Mar 24, 2026 Economic Development Partnership Board on 2026-03-24 8:00 AM (SPECIAL CALLED)
March 24, 2026 Economic Development Partnership Board
Full Transcript
>> Okay. All right. We now have a forum. With the forum I will call this meeting to
order at 8.03 a.m. We will now open with the working session. Item EDP 26-007, hold a retreat
workshop and discussion facilitated by Opportunity Strategies LLC and advise staff on priorities
regarding the city's economic development challenges, strengths, and goals for the 2025,
2026, 2026, 2027 fiscal year. Estimated presentation and discussion time is four hours. Welcome.
I will hand it over to Alicia. >> I hope I'm sorry.
>> Good morning, everyone. All right. So this morning we are going to get into writing some
goals. Hopefully y'all had a chance to think about everything last night and jot down some
things that you wanted to put forth as your priorities for today. Recognizing that we're
not going to be able to do everything that you mentioned yesterday, all the things that
you want to do, but today we want to get down to the three, four, five, six, no more than
seven things that we want to put on your to-do list for the next year and a half of this fiscal
year and next fiscal year. So just a real quick recap. We talked yesterday about development
services. We talked about expanding funding opportunities, site development. Really, really
a lot of people talk about celebrating our successes, driving home, the successes that
we have in storytelling, becoming a hub for logistics. How do we leverage that? Medical.
The chamber in the city, who's doing what and how do we divide what it is that we're
supposed to be doing with recruitment that's already identified, but how do we make sure
that we're tracking recruitment, diversify the businesses that we want here, Main Street,
VRE. We talked about incentive sets for recruitment retention expansion. How are we going to capitalize
and categorize the results from VRE? Like where did all of our, where does the records
go of all of our conversations with our existing industries? Opportunity zones. We talked here
about how do we identify and leverage our competitive edge, being site ready, providing
white glove service around the city, frictionless development services. How do we kind of get
that machine going well old? How do we ensure customer service excellence in all that we
do? Relationship development, fostering partnerships, safety, homelessness, a target industry analysis
that helps us with lead generation, knowing which businesses we need to go visit, where,
trade shows. And then we talked about business round table with a bus tour, the growth summit
that UNT and the Dallas Business Journal is doing. University commercial. Silver tsunami.
How do we help business owners who are ready to retire, but they are ready to sell their
business? How do we manage that? Is it an opportunity for us to work on that? And then
we talked about the TWU Women's Leadership, the existing business transfer that Jason
was talking about. So that's a quick kind of overview of all the ideas that we discussed
yesterday. When we talked about the homelessness situation in Denton, I did go do a little
bit of research last night about some cities who have found some solutions. And so the
word solutions means different things, of course, to different cities. But I wanted
to give you this as just kind of a to do list to search research out. Maybe you can talk
to some people through TML or through National League of Cities, different places. And I
know that's not really this group's job, but if you pass it along to some other city
ACM, city mayors, good for city council to know these things. This is the result that
I came up with last night with some help from AI. These are the five cities across the United
States who've made really big strides the last few years in addressing homelessness
concerns. I was shocked to see that Houston has reduced its homeless population by 63%
in the last eight to 10 years. That's significant. So especially for a big city, but that's the
only big city on there. The other four cities are in your population range or smaller. So
Rockford, Illinois, Abilene, Bakersfield, California and Chattanooga. So those might
be some kind of research figure out what all they did. But the one thing or the five things
that all of these cities had in common was the process that they used. And the process
was immediate permanent housing. How do we get people off the streets and into some kind
of shelter right away, centralized coordination system. So one entity doing all the coordination,
fast housing placement. So that meant anytime someone was identified and needing housing,
they were housed within days to a week, not months. So there was someone looking for the
opportunities and getting them housed immediately. And the big, the big key was city, county
and nonprofits all aligned together. So whoever doing the number two coordination, they got
the city, the county and nonprofits all working together to do that, which y'all know, that's
a hard, hard thing sometimes. And then the last one was we've got to have places to put
adequate housing supply. So anyway, I just thought I'd share that with you just did a
little research on that. So whoever y'all need to pass that along to, to start doing
some research on that, it's not really inside y'all's purview. So that helpful at all. At
least have some places to start working and people for city management to start calling
to say, okay, so what questions, concerns, feedback, ideas, anything from yesterday after
sleeping on anything, anybody have any things that they pondered overnight? Was it outside
of my reflection on last night? Great job in categorizing the box for the someone that
you have a big, big, big variety. It seemed like we were, you know, you weren't working
towards the common one. Okay. Well, this is a high level over thought, but for me personally,
the quality of my piece is something I'm very much interested in because it just captures
him. Okay. And so listening to have peers here, I just think we're just on the right
path. I think that when we are talking about our city and not necessarily compare it to
everybody else in the book, which is where we are certain people are gravitate towards
us because we all agree that we're saying that same kind of flavor culturally, you know,
we all agree on it. We have our own partners here, really care about what they're doing.
I'm just talking from city council perspective. Yeah. And I'm just a regular citizen here
as well. So I'm just really glad to be sitting here knowing that when I go home, you know,
I've been on the council here for five years. I'm just so excited about sitting next to
people that were born and raised. So being able to know that when I go home, I'm done
with all the incentive to ensure that the investors here, the developers, the chamber
of commerce, the hospitals, the school district, the airport, you know, everybody's just still
working hand in hand to make sure that I'm safe. So I appreciate that. I really do appreciate
it. Great. And I think that's a good important thing. We're all, everybody here has the same
hopes and dreams for them, that it's successful, that it's a great place to continue the work,
play and visit and all that good stuff. And so yes, we've got issues. Yes, we've got to
overcome some challenges, but if we operate today's goals from our strengths and our opportunities
and our successes and tell that story, I think that's a good lead for the goals. Yes, Rick.
I think sometimes we don't take advantage of some of the assets we have. The chamber of
commerce has done a fabulous job of having what they call leadership done, but I don't
think we call on those alumni who have been through that program to help them stay current
on, I mean, the first class 30 years ago. 41. 41. A long time ago. A lot of those people
no longer live here and things like that, but the ones that do are still worth, you know,
contacting to help them be our cheerleaders in the community. And I think sometimes we
haven't done a good job of staying in touch and I can speak from experience. I was in
class one and two, average honor. I think that's part of our cheerleading point that
we've got some more cheerleaders out there. We're just not calling. Yeah, that's a great
idea. So can you speak to what is the, is there an alumni group? How active is it? What
does that look like there? It ebbs and flows. 41 years is a long time. You get hold of people.
Sometimes you find out there's somebody that's been in class one that you didn't even know
that I didn't know that. I'm glad to know you walked out in the first class. I'm going
to put in our board for a minute. That's like the fact though that it's so strict. If you
miss the first meeting, you don't, you don't get to come. So it's important that everybody
come to all the things. So that's a good time. I think it has a, it has a great reputation.
I know Matilda is a graduate from it. There's probably a few others. There's a graduate
leadership in that here. There's three people. Okay. Oh, I am. Oh, you. But I think an alumni
program has always been talked about. It's not a dual class project every year. He was
the young professionals one of the years ago. They're working on a chamber foundation right
now, which is exciting. But one of the goals is getting individuals that take the program
to speak elected or appointed or board positions, but having the advancements to do it and the
knowledge to do it. So not just instantly saying, oh, I've done leadership that now
I'm going to go run for city council, working their way up through committees and appointments
and whatnot and leveraging their community wide knowledge into opportunity to advocate
for this community president. Amen. And that's the whole point. The chamber adult leadership
programs across the country is to prepare up and coming business leaders to become up
and coming community leaders. And, you know, the work starts after graduation, you know,
is preparing them for all that. I don't think that we've convinced enough of them to go ahead
and run for the elected offices. I'm going to tell you that I'm, I don't think the current
candidates for city council have much background on behind the scenes. So we have an educational
job that's huge. Right. Well, maybe you can lead this year's graduations and you can promote
that. But that's really the whole point of that really is the whole point of leadership
for them to graduate thinking, okay, what's my next step here? Is it running for office?
Is it getting on a board? Is it working with a nonprofit? What does that look like?
I like the United way. They do a good job of taking people who want to be on some of these
boards and commissions who have no experience. And, and some of those who have been around,
I teach the liability part of being on the board, uh, have in the past and have recently, but I mean,
there's another group that they're, they're in this for the good of the community, but maybe from a
different angle, but we all work together. Well, the one thing that came to my mind is
we see this a lot. I think the barrier is always, that's great. We got to give people like ready
30 seconds to a minute materials that they can distribute like this, like that goes back to
storytelling. Well, it comes down to like the boots on the ground logistics and someone owning
those like snippets, those bits, those little pieces of facts. It's not a huge document like
this, this big and people just look and they go, I'm not gonna read that. It needs to be like one
slide. It needs to be 30 seconds video. Everyone's got TikTok brand. So they're not gonna, they're
not going to watch it. They're not going to look at it. Like we just got to adapt to it. I mean,
it's worth my visit for all the time now. All of our trainings has been turned into a minute and a
half video. Yeah. Same here too. I mean, I used my strategic plans about five years ago. I started
doing these one pagers because people are like, citizens aren't gonna read the whole strategic
plan. One page with the goals listed and that's it. You're right. And the book, I think you can
incorporate that in all that y'all do and especially on media, like in a video. If you have
what Briggs say, and I think, you know, we can leverage those networks, but we have to give them
that 30 second elevator speech too. Like, or else I'll just, okay, I'm engaged in community. What do
I do? And everyone just stands there, looks at each other. Yeah. Right. Like that's the idea to
execution. Yeah. Y'all have this year's graduation speaker yet for leadership? It's usually a member
of the club. Oh, okay. The class comes and talks about what their project was and what they learned.
So they have to appoint their own speaker. Okay. Yeah. Well, maybe that's a good message to give
that speaker is like, let's talk about what's next after this and what we've prepared you for.
And then maybe you're one patient. So I can, um, Lucy, bring up that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's just a
white glove service. Like your service in general. I think we're all, um, a lot of businesses on the
banking, I mean, it's all served, right? I mean, my bank or another bank is, you know, one, it's
the service that you get that makes you want to come back. So I don't know if the city is any
different. Um, but I think if you're going to have a 30 minute or 30 second or a minute and a half
for sales pitch or storytelling, like it's a lot easier to do that. It's like what you're saying
is actually true. Right. And, and the problem is, um, I mean, there's probably some challenges on
how you only pay to get a faster service, but if it's been done in other cities, we should figure
out how to do that so that we can offer that thing. But I think the underlying premise is we
need to offer good service. Like in the last probably 90 days, I've had two instances with
the city, one as a property owner where they tended to apply for a permit and they, the city
closes at noon on Friday. So they sit around and wait and they don't notify them until the 11 o'clock
hour on Friday that, Hey, your permit has an issue or has been rejected. I mean, there's nothing you
can do or get to the weekend or, um, and then with that same tenant, I was just, they had transferred
utilities over to the tenant. We were trying to get transferred back to us before they terminated
utilities. We contacted the city facility department on Monday and they said that they call us on
Friday at the end of the 11 o'clock hours, two instances, two for two, and I have zero billing
C on a regular basis. And of course they're done at 1130. So then the electricity gets turned off
that night. One that is the, um, uh, they didn't do the transfer. They still got to go back to the
permit for the, um, inspection process, which was not true. All we had to do was just transfer it
from one order to the other. Um, but they waited five days to give us that information and it was
right 30 minutes before they closed. The only reason that's happening is because some employee
thinks that that's okay. There's no, there's some, there's no one who's told that employee
That's what I'm saying. Like they think that's okay because no one from above them has told
them that that's unacceptable service at the city of Denver. Right. So that standard has to be good.
So we've had permits that have been issued and I'm not so happy with the work that you
be done. Okay. Oh, you're kidding. What happened the last nine months? Uh, you know,
we're not going to do that. I was just thinking of writing some thoughts on it yesterday. I felt
that was here for this morning. Really I was, I was looking at the perspective of our organization,
you know, the larger organization here probably seem a clearer as long once they're still trying
to figure it out, but every department has to collaborate. We have to look at it as we have one
common goal. Right. And, and if the organization is the city of Denver and we, he, the board is
one department, then we have to identify where our farmers are across the aisle. We have to identify
who the other components are of this organization that we are misfiring and we have to align.
Because without it, you're not going to fix what he and I have talked about. You're not going to
fix the builders that come once and they tell you that's it. I'm not coming back. Right. Uh,
and we burn to a lot of big builders that way. Um, but it's that collaboration that this patient,
the, the, Hey, this is, this is not EDP. This is not your other. It's a holistic reputation.
Right. And as much as I agree with what's taking us, I love the outdoors and I want the outside,
I have to figure out how to tax for that purpose, but I also have to figure out how to create
opportunity for the, maybe not the size of the organization that I want to see, but I do need
some of those. I do need some large organization. I need some little, some small.
The problem is like someone like Lee that has interaction a lot, someone like myself that has
contact in the city, like we can pick up a phone call, so I would get up somewhere at six or seven
o'clock at night and get a thing over the weekend. I didn't transition in my face and get that fixed.
That's not available to. Well, in the back of the, you shouldn't even have to, it shouldn't be on
who's got contacts after hours to get something done. It should be an expectation of all employees
out of the city that says these are our standards and you will live up to these if you plan to
continue work. I agree with what they're saying. Well, there's, there's another part that I look,
you know, some of these subcommittees on building inspection or plan approvals and checklists,
and the amount of submittals coming into the city is pretty large. And, you know, like I said
before, a lot of the projects are part of projects that are being worked on today.
So I think it's got to be a city management leadership and city council saying we want
this piece of our city to be the best service because we see the importance and see. So I
think we have to meet with city manager and city council members and say, okay, we have,
if we will truly believe what's coming out of this, that time to get something done in customer
service in those departments are the number one, because I said yesterday, ready employees,
they're ready sites. Basically there are a pipeline of employees. If that is the real
over incentives, not that we don't want to get rid of it since, but those are the real top two
things that most people are looking for. Let's make it, let's make a decision. We're going to
put funding to that, right? We're going to put our money where our mouth is and let's go advocate
because that's about what we can do in those areas. Let's go advocate, get that done because
we don't have a lot of funds because the real train to go through a money deal. Let's, let's
service them. We're at the top of the city, state of Texas, the top of business and everybody pays
the same, doesn't matter where you stop, don't you walk in. So what do I have to sell? Cirks,
somebody's closing at eight, seven o'clock on a Saturday morning or they're at seven o'clock on a
Saturday morning. You know, you're already paying, you just said, well, it is actually because
you look at the number of permits coming in, the process and the flow, you know, I'm not defending
them getting back to you, but they may have had 2000 of those that day, you know, they didn't have
it twice. So it sounds like a trend, but it's looking at that workflow and going, are we, are
we putting our money where we think it actually moves the needle? It's, it's building metrics for
analytics that drive that. That's the same thing. If you go through purchasing refuse or whatever,
and guys who are accounts payable have 5,000 a day, they don't know they just see a stack of 5,000.
They don't have like an aging report and some other key metrics that actually give them the
dashboard or the transparency to know what's important. Like it's not, it's very easy to say
that people don't care. Right. That's nine times out of 10, it's not true. They typically don't
understand either their part in the whole system or they can't see the results of what they're doing.
Right. So if you can, if you can put those things in front of them, it'll fix it like five times
out of 10. Agreed. And I think you're right that most people, when they know better, they'll do
better. It's often an opportunity, it's often a problem of them not knowing what this is for
and what the vision is. If all city employees can't say what the vision is for the city,
then they don't see their piece in it. If this might be an IE question, you know, I know our
industry is run by KPIs. That's where I just wrote, sorry, NIUP. So for a city, when it comes to
permits and things like that, where does it start to set goals? And what I mean by that is if I had
5,000 permits a week and I can only process 200, that's fine. But do we have goals of what kind of
200, what level of impact 200 are we going to process? And how many do we want to? Is there
any type of common goal of achievement as a city that we're trying to do when it comes to that?
And I'm being like, because in my industry it's all about KPIs. Right. Everything is on push.
I think that's the answer right there. And because we don't have development services sitting here at
the table today, but I think this quarterly roundtable where everybody comes together and
there's a, you know, where development services is sitting there with all of y'all in a big group,
that question can be answered there. What are the KPIs? Are they on track with what we need?
They're working hard and they have reviews and they have processes internally that, you know,
serving on some of these subcommittees of these things. They're working very hard at those things.
You know, I think part of the problem is in that part, we can forecast our business, right? We can
know we're going to go bid on 15 jobs, we're going to close three or whatever that is. The city then
has to take whatever's submitted. So one month that thing may spike in the next month it might be low.
So I think that's their hardest challenge is balancing that workload because they don't have
any control. If you guys are busy, you're not going to bid jobs for a few weeks, right? Until you know
you can get to those projects, the city has to take. And so that's one paddle that they have.
So I think it's just helping out again, back to say, okay, we're going to fund this, even it
at the highest level because this is the problem. But I know they are working very hard on that.
Scott's here, Charlie's kind of taking the reign on that and it's just hard because it's huge fights.
Not that it can't be overcome. He can manage to overcome. And I mean, I think we don't know what
all that is until y'all sit down and talk to them. Like they're doing a good job on a lot of things.
They need to be sitting here and talking about what all that is with y'all. So they do developer town
calls. And I think they're probably the same way that like Kristen or Jamie report on mainstream
or EDP, they can always do a quarterly report to have some of that fact. Are you doing quarterly?
It's just like anything else, right? The more you sit down and talk about it,
everybody understands. And when everybody understands, everybody kind of
does better once they understand it. So that's the economic film. They may ask for you.
They don't. A lot of times I'll talk to development services directors that they don't understand
where they are. They don't even understand that they're doing that. What that is and their piece
in it. So I think the more y'all can collaborate and work together with all that, I think that
cross-department collaboration can be really important. And one thing I'll say, kind of
speaking to Rick's thing, and then we'll start writing some goals. Talking about the chamber,
one of the best things that I've seen where chambers have a long history of alumni classes,
but not a real solid, robust alumni group. It could be next year's project. I know you usually
let them decide on their project, but you can also feed them and say your project this year is you're
going to create an alumni group. They don't decide. Our board decides. Okay, well there you go.
So you get to help decide what the project is for the leadership class?
The board. The board folks got it. Yeah, that might be a good project. So like let's say
leadership class that starts in August. Your project this year is you're going to build
and execute an alumni organization, and then they figure out what mechanics are. Anyway,
that's just one of the best practices I've seen. And then when they own it, all of a sudden it's
really, really strong. Yes, every other challenge. Was there any briefing day?
Especially with experience. Let them build it. They're there to do stuff like that.
And then they're on, but he already knows. Yeah, he's done it twice so he knows what to do.
He was forced into that, but I think, I think you're right, Rick, that that's a good
action tool that we're not really activating yet. So okay. All right, any other things?
Okay, so hopefully you've decided on what your top two goals are for the year. I hope you,
just a refresher. I'm going to give you, I'm going to give everybody two post-it notes.
The colors don't matter. We're going to have different colors. When I give you your two
notes, I want you to tear them apart. You got one goal on one sheet, another goal on another sheet.
Now a goal is kind of an overarching goal. We're going to have multiple strategies underneath.
When we get three to seven goals put up here, we're going to have strategies underneath them.
So what's going to naturally happen is something that you think is a goal. Somebody else
has a bigger goal. And so now you're going to become a strategy under another category.
Okay, so we're going to, you're going to help me organize all this on the flip charts.
So I want you to think about for this organization, what are the top two things that we need to put
our goals that we need to get done next, the rest of this fiscal year and next fiscal year. So that's
like a little over a year and a half or whatever. So be thinking about that. If you need to get up
and walk around and refresh yourself on the stuff we mentioned yesterday, I want you to think about
the SWOT analysis that we went through. I want you to think about the staff's SWOT analysis,
which was real similar. And so look through if there's anything you circled or took notes on
yesterday that stood out to you. So we'll get everybody's top twos and then we're going to see,
is there anything really big missing that you're, whatever your number three is probably going to be
somebody else's. So we'll see what's missing. Use your sharpie for this, please. I want you to write
just a quick goal on the sheet of paper
and use your sharpie so folks can see it from across the room.
I'll give you a minute. I was like you've seen the same, but two of those already lost your sharpie
or you stole my sharpie and took it home and I'll get any of the other ones going.
No, it's not for our legs.
Top two, disorientation. And I also want you to think about yesterday we talked about
things that we can get done and things that we can get influenced.
Anybody need a sharpie?
We have an extra one.
No, don't tear it. Y'all don't tear your sheets, okay? One goal per sheet. One goal per sheet.
I mean
All right, everybody got two sheets.
Now workforce development, think about recruitment, retention, VRE program,
white gloves, all that stuff. So some of your goals are going to be things that you can do.
Some things are going to be things you can influence that others can do.
Use your sharpie right large so people can see it across the room.
Who needs another sheet? Change your mind? Messed up?
You need to get up and walk around, please do.
Who needs another sheet? An additional sheet or replacement?
Pass.
Maybe another minute. You can walk around if you can't see any of the
words up there. Look at the SWAT from yesterday. What did you circle? What stood out?
Well, like the SWAT during council, they receive, which I do all the time.
Those lights are actually very very hot sometimes.
Well, thanks for asking.
To be a little sister to this guy. He's five years young. Five years, okay. So he just
colors like that. He's not turning gray, he just colored like that.
Got a bound book of the 10 generations back.
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
Today is old. I've got a couple people working.
Oh, you just turned nine. So I'm David. So competing.
Puppies are not raised again. Do you want the sound on? I'm sorry.
Is that what you were saying? Yes. There we go. Yeah. One of these puppies for getting this weekend.
All right. Okay. All right.
Okay.
People still writing, but that's okay. We'll just go ahead and start going and see what
seeing what we got coming up. Okay. So what we're going to do here, what we're going to do here
is one person is going to call out one of their goal areas on their goal language.
And we are going to categorize them up here. Maybe three on this side and two and three.
We'll see what happens here. But as people start calling them out, you're going to help
me organize. Where do you think it goes? Because a lot of these things that you're going to say,
you know, in multiple categories. So we're not trying to get everything perfect. We're
just trying to get everything that makes sense logically in the right areas. Okay.
So who wants to go first? One goal, just call it out. What you got? Well, mine wraps around
funding and the perception of funding and people out there are thinking that someone like me is
taking money from someone like this, so I can give them special treatment, you know, and that kind
of thing. I like for us to be more transparent in, you know, how funding works for a Norway
community. I said how things are built, the incentives part. And then I have executive
help and leadership, but we need more in just perception of how funding works. Okay. So is
this a funding category or is this a storytelling category? It's going to be both, but mostly we
want to put it out as a funding thing. Okay. Well, I can tell the storyteller. Let's put it on the
storyteller. Okay. So the way you're describing it, it sounds to me like it's getting the word out
about what we're really doing on the transparency. How does it work? All that. Okay. Okay. So let's
put that here. We'll start with storytelling. Who else has a storytelling goal or marketing
goal? Kim? Yeah. So I wrote a messaging campaign and the three things would be a piece of messaging
blog, if you should do at our city, stakeholder buy-in, which was meeting everybody that would
need buy-in from this, and then free earned media, crack up our messaging blog. Okay. So messaging
campaign, cohesive messaging, stakeholder, and earned media. Okay. So now y'all see what's happening
now. Her storytelling goal is now strategy under a bigger goal. There may be even a bigger one here.
So we'll, we'll keep this category going. Why don't you have some storytellers? This is creating,
create, and tell the story of that. So more broad. Right. Now, is this the story of economic
development in general or the storytelling of economic development in Denton and what we've
won up at the top? Okay. I think this is a bigger overarching goal. Okay. Who else has storytelling?
Promoting the impact. I think part of what the monitoring is you bring people about all
business. They come with it. They contribute to that and also tell that story. It's tiff. The big
analysis is always called butt fool. Butt fool is the speed here. All this other stuff that happened.
Right. Right. What do you have? Read it for everybody. Celebrate past successes,
thus encourage repeats. Celebrate past successes and then encourage repeat.
So I think this part right here, I don't want to gloss over what Jason said on the multiplier
piece. He said promote a multiplier effect of new businesses. So talk about what the impact is
right now. What are y'all using a data impact tool? We are using impact data source. Okay. Good.
And so is that, is that software mainly used in-house or are y'all using that to promote
messages like the, like what Jason's talking about? It's mostly used in-house, but we can
definitely certainly hear in a way to promote it better. Roger? Sometimes different because
the tip structure is different than the state I came from. But you know, when you get over the
city council and there's an argument, it's always over you. You're asking for future money. Right.
You can get money up to 20 years. And the funny thing and funny as they start counting this money,
it's like, you know, this project isn't going to generate any money. I'm not taking anything
away from you. I'm taking part of it. Right. Zero loss. Like until that's almost been part of that
before. Right. So just to clarify, everybody probably knows this already, but in Texas,
we call them TURS, Tax Increment Refinance Zones. In other states, they're called TIFFs.
And it actually is a TIFF, but a TIFF is a Tax Increment Finance Process. And so what he
says TIFF is the same thing as TURS. So it's got a good story for that too. It's a discussion.
Yeah, it is a TURS. Right. If you said you could do that exactly. Since 2005, I think when that
started, this is generating this much income. Had we done nothing, it would have been $96 times
whatever, because it was all ahead exemplary. And then the next sentence is,
which the tax payer would pay. But for those taxes coming in, the tax payers would have to
pay that. I mean, a residential. You can do that on a single penny planet round to that,
go back at one point and say, picture one, picture two. Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of that story
time for sure. So who in here has seen the impact data source software product, the result that
Brittany's talking about? Do y'all know what that is? I see one hand shaking yes. Yeah, it's okay.
Y'all know what impact that is. So Impact Degasource is a company and they provide software
service to cities. And it's an input output model. So whenever a project is considering
coming to Denton, we figure out what the numbers are. You put that into the software and it says,
if this company comes here with this much jobs, this much capital investment, this much tax
augmentation, here's what the impact of that company is. One year, five years, 10 years,
whatever. Yeah, we see it. We didn't know where it came from. Yeah, they're doing a good job.
Yeah. That data is a piece that can really tell a good story if you use that for storytelling. And
it's also what happens if a business comes and says, Hey, we're being ported by Louisiana or
Oklahoma or Georgia or whatever. We're fixing the lead. You can put that in there and you can
generate a number of what that would cost you to lose that company. And that's how you start
generating the numbers for an incentive or retention incentive. So that's a really great
tool. But you can go a step further and using that data to tell stories. So, Clay?
I was making sure I was going to mention that it was in the presentation that they mentioned.
Okay. All right. Who else has something along the lines of storytelling?
I don't know. And this is a tough one, but I put spotlight economic development impact of
the homeless problem because, like I said, I was at a candidate forum for city council last night
until 10 o'clock. And I would say, you know, 2% of the people I listened to understood economic
development. And almost all of them said, you know, basically we should,
the sky is no limit to the funds that we should spend. But I don't know that they,
getting out the story of how it had detrimental effects for reputation management.
Yeah. But it's a tough subject to know. Nobody wants anyone to suffer.
No one, no limit to spending the money on what?
Just the whole, I mean, some people believe as many homeless come here from wherever. I mean,
and I heard this last night, the more that we should have, we should just keep
funding, take away from wherever else it's basically.
Yeah, go back to that triangle, right? Is that what we want our tax dollars to go to,
to that extent? There's no telling that story. Right. And that's right. So this relating to that.
You're right. Okay. So that goes in storytelling too. So, and I think y'all can articulate a
clear message about what that impact is. What else is storytelling? Anything else?
I might under storytelling, I wrote fuel and focus partnership with opportunity and collaboration,
not competition or adversaries. So I think we all work together. The city can't tell the story,
Main Street can tell the story or Stoke can tell the story or the chamber can tell the story. So I
think utilizing each other more strategically as partners and not, we're sitting at the same tables
all the time collaborating on the same work. We have to share the same goal with vision.
Okay. What if we say this is a new goal of like partnership boss, like fostering partnerships,
building relationships, something else, but have a feeling that is you're not going to be the only
one. Okay. I just, you're almost like, I know your brain's on the same place as other people.
Let's see what you got. Okay. Lucy is set intentional inter-department collaboration.
All of this work has to be intentionally brought together and not just so happen to come by. Oh,
I do need this. Okay. So y'all see where Lucy's is the same set different. Like she's talking about
partnerships across groups. Lucy's talking about partnerships across departments in the one group
of the city. So we've got both of those are going to be critical for relationship building, right?
What do you have, Jeremy? I just quit. Well, I quit development advantage and then I put servants
in department collaboration below that as let's have categories. Okay. I don't know.
Competitive advantage service. I just did the community. I kind of have to say,
yeah, this is something different. I think, I think what, uh, what Aaron and Lucy are talking
about here is like, how do we build up our bandwidth and our strength together as a unit?
But I think this is like we need to, how do we set the stage for this? If we do it through this,
but I think this is a whole nother goal of, um, that that whole competitive edge right there.
Well, you shall lose me. I had this for Lina. I have pretty much the same as Lucy cross
department collaboration and all departments. Yeah. So see the leadership and well, the service
coach, then they are, and maybe they've never quit that. And this round table idea that y'all
have, I think is a means to this. Um, when we get everybody on the same page, it's, it's hard to
not see your place in the, in that situation. So, okay. So we've got cross department collaboration,
all departments, same vision, same goal. And so, um, this might have to go, you know, higher up.
So the city council, do y'all have a, uh, annual retreat like this where you kind of set the vision
for the year? Okay. So, uh, you know, everybody here kind of understanding what that is too.
Well, but there have been problems in the past where certain city council members refused to
participate with the facilitator. And so we just called it. So I'm just saying, and, you know,
they have varying degrees of symptom and we have to, sorry, I just felt like we should be like,
we have to know those things because I mean, we don't leave anything. If we're trying to
get a solution through and half of the, you know, half of the people sit down and say, I'm not
walking. That makes it hard. Right. Which is part of the point of what we're trying to make here.
Cause what I'm putting here was I was trying to think backwards. What's the goal? The goal
is the recruitment and the retention. That is the economic development is that fruit and the name.
Right. If we understand that to be the goal, then we need alignment with the city. Right.
For those two goals, going back to what Lee was saying is we understand how
we participate in the collaboration. Okay. So, um, this might be combined with this in a minute,
but does recruitment, so this is just a matter of how y'all want this to look
our recruitment and retention together in one goal or are they two separate goals?
Separate. Except two separate goals. Okay. From my perspective, I think they're one because they
don't hand in hand with each other. It's the same sword. Okay. So in your strategic plan or your,
this is really a work plan for y'all for next year, are you, um, do we want recruitment and
retention to be in one goal or should it reside in two where we can track kind of two tracks?
Okay. All right. So we'll come back to yours in just a minute there because I think we'll divide
that up. Does anybody else have anything about competitive advantage with, uh, white glove service?
Yeah, we've got storytelling, then we've got fostering relationships, and then we have
another thing here about how do we build up our competitive advantage like the white glove service
that comes. So. Ha ha. There you go. Ha ha. Ample male white glove development service department.
White glove service. I'm going to be drinking more, so just get ready.
Streamline. So Kim's got streamline industry recruitment with university research strengths.
What Brian said yesterday, I present it. So in my mind, this kind of goes with
partnership development, but what do you think? Where do you think it goes? I think, um,
I just think about recruitment is, but yeah, you're right. But I mean, I kind of think maybe
it make this should be and so recruit my stuff. What do y'all think for streamline industry
recruitment using with university resources and strengths, research, I think it probably goes.
Okay, so we kind of have this customer service excellence white glove. It might end up going
somewhere else in a minute, but I think it's strong enough y'all. Y'all said enough about
it yesterday that it probably needs to be a standalone thing. So who else has like white
glove customer service excellence? Mine's not quite white glove, but it is intentional touch
points with current businesses to strengthen the ties to it, which would lead to the restriction.
Okay, so that's a B R E thing, right? Like we're having a business retention expansion program in
place where we know a program has like 10 or 15 steps in it. So like knowing where we are in the
B R E steps, I think that's one of the steps right there. Okay, so who else has anything
customer service excellence? What do you have? We have, I just hadn't been asked. I was going to
put a robot, but that was kind of up for just saying, okay, we have to know where we're going
before reading. You have to understand your customer. You have to understand like the culture
of that business. I don't want y'all listening to all of that. I'm sorry.
Well, you're a big player, but you're not the only player. Exactly. Yeah, I totally understand
where you come from. So that brings up a good point. Who can tell me how many registered tax
ID businesses y'all have in Denton, have a Denton address inside and outside the city limits?
Who knows the number? No, there's over 5,000. There's over 5,000. Of 1,400.
1,400. He said 1,400. Was it 4,000? Maybe I've transcribed the numbers. I thought it was 1,400.
So, okay, while looking up on the break, I thought I looked it up last night. It's 1,400
businesses in town. But whether it's 1,400 or 4,000, that's a lot of businesses for
one, two, or even four people to call on, right? So like, what is the depth of the touch points?
So we have, I swear that number was 1,400 yesterday, but you got 120 businesses.
What about the real estate partnerships? They get tax up. Yeah. So whether it's 1,200 or 4,000,
we're going to have a lot of people doing visits, right? In a year, you know, how many,
what is y'all, so we are doing a lot of VRE stuff. So I know you're the contract with the EDP,
but you're also calling on non-chamber members, obviously, right? That contract. So what does that
number look like for y'all? What are you shooting for to be in the office, interviews? So we are
contracting to do 50 a year. Jamie did 60 that he qualified, but on an everyday basis, we don't
write every single one down, honestly. And that's just Jamie, just by himself. That is not myself
or our director of business development, it's just Jamie's solo staff. Okay. Yeah. So it's reasonable
that one person can do about 60 visits in a year, right? 50 to 60. Okay. Yeah. How
far did it say? Yeah. I looked up on the website and it said 16. Yeah. And on that list is also
businesses who've gone out of business, who aren't active, but they have a tax ID or whatever. So
that number is probably somewhere between a thousand and 1200, probably somewhere in there,
like active doors open businesses, selecting sales tax or some electrical taxes. Okay. So
who else has something before we get back into VREs or anything else on customer service excellence?
Okay. So let's go into back to recruitment and retention. Who has a recruitment or retention
goal? Rick, what do you have? The strength of public service, servants, specifically elected
officials, but it could be others too. Right. And how do we go about, this to me is like a result.
How do we go about that? We work with leadership then folks and encourage them to run for offices.
Oh, so you're saying future public service. Okay. Um, right. Let me write that on there. How to
recruit people that are in business, um, and have business experience. I've found personally, I mean,
not that I'm a big business, I'm a very small business, but I found it to be very helpful.
And I think we, you know, different was set the table, but no, we don't have a lot of that.
And so I don't know how to, I think maybe there's a perception that it's impossible to
have a job and be on council. And so, um, I think that's part of the problem with economic
development is the lack of experience that some have on council, not everyone, you know, and I
think we do need different sectors represented, but I think that it's the same is true on the school.
Yeah. So a couple of fixes to that, Jill, we have to make sure, and I'm not, I'm not here selling my
services. There's other games in town, but every council needs economic development, right? I don't
care where you get it. You get it online, you get it TML, you know, if you go to the TML economic
development conference, every fast drop, or you go to the sales tax training, or you go to TTC,
or you have somebody like me come in, but every city council board needs to, I mean, every city
council needs to understand community development, economic development. I want to change one of my
goals. That would be great. Okay. Well, that's okay. You can, yeah. But I would challenge you
to add school boards to that. Oh, of course. Yeah. That's another one. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't mean
that y'all have to provide it, but somebody has to get that, but going back to your goal here of
public servants. So that should be, Jill, you're talking about the adult leadership force of
leadership dentin. Is that what you're talking about? When you were talking about getting the
right people in the class? I think that's one way. Okay. So is that a requirement that everybody in
leadership has to be a business fit for? No, we usually get about 50 applications and we take 20.
It's a written application involved with in-person interviews with alumni. But no, we've seen a
tremendous uptick in public service participants. So everything from police and fire, and of course
we have our university and school district representatives that know you're not required to
be a business owner or business representative. We historically haven't seen a lot of individual
citizens over the past few years, but we do want a healthy intersection that represents the industries
in our town. And nonprofits as well are all represented. Yeah. And so, yeah, some, I mean,
in theory, it should work backwards, right? In theory, we should have business people going
through leadership and then they become a board member on a nonprofit or a city council member
or something like that running for public office. But sometimes you got to go backwards and, you know,
get some of those folks. But a lot of leadership programs weigh that. They have a criteria weight
where if you're put forth by your business, you have a better chance of getting in than just a random
citizen signing up because they're likely to go forth and serve in different capacities. So not to
change your criteria. But a lot of chambers do that too, where they give higher priority of a
business put the candidate for. So how do we go about this? Where does this go? Improving
strength of future public servants. So is this primarily just the leadership program?
Well, in a lot of ways, it's a whole lot of it goes under that collaboration part of the training,
building strengths. Or unless it's a separate thing altogether. But to me, it's part of the
collaboration too. It's a result kind of, right? Of the collaborative energy. We'll put it here
first and we'll see where that goes. At least you could be under like influencers, how this
work could influence. Yes. Collaboration. Okay. Yeah. And I think some of this we kind of mix
in here of these are things y'all are going to say we're going to do. And then some of these
things are going to be the things that we can influence other people to do. So we're going to
make sure that both those are highlighted and it looks like they're kind of coming together right
now. Okay. Who else has something for recruitment or retention? I have recruitment. I have a certified
science program. I think would land on. Okay. Certified science program and building a tech
ecosystem to recruit some of those startups and assist them with growing and staying. And I know
that would create a different, different types of jobs that UNT maybe students would like to see.
So maybe they could stay here. Those are my two. Okay. So kind of an entrepreneur is this kind of
going entrepreneur stuff? Or is it existing businesses? Build a tech ecosystem.
Recruitment. Okay. All right, discovery Clark. Perfect. Certified science program recruitment.
Does everybody know what a certified science program is? Okay. Can you describe that Brittany?
Just so everybody can kind of get your perspective on. Sure. So it's a strategy that many economic
development agencies do to in order to recruit companies in. And so whenever a company is looking
to move to your city, they're typically looking for x amount of acreage and x amount of utilities
and proximity to an airport. But the problem is sometimes they're not the side of a shovel ready.
And so something that the focus Christie regional UDC did is they created a qualified science
program where they were an investor based nonprofit, but they utilize their investors to,
they paid for their engineering firms to finalize and phase one environmental reports. And so
that environmental reports identify utility lines, soil samples, what type of buildings
are built there, where the utility lines were. So that's something that may be beneficial for us.
There's also a full-fledged program that I think Amy back in the day had maybe researched. But
that's where the city actually pays for the utilities to build out. And, but they've worked
it over. They signed up with the landowner just to plan for future recruitment purposes. So there's
land available and funding bill. So this whole concept of certified sites, I would say started
maybe 15, 20 years ago or so as a result of site selection consultants. So the consultant of the
company hires to help them find their next location. Site section consultants got fed up
with economic developers promoting sites to them that weren't ready. They said, oh, we're shovel
ready. And then they get there and there's no phase one environmental. There's a brownfield
and they just don't know what they're selling. So this certified site program concept has been
born from site section consultants saying, please don't waste our time showing us something that's
really not ready. So that's what Brady's talking about is how do we not just get sites ready,
but certify that the site is really ready so we can promote that. So we kind of, this once
it happens, it kind of goes into storytelling as well. So just have ready sites and identify
where they need to be and make utilities available. But to help with that is I think
we have a very detailed checklist to say, okay, what is our stage game process
to go get a site ready? Do we have to do a component change? Do we have to do a zoning
change? Is there an SUP? Is there neighborhood meetings? Is it preliminary planning? You know,
understanding preliminary planning is good for two years. And you don't want to final plan it
because you don't know exactly what that building layout is. Again, that's going,
I could get in the weeds here, but that's going to development services because to get a final
plan you have to have cool engineered. And so there's like this, when you say site ready,
what I think we would need to do is first look at our comp plan and say, okay, where do we want
a swab or whatever for industrial use? Identify the area we want that. Then if we have certain
sites, have a phase one done, have a plenary plan done, have utilities extended to that.
Well, I have a site right now, we're building a road that we don't know, we get a plenary plot,
but we, so we know where our road needs to be. But then that can be a, they can be a 20 acre site
or 200 acre site. We're getting, we're working with the city. So this is actually happening
to extend the sewer line to that point and water lines getting run. So we're having,
we have a 300 acre site, we have a plenary plot to take it down to 20 acres.
So have it to a plenary plot with the due diligence, with utilities extended
and the road built at least to the site, you know, so that some that's shovel ready, you know. So
I think there's some clarification of what is shovel ready, right? Right.
Is that different things to the site selector shovel ready, doesn't mean, oh, it's clean and
it's freefield. Oh, we might run three mile off site sewer line and go get easements. That's not
site ready. They're saying I want sewer at the edge of the property. So about two million square
foot building or 200 thousand foot building. So I think it's maybe educating what shovel ready is.
So you've seen the same thing. Yeah, I agree with that completely. I think maybe 15 years ago,
shovel ready and that phase one has been done and it's, we've purchased some, you know,
now today it means, and especially in Denton because of the time it takes to get a site shovel ready,
it really means everything we just described, which is an allocation of investment in targeted
infrastructure improvements. Essentially, it's what it boils down to when it comes to time and
money. It's how are we going to get the infrastructure there to the site? How do we identify that site?
And how are you paid for the level of work? Because you're looking at... Me? Oh, yeah.
In just engineering and city review fees and like we're worth 500,000 to a million to a site,
before we even, a big site, right? Before we even stick shovel in the ground. How many sites are
we talking about? Site ready? You know, what's the motto? Now we're adding commas, not zeros,
we're adding commas to being site ready. And it's part of the ecosystem we're talking about. Hey,
we may not be able to get that 50% site ready for about 10 years, and I'm just going out there,
but we can gradually get there. But where's the money coming from? Who pays for it? You know,
like, what's the total investment we're looking at? We have a way to do that. And we've done it
before. And that is the industrial church that we set up. And that created a mechanism to pay for
that infrastructure. It was large enough to attract several industrial users. Sounds like that.
10 years, you know? And that's, I think, where Fenton really struggles is without the south tax
corporations. Like, where do we get money? We have all the mechanisms we could use. That's right.
That's right. The church was not always successful. It's outperforming the regular projected numbers.
So, you know, do we try to replicate a process like that, identifying eight-meter acres or,
you know, a corporate campus special thinking and utilizing that tool to get
a source of funding that developers can then go out and leverage? Right. Well, I think on top of
that, if you look at what the engineering sewer water master plan is, then you say, okay, we're
going to allocate, they're running a big sewer lobby on the north side of town, you know, the
master plan, which is a great thing. It needs that. But if we say, okay, city goes expense X amount
to put a sewer line that's drawn on the master plan that's already been identified or a water line.
And then we come to economic development and say, we got these three projects budgeted for
the next five years. Where do we see as a city economic development that we could have,
we can move the needle the most, depending on which project we put in. And that's back
to that collaboration. Right. Of going where we build roads, where we put utilities in,
that's going to have the biggest uplift. Right. You know, not just an engineer saying, well,
we think over here is going to, we know we got a problem. Right. Allocate, because the city
already has dollars, they're going to spend for infrastructure improvement. Or it's maybe just
coming together and saying, okay, where's our biggest lift as a city? If we spend dollars on
top of the tours, like, you know, the developers still has to fund that if it gets reimbursed
over time. But the merchant, those two things, what I'm saying together and bringing EDC in.
Where do we put this power line? You know, along highway that gives us a hundred foot easement.
Right. So we don't have any retail within that hundred feet. You know, it's like,
let's put that power line back here. So we'll leave that side. So whatever it might be,
I think it's, again, working with, you can see where. Well, and that's the best stewardship
of the taxpayer dollars. It's the best stewardship of getting the right projects that we want.
If y'all are building and incentivizing too, right. If we're saying, we're going to figure
out where the city's already building the infrastructure, find some sites near there,
incentivize those sites for our targets. Now it's all strategic thinking. It's not letting the
prospect pick all the sites and saying, we've got these three sites available. We're getting
these shovel ready, whatever. So that makes the most sense for the taxpayer and for the investor.
So I think leads really, that's the, that's the ideal way for all this to happen is plotting it
out that way. Okay. So what else? What else on recruitment or retention? Anybody have recruitment
or retention? What do you have, Kristen? So Brian mentioned it yesterday that this is one
of the things that I kind of focus on in the VRE visits is the small business succession plan.
We're up against, you know, businesses, business owners that are kind of aging out and have
what kind of plan they have to continue their business. Okay. How we can kind of figure out,
kind of work with them and get a plan together. Okay. To ensure they continue on. So there's
several surfaces that you remember how I said, there's all these categories in VRE. One of them
is how do we help our small businesses as well as our, are you doing construction?
Okay. So small business and everything under VRE. Okay. What else? Who else has something
recruitment or what do you have planned? Developer developed suppliers.
I'm sorry. Well, they'll have supplier targets for recruitment through VRE. So like doing more
partnership with us and chamber through their VRE process and being able to
take those takeaways from those interviews and conversations and email in the name of
a supplier that you go try to track down. Okay. So this is what we call warm leads, right? This is
what Brian was talking about yesterday, where we go call on our existing industry, find out who
their suppliers are, and then we go call on them. So it's a VRE strategy, but it leads to retention,
I mean to recruitment, right? So I think we'll put it here for later.
Or do y'all want to put it in recruitment or retention? Okay. Who else has anything
recruitment retention? Maybe we'll have something completely different we haven't mentioned yet.
What do you have planned? I think I'm going to go back on a collaboration, establishing P3s
with universities and or the IST. Okay. Ideally kind of in that sense, it's probably in
a workforce development like situation. Okay. Thank you.
You're like a ninja. I didn't know you had to get up again. Okay. So establish P3s in the university.
So this kind of goes in this collaborative thing right here. Okay. When we're talking about P3s,
what are we talking about? Whether it is, I mean, I could be doing a bunch of different approaches
for something like Blue Grown, whether it's something like what we're talking about putting
on some of these events and everything. It's some of these career day situations, whether that is
a small portion of our budget or sponsorship or something for sponsorship of an event goes to
some sort of Blue Grown workforce day situation, whether you scale that up to university. I know
we've talked about too, we did just kind of like an internal brainstorming thing at the beginning
of the year on a specific industry level with some of the university programs and everything.
This is a beautiful downtown thing. If you want to talk about that kind of the merchandising
shared partnership situation. So we held a retail round table with all of our downtown retailers
and then invited the university UNT's merchandising hospitality group to come. Because I think that's
one of the things that our small business struggle with is just staffing and they have a built-in
workforce that are that's already there. I'm a graduate of that program as well. So I think it
was great to connect them with our small businesses because then they're creating that relationship.
And so if there's staffing issues, if there's, you know, something that we need support on downtown,
then we can we've already made that connection. So it's been really helpful in some of those small
business owners have spoken to those merchandising and hospitality students. And so just getting that
that connection there and making it stronger. Yeah so you're talking more collaboration.
So if you look at Iowa State, Iowa State City and the university and the students run a farm.
That's what I'm talking about station because it's really a monetary venture as much as this
collaboration. I mean they run a farm and then the market and all that kind of stuff that's,
you know, spilled around. Generating money but also internships with students on that stuff. And so
and put in the money side as opposed to very sensible collaboration.
Okay all right. So kind of thumbing VRE and thumbing collaboration here. Okay does anybody have something
that's not included anywhere? A big goal or a six goal something that goes in one of the existing ones?
Maybe the extension of the idea around my head with all the
university suits plus this small business that I just came up with. This silver suit obvious.
Have we ever thought about doing like a reverse job fair where it's like a you want to be an
owner fair? Yeah that came up yesterday. A lot of people want to own stuff. Or start something.
So you got to guarantee a cash flow when you buy it. You got a bunch of business students and
everything else that are looking to stay in that area. They don't know that those jobs or people
are looking to sell it or whatever. And you have financial institutions involved in that too. So
that there's plenty. Yeah same thing. How are they going to get a loan to buy the business?
They just got out of school in England. They got parents. Oh well if you look at this
it's 60 percent of second generation or seven percent of third generation don't make it.
And what's left it's quite third generation. It was only like 13 percent actually make it.
Which what I mean by that is that while everybody wants to be a business owner
until you do it you realize how much you may not want to be a business owner because there's a lot
of things you don't know. So as the economy development are focused between the gap of
knowledge between what it really means to run a small business with the mindset of growth
or the acquisition of a business that has been successful for a long time. Because if you jump
into into a moving train and your legs can't keep up. That's the train wreck for the economy
for the rest of us. Because we're left picking up the aftermath of those businesses that can't
figure it out. So how it would be as an economic development potentially could help build the gap
in education and knowledge. Of course it would. It might not be in our alley. I know that from
experience there is a big gap. Right. So I know some of that. So does I know TWU. Yes they do
and even but Main Street does some and Chamber does some. So yeah between all the workshops
and seminars that these entities are already providing. Is there a need for additional
training at what workshops or is it just the alignment of all that? It's alignment to how you
market it right. To market and develop people from even what I understand doesn't seem like that's
the target audience. It's more just like we do a lot of collaboration and I think we do a lot of
really good collaboration. It's like how do we make this intentional collaboration. Like
I'm collaborating you know we got to have fixers do that stuff but this is intentionally with the
goal of partnering people up you might be interested in carrying this business forward or this kind of
thing or whatever right. So people kind of know that. Yeah a goal and then contacting those groups.
What do you have slated this year? If anything that meets with you know this particular gap
and then if so how can we help you market that? Or no one's doing it. Is this something that maybe
one of these groups would be interested in? For sure. I like that. Let's hit the things each year
this year that need to be covered. It helps you answer the question. If you have that goal in mind
getting like oh well Brian thought about this idea but you didn't think about like we need to have
finances right. Like well you know maybe we need to invent we need to invite certain groups. So an
example I think is like veteran in small business little brains right. So then there needs to be
veteran groups invited. You're whatever right. There's like you can start really figuring out
who the audience should be based on who would be a potential to do that. Like who could actually
meet the goal. So this is really good subject because I think the first thing we have to do
is a bit about are there businesses in our community saying okay I'm going to retire.
What do these look like right? That's the first thing we don't have. That's there and yeah so
that's the number one but what the biggest thing we did in our business when I started when I was
26. So when I was probably 30 we set up an advisory board in our business and it was the best thing
people ever done and we still do it today. Matter of fact I have it next week and we went from
monthly to quarterly now but you know first time somebody sat down and said Lee what's your forecast
through the end of the year and I go I don't have a crystal ball I don't know and I left that meeting
really frustrating. I'll never forget and I spent the next 30 days you know how do I know my forecast
right? What contracts do I already have? What's my revenue going to be? What's the schedule on those?
It really wasn't that hard to figure out but first time somebody hit me with that so I think it's
leadership and it's my favorite thing to do. I have young guys I've built multiple companies set up
their QuickBooks. How do I send a bill right? And our CFO has sat down with them and built their base
QuickBooks. I love love that more than anything I do and all the points I serve on. When I see a
young person trying to start a business and not send their first invoice they've already done the
work. It's my favorite thing to mentor those people up but I think if we identify what businesses could
be and then we don't just say oh we hope somebody comes along we have some kind of structure of a
of a staple of young people will say okay these these people are qualified they may not know how
to run a business yet but they've got the work ethic and the craziest I mean to be crazy enough
to go do it. How do we foster that right? As to what you're saying so there could be some structure
of we set advisory boards up to help as people go acquire these businesses and you're free qualified.
We've already filtered some of these people to say okay they can take over these businesses
and try to make that connection because brokers are doing that right now and I get
businesses for sale on my email every day right but if we could be strategic about that that would
be a fun project. I love this idea and I just did the same thing I just had an advisory board to my
business last year and it has been a game changer in fact I just booked the retreat yesterday for
the next one because this is this is how you get to where you're going. I mean that's an example of
that I own my own business and suddenly was raising my granddaughter and it was a big priority shift
for me I didn't want to be trying to grow a business and raise a baby at the same time so I
was going to shut it down I was working towards an early retirement plan and shut the business down
and was fortunate enough that I had some colleagues that were like wait wait wait let's see if we can
sell your business rather than having to just completely close it down and about nine months
later that's what I did. I think that's we've got to teach small business owners and young business
owners that you got to have a village but we can bring the village to them if we build it.
So we have we have all these pockets of you know management gaps and whatnot do we have a funnel
where uh aging or or people live life changes and things like that they can turn to?
Okay I'm aging too. It's like well dare you call me an agent. But um no what I'm saying is
I'm saying you're going okay but does the current business owner know where to turn to because
I can tell you one thing that longer not the longer in our industry a lot of people don't
want to go to private they'd rather work with a young person and mentor them just like they're
saying and see the next generation and so so can can we create a funnel for for people and even
advertise they look back to the marketing hey our city is looking to help transition businesses to
the next generation the next leadership the next um if you're interested in visiting you part of
this that's really what I hear brian and and this group saying is that let's set up the funnel let's
let's be the let's be the organization that sets that up and identifies those matchmaking
opportunities and kind of go into what Lee was saying so I think I think this is all this right
here is saying uh a succession plan a reverse job fair small business workshops on transition
all of this kind of goes into are we you know us becoming the funnel for that and three of you have
said it so far so I think it rises to the level of this is probably going to be part of your b.r.e.
well to your point I sold two businesses to project to you that don't know what scope does
I believe at that level it's more helping smaller businesses and maybe some of those
home-based businesses that need a spot to office space okay or the startup so this is more of a
transfer because it's a lot of the skills are the same I mean it's not pretty good like good
like leverage that I think this is really innovative like I've said I've done uh awards
judging for IEC awards I thought yeah and have read most innovative programs going across the
country but I've not seen something yeah I think it's a big need I mean y'all can actually build
this and present it for an IEC award the small business development center talks a lot we meet
with them pretty regularly about the business comes in and they say we're closing in six months
right we're going to run out of money so it's a great contact relationship with to say who are
you meeting with who can we connect you with because they see it every day where somebody
comes in and says hey we need help funding yeah that's a good point the sbdc being a part of that
the top end of that funnel okay so erin had a comment and then we're going to take a restroom
break you're adorable it was going to be I don't think one person can help with like breaking
components along with her already existing but it's going to take everyone every partnership
organization is going to have to have a goal right yeah yeah and I mean these are the goals
that we're writing here this is for y'all as the edp entity saying we want to take these things on
and so there's going to be some city responsibilities here there's going to be some chamber
responsibilities there's going to be some city council responsibilities in here but it's going
to have to be this whole group saying this is what we want to do so before we take a brace is
there anything it's conference is there anything in here that's not realistic for this group to
have as a goal or an influence or anything that's just so outside of our scope we can't
manage in this next two years is there anything unrealistic up here
right okay so let's take a restroom break it's 10 minutes okay
let's take 10 minutes we will start back at 10 43
we're gonna recess that 9.43
now we're all back in session at 9.45
all right so
okay so anything else is there anything that we need to add to any of the discussions that
we've already had here okay so it seems to me that we have consensus that these are the five goals
knowing that some things inside here could live either places but those purposes for the next
for next this year next fiscal year these are the five categories that we're going to say that we're
either going to do or that we're going to influence somebody else doing um so what i want to do we've
got about 23 i think 24 people here today to kind of work this out so um we can do this one or two
ways i just like to give groups a choice we can you're going to be working in small groups
putting together the goal language the strategy language and the metrics for today um
you all want to do five groups of five how many board members do it maybe more actual board members
one okay one two three four five six seven eight
we have 11 board members here 12
all right then that's all i have to be voting on on voting board i was trying to get an idea
staff versus board members okay so um so we have enough people we can do five groups or we could do
uh three groups so that would be one group just working on just for the rest of today
so working on developing the storytelling portion fostering relationships customer service excellence
business recruitment and business retention expansion so do y'all want to divide up into
five different groups and hammer this out or you want three groups uh two or three groups working on
two things which may have different groups
i want one board member at least on each direction here but if we yeah we had two
yeah two you still have two almost for all five for each but there is 11 okay so then we can have
yeah but not everybody may want to do the things that we want them to do i want y'all to pick the
things that you want to do oh then maybe that's on the side of me first yeah well i want to do
storytelling okay so we'll we'll divide it all up and just going to be thinking about what's your
number one group is be thinking about what your number two group is and i'm not trying to get you
into one or both of those so it should put customer service excellence and business recruitment
together in one group wow this is this is really customer service excellence with like development
services and city staff do you think all that goes in bre i don't think that all those at bre
but i think the same people are going to be oh that's interesting both categories going together
i'm shaking okay so what we're going to do in our small groups is each of these categories
storytelling each of these is going to have its own sheet you might have two sheets
number one do not write on the back only write on the fronts i've got lots of fronts okay so the goal
here um don't well let's go ahead and put these in order what what order do you want these to appear
on your written deliverable what order trial wordy what do you want number one to be recruit i mean
y'all are responsible for these two kind of first and foremost right read them again it's kind of
small for the whole people okay recruitment bre business retention expansion customer service
excellence this is all like city customer service excellence so we can't control this we can influence
it fostering relationships partnership development story tell okay okay now oh which one let's put
these in order real quick recruitment first then retention first okay then recruitment
well wait a minute we said number one thing that businesses are looking for is employees that's the
number one thing the number two thing is how quick can they get something under the city
right so those fall underneath the global of those two things because we've got to go back
with what we said two top priorities of business right that's true those fall well in workforce
development stuff falls in this one and this one i bet it's not really outlined here very well
we said before we started those are the top two things companies right we have the the education
workforce development that fostering relationships talking that's where can try to talk to it okay
i'm sorry say that again sit there it's in that fostering relationships it was one of the
collaborations with yeah a couple times it's all you got a p3 and then you've got the text startup
with right but aligns with the college's expertise or whatever right but i think what these things
split it out this is uh it's a whole workforce development that's what i'm i mean it's nowhere
written up here y'all said workforce development is one of the number one things um but it's not
really outlined here i mean it goes in almost off the base but i think we probably need to spell
that out so it's not lost in here so what does that look like but i don't mean to confuse any
shit i just know i think that's we're all over the country and i think we hear that from ricky too
people want to know that you can get employees and how quick can they get their building on the
ground so i'm just a bit yeah so it's really workforce development through these relationships
you know that's what i think is we can't this board influence workforce development by building
those strong connections that's our book that's our yeah that's our role with that like we can't
i don't know how to teach someone how to be an engineer but i i can get the right we do have
the influence to say hey next month i want an update on x when that will drive someone from the
city or university or someone else to deliver tags right so that's kind of how we have to be
intentional about what we ask for basically in line with how we influence it either do it directly
or influence so if we're thinking about workforce development from a pipeline you know relationships
with our schools school superintendents universities cte programs that that information comes through
the vre but should and it's developed through relationships but should workforce development
should all that be spelled out in its own goals separately should there be a sixth goal of
everything that we're going to do for workforce development my question would be like when you're
talking to businesses how do you agree that's top on the list do you agree that that's or or are
they saying we're coming if i get the sentence or number one thing do you have any employees for us
yes that is one of their top three priorities is workforce and so something that we do is always
provide comparison of salary ranges of similar positions in the area what i will say with more
businesses coming to the city there's going to be limited workforce skilled workforce right so
i do think it's important maybe have a different category for workforce because i think we would
like to create an upscaling program at some point because there's there's a lot of i think
different residents that want to maybe get in manufacturing or get into a different industry
but they don't know how or maybe they don't have the funding to do so i remember attending a city
council meeting i don't know if councilman duster remembers but um she there was a young lady who
wanted um who said i can't find a local job i don't she's like i've been applying i just can't get into
the right job that i want until she was just really saying i need help getting a job so it would be
nice if we could create some type of you know resource programming to get those type of residents
a higher end job or hiring job yeah on the workforce development though because because
it's a big blanket and this is a really big rush right and i think there's different categories
because when i would think of a topic i look at the university and say we have a plethora of
students available that we need to figure out how to retain them whether it is by creating a
opportunities for startups so that some of them will venture out all right why not but then the
other question is what are the categories we're not considering on some workforce development that
key employers are looking for because if i'm if i'm gonna and i can be naive but if i'm gonna look
at manufacturing that's a really big beast to tackle right uh and education and the infrastructure
and the investment that i have to get just to even be at the end of my way so what are the other
categories of the workforce development is it is it this type of employees this level of education
because the big brush is going to be something how they're very i think this i can tell y'all
i was gonna say let's let's talk to somebody that's already doing this is what we are really
focused on uh number one thing number one thing that i hear from corporations is soft skills the
people that come out of college cannot they would rather have hire somebody that's farther along
has reliable experience number one day consistently erica airlines uh to i mean if peter bills has said
it we've had that cannot problem solve so that's number one thing internships is the number one
thing to job hotline so they want internships in so that leads to you know understanding that
organization um being familiar with the language that's used uh upskilling re-skilling is a huge
focus cert uh certificates and some type of manufacturing or continued education
those are the things that we are hearing right i think a lot that's what britney's also talking
about so is there is there uh at unt or tvu or anywhere is there a kind of a funnel that's uh
identifies students who need this is there like a connectivity matchmaking thing so brine college
of business is our college that does it and they do a great job because they have they have alumni
that work right that funds it and they do it well what our goal is with the corporate concierge team
is to make sure that every college has that so we're streamlining it for our corporations which
we're not right now doing that possible so that is that's a that's a shortage we have well well
what about someone who's not affiliated at all with the university they're just a random citizen
that needs some scaling up services we launched a new program that sea which is focused on
uh many credential certificates continued education if it's you know management leadership is a big
thing that we work from corporations that you know people want to move up and need you know sigma six
training or something like that that's another thing that we're so how are you finding those
people that aren't affiliated with the university at all to get into that program that's one of the
things that our enrollment is working on we have also we're tracking and this is something because
we have a shortage and enrollment concerns because of visas is we're tracking all the people that
have college credit that haven't finished their degrees okay and we are that is we're taking a
very strategic program to target those people that are already that that have you know a few hours
left or 30 hours left that we let's get this done figure out how to do this on the top brain that
works for your schedule so what is the gap yeah so we will volunteer for the program it's him
yeah so what what is the gap between what you're offering and what you're you know people are telling
you that they need how is that i mean is there a role for this group to make the connectivity
between those two the biggest gap is our ed works on things florida congress yeah i mean that's the
biggest gap but i don't know yeah i mean it really does that is the biggest we're not working on
business fee which is our biggest problem that's what i'm trying to change but i think nctc we need
to get somebody from nctc involved with this too that needs to be a top priority when we talk
about rewriting that but that's one of the points nctc to be on nctc junior college because it's just
an extra layer that i worked on in michigan and when you came in this this was manufactured
the manufacturer of beverage equipment quarter million dollars to 15 millions on from scratch
right so it's a six synonym process but the local partnership was any employee that came in will
spend the first two months training with every department yeah and it was subsidized by a grant
or something with the local university but what it did is it worked with soft skills it'll work
with with engineering knowledge it's just overall picture and the overall health of the company
because every year exponentially was growing because the trending and the focus was different
so i understand the business speed and the innovation speed how do we reach that gap how
do we how do we create that because really the incentive from the business side is there
the the transport is not all there yeah it's just it's about having the facilitating of a
relationship where it says everything even that we did like deep work very close with the mba
students now we've been doing it for like 10 years but basically just started because someone
will do something versus it being like an intentional strategy we're now like implementing
actually implementing programs from that npm program like at theater of life like culture
culture initiatives rewards programs those came from those students but it took us like you know
the last two or three have been really really good it took like five or six years of like stumbling
and learning each other and like learning what they can do what we can do but you got the right
people to the table to start this conversation but i think it's it's doing some more of that
kind of stuff but intentionally instead of dynamically and how did we got some experience
why did we not have members from the school board on this committee rather than superintendent we
don't have a city manager here we have representatives from the council i mean
i don't understand why that they're going to promote programs to the superintendent and others
to support what we're trying to do here yeah usually the school's different and it
is a member of this and she is but she is but she's just not here okay well why not elected
officials you know we've got two here in city school board yeah yeah yeah for sure the city
manager can come anytime yeah okay so back to my original question does is this the group to do it
is this the group to in the edp be the one that identifies workforce cogs and builds solutions to
them so so do we need a britney's idea of a separate goal for this i think so i think so
i think it's a very conversation it's a whole lot you might just categorize some of the other
things under that i think yeah i got soft skills i think our power is we can make we can influence
can't necessarily be but we can be the squeaky wheel that continues to ask for certain updates
or certain things that's going to drive people to make that whatever that is right as a board that's
what we can do you can put it on the agenda even if it's six months from now it's still it's like
gosh start right right and this can look like whatever this group says it needs to look like
y'all can you know you already have some people that are standing in the standing as the conduit
between the the main thing here is how do we connect the dots between the employer's needs
and the education providers offerings right whether that's cte school board level university level
junior college whatever how do we connect all those dots and i think a lot of that is
targeting very specific not specific companies but maybe specific types of companies that we
leverage their their subject matter expertise in what colleges they have that are the most successful
most well funded or most whatever right so we can say hey we've got the number three logistics
college in the country you're a logistics company like here's this or we have this integrated
you know health care system here now like you're this kind of company like it's not this
we're very generic sometimes where you say hey the average income is this median this and all it's like
i'm a company i don't care right i care about like are your schools good like a bisd level
right and do you have people like engineers or logistics people that i can hire and give them
two months of training or whatever and then i can let them go do stuff right what companies care
about so those are the components of a tia so does it sounds to me like y'all need a target
industry study right target industry analysis or borrow one from the area
huh i was thinking about a hug you know what are we you know as we're as we're defining who we are
economic right and this is not an inexpensive endeavor a tia is about 50,000 to 60,000 dollars
we just did that with our strategic planning that i think some of y'all have it but i'll
share like y'all did yeah yes he's done for us okay well pretty okay so she designed for y'all
so yeah so but again that's right back to saying take somebody like him at unt drive and saying oh
being here today taking the time and put that collaboration piece of that right at 60,000 bucks
we could have gone out and spent but because the right people in the room you're going from there
right that's the perfect example and so all y'all's tia took into consideration all the utilities
existing skill set all that is this yes uh skill set not utilities yeah y'all know this group will
know well that takes too much water we can't do that yeah that takes too much power we don't have
whatever but yeah i mean job postings positions um projections does it come with legion like xyz
company in clayton ohio i mean you need to go visit okay okay y'all that's a fixing battle project
so uh so really it's not created tia it's leverage unt's tia right and how have you done that pretty
recently that within the past six months okay yeah i have it for state county uh collin county
and then regional so well that's even better because that says what would work in this region
which kind of broadens the well it says what your neighbor and you are neighboring communities to
chase it yeah like you know well because if they have a main industry we can target the subsequent
industries best of four and and then the new and then all those other things that we can we can
make them share right and that's the position that the definite has been on for a long time is although
we have a lot of extra space a lot of disabilities kind of get to they pay where we want to go and
what we want to build right well and if y'all remember from last time when we did the understanding
the economic development process workshop in november december i talked about those are the
three steps of economic development product development what are we taking to market whether
the sites the buildings the shovel ready stuff the sign certification all of our skills all of our
workforce stuff what is our product that we're taking part in second part was the target industry
identification who might want to buy what we're selling and then the third part is the marketing
and storytelling so y'all you still have some product development stuff to do of course but i
think that kind of sums up the whole part two of everything that y'all are trying to to achieve
leveraging that so so kim how soon can you get everybody here a copy of that or get a
break at night yeah so okay so it sounds like we have a sixth category of workforce development
everybody agree to that so thank you for mentioning that okay so we got the number one thing
so we don't we don't even need to number this right now because i'm going to take care of you
here's what we're going to do we're going to divide up into uh i think maybe three groups
now each take two you'll get about that you can kind of at least get one that you like i think
there's they naturally go together vr e and workforce development business improvement
as part of this foster relation process they're up nicely okay so these two going together you said i
i agree so this is the part of strategic planning where i started to get overwhelmed like okay now
we're gonna make all these plans but yeah i'm gonna implement them um so i would just challenge us all
to think about how what's a reasonable way to expect implementation of these goals that were
in the process of putting together um one lot might be you know the established a workforce
development task force that meets once a month or once every other month for the next year that one
of we've got six staff members in here that are focused on economic development between the
chamber and the and the city and we got six categories up here let's have an ongoing and
then let's get nctc in the room let's get the isd in the room and have a task force that works on
the implementation of this over whatever duration is um is intended to do yeah and there's something
where what i don't want is for britney and and jamie and uh everybody's team to walk out of here
and be like and we just got a whole new job description on top of everything else we're already
doing yeah you i would encourage all to rely on us and other members of the community the task force
doesn't have to be made up just with the people sitting in this room that can identify key players
and hold into those conversations that's how stoke happened it was the technician it was one of these
six goals here we go and we had as we pulled together a group that cared very much about that
specific issue and that you had weekly once off then so you raise uh another thought should this
today be a three year instead of a two year it's really finishing out this year and next year
a lot of this stuff is going to take you a little bit longer than that well i think we're i think we
don't even know what everything else one texas has done for sure hello nctc because they have well in
school to add i mean this they probably have a lot of this work already done yeah and i don't think
that i think if you look at the funding that they have for these things i don't think it's something
looking oh gosh we gotta fund this whole thing i think a lot of work may be done between texas
workforce commission nctc unt tw i think it's just getting the right people at the table and yeah we
have that oh we've done that study and then implementing it right okay so yeah i added that
on here identify with the reskilling and upskilling and workshops and stuff identify the needs and who
would put in that school referring offerings is offering what already before you go rebuild
okay well the exercise then going back to i think what she's addressing is there's visionaries in
the group and there's because they're actually trying to do something about it but you have to
give them enough and every group come up with uh two three four places where we start like
so here's the three places where we say immediate action could yield more action yes that's what i
want you to do on these sheets right here so and keeping in mind the framework for today that some
of these stuff is going to be boots on the ground y'all are actually doing some things are going to
be we're going to create a system we can influence the city to do it or the university to do it or
somebody else to do it so influence plus action so um in your groups so i think we're probably going
to do three groups of two three groups handling two goals so um right here the goal this first
line is this word storytelling okay it's just don't say storytelling the first order of business
in your small group is to write the goal sentence and i don't want you to spend more than 120
seconds okay you can get bogged down on semantics decide in the first two minutes what is the goal
what is the goal of storytelling what is the goal with customer service excellence okay you write
that out and then right here on this strategy sheet you will see that there's no numbers there's
no letters there's no bullet points i want you to put it in the order that makes sense to you
don't worry about the format i'll fix all format make everything uniform later okay so it can be
one two three can be abcd it can be one abc2 abc however makes sense in your group so your first
like let's say here fostering relationships we have multiple sticky notes some go together and
some of them are very separate the first order after you write the goal language take all these
sticky parts apart lay them on a table and i want you to figure out how many actual strategies and
this is my semantics goals first then strategies then action items or objectives or whatever
categories but you know you may say different in your company but for today's purposes goal is the
overarching goal and then the first level of strategy so how we're only going to have time
today to do the first level of the how so how many strategies do we have here is this two is
this 10 what is it you lay it out on the table and make the decision and then spell those out
okay and what what are the and so you might need two sheets three sheets whatever but capturing
everything that is sitting here and then if you need to go one level deeper this in collects for
this what he was just saying workforce development if the goal is established workforce connect
workforce development connectivity with existing industries or whatever the first step is to create
the task force and then what are the task force going to do sounds like what amy was just describing
so hammer out what the steps are here whatever order you like and then the best guess here for
the start quarter and the end quarter and the metrics i'm going to give you some feedback on
that in just a minute but we need to have a little bit of idea here who's going to be responsible
for this is this going to be the edp as a whole is this going to be strictly this is inside the
contract with the chamber so we already know the chambers expected to do certain things or the city
city staff edp whatever that looks like university we can put our partners in here but this is really
for brian's benefit brian's going to want to know who to call on for this piece so it doesn't mean
that you have to do it just means that you have to see to it that it gets done so once the plan is
published and it says you know jason's responsible brian's going to say jason have this coming along
and then you're going to give an update on that so that's where we have some accountability here
um so that's what this form is for so you know if we were here you know two whole days we could
get into different level but for today's purposes that's about all you're going to be able to do is
the strategy and maybe one level of the action the how to so as far as quarters go are we doing
this on a fiscal year or on a calendar year fiscal okay so what we're going to right now then
so we're into it so you're not going to get this time for about
six weeks so let's start with q3.6 all right
okay so you got six quarters in this plan is that right okay we're going to stick with that
is that reasonable okay metrics kpis
there's a kpi category next to every strategy you don't have to measure every single thing
the things that need measuring everybody has their philosophies on this
if you think every single thing on your group needs to be measured that's fine you can do that
if you think this is just a step and once it's done it's done we don't have to measure that
that's fine too but if your strategy here needs a metric there's only three ways that i know how to
measure anything we can count we can count dollars people visits announcements trade shows
lots of things we can count we can do a percentage up or down increase decrease by five percent ten
percent whatever and the third way so we can count anything it's binary we say we're going to do it
you either do it or you fail to do it okay so some of the things that you list on your goal sheet
are going to have numbers we're trying for this we're trying for this many visits we're trying
for this many surveys whatever that looks like or percentage or if it's just you know matilda says
she's going to do it she either does it or she doesn't do it right so we can either check that
box or that box has left me duck if you know what the number or the percentage is i want to see it
in the goal sheet if we don't have any idea so you just said you know jane he's doing expected to do
50 he exceeded his performance metrics by 10 did 60 what is the number for the next year probably
50 is a good goal that's what's in your contract and enlist that and you can always exceed those
goals so if we know what that number is listed if we don't know what the number is then we're going
to count it this first year and then next time we'll know exactly what we're up against how what
those dollars or what those numbers are okay that makes sense any questions about what i'm going to
ask you to do on this form okay and i'll be walking around helping you so what i do want to see is at
least one to two board members one board member at least on each of these hopefully two and then
staff i want you to kind of divide up too for all the staff in the room go to the thing that you're
most capable or interested in advising like we're already working on this or this needs to go this
direction or whatever so i want some professional staff to advise some of the board members on
things you're already working okay so we've got bre workforce development as one and what did you
say and you thought those together customer service and business recruitment and then
storytelling and relationship building being one i still disagree i thought that makes sense in my
brain one makes sense in my brain too so this is not to say that this is the only thing you're
going to be expected to have an opinion on for the next two years right this is just for today's
purposes that you're willing to put these things together on paper to make sense for the whole
organization okay all right so chairman do you get to go first which one do you want do you want
this great workforce development bre retention recruitment and customer service excellence or
storytelling foster relationships who wants to work with brian on this so i know vicki
said she wanted to do that who else must work on this group
that's held up hold your hand up now this is all this is a lot for two board members to do so
any other stuff okay y'all can staff can figure out where they want to go to but
well okay we'll dig some people up to your other so legit but for logistics we all have to stay on
camera so you're gonna have to like maybe shuffle around tables yeah so y'all might have to come
around here and brian or whatever y'all share
okay so first order of business lay all your flip chart post it knows out and figure out that we
have two strategies or 10 or whatever it start putting them in the right order what goes underneath
so organize it paperwise before you start writing on your sheet okay and this is the final sheet
you're going to turn into me so if you need to scratch pad it out first will you scratch
pad it out first okay so i'll give you two here to start with okay y'all right on the back thank you
um so recruitment business recruitment and ensuring customer service excellence at the city
okay lee jeremy play
and amy i want you to do something that you find
probably this in fact no it's your contract is
okay so where y'all want to go this group where y'all want to go we've got tables back here
okay
all right you give them you give them your best direction
and then workforce development and b.r.a.
so now y'all can you know it makes these goal sheets you only need one
one sheet or two sheets for each one don't come by okay these are six separate goals so who's
doing b.r.a. and workforce to help okay kim what was erin lucey me what do i see i'm learning
all the things all right erin you know lucy there jimmy where everybody has to pick i'm not signing
anybody anything so i'm just waiting to see where i'm needed
whatever
this is our new white glove service when i exist upon so
take the category that you can have the most influence or suggestions on okay
that's right so there's one for each one but i'll be
right does everybody have a tea
oh for your skill best utilize oh so sorry very good so like uh it can't be right
so much so very you congratulations
oh
and there's an alternative that they shouldn't need the focus right my books are available if
y'all need to come up here and draw something out i've been involved in the whole story
what's the point
how many strategies do we have
yeah well we just have to get our goal with a section
same thing
if it helps you write your goals in that class you can save it for last if it's too hard to
put it together sometimes it's easier to see it all written first one
uh
the first question i always ask is can i say financial assistance
yeah it's not work force gonna be
and i'm seeing the magician errors i'll send them they carded the gold and i think it's too
crazy to see the questions was in that no no i'm a little bit more than that's what i was told
that i guess but that's what i'm going to do that because i was trying to create a strong story that
they're looking to go there what this is that's what they're doing to keep this even the services
in the back of the lag and i need to find their clients out like that's right you can't say why
you're not so or is the heart saying that's what this is like that is one of the best
how to get feedback from characters is all set a question together
you know decided on that's probably not in the day
do you want to put it you know they have
you know should just stop up creating a new thing until that'll be a show or attention with what
we're working on what is that priority i think the priority data i agree that the purpose of which
the promise i did is i'm improving our data so that's a lot of difference with a priority of
hate so yeah so i was like improve it with the data reporting so that from that data then is that
so
so
but
it's not always just what you should be doing because of the shame you're feeling so it's making
the most of them so you know an action item or the other side of the fundamental misunderstanding
this is like very thoughtful action draw this and draw it like elections in here's
or land in here's parks here we all like this is kind of like we all know maybe all
dollars based on
sometimes it's
get to you
is
that
national may access it says purpose and for that you'll fortunately be able to also teach me like
are
i think you're right here for 46 years yeah here was it it's like year one that was we built half
a truck in the 80s there was no only a question there in year 46 this is that's the best but don't
have to go through yeah i think that is i'm just thinking that was a gift art only that's
way to run into you right this is something that you are here to be are you you have a little
bit to bring that into the video how much you're about to take that before you like try to stop
this that's that's how it's always a bunch of so like it's a good idea that you know this
way he says they didn't bring on the other day they are a bunch of stuff but it's kind of like
the same thing that it's coming i want to start again but i think it's smaller right and they're
going to have to be a pack of four or five stores that anyone has these we were awesome
or something to share became on my cell phone
i don't want to take the time
but most people are like
all that all there okay we've done nothing like that so we had from 2005 to 2025 of this we're
thinking ahead a hundred dollars right you see that you know 25 million dollars it happens a lot of
a lot of small businesses primarily that's why you don't have warehousing
relationship
thank you
thank you
yes
uh
yeah
sure
yeah
i think
is
but
so
um
so
this is a big reason because it's not it's more like to do here's what a chamber is here's what it
does but this is kind of skirts around it but it'd be good to have like a this is the right
name because i think telling this was actually very just a baseline like hey this is not
filled like this is what it is in 30 seconds you've got to pay for that you've got to pay for stuff
you want that's the only three ways to pay for it three ways you have to use something that's going
to be i go back to the final triangle which is you can have it fast or slow yep you have two out of
three you're probably never going to outline all three yeah so how do we make sure we're always
hard and ready to fire up the alternative you know because they're both terms of using strange
and that's the story and that's the so
but
that's you
very
they're
also
minutes on this first one and we haven't moved over to your side yet
all right you're moving on to the side oh we have to get
good like our skills we have to run the train you have to sign to our friends we don't have to
have solutions we have industry
very simple very good stories
like tracing some of his stoles they just can't
trail so you also have like this i mean you just can't do so
what are you
and they help is it what you mean what's your time
and
best crap i mean if we say people close again and there's these three centimeters that may be
years they cry now like i just like
yeah that's a good the business that you're talking about
we don't want to put all of that
so we're away from you to shepherd some of the businesses you're talking about
helps to do that so how are y'all coming along are y'all okay that's one of your first ones
yeah you know you got about eight more minutes on your first one oh maybe we're up in with some of
the ass so if it helps to peel the papers off y'all do that storytelling right now yeah oh yeah so
once you if i help you you once you honor the words on the first one you can throw it away well
like you know you're honoring your big one there and then building out so if that helps you
so is there here's a plan to do but i hear you might as well show and there are things like that
this is my first page of course development
so if remembered
so that's
you can try all these credits out and then you can read for whatever but those like who's gonna
identify as so the task force is great so you can go back and read
later just make sure it's in their brain and what we did on the other side i first you know
is
so
you're already doing like the tia that's a perfect example of when we know what you've got
and then you have a little bit to fill up the insulator thing but don't leave out that
i think
okay
hey that's y'all's alarm that you should be moving on to your second one if you haven't yet
and they would get included in our password so and then
and influence so so i got developed three or four other way correct how to develop it by
us tag you inventory of success stories
you like existing tag lines are great so it's where you get a number into the course of years in the story
because
is
this is a lot like
that is
only that's all
and
and then it's like hopefully i've already seen it you can't wait to do it oh i want to ask for
about this actually so much and it's still just my general click because that was my yard there's
not a social channel there's not a huge hallucinatory scroll yeah exactly because it is
growing like truly and you're like hold on let's get the process right first and then we put like real
and you're like yeah but the one thing i like about that is
that that's a good point i think i'm gonna put it over here
you know
yeah
yeah
is
i mean like
we're doing that too why are we not emissions are being let's
even though we are actually working on right now because
was it was it was a size of all of the time we're going to have a trade sorry in addition to that we're not we're not holding this person right now they're not really
in it's
but i guess
all of us you know i'm feeling there are we don't even have this we don't know how those
make it
i know
and then all the education partners
uh
there's so much pressure
that
so
so
i mean that's the like i said remember that maybe you have to do it yeah
maybe it's like that i mean you're like very more fun just put them on there so
open open down yeah innovation i would take that then the next part of the line is to see if my
programs are the same since it's very important that's what i thought it is and so sorry that that was very
important was to expand to all for the you know what i mean like the public sure like okay sorry but that's it's that's that legal absolutely a sitting on the shelves to say okay right down to that competition
right
yeah
actually
uh
maybe
would be just instead of thinking about balls they stare to everyone that's why they were doing it yeah right and it's yeah i think that this is the question like it's called the air something but it is ran by all things that are in the day how long
over there that's really important that we don't be just one they work that we have all that i think they agree yes because one in the jar need to work you know he's trying to get one or take a picture
yeah
I don't know the names but if we start with one way that's great
the mail that i requested well it's like responsibility shared responsibility shared but it's basically but like everyone there is a big picture just to be put like the band's good
chambers got this so you kind of just you all work that out together now we understand how we collaborate
and I'm going to challenge you to call it because it's not it's not the point I did one group I had a turn that you can say how are you putting this out or are you at the after you got it with water
and what's the long terms of bank holders they have that very long so we can be 10 so I think you have the most because we have one so
are they okay do you know me that we are purchase community first and later then okay or whether you know I think that's we don't have established that's all we're going to have to do is have a business to really go to say you know
what is your strategy for building this area you put together the program or you're going to try to do it on your own and copy somebody else's
we have
what y'all got a rich and they can do but y'all got a written yeah process
so what software did you decide to use
I'm just going to I'm just going to do a break with it until it has just arrived to call out
when she realized that this is a bunch of people with her words as anyone yes I got this for the summer school and there you put it in the polls and be synchronous to make sure that that's one of y'all's steps
to the next basic about who's using which softwares because I don't even know what it's all through most everybody out here
and so one of the things we talked about is how much is the dsc system know where you're trying to go website all the public is going to be able to bring this to this company as it says to do our customers and push them off several other centers so if I get a little bit more managerial we're going to act right now.
And so we say hey the CEO actually that's top of the population right now we're going to be getting up there right now and that or something like that I think that's what I'm going to be sure to be sure that they come up with information for people who are out there for you to even write articles about well and we don't know what's going on so this person but you're hard but you're awkward and that totally tends to cancel it you're you're creating this almost like
it just changes regardless of the way you feel about it. I'm sorry I think that's just the nature of it.
There's whole.
Relationship storytelling. Yeah. That's great. That's how it's going to be. I'll make sure you're honoring the words on all your papers if you want you to decide everything's.
That's right you can water down there throw it away.
I mean, I'm just saying we're trying to understand how to collaborate with each other.
I went through the.
I don't know.
So she is.
I'm like.
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Hey, we already did. I had somebody yesterday send me their edits and they've already checked off 30 things off their list. So that's fine. We're still gonna put it on the plan, but we can put a check mark to it in red on the plane. So you can say we planned this and we already got it done before it even got focused. Okay. So I'll get that to you. Is there any other questions? Comments? Arguments? Disagreements? Anything? Okay. Thank you all. Thank you all. Good work. Y'all did excellent work. I'll get this to you soon.
So, all right. So if there's any other comments or closing comments for anybody? I do. So we have a four meeting on the on the eight. And so right now we have two incentive for reviewing. So we may need to push that meeting back a week, but we'll let you know as soon as possible.
Okay. All right. Any other concluding items? There are no other concluding items to do. We'll turn this meeting at 1157. Thank you very much for your day. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.