Alright, we have a quorum, so good morning, welcome to this meeting of the Economic Development
Partnership Board.
It's Wednesday, September 10th, 2025.
We have established a quorum, so I'll call the meeting at 11.05 a.m.
Now we'll begin with presentations from membership of the public.
Are there any?
We have none.
Since there are none, we will now continue the items for consideration.
Now beginning with the item for consideration, item A, EDP 25-023, consider approval for
the Economic Development Partnership Board meeting minutes for August 13th, 2025.
Are there any questions?
At this time, the chair will entertain a motion for approval.
I do have a motion from Rick, I have a second, a second from Aaron.
All in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion passes.
Now move on to item B, EDP 25-025, receive a report, hold a discussion, and make a recommendation
to the city council regarding a request to nominate United States Cold Storage LP to
the Office of the Governor of Economic Development and Tourism through the Economic Development
Bank as an enterprise project.
The chair recognizes Erica Sullivan to present on this item.
Good morning, my name is Erica Sullivan, I'm the economic development program administrator
here at the city and I'll be giving you a presentation on U.S. cold storage's request
for nomination under the Texas Enterprise Zone program, and a number of you are relatively
new and haven't been here when I presented the Texas Enterprise Zone program, so we're
going to begin with an overview of the program.
So the Texas Enterprise Zone program is designed to promote job creation and to create capital
investment in economically distressed areas of the state of Texas, and requires a partnership
with a local community for that designation.
Successful applicants are eligible to apply for state sales and use tax on qualified expenditures.
The program reimburses according to the level of capital investment, jobs created or retained,
and for economically disadvantaged individuals or veterans.
The competition varies depending on the funding cycle, on how competitive it is, and the projects
are eligible whether they're located inside or outside of a zone, there's just criteria
that go into that that we'll discuss in more detail.
So you can see a table here from the Texas Enterprise Zone program, on the left side
we have the capital investment, and it starts with a half an enterprise project all the
way to a triple jumbo project, the maximum number of jobs under that category in the
second column, the maximum potential refund based on the maximum refund per job allocated.
So this particular project falls under the enterprise project, the second one there from
5 million to 149.9 million, and another point to point out is the double and triple jumbo
projects are just for new jobs, not for new and retained.
So the process project needs to apply, they need one to receive an incentive from the
city or local community, and then they also need a nomination from that city, and communities
have a limited number of designations and it's based on population size, and the state
has a maximum number as well that can be awarded in the biennium.
So the state has 105 for biennium, and then Denton, according to our population size,
we have six, and this would be the first project in the biennium, so we have five left if this
is approved.
And then we decided to participate in the program through an ordinance and then we nominate
via resolution.
Project designations are good for five years, we have three active projects currently in
the queue, jobs must work 1,820 hours minimum per year, this equates to a 35 hour work week
for 52 weeks, and then jobs must exist through the end of the designation period, which is
three years after the date or when the state benefit was received, whichever is later,
and then applications are received on a quarterly basis on the first of the month.
So in blue you will see the Texas Enterprise Zone, and again we mentioned under the overview
that they could be physically inside or outside of the zone, if it's inside a company has
to meet 25%, the economic disadvantage criteria would be actual lay living in the zone or
be a veteran, and then if it's outside of the zone it's at 35%.
So Cold Storage submitted a request for nomination, they're investing approximately 35 million
at the Denton facility, if y'all remember this was brought to the board in May and then
was approved by City Council in July, and they are looking at 100,000 square foot expansion
and investing in machinery and equipment.
So the current facility is located within the Enterprise Zone, you can see a map on
the bottom there as well as the physical facility there.
It would be expanded to the north and south of the facility, and then with that 35 million
de-investment, again according to that table they fall under the enterprise project category
of 5 million to 149.9 million, under that category it's a maximum of 500 jobs with a potential
free fund of 1.25 million.
Theirs is estimated if all were to qualify of their new and retained jobs it would be
800,000.
So some of the benefits to U.S. Cold Storage, they receive a refund of 800,000 for their
320 full-time jobs, and then they would, because they're in the zone, they would only be responsible
for 25% of creating new positions and turnover that would be given to economically disadvantaged
residents of the Enterprise Zone and/or our veterans, and then nominating U.S. Cold Storage
enables us to assist the company in receiving state funds and it has, does not have a fiscal
impact to the city.
So staff recommends at this board, recommend that the City Council approve a resolution
nominating U.S. Cold Storage as an Enterprise Project.
The next step would be going to City Council for individual consideration once the application
is completed.
They would be applying under the December 1st round.
I'm happy to entertain questions.
This refund is based on actual sales and use tax revenue that they're generating.
It's four purchases, I have a hidden slide I was trying to get to.
There we go.
One more.
Okay, so if you look, thank you for making it bigger.
Okay, so step seven demonstrates payment of sales and use taxes, qualified expenditures,
and job creation retention.
So they have to demonstrate it to the state and the state reimburses that.
The amount they're eligible for is based on the number of jobs created, right?
Yes.
According to that, Table 8 Max is out, yeah, and then they're within that threshold with
that one.
It also sets the amount.
U.S. Cold Storage, yes, they are currently under construction.
We approved, like I said, we approved their incentive and we recommended it here in May
and then we approved it in July.
Are there any other questions?
If there are no other questions at this time, I'd like to entertain a motion to approve.
I have a motion.
I got a second from Rick.
All in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
All right, with that motion passed, we'll do a call out for working sessions.
I'll call item A, EDP 25-027, receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the TxOMA
Logistics Innovation Engine from Dr. Terence Poland of the University of North Texas.
The chair recognizes Dr. Terence Poland to present on this item.
Thank you for joining us.
Well, thank you for inviting me.
Just a little bit of background on me, I'm a logistics professor over at UNT.
I'm the senior associate dean for the G. Burke Ryan College of Business.
I'm the director for the Jim McPatt Institute for Logistics Research.
They can't keep me busy enough.
And then I'm also the lead primary investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to
create an innovation engine focused on logistics in the North Texas, Southeastern Oklahoma
region.
And as you can see, we have quite a range of individuals that are key personnel on this
grant, but our focus has been capitalizing on DFW's position as the logistics hub for
North America.
When you take a look at our area in terms of the amount of freight that we move, where
Fort Marge is freight market, we're the second in terms of industrial distribution space.
I just saw all that on the cold storage, but when you take a look at our market alone,
think of DFW Airport completely under one roof and then another 10 square miles.
That's how much is dedicated to distribution just in this one market.
Also in terms of intermodal movements, we're either third or fourth largest in terms of
intermodal containers coming into this region.
And that really supports growth.
So we were ideally, in my opinion, were ideally positioned to be an innovation hub for logistics.
Now you're probably trying to figure out where does this all come in for debt, and I'll
be getting to that.
But to put together this innovation hub, we put together a variety of different stakeholders.
And one of the things I want to emphasize is this is not a university initiative.
To make innovation work, you've got to have stakeholders from all of the different groups
represented.
So yes, we do have several academic institutions involved.
But we also have corporations, venture capital, entrepreneurs, government agencies involved.
Now why am I here today?
I'm going to propose holding an innovation summit on urban mobility in Denton in March
of 2026.
Okay.
And that's going to capitalize off a couple other initiatives that we have.
For example, as part of the innovation engine, we're not only just focused on innovations,
but what workforce is going to be.
Because when I look at logistics today, and I start looking out 10 years from now, the
way we move for it, the way we process information, the way we store it, the way we pull it, the
way we deliver it is going to be very different from how we do it today.
And so the workforce of tomorrow has got to be prepared.
So what we are also working on quite closely with Dallas College is looking at all the
different logistics positions, career pathways, mapping our academic institutional programs
into them.
Not only just universities, but also the workforce development training organizations as well.
And so this effort has been led by the Dallas Regional Chamber.
Last week, some of you were probably out at UNT Frisco and heard about the Texas Talent
Accelerator.
We're going to be collaborating with them as well.
Again, we want to understand where are different industries going?
How do we support that?
Now what we're going to be doing with the program here in Denton is going to be capitalizing
off a couple other initiatives that we have ongoing.
We have a dual use summit coming up this Saturday at the Frontiers of Light Museum.
So when I say dual use, defense and commercial applications.
Many applications in the defense side don't necessarily get translated over to commercial
applications or vice versa.
And so we have quite a program lined up.
We have two former deputy secretaries of defense speaking.
We have a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that's going to be speaking.
So we have quite a cast of individuals.
Right now our registration list is at 514 people for that event.
We had a very successful event in May at the Circle T Ranch.
Also focused on national defense and innovation.
And I think we're going to be building off of that.
Another summit that we have, we're not busy enough.
We got one coming in October, it's going to be at the U.S. Capitol building in the Canon
Caucus Room.
And that's going to be focused on space innovation.
And from a UNT perspective, we're very much focused on some of the initiatives in the
Golden Dome Research Area.
So I think this is going to be a first for UNT to be holding an event at the U.S. Capitol
building, but we're very excited about doing that.
Our keynote speaker is General Sulzman, the Chief of Staff for the U.S. Space Force.
Then in October, we're holding an event at UNT Dallas.
And this is going to be focused on trying to expand our ecosystem for logistics innovation
in the South Dallas region.
So we have panels focused on workforce development.
We have it focused on advanced air mobility, energy and emissions.
And I know there's one other and I can't think of it off the top of my head.
But any of you are any of you are interested in attending, please send me an email.
I'll be glad to have you attend.
In January of next year, we're also holding another innovation summit, this time in Oklahoma
City at Rose State College.
That is going to be very much focused on advanced air mobility and defense applications.
We within our group of stakeholders that I showed you earlier, we have both the Choctaw
Nation and the Chickasaw Nation.
And so we wanted to do an event in their area that would help promote their entrepreneurs
and make connections also with the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center.
We recently hired Major General Lee Leedy to work in the Jim McNadd Institute.
General Leedy was a former commander of the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, so I know
we're going to be making lots of good connections there.
Now we're going to be ending this NSF grant in the April timeframe, but the thing I want
to emphasize is all of the stakeholders that we have are saying, "Let's not stop here.
Let's keep going."
And so we're going to be continuing to hold a bunch of these innovation summits, have
convenings of these different stakeholder groups.
But the one I want to round this out is an Urban Mobility Innovation Summit here in Denny.
And looking at the March 26th date next year, I've already checked with the Monroe Pearson
Building that happens to be available then.
It also follows spring breaks, so we don't conflict with that.
But my thought here is, let's take a different slant on innovation.
Let's look at urban mobility.
So look at urban freight mobility, because we've got different challenges when we're
moving trucks, delivery trucks in an urban environment.
Urban passenger movement, we've got different autonomous systems coming online.
But what are some other things that we can do that would promote economic development
in the region, as well as promote efficient passenger transportation?
Probably another one that focuses on information technology, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity.
And then a final panel probably focused on either promoting entrepreneurship and innovation
in Denton, and then also marrying that with workforce development.
The purpose I really want to see out of this last summit, and I won't speak for Brittany
and the EDP or anything like that, I want to see Denton view as a center of innovation,
especially in the logistics mobility area.
And with companies like Peterbilt, U.S. Cold Storage, we're seeing distribution centers
just come right up along I-35.
We also at the university have a good relationship with the Alliance Mobility Innovation Zone,
the Alliance Development.
There's lots of potential here to really build off the strength and logistics.
And I think if we play our cards right, use this summit, we can really position Denton
as a leader in this area.
And I'm probably very close to my time.
So any questions?
You can have more time.
This is very interesting.
I hope that this gives us enough lead time to start working on brochures and things like
that that we can hand out to people coming in here.
I see that as a critical addition to what you're trying to do, advertise what they're
doing, because former military, I'm very aware of the number of military folks coming through
here to give graduate degrees in the logistics area.
What a great opportunity to continue to expand those relationships that we have.
Now I'm a retired Air Force logistics officer.
So that's where we're getting some of these military connections.
This is exciting.
Yeah, very exciting.
I think there's a lot of opportunity.
I guess my question would be, as you're putting it all together, and I might be interested
about how sadly, is to collaborate into what industries we need to start focusing on, especially
for development, for warehousing, for, you know, there's so many options there.
We talked about the emissions last, you know, two times ago, you know, how do we get into
industries that have low emissions to not, to sandbag the opportunity to get something
later, because the DFW area is getting saturated with it.
So I think I'm with you, I'm really excited about this topic.
Well, one of the things that I would like to have as feedback from you, and I'm kind
of listing out a couple panels, and I'm kind of just putting out there as strong end.
What would you like to see?
You know, what kind of panels?
What companies?
What entrepreneurs?
What venture capital firms?
What would you like to see come in?
Also, you know, there's a group, you know, over at Stoke.
I'd like to have some of them that are especially interested in this space have tables set up
where they can promote their innovations, their ideas, because in many cases, they might
be working in an area that they think is not related to logistics and transportation, but
just a one-off, and they could be, you know, doing something that, you know, improves the
efficiency, the scheduling, a variety of different things in the logistics area.
So I'm hoping that all of you will also give some ideas and say, "Hey, we would like to
look at this."
Like in South Dallas, yes, emissions and noise are big issues, you know, with all the distribution
centers going along, the people in the Haslett and all those other areas aren't too keen
on all the trucks coming through.
Okay, if that's an issue, let's bring different people in to talk about how do we reduce those,
how do we reduce the emissions.
How can we schedule trucks, especially if they're telling us to operate at night versus
the day?
Are you the contact person for us?
Yes, I am.
You can also contact Brittany as well if you have any suggestions or ideas.
And I hope the Chamber is thinking about a special group to maybe coordinate.
That's a great idea.
You know, also I'd like to have some ideas as a keynote speaker.
I've got a couple, you know, that we're working on, but if there's somebody that really could
-- you know, I'd like to have somebody, especially as we have like a fireside chat at the end.
Why Denny?
You know, people can really talk to that at the end.
Why think about Denny in terms of innovation?
Why locate here?
Brian said that he would be the keynote speaker.
They have a great R&D program going on at Peterville, and they work with a lot of those
technology startups, so, and logistics, they may be a great keynote.
But we're excited for the opportunity because I know a lot of cities have gotten ahead of
us in the startup ecosystem game, and I think this will allow us to start visioning for
the future.
And the reason also I picked the Monroe-Pearson building, I didn't want this to be viewed
as a UNT event.
I wanted to be viewed as a community event.
I may not get -- maybe some of the UNT now is going to come after me for that, but I
doubt it.
But I just really think that having it in that setting really would bring in civic leaders,
others, and they get to see Denton as opposed to UNT.
And I see you as being on the catboard seat on a lot of this because Peter built some
of the things you're already doing.
You have a far greater understanding of what he's telling us than I do.
On certain parts of it, there's a lot -- there's a lot of -- I mean, it's a whole ecosystem.
We're just one sliver of it, really.
And then we can also look at inside the warehouses as well.
We could be looking at, you know, different types of innovations there because there's
quite a bit going on.
Because in logistics right now, with trucking, you know, other areas, we have a severe workforce
shortage.
Yeah, there's a lot of due for logistic opportunities as well, but that's in the scope, but for
sure.
Brittany, can we get an update in December at the latest?
For sure.
We could do that.
Yeah, so we can do the help as you develop more and more ideas.
We love help.
So we have a meeting with head of Gregory, Jamie Adams, and Dr. Pollin every two weeks
right now to try to get this in order.
So we'll update you.
Clearly, I see the airport as part of this deal, and you know, we have grown out to where
we can handle a number of additional capacities.
We need the west access road out there, but that's coming.
I agree.
All of them rhymed, for sure.
I told him about it.
He was excited.
All right.
Excellent.
Well, thank you very much.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
All right.
We're going to move on to the next item.
We'll call item BED25-024, receive a report, hold discussion, and give staff feedback regarding
the City of Denton utility billing programs.
Chair recognizes Krista Foster to present on this item.
All right, so first off, thank you for having me today, dear members.
I'm Krista Foster, customer service manager, and we're going to talk about a recent review,
like business review that we did in our billing and collections.
So council approved funding for us to have a review done by an outside consultant to
ensure that we are being competitive and efficient in the way that we're carrying on operations.
What we're going to talk about today is a very high level overview of the benchmarking
and the revenue trends, our commercial deposit policies, payment arrangement policies, leak
adjustment policies.
Then we'll just do a quick summary and that will take any questions that you have.
So as far as benchmarking and revenue trending, you can see that Denton performs very favorably
against the industry.
We exceed the industry in our bad debt numbers being lowest, our aged revenue, as well as
our average time to collect.
And you'll notice over time, our performance is consistent.
You can see that the anomalies are related to the pandemic and when the pandemic occurred.
As for commercial deposits, the consultant reviewed our policy as well as those against
other benchmark cities and determined that our way that we calculate deposits is consistent.
The return of deposit interest is consistent with peers, but we are not aligned with other
cities in the retention period.
So most of those return within one to two years and that our ordinance, the way it's
written requires manual screening of all deposits.
So the recommendation that we're bringing forward and again, any recommendations that
we're making as it relates to commercial deposits to leak adjustment or to pay agreements
is specifically consultant and customer service recommendations.
Obviously, they will require counsel direction and legal input, so they may change slightly.
So what we're recommending is keeping our residential deposits refunded at 12 months,
changing our commercial refunds so that they will occur at 24 months because currently
they are held for the lifetime of the account.
So we're going to be looking at refunding those as long as those customers have any
credit rating and they've had no disconnections, they haven't been tampered with the meter
and the account is current when we go in to do the reviews.
Payment arrangements, we found that the calculation date that we're using to come up with a due
date for pay arrangements is manual, so it's more time consuming and it's a little more
prone to errors.
And our eligibility and administration is a bit restrictive because we only allow one
adjustment or arrangement per six month period.
And then any deviation to the guidelines for pay agreements would require counsel intervention.
So the recommendation that's being made is to change the due date for a short-term pay
arrangement to match the due date of the current bill that would be printed on the bill to
remove the restriction on the number of arrangements someone can request.
But instead, if the arrangements are not being kept, then we would suspend access to that
program temporarily.
Then we're looking at updating the ordinance so that we can authorize the program authority
to the city manager, give discretion to the head of customer service, and still ensure
that counsel gets to review prior to any formalized changes to the program.
And for our leak adjustment program, we found that we weren't aligned with some of the
other benchmark cities in that the ordinance is hard-coded, which means, again, any deviations
to those programs would require counsel intervention, and that we had a shorter filing time and
our policy was restrictive compared to some other cities.
So we also had no consideration for AMI metering that's coming in place with water, then low
customer eligibility, and there was some language in there that inadvertently excludes renters,
so we need to correct that.
So our recommendation is that we're going to remove the 100,000-gallon cap for residential
customers.
We are adding a provision for outdoor elements like sprinklers and pools that they will be
covered at a lower rate, and they will cap at 5,000 gallons excess.
We're going to increase our submission deadline to 60 days, and then, again, for the ordinance,
we're looking at updating the language for renters, authorizing program authority to
the city manager, discretion to the head of customer service, ensure counsel has opportunity
for review before formalized changes, and add provisional language for water AMI.
And, again, all of these things have to go through legal, after-counsel direction, so
they could look different.
And with that, summarizing it is that Denton is performing very favorably against the industry
in our collections and billing, and then we're going to be taking those recommendations to
counsel so that we can have better agility and flexibility for commercial deposits, pay
arrangements, and make adjustments.
And with that, does anyone have any questions?
I like your new bills.
Thank you.
And at least the perforation is on one of the folds, instead of half.
We worked very hard on that, didn't we?
I have one question.
The benchmark cities, we know what those were, and were they regional?
The reason I'm kind of asking that question is it's good to always benchmark nationwide
and even Texas, but you kind of compete regionally.
Correct.
So do we know what cities were included in that regionally?
The full list is in the study that was one of the backup attachments; however, it included
Garland, it included Fort Worth, I believe it included Sanger because they also had electric.
Alice, Carrollton, Lewisville, San Marcos, Austin, San Antonio, so it was a good selection
of pure groups.
As you make information for the AMI metering, what kind of impact did you see on how things
operate now versus how would that change?
Well, we anticipate that with AMI metering coming in, we'll be able to actually look
at the flow data to determine more specifically a time period of this is when the leak started,
this is when the leak ended, rather than having to go just based off of average consumption
over historical usage and things like that.
It will give us more concrete information to work from.
So as far as waste and reduction of waste or even just targeting, right, being more
at the bullseye, any ideas of what we can expect from them?
I mean, it seems like it's in the direction we're going, but I'm not necessarily seeing
or hearing where this is not the topic or maybe the day for the topic, but how we're
moving forward with it and how can it, you know, we're looking to figure out where to
eliminate waste, right.
And right now, if you have a smart thermostat and you show up at home in the middle of the
day, it's 76 or 78, and it affects your electric bill, but it also affects the load for the
city, right.
I see Tony coming because this is really more of the water department's thing, so I may
not have those answers.
That's okay.
Curious.
Good afternoon.
Tony Quent, the DME General Manager at Alverson Customer Service.
First of all, so the AMI that we're talking about is on the water side.
DME converted to AMI probably over a decade ago, and so, and that's worked really well
for us.
On the water side, if I remember the study that was done, it protected about a 15 to
20% recovery.
So in essence, what happens with these mechanical meters as they begin to fail, they don't record
the full water usage.
So the very first thing that you see when you convert to a water AMI is people's bills
tends to go up, and that's because these meters tend to record a lot faster and more accurate
and all of that, but we see those leaks a lot faster, right.
And so it's about 15 to 20% type of recovery that we would see.
Thank you.
What interest were receiving and giving back on the certificates?
So we are still working up numbers on the deposit interest and the deposits that will
be refunded, but it would be a fairly significant amount during the first year, but I can get
the numbers and provide them back to Matilda.
I think a lot of small businesses are wondering what happens to that money and then when they're
going to get it back and what interest rates it's going to be.
We actually apply the interest every six months with the rate that is the federal rate, and
then we apply that and keep it in an account so that our calculations so that we know and
they're getting the actual interest rates.
I think a move of a cash deposit will accept a letter of credit.
Yes, a new revocable letter of credit.
Is it possible for the city, this is probably a Scott Bray question actually, but the city
to create a standardized letter of credit form because I know that for a lot of the
businesses the back and forth takes more time and going to the bank, from the bank, to the
bank, to you all getting it approved.
Is there a possibility of a standardized letter of credit form that is accessible should they
be interested in that?
I know that's come up in the past.
I would defer to customer service on whether they want to do that and their accounts, but
I think a lot of banks have their own requirements for those as well.
When this has come up in the past, we have taken that through our legal team and legal's
recommendation was not to provide something standardized.
We can certainly as we go back discussing these things again, bring it back up, but
as of today, that was the direction that we never seek.
Maybe in lieu of a standard, could there be a criteria document to kind of help?
I will make sure that I bring that up and we're sticking to it.
That might keep it going back, keep the back and forth to a minimum.
Releasing that letter of credit in the same timeframe instead of that you're revocable,
releasing it at the same time if they need the requirements.
Any other questions?
All right.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
We're going to move on to the next item, item C, EDP 25-026, receive various staff reports.
Good afternoon Board of Directors, Courtney Sotelo, Economic Development Director.
I hope you had a great month of August.
Have good news, Ditten was ranked as number nine best real estate markets in the U.S.
by Wallet Hub.
It's a financial online platform that tends to rank cities throughout the U.S. and so
our competitors are some of our local cities, ranked as number one, McKinney, Bridgerton
number five, and Briscoe number six, and we're at number nine, not too shabby in the United
States.
For our partner visits and training for the month of August, the Texas Main Street Staff
came down to visit our Ditten Main Street Association, our city manager's office and
our team.
Kristin Folio, our Main Street Manager, a manager that visits, I want her to come and
speak about hot wind.
Sure.
Good morning, Kristin Folio, Main Street Program Manager.
So as you all probably knew from our previous meeting, Ditten Main Street Program did receive
their accreditation and that's based on 10 performance metrics aligning with our four
point approach of economic vitality, design, promotion, and organization.
Again, Main Street is a preservation based economic development tool.
I do want to share some very specific facts with that site visit.
There are 82 Main Street programs across Texas and 73 of those programs are municipal municipality
programs, so the majority sit under the city.
Ditten is in the top five of the largest Main Street communities, so part of their visit
was to discuss what an urban Main Street program looks like.
So, Texas Main Street is very aware of our issues and our struggles within an urban program
and so, Texas Main Street and the Main Street America program are all working together to
figure out what an urban Main Street program looks like.
We also reviewed our Ditten Main Street Program transformation strategy and work plan and
so when we want to do a quarterly Main Street update, I can share that with you all and
what that looks like.
The two main goals right now are placemaking and community serving with a heavy emphasis
on business recruitment right now and then another interesting fact is that we are one
of three Main Street communities that have received the Great American Main Street Award.
Dennis and Jeff's received theirs and so, Texas Main Street, Texas Historical Commission
and Main Street America, we're all working together on how we can kind of promote that
Great American Main Street Award and then again, being a Main Street community, we have
access to small business webinars, we've been kind of with our downtown lowdown newsletter,
pushing some of those webinars out for our small businesses just as another resource
and tool and then grants for our small businesses being part of Main Street.
We partnered with our transportation department on GM on Main Street grant, we did not receive
it this year, but hopefully we can try again next year, but having access to all of those
grants and funding opportunities for our city.
So, in addition, I am conducting a meeting held by the North Texas Commission, it's a
business trade association in North Texas and they invited all the regional NDCs to come
and speak to learn more about the World Cup that will be hosted in the United States next
year.
So, there will be several host cities in the United States including three in DFW, so we're
hoping to become a host city where we're working closely with Jeff Pritz, who's over at NDC
Suites and UNT and I know Jamie Adams is working with him as well, but the goal of
this meeting was to see how we could coordinate or host businesses that will be potentially
sponsoring those teams as they come to the states.
Erica attended a North Central Texas Cog Economic Development District Board meeting, she serves
as our representative on that board, so thank you for attending.
Our staff also attended a few webinars and Matilda attended a Public Works Ride Along,
so occasionally our colleagues in different departments will let us ride along with them
for a few hours to learn more about what they do, so Matilda attended the Public Works session,
she said she had a great time.
For our August recruitment stats, we have 29 active projects, within that pipeline we
have a little over 3,800 potential jobs and $6.5 billion in capital investment.
For August we had eight new leads, four that were direct, three from the broker and one
that was from a recruitment outreach email that Clay sent out to the business.
We had one incentive application and one recruitment visit.
We had four leads lost, and so we moved two to our cold pipeline because typically we
don't hear back from a company within six to eight months, we add them to cold because
we're not considered active.
And then we moved two to our business support pipeline.
So typically when a business reaches out, they intend to expand or they intend to apply
for incentives and that may not happen, they may just expand or they may not only need
our help for a few tasks and so we're moving those to our business support pipeline.
And Clay reached out to 102 businesses during last month, so he's got a really good email
system, email blast system that he targets to several businesses throughout the U.S.
For our downtown stats, we had three business retention expansion visits, two new leads
for our downtown reinvestment grant program, and we had 11 leads lost, two are no longer
moving forward with the expansion, six are cold, and three did not qualify for the downtown
reinvestment grant.
And we also had 12 recruitment outreach emails.
For the RFIs, we had six that we received, we submitted four, we did not submit on two
and we had zero lead conversions.
And the majority of those leads came from the governor's office and the ones that we
did submit had a total potential capital investment of $625 million and 652 jobs.
So for the year, we've submitted a total of 45 RFIs.
These are music and film, they're all in, no one's alive.
Hello everyone, I don't have much from an update this month.
We had zero film permits for August, now school is back in session and I've already started
to receive some student film inquiries, so that number will go up.
I went to the Didn't Film Meetup.
This gentleman here was collective co-creator of media in Denton, hosts eats occasionally
and they're always very well attended and it's a really good way for me to get to know
people living and working in the film industry in Denton.
There was about 20 people there and this one was kind of show and tell themed, so people
were pitching their ideas and seeing if anyone else wanted to help.
So that was fun to see what people have been working on.
And then the Live Music Society released a toolbox grant, it's $10,000.
So I shared that with our venues as well and one of them is confirmed to have applied,
so hopefully that works out.
Thank you.
All right, for past upcoming events, for the month of August, our team with Denton infrastructure
summit in Irving, the Data Center Investment Conference Expo in Dallas and Clay attended
the Taiwan Expo in Dallas as well, the governor's office, their economic development team were
there and Clay was able to contact them.
Our team hosted a fire suppression workshop, so Chris and Matilda led that effort and at
the very bottom picture you can see a few people showed up for those, for that workshop
and on the 26th we hosted a downtown safety meeting in partnership with Community Services
with our Police Department and our Parks and Rec Department to collaborate on future initiatives
and just kind of learn about our existing resources for downtown.
And for September, this Saturday, as Dr. Pollan mentioned, there is the National Security
Cyberland and ARC Space Summit that Matilda and I will attend, so we do work overtime
on Saturday, just want to note that, but we think it's important to network with the folks
that will be attending and try to generate some leads.
On the 16th, Clay and I will attend the IC3 Life Science and Healthcare Innovation Summit.
We look forward to learning more about biotech and exploring opportunities for Denton.
And as a reminder, on the 24th we have the Denton Job Fair, the second job fair for the
year.
Christina Davis in the chamber are coordinating on this event and I believe there was about
46 businesses already signed up.
We actually have, as of this morning, we have 51 and 176 job seekers have already pre-registered.
That's great.
So kudos to them for planning the second one this year, looking forward to seeing how that
turns out.
And on October 23rd, we are working with TWU to host the Governor's Small Business Summit
that is women-focused.
Both of our offices applied to host this summit with the governor's office and they said y'all
can coordinate together, we'll host it in Denton and it's going to be women-focused.
So we're working on finalizing the agenda right now and once we get that finalized we'll
send it to you.
So if you have any team members or if you would like to attend, please let us know.
And that is it.
Any questions?
All right, the other item we have is future agenda items, the calls for future agenda
items.
So for the month of October, it's not listed on this sheet but we do have an attendance
presentation update and that's to identify attendance policies for our board and we have
the STO contract that we'll bring forward with you and we, our guest speaker, will be
Dawn McCary with the UNT Murphy Center.
We hope to continue hosting guest speakers so that y'all can meet with some of our resource
partners that we're meeting with and we're collaborating on instead of you hearing maybe
a once-in-a-summer in front of me every month.
All right, does the board have any other business to discuss for suggestions on what we should
discuss in the next meeting?
For future agenda items, do we need to put nominations in the committee necklace?
Yes, so last night Councilmember Duster made a two-minute pitch or I believe it was for
board uniformity.
So we're looking into what that means and so that will be coming up as soon as possible.
It is our time of year to be doing it and when we send in a nomination I just want to
knock it off on our side also.
Got it, got it.
So yeah, we'll put that on a future agenda once we understand the timing of that.
Perfect.
All right, our next EDP meeting is scheduled to be on October 8th, 2025 at 11.
Please let staff know if you're not able to attend the meeting, submit your notification
of absence online.
If there is no other business, I will adjourn the meeting at 11.52.
Thank y'all.
Good day.
All right.