WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:19.000 I'm gonna go ahead and get the meeting started. We've got a lot going on. Please continue to enjoy your lunch, but let's go ahead and get things kicked off so we can get out of here at a reasonable time. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:35.000 So with that I'll just say welcome and we're on the mic. Alright, so welcome to the Denton Economic Development Partnership Board meeting. My name is Marty Rivers, chair of the partnership board. 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:58.000 It's 1115. We have a quorum and we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. And our first item up for consideration is EDP 20-008. Consider the approval of the meeting minutes for November 13, 2019 and January 15, 2020. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:03.000 I move approval as sent on in advance. 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:11.000 On both minutes. There's a motion for approval of both sets of minutes. 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:19.000 Second. And we have a second. Any discussion, comments, questions? 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:24.000 All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:29.000 The minutes are approved. Thank you so much. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:41.000 And our next item is to receive a report. A whole discussion to give staff direction on an update to our policy for tax abatement incentives. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:49.000 And I promise this will be probably the shortest presentation on this policy that this board has ever gone through and there'll be a reason why. 00:01:49.000 --> 00:02:00.000 So I'm just going to give you a very brief overview of the update, the recommended updates to the policy and kind of give you a status update on why we're making certain changes. 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:13.000 So just to kind of put this into big picture here, Chapter 312 of the tax code requires the governing body to adopt these guidelines to be able to give tax abatement incentives. 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:26.000 So they are only good for two years after the two year mark. We have to readopt, reauthorize, amend, or we're no longer eligible to offer tax abatement as the city. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:31.000 This policy expires on March 20th, 2020. 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:46.000 So right now we're only recommending minor changes to the policy. The reason for that being is if the board recalls you went through a number of work sessions and items in 2018 to make significant revisions to the policy as it stands today. 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:57.000 From the staff perspective, as the policy is written and has been an effective tool, we have been able to offer incentives and abatements that were successful in recruiting companies to Denton. 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:08.000 And then the last point is sort of the main reason we're all here today in the major discussion we're going to be having is that the policy is actually being evaluated as part of the strategic planning process. 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:18.000 And so what we didn't want to do is tell you we're going to make some strategic shift in the policy and then get feedback in our strategic planning process and have to go through this again. 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:25.000 So we wanted to save time, save your time and be a little bit efficient in how we move through the policy process. 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:33.000 So we're making a few minor tweaks to the policy. The first is a clarification of the goal to increase jobs paying more than $75,000. 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:41.000 The way that the goal is written, it includes a specific date requirement. We just want to make it the overall goal that we want to increase higher paying jobs. 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:47.000 So we made a little clarification to the language. You do have a red line copy in your backup if you want to see it. 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:58.000 We've added the word average to where we're looking at wages. And the reason for that being is, as you've seen over the last two years, we've also we've included both median and average in our analysis. 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:05.000 So we just wanted to make that clear to applicants under our policy that we're going to be looking at your average wages. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:18.000 And we made a sort of technical clarification on what constitutes a complete application. It wasn't necessarily clear in the application procedure section, so we made a very small amendment there. 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:25.000 We updated the qualified census tract map. It was out of date. We updated it to the 2020 map. 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:34.000 And then certainly we found some typos and errors that we found when we were not perfect and we made those corrections throughout the document. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:38.000 And that's all of the changes that we're recommending at this point. 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:49.000 So I don't have a big presentation, so our recommendation is to move forward with really a simple reauthorization of the policy as written. 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:59.000 And then our goal would be to come back to the board subsequent to the strategic planning process being concluded for any changes that might be necessary at that point. 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:06.000 That's my presentation. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:22.000 On the wages, paying more than $75,000, is that are we considering that all in with benefits and everything or is that just the wage itself and then everything else would be a bonus? 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:30.000 We evaluate it based on salary. When we ask applicants to submit us wage information, we ask for the salary information. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:36.000 They will often provide us both salary and wages, generally if they're below that number. 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:44.000 We like both. We'd like to know if someone's making $70,000, but they have a significant incentive package or something to go along with that. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:51.000 We want to know about it, but generally we're looking at just the wage. 00:05:51.000 --> 00:06:04.000 How does that stack up with are we finding a great difference between this side of the lake and the other side of the lake when it comes to that salary? 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:21.000 I wouldn't say it's necessarily a north of the lake, south of the lake. That's sort of the mark in terms of job categories. Generally at that range you have a degree or a technical position, some sort of certification. 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:40.000 That's more of the, it's not necessarily a, we're not in the living wage argument, it's considered a higher wage position. It's based on a single person making $75,000, where would you fall in the median income of your, so that would be considered a high wage. 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:47.000 Well the reason I was asking was I don't know what the others think, but to me that's a pretty significant increase. 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:54.000 The $75,000? That's $75,000 is what's in the policy today. 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:56.000 That part didn't change. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:07:01.000 But if you ask people when they're coming, we want you to pay $75,000 in wages. That's what it's going to be. 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:08.000 We wouldn't be asking for every position to be $75,000. We want to incentivize positions that are making over $75,000. 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:21.000 The goal is not to attract people all with $75,000, it's to increase the number of jobs, the number of people that are making that kind of money with other kinds of jobs as well. 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:28.000 But to qualify for the jobs you have to have an average over the Dent County average. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:30.000 What's the Dent County average? 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:32.000 It's $22-ish. 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:34.000 Yes. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:39.000 Which is I would say higher than the city of Denton average. 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:41.000 That's a higher order. 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:46.000 $22-ish would put you at $45,000. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:49.000 I don't know if the top's going to understand. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:54.000 That's what I'm saying. If you've got a city average of $45,000 and you're saying $75,000, that's pretty significant. 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:55.000 But I like it. 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:56.000 Yes. 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:59.000 I like it. It's just a question of... 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:06.000 I think the goal is to try to bring higher paying jobs, not offer incentives to lower paying jobs. 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:12.000 So those doors are closing that chapter of history. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:16.000 We're not changing anything. 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:17.000 I don't get that. 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:23.000 I'm just saying, if they're not going to come this strong, then don't even come. 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:25.000 No, that's not saying that. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:30.000 That is just a goal. So when we're looking at incentives for people coming to town... 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:31.000 Yes. 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:34.000 We want to bring people with higher paying jobs. 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:38.000 That doesn't mean we won't bring people with jobs less than $75,000. 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:45.000 That means the goal is to increase higher paying jobs. 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:54.000 When somebody applies for an incentive and we're looking at the jobs, one of the things they get credit for is they have to have 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.000 to show that their average wages are higher than the county average wages. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:02.000 So that's the thing. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:04.000 The first one is a goal. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:11.000 The second one is, if you want to get credit for coming here, then you've got to show that your wages are higher than the county average. 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:13.000 So that's what they were doing. 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:22.000 So let's say someone comes and they are not in this category, or at least in this ballpark. 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:28.000 What ballpark you're talking about for coming is they have to be higher than the $22 an hour. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:31.000 Our goal was to try to find more people that pay higher jobs. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:35.000 That doesn't mean they can't qualify for both of those. 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:40.000 I'm above $22,000. I was at the $75,000. 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:47.000 So just so that you know, the statement in the policy right now says increase the percentage of jobs paying $75,000 per year 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:50.000 or more from 10% to 14% by 2020. 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:54.000 We're just striking the 10% to 14% by 2020. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:56.000 We're keeping the goal. 00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:00.000 We're removing the timeline since it is 2020. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:07.000 And instead of putting a future date on that, because we know we're going to come back with a policy, we just struck that last statement. 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:14.000 We made no change to the goal or how we would operate for companies coming in. 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:21.000 If I could just add to that, some of the incentives we've seen, Mr. Baines, they have a chart. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:27.000 And some of the majority of the workers make less than that. 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:31.000 And then so some of them, a few of the higher ones make a little bit more than that. 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:38.000 And so with the average, it equals what the incentive policy qualifies for. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:44.000 So that's kind of been where I have found the sticking point. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:51.000 When do you get 100 jobs that make $10 an hour and only three that make $8,000? 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:52.000 $400,000. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:53.000 Yeah. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:59.000 That's kind of where you take the average of those and you qualify. 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:06.000 Well, that, again, I think we're trying to change a few things here just to update the policy, just for clarification. 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:11.000 But that's a good discussion to have with TIP strategies on how do we change that number. 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:13.000 Mr. Chairman, I've got a quick question. 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:22.000 So in the general provision document, Exhibit H, when we define higher wage, right, 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:30.000 it talks about average of $55,000 or greater and at least that's on page three of the general provisions. 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:37.000 So how does that definition relate back to the $75,000 number? 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:43.000 So the $75,000 was one of the general goals of the council and of this board. 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:50.000 The higher wage is a threshold that we use in determining the qualification for a specific incentive. 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:57.000 The investment fund includes that higher wage term that says you have to have the $55,000 or greater 00:11:57.000 --> 00:12:01.000 for all positions or 25% making above $65,000. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:09.000 So that definition ties to that specific tool. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:16.000 I've got a question on changing the, basically the packet has to be complete with all that information. 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:17.000 Yes. 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:27.000 Are we expecting an applicant to know if they're compatible with the NIT and 30/30 plan and the building code 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:32.000 and the city ordinances and put that in the packet or is that something that's backed up? 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:33.000 We would review it with them. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:37.000 Generally it's a, I wouldn't say they kind of hand it off to us and we've never met with them before. 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:41.000 Generally we've had meetings with people who are considering applying. 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:48.000 And one thing that we tell them is certainly making sure that your use is compliant with your zoning 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:55.000 or is there a path forward if you need to seek a zoning change that would be compatible. 00:12:55.000 --> 00:13:02.000 What we don't want to do, this is a bad example, but say we wanted to have a heavy industrial user 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:04.000 and they wanted to be in downtown Denton. 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:14.000 We would probably say that's not the place and there's no compatible use in any continuous area for that to occur. 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:17.000 You might want to consider this location. 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:23.000 Again, that's kind of an off the wall example, but we try and work with the applicants to make sure 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:27.000 that they're familiar enough with the code, that they're not bringing in a project at that point, 00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:32.000 that regardless of what incentive we offer them, development wise, it can't happen. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:35.000 We try and head that off right at the beginning. 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:39.000 Has there been a problem with incomplete applications that we're adding that language in there? 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:40.000 Yes. 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:41.000 Okay. 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:42.000 Yes. 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:47.000 So we want to make sure that kind of from the shop clock perspective, once we have a complete application, 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:51.000 we want to get applicants through the process as efficiently as possible. 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:56.000 What we don't want to have happen is preparing our analysis to bring to the board 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:59.000 and find out that we don't have the information that we need. 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:08.000 So we try and work with applicants ahead of time. 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:10.000 And then we're updating the census tracts map. 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:16.000 I guess we have one census tract that has fortunately risen above the line. 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:22.000 And then I guess we're also adding, we're picking up another qualified census tract in the north part of town 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.000 between Sherman and Locust. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:26.000 These come from the census. 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:27.000 Yeah, I understand. 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:30.000 I'm making sure I'm reading the map correctly. 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:31.000 Yes. 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:33.000 That we've picked up one qualified census tract. 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:41.000 But then fortunately, one census tract kind of in the heart of town has risen above the line. 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:47.000 So if folks living there, that's a good thing for people seeking certain grants, maybe not so much. 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:59.000 But generally for our town, that's a positive development. 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:05.000 So this is just a couple small items to get us through the end of this process with the strategy 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:08.000 when we come back with a holistic view of the whole thing. 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:10.000 Yes. 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:14.000 Anybody have any more questions or comments, discussion? 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:18.000 Or if not, would anybody like to jump out there? 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:23.000 I have one question because I think I saw where you can only make amends or change it. 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:25.000 What was that? 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:31.000 So after, in the two-year period, you have to have a three-fourths vote to make an amendment. 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:36.000 So when this gets adopted or if this gets adopted by city council, 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:41.000 you would then require a three-fourths vote of the city council to amend it. 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:45.000 During that two-year time period. 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:52.000 I will say that we've kind of thought this out and, you know, how do we move forward in a timeline? 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:57.000 Based on the recommendations we get, we're not asking TIP to rewrite our policy. 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:00.000 We assume we'll be getting the plan later this year. 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:07.000 It could be a six-month to a one-year process for us to workshop and rewrite the policy of the plan. 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:10.000 And we thought that was just too long of a way to go without. 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:17.000 We have companies we're speaking to now, active projects that we think are going to submit applications. 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:21.000 And we certainly didn't want to deny them that opportunity. 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:27.000 And denied this board or council the opportunity to receive those applications and consider them. 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:32.000 So we do have to have something by law to be able to consider those. 00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:35.000 Just kind of follow up. 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:42.000 So it can still be amended, it's the three-fourths vote that is the qualifier? 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:43.000 Yes. 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:47.000 And we would always hope to have a policy that is 100 percent. 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:48.000 Right. For sure. 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:49.000 That's our goal. 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:52.000 Right. Okay. Thank you. 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:54.000 Anybody else? 00:16:54.000 --> 00:17:03.000 Anybody want to make a motion? 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:13.000 I move that this body approve the changes to the tax-cutment policy as presented here today. 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:15.000 We'll obtain a motion for a second. 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:20.000 Second. 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:22.000 We have a motion and a second. 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:24.000 Any further discussion? 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:26.000 All those in favor say aye. 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:27.000 Aye. 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:29.000 Any opposed? 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:31.000 All right. Motion carries. 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:39.000 Our next item is to revisit with our friends from TIP Strategies about the process we're going through. 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:41.000 Thank you guys for coming back. 00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:46.000 Such a lovely day. 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:51.000 Yeah, I'm not going to take responsibility for the weather. 00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:58.000 Although we were in Detroit earlier this month. 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:02.000 Except it's not frozen yet. 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:04.000 Well, thank you guys. 00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:10.000 It's great to be back and continuing to meet with the leadership here. 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:15.000 We've already had a great 24 hours as we got in yesterday about lunchtime. 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:20.000 As usual, Jessica keeps us really busy. 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:21.000 Lots of meetings. 00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:26.000 We'll talk about the meetings that we've had so far and what we have ahead of us. 00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:31.000 And are really interested in your feedback today. 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:41.000 So this is less about us making another big presentation than it is getting your feedback on some of the things that we've heard. 00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:47.000 But right now, we're getting a lot of anecdotes and opinions about what's going on. 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:55.000 And so our job next will be to go back and really validate some of the things that were here. 00:18:55.000 --> 00:19:07.000 And we will be excited as we get through this process to make some recommendations as we review your current incentive policy. 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:13.000 But as Jessica mentioned, the details of how you would go through that. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:24.000 You know, you'll want to take the strategic direction that we give and then consider how that sort of manifests itself in the new incentive policy. 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:28.000 But so just a quick project update. 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:40.000 We are approaching the end of drinking from the barbodes, which is really just trying to understand since we were here last what's going on in the community. 00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:49.000 And then when we come out next time, we'll be talking about sort of our ideas and some of the best practices that are out there for you guys to consider and to beat up. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:52.000 That will be what we do on the next. 00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:55.000 And then the third phase is implementation. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:57.000 And we are right on track. 00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:02.000 I don't feel the need to go through a timeline with you guys or a detailed scope. 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:08.000 But we're right on track with where we need to be at this particular point. 00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:15.000 On the last trip, the Chamber, Erica did a great job of pulling together a group of businesses for us. 00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:24.000 We also held what we called a tech/entrepreneurship roundtable and then more of the traditional industry came together. 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:27.000 Thank you, Peter Belt and others who came to that meeting. 00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:40.000 We also met with school district, workforce board, got a lot of really good workforce information, did sort of an infrastructure development with the staff roundtable. 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:47.000 Also, you know, we meet with economic development staff in between just about every meeting, so we appreciate your feedback. 00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:54.000 And then had a city executive leadership that was Todd, city manager, and a couple of others got some feedback there. 00:20:54.000 --> 00:21:04.000 And then met with the county, has an economic development director now, Michael Talley, as I was saying, has been with them for a while. 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:11.000 And then on this trip so far, we are going to be meeting with every city council member. 00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:16.000 I think we've got everybody scheduled and we really appreciate you guys taking the time to meet with us. 00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:20.000 And unfortunately, we only have about a half an hour, 45 minutes for those meetings. 00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:26.000 But just know that we're going to be available after that for additional meetings as this process goes forward. 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:30.000 And Jason was in here a moment ago from TWU. 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:32.000 Did he have to go to another room? 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.000 Yes. 00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:35.000 John keeps it busy. 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:38.000 That's right, so now I can talk about him now. 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:45.000 We had a great meeting yesterday, kind of filled us in with what he could, because I think he's been there a couple of years. 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:51.000 But he did a great job telling the history, and so we shared notes there. 00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:57.000 And then we had an energetic meeting with the judge. 00:21:57.000 --> 00:22:08.000 I feel like he's very interested in economic development, I guess, in a way that the county hasn't necessarily been as proactive in economic development. 00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:11.000 And so it was a great meeting. 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:22.000 And then yesterday evening, we met with a group that -- Erica, they were many big fans of yours in the Chamber, a young professionals roundtable group. 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:26.000 But I think they -- I don't know if this is public or not. 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:28.000 No, it's all right. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:29.000 It's in the works. 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:30.000 It's in the works. 00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:38.000 Yeah, so I know that that's a group that has been active in the past, but over the last year has struggled a little bit and is feeling some new energy. 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:47.000 But you've got a Chamber that's also interested in maybe partnering with how that young professionals group might be more active in helping support that. 00:22:47.000 --> 00:22:59.000 So we think that's a very important group, and the group that was in front of us was a very diverse group from race, ethnicity, standpoint. 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:07.000 And so I thought that that was one of our best sort of feedback sessions so far. 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:23.000 And then -- what else have we done, Jacqueline? A lot. Met with Councilmember Paul. Met this morning. Met with Development Services from the city. 00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:29.000 And then we have a busy afternoon, more meetings and a roundtable with you. 00:23:29.000 --> 00:23:31.000 So are we wearing you out just talking about it? 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:32.000 Yes. 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:37.000 All right. All right. Just letting you guys know. Just letting you guys know this is our schedule. 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:49.000 So -- oh, here it is. So here's the actual list of who we're meeting with and when over the trip that we are on today. 00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:53.000 So any questions? 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:58.000 Is NCTC and UNT on the right over? 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:06.000 They definitely are. We actually met with the Chancellor from NCTC as part of the first workforce and education group. 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:17.000 But we'll also reach back out the fact that he serves on the statewide association -- are they called community colleges? 00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:18.000 Community colleges. 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:29.000 Community colleges, talk boards, something like that. Association of Community Colleges. 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:30.000 We've been keeping UNT up to date through both AMLA and through the President's office. 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.000 They just weren't able to attend the February meetings or the meetings this time. 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:44.000 But we're working for some more university-focused meetings in March, hoping that we're not falling on their spring break week. 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:53.000 Yeah, and we'll get on the phone if we need to. We're going to do whatever it takes because I feel like that's a big part of the input process here. 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:56.000 Any other questions, Marty or anybody else? 00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:07.000 Once again, this is an update of what we've been up to so that if we're missing something or you guys have some ideas for us, you have a chance to weigh in. 00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:15.000 So some of the emerging themes, and Jacqueline, feel free to pipe in here. I don't want to take over. 00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:20.000 So remember last time we asked you guys to do some little pollings, some real-time polling? 00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:28.000 And one of the questions we asked was around, you know, rating these statements. 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:36.000 Is it economically competitive? Is it an attractive place for young professionals? Does it have the capacity? 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:42.000 There weren't any big surprises in terms of how this went. I was a little surprised by the 3.9. 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:51.000 And some of the things that we heard yesterday from the young professionals group were really interesting because they were very positive about certain things, 00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:59.000 but they also felt negative about certain things, which came out in other themes, you know, access to affordable housing and transportation. 00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:06.000 Some of the things that were very important to a younger professional group felt like they were still lacking in this community. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:11.000 So it's interesting to hear, you know, this crowd says, oh yeah, it's great for young professionals. 00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:20.000 You ask the young professionals, you might hear a little bit different sort of angle, which for us means you actually have to go and ask those questions. 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.000 You know, it's not enough to make assumptions. Yes, sir? 00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:35.000 Yo tengo una pregunta por las razas diferentes. ¿Tú tienes la habilidad para comunicar con los áreas diferentes en esta ciudad? 00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:37.000 Sí, o hablo español. 00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:38.000 Muchas gracias. 00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:49.000 Sí, pero también tengo un compadre, un empleado que puede hablar español mejor que yo. 00:26:49.000 --> 00:27:02.000 Pero yo veo los vistos allá, no veo los africanamericanos, los mexicanos, los asianes. 00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:09.000 Yo creo que es muy importante para incluir estas partes. 00:27:09.000 --> 00:27:19.000 So you guys are getting the gist of John's, including the populations, and I appreciate the test. 00:27:19.000 --> 00:27:21.000 I'm making a point. 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:29.000 I think you committed to purchasing a car for me. 00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:31.000 You heard it. 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:33.000 That's what I heard. 00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:37.000 I'm giving away cash. 00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:39.000 I can tell you some stories. 00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:47.000 So I'm married to a mexican-american woman when I first left home to meet her dad. 00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:57.000 And he asked her and my mother-in-law in Spanish, you know, "Does this white boy eat beans?" 00:27:57.000 --> 00:27:59.000 And I apologized for that really. 00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:03.000 I mean, he said, "¿Este gingo come frijones?" 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:10.000 And so my wife answered, "Yes, Dad, he does. Andy speaks Spanish." 00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:15.000 And that began the relationship I had with my father-in-law. 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:21.000 It's really shifted things quite a bit. 00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:22.000 Would you catch my drift? 00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:24.000 No, I do. I do. 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:33.000 As a matter of fact, when we were in Detroit, this was the last we could read before. 00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:35.000 I don't know if it's coming together. 00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:42.000 But part of what we did is we helped facilitate several different sessions around diversity, equity, and inclusion. 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:48.000 And anytime I'm in those sessions, I always realize I'm really not the best person to be in that discussion. 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:50.000 But actually you are. 00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:55.000 I mean, in a way, I opened up the session by asking what does diversity mean to you? 00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.000 And so everybody in the group started defining what it meant. 00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:04.000 It started with race. It started with income, LGBTQ. 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:08.000 But then it went to age, sort of the diversity of ages. 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:15.000 And right now, there's biases against whatever you want to call millennials or whatever you want to pick on. 00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:20.000 There's the OK Boomer. 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:23.000 At that, in my house, it's like, OK Boomer. 00:29:23.000 --> 00:29:26.000 You know who's paying your insurance bill right now? 00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:30.000 But those discussions, it's really fascinating. 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:32.000 And so we take that very seriously. 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:34.000 And we will continue to work on that. 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:36.000 So thank you for pointing that out. 00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:37.000 Thank you. 00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:46.000 But the last time, we also asked, you know, you compete with Dallas, Frisco, Plano, Alliance, Fort Worth, McKinney. 00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:48.000 These were some of the items. 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:54.000 And so as we start thinking about comparing you guys to others and understanding what other groups are up to, 00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:58.000 these are some of the communities that we're going to look at, but we won't limit it to these. 00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:10.000 We also asked what constituted success for the project, buy-in, actionable strategy, measurable action plan, unified direction, clear vision. 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:13.000 A lot of common themes around, we want to have a plan. 00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:16.000 We want to feel like there's consensus around what that plan is. 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:17.000 Question. 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:18.000 Yes. 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:25.000 Are these answers, are these coming from the totality of the groups that you've met with thus far, or is this from our group? 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:27.000 This was just your group. 00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:28.000 Okay. 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:29.000 Right now. 00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:30.000 Just curious what I'm seeing, right? 00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:31.000 Right now. 00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:41.000 And what you would have expected since this is your charge, you know, your charge with the vision and being clear about what it means for the community. 00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:54.000 And really, this was just reminding you guys, because I know while Jacqueline and Jessica and I have thought a lot about, you know, this over the last 30 days, 00:30:54.000 --> 00:30:57.000 you guys may have other things on your minds. 00:30:57.000 --> 00:30:59.000 I can't imagine what it would be. 00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:12.000 So some of the things that we heard over the last trip and then so far, kind of this theme of Denton has been discovered. 00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:27.000 In other words, since we were here back in 2003, 2004, you know, you can't really describe this as a sleepy sort of, you know, arts-oriented college town anymore. 00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:31.000 You've got major medical that's delivered here. 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:37.000 You have, you know, Razor Ranch, another retail that's in this community. 00:31:37.000 --> 00:31:44.000 You have a downtown that's now, at least a portion of it is more vibrant. 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:54.000 And while we know that only four people actually drive the A-Train, that's about right. 00:31:54.000 --> 00:31:58.000 So I promise I wouldn't quote anybody. 00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:07.000 No, it's that, you know, you now at least have a public transportation option to get into Dallas, whereas at that time you didn't. 00:32:07.000 --> 00:32:17.000 So there have been a lot of changes, and you've got major developers that are looking at tracks of land on I-35 toward, you know, all the things that you know. 00:32:17.000 --> 00:32:23.000 So this is no longer sort of that sleepy college town, and that growth is moving this direction. 00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:29.000 And I've worked in a number of communities, and I've lived in Austin for 40 years. 00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:39.000 And I've watched sort of perceptions about growth and what we do about it and how we respond to that over, you know, periods of time in a lot of different communities. 00:32:39.000 --> 00:32:45.000 And you guys are in that position where growth is going to come this way. 00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:56.000 I mean, we may go through a recession at some point, and that growth gets slowed for a period of time, but in terms of development corridors and what's happening in Fort Worth and the growth there, 00:32:56.000 --> 00:33:05.000 what's happened with Alliance and what's kind of coming up, you know, 35 West, you know, you are going to continue growing. 00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:07.000 That pressure is going to be there. 00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:14.000 We are in Texas, and there are things that you as cities and counties do to slow some of that growth or manage that growth or be smarter about it. 00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:22.000 But for the most part, you know, if population continues to grow in the DFW area, this is going to be an area that is going to grow. 00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:25.000 You know, just the way that it is. 00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:28.000 So people are attracted to Denton's Authentic. 00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:34.000 I'm not telling you guys anything you don't already know, but I think it's important for you guys to react to some of the things. 00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:37.000 And that's what we're looking for, is like, you know, your reactions. 00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:42.000 Is this off or is this different than what you hear or what you think? 00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:52.000 But one of the, you know, this authentic charm and quirky culture is seen by many people as a differentiator for you. 00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:59.000 You know, that's something that's harder to find in a greater DFW area. 00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:03.000 And probably a lot of that comes out of the universities that are here in the industry, 00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:10.000 similar to Austin and how we became, you know, weird and quirky in different ways. 00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.000 That that's one of the unique factors of this community. 00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:16.000 Lots of assets. 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:19.000 You know, you own your own utility. 00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:22.000 You've got the multiple universities, the vibrant downtown. 00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:27.000 You've got, you know, an industrial park that has major, you know, world-class tenants in it. 00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:33.000 You've got a number of assets here that, you know, are very valuable from an economic development standpoint. 00:34:33.000 --> 00:34:43.000 You know, byproduct of the growth, outpacing, you know, the infrastructure is that your development services guys and the infrastructure, 00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:49.000 you know, right now under a lot of pressure to try to figure out, you know, how do we finance and what do we do first, 00:34:49.000 --> 00:34:54.000 what do we do second in terms of the infrastructure that's needed. 00:34:54.000 --> 00:35:00.000 And this, the infrastructure question doesn't happen in a vacuum. 00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.000 When we met this morning with development services, you know, 00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:13.000 we're pulling up text-dot maps and they're showing where the planned sort of loop, the outer loop is 00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:21.000 and how that's impacting current road projects that the city has planned because of text-dots, 00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:26.000 decisions about connections to that loop in the future. 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:34.000 So, you know, infrastructure is a big deal and it drives a lot of what's going to happen. 00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:40.000 So, competition from DFW communities such as Frisco and McKinney. 00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:50.000 I mean, what do you guys, when I ask the question about who you compete with, do you really compete with Frisco and McKinney? 00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:59.000 I'm just going to throw it back out to you. How do you feel about that? Because that's come up quite a bit. 00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:02.000 Well, we put a new facility in McKinney, so yes. 00:36:02.000 --> 00:36:09.000 All right. From an economic development standpoint and definitely. 00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:21.000 I feel like the comparisons comes because McKinney is or was similarly sized city on I-75, so on a highway. 00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:25.000 And it seems like the growth kind of, you know, a lot of different growth happened over there. 00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.000 They've got a square happened over there first. 00:36:29.000 --> 00:36:32.000 So because we're north of the Metroplex, I think that's that draw. 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:38.000 I don't know that we competed for projects against them or there's things going on over there. 00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:46.000 Frisco, you just see they have attracted a lot of stuff, but they started with farmland. 00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:51.000 We've got a hundred and fifty, sixty year old infrastructure here and it's not the same. 00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:57.000 So they can go in and say, we want to have a sports themed, you know, growth and offices. 00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:05.000 That's a little bit different thing. So yes, but not directly because the kind of folks that are looking here maybe aren't looking there. 00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:08.000 They don't want there. 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.000 But it just seems like that's where you hear major announcements. 00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:19.000 It's South Denton County, West or East Denton County. 00:37:19.000 --> 00:37:30.000 Some of the PG headquarters is coming. It's kind of those kind of things like offices and Charles Schwab and all those kind of things are going on the outskirts. 00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:38.000 Any other reactions to who you compete with? 00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:43.000 It really just depends on the circumstance and what kind of competition you're talking about. 00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:45.000 We offer a completely different product. 00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:54.000 I mean, if it's a question of where do suburban rooftops go or where do grocery stores go and kind of those bread and butter kind of thing, 00:37:54.000 --> 00:38:00.000 sure, there's some competition there, but that's almost all population driven stuff. 00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:11.000 I mean, if we're not competing with Frisco McKinney for who can be the most aggressive about growth because we're not trying to grow in the same way that they're trying to grow. 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:20.000 We're not really trying to be. I don't think this one man's opinion. I don't think we're trying to be much like those communities in a lot of ways. 00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:29.000 I think we just offer a completely different product, and there may be competition in some sectors, but we're not going for PGA. 00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:33.000 We're never going to go for the PGA. Charles Schwab would have been nice. 00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:35.000 Why not the PGA headquarters? 00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:36.000 What's that? 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:39.000 Why wouldn't you want the PGA headquarters? 00:38:39.000 --> 00:38:44.000 Why wouldn't we want it? It's not a fit. It never would be an economic development fit for them. 00:38:44.000 --> 00:39:01.000 We just would never offer the same things, that critical mass of, like you said, sports centered, sports themed stuff, access to, quick access to Dallas, all that kind of thing that I don't think ever would have been positioned the same way Frisco was. 00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:05.000 It's not that we would want it. We're just, we didn't offer the things that they were looking for. 00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:20.000 We've had a lot of discussions on why don't we get office, large office, campus headquarters, like a Salisbury kind of thing. That would be one. We may not be a fit, but I would love to have had them have a discussion here and then about that. 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:27.000 It would have been worth the conversation. You might just have to agree to disagree for, because we didn't get them. The PGA didn't come here. 00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:36.000 But Charles Schwab, maybe that's something we would have looked at if we had had the ability to do that. But again, we weren't there yet. 00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:42.000 So there's some things that maybe we are in competition for, and that we'd want to be in competition for. 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:52.000 But even just now, the interaction with Marty and I, we're not sure what we want to compete for. We're not really sure what is, that's the whole conversation, right? That's the whole strategy conversation. 00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:57.000 What are we really wanting to be competitive for, and what are we going to leave on the table? 00:39:57.000 --> 00:40:03.000 Well, in a way, that's why I kind of threw this back out to you guys, because that's the conversation that we need to have. 00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:11.000 And it's okay. We're not going to make a decision just off one comment or anecdote. It's really what makes the most sense here. 00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:26.000 What aligns with where the market is going? What kind of businesses are looking? What aligns with your current and maybe future sort of talent base that's here? 00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:36.000 I have a comment. I'm going to use an analogy to make a statement. When I was in high school, I loved to play basketball. 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:46.000 My brother was the city leading scorer at 5'6", but he got overlooked because they weren't looking for 5'6" people. 00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:53.000 You know, it's like he didn't have what people were looking for. He was qualified, but he didn't have what people were looking for. 00:40:53.000 --> 00:41:10.000 I feel like Denton is qualified, because I'm not sure we have what people were looking for. And that's one side of a cake. If you flip the cake, I would like to think that we should be able to attract whomever and whatever we want. 00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:21.000 But that's from our side. I don't know what other people are thinking. When you look at the Internet and the confusion that it's created, who's spreading these rumors about Denton? 00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:32.000 Are we spreading them about ourselves or somebody else? I'm saying that you don't go to Denton. They're slow. They're old. They're behind the times. 00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:52.000 Well, I appreciate the analogy. Unless your brother is spud web. He's not, or maybe not, NBA fans. 5'6" I believe was spud web. One dunking contest. Best NBA player. 00:41:52.000 --> 00:42:09.000 But I think the idea that, you know, there are things that Denton has the capacity to do. But right now maybe it's being overlooked because it doesn't have the perception or the image that you've got capability of supporting Charlottesville. 00:42:09.000 --> 00:42:24.000 Or supporting something that, you know, because the demographics or the income levels or whatever it is doesn't fit within the corporate, you know, because a lot of the corporate guys, they're drawn circles. 00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:36.000 And they're saying, you know, they've got their algorithms and they're looking at, you know, where do we place this where we can pick up, you know, the highest number of people with these types of technical skills or degrees or whatever it is. 00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:44.000 And you guys being on the periphery, you know, you may be, you may just be three miles outside of that ring that they're drawing. 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:52.000 And so, you know, it's going to take some additional growth coming up, maybe 35 to improve your numbers. 00:42:52.000 --> 00:43:11.000 Because as mostly a college town and the incomes that are associated with the service industry that supports that, you know, you're not going to meet their first threshold. And you're going to have to work your tail off to change the perspective with the individuals who are making those decisions. 00:43:11.000 --> 00:43:26.000 And they have to go back up to corporate and say, yeah, we're looking for a million people with certain income levels and certain educational attainment levels that have to be within a certain number of miles, whereas people are going to have to justify it. 00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:36.000 Because it's a $175 million worth of first days investment. 00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:56.000 See, move forward. So over your competitive advantages, you know, Austin uses quirky culture, attracts sort of the tech crowd in a way that no other city in Texas has been able to do. 00:43:56.000 --> 00:44:10.000 And so that's a real advantage, especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Because the greater perspective of, you know, Dallas is that it's all about, you know, high rise office space and master plan communities. 00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:16.000 And we love those. Those do well. They pay a lot of taxes. You know, it's like you want to support those. 00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:30.000 But if you're trying to attract tech talent and you're trying to differentiate yourself as a small employer that's in growth mode and you're trying to get somebody out of Dallas or somebody out of Denver, you know, what is it that you're going to offer? 00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:43.000 And you guys have something here that is attractive. And Heather, we appreciate the tour yesterday of Stoke and having some of those conversations with you and Washington. 00:44:43.000 --> 00:44:57.000 City-owned utility, not quite sure what to think about that yet, other than the fact that you guys have, you know, the ability to negotiate rates and generate income. 00:44:57.000 --> 00:45:12.000 And when I say I'm not sure what I think about that yet, that's just for me throwing that out there because I want you guys to understand that we're going to look at it very seriously because we understand what an asset that is for the community overall. 00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:17.000 You know, how do we leverage that for economic development? What does that really mean? 00:45:17.000 --> 00:45:28.000 That means, you know, for the big users of electricity, you know, having a really solid utility at a decent rate is a big deal. 00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:44.000 That gives you a competitive advantage. But what does it mean from a resource standpoint? What are the other things that you could, with some creativity around your utility, position that as an economic development asset? 00:45:44.000 --> 00:46:01.000 Well, for me, when I see that, because we are a municipality-owned utility, we can do a lot of things that other utilities cannot do whose main focus is income. 00:46:01.000 --> 00:46:16.000 So we are going 100% renewable. There are a lot of businesses out there who are very environmentally conscious. And so we are being very responsible in that way. 00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:35.000 And I feel like that is, especially when we're talking about part of our charm or, you know, we consider ourselves a pretty sustainable community, and that's not up there. But I do know now there's more corporate responsibility out in the business area. 00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:57.000 And so for us to provide those things, when people look for those, that could be something that we do, not with just our utility, but with other parts of the departments that we have, our water, solid waste, those types of things that I consider a really good advantage. 00:46:57.000 --> 00:47:04.000 Thank you. Because that's kind of what I'm looking for, sort of the creative ways we think about using your assets. 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:18.000 I was going to say something along the same lines, but even further, I mean, we're on track to be 100% renewable electric utility. We have a commitment in the city to sustainability. 00:47:18.000 --> 00:47:32.000 Green is marketable. Some would say that green is mostly marketable. But it's highly, highly marketable in this environment. And I think we can do a little bit better position ourselves in that way. 00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:42.000 And I have to push back just a little bit on the quirky culture. We're not going to emulate what Austin did with Austin's weird and all that kind of stuff. 00:47:42.000 --> 00:47:53.000 We have a unique culture, and I think that's part of the draw. But I don't think not everybody who's attracted to our culture is attracted to it because it's quirky or autistic or offbeat or whatever. 00:47:53.000 --> 00:48:09.000 We're just different. We're just our own unique thing. And that's special. We're a separate entity, a separate culture. And that's what's special about it. Not that it's kind of funky. 00:48:09.000 --> 00:48:28.000 I think the Austin weird campaign was actually developed by a group of small retailers that were locally owned and used that as their slogan. It was a little sleepy for a while and then it got picked up and emulated by others. 00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:48.000 I just want to add to the utility. As you're thinking about that in a way to keep it here in this list, if you could explore the rebates that we offer. We offer 100 solar households now, and that's really high compared to other places in Texas. 00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:59.000 We do offer those for larger companies, too, and corporate headquarters. 00:48:59.000 --> 00:49:28.000 I'm sorry that Jill walked out, but the presence of higher education as an outsider, you think it's a no-brainer. But the experience you may be having, do you feel like you're really taking advantage of having the presence to two universities and a college? 00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:31.000 Are there opportunities for that? 00:49:31.000 --> 00:49:39.000 You're from Austin. So what's your perception of our education? What do the Austin people think of our identity? 00:49:39.000 --> 00:49:59.000 I think a lot of people think that the City of Austin has always gotten along with the State of Texas, and that the City of Austin has always gotten along with the University of Texas. The University of Texas is its own city. 00:49:59.000 --> 00:50:12.000 And the things that they do happen to leverage, or happen to have huge economic development value, but it hasn't always been perfect. 00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:25.000 But I think the Chamber and the City of Austin have over the last 30 or 40 years been much more strategic about how they think about the University and their relationship. 00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:37.000 And so I feel like I haven't really learned yet much about how T.W.U. and U.N.T. and the City and Chamber work together or don't work together. 00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:47.000 No, I was asking specifically, as a person from Austin, when you think of the Denton educational facility, what's the first thing that comes to mind? 00:50:47.000 --> 00:50:48.000 You mean? 00:50:48.000 --> 00:50:59.000 Knee-jerk. Oh, well, I mean, I think of music and arts as being a strength. That's the reputation that we've known. 00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:07.000 And then just sort of discovering over the last 10 years that they're strong in engineering and business and some other things. 00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:20.000 In T.W.U., I'm just now learning their strengths and excited about the women in leadership and entrepreneurship and some of the other things that are going on. 00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:28.000 Can I make a comment? I used to travel to Austin a lot about 10 years ago. 00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:37.000 And one of the things that was interesting to me in Austin was most people that you ran into went to UT and they graduated. 00:51:37.000 --> 00:51:43.000 They stayed in Austin because Austin could give them the job opportunities they needed. 00:51:43.000 --> 00:51:48.000 I don't think that's the case here for us. Unfortunately, I think that's one of our biggest challenges. 00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:54.000 I was reading this morning, I guess in the last 10 years, that Dallas-Fort Worth area has created a million jobs. 00:51:54.000 --> 00:52:08.000 I don't think we've got nearly our fair share in our market. So all of this, to me, is about how do we change that going forward and take advantage of these educational facilities and be able to retain those kids that graduate. 00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:14.000 And some of them would love to stay here, but there's just no opportunities for them. 00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:16.000 Call me about Detonate professionals. 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:17.000 Pardon? 00:52:17.000 --> 00:52:24.000 Call me. The Detonate professionals are being task force. 00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:38.000 Actually, their first meeting is next week, and they're going to sit between now and October and talk about that question and what program can they put together to attract, retain, engage young talent and capture that. 00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:52.000 The universities are actually capturing them in town. So how do we network them and connect them to something here that they'll, so by the time that they're ready to build something, either take a job or create an opportunity, they're already connected to this community. 00:52:52.000 --> 00:52:59.000 That's an opportunity I think we've been missing for a while, is a strong young professionals networking group. 00:52:59.000 --> 00:53:07.000 And that's what we have been talking about with that group for a couple of months now. And we have a task force built that are coming together at the end of this month. 00:53:07.000 --> 00:53:21.000 But at the end of the day, it's how we as a city, our strategic plan, you know, our efforts come up with opportunities to bring business into this market, into our community. 00:53:21.000 --> 00:53:28.000 And make available jobs to those people that are graduating with finance degrees, business degrees, other than the music degrees. 00:53:28.000 --> 00:53:41.000 You know, UNT, TW, all these have great other departments. They may not be world renowned, but they are generating a lot of educated, you know, men and women in various fields, and they can't stay here. 00:53:41.000 --> 00:53:53.000 Yeah, it was funny because it's exciting that they're going to come together and help communicate, you know, because I think having them communicate with this group, just what they're thinking, what's on their mind, and what their challenges are. 00:53:53.000 --> 00:54:09.000 Because they said yesterday, one of their biggest challenges is finding a job. You know, which is kind of to your point, which is we come here, we get a decent job, but just there's limited mobility for us. 00:54:09.000 --> 00:54:26.000 As young professionals, there's a strong gravitational pull, you know, from the metroplex because we go down to Frisco, we go down further, yeah, maybe the cost of living is a little bit higher, but the compensation differential and opportunities are much, much higher. 00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:32.000 So how do we get those jobs here? I'm going to come to you and then I'll come back. 00:54:32.000 --> 00:54:41.000 To your question about higher education, about are we adequately leveraging? I think the portion of our reputation has to do with music and the arts and all that kind of thing. 00:54:41.000 --> 00:54:50.000 I think we are properly leveraging, even working really hard to use that. What we're not doing is exactly what Tony was talking about. 00:54:50.000 --> 00:55:08.000 We graduate, we talk about tech jobs and stuff and you want to attract tech or something like that. We graduate exponentially more business majors and finance majors every semester from UNT and TWA than we do engineers or software engineers or anything like that. 00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:22.000 We graduate more finance majors than we do music majors from UNT. Well, finance and business together. But more than half of the students that currently attend each of those universities live outside the county. 00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:45.000 So they come up here and they go to school and then they go back home and they get a job in Westlake with Charles Schwab or downtown Dallas with some firm or Richardson or Addison with some firm. We don't have those jobs, but we're actually very well positioned if a firm, even a medium-sized firm were to open a campus here. 00:55:45.000 --> 00:56:04.000 We're very well positioned to keep the staff with interns, support staff, all the way up through middle management. And that we have not leveraged. We have some opportunities coming up in the near term and the long term and we've got to find a way to connect that pipeline. 00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:25.000 Awesome. Awesome. Any reactions, Jimmy? I'm just listening to everything that everybody's saying, but it is true. I have families that graduate from UNT and they all go to Dallas, but they only go elsewhere because I've said the degrees and the opportunities in there. 00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:47.000 So I think that's part of it. Part of the infrastructure, I think, needs to be improved a lot. And I see improvements coming, but we're still behind everybody else. It seems like we're two or three years behind everybody else and that's why we're not attracting the companies that we want. It's a good place to live, but as far as work, it is not the same. 00:56:47.000 --> 00:57:02.000 I think you were here last time, when you were here last time, did you say something about a lot of the medical professionals have residences in other communities other than the top medical people? 00:57:02.000 --> 00:57:21.000 Yeah, that's kind of what we heard from the hospital systems was that a lot of their doctors and higher-end personnel choose to go down to Flower Mound or Hardall. Education and that cultural kind of presence there. 00:57:21.000 --> 00:57:39.000 Yeah, and sometimes those decisions are driven by spouses that have work in Metroplex and feel like they need to have opportunities within their career for a particular school district or a particular program in a school district these days. 00:57:39.000 --> 00:57:54.000 But, I mean, we haven't been out to the Advanced Technology Center yet and we did meet with someone from the ISD, but we're planning to follow up there to really understand that asset. 00:57:54.000 --> 00:58:15.000 Well, I have a few comments, but we have to meet after this so I can hold most of my comments for that conversation. I wanted to know if we know how many companies offer internships to those college students, like who has programs with the universities. 00:58:15.000 --> 00:58:28.000 Do we even know that? Like this Peterbilt? Are you guys offering? 50 to 60 a year. Okay, and so just knowing how many, does the hospital do that? We can. Yes. 00:58:28.000 --> 00:58:46.000 Okay, so I mean that would be helpful just leveraging that already in what you do to make sure that those students in those colleges know that that's there and then when you intern and you make friends and you build community and you start volunteering for nonprofits. 00:58:46.000 --> 00:59:06.000 That's a part that's not on here is the people in the community and how giving we are and some people want to stay and be a part of that. So I think that's a really big asset. If we can provide the wage, the higher income, which we discussed earlier in our incentive policy. 00:59:06.000 --> 00:59:17.000 You know, so if we can focus on that, it may start to work. I have a question. 00:59:17.000 --> 00:59:26.000 You know, when you talk about jobs and talking about jobs, who has the real number of how many jobs are created each year. 00:59:26.000 --> 00:59:38.000 You know, I, one of the things I dislike is that, you know, this many jobs were created and you just wonder where, where is this number coming from and where are those jobs. 00:59:38.000 --> 01:00:07.000 Who has the real number? Who's monitoring that? Who, who, who, who puts their Marty River seal of approval. Marty says I approve this number. Okay. I mean, where is that going on? I mean, because if we're talking about jobs, job retention, job growth, we need to have something that gives us a feeling that this is a real number and we're making progress, you know, towards a goal. 01:00:07.000 --> 01:00:13.000 So is there a measure? Yes. And who's doing the measure? 01:00:13.000 --> 01:00:22.000 Please reference USA. We can get from businesses and we can do it by year and we can do it by six months. As well as a business directory. 01:00:22.000 --> 01:00:34.000 And also what the percentages of salaries that are paid, how many people are at a lower end median up to the 98% pay level. So there's a way to track that. 01:00:34.000 --> 01:00:47.000 So you say reference USA, but how does the average person? Not reference USA, it's MC. Well, we have multiple tools, she's talking about MC. It's the one that Texas Workforce uses, so it's actual data. 01:00:47.000 --> 01:01:01.000 The data, the raw data usually comes from the Texas Workforce Commission and they have a huge database that our systems are pulling the data from that gets reported directly by the companies. 01:01:01.000 --> 01:01:22.000 Okay, so let me ask the follow-up question. If that information is there, do they have a credible history of showing us what's going on in our county or in our city? Are we growing or are we staying the same? 01:01:22.000 --> 01:01:37.000 And then once we get that, we need to somehow publish it and let people know that we are retaining jobs. We are growing in jobs. We are improving. Our graduation rates are increasing. 01:01:37.000 --> 01:01:55.000 The file data capitals are increasing. The research contracts are increasing. So as a community, we're becoming more vibrant, more attractive, more saleable. 01:01:55.000 --> 01:02:15.000 Well, my understanding is that most of that data, you guys are publishing it. Maybe what I'm hearing is that it needs to be more broadly distributed or communicated in a way that's more adjustable. 01:02:15.000 --> 01:02:28.000 Is that what you're saying, John, or were you just not aware? Because what's the perception? I mean, if our perceptions are not being improved, then we've got to work on that. 01:02:28.000 --> 01:02:42.000 Yeah, and I think the data is just part of that. The data tells part of the story, but there's a lot of other pieces to that story about businesses that are expanding and universities expanding and other things that are going on. 01:02:42.000 --> 01:02:56.000 All right, guys. How are you feeling? This is great for us. I appreciate your taking the time being candid about some of these things, because I'm going to keep going here. 01:02:56.000 --> 01:03:16.000 All right. Maybe I lost power. Turn it off. Wait three seconds. Turn it back on. 01:03:16.000 --> 01:03:39.000 All those fails. Computer. Escape. Right click. Back in business. All right. So you wanted to talk data for a moment? We're going to talk about our weaknesses. 01:03:39.000 --> 01:03:54.000 Challenges? Oh, I was going to skip over those things. I was going to skip over those. Sorry about that. So yeah, you know, challenges. I think we talked about the competition from surrounding communities. 01:03:54.000 --> 01:04:13.000 It's hard when you've got communities like Frisco that have greenfield sites that grow at a rapid pace versus Denton as an older established community with established employers and development patterns and having expectations that you're going to grow in exactly the same way. 01:04:13.000 --> 01:04:25.000 That's an easy thing to compare. Number two, limited economic development resources. I think we've heard several people say we don't have the economic development sales tax. 01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:44.000 And Jacqueline has a very nice map here I'll show in a moment just to show who does and, you know, in the area because it's pretty dramatic. The number of communities just in Denton County alone. Much less the DFW Metroplex area. 01:04:44.000 --> 01:05:02.000 But for a community that's about to undergo the kind of growth that is anticipated here from an economic development standpoint, you are not devoting what your competitors are. 01:05:02.000 --> 01:05:18.000 And both from an incentive standpoint and from a staffing standpoint. And so really it's going to come down to, and this will get to the question of how seriously do you want to play in a competitive economic development game. 01:05:18.000 --> 01:05:34.000 And I'm not saying that lightly. That's going to be a very serious question. And we'll help lay out a couple of different scenarios for you so that it's not just, oh, the consultants came in and recommended this. We'll help lay out, here's a couple of choices for you. 01:05:34.000 --> 01:05:48.000 You can kind of, business as usual, here's what we recommend that you want to kind of stick with. But if you want to take seriously leveraging the presence and the growth of the universities and the plans that they have. 01:05:48.000 --> 01:05:57.000 If you want to take seriously the growth that's coming up I-35 West. If you want to take seriously the potential that remains with the business park. 01:05:57.000 --> 01:06:08.000 If you want to take, there's a lot of different opportunities here. And so really what's at your disposal to dedicate to economic development and how creative do you want to be. 01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:17.000 So that's going to be a question that's coming up. Keeping up with the demands on infrastructure, we talked about that. We really haven't talked about housing a lot. 01:06:17.000 --> 01:06:28.000 But you guys are not alone in, really in the country right now with access to what we consider workforce housing or affordability. 01:06:28.000 --> 01:06:36.000 Not just during the section 8 housing, but housing at different levels. You know, that's a challenge everywhere we go right now. 01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:43.000 I mean, every single community that we go, especially communities that have any kind of opportunity, it's a challenge. 01:06:43.000 --> 01:06:55.000 You've got young people that are graduating from college with debt. You've got young people that are graduating from high school and taking $12 an hour jobs, $15 an hour jobs. 01:06:55.000 --> 01:07:04.000 And yet the pressure on real estate in most communities puts that, you know, even the inexpensive stuff out of reach. 01:07:04.000 --> 01:07:15.000 You've got doctors that may not be finding housing options within the city limits of Denton at a certain price point. So they're going down the street. 01:07:15.000 --> 01:07:26.000 So it's not just, affordable housing isn't just section 8 housing, even though that's affordable housing is an issue too. So it's across the spectrum. 01:07:26.000 --> 01:07:37.000 My caveat is that you're not alone, but it is an issue here. And how does that play into economic development? How does it play into your competitiveness? 01:07:37.000 --> 01:07:45.000 I think that's a question that we have to ask ourselves. The town versus gown dynamic, that's come up a couple of times. 01:07:45.000 --> 01:08:03.000 The sense that the university and the city squabble over parking or squabble over development, whatever it is, don't seem to be working as fluidly as you would expect. 01:08:03.000 --> 01:08:15.000 That's just anecdotal. For me, it's like to have university systems that are here in that size, figuring out how to go forward. 01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:24.000 But that's, maybe that's just perception. We're meeting with universities and the city and feel like that needs to be approved. 01:08:24.000 --> 01:08:29.000 And then, I don't know what we meant by leadership transitions. Do you remember? 01:08:29.000 --> 01:08:33.000 That there have been a lot of transitions at the city and the chamber. 01:08:33.000 --> 01:08:46.000 Okay. And I assume that's mostly going to work out the better. This is a new opportunity for the community with new leadership. 01:08:46.000 --> 01:08:58.000 These are just themes that came up during the interviews. We're not here to spend a whole lot of time on this, unless you want to. 01:08:58.000 --> 01:09:02.000 Thank you. 01:09:02.000 --> 01:09:09.000 Anything missing from that list? 01:09:09.000 --> 01:09:13.000 You asked me to stop, Marty. 01:09:13.000 --> 01:09:16.000 So, you didn't let me skip over that. 01:09:16.000 --> 01:09:22.000 Yeah, a couple of quick data points. 01:09:22.000 --> 01:09:32.000 Can I just open up Tableau? 01:09:32.000 --> 01:09:42.000 So, I had mentioned earlier, these are communities that have 4A. 01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:52.000 And I think I can just scroll in here, just within the county. 01:09:52.000 --> 01:09:59.000 And I don't have the numbers for what they're collecting right now, but I know that data is available. 01:09:59.000 --> 01:10:08.000 And I think it would be important the next time we come back, just so you kind of know what kind of kitty Frisco is sitting on and what kind of annual. 01:10:08.000 --> 01:10:11.000 And you may know it off the top of your head. 01:10:11.000 --> 01:10:22.000 I'm always surprised when I look at just how much is being collected by communities in the $10 million, $15 million, $20 million a year. 01:10:22.000 --> 01:10:37.000 Do we know how many of those cities listed give a large percentage of their sales tax to public transportation as well? 01:10:37.000 --> 01:10:43.000 I'm guessing that none of these do that have 4A or 4B. 01:10:43.000 --> 01:10:54.000 No, so the way that the sales tax that you can split it, generally, if they're participating in 4A and 4B or 4A or 4B, 01:10:54.000 --> 01:11:00.000 they would be somewhat limited in what they could participate because the one cent that's dedicated to the city stays with the city. 01:11:00.000 --> 01:11:02.000 Now, the one cent is the other flexible. 01:11:02.000 --> 01:11:11.000 You can see up there that there's other options, the 4A, 4B, street maintenance, that you can only split those and kind of so many eights before you run out of options. 01:11:11.000 --> 01:11:15.000 And I believe eights is the limit right now from the comptroller on what you can do. 01:11:15.000 --> 01:11:17.000 I don't think you can use 16ths of a cent. 01:11:17.000 --> 01:11:23.000 And so there's only so many ways you can divide that one cent. 01:11:23.000 --> 01:11:31.000 And so generally, communities that are participating in 4A and 4B don't participate in Metro Transit. 01:11:31.000 --> 01:11:33.000 It was the same in the Houston area when I was down there. 01:11:33.000 --> 01:11:45.000 If you were a member of Metro, you didn't generally participate in the economic development sales tax just because there's only so much. 01:11:45.000 --> 01:11:51.000 Yeah, I wasn't going to tell a lot of stories around this particular data set, 01:11:51.000 --> 01:11:59.000 but I wanted to let you know that we have it so that if you do have questions, we can take a look at it. 01:11:59.000 --> 01:12:04.000 One interesting story, I think, is if -- can I select both 4B and A at the same time? 01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:05.000 No. 01:12:05.000 --> 01:12:06.000 No? Okay. 01:12:06.000 --> 01:12:09.000 Well, I'll pick on 4B then because there's a few more. 01:12:09.000 --> 01:12:19.000 But it's just always fascinating to see if you scroll out the concentration in the DFW area. 01:12:19.000 --> 01:12:31.000 You guys are -- we're in the majority of the 4A and 4B sales taxes are using or where they exist. 01:12:31.000 --> 01:12:37.000 But I'm going to be as much interested in how much is being raised and coming back to you guys. 01:12:37.000 --> 01:12:45.000 And then in addition to that, in the areas where we can actually get information about staffing and how funds are being spent, 01:12:45.000 --> 01:12:52.000 to be able to share that with you as we're thinking about how creative does Denton want to get. 01:12:52.000 --> 01:12:55.000 So any questions on that? 01:12:55.000 --> 01:12:58.000 I think Tauga has $12.36, and they're fine. 01:12:58.000 --> 01:13:04.000 All right. 01:13:04.000 --> 01:13:08.000 Oh, wait, no way for Tauga to be listed there. 01:13:08.000 --> 01:13:10.000 Dairy Queen there, right? 01:13:10.000 --> 01:13:17.000 Was there -- let's see, if I go down my list here, which one do I want next? 01:13:17.000 --> 01:13:19.000 Number four? 01:13:19.000 --> 01:13:21.000 Okay. 01:13:21.000 --> 01:13:28.000 And so we're just now taking a first cut at looking at the revenues for different cities 01:13:28.000 --> 01:13:35.000 and how they're generating their revenues in terms of general revenue. 01:13:35.000 --> 01:13:44.000 And so Denton for 2018, and anybody from the city needs to correct me on the fly here for free. 01:13:44.000 --> 01:13:47.000 We're not going to publish this data yet. 01:13:47.000 --> 01:13:52.000 But if they're -- so 35% actually comes from property tax. 01:13:52.000 --> 01:14:02.000 And then you've got 20% sales, 14% franchise fees, and then 32% other revenues. 01:14:02.000 --> 01:14:06.000 And I think you had a question. 01:14:06.000 --> 01:14:13.000 Yeah, so we were talking about earlier why our -- know that that is capturing development fees. 01:14:13.000 --> 01:14:19.000 So if you look at, in the standard report, the number of the increase in building permits, 01:14:19.000 --> 01:14:27.000 the increase in development that's been occurring, I would say that's probably a factor in why that as a percentage is so high. 01:14:27.000 --> 01:14:32.000 Because my question, does general revenue account for income from utilities? 01:14:32.000 --> 01:14:33.000 Utilities. 01:14:33.000 --> 01:14:34.000 Yeah. 01:14:34.000 --> 01:14:41.000 So because that would have been my first answer to this, but this is stuff that we'll research as we're thinking about it. 01:14:41.000 --> 01:14:49.000 But it is interesting to see how much -- what percentage is -- you've got all that greenfield new development that's going on, 01:14:49.000 --> 01:14:54.000 how much of the revenue for Frisco is coming from property tax, McKinney, Flower Mound. 01:14:54.000 --> 01:15:03.000 Yeah, I think the other part of that property tax is where we have the county seat and the universities that they don't have. 01:15:03.000 --> 01:15:12.000 Yeah, the fact that you've got a higher percentage of your overall taxable property that's off of tax rules than normally would have been, you know, depending on the purpose. 01:15:12.000 --> 01:15:15.000 Same thing that Boston ran into for a number of years. 01:15:15.000 --> 01:15:23.000 We have the state capital, we have the university, and until we reached a certain size where we had a lot more private investment 01:15:23.000 --> 01:15:29.000 from other companies, we were a little bit out of whack there. 01:15:29.000 --> 01:15:40.000 But once again, I'm not going to go through all these data sets, but I was just -- we're doing this and we're going to share this with the staff 01:15:40.000 --> 01:15:49.000 as we think through, you know, what -- at the highest level in terms of generating revenue to pay for city services and the future sustainability of this community, 01:15:49.000 --> 01:15:56.000 what does it make sense to focus on? It's easy to say, oh yeah, let's incentivize a particular type of business, 01:15:56.000 --> 01:16:05.000 but if that particular business is returning an investment to the city and helping continue to pay your way based on your current structure, you know, 01:16:05.000 --> 01:16:08.000 it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 01:16:08.000 --> 01:16:09.000 Tom, I have a question. 01:16:09.000 --> 01:16:10.000 Yes. 01:16:10.000 --> 01:16:23.000 So even though you've got the blue, which shows property taxes, does it give us an idea of the strength of that community's tax base? 01:16:23.000 --> 01:16:28.000 And how would you define strength of that tax base? 01:16:28.000 --> 01:16:43.000 Well, let's say, for example, let me use the best I can give you. If we don't have that much -- that strong of a tax base, then we're not going to be able to generate that much property tax. 01:16:43.000 --> 01:16:53.000 But if we have a lot of businesses that have a strong or high dollar value tax base, then the result is more property tax dollars. 01:16:53.000 --> 01:16:59.000 Not necessarily a higher rate, but we have more taxable value. 01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:00.000 Right. 01:17:00.000 --> 01:17:08.000 And that generates more property taxes, which to me is one of the things that we would like to have here. 01:17:08.000 --> 01:17:10.000 Gotcha. 01:17:10.000 --> 01:17:16.000 Can you differentiate between residential and commercial? 01:17:16.000 --> 01:17:21.000 I think we can do industrial, residential, and commercial property taxes. 01:17:21.000 --> 01:17:31.000 Yeah, the CAD breaks it down in those three general categories, because that determines how they use different methods to value the property. 01:17:31.000 --> 01:17:36.000 Generally, yes, we know how much value is coming from each of those broad categories. 01:17:36.000 --> 01:17:50.000 We can also break it down each year by what's incremental value on properties that are existing versus what's value that's added, new construction value, those sort of things. 01:17:50.000 --> 01:17:53.000 Jacqueline, do we happen to have the community data on this one? 01:17:53.000 --> 01:17:54.000 Did you pull it up? 01:17:54.000 --> 01:18:00.000 Yeah, it should be up on the other tab. 01:18:00.000 --> 01:18:02.000 Which is right here? 01:18:02.000 --> 01:18:03.000 Okay. 01:18:03.000 --> 01:18:10.000 Yeah, and once again, I didn't want to make this a data presentation, but I just want to let you know that these are the kinds of things that we're looking at in the background, 01:18:10.000 --> 01:18:18.000 because there's stuff that the city already does, and we don't want to replicate that, but we want to get a feel for -- yeah, if we're going to make recommendations here, 01:18:18.000 --> 01:18:21.000 we want them to align with where your strengths are. 01:18:21.000 --> 01:18:24.000 Could you go back to that one that you had in the blue? 01:18:24.000 --> 01:18:26.000 If I could make a suggestion? 01:18:26.000 --> 01:18:28.000 Yeah, it's that one. 01:18:28.000 --> 01:18:32.000 Let's say in the blue, you put the dollar value that's generating that 35%. 01:18:32.000 --> 01:18:34.000 Yeah, how much is industrial versus -- 01:18:34.000 --> 01:18:40.000 How much industrial is generating, and you go look at Frisco, and that tells us how much industry they have. 01:18:40.000 --> 01:18:51.000 Yeah, because I know I've got other files of what percentage comes from your single top taxpayer, top three, top ten, versus the other cities. 01:18:51.000 --> 01:18:59.000 We've got data on sort of general obligation debt based on other communities. 01:18:59.000 --> 01:19:03.000 Good question. Do you have residential versus -- 01:19:03.000 --> 01:19:14.000 I don't know that I have it. We may have the data, but it's just not as part of this slide deck, but I'll go back and check. 01:19:14.000 --> 01:19:23.000 But I will say that it's very difficult in comparing cities to find apples to apples. 01:19:23.000 --> 01:19:36.000 This is a discussion Jessica and I would have, because your tax makeup is different. Some have a lot of nonprofits, churches, universities, and others don't. 01:19:36.000 --> 01:19:43.000 Some have -- they're a municipally owned utility that helps offset certain other costs that you might not have. 01:19:43.000 --> 01:19:50.000 Some rely on fees. Some rely on their sales tax. 01:19:50.000 --> 01:20:01.000 There was the quirk for a while that I think the legislature's trying to account for, which allowed for a point of retail sales tax collection for telecom and things like that. 01:20:01.000 --> 01:20:06.000 And that debate's still going on right now, so you really have to continue drilling down. 01:20:06.000 --> 01:20:19.000 We want to drill down enough to where when we make our recommendations, we feel like, okay, we're not sending you down a path that doesn't match the resources that you have in your current situation. 01:20:19.000 --> 01:20:32.000 I will show one other quick one, just a reminder that we're also, you know, this question of, you know, where do residents of Denton work? 01:20:32.000 --> 01:20:43.000 Where are they going to? Because that question of how many people live in Denton that are educated, that are currently leaving the community, 01:20:43.000 --> 01:20:54.000 that if the better opportunities were available to them here and were able to be successful in attracting investment and new jobs here, that they would be able to stay here. 01:20:54.000 --> 01:21:00.000 And what age groups, what are their current earning levels, and where are they going? 01:21:00.000 --> 01:21:09.000 Obviously, Dallas is the number one destination with Fort Worth being number two. 01:21:09.000 --> 01:21:17.000 But this is a relatively new, even though the data set has been available for a while, you can see where people are commuting. 01:21:17.000 --> 01:21:23.000 Being able to drill down below that and find out characteristics of those who are leaving. 01:21:23.000 --> 01:21:29.000 You really couldn't get to any of that unless you did a specific survey. 01:21:29.000 --> 01:21:39.000 If you surveyed the residents and said, where are you going? What's your income? And give us more information. And more data is becoming available now. 01:21:39.000 --> 01:21:50.000 So there's other stuff that we can look at. But we can, you know, we can drill down and show where people are going, where those concentrations are. 01:21:50.000 --> 01:21:55.000 There's a little pod on the other side of the lake. 01:21:55.000 --> 01:21:59.000 Can you tell me what the source says at the bottom down there? I'm trying to... 01:21:59.000 --> 01:22:09.000 Yeah, it's the... Oh, gosh. Do you know LEHD? 01:22:09.000 --> 01:22:12.000 It's like a combination. 01:22:12.000 --> 01:22:18.000 Yeah, I'll get that to you. I'll get that to you. 01:22:18.000 --> 01:22:32.000 All right, guys. I'm going to switch back. We have about 20 minutes left. 01:22:32.000 --> 01:22:41.000 We are going to put together what we will consider a draft of a SWAT. 01:22:41.000 --> 01:22:49.000 And I'll actually send this to you guys afterwards so you'll see our first attempt at populating this. 01:22:49.000 --> 01:22:58.000 But when we think of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, many times it's really just something that's local. 01:22:58.000 --> 01:23:04.000 In other words, this isn't a weakness in the greater metroplex area that's just a dent in weakness. 01:23:04.000 --> 01:23:14.000 Or maybe it's a weakness that is something that's statewide. In other words, that we're kind of stuck with the way that we pay for public education. 01:23:14.000 --> 01:23:17.000 You know, whatever, if you want to see that as a weakness. 01:23:17.000 --> 01:23:24.000 And then also sometimes things are beyond our control. They're happening nationally or globally. 01:23:24.000 --> 01:23:29.000 And I'm going to go through this relatively quickly and I'm going to give it back to you guys as homework. 01:23:29.000 --> 01:23:34.000 If that's okay because we don't have a whole lot of time left. But we still understand what we've been up to. 01:23:34.000 --> 01:23:40.000 And so we're going to take each one of these strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 01:23:40.000 --> 01:23:48.000 And on the strengths side, I think I'm missing, I looked at it just a moment ago, I'm missing its ETC. 01:23:48.000 --> 01:23:51.000 So make sure you put that in there. 01:23:51.000 --> 01:23:56.000 But availability of water. I think that came up in some of our industrial meetings. 01:23:56.000 --> 01:24:03.000 That's not an everywhere in Texas thing. It's definitely not. That's a big deal. 01:24:03.000 --> 01:24:09.000 The universities, they're, you know, relative to other communities that are landlocked. 01:24:09.000 --> 01:24:15.000 In the DFW area, which many of them are, that I've worked for, Rowlett, Saxey, Wiley, and you know, 01:24:15.000 --> 01:24:18.000 a lot of those communities have very limited development opportunities. 01:24:18.000 --> 01:24:24.000 You guys still have a great swath along I-35 on the south, west side. 01:24:24.000 --> 01:24:29.000 There's still a lot of land available on the north side of the community. 01:24:29.000 --> 01:24:35.000 So there's still a lot of room for this community to grow over the next 10, 20, 30 years. 01:24:35.000 --> 01:24:39.000 That's a benefit. 01:24:39.000 --> 01:24:45.000 Concludes of the interstates. Overall, affordable cost of living. 01:24:45.000 --> 01:24:53.000 Manufacturing, workforce, music and arts downtown, location and a growing metro. 01:24:53.000 --> 01:24:59.000 Unique culture. There's the word unique. So we didn't use quirky. That one I like. 01:24:59.000 --> 01:25:02.000 Alright. We're good. We're good there. Alright. 01:25:02.000 --> 01:25:07.000 Airport. I don't really have a good feel for the airport yet, but we're going to meet with those guys. 01:25:07.000 --> 01:25:10.000 So I'll get a better feel for what's going on out there. 01:25:10.000 --> 01:25:18.000 Your park system. While not 100% lots of plans for improving that. 01:25:18.000 --> 01:25:26.000 Competitive tax climate, which is really an overall state competitiveness issue that Texas has. 01:25:26.000 --> 01:25:30.000 And just overall economic growth for the US. 01:25:30.000 --> 01:25:38.000 Some of the weaknesses or challenges. As I mentioned, your housing mix, limited resources. 01:25:38.000 --> 01:25:42.000 It's interesting with the young professionals. We had a pretty diverse group there. 01:25:42.000 --> 01:25:48.000 And for them, some of them, they felt like, yeah, a lot of people think of this as a very progressive community. 01:25:48.000 --> 01:25:53.000 But there's still a lot of exclusivity. It's hard for us to feel like we have opportunities that others have. 01:25:53.000 --> 01:25:58.000 And, you know, in Austin right now, we're having that discussion every day. 01:25:58.000 --> 01:26:02.000 You know, it's a big part of the discussion. We've got all this tech growth. 01:26:02.000 --> 01:26:08.000 But you have communities that don't get to experience the benefit of all that growth within the community. 01:26:08.000 --> 01:26:13.000 How do we help those folks? Not a lot of Class A office. 01:26:13.000 --> 01:26:21.000 Some of the corridors that come into the city, you know, don't give off the best sort of impression of the city. 01:26:21.000 --> 01:26:30.000 One of the interviews that we had this week talked about somebody that hadn't been here for a long time. 01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:35.000 And they didn't really, they had been coming through by the community, but they didn't even know that downtown existed. 01:26:35.000 --> 01:26:41.000 And they had a child that was going to the university, or they wanted to go to the university. 01:26:41.000 --> 01:26:44.000 They'd come into town, and they didn't know to go to downtown. 01:26:44.000 --> 01:26:48.000 You know, it wasn't part of the sales pitch. They just didn't know. 01:26:48.000 --> 01:26:55.000 And we all, you know, who have been in the downtown, when we talk about Denton, we talk about that as an asset. 01:26:55.000 --> 01:26:59.000 But is it, you know, something that's known to the broader community? 01:26:59.000 --> 01:27:05.000 Workforce for skilled trades, that's a statewide, national issue, probably should be out there. 01:27:05.000 --> 01:27:14.000 And you've got a community college that pointed out to us that they operate without the taxing district. 01:27:14.000 --> 01:27:22.000 They operate off of state funds and fees, tuition, fees. Interesting. 01:27:22.000 --> 01:27:32.000 Let's see. Opportunities. You know what, I left this off, Heather. 01:27:32.000 --> 01:27:38.000 When I was talking about strings, the growing taxing. I want to point that out. 01:27:38.000 --> 01:27:44.000 I want to point that out, because I feel like we heard stories yesterday when we went to Stoke. 01:27:44.000 --> 01:27:52.000 Of course, it's your business to help us understand, but it's real. 01:27:52.000 --> 01:27:57.000 I mean, the number of small companies that have started here and have grown here, 01:27:57.000 --> 01:28:05.000 some very heavy on the tech side, some, you know, Etsy-based artwork that's done, that gets converted, 01:28:05.000 --> 01:28:10.000 and before you know it, you're selling stuff all over the globe, and one of the top sellers. 01:28:10.000 --> 01:28:15.000 You know, so there's an entrepreneurial culture here that I think needs to be leveraged, 01:28:15.000 --> 01:28:19.000 and I think that's a big opportunity. 01:28:19.000 --> 01:28:25.000 So expanding tech, R&D innovation, leveraging higher education. 01:28:25.000 --> 01:28:32.000 I know this is a sensitive issue for some, but mall redevelopment, telling the story better, 01:28:32.000 --> 01:28:40.000 utilizing utility funds for economic development. That's a question mark for us. 01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:48.000 It's like how far down that path, what can be used from your electric utility to support economic development. 01:28:48.000 --> 01:28:53.000 You know, I kind of grew up with economic development in Texas being led by the electric utilities. 01:28:53.000 --> 01:28:57.000 I worked for the State Department of Commerce. We didn't have any money. 01:28:57.000 --> 01:29:05.000 Most of the economic development in Texas was done by the Texas utilities. 01:29:05.000 --> 01:29:09.000 I can't list them off. Houston Light, I'm naming all what they used to be called. 01:29:09.000 --> 01:29:14.000 Houston Lighting and Power, Gulf State Utilities, Central Power and Light. 01:29:14.000 --> 01:29:18.000 I mean, these guys had budgets. When I was running the International Department, 01:29:18.000 --> 01:29:23.000 Central Power and Light paid for my travel to go to Asia. 01:29:23.000 --> 01:29:29.000 You know, here I was a state employee running state offices in Taipei and Tokyo, 01:29:29.000 --> 01:29:34.000 and I couldn't afford to go, but they could fund it because they were the economic development engine 01:29:34.000 --> 01:29:37.000 for many of the communities in Texas. 01:29:37.000 --> 01:29:41.000 So what is the question for you guys, in other words, what does it mean to have a utility? 01:29:41.000 --> 01:29:49.000 Is there a possibility to be created in the way that utility supports economic development? 01:29:49.000 --> 01:29:57.000 And then threats. We should have started with this. We should have started with coronavirus. 01:29:57.000 --> 01:30:10.000 We were there, right? And climate change, trade policy. 01:30:10.000 --> 01:30:13.000 All right, so we are going to send this to you guys. 01:30:13.000 --> 01:30:18.000 And the idea is for you to be able to take a look at this and say, okay, what else is a threat for us? 01:30:18.000 --> 01:30:21.000 What have the consultants not captured yet? 01:30:21.000 --> 01:30:25.000 I could have given you a bike slate, but the idea was to give you something to start with. 01:30:25.000 --> 01:30:31.000 So any questions on the homework assignment that I'm going to be giving you guys? 01:30:31.000 --> 01:30:36.000 So once you send this to us, what's your expectation? 01:30:36.000 --> 01:30:44.000 So the expectation is for you to review it, and then you can just email us just any comments that you have 01:30:44.000 --> 01:30:51.000 about who really missed something in one of the strengths or weaknesses. 01:30:51.000 --> 01:30:55.000 Well, I'm kind of sensing that we probably need to wind down here, Mark. 01:30:55.000 --> 01:31:04.000 We've got about 10 minutes left, but I feel like I've been doing too much talking. 01:31:04.000 --> 01:31:11.000 Let me talk about next steps, and then if there's any closing thoughts, we'll do that. 01:31:11.000 --> 01:31:19.000 All right, so we are going to be developing opportunities, and I'm going to flash through this real quick 01:31:19.000 --> 01:31:25.000 so that you don't see that we're actually starting to think about what the recommendations are going to be. 01:31:25.000 --> 01:31:26.000 And I'm going to skip ahead. 01:31:26.000 --> 01:31:33.000 So we are going to be back in March, and at that time, we will have done additional homework 01:31:33.000 --> 01:31:37.000 on where we think specific opportunities are. 01:31:37.000 --> 01:31:41.000 We will have met with all of the council members to get feedback. 01:31:41.000 --> 01:31:46.000 We will have met, hopefully, with UNT or at least have a phone call here. 01:31:46.000 --> 01:31:52.000 We're planning to have an additional meeting with TWU, and then we've got some other things planned. 01:31:52.000 --> 01:31:55.000 And so we will be back in March. 01:31:55.000 --> 01:31:58.000 We're also going to be looking at the best practices. 01:31:58.000 --> 01:32:03.000 Who else is comfortable to you guys that is doing economic development for you guys 01:32:03.000 --> 01:32:08.000 to consider a framework for what happens? 01:32:08.000 --> 01:32:14.000 So we need to -- we're going to change an R reading to back a week to the 18th. 01:32:14.000 --> 01:32:17.000 Normally, it would be on the 11th. 01:32:17.000 --> 01:32:24.000 Yes, so as it fell, that was the week that -- the week before that is actually the spring break week, 01:32:24.000 --> 01:32:28.000 I think, for Denton ISD and I think for both of our universities. 01:32:28.000 --> 01:32:29.000 NLC. 01:32:29.000 --> 01:32:34.000 And NLC, and so we were going to lose, I think, quite a few people. 01:32:34.000 --> 01:32:40.000 And so we were more comfortable with the 17th, 18th being the dates that they're here. 01:32:40.000 --> 01:32:47.000 So pushing back your March meeting one week so that it wasn't occurring on any time 01:32:47.000 --> 01:32:54.000 when someone had family or children obligations or maybe a student home from university 01:32:54.000 --> 01:32:59.000 that you want to spend time with. 01:32:59.000 --> 01:33:02.000 So that was our thought. 01:33:02.000 --> 01:33:06.000 Yes. 01:33:06.000 --> 01:33:13.000 Unless someone is still on spring break that week, I think every week in March is a spring break for someone. 01:33:13.000 --> 01:33:16.000 All right, we've got to have a homework assignment. 01:33:16.000 --> 01:33:21.000 And then you'll also be able to react to all the other slides if there's something in there 01:33:21.000 --> 01:33:26.000 that went over a little too fast or you didn't capture it. 01:33:26.000 --> 01:33:32.000 But from our perspective, we feel like we're on track. 01:33:32.000 --> 01:33:40.000 We're partway through our meetings of this trip, so we have a busy afternoon and then a busy day tomorrow. 01:33:40.000 --> 01:33:44.000 And then I think this evening at five we're meeting -- 01:33:44.000 --> 01:33:51.000 We're meeting with a number of local developers by representing some commercial development, 01:33:51.000 --> 01:33:54.000 some residential development, and some industrial development. 01:33:54.000 --> 01:34:03.000 So we have a good group coming this evening to give a holistic perspective of what they're seeing and experiencing. 01:34:03.000 --> 01:34:11.000 Yeah, we always feel like giving the developers an opportunity to be candid with us is important. 01:34:11.000 --> 01:34:14.000 And we recognize their perspective and appreciate their perspective. 01:34:14.000 --> 01:34:19.000 Did you find some that are willing to give their opinions? 01:34:19.000 --> 01:34:21.000 More than so. 01:34:21.000 --> 01:34:23.000 And what time is that? Is that here? 01:34:23.000 --> 01:34:25.000 What, the developer round table? 01:34:25.000 --> 01:34:26.000 Yeah, it's at five. 01:34:26.000 --> 01:34:32.000 Is it an invitation only for some people or what did their communities put it out and open for anyone to come? 01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:39.000 No, I contacted the developers directly and asked for specific representatives from -- 01:34:39.000 --> 01:34:44.000 It's just for them to have a specific discussion about development. 01:34:44.000 --> 01:34:49.000 It's not -- when we move into the later stages we'll be having open community meetings to get feedback. 01:34:49.000 --> 01:34:53.000 It's for them to just provide their specific experience as a developer. 01:34:53.000 --> 01:34:58.000 Yeah, and we'll definitely -- we won't attribute the feedback to any particular developer, 01:34:58.000 --> 01:35:05.000 but when we come back we'll share with you guys what we said and the perceptions that we have. 01:35:05.000 --> 01:35:10.000 I just know there's a large community, so I just want to make sure there's opportunities for more than just -- 01:35:10.000 --> 01:35:13.000 Yeah, we kept it pretty limited in this. 01:35:13.000 --> 01:35:17.000 If it gets bigger than about five or ten people, it can have a big conversation. 01:35:17.000 --> 01:35:21.000 It's hard for someone to get their opinion, so we did keep them somewhat limited. 01:35:21.000 --> 01:35:29.000 But our goal would be in March to start opening it up to the broader community. 01:35:29.000 --> 01:35:32.000 All right, guys, anything else? 01:35:32.000 --> 01:35:36.000 Any surprises so far? 01:35:36.000 --> 01:35:38.000 Mostly positive. 01:35:38.000 --> 01:35:40.000 Mostly positive. 01:35:40.000 --> 01:35:54.000 No, I mean, like I said, I have not been in Denton for a while since we worked here. 01:35:54.000 --> 01:35:55.000 I'll try. 01:35:55.000 --> 01:35:59.000 All right, thank you, guys. 01:35:59.000 --> 01:36:02.000 All right, thank you, Tom, appreciate it. 01:36:02.000 --> 01:36:04.000 That's a lot of really cool information. 01:36:04.000 --> 01:36:08.000 Looking forward to further discussions. 01:36:08.000 --> 01:36:18.000 Our next item is EDP 20-009 staff reports, given the short amount of time we have left. 01:36:18.000 --> 01:36:20.000 Anybody want to bring it up? 01:36:20.000 --> 01:36:28.000 We don't have anything specific to report right now, but I will say we're talking to a number of prospects, 01:36:28.000 --> 01:36:35.000 and you might see some applications in the very near future, so I'm excited about that. 01:36:35.000 --> 01:36:41.000 Charlie, Erika, anything from the Chamber side that we need to be aware of? 01:36:41.000 --> 01:36:44.000 You'll see the new format for the report in the back. 01:36:44.000 --> 01:36:46.000 It's a narrative reporting. 01:36:46.000 --> 01:36:48.000 It's one page. 01:36:48.000 --> 01:36:53.000 There's not a lot of metrics, but Charlie, do you have anything? 01:36:53.000 --> 01:36:55.000 No. 01:36:55.000 --> 01:37:09.000 Any other items we need to talk about or place on the agenda for next time? 01:37:09.000 --> 01:37:15.000 Looks like we'll look for a calendar rotation for March 18th, Wednesday the 18th. 01:37:15.000 --> 01:37:19.000 And other than that, I'll take a motion to adjourn. 01:37:19.000 --> 01:37:20.000 So moved. 01:37:20.000 --> 01:37:21.000 Second. 01:37:21.000 --> 01:37:26.000 We're adjourned.