All right good morning welcome to the meeting of the economic development
partnership board is April 15th Wednesday April 15th we've established a
quorum so I call the meeting to order at 11 a.m. I begin with presentations from
members of the public comments from the public so now we're going to start with
the first item calling out so we'll now begin with the item for consideration
item A EDP 26-008 consider approval of minutes of the March 11th 2026 economic
development partnership board regular meeting are there any questions about
the March minutes I got a motion from Rick I got a second from Jeremy Fikes
with those can I get a move on the item B EDP 26-009 consider approval of the
minutes of the March 23rd 2026 economic development bar report economic
development partnership board retreat special called meeting from Lucy second
from Lee Ramsey all in favor all right move on to item C EDP 26 - oh one oh
consider approval of the minutes of the March 24th 2026 EDP be retreat
special call meeting are there any questions about those minutes and I get
a motion I got a motion from Amy take a second second from Vicki bird all in
favor all right any opposed
all right we've got the minutes out of the way go to item D EDP 26 - oh one
receive a report hold a discussion and consider recommending approval to City
Council regarding an incentive agreement for Tio sky for a sales tax rebate on
construction materials up to ninety four thousand five hundred dollars a job-based
grant up to two hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars and an ad valorem
rebate on real property improvements and business personal property up to four
hundred ninety thousand five hundred and sixty four dollars and a headquarters
grant up to fifty thousand dollars under chapter 380 of the local government
coach chair recognizes Brittany Saltillo to present at this I'm here to present
an overview of Creteo skies incentive application we first started working
with the company back in September 2025 when they reached out to inquire about
the size we heard back from the company in December January timeframe but they
wanted to move forward with one of the sites in addition they were also
exploring another side in the DFW multiplex we hosted them for a site visit
in February 2026 and now today joining us for the company is Ellen McCarthy
she's a senior vice president of global government affairs and they have
contracted with KPMG and Bob Maida is also here he's a tax managing director
and he's here to represent the company it started the company was founded in
2025 and they're undergoing rapid growth there are currently exploring two sites
in the DFW Metroplex to assemble a large-scale manufacturing facility that
will enable the company to establish itself as a dual-use producer for the
autonomous aerial robotics the manufacturing facility will design
produce tests and refine the company's autonomous aerial robotics product
offerings here in the final stages of closing the acquisition of multiple
operating UAS assets in the very near future and they're strongly capitalized
with initial funding raised through existing partners and additional funding
commitments from outside investors the company is also in the process of
evaluating options for their future global headquarters providing a central
hub for ongoing corporate acquisitions product management and strategic planning
within the next few years project overview the autonomous aerial robotics
industry is rapidly growing and the country has an immediate requirement for
American-made at scale UAS the company is a dual-use grown manufacturer that
wants to focus on both military and commercial markets and say they will
focus on defense security inspections agriculture law enforcement and search
and rescue logistic and construction industries the company is planning on
leading the industry by creating the first Western at scale unified
intelligence and actuation platform that is monetized through services and they're
uniquely positioned to win with its seasoned leadership team so Scott wine
is a current CEO of the tail sky Scott is also the former CEO of Polaris which
is the recreational vehicle manufacturer he served with the company from 2008 to
2020 becoming chairman in 2013 and during which he transformed the company
from a 1.9 billion dollar company into nearly seven billion dollar global
power sports leader he also led the company through significant growth
including major acquisitions portfolio diversification and expansion into
international market the company also has representatives from that formerly
were employed by Boeing the chief technology officer and they also have
expertise in AI autonomy and advanced manufacturing Ellen McCarthy she has
experience in government relations during her career she was a former chief
of global affairs for Polaris which is how she knows Scott and she has secured
over 200 million dollars in congressional funding throughout her
career and she was a former Senate Finance Committee adviser she's also
retired a retired Marine lieutenant colonel
the company plans on leasing a facility at 3411 Mingo Road building number two
the building is a little over 165,000 square feet and it's at the 280 288 3d
logistics part they will make several improvements to the building including
adding a manufacturing floor and office space build out additional facility
modifications climate control systems and adding power distribution upgrades
it will also add manufacturing equipment tooling assembly fixtures testing
equipment and other personal property within their incentive application the
company estimates to create 23.5 million dollars in total capital investment 12.6
million dollars in improvements 10.9 million dollars in business personal
property and a total of 258 jobs currently the building is evaluated at
16.4 million dollars with the estimated improvements in business personal
property we estimate it will create 18.8 million dollars for a total of 35.2
million dollars after the improvements are completed current city revenue is at
ninety eight thousand dollars with the building with the improvements we
estimate an additional hundred eleven thousand dollars for a total of two
hundred ten thousand dollars our incentive proposal to the company is a
65% chapter 380 at alarm rebate for eight years on real property improvements
in business personal property with a cap of four hundred ninety eight thousand
five hundred and sixty four dollars a 50% sales tax rebate for construction
materials based on their ability to I'm sorry the cap of ninety four thousand
five hundred dollars it's based on their ability to obtain a Texas direct pay
permit and it's a one-time rebate in addition we're offering a job-based
grant up to 227 thousand dollars and a headquarters grant up to fifty thousand
dollars and the headquarters grant will be provided if they choose it as a
location as our headquarters and we're providing them up to two years to make a
decision fingers crossed the company will hire a variety of positions including
production and quality test technicians supply chain warehouse staff production
engineers facility staff controller and HR personnel and a plant manager with
executive staff the average salary for those positions is seventy eight thousand
seven hundred eighty seven dollars and currently we at their last jobs ET report
that we ran is sixty four thousand one hundred dollars which is the Denton
County average salary the company will also provide health and television and a
401k match which is something that we ask on our scoring matrix and going back
to the job grant proposal we estimate that we are funding up to a hundred and
twenty three jobs with a cap of two hundred twenty seven thousand so for
jobs sixty that are funded sixty five thousand to over a hundred thousand
dollars that's ninety eight jobs and then we added a didn't resident residency
bonus for twenty five jobs up to twelve thousand five hundred at five hundred
dollars per job on the economic impact report the net benefits lesson centers
estimate is nine hundred fifty thousand seven hundred fifty five dollars but the
city would generate over a ten-year period for the county it's four hundred
eleven thousand and the school district is a little over one million the rate of
return for the project is twenty point six percent and the payback period is
four point six years
benefits of this project is this will serve as a catalyst for additional UAS
opportunities and didn't we just posted a mobility summit that focus on mobility
and we think that this would be a great segue to open up more opportunities to
recruit similar companies this is also within our strategic plan under
connectivity or transportation and logistics this also will create
additional research partnerships and employment opportunities with UNT, UTW,
and NCTC and there's potential to test some of their technology at the Dent
Enterprise Airport or UNT's UAS test center so our staff recommendation is a
chapter 380 abalone rebate on real property improvements and business
personal property at 65 percent up to eight years with a cap of four hundred
ninety eight thousand five hundred sixty four dollars a 50% sales tax rebate for
construction materials up to ninety four thousand five hundred dollars a job based
grant up to 227,000 and headquarters grant up to 50,000 and Ellen and Criteo
Skye they're a bit of a rush to move forward so they can finalize the site
and so we are proposing taking this to City Council next week on Wednesday so
by the time we posted this presentation we weren't able to have we were able to
have a draft agreement we do have some of the performance measures that will
require for this incentive as an additional slide but I just wanted to
state that any questions you go back to the salary in benefits slide and you
said the average in Denton is 64,000 right so these are good paying jobs with
benefits up to 200 was it hundred or up to 225 jobs is that the other spot probably
higher closer to 300 I was really conservative in all of my estimates our
capital investment says 23 million it'll be somewhere between 25 and 50 million
we anticipate jobs closer to 300 but I didn't want to overestimate anything no
appreciate the transparency there thank you I just wanted to get that on the
record yes ma'am I'm on the and just forgive me if you explain this the
economic impact report over ten years slide you've got salaries there and then
it says fifty seven thousand eight hundred and thirty six average what is
that reference yes so that includes all the positions that are proposed so what
happens is with the economic reports it includes indirect jobs that are created
so that can include small businesses that hire more employees waiters and
waitresses to supply potatoes guys employees or maybe their additional
suppliers and so that's estimating the potential salaries that go into that
average wage okay so it's a little bit lower but yeah so it's not the current
average wage and it's not the anticipated average wage for the company
correct okay just want to make sure and then can you talk about you know it's a
lot of people to hire are they going to be building are they working on the
software what is it that these what kind of positions are these I want to thank
Clay and Brittany for working with us over the past several months and Elena
Glassman from congressman Jackson's office is here so thank you so I want to
start by explaining because we're a newer company but we're not a traditional
startup and I think that will feed into your question about how are we going to
hire 250 to 300 people in the next couple of years so we've spent the past
couple of years looking at over 200 drone companies UIS companies we've
identified six that we're acquiring in the next two months and those are
operating businesses with revenue we're going to create the manufacturing hub
and integrate those businesses here in Denton we funded the initial 50 million
dollars for our business from partners of our business we have another 350
million dollars that we are raising through equity and debt so we're very
well capitalized we have existing drone manufacturing that we're bringing here
to integrate and leverage the various technology and systems into our
platforms so the jobs we are in the process we've interviewed several plant
managers and plant engineers we have a plan for who we want to hire and need to
hire I'm excited about UNT when I was here a few weeks ago I went there and I
met their head of engineering and saw their UAS test facility outside so we
think Denton is a great place to you know in the Denton area is a great place
to find talent and hire so that's one of the reasons that we found Denton to be
appealing especially for the UAS market and we're looking at in your question
about are we building a new plant no we we found a box so 3411 Mingo Drive is a
logistics building we have a general contractor lined up I have a couple of
architects I've got to decide which one to use we're going to build a third a
two-story 30,000 square foot office space the rest is going to be planned for you
know as you can see the wars in Ukraine and Saudi Arabia there's an urgent need
for a robust sovereign American UAS manufacturing base and that's our
mission Scott wine a former Naval Academy graduate me retired 20-year
retired Marine to war veteran Bam Bam Smith Robert Smith 30-year Navy seal you
know we're very focused on Department of War we will sell civilian to the
civilian world commercial world as well but we feel there's a mandate to be a
premier American manufacturer of drones today the number one manufacturer drones
is Chinese company and we are focused on building a Western supply chain base we
also are leveraging AI will be an AI native company and that doesn't mean
eliminating jobs it means working more efficiently whether it's hiring whether
it's supply chain whether it's the management of your business we're
integrating that at the very ground level does that answer your question yes
so it's mainly logistics as opposed to the manufacturer manufacturing we're
acquiring the logistics building which is like a blank slate we're building the
manufacturing in that site as well as the office space for our engineers and
for our tests there's two acres adjacent to this facility that assuming the FAA
approves it will do some tests some of our testing there later today I'm
meeting with the municipal airport to see if we can do some drone testing at
the airport as well but it's not logistics it's manufacturing it's
development there's a lot of software that goes into these the drone itself is
like the bus and then you have to build the frames and that's going to happen
here in Denton as well and if I may just follow up so I'm assuming that from what
from what you've said you've looked very seriously at Denton and I assume that
part of your decision-making has to do with the proposed incentives and what
you are hoping that are granted here today important part of our decision yes
okay just wanted to make sure that we were it's that and you know just like
the partnership that Brittany and Clay have showed us and even Congressman
Jackson's office you know visiting UNT they're excited to have us here too so I
feel like it's a welcoming community for business when I found out I took this
job at Criteo Sky I knew how to spell drone but I didn't really know anything
about drones right but I reached out to Congressman Jackson's office I was like
if you were to manufacture UAS in Texas and you're just where to go and they're
like good and Brittany gave us a list of potential properties we also have been
looking at North Richland Hills there's one site that we've identified there
that would work for us and as far as any security concerns I assume that that is
all built in as far as any considering the nature of what you'll be doing we'll
have a secret level manufacturing section for our defense yes and and
appropriate protocols to make sure those those systems and if you know and if you
don't you know don't feel put on the spot but what are you looking for in
determining a location for your headquarters here in the United States
so I think Texas we're looking at Texas I mean we've decided up front Texas is a
good place it's very favorable for industry so we're looking at Texas no
other states I didn't apply for the attack because you know you've got to say
you're looking somewhere else so business favorable environment we want
to make sure we can hire people right that's gonna hire 300 people in the
next two years so we need we need a place where there are qualified educated
talented people and this is a location where you can do that we're focusing on
the Dallas area and I honed in on debt because of reasons I explained did I
answer your absolutely and thank you so much for letting me continue with a few
questions no I mean that's why I came I think from Virginia this morning don't
put this in the minutes like my own I slept through two alarms
well thank you very much I just wanted to tell you all that our city is so
unique and so cool but the thing about your location is in my district so I
am excited to see that not only are we excited about our downtown area and
north west area you know everything's going with everything's going north with
you all being over there you're gonna help drive more interest over to our
eastern sector that's one thing that appealed to me as well is there's more
space it's a little more open rather than having our manufacturing site in a
heavily industrialized area there's more space so that's that's really cool thank
you all for that consideration the other thing is so we're the city council is
meeting on I'll be here for that meeting all right so we say yes for you how long
will it take from a yes vote to get to a point where you are now hiring and
settled in what do you all think about so if you're a general contractor we
haven't signed a lease yet you know but we're talking with the landlord once we
sign a lease and get occupancy approved certificate of occupancy the plan is put
a curtain up so we can put a manufacturing line up immediately and
just start on one of our one of our systems we already have orders lining up
even though we you know our partners that we're acquiring as far as up and
running and like full speed ahead Gordon Lighthizer is the general contractor
I'm talking to they said by the end of fall so be quick you know speed is our
middle name number two there are four to five hundred members of the North Texas
University Drone Club and number three similar patrol is a consumer of drums we
fly for FEMA during disasters and we cannot fly anything but a u.s.
manufactured because the Chinese are monitoring the other the system so when
we're flying for FEMA which we do extensively we're really limited on what
we can do because we don't have enough u.s. manufacture drugs one of the drugs
we're acquiring flies and hurricanes or tornadoes and that's good to know I'm
glad they will stay in place and we're not a venture capital firm we're about
aggregating and growing so we will keep those businesses in place and continue
to invest in them but also invest in our make all our manufacturing here what's
happened with a lot of these drone companies it's fractured industry they
have you know a couple of tables in their manufacturing room and they can't
build scale so this would be a credo to those this would be this would be this
is where we would manufacture to scale and quickly yeah Kim thank you for being
here thank you for having me do you have any projections on how much of your
business model or business revenue will be based on federal government contracts
probably about 60 to 67 percent
just looking ahead five years ten years what are you looking for as a community
that we would say hey you know this is an industry that I think is at the it
doesn't sound like it's the beginning but it's the beginning because it's
fractured so so what does a community like us does to prepare on the growth
and expansion and the direction that you guys are going and I'm talking to
universities but just curious about the future employment the future development
like what is it that we can partner and say hey you and T here's opportunities
for your students hey here's here is here's the manufacturing jobs here's the
technical analysis we want in the future yeah so I think part of that is you know
advanced manufacturing software system integration they're not just assembly
jobs these are high-tech positions so as the UAS ecosystem grows and advances
those jobs will as well my CEO and we also have somebody who's on the ground
in Ukraine and we're looking at a few companies to partner with there as well
what they've told me every two weeks there's advancements in the in the
drones right so it's not like we're gonna put in a few screws or we're
assembling a couple of things this is a an industry that's growing and advancing
at a very rapid place at pace and I think the jobs well does that answer your
question it does it does and it's harder it's a crystal ball that is not clear
right now because of what you just said because my brother was in Ukraine you
know doing medical work since the beginning he's like everything is
changing so fast it war is not what it used to be notice everything else I remember more
story in the Marine Corps you know all of a sudden we started learning how to fight
urban warfare and that was a big thing and then when I went to Iraq the second
time the IEDs were everywhere and that was a whole new way now it's drones you
know we want to make sure our service members are safe and our country is safe
so I think that's an important mission for our company I don't want to sound
like like a goal or anything like that but I think it's important and I think
being in debt and being in a place where we can really partner with community is
important for our success ready to go back to the recommendation I just want
to make sure if you're done with me I'll get out of the spotlight everyone's done
asking questions I think we are thank you so much for your input and thank you
for visiting us all right so guess what I'm gonna look for is a motion to
recommend or approve the stated so I got a Rick's bailing me out here all right I
got a motion from Rick can I get a second all in favor I I any of any
opposed all right motion passes thank you very much and thank you thank you
coming all right we're gonna move on to working session call item
PDP 26 - oh one to receive a report and hold a discussion regarding Greek
business program and recent sustainability award winner recognized
Karen for burner thank you thank you yeah as I said I'm Karen burner I'm the
sustainability engagement specialist with the city of Denton's environmental
services and sustainability department and I'm just gonna talk to you today a
little bit about the green business program and the awards that we gave out
in 2025 so today's focus we're gonna go over a back a little bit of a background
of the program and an overview and what it means to participate in the program
then we're gonna talk about awards and recognitions including our 2025 awards
that we gave out with a project of your highlight from our friends over at ESAP
they're gonna come up and tell us about so with the background there was a pilot
program launched in 2019 with nine participating businesses that pilot
ended in 2020 and then the program was put on hold through the pandemic and
through some staff changes but we did have a full program relaunched in
January 1st of 2025 and we've now completed that first calendar year a
small overview of the program it it's meant to encourage sustainability within
businesses and provide resources to highlight or initiate green practices so
basically we want to meet businesses wherever they're at and provide some
guidance and resources for any sustainability goals that they might
have or if they have corporate sustainability goals help them reach
that area within their local businesses here in Denton and the focus areas are
water conservation, energy conservation, transportation, materials management which
just means diversion from the landfill so recycling, composting, things like that
wildlife, community resilience and it's also meant to be an opportunity for
businesses to network and collaborate with each other to gain to increase
sustainability throughout the city so some of our some of the things that were
done within the green business program this past year this picture on your left
is actually it's a lunch and learn that we did it out at Peterbilt so we know
that some of these employees they do reside within the city of Denton and
we'd like to get information out to them and we do provide workshops but they're
on weekends and after in the evenings and we know not everyone's going to be
able to come out and get to those places so we want to come to them where they're
at give them some free food so nice incentive to come and listen and then
for this class we talked about the city of Denton sustainability incentives we
have so people who live in Denton are able to take advantage of those and then
on the other side that's at ESAB so we like this program to be a collaboration
not only do we want to provide resources for the business but we can help each
other so over at ESAB they are actually a registered wildlife habitat within the
National Wildlife Federation's community wildlife habitat program and that is a
goal that the city is working on to become a certified wildlife habitat city
so ESAB gets this beautiful area that brings in wildlife it helps Denton
critters as well as gives the employees a beautiful spot to sit and look have
their lunch have their breaks all of that and we did get the Bird City to
Texas designation as well this year and so having the things like the bird
houses that they have all over their campus is perfect so for awards and
recognition within the program it's based on three categories and it's by
employer size so the small businesses are 1 to 75 employees a medium is 76 to
300 and a large is 301 above and they can win awards in resource conservation
which includes energy water materials management transportation and then
wildlife and community resilience so in the end we can have up to nine awards if
we have all three employer sizes for all three categories and then we also have
project of the year which is one award for any size business based on the
sustainability project that they are proudest of that year basically at the
end of the year we have a little report they can fill out for whatever they've
done and send it in and then we decide from there who wins project of the year
so for 2025 he said one the wildlife and community resilience award they also got
the resources managed conservation award and project of the year and then over on
the side we have Peter belt who won the transportation award for 2025 and for our
project of the year I'd like to invite our representative from east of up to
talk about it a little bit
well firstly let me say thank you for having us over here my name is Bruce
I'm the senior director of operations for North America from the south Kimberly
Smith I'm the environmental health and safety manager so it's been exciting just
being here and just reflecting back because it goes back to my time but Kim
and I started I started as a plan manager there and then we started
working on all of these programs and then just goes back flashback memories
like wow the last few years what the difference we have made but this one is
very close and dear to us because when we started having working from Michigan
moved into Texas not used to the necessarily the weather but started
seeing our employees going through a lot of these cases of water and then used to
go to get some of these sashes that we would give it to our employees that we
went through these a lot of things that we went and then maybe one is like God
what are we doing for sustainability and we start looking the number of plastic
that we throw around as well and I will leave it to Kim who came up with the
solution because this is where I think having a good DHS partner and she
understanding the core of our business and more importantly taking care of our
people it was important to our community so you want to go ahead and talk but how
you went about getting this water station yeah actually I just did some
work with research on the water stations and this fit our facility so we have
eight stations and they're just around our entire facility but not only that we
provide water belt bottles for our employees so our employees love this we
give them a what new water bottle every year and like you can see we say
actually saved 77 of water last year so it's it's huge and not only from a
sustainability point view but also from employees our top thing is to take care
of our employees and they like it what's important is they taking that message to
their homes so we started giving out yes as companies we do do the branding in
terms of our own ESOP logo bottles and everything but they started taking back
to their homes teaching the kids as a company we're using this as a best
practice across all the other sites that we have in North America in fact I'm
responsible for Mexico too so if we started this program there as well try
to spread anything that we can do sustainability you don't need to reinvent
the wheel something simple as this it should help our employees and help our
earth let's go for it so this is something that we take pride in and we
thank you for the city of danger to come in it was a surprise to be one day they
walked into this and hey you got your awards like wow okay we didn't realize
that but it once again thank you so much for the opportunity well and if there's
anything else you folks want to know or understand even with the other project
that could be briefly touched upon LED is a big thing saving energy we also use
the local community help like French East landscape of which helps us in
drip irrigation we also use nonprofit organization so this birdhouse that you
see it's a foundation USA we actually use them and every month they're giving
us 20 pounds of bird feed to support the natural habitat in addition to that our
employees are very big we support the local church of we raised about 12,000
pounds of pantry food I think it was good Easter out country is what we did
that daily bread a big proponent we go about doing that there's an animal
shelter I'm a big animal guy but love to try to do these animal essential drives
so we try to give them all of this stuff so anything within the community we're
doing here so again it's all about community we can hear come here and I
can talk to you but presentations even there was margins it's all about
community is that something that is near and dear and that's what we need for the
future on our generations to come and that's near and dear to us at least if
the folks in Indian as well as in peace up so again thank you for the opportunity
but you are more than welcome to come and visit us whenever you want to see
anything else that we have in our facility thank you thank you congratulations
it's really great and the first first annual project of the year something be
very proud of so congratulations again well thank you all right we're now going
to move on the item EDP 26 - oh 13 receive various reports
we've had two downtown economic development committee meetings since the
last report a couple of months ago particularly exciting I want to thank
Christine Portello and her team the group is very engaged and one of the
reports was how have we been doing giving incentives and what does that
mean to the community and the return on our money is what well over 200% I
suggest to the team that maybe we discuss at a future point time how we go
to the council and ask for some more money we've been doing such a good job
of putting it in the downtown community and getting a return on the money to try
to help people in the downtown area attract people to the downtown area so
that is a future agenda item but I want you to know the people on that committee
are very engaged I'm privileged to be representing this board to work with any
questions for Rick again kudos thank you so much for what you do
quarterly directors report on the Brittany all right we had a very
productive q1 this year in the news didn't was featured a variety of times
in multiple news outlets Tetra pack broke ground on their 22 million dollar
expansion their u.s. and Canada headquarters which is based in didn't and
it's aimed at enhancing food and beverage product development the project will add
a product development center and a customer innovation center doubling
capacity to support rapid small batch prototyping so we're very excited about
that and then Germany based Arvato announced that they are leasing a
270,000 square foot facility and didn't as well this actually got a lot of likes
on our LinkedIn page they are let's see there's data center supplier supporting
inbound and outbound flows of sensitive hardware and complex like love delivery
services for active and under construction data centers not actually
data centers are supplier for data centers and then this now featured us
and two times during the first quarter this first article was really helpful we
received a lot of leads after it came out it's called didn't aims to go from
the FW's best-kept secret to next boomtown did anyone get a chance to read
it by chance well I'll send it to you after this meeting and we were also
featured in an article talking about life sciences and how DFW is aiming to
recruit more other companies in this field I got one quote that says we have
land that's it I want anyone that's reading this to know that they should
look at us if they're going to expand their life science company and of
artists is a gift that keeps on giving we continue to see articles that future
Novartis and other expanding to didn't partner events the team attended the
economic development partnership coaster event that Dave put on thank you Jamie we also
attended the American Cancer Society's bright edge Texas Innovation Summit this
is how that Pegasus Park in Dallas if you're not familiar with Pegasus Park
they're also a life science hub that's funded by private private donations and
corporate sponsorships they've been a great job landing some of the startups
in this field from all over the world and so the American Cancer Society they
have a division that supports cancer treatment startups so they they actually
fund some of those businesses which is pretty cool and then we also did the
stalls ribbon cutting this company has gone over beyond to support local vendors
and they wanted to make a big show for the groundbreaking so I know several of
you were able to attend they got two large long horns to represent Texas they
had the contract of the local vendor they had all types of food and it was a
great event and if you see Brian Hatmaker the CEO please don't thank you
for all of his efforts because he really wants to support the community the next
day after the salts event he came to our Mobility Summit and he presented on why
didn't and so he had a really great a few great quotes according to council
member Jill Destory and so we wanted to make sure that we share those I don't
want I wish I didn't write him down I wish I could share him today I it's been
a lot of things going on but that was a great event so we also our Mobility
Center the remote mineral Pearson event and we had over 200 registrants it was a
pretty great event considering it was our first time putting it on together and
then this was a partnership with UNT the economic partnership and multiple other
stakeholders dr. Terry pull and actually volunteered to pay for the entire event
through NSF grant that he applied for previously which was amazing and this
was actually his recommendation so he knew that we wanted to start this tech
ecosystem and start recruiting some of the mobility companies in and so this
was just the first step of hosting it so now we feel like we have a better path
forward of how we want to maybe structure our incentive policies and
board retreat I took a good photos of our work sessions I have a lot more by
the way I just want to feature all of them and thank you so much for spending
eight hours of your week in March to talk to us and provide feedback and
collaborate I think it was a great retreat it was a first retreat that I
think that economic partnership work out in quite some time and but we have
really great board members and my team and I left thinking you were confident
about the results and just the overall feedback that you provided so thank you
and I think that we have a good path forward as well right we felt confident
that we feel more aligned we felt more alive than what we thought we didn't know
what we were going to hear from the retreat but it was a great event all
right partner events that our department led Federal Reserve met with UNT and
actually coordinated with UNT, TWU they hosted a get-together at Docu Stadium I
attended in the morning and we're multiple business stakeholders including
some in the room were in attendance and then during lunchtime Chris and Polita
our main strip manager hosted a downtown tour for the Federal Reserve so their
pictures in the top right Matilda hosted a no more grow more workshop and this
featured a free tool through the Denton library called reference solutions and
it's for market research we also attended several UNT tours at the media
arts facility in the UAS testing center and then zip line I don't know if the
video will work we assist it well I'm gonna let you watch this first
the volume work so we assisted zip line with their launch at the Walmart on
University Street so zip line is a different type of drone there are all
types of drones as we're learning right and their drone in particular will go
over the destination dropping point and they'll drop the package via a stream
which is pretty cool because in my mind I thought I'll just see a regular drone
that just drops the package in total but they dropped the package by a stream
which is different to see so we helped them typically they partner with
municipalities and to feature City Council members and receiving a gift so
my your husband brought his daughters along so that was a fun time all right
trainings workshops and conferences two most notable trains that we attended
Vanessa Sparsa she is all of our board secretaries for economic development she
attended the Texas Economic Development Council basic training workshop so we're
very thankful for all the help that she provides us and I'm most proud to say
that all of our team has attended a basic economic development course because
we believe that if you're not learning you're not growing you're not growing
you're not innovating if you're not innovating you're not competing we want
to be competitive with other cities and then also Erica Sullivan our team served
as a panelist on a webinar called cities that model good economic development
transparency you know Erica she's one of those organized people that you've ever
met but that I've ever met actually and so this was perfect for her to
represent the department all right going to our Q1 recruitment stats we have 25
active projects in the queue this seems to be our average running total we had
10 new leads for the quarter that came from a variety of sources we had two
city incentive applications that came through our office we also hosted five
recruitment visits and 14 leads were reclassified so those went from active
projects to reclassified those either went to cold or lost or they transferred
to business support the good news is that we only lost three and then
recruitment outreach a chance Clay Parker will reach out every month via email to
targeted industries via email and so he had reached out to 266 leads for
downtown we have four very visits for new downtown grant leads and then for
leads that were lost they're either not moving forward with the project or two
that went cold and then we have 20 recruitment outreach attempts our high
stats so we received 18 from the governor's office and Dallas Regional
Chamber we submitted on 12 we did not submit on 8 and we didn't have any leads
converted unfortunately out of the ones that we did submit we had five point two
billion dollars in potential capital investment and then a potential of 8700
jobs and so the majority of the leads came from the governor's office then I
will hand this off to Matilda we then talk about music and film we had a nice
I would say a nice little break in quarter one so not as many permits that
applications that I received but I've been working a lot on internal projects
to better our film program especially working with Scott on a new film
ordinance I attended the media arts career kickstart so talking to a lot of
students about their next steps after graduation and then fine arts theater
announcer tentative opening in August so Kristen and I have been working with
them on several different projects related to the theater and their impact
on downtown as well as film and then Brittany and I did submit one RFI for
film which is kind of exciting and new foray into a different industry that we
normally target for our eyes and then music there is a Denton band called
Smothers that is in the jambaloo music prize aiming to win $20,000 which
musicians can use $20,000 I'll just say it like that so it's kind of a local
competition they're DFW based bands but jambaloo is a regional music festival
hosted by jambaloo and then Mullen and Mullen law firm so they have concerts for
about a week straight at different venues within Dallas and Fort Worth last year they did
have Andy's venue in Denton participate but since that closed they were not in
Denton this year but they might come back I had some conversations with them
and then we've just been working with Dallas music office on some potential
initiatives as well learning from them and seeing what maybe we could implement
in Denton so kind of slow on the permit side and the interactions they have with
external people but we're very busy on the internal side of working on
programming. Okay upcoming events we have a Denton job fair tomorrow and attending Jamie Adams
with EDP and Christina Davis on our team along with the United Way what we're
solutions have been working hard to put this together and so this year they
decide to get a little bit creative and they're hosting mini master classes they
will be presented by UNT and NCT career coaches and so the titles are aspire to
be hired leveraging social media in your job search optimizing your job search
and tell me about yourself creating the effective elevator pitch because they
found that last year that some of the candidates were probably needed some
help right and so they're offering these free classes which is great. Right now
there's 46 employers that have signed up and they've stated that they will
create over 1,600 jobs. There's 1,600 jobs available I should say. Matilda and Clay will attend
the EarthX conference sustainability conference in Dallas and then the team
will attend a getting started on upward mobility tools and strategies for local
leaders webinar. National Small Business Week is coming up if you have any ideas
to celebrate let us know. Clay and I will be attending the exponential trade show
in Detroit Michigan that's a UAS focused trade show and so we hope to bring some
of those companies back and put them in touch with Criteo Sky and then on May 27
BizNow will host their first in county state of the market and so many of the
news companies are wanting to move further north in future Denton and so
which is great news. So I will serve as a panelist along with Greg Johnson with
SVN. So if you want to hear me outside this meeting please register for that a
bit. But most importantly Judge Eads he will be the keynote address for that event.
Where is that by the way? Lakotian TV. Lakotian TVA actually. Yes we put them in touch and I
don't know what they decided on. We're hoping on the NBC suites. Can we get an email to the
board when there's more information? Thank you. If you have any
suggestions let me know. I think they typically look for sponsorships so just
throwing that out there. City Transitions. Sarah Hensley our city manager. She held
her going away celebration on March 27 and so we're going to miss her. I put
this picture of her on the top right. The shirt says HUB believer. So I first
started working here we met with HUB early on and that's all she could say
during the meetings. I'm a HUB believer. So we got her a custom-made shirt and
Cassie Ogden is now our appointed interim city manager and so she's already
hit the ground running. She served as a moderator during the Mobility Summit.
She's featured in the bottom right and Christina Davis on our team she will be
retiring in May. She's been with the city for nearly 20 years and so that will be a
big change for us but she's seen a variety of changes directors over that
course of 20 years. So we'll be hosting a retirement party for her which we will
send to you via emails what we want to attend. And that is it. Any questions? Any
questions for the staff? All right hearing none we're gonna move on to
including items, announcements, and reminders. So first I'll ask the question. I have to read this for me. I got a smile on my face.
Oh we have two. Oh future agenda items. Was that already on there? No, it's a separate item.
I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Future agenda items. All right, so coming up on May 13th, we will have, we have a tentative guest speaker. I can't confirm until we confirm the guest speaker and based on our board
report feedback, Vanessa Esparza, she served on the Dindy Young Professionals group. So she wants the leader, the chair, what is his name? Dan. Yeah, what's his role? He's pretty much the chair of the company. The chair to come
and speak to the group to learn more about their goals for young professionals.
We're excited about that. And that's it right now. Of course we have projects in
the queue. It's a matter of time of getting them through the process. Thank you.
Right now are there any questions? Alicia said she should have it by the time
our May meeting comes around. With posting schedules, you never know. So it's May, June time frame.
Any other questions, comments? Yes ma'am. I'm unopposed. So please come to my
swearing-in May 12th at 2 p.m. in the council chambers. Yes, thank you. Anyways,
everyone's welcome and I hope you can come. Thank you. May 12th. That's correct. Any other announcements, questions? Yes ma'am. I'm sorry. I need to call for my concluding items. I haven't done this before. I don't know what's going on.
All right. Does the board have any other business to discuss or suggestions on what they wish to discuss in the next meeting?
No, mine was going to be concluding items. Go ahead. I was just going to make an announcement. It was just going to be something to the
lines of what Jill just announced. I'm not sure if we're in that area. We were concluding items. Yes. Well, I was just going to announce that to you all that, you know, this is my last meeting coming off the city council.
And you know, you all know that I'm running for school board.
So that's going to be a beautiful transition for me if I can, of course, receive the votes. So I'm excited about that. But as I was listening to all of these really cool things happening and you know what's happening to us with the quality of life piece and I'm speaking to our company here, it's just going to be so hard not to.
I'm going to find some kind of way to stay in here, you know, stay in the midst of things. So I'm really looking forward to the growth that we're going to have before us. And I just thank everybody for all the support here in the last five years.
Any other concluding items I apologize.
I need two more cups of coffee.
Does the board have any other business discuss or suggestions on what they wish to discuss in the next meeting.
Hearing done, our next EDP meeting is scheduled to be Wednesday, May 13 2026 at 11am please let staff know if you're not able to attend the meeting and submit your notification of absence online. There's no other business, I will adjourn the meeting at 12pm. Thank you very much.