flows downstream
this chart is a comparison of the regional versus local approach
approach it is just one of the tools that we use in our planning efforts when we approach our
infrastructure like that
so denton implemented the mud policy in 2022 which sets goals and conditions for the creation
and operation of mugs it provides a framework for development agreements and establishes
preferences for utility and emergency services services open spaces financial stability and
future annexations this benefits the city by creating a full service utility that aids in the
development of future infrastructure streamlines our development agreements
by ensuring that mugs are built to the city standard for infrastructure which helps with the
future annexation
this is a basin map outlining the individual drainage basins within the city
and the location for the existing and proposed water reclamation facilities in our
as you can see we have three drainage basins which necessitates the construction of three
regional water reclamation facilities currently we have our existing facility is shown with the
concrete basin green and then the two proposed facilities are associated with the northern and
western drainage bases these are the main drivers behind our utility planning effort
so the infrastructure plan is shown here pulled from the 2023 wastewater master plan which was
adopted last year and the 2024 water master plan which is set to be adopted in august of this year
the wastewater master plan is currently posted on the water utility website website and the
water master plan will also be adopted these maps are they follow a common color coding system
throughout the master plans with everything shown in red to be planned to be constructed within the
zero to five year time frame everything in blue to be constructed in the five to ten year and
everything in green to be constructed within the 25 year time frame and figured i'd open it up to
any questions on infrastructure development i'll just make a comment is you know i'm i'm really
happy we do a lot of development a lot of different cities and the city of denton i believe is doing a
pretty good job before thinking with the muds and i'm a mud fan right because i think it helps with
future infrastructure costs and over time and and the city i think has done a good job looking at
how instead of just saying no we're washing our hands because if they're going to happen because
they're out of the city's control i think the city then has done a good job of saying okay let's go
ahead and figure out how to expand and get utilities here because it's a bigger picture than no we don't
want muds like some cities doing just don't do anything red instead they say okay how long term
we know we're investing in our city what does this look like so that we can get those utilities to
those areas so that we're looking at that considering that looking at the pros and cons i think it's
positive so thank you for bringing that now for most people it doesn't happen fast enough
but it takes time right so i think it's very good we're looking at what areas of our city needs to
grow and one question i do have when prioritizing which lines go in first is part of that looking at
economic development of what's the most potential growth in what areas does that put a priority of
what projects we do first so the economic impact is to prioritize through the development services
group they investigate that from the utility we're primarily focused on the conveyance
infrastructure so what it takes to get water there it takes to transport wastewater away
our water rights do we have enough water to serve how are we looking how are we going to
manage this growth and then our treatment capacity so those are our primary drivers on
water and wastewater master plan i would just say you know looking at our growth patterns you know
because water and sewer drive growth patterns ultimately right looking at the growth patterns
and what vacant land that is not affected by floodplain not affected by you know access and
those things and meet with economic development to try to come together and say okay if we put these
lines in in these areas we think our return is going to be quicker because of the growth
happening in those areas and we're kind of doing that with the mud districts because we have to
but even future projects i think it would be good to work with the city planning and then to prioritize
those projects so that we can get a quicker return on these investments so that would just be a
recommendation and where do we want the city to grow because we put water and sewer that's where
it's going to grow you know and so i think it would be good to collaborate between economic
development seated in planning and water utilities which i understand is hard to get everybody get
but to say where are we going to spend the city dollars because if we put them in the right spots
the return is going to be way faster western boulevard is the perfect example you know you
put a water line in out there in a road through it turns and boom i mean it blew up so that would
just be my only add it's make that problem great yeah thank you any other questions oh rick several
years ago city owned the water rights to cooper lake up by salt springs and we sold that to urban
number of years ago of course they had to build the pipeline to put it in louisville we could still
use that water as if we owned it there and then put it back in louisville and use it again
are we looking for those kind of opportunities still further away right now we're looking for
water rights and we'll reconfirm them so our two primary sources are surface water through lake
louisville and surface water through lake ray roberts we're the minority water rights holders
at allison both of those lakes but uh that's that's a big part of our planning is putting these
putting the growth protections together and then really determining how much how far we can save
the conservation and where we can expand so we're looking at it we're turning over every rock right
now i hope we find some way and i know that you know tom hart rule was very involved in securing
the water rights through the years he and ray roberts but i don't think the city really
understands how important that was in 1950 yes but we do not we need to honor those two people
did we get anything out of uh i know uh opportunity and all that did they have all
the rights for the boat ark lake and all the new ones up north i know that was before my time here
negotiation discussions on that i know that we are looking through what was written down right now
to see where the water rights are jimmy do you have a question
on the with economic development where development is planning to go where do you see the biggest gaps
in water to service those areas in the next five years from a timing of when you think new lines
are going to come online where's the kind of the hot spot of need and that's kind of what whenever
i brought up having a plan for waters try to find out what excess capacity is in certain areas
and then where the demand are you kind of overlay those do you have any idea of where that is so that
obviously people on council can try to see if there's resources we can put toward that to try
to fix it in the next five years appropriate answer i'm sorry we're an appropriate answer
not really no um so so really the focus right now is on the north uh kind of the north section
the clear creek basin if you go back here um the clear creek basin so working in the hickory creek
um basin we're working with 100 100 development and we're pursuing different methods of getting
the infrastructure out there the clear we're uh we're pursuing for wastewater our clear creek
interceptor uh which is currently in design which would open up that whole basin the entire blue uh
good a good section of it through center the basin to wastewater service and then the uh 60 inch
extension from the ray roberts water treatment plant or water yeah water treatment plant at the
south end of ray roberts along to the west there that would uh open up as well that's our we're
really looking to partner with mugs to partner you know to partner um with developers to
accelerate that infrastructure growth so i'm saying capacity is probably an issue in uh
hunter and coal ranch probably is handling the southern part of the hickory creek that's helping
to open it up so working with hunter and coal ranch bringing those those interceptor lines for
your sewer and bringing the water lines out there helps to open up the rest of that area even the
farther north the far north area of hickory creek um not as much the far north but there are we are
showing a loop on the water here in red we're showing a 30 inch loop to come around that we're
working with smaller mugs what where's that at it's uh on the right hand map map on the north side
that 30 inch um okay comes north 380 and then crosses 380 over south of chrome okay so on that
previous map the clear creek extends further north up to apply milo kind of that area yeah the water
so water and wastewater we approach a little bit differently so with water since it's all
pressure-based we don't have to worry about drainage basins so water is i don't want to say
easier to extend but you don't have the gravity drainage considerations so that's more of a
sig-wide approach with our wastewater we have to really narrow it down to development basically
developing developing the trunk line in the basin so that everything else so is there a is there a
plane in place right now to kind of tackle that northern whatever base we're talking about this
point the one yes yes so that's hickory creek sorry wait a minute you're talking two different
things did you say the clear creek's under design or the hickory creek's under design both of them
are so the hickory creek the the interceptors through the hickory creek are under design
through the hundred college operating agreements with them delivering those projects the clear
creek we're in designing through the city because we don't have that anchor yet we have development
you know we have constraints up there but we don't have that anchor to pursue
so a lot of the businesses that do come like through grittings department development they tend
to be airport and then a little bit north of that is what we're looking at at least i've been on for
about a year that's what i've kind of picked up so far uh so what is the kind of game plan for that
area because it looks like the higher call is going to accomplish more the southern the southern
but it stretches all the way up to that north to the northern the way the drainage basin works
to university or further okay there's some existing infrastructure out there right now
that pulls it what we basically do is we pull out of the hickory creek basin on that northern
section just off the crowd we pump it over the concrete basin what the hundred coal interceptors
do by by running the interceptor from the low end of hickory creek up it creates a gravity solution
which makes it much easier to connect into and so that that'll extend it'll keep extending up
all the way to three so on that map that you have with all the the planned stuff in the 30
30 inch that goes all around the loop um what's the timing on all of that to try to get it all
like to get in place that's a pretty forward looking graph right yeah so right now the timing
on all the with i think on this chart with all the red is within the five year window okay but
it's not it's a mixture of development through buds building you know extent extending
their off-site improvements to reach their need and then us taking it up after that and
city projects so it's a mixed thank you
go ahead um similarly the legislation's got to be approved in november one billion dollars a year
do you have a feel for what that looks like i guess it goes to the texas water fund do we do we have
are we i mean obviously it just passed so forward looking i'd like to know how we get involved in
those considering we're pursuing all basically every funding that's on the table through the
utility we're pursuing right now so we secured a swift loan from the texas water development board
last year for the expansion of the ray roberts water treatment plant we're working with livia
so the water infrastructure finance act through the federal government to secure funding for our
entire capital plan and then we're also submitting interest to the texas water development board for
our other large dollar some plant expansions for pecan creek clear creek and hickory creek got it
and i think it would be productive because y'all are doing great work and i can envision another
slot that kind of captures these other things we're doing to be kind of proactive and so i'm
going to butcher it i'll let you fix it and if i'm not supposed to say it then just tell me i'm not
supposed to say it after i'm done but uh but i do want to give credit where credit's due because
their team has so there's uh what we're trying to do is prevent people from punching a whole bunch
of wells out in the etj and then also there's designated areas where the water flows to say
lake grapevine and so the team has reached out in those areas and said hey give us your runoff water
and we're going to run it back to like lewisville so we can get lewisville lake tj would get mad at
me run it to lewisville lake so that we can get credit for that so here's water that should have
gone flowed towards like grapevine that we're capturing sending to lewisville lake to then get
credits to be able to retrieve that water so real real creative thinking around that and so every
time we can do that that's net positive hundred percent like we never should have been in that
game and so they're to their point about getting creative and doing all things uh really really
proud of the work they're doing so how does the wells impact that water wells the water wells you
said the etj to eliminate water yeah so how does that impact well because they can punch down so
they can build a house only thing they need water for is fire stations and so we're trying to prevent
them from punching a bunch of wells because the water table is shrinking as is and there's no way
to monitor that no way to kind of control that and so what you try to do is get them on city water
so that we can control the flows we can kind of monitor we can do all those things and then they
also convey over land or towers etc etc so there's a trade-off and there's a monitoring component so
really it's that just to make sure we can have a feel for what the water table is doing and control
that versus just the wild west of people just drilling and because ultimately what happens is
their well fails and then it's a real big problem in the middle of nowhere there's not a property
rights issue on that no well basically what is you know you got bolivar water out there you got
mustang water you got these guys so they may have the ccn for that area and if they have the ccn for
that area we can go cut a deal with them and then put a put a well and tower in and be about 1200
feet apart for the north texas water district i think is right and so then you can if they get
the ccn so then you got all these wells out in the counties which is not necessarily a bad thing but
i believe overall long term it's better for a city that be using surface water than underground
storage water there will always be a balance of both but if you can get with the city's looking
ahead that mud district's going to spend like right now if you go to volatile water they're going to
charge you like 93 hundred dollars a tap for a capital recovery fee and they're going to go
drill a well and they're going to maintain that well and supply but really what it does overall
for the underground storage you don't really they have pretty good guesses right but they don't
really know if we can think ahead like we're doing and say bolivar will you do a joint agreement or
give up your ccns to the city of denton and we can use surface water for that it's way easier to
regulate that as far as how much usage is we do both in our development sometimes we go drill wells
sometimes we work with the city but if i'm paying 93 hundred dollars a tap and i can go
apply those funds and the city's willing to apply funds and we can do a joint project long term
that's what i say long-term thinking if the city will put a little bit of money in
and the developers put money in to expand this infrastructure and the mud district can reimburse
that over time and the city gets it back over time that's a much better in my opinion long-term
approach probably some cities say we're not spending the dollar it's in their atj but the
state laws changed city dentons not necessarily taking that approach because who knows that's
gonna change one day you know it's not gonna be that way so this is different than like if i'm 20
acres out west of town and i want to put a water well for my house that's different that's what
you're talking about right no i'm talking about for subdivision like i'm putting 25 lots in same
thing because those are not for an individual like home property right okay right because those
are because they're getting so large there are other questions specifically for the water several
years ago both dams those bill and rey roberts were on the danger list are you satisfied with
coral engineers and unnecessary repairs to keep those from failing i believe so but i haven't
looked at that recently with the other folks on the infrastructure and loss of either one of them
it'd be devastating i mean what's the ccn he can answer it's who has the right to serve that area
that's the certificate of convenience and necessity so basically which utility has the right to serve
water or wastewater services in that geographic area you said something about 93 something dollars
for a tap well it's what is the capital recovery fee for some of these rural water districts it's
not city of denton it's if oliver if you're in their ccn they're going to charge you so much per
tap to be able to get the drill their wells and this has to do with water because you know if we
can apply those funds to expansion you know to a city water that's much better use of those funds
one quick question is back to economic development and i know we got to move on all right we got one
less question one last question but again like i think we should definitely be working with planning
and look at what the zoning is in that area because you look at that clear creek up there
for the wastewater the zoning up there is five acre lots and so i think that's something we've
got to do we got to look at because there's not a lot of sewer required for five acre lots
obviously uh interesting topic to everybody so appreciate your uh coming and talking to the
board thank you again questions there for for that particular topic i'm gonna call uh for britney to
give our director thank you thank you so much all right so it was a slower month for us but
it's just in this presentation we have a new newsletter for downtown called a dip downtown low
down um i know it's really exciting see some of your faces pretty cool title uh so this is an
upgrade from an email that staff was sending to the business owners and programmers downtown about
resources road closures whatever is going on around the city and a mainstream program um so chris and
matilda worked hard on putting this newsletter newsletter together we released the news on social
media and i think people are going to find it so pretty good um important update so this presentation
was planned for two weeks ago for the council meeting so some of it's back dated but twilight
tunes is officially over fortunately but um christen is still highly involved with the main street
program and the energy twilight tunes and um didn't june teeth just passed so we missed the date
unfortunately but we wanted to celebrate that um our partner visits collaboration staff into the
stokes flint conference and the edp quarterly forum and we attended the unt jim mcnaught institute
for logistics research um presentation farhan but our transportation manager and myself presented
um our department information to the faculty at unt in this department really to discuss research
and development um collaboration opportunities and from this meeting um farhan is now collaborating
with unt on a u.s department of transportation grant proposal that he submitted today actually
it's called an advanced air mobility grant and so this will allow us if we are able to
get a vertiport this will allow us funding up to if rewarded two million dollars for a vertiport
so that was a good uh meeting following business town hall so christen put together our uh this
meeting to collaborate with the downtown business owners um so as you can see in the bottom right
picture um there's a few business owners quite a few business owners actually that are involved
um with halloween and they're looking at creative ideas to celebrate during the month of october
um and we also did in the public libraries reference solutions training
so here are our may recruitment stats we currently have 27 active projects in the pipeline um out of
the pipeline that's a little over close to 4 000 potential jobs and 4.5 billion in capital investment
um we had during the month of may we had two new leads um one that was from a broker and one was
direct and then we had one incentive applications and so the way that we um title or kind of define
leads is those are serious prospects are wanting to move in because everyone has a different
definition so that's why sometimes it seems low we get general requests all the time that we're
starting to track as well so we report that out um so under the active product stage we have quite
a few in the lead stage that will stay there um we have five that are waiting application but they
have told us that they do want to submit an incentive application so those are in the queue
um one that we're processing right now and then um two that are in the standard negotiation process
um and three that are in the board approval so we didn't have any recruitment business during the
month of may and we actually lost two leads um so one did not make the incentive qualifications
for our top of the rating policy um they already had applied for a commercial permit alterations
permit um so they're already here we plan to send them off to the chamber because they want a grand
opening ribbon cutting so um that's a really good company i don't know if i'm allowed to share it but
yet but um unfortunately we consider a lead loss because they were not going to move forward with
themselves um the other one chose another location i believe they chose the city of lewisville um
they were looking at a site a warehouse space in denton and if you talk to the broker you'll get a
different story from what their business owner said so but they ultimately chose lewisville but
we actually had processed their incentive proposal we had it on the uh cube agenda to propose to uup
but they ended up choosing lewisville for the downtown stats uh christen have four business
for change and expansion visits and six downtown reinvestment grant leads and that's specifically
for through tours one um and then she we held the tours one meeting in may and the board approved
the tours one annual report um and then we also had a public improvement district informal staff
report that was released so those you may recall that we met with property owners in the downtown
area to discuss the potential of creating a public improvement district and many of the property
owners turned it down they didn't want to move forward so we released an official release so if
you're curious to see that we can send it to you as well so here's where we track our request for
information stats and these are the leads from the state and the dallas regional chamber this is how
we got panel right um so for the month of may we received five we submitted seven we did not submit
on one uh probably because we meet some criteria um but we didn't have any lead conversions um so
from the dallas regional chamber we received two and three from the governor's office um so within
that pipeline it's a total of 47.5 million dollars in average capital investment and 270 average
jobs um so for the year the calendar year we submitted total 35 RFIs so sometimes those
numbers don't add up as well for submitted into uh and no submittal because the due dates sometimes
go into a different month so those numbers may not add up to the total RFIs received
music and film till then
so this is the presentation for may so we have two permit issues in april and one in may
even though this just happened this weekend the state film incentive passed
that's 300 million every session or 125 million each year for the next 10 years for a total of
1.5 billion in incentives for film in the state of texas you may recall american idol was on the
square we had a big parade concert um and then council member melchor is not here anymore but
his uh documentary uh premiered at thin line film festival and then a local family documentary was
nominated for an emmy recently uh and then finally i've just been working on some film marketing
knowing that this incentive might pass uh you may have gotten an email from me saying submit your
location if you're a property owner or if you want to uh we have a database of different locations
on the state's website so a film production could come and make like a rental agreement with you
basically to use your home or your business or whatever your property that you own um so
i've been making some marketing materials to distribute that to location professionals
and then lastly um economic development and discovery went on a music venue tour to harvest
house and then also to steve's wine bar as their uh music venue that received the texas music
incubator we made last year thank you any cool sites to share let us know the last home permit
that came in they were looking for a 1930 style ranch house right um and so we were like we're
gonna find one so we called a few folks i don't know if we ever found one but there's they're
always looking for unique sites all right council updates um council approved the mayday manufacturing
consent and proposal so congratulations board um and the catalyst fund item pass that was jill
jester's uh two minute pitch so that ended up passing last council meeting as well so congratulations
board events we held a foreign trades on webinar yesterday and we had 12 attendees total including
staff i think there were like five seven company representatives um from what i hear it went well
and um i attended the bio international conference in boston last week um that was a new experience
for me i went alongside the dallas regional chamber who hosted the booth that was their booth in the
picture um in several cities in the dfw went as well as let's see dallas plano desoto and arlington
um so we got a few leads and i wanted to really explore if that's this is going to be opportunity
for didn't so unt has a biomedical engineering degree program that um we can definitely
collaborate on but there may be potential to explore creating wet lab space for some of the
research and development or just general companies in the life science space um in denton uh desoto
and plano they're both building spec office space and lab space for life sciences and so
um i would like for our board to get to a spot where we're kind of creating and this vision for
the future of denton and what we want to specialize in because i think that will create a separate set
of jobs that we're used to seeing and we got a proclamation for steve edgar former chairman
um we wanted to celebrate him and his efforts i think he served on the board for six
six years six years um so just so you know brian you'll get to have a proclamation of city council
too but we understand that this is a time consuming for you it's a lot to come out every
month but we really do support we appreciate all of your efforts and that is it any questions
on the house fund that was passed that council there was a discussion here first at a lesser
percentage or 100 what was the i think we decided 100 we're gonna put erica uh basically that it
will be evaluated annually correct budget process that it could be a portion of all
but the first year 100 or whatever it would be up to the council to decide that we will present
the full value and then they can decide that it's based on budget appropriations and councils review
and will be every year okay so when's the first review of that we did it for 10 years but i did
it for 11 with ordinance we could do it to make sure we could do it this year
on the unt and the labs is there have been any leads conversations of is it just a thought
right now or is there actually some substance to possibly move that direction so the murphy center
it's the unt's entrepreneur center they have indicated that they have startups originating
at unt's their research division that would like wet lab space so um you know i learned a lot of
well i learned a lot i don't know if i can repeat it because i probably already forgot but um i think
there's opportunity there and we're going to explore so jll i think they're building
it's a commercial brokers firm they're building in plano right now so i want to pick their brand
see if that's potential for um didn't because if so then we can definitely maybe recruit some of
those companies into but we had it earlier this year we had a medical device manufacturer um that
toured didn't and that came through their dallas reno chamber so that kind of got us thinking well
maybe this is an avenue that we should explore i do think we have stronger industries that we
should focus on uh but i think this is additional that we can capitalize in the future stronger
the question is if you pivot and you already have the foundational structure how quickly can you
pivot how quickly can you attract it so i don't know much about the wet labs and what the requirements
are but uh just just i guess focusing very little bit i'm saying what is there and how far up you
got so i like it i mean what yeah i think kind of what you're getting i'll give you an example the
word we have a headwind here that's pretty significant for for manufacturing and that's
that we're in a zero attainment epa zone being in dfw area so that means that if you're considered
a major emitter so over 25 tons of knocks per year that you are going to have to be subject to
federal review which could be a three to six year process so if you're trying to get businesses in
here that could fall under federal review that goes to the that goes to the nation it goes to
the epa so one of the things like the opportunities we got to talk about is you know a wet lab space
they wouldn't fall into that category so that might be something we want to look at as we're
exploring because that environmental cap is only going to get lower so two years ago it was 50
tons per year now it's 25 so they they are strategic yeah very we have to be strategic
about what types of that's kind of why i asked the question in in lat like how much
emissions or are you going to grow to because that's going to actually limit your amount of
growth that you can do just by the fact that you're in dfw because because if we highlight
low emissions it still gives us the opportunity of growth on other industries that are not as
forgiving on that because we load it lightly at the beginning yes always sandbag at the end
for some of the other competitors in this this area they're already maxed out they're having to
manage that at a whole different level we have the opportunity to look at and say okay it might not
be in our line of sight right now but is a great strategy for collecting now and later i like it
we cannot we can definitely add it to our strategy so we still want to hold a whole day a board
retreat we um as you know you may see in the news that the city's having financial concerns or
re-availing in our operating budget um so i think that we can probably move forward with a board
retreat uh we want to get a facilitator facilitator and to lead it so but these are great ideas and i
think i've never considered that constraint brian and leo but i think the retreat would be a good
by the way to discuss this i think i think we kind of need to dfw and houston areas are non-attainment
epa areas for the state of texas so we just need to be sensitive to that as we recruit and hopefully
i mean to be honest when that comes from the state they should hopefully be pushing things
to us that don't violate that but we don't need to be spending a lot of bandwidth in my opinion
recruiting someone who at the end of the day will say the tcqs and go well we really want you in
denton but it's going to take six years so they're going to go somewhere else so it's just something
that we need to be cognitive that's helpful all right um are you going to cover for future agenda
items sure yes just things not here yeah all right so we may potentially have two projects to bring
them before you project loom and project footprint and potentially project recharged um we will
discuss the rfi overview which will detail some of the leads that we are getting here from the
state and the drc and i think this would be a great opportunity to expand on brian's statement
on which leads should we be responding to um and that is those two major items right now
okay so um we're going to move on to concluding items then does the board have any other business
to discuss for suggestions on what they wish to hear in the next meeting jeremy all right
i would like for staff to bring back an update on the utilities rates etc it's on the agenda
as they're supposed to be yeah but it's to be determined like i'm saying we're having a
conversation now and i don't know what your utility bill is but i bet just more than the one person
that's driving the conversation in his house so we probably want to have some some input from
somebody that has more than 2000 square feet so yes i was this is a this is a hot topic for peter
bill so and you're using less energy and paying more money for it right now well in embassy suites
and all the but you know so what i'm saying is hear me a 2000 square foot house guy is driving
a conversation versus all the big users because we don't hear from you right i hear from you
but we gotta we gotta so i need to raise the awareness to say hey don't don't miss this
opportunity to level set and and maybe us refocus on those that have more than 2000 square feet
driving conversations being active in those conversations think to your point and also as
you look at these impact fees that's a that's you go build a new factory now you're paying higher
rates and then to get your permit you're paying higher rates you gotta gotta look at that globally
because that's a those are they're about to be really big numbers and i think we got to look at
that as a whole utility package when they also the deposits yeah i think was what the original
original special was based on deposits uh but yeah needs to be discovered needs to be expanded
include all of this so if there's any if if i would say and i don't know i think we had that
conversation in july but i'm happy to say hey we're having this conversation in july but we're
gonna you know send it to the to the board or send something out to the board earlier at least so
they know if we're hard set for that july conversation i don't know when that comes back
i'm just saying i'm passionate about making sure we get equitable responses versus
the offer also christina when you coordinate a schedule right now we currently don't have a
july meeting scheduled but we may need a special call meeting and we will reach out to you if
that's the case to push some of these projects forward a little bit sooner but for sure in august
we'll put it on the agenda and i'm not having just to be clear i'm not advocating for extra
meetings so we good but but you certainly can send an email saying hey city council is doing
these things as a follow-up to the you have everyone's email and then that that does the
same thing i just want people to be aware of and be active in those conversations all right sounds
good on the topic of those low admissions as we're looking at the board retreat possibly or
even in the future can we identify where those type of industries are and you just start looking
just i mean this is not necessarily pressing us to get to the end of it just
start taking in that direction and going hey you know what are what are the low hanging fruit for
how to attend this position because i love their answer and i'm glad jeremy asked what brought you
here and and it's effectively uniquely placed for a huge distribution and so we can we can target
more efficiently some of those industries and if we come with the right mindset we can have a great
strategy okay we have uh so per about energy do we have consensus on that i think everybody
kind of agree i know i would agree to put that on a future item and then uh yeah for more board
retreat i think probably britney i need to get with you and get my environmental engineer kind of
educated up with you i think that's pretty complicated topic i think that would be a blast
it'll be fun i'll expose you to that so funny stories of corpus christi i had to dive into that
industry but they're actually in air attainment and they have all the refineries there isn't that
crazy well it's a problem it's an issue it's for us so we got to be smart because you can go right
up the road to gainsville and do the same thing that you do at peterville without putting any
emissions controls in literally 30 to 40 minutes up the road so it's it's an issue for them
something we need to be strategic about okay um so with no other future agenda items uh or anything
further to discuss um we got to go on to the next items because you are a member of the edpb you're
also member of the ters2 board please stay after this we do have a ters2 special call meeting which
take approximately 30 minutes uh just a reminder our next edpb meeting is scheduled to be on august
13th at 11 please let staff know if you're not able to attend the meeting and submit your notification
of absence now online anyone got to get closing items i would like to say that next meeting in august
is jeremy mike's birthday so we could get cake for that meeting as well
you need to hear about the budget short call
all right we'll close this meeting out then and we can open up with our
you want to we can adjourn this meeting and we've got 15 minutes till officially the next