I want to recognize the new city council member Nick
Stevens. Nick was appointed to this board
yesterday at council. So welcome Nick. Thank you very much.
Appreciate it. And then so Jill and Nick will be our city
council
representatives that are on here at each meeting. Cassie
also wants to thank you for joining as well.
We will now begin with presentations from members of the
public. Do we have any members present?
So I don't need to read this section. So we'll continue to
calling individual items for consideration.
The first item will be item A, EDP 26-019, consider
approval of the minutes of the June 10th,
26th Economic Votes Partnership Board meeting. I think
everybody who received that either emailed on Friday from
Lindsay.
Were there any questions regarding that? Okay. So I'll just
make a motion.
What was that?
Ritchie? Second.
Rick, all in favor say aye.
Aye.
All right, motion carries.
Go to item B, which is EDP 26-020, consider making
recommendations to the city council for an incentive
agreement for equipmentshare.com.
And I recognize Brittany and Clay Parker to present on this
item.
So Clay Parker is the primary project manager on this
project. And so he'll be presenting.
Good morning, everybody. Clay Parker, business recruitment
specialist.
And today I'll be presenting for your consideration the
intent application for equipmentshare.com.
Today's objective is a full caption on your agenda to
approve the set of agreements, or the set of incentive
agreements rather, for equipmentshare.com, including a
sales tax rebate on construction materials up to just under
$211,000, job-based grant dates of $3,000,
addable R&B date on real property improvements, business
personal property up to $489,615.
So just for some background, back in December, the end of
last year, our office began participating in equipmentshare
site selection process.
And on March 17th of this year, they submitted their formal
incentive application.
The company itself was founded in 2015 and is currently
headquartered in Columbia, Missouri.
And they provide construction solutions, ecosystem support
through smart job technology and equip the rental, retail,
and service distribution.
And just a little bit here, we'll get into those services
and that equipment.
At total, they have 8,500 employees, a little bit more than
that, over 400 locations across 45 states.
And they're named the 2025-5,000 list of America's fastest
growing private companies.
So equipmentshare offers more than 1,000 options for their
rentals within their equipment.
And this is across all the different industries you could
imagine or rather the different types of equipment you
could imagine on a construction site.
Everywhere from forklifts to bulldozers to anything for
bird moving or compaction,
it's on a construction site is probably a piece of
equipment that they offer.
On top of that, they also offer their T3 technology
platform.
This is a brand agnostic hardware and software platform
that connects those jobsite assets on the job site itself.
And within that, it includes fleet management, dash cam
access, security, compliance reporting, safety, and
accountability.
It really just helps with the efficiency of fleet
compliance on those sites.
So the proposed development that's being considered, we
include a first basic development that we're doing the
analysis for.
It is first a distribution center, a 402,000 square feet
distribution center.
They'll serve as their second major distribution center
within the United States.
And there will be three divisions of the business itself,
how the pre-engineered metal buildings.
So that will include heavy dirt equipment, which is just
under 30,000 square feet for that building, advanced
solutions, which is just under 30,000 square feet as well.
And then it also includes site solutions, which is eight
and a half thousand square feet.
To be in particular with that, heavy dirt is going to be
for earth moving equipment, such as bulldozers and excav
ators.
Advanced solutions, those services will include climate
control, compressed air systems, et cetera.
And site solutions itself will have site access and
security, fully stocked mobile tool trailers, and on-site
fueling.
Just picture what's at those buildings. It's not everything
that's going to be there, but that gives you an idea of the
division of business itself.
And they're currently in those active site selection
negotiations.
So the location that they are considering is the North
Texas Logistics Hub.
This is the northern portion of the Baker site. Just so you
get your orientation here, I put a fun compass for us.
The top of the picture here is east, just so you know what
we're looking at.
And that yellow star you see is the property itself.
It's just about 125 acres in between North Mott Branch and
FM 1173.
And this is a property that we've been trying to help
market for the last two years.
Big property in our industrial region, something that we
would obviously love to see some great development on.
Speaking of that development, this project itself is just
under 250 million in capital investment.
That's split with about 75 million going toward
improvements and just under 154 million going to business
personal property.
In particular, I should note that 140 million of that
business personal property, as you'd imagine, is that
rental equipment.
And then all in all, they're estimating 136 jobs.
We'll get into that breakdown of what those job titles look
like and some of the salary details.
As that capital investment transitions to both valuation
and revenue, you get that picture a little bit here.
We're going to do an estimated valuation for the northern
portion of the Baker site because currently it's a single
plat.
So basically it's pretty close to even, so we just divided
it by two.
So the land itself is just valued north of six million
dollars.
There'll be an estimated increase of just under 14 million,
bringing it to about 20.
And there's some improvements on the site right now, just a
few barns, I think, is what DCAD kind of defines it as.
The estimated increase there is going to be 30 million.
And then business personal property, there's a fun part of
the Texas tax code that is a heavy equipment dealer
designation that has a different set of rules for how that
equipment is valued.
We're doing their equation and working with DCAD on that.
We're estimating there will be just about 11 and a half
million at peak for that valuation for business personal
property.
All in all, that adds about 55 million in valuation,
bringing us north of 61 million.
As that transitions to revenue, it basically comes down to
an estimated increase just over a million dollars in annual
tax revenue when you consider sales tax figures that were
provided.
And that brings the estimated city revenue at about a
million and thirty eight thousand dollars.
So the proposal that we have is to do an ad-worn tax rebate
at 50 percent for five years on real property, which is
just for new improvements only.
And business personal property that's estimated to be about
four hundred eighty nine thousand dollars, which would be
the cap on that.
And then sales tax rebate at 50 percent on construction
materials that we cap to just under two hundred eleven
thousand dollars.
As a reminder for that to qualify, a company needs to have
a Texas Direct Pay Permit, which requires that they have
eight hundred thousand dollars in purchases, in taxable
purchases rather, within the state of Texas.
And that allows them to designate where they want to pay
sales tax. In this case, the construction materials they're
purchasing for their development.
So when something like lumber would maybe be purchased in a
different part of DFW or a different part of the state,
this agreement, getting that direct pay permit allows for
that all to be centrally paid in the city of Denton.
In that sense, it's kind of a win win for both parties.
And then finally, based on the jobs themselves, which we'll
get into in just a second, we are capping out the job based
grant at eighty three thousand, bringing us to a total of
seven hundred eighty three thousand five hundred fifty
three dollars.
When you plug that all into our software for total economic
impact, which is impact dashboards, this is the picture of
that five year rebate and every other incentive that was
involved in that.
As we talked about a little bit before impact dashboard, we
go a little bit more conservative on it and estimating both
the revenue and the total cap on incentives.
That's where you see that gap in incentives between what
they estimate and what our cap is going to be. But all in
all, it is estimating a one point four year payback period
with a hundred thirty one percent rate of return.
And in the bottom right there, you can see that that net
benefit less incentives over 10 years of analysis is just
over eleven point three million dollars for the city.
Performance measures are always baked into our agreements
for those different grants that I just described, in
particular for the ad or rebate.
We require that the company itself received a certificate
of occupancy after completing their improvements.
They must reach and maintain and appraise property value
above the twenty twenty six certified valuation in this
case.
So that is also going to be performance measures for the
sales tax rebate as well with the CEO getting that bar
ometer of over the twenty six certified valuation.
And then both for the ad or rebate and the job based grant,
we're going to require that they must hire, maintain,
agreed upon number of full time employees.
That incentive agreement itself is in the final stages of
legal approval process. So those final terms are just being
conducted official, but those will be official by the time
for individual consideration.
And then here's some of that job wage information that I
mentioned. You got an idea of a variety of titles on the
left side of the screen ranging all the way from vice
president to construction managers to data analysts to
application engineers.
You can see how there'd be a wide range of different types
of occupations within the company itself for the wide range
of different services I described previously in general,
running all those numbers together.
Their average salary for the projected employees came out
to sixty four thousand five hundred ninety one dollars,
which is just above our average salary of Q4 twenty twenty
five sixty four thousand three hundred dollars.
On top of that, equipment share themselves estimate that
there will be estimated eight thousand four hundred ninety
dollars in benefits, including for the match medical,
vision, dental, et cetera.
On the right side of the screen, you can see that's how we
got that eighty three thousand dollar capped job based
grant.
In particular, they qualified for year one of added jobs as
a reminder to qualify for the job based grant. You have to
either in that particular year, new employees need to have
an average salary greater than sixty five thousand dollars
or at least a quarter of those new employees need to be
making more than seventy five thousand dollars.
So you see that breakdown between those different brackets,
depending on the salary and then we also added a resident
bonus for those qualifying jobs through the reporting
process and the certificate of compliance that to submit
every year through the agreement by proving that those new
employees are residents within the city of Denton.
They can receive a five hundred dollar bonus per employee
and that would be capped out at ten employees, but in total
, an eighty three thousand dollars cap on that job based
grant.
As it comes to community impact itself, the company
provided a lot of great areas about their current work, not
only in Columbia, which is their headquarters, but across
their different operations.
In particular for us, this develops a greenfield site.
Again, we've been marketing for the last two years and it
will generate a significant amount of taxes across both
property and sales and some solid jobs.
If you're basically comparison to some alternative
industries that can take space, it also will spur in field
and infrastructure development, which not only supports
that property, but some of the ordering parcels that are
within the region and it secures this new company with a
grand history of supporting career and technical education
within Missouri through the One Missouri Program.
They have their own targeted recruitment of veterans
currently, and they have a great amount of sustainability
efforts in particular that T3 technology really for those
companies that are using it on site helps reduce the time
of just simply equipment running and the emissions that
creates.
So it really not only have cost level creates efficiency
for those companies on a sustainability level. It also
helps.
And all of those items are highlighted on the right between
our city of debt and strategic plan and our chapter 380
policy considerations.
So staff recommendation is to carry out a chapter 380
agreement, which will be capped at the previous included
figure.
That includes the ad for rebate 50% for five years on both
real property improvements and business personal property
sales tax rebate construction materials at 50% and a job
based credit.
Next steps upon recommendation for approval be going to see
council for individual consideration on August 4.
And I can take any questions.
And I should also note that in the room, we also have Mark
Wallace here from equipment share is the manager of
economic development conditions.
So,
No questions, just comment that if you've been out by the
industrial area going toward the airport at Western,
Boulard and Airport Road, there's a place that puts decals
on vehicles.
There have been hundreds of trucks going through.
They're getting details for this company for the last six
months.
So I think they're committed to our community.
So,
First of all, every time you say T3, I imagine terminators
from the movie actually like renting out.
And so I'd like to know if that's available to terminators.
That'd be great.
And I asked this question to you prior, but on the
requirements regarding the chapter 380 agreement.
Right now we've got the requirements that kind of TBD just
above the last year's certified value at lower value.
When does that get baked in as far as, you know, one sent
over?
Like, what is it that expectation?
When does that get put in?
When will the final terms be finalized?
Specifically to the appraised value requirement in the
chapter 3.
That should obviously be finalized either the end of this
week or early next week due to the posting deadlines for
the individual consideration itself.
We're going to post next week for city council.
So that'll be we're kind of in the final parts of doing
legal approval and everything for that.
Again, as a just explanation for how that typically works
in different incentive agreements,
usually that based on how we carry out our incentive
analysis and that perceive what we think the valuation is
going to be.
Usually that barometer is crossing either about 70 percent
or 80 percent of what that expected increase in valuation
is.
So that's usually how we make that into the agreement
itself.
And that is based on both submitting certificate of
compliance, but also directly connecting it to how DCAD
does their valuation.
So in this case, the parcel itself again, struck stretches
across all of the Baker site.
So they will upon acquiring the site, it will become a new
parcel, which on January 1st, that's when DCAD will carry
out their analysis of valuation of the new parcel.
So all in all, the base year will be set at that 2026
automation.
Thanks for that explanation. I appreciate it.
Did you mention is this their first location in Texas?
This is not their first location in Texas. They have
different, they have a wide variety of locations in Texas
for smaller operations,
but this would be in general, their second large scale
distribution center.
Where's the other, do you know?
The other is in Columbia, Missouri?
Just outside of Columbia, Missouri.
They have retail centers across the state of Texas.
Yes.
And so Midland Gas, that's where I'm from. They're
everywhere.
You can see their rentals everywhere, every site, gas site.
So pretty well known.
Do you feel, not deal specific, but whenever it says like
they pay a living wage for all their, is there a set number
threshold that is a living wage?
What is that for?
So that's, we baked that. It's actually, I think,
specifically called out in our 380 policy.
It's MIT specifically does living wage calculations,
calculations that they consistently update on a quarterly
basis, Erica, on a quarterly basis.
And that is a county to county level. So that's
specifically based on Denton County through MIT.
They not only do a living wage analysis, but they also,
what are the different levels again?
They have a poverty wage, I believe is also what they carry
out, but specifically throughout that high end is the
living wage.
Do you know what that number is?
I can find it.
You can let me know there. I'm just curious.
I had a question. The must do's was pretty long list.
So I guess the question I'm asking is not in the punishment
mindset, but it's like, is it an all or nothing kind of
thing?
Like you have to meet all these requirements too, or is
there a discussion in between just because the list was big
?
Absolutely.
So they're set out for success and we're set out for
success.
So some of them are split a little bit.
In particular, like the sales tax rebate doesn't have the
same job based requirement of meeting those minimum amount
of employees because the sales tax rebates more focused on
that initial development stage and erecting the building
and creating the improvements that were described.
But again, we really do have open communication with our
prospects as we go through these performance metrics to
ensure not only early on when they create the capital
investment figures that they're describing, we try to
communicate early on, hey, this is what's going to be baked
into the agreement itself.
This is something we can reach and come back around to.
And again, that's kind of where we create a little bit
about we understand that construction is a unpredictable
business and sometimes you can be over or under and in the
same way, the way your property ends up getting valued by
decals unpredictable in some senses to really just depends.
So that's where we try to create that way to make sure that
these are performance metrics that accomplish both sides of
it and make sure that the project is the rule that was
described, but it's not something so strict and stringent
that it doesn't allow for the normal flexibility of
development.
Thank you.
Sorry, I just thought of after Rick's comment, a concern in
the past with this board has been that we don't want to
recommend offering incentives if the decision has already
been made to come.
Can you speak to the property has or has not been purchased
and do you believe that this incentive is part of the
reason for the decision and if you just wouldn't mind
speaking to that that's something that we've always wanted
to make sure of.
Yeah, absolutely.
The property has not been purchased.
That's legally kind of required for us in this sense. And
on top of that, I mean, we've been talking to them since
they've been considering other sites and that's just the
name of the game of the site selection process is whittling
down getting this lower and smaller and smaller lists in
that sense and really, especially for a site like this, it
's a green field is going to need a little bit of work on
the land side of things and the infrastructure side of
things, which, you know, compared to alternative sites
might not be the case.
I'm not familiar with the other sites would be that are
being considered, but especially from green field always
the scale of this development, having that added
partnership with the city is kind of key to be able to
carry out the improvements that would be necessary.
I don't mind over speaking at all here, but I can openly
say that we currently have site selection resources and
initial incentive packages back from the Atlanta area, the
Indianapolis area, the Columbus area and the Salt Lake City
area.
So, very much a competitive project out of really all 50
states, but in maybe a more feasible idea here would be
probably three out of the 20 or so states. We've engaged on
this. We'll see some form of large scale development over
the next 10 years.
This would be our first large scale expansion outside the
state of Missouri that isn't just a retail location. So, we
are doing our due diligence. We have a team of economic
developers internally as well and we always have to over
explain to our folks what it means to remain a competitive
project and the land not just in the right place, but with
the right partners.
So, Brittany and Clay have been great so far and that's no
small part of why we're moving forward with even this
meeting.
Thank you so much for that feedback and we welcome you here
and hope you love it as much as we do. Thank you and thank
you so much.
Thank you.
Not a certain percentage. That's a recent thing that I'm
not sure if I'm allowed to kind of describe some of the
private conversations that happen with that, but I can at
least describe that for the first time last year, just over
last year, I'm going to say it was approved in December,
our engine tech agreement was the first time we added
resident bonus consideration, which was under the
questioning of how do we make sure that some of this stays
in Denton and those the incentive we're putting towards the
end.
And if we're putting towards this creates jobs here so that
was our current approach with engine tech so this is going
to be mirrored off of that incentive agreement it's not
based off of a percentage requirements to receive the job
base in general currently is truly a bonus so the incentive
itself has a portion of it that is dedicated to hey you can
get up to the $83,000 cap.
And to do that, you need to make sure that X number of the
new employees you're bringing on are going to be proven to
be residents of the city itself. So it's not more so of a
percentage to be able to qualify for the entire thing is a
bonus to kind of reach the last portion of the cap
agreement itself.
So, it's something that we based off of something we did
for the first time a couple years ago or I think it was a
year and a half ago. Some of we're still exploring workshop
.
So, we're still trying to figure out how to make sure that
we're getting the best out of the job base. So, we're still
trying to figure out how to make sure that we're getting
the best out of the job base.
We will move to work.
The chief economic development officer at the Texas
executive director of the Texas talent accelerator program.
As a reminder for to the support of our guest speaker
series and so we're very thankful to have been in today's.
Accelerator.
It's an honor to be here. My name is Ben McGill. I'm the
chief economic development officer at T, as well as another
half the executive director of the Texas talent accelerator
.
I've been in economic development workforce development in
the North Texas region since about 2010. I've worked at
cities and chambers and community college and now even T
and this project.
And so excited to tell you about this this morning.
What is the Texas talent accelerator?
It is a regional intelligence hub. What does that mean? We
'll dig into that a little bit.
But the basic info is that the Texas talent is a regional
intelligence hub founded by you and T with a special item
through the Texas legislature to create a regional resource
.
Okay, to to help us understand the labor market, help us
get more aligned as a region. So, while this is being
founded by you and T, the intention is to serve the entire
region.
So, any educational institution that wants to become more
labor market aligned, we are here to help. So, think of
think of the accelerator as not only an intelligence hub or
labor market data, but also an extension service.
So, what is labor market alignment? You all probably know
this given the time that you spend in meetings like this
economic development, but it's really making sure that the
programs, the certificates, the degrees that we're offering
at you and T and other colleges and universities around the
region are of value to the students who are spending their
time and energy to get those degrees.
And that they have value in the marketplace. Are they
aligned with the needs of employers? Right? So, we spend a
lot of time as a team looking at labor market data.
But as you all may have experienced, the data does not tell
us everything. Right? So, we spend a lot of time also
talking with economic development organizations, employers,
other colleges and universities and trying to bring
everybody together on a regular basis to get an idea of
what's going on in the region.
So, let me tell you a little bit about that work. And by
the way, please just interrupt me if you have questions and
I'll go until you all kind of just cut me off. Whatever
feels right.
So, we recently had one of our quarterly convenings down at
Pegasus Park in Dallas. We brought together multiple
colleges and universities, economic development
organizations, employers to kind of talk about this concept
, get feedback on the data that we've been working on.
And we really want to not only be an intelligence hub,
right? And collect this data and understand this data, but
put it into action. Actionable insights is what we're
really after. Right? So, what do we do about all these
insights? If it's just data, that's great.
But we got to put it into action and really change things
and make an impact for the region.
So, as we've been doing this work over the last, let's see,
we started officially on September 1st last year, so we're
not even out of year yet. But as we've been doing this,
these are some of the things that have emerged from the
listening sessions that we've had, the interactions we've
had with our different stakeholder groups.
Our region needs a better understanding of emerging skills
and the impact of AI on that workforce. Soft skills are
still important or durable skills are still important
managing the transition to and within workforce.
Priorities should revolve around pathways to target occup
ations. What's the best way, what's the best pathway to get
to that living wage job or that thriving wage job? What's
going to get me there fastest? What's the most efficient
route to that? What's the degree or the certification or
the key skills that are going to get me that good job?
Right?
And then insights on graduate employment outcomes. If you
've spent any time in the labor market data space, there is
kind of a, there's a black hole in terms of where are
people winding up. Right?
There's a lot of information about what students are
studying and what type of talent is needed. If you all work
for a company, own a company, you have a really good idea
of what you need in terms of talent.
And we have a lot of great institutions that are offering a
lot of great programs, but we kind of don't know once
students graduate where they wind up. And that's a key
piece of information to help us do our work better as
educational institutions. So that's something we're trying
to dig into.
We're working with the state. We're working with other
partners around the country to kind of help shine a light
on that and better understand employment outcomes. And I'll
tell you a little bit about that in a minute.
Why we think this work matters.
As we've talked about workforce demand is being rapidly res
haped for a number of reasons.
At least of these AI.
Skills needs are evolving faster than traditional systems
in the labor market data world. We have these very outdated
occupation titles that do not translate to what, you know,
the jobs that people are applying for. Right? When you look
at online job postings.
The data exists, but it's fragmented.
So this current situation requires a new coordinated
approach. There are a lot of great institutions, a lot of
great economic development organizations that are all
looking at data, trying to make data informed decisions.
But our our hope and our goal is to kind of have a
coordinated vision and understanding for the region and to
be communicating about communicating about that working on
that together as a region. Because as you all know, people
drive all across this region to go to work.
They might live in Denton and drive somewhere else, vice
versa to go to their job. And so it's really important that
we think about this as a regional regional economy.
So, as I mentioned, really the core of this is both
understanding the labor market data, as well as getting the
stakeholder group together to talk about what they're
witnessing.
What's missing from the data so that we have a better
understanding and can build towards that. So quarterly
basis, we convene the stakeholder network, education
institutions, economic development employers, etc.
To get to get that feedback. And then we turn that into
into action, right? Actionable insights. So I'll take you a
little bit. I'll show you a little bit about what we've
done as it relates to health care. There's a couple of
other examples in here, too.
We may not have time for that today, but as you all know,
this region, it's both a blessing and a curse that we have
such economic diversity in this region.
Any one industry does not overpower the others. So all of
our work would be a little bit easier if we just had two,
three industries and that's all we had to figure out. For
better or for worse, that's not the situation in North
Texas.
All the industries matter. All the industry sectors matter.
We have to respond to that as educational institutions. And
so as a result, we have lots of programs, lots of degrees
across many sectors.
But health care is constantly consistently at the top. That
's a big one. That is a big one. Not only in North Texas,
but around the country. And it's only going to continue to
grow.
It's been the most consistent source of job growth since
2023 in the U.S. And that tracks with Texas as well and
with North Texas. So while it's something that we tend to
understand and spend a lot of time on, and it may not be
the most exciting topic of the day, this is a behemoth
sector and something that's going to continue to be really
important to continue to grow.
So that's something we've really focused on as of late. You
can see here why this matters to the DFW economy. Jobs grew
by over 500,000 plus over the last five years, projected
through more.
Lots of job postings across a ton of companies over the
last 12 months. So again, this is a big, important sector
to pay attention to.
After doing putting together this health care report, which
I'm going to share with you all if you don't mind just
passing this.
This is an executive summary of a health care report that
we did. We did a lot of the data work to kind of understand
what we were working with. And then we spent a lot of time
talking with employers, talking with the DFW Hospital
Council Association Foundation, excuse me,
to really understand what they were seeing across all these
different health care systems. And some of the things that
came out were, you know, we've got to get, we've got to get
into the weeds.
We've got to get a closer relationship with industry, not
once candidates or employees or students graduating, but
when they're looking for what career to go into, when they
're looking in high school, middle school or high school,
like, what is my career going to be?
That's where we need employer engagement. That's the kind
of connection we want to foster.
We need an employer's employees, excuse me, really need
these wraparound supports. So we find things like, you know
, affordable housing, you know, people having to drive
across, you know, county to be able to get to the job, the
living wage job.
And, you know, that, that living wage being really affected
when they're having to spend so much money on other things
like trying to find childcare, etc. So these things have to
be addressed jointly across the ecosystem.
Allied health roles are super critical. And sometimes, you
know, these are roles in which they pay a really good wage,
but don't necessarily need a bachelor's or master's degree.
So, this is something that we found out in talking with our
friends at the hospital council foundation, which really
this blew me away.
This was in Collin County, specifically, signing bonuses
for radiologic technology reaching as high as $30,000.
They also highlighted the fact that I think in Collin
County, specifically, there was no training program for
grad techs. And so that's an opportunity for an institution
to build, build in and fill that gap.
When I talked earlier about understanding outcomes,
understanding where students are winding up, and how we can
kind of dig in and kind of develop pathways. This is not a
totally holistic picture, but it's information that we can
glean from online profiles.
We're trying to trying to enrich this data by getting
actual workforce data from the state.
It gives us an idea of not only outputs of where graduates
coming from, what types of degrees are they getting, where
are they winding up in the workplace, right? So it begins
to help us kind of track back and think about the types of
investments we're making in programs and what we offer.
Some of those outcomes you can see here, occupations
entered from all of those graduate outcomes of health
programs across the region. Not shocking to see registered
nurses at the top of that list. That's a big one.
I will move quickly through these.
So what education levels do workers in these occupations
hold? 52% of them do hold a bachelor's degree, 28%
associate's degree. So it just gives you a flavor of what
type of education, what level of education is needed for
some of these roles.
Which institutions feed these occupations? So where are
students coming from and wind up in these? Again, it gives
us an idea of output across the region.
Skills gaps. This is often a conversation that comes up
with employers, as you all know. Students are coming out
with these great degrees, but where are the communication
skills, where are the soft skills, the durable skills, the
problem solving, the teamwork, et cetera.
So those are things that are really valuable that we can
communicate back to our higher ed institutions to say, let
's make sure we're addressing these things in programs and
curriculum.
So I will pause there. Does anyone have any questions?
On the graph, where's Strata? Is there a statistic that
shows basically the first column feeding into the last
column? Meaning, states in the region, other US or states
in Texas?
From the, by which school? Or is it all pretty consistent
if you go to UTD, UTA, North Texas, TWA, that the retention
in North Texas or retention in Texas or not retention in
the US is all pretty consistent regardless of the
institution?
We could. We do have a way to look at that by institution.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, obviously, now, but that might be
interesting to see if North Texas or TWA is, you know,
staying consistent with the others or better.
Yeah, what I will say in general, my experience has been
that students who are from, let's say, for example, a lower
socioeconomic background tend to stay in the region.
Now, the differentiator, as you would imagine, is as
students get more education, their mobility changes. Right.
So, but if they come from the region, and they tend to come
from this, we saw this at Dallas College as well.
Students in that from that background tend to have more of
a loyalty, so to speak, to the region. But then as you as
you receive more education, you earn more degrees and
certificates, you become more mobile.
So you look at opportunities elsewhere. So just that we
could. Yeah, we could dig into that more. The reason I kind
of brought them on, I guess there's a chart or staff that
just came out. You'll probably see it on social media, but
where it shows by state how many people stay in the state
that they were born in versus moving elsewhere.
And like I'll say it's like Minnesota was the number one,
and then California was obviously pretty low just because
it sounds like the last few years been flooded apartment,
but I was just seeing how that tied to it.
Yeah, well I think that's that's also why it's important
that you, you know, in May, why, as part of economic
development strategy, you're targeting those for sure like
living wage jobs and beyond because as students become more
mobile and have more opportunity, you know, your, your
ability to attract them and keep them or retain them here
is going to be dependent on those great jobs that are
looking.
Absolutely.
So, in my gathering that the healthcare industry is, you're
saying is the leader in this area as well as far as job
creation. Yes, and just before we kind of get up that topic
and kind of interested to you I mean we talked in the past
about wanting to become kind of a healthcare hub here for
some of the smaller cities around us and we have two jewels
with our hospitals here.
What kind of degrees are offered at UNT, TW in the
healthcare industry here in Denton, I know there are other
you know schools and, you know, UNT and TW have different
campuses but.
You mind if I ask that question. Do you know what type of
healthcare degrees right now are offered at TW on the
campus.
Yes, since we did the new building. It's the first time we
've done had cohorts for nursing OT and PT and then as
opposed to having to go to Dallas and Houston for those.
And so, we're also looking to add nurse practitioners
physician assistants, the new dean and else I'll say we don
't have the medical school facilities that UT has for work.
Okay.
Do you happen to know what kind of degrees we have. I'm
looking at you know what the city of Denton is what we can
do here how we can utilize those that are coming out,
bringing in jobs for them anyway that's kind of where I'm
going.
Sorry, go ahead. Yes. And so most of it's at UNT health at
Fort Worth.
I can't clearly cannot get ahead of my skis but there's
discussions about expanding in areas here in the city.
Yeah, but yes we've been a program in work with UNT health
which is clearly a different institution in the system, UNT
system so yeah, different but we could partners.
I was just a Jeremy asked a good question I think the thing
you have to keep in mind. So, we don't have a medical
school so I'll just use medical school, medical school or
placements when you go to apply so my doctor when I was
back in Kentucky was an AM grad, but he came from there and
he went to school because he did get placements in a
medical school so they're going to be the mobility is a lot
different in a lot of those and I think the clinical plac
ements.
So, you're going to come this way and then you may end up,
you know, staying with those.
So the question may be how many students from here go to
your schools I don't care what location they're at right
and chances are they have a better probability coming back.
And the statistics show where you do residency or where you
do your placements where you end up staying and living. So,
this information is really great. Thank you so much and
those are my questions.
Thank you.
It was kind of tie into this but you mentioned the gap of
you know, knowing where these kids end up. My daughter
graduated college. Two years ago and, and I'm sure we do it
all universities do it but the placement of those kids you
know help.
And I'm maybe pushing that to go hey how do we, how do we
understand what you guys are doing and I understand it's
impossible to do it through all industries, but I found
that the placement and helping these kids when they
graduated there was a gap there at the
end of the year that they had to do it through all
industries. And so that could be a way to boost, you know,
if we elevated our placement programs with this
relationship you guys are trying to build it sounds like
that'd be a way to track that make an investment in that
also, because I found that a lot of kids graduate
with a bachelor's degree less with a master's, but more
with a bachelor's that there's not a lot of support from
the universities to get them placed or make introductions.
So, that may be a way to help build that black spot which
you guys probably already identified that you're spot on.
That situation is that is that is an issue in most
universities across the country, with the exception of your
very elite private institutions, which do that very well,
they do placement very well.
That's a very difficult thing, I can say from what I've
seen at UNT for example is a ton of activity around
bringing employers to campus, hosting career fairs, a lot
of engagement.
But the missing piece in some cases that you're
highlighting is getting kind of flipping the script at the
advice, at the advising moment, right, where you're saying,
and kind of changing it from.
Are you interested in, what do you want to do to look at
what might be a really good opportunity and like let's work
backwards from there, right, I think that's oftentimes what
's missing so that's an area where we really want to dig in
as the accelerator,
we've recently engaged with, it's called MAC 3, and it's
like the Metroplex area career advising centers, and so it
's multiple universities and colleges, so we want to help
them kind of beef up, you know how they do that advising on
, you know, what type of degree students should be going
after, based on the opportunities that are out there
locally, regionally.
And then, you know, all along the process, how do we, you
know, how do we get employers engaged early on and give
them an early look, right, at these talent pipelines.
So, that's spot on and not, you know, not unique to this
region, it's an issue.
And, you know, what I mean with a lot of kids graduating
high school going, "Hey, what am I going to do?" You know,
this and that, so to your point, the question I asked him,
I said go look up what careers have the highest paying jobs
, and then I say, look at what level education, you know,
make them go look up and come back and meet with me, and
then say, okay, you got these careers, PhD degree required,
or probably a master's degree or bachelor's degree.
You know, what kind of lifestyle do you, income, do you
want to live, personally, and I ask them all these
questions, and then I come back and say, okay, what are you
, what are you good at, and then make them fill out
basically a report to me saying these things, right?
Okay, do you want to be, we need teachers, we have to have
teachers, we have to have great teachers, but you need to
understand, don't complain about your pay when you go get a
four year education as a teacher's degree, you know, you
understand what you're getting going in, right, or you want
to be a CEO of a company, what do you need to do?
Or start your own business. So I think you hit the nail, I
haven't put those two together until you were just talking
about that, but that's a perfect way to do it. Instead, oh,
what do you want to do? Here's your classes to go do that,
right?
Here's the income levels, and time, whatever's important to
you, the time, all that, that's really smart.
I think, you know, part of what we, so if you're an
engineer, often have internships, if you're in healthcare,
we just talk about, if you're teaching, you need to teach,
but what about all these other fields?
So how do we get business more involved to have those,
because you come out with finance, and that's your degree,
you just want what you can go to, so unless they have
internships or something, how do they work in the jobs,
right?
And that also means we've got to figure out how to engage
business better with this.
Well, I mean, this isn't good for the universities, but I'm
hiring, I'm hiring kids that have used Claude and ChatGBT
to train themselves on how to use it.
You know, that you can go in and it'll teach you how to use
AI, right? And so I just hired a kid a month ago, and I
think we paid him 80,000 bucks, and no college education,
but he had used Claude to train him how to use agents and
how to use these things, and we implemented him in a
business, because you've got guys my age that know the
problems, and we know what solution we need, but we don't
know the steps to get there using AI.
And this kid, in a month, you know, AI is no good until it
goes in the workflow, right, in my opinion, until it's
actually in the workflow. In a month, I'm like, look at
this kid, I go, man, if you, he could potentially be making
$150,000 a year in 12 months, because he's saving us that
much money.
And no, he doesn't have a college education. He used Claude
and ChatGBT to teach himself how to do it. It's wild. And
when I look at what he's doing, and we're actually going to
hire one for every company and put them all in one think
tank, so we'll have six.
And an $80,000 investment is like a drop in the bucket for
the uplift, for getting out of it. And it was our first one
, and I'm just, I'm like, I told all the presidents of our
companies, we need that guy, and we need them all in one
room, and a bullpen.
And it's amazing.
Susanna is not here, but I'll ring the school district's
bell. We're one of the few districts in the entire state of
Texas that has speech pathologists on campuses.
And I don't know that our employers or people we try to
recruit or things like that understand that, but that's a
huge opportunity for students who may have a need that they
have to go pay some private to some of them can't afford to
pay private.
Do we know what our different institutions as an economic
development board so we can sell that product to the people
we're trying to recruit in here? I think that's an
important question.
Yeah, absolutely. I will say that I was told a story that
we, a couple years ago, we brought together a bunch of site
selectors. This is when I was with Dallas College, and we
were really engaged in like building the biotech bioscience
sector there at Pegasus Park.
We brought in a bunch of site selectors to kind of show
them, kind of, you know, just to show and tell. Look at
this region, look at everything that's going on.
And one of the site selectors pulled me aside afterwards
and said, you know, this was amazing. Like, you guys have
these incredible facilities and labs and institutions like
all over the place.
But show me the education, training, workforce development,
like ecosystem, and how people move through that. Like,
show me what's available at all these institutions and show
me how, show me what you're going to do at the K-12 level,
show me what you're going to do, you know, community
college, show me what you're going to do for you.
Show me that. And we have such a large region and so many
resources that we struggle to map all that out in some kind
of cohesive way. So that, I think that's a challenge for us
regionally. That's something we're digging into and trying
to figure out.
Is it to have a cohesive kind of resource list or map like
you're pointing to for economic development purposes, you
know, beyond just, hey, there's a lot of growth here and a
lot of great stuff. So that's a challenge for all of us,
for sure.
We still have more slides right on the next section or is
that?
It's up to you all on the time.
I don't know.
We have, I think, two more items, not fours, but it's
totally up to torture.
Can I do anything to go briefly? Yeah. Just kind of, it
looks like a semiconductor piece. I'll just hit that real
quick.
So on the emerging side, one of the things that we're
looking at, maybe this was kind of to that point of kind of
helping students understand that career map. We're
beginning to work with an organization called Julius
Education and we're going to be pretty soon we'll be
launching these interactive maps to help students kind of
understand how you move through either, you know, an
industry like semiconductor manufacturing, how you move
through it, how you advance, or let's say you want to move
over to the next step.
Let's say you want to move over to another part of the
business and how the skills that you've obtained so far
kind of help you with the move you're trying to make.
So you can kind of see your career path.
So that's coming really soon.
Related to that is something that we're that we're working
on is how, you know, our traditional industry sectors are
being kind of reshaped and kind of reorganized to where it
's kind of becoming a super sector that involves
semiconductor manufacturing, energy, you know, with all the
data centers, all the AI investment, etc.
But, you know, that's creating some great opportunities.
But again, we're talking about by advising and trying to
help students understand where opportunity is.
I mean, my kids barely know what I do.
So, you know, it's like all these career opportunities are
such a mystery. And how do we kind of demystify this and
help students understand what the opportunity is and how to
navigate through that. So that's some resources we're going
to be launching.
We have a number of partner institutions are continuing to
expand our network and the intelligence hub.
So please spread the word. The great thing about joining
the Texas Talent Accelerator is it doesn't cost you
anything. You just say yes, I want to be involved on a
partner.
So please spread the word.
I'll give you a preview on October 26th. We're going to be
having kind of our next quarterly convening, which is also
kind of an anniversary celebration. We'll have been here at
that point. We'll have a lot of great discussions, projects
that will have been completed by the time resources
available.
So we excited to share that with you all. That'll be coming
up in October. So please check out the website. Let me know
if you have any questions. And thank you.
Item B, EDP 26-022. You see various staff reports. Sorry,
we're deported to the Directorate of Corporate Education.
Good morning. I will present the direct report from Q2 this
year.
We had a productive Q2. We were able to celebrate panel
raise, room and cutting as a reminder of the support for V
incennes for them. And so they have quickly right-footed
that building. It's an old warehouse space. And someone
said that they can actually lick off the floor of that
warehouse. It was so clean, which is great.
So very excited how many of their executives from Mexico
came in to celebrate and they're looking forward to
investing in the future on other projects.
We also celebrated the grand opening of Monster Mini Golf.
This is a recruitment rent from our Main Street program.
Chris Polito as a reminder, she reached out to this venue
months ago to come downtown. They couldn't find a site
downtown, so they ended up picking another location outside
Golden Triangle Mall.
But this seems to be a really good fit in the City of Dent
on, Newark side to have them.
City Council also approved Corteo Skies incentive proposal.
It was passed 4-3, but it still went through and we're
still continuing to work with the company to follow through
.
We also celebrated the groundbreaking of Novartis. Thank
you for everyone that attended the groundbreaking. This
picture is one of our favorite pictures from the event
because it shows how many people goes into actually working
on economic development projects and getting it across the
mountain.
And so that doesn't even cover the amount of people that
had touched the project throughout the process. Emmett
Smith had a guest feature. I don't know if anyone heard
about that, but that was a surprise to us. And the
president of Novartis US operations came down as well.
So it was quite an event.
And then we also attended a variety of partner events. We
spoke at the Pilot Mob Rotary meeting in April. We attended
the UNT Speaker Series.
We also attended the Downtown Denton Foundation's Pilot T
unes event. And we attended the Bistnow Denton County Save
the Market event. I spoke as a panelist as well as other
local business representatives like Hillwood spoke on a
different panel as well.
And Greg Johnson with SBN. Over 300 people attended that
event actually and Bistnow said that was one of the most
successful events of the year. So they were looking forward
to doing that next year.
We also led a few events, including the well, we
participate as a partner for Denton County Community Job
Fair. We partnered with the Chamber of Commerce, Work for
Solutions, Google Industries, and Unanimous United Way.
So that was a successful event. We also hosted an internal
Small Business Week lunch and learn for our staff and
development services.
We hosted a Small Business Week campaign on social media.
Chris and Matilda were part of to work with our downtown
business owners to get quotes for motivational quotes for
other entrepreneurs that we posted on social media.
So this is a quote from RubyRubyO.
We also launched a new website opportunitydent.com. This
hosts all regional and local small business resources for
entrepreneurs. And so we get a lot of calls from
entrepreneurs that they just want access to resources.
And so we can call them onto one website. And if you have
anyone that needs help, feel free to direct them to that
website. We're looking at updating that on a quarterly
basis.
We also hosted an airport business roundtable. This was in
partnership with the airport director Ryan Adams just to
get the local airport businesses out and to learn more
about their opportunities and challenges.
So it was a productive event.
We also attended a variety of trainings and workshops,
including the Cat Consortium meeting. That is a quarterly
meeting with UAS professionals. This was led by the Orphan
's Christy Loan Store Center.
The Loan Store Center is one of seven FA test sites in the
nation and their opening is not location support work. So
this is part of their initiative.
We also attended the EarthX eCapital Summit in Stokes Flint
Pond. We will attend multiple webinars, including the Urban
Institute's Getting Started on Upwork Mobility.
And we attended two trade shows, which we'll elaborate on
in a second. Let's see, actually three trade shows this
quarter.
For Q2 recruitment stats, we have 31 active projects in the
pipeline. We had 14 new leads and they came from various
sources. We had one incentive proposal that we developed
that we sent over.
Sometimes companies, they don't actually submit
applications. They're just asking to see what a proposal
would look like. And so we sent one over to a lead.
And then we had two recruitment visits, six leads that were
reclassified. We moved five to cold, the one that would
transfer to business support. We had 210 recruitment
outreach attempts.
That is an initiative from Clay Parker, who is a specialist
. He's developed an eBLAST system on Outlook. And so that's
why you see so many companies on that list.
This is a new reporting metric that will be included. So we
attended the Exponential Trade Show, which is a UAS trade
show, and then Automate, which is an advanced manufacturing
event and Bio International Convention.
So part of Clay's duties is recruitment. And so he's going
to present kind of a follow up on the events that he
attended.
So like Rene said, we went to three trade shows basically
in the period of about three months in total. And we have
one last being one left. It's IMTS in Chicago.
This in particular, since I've been here, is kind of the
first year that we've done a full-fledged attempt at some
of these large trade shows. In particular, we did exhibit
at both Exponential and Automate.
Bio was a joint effort with the Dallas Regional Chamber at
their own booth recruiting life sciences to DFW. So we were
there with some other cities. We were there with a
representative from Dallas, a representative from DFW
International Airport, all doing that joint recruitment of
life sciences to the region.
And then the other two were just booths for the city of
Denton in general. So it was a great time. Again, Expon
ential is on the UAS side of things, learned a ton about
drones and that mobility world.
In particular, we got to go to Michigan Central, which is
the complete revamped, used to be the central station back
in the olden days where Amtrak was coming in and out. Now
it's a 30 acre innovation district with some solid
investment by Ford that made that possible.
So it was a really good picture of kind of seeing that
smart technology startup type stuff. Jill, do you have a
question?
Just a quick question. Both have mentioned UAS and I don't
know what that stands for. What is that?
It's unmanned aerial systems, I'm going to say is that full
thing. One of those words might be a little different, but
it's drones and that type of robotics and everything in
that world.
So Exponential was a great place to go for that. I was out
in Detroit, had a bunch of people in that industry that was
super great to learn from as we started expanding in that
world, as the airport started making initiatives in that
regard.
So again, learning from those people and some local
partners was really great. Automation is on the advanced
manufacturing side of things in that robotics world as well
.
Brittany Matilda, our representatives in our booth there,
had a great time in Chicago. And then I personally attended
Bio with DRCT and with Team Texas.
All in all, our 633 new contacts for us, which is really
great. In particular, Bio, because it was a lot of people
splitting those costs, we were able to get lead retrieval
package at these trade shows.
It just makes it a billion percent easier to scan somebody
's badge, immediately have their name, title, email, company
, everything you need. So that made things a little bit
easier to get a wider net, if you will.
But in general, it was kind of a similar walk away for most
of the trade shows for what we would consider leads.
Companies that were either mentioning, hey, this year we're
considering doing an expansion or we're considering reloc
ating X thing in Texas to a new place in Texas.
So walking away from that, we got just a 30 total leads
from that, which is really great to have something that far
in that stage where you know you're not sending something
to somebody's inbox who's going to throw in spam or throw
in the trash.
So better leads in that regard. We're currently following
up on those projects, hoping that those transition and go
farther down end up in itself.
Again, that really helps us skip through cold outreach and
not really knowing who's interested in who's not and being
able to get face to face, not only with some of these
companies who are looking to change their location and
looking to expand, but also other cities, other states who
have had their own success stories, their own programs they
've implemented to be able to see what it does might be
transferred to debt in itself.
So that was three out of four, and then one last trade show
, an international manufacturing technology series will be
in September in Chicago. That'll be our last one.
Thank you.
For RFI stats, we received 26 from the Dallas Reno Chamber
and the state was submitted on eight minutes, and then on
17 we converted to leads. That's from RFI to lead. As a
reminder, whenever we submit our proposals for RFIs, it
doesn't mean that we're finalists in the site.
It just means that the company has to select their top
three sites and until they schedule a meeting, that's when
we consider it a lead.
Out of the ones that we submitted, the potential capital
investment is 384 million and a little over 3000 of
potential jobs.
Our Q2 downtown stats, we had six BRE visits, two leads
that were lost, and then we didn't have any downtown grant
leads, mostly because the TURS1 board increased the budget
to 300,000 to cover the remaining grant.
So what happened is we budget $200,000 out of our TURS
downtown reinvestment grant for those grants. I'm sorry.
And so, Chris has done a good job advertising that grant
program that we hit the max capacity. And so we're
currently holding off until we update the downtown reinvest
ment policy to make it more competitive and lessen the
administrative burden.
And so that will come back in the fall timeframe, early top
frame, to the TURS board and that will ask for probably a
higher budget at that point.
And then we had 16 recruitment outreach attempts.
Main Street update, Chris had to leave early for another
meeting, unfortunately, but she did manage to get us re-acc
redited.
Every year we have to maintain standards to maintain our
Main Street accreditation. And so that's an excellent
achievement that we want to celebrate.
Give us a hug. She also attended the Texas Main Street
retreat as part of the ongoing contract that we manage with
the state historical commission is that she does have to
attend this conference.
And then we're onboarding a new Main Street board. City
Council approved a new Main Street advisor board a few
weeks ago. The board will focus primarily on historic
preservation and providing feedback for any type of
downtown programming that we may need.
And so we're excited about that. And then it's also a
requirement to maintain the Main Street accreditation
through the contract we manage with the state.
Susan and our marketing team and parks and recreation team
are a working part on the Home Weed initiatives. So I
wanted her to talk about, maybe she comes back early, she
can talk about all the updates that she has, but there's a
lot of progress being made.
I think there's a potential article coming out in the local
newspaper.
So all the businesses that started out of the quarter there
was three business closures. There were seven jobs gained
44 and jobs lost 24.
Music and film, Matilda handles all of our film permit and
music initiatives. I'll show you doing this update.
For film, we issued three film permits in quarter two. One
was a commercial, one was a TV show, which then after we
permitted, it got canceled. And then one was for a movie
they filmed in the municipal court.
And we heard very good feedback from them. They want to
come back. So that was nice. We also hosted a meeting.
Brittany and I met with about 15 film professionals to
learn kind of about what they do, hear feedback, things
like that.
I've included this if you want to be a movie star and
include your house or any property that you own in the
database, please scan that QR code. It helps us build up
locations for people to use.
And then for music, Tom Zachary on Price Street received a
grant from the Live Music Society for their music in action
series. So they had to submit a project proposal and they
're doing a residency program to spotlight them artists.
So that's very exciting for them. That's all I have for Q2.
And we have great news. We have a new team member, Kelly Ru
iz. She is our new economic development manager. Can I say
that Kelly?
So Kelly is actually originally from Utah where she worked
for the Salt Lake City Corporation. It's their equivalent
of economic development corporation.
And so she moved to Ditten a few years ago and she's been
working in the capital projects department as an
administrative manager. And so she will be helping us with
day to day operations and ensuring that we're meeting all
of our deadlines.
We're very excited to have her because there's a lot of
programs that we have in the back burner that she's going
to help us bring to life. But very excited to have some
help.
Upcoming events. We have an upcoming business workshop
focused on AI. Anyone who's interested in attending, please
let us know. We'll send you the registration link. That's
on July 30th.
It's a two part series. The second part is September 3rd.
As I mentioned earlier, we will be attending IMTS in
September.
And then one thing that's not mentioned on here is the
Dallas Business Journal Growth Summit that will be held in
August in partnership with UNT.
And so I believe they're finalizing their last panel right
now. But Amy Massette on our board, she'll be a panelist.
And so will Dr. Harrison Keller. So excited about that.
And I believe Brian Danel may be serving as panelists too.
So that's exciting. And that is it. Any questions?
I'm going to turn this over to Greg.
Sorry. Greg and I had a conversation, I guess, in the last
meeting. There were questions about receiving additional
information from the reporting database. So on her director
's report, we're going to put together a survey distributed
to the board to see how reporting can be enhanced.
And then we'll also put together a survey to see if the
board is getting any additional information. Is the board
needing to receive what additional information can be
enhanced on the report to make sure you're getting all the
information you'd like to see.
All right. So we can now move to completely guys.
Suggestions on what they would like us in the future
meeting to add to future agenda.
Parking minimums or doing away with parking minimums is
something that we've had some speakers at City Council talk
about.
I think there are different lenses that you can look at as
far as making that decision. But I wondered if maybe this
board would
the effect on if any on economic development might be
something that we need to look into or not. And again, I
might be off the reservation, but I just kind of wanted to
put that out there because that is a part of what we do.
Thank you for that. We can definitely look into it and see
if you want to bring back the next board meeting.
Yeah, I'd love to have that on the agenda because I think
it is an economic, there's pros and cons. You know, just I
like to bounce some ideas around just to hear what people's
thoughts are on it.
There could be some things that we've done a lot of
developments downtown and outside of downtown. There's pros
and cons, but I'd love to hear this group's thoughts on
those.
We just completed a citywide parking study that has
recommendations for removing for some parking minimums. So
that presentation is coming to Council August 4th, but we
can certainly have the parking minimum discussion presented
to this board and any other information you want about the
parking minimums.
But it comes, our staff are recommending some kind of phase
approaches to those recommendations. We can't do all of
them in the first year, but we're happy to present that
information.
We're going to, Scott's giving me the eye on pulling it
back to the on topic. So if you want to pull up your
exhibit for future agenda items.
That's a little bit. We're being asked. I'm sorry. Yeah. No
, I can't see brought it back. Okay. Before we got into what
status and working on. I think I just want to make sure we
're talking about future agenda items. Yeah.
I'm not sure that it remains to whether to discuss it as a
future agenda topic.
Or would they quit. But if there's any considerations for
economic development, then we may have a slider to.
I don't know if you want us to go through the full
presentation, or we can just send it to y'all have the data
.
Sorry, I went to tell you out there. I thought that that I
just wanted to mention it just so that you can have it. So
go back to item B, ADP 26022, the economic trends report
for Rotunda.
We can send it to the meetings running a little bit long.
I'm the last thing for you today.
First we have our residential permit values. They were up
from last year. I have this quarter Q1 of 2026 comparison
to Q1 of 2025 and then the year to date. So I have in my
notes.
Due to new build homes coming online. Next commercial
permit values again were up from last year. There were two
big projects that I think are kind of alleviating that
higher number one with a big shell building and then one
with a large retail remodel.
And then I was asked to remind you guys that the permit
value is based on job value assigned during permitting. So
the number at the end of the project, probably be higher
but could be lower as well. So it's not always the same at
the end of the project.
Sales tax collection up a little bit from last year, but
actually really close. And then the year to date number.
Employment rate Q1 of 2026 average about 4%, a little bit
lower than state and nationwide. So that looks good for us.
And then as a reminder, October 2025 the Bureau of Labor
Statistics did not publish any data. So that accounts for
that drop.
So living index. This is done in comparison to other Texas
cities. Again, for Q1 only the lowest cost of living was
harlingen as always. And then the highest Plano everybody
else is below 100, which is the index.
So that's 500 equals average. And we are below average for
most of the categories. And then I have a comparison here
for this time last year, and then the average annual for
last year. So our numbers are down from last year.
So our cost of living.
Well, it might seem like it's going up, it's going down
from last year.
And then in comparison to the rest of the US. I don't know
how much you guys remember from my past presentations, but
usually to cater a little away is a cheaper place to live
in the US.
But now Mississippi beat them at a 79.3 index and then
Manhattan remains the highest place cost of living in the
US. And I love to point out how expensive their housing is.
Just to alleviate any heartache people might have about
living in Texas.
And then I have our comparisons for that transition. And
then this kind of reflects that as well our median home
price went down compared to other years.
Now I have commercial real estate, industrial.
What can you do? All right. This is down a little bit from
the same last year, and we have about 4.2 billion square
feet available.
Now retail again down 3.5. They could see right.
And then downtown I forgot to put my comparison for
downtown, but I wanted to call this out. We have a 4.8% vac
ancy rate and last year was 8.2.
Brittany mentioned this yesterday in her work session
report to council but a lot of that is thanks to the
efforts of the Main Street program and recruitment things
like that.
Making sure those vacancies get filled.
I'm finished. Thank you for your time and letting me speak
for that. Any questions?
Oh, it's very interesting. Thank you.
Go back to the items and so we'll go to I think we're done
with future.
Anybody else have any other requests at some point low
priority, but I would like to hear more about the state of
our healthcare industry here in the city.
Since we're hearing so much about that job creation, I'd
like to know what we've got and what maybe we could do to
move that up on our target list as well.
So we'll get those two items in consideration for future
agenda.
And then our next EEP meeting will be scheduled for
Wednesday, August 12th at 11 o'clock.
So make sure we're letting staff know on our attendance so
that we can make sure we have a full-time form.
There's no other business and we'll adjourn at 1120.
I just wanted to say that one item that was not on the
report, the term report, but we did attend an event where
Brittany was recognized as one of the 40 under 40 from the
Dallas Business Journal along with Ruth Piper from Health
and Health.
And then Carrie, do you want to maybe speak to one of our
former Economic Development Board members?
John Vane has passed away and there's a celebration this
weekend.
Yes, John Vane's past chairman of this organization passed
away Monday.
John lost his fight with Cross-Raid Council.
He had been dealing with approximately about 15 years.
John was one of the founding members of the Black Chamber
of Commerce, instrumental with the Blues Festival, Young
Minority Entrepreneurial Institute.
John's going to be very much missed with the community and
of course with our Chamber of Commerce.
John was appointed to this board back about eight years ago
and moved up to be chairman of this board.
We're going to miss John.
The event is going to be a memorial at the Civic Center.
I believe it's 10, 1030.
Don't hold me at that.
I think they're having a family hour, about 930.
I don't know if anything in lieu of flowers they're asking
for.
But if anything, I'll let you guys know.
I'll reach out to Brittany or Christina to spread in the
news.
You guys keep John and his family in prayer and his wife,
two children and many friends and relatives.
He will be missed.
Certainly someone that's given a lot to the community.
Thank you, Jared. Level 29. Thank you.