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.
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.
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.
I move approval as sent on in advance.
On both minutes. There's a motion for approval of both sets of minutes.
Second. And we have a second. Any discussion, comments, questions?
All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?
The minutes are approved. Thank you so much.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This policy expires on March 20th, 2020.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So we wanted to save time, save your time and be a little bit efficient in how we move through the policy process.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So we just wanted to make that clear to applicants under our policy that we're going to be looking at your average wages.
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.
We updated the qualified census tract map. It was out of date. We updated it to the 2020 map.
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.
And that's all of the changes that we're recommending at this point.
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.
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.
That's my presentation.
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?
We evaluate it based on salary. When we ask applicants to submit us wage information, we ask for the salary information.
They will often provide us both salary and wages, generally if they're below that number.
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.
We want to know about it, but generally we're looking at just the wage.
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?
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.
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.
Well the reason I was asking was I don't know what the others think, but to me that's a pretty significant increase.
The $75,000? That's $75,000 is what's in the policy today.
That part didn't change.
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.
We wouldn't be asking for every position to be $75,000. We want to incentivize positions that are making over $75,000.
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.
But to qualify for the jobs you have to have an average over the Dent County average.
What's the Dent County average?
It's $22-ish.
Yes.
Which is I would say higher than the city of Denton average.
That's a higher order.
$22-ish would put you at $45,000.
I don't know if the top's going to understand.
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.
But I like it.
Yes.
I like it. It's just a question of...
I think the goal is to try to bring higher paying jobs, not offer incentives to lower paying jobs.
So those doors are closing that chapter of history.
We're not changing anything.
I don't get that.
I'm just saying, if they're not going to come this strong, then don't even come.
No, that's not saying that.
That is just a goal. So when we're looking at incentives for people coming to town...
Yes.
We want to bring people with higher paying jobs.
That doesn't mean we won't bring people with jobs less than $75,000.
That means the goal is to increase higher paying jobs.
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
to show that their average wages are higher than the county average wages.
So that's the thing.
The first one is a goal.
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.
So that's what they were doing.
So let's say someone comes and they are not in this category, or at least in this ballpark.
What ballpark you're talking about for coming is they have to be higher than the $22 an hour.
Our goal was to try to find more people that pay higher jobs.
That doesn't mean they can't qualify for both of those.
I'm above $22,000. I was at the $75,000.
So just so that you know, the statement in the policy right now says increase the percentage of jobs paying $75,000 per year
or more from 10% to 14% by 2020.
We're just striking the 10% to 14% by 2020.
We're keeping the goal.
We're removing the timeline since it is 2020.
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.
We made no change to the goal or how we would operate for companies coming in.
If I could just add to that, some of the incentives we've seen, Mr. Baines, they have a chart.
And some of the majority of the workers make less than that.
And then so some of them, a few of the higher ones make a little bit more than that.
And so with the average, it equals what the incentive policy qualifies for.
So that's kind of been where I have found the sticking point.
When do you get 100 jobs that make $10 an hour and only three that make $8,000?
$400,000.
Yeah.
That's kind of where you take the average of those and you qualify.
Well, that, again, I think we're trying to change a few things here just to update the policy, just for clarification.
But that's a good discussion to have with TIP strategies on how do we change that number.
Mr. Chairman, I've got a quick question.
So in the general provision document, Exhibit H, when we define higher wage, right,
it talks about average of $55,000 or greater and at least that's on page three of the general provisions.
So how does that definition relate back to the $75,000 number?
So the $75,000 was one of the general goals of the council and of this board.
The higher wage is a threshold that we use in determining the qualification for a specific incentive.
The investment fund includes that higher wage term that says you have to have the $55,000 or greater
for all positions or 25% making above $65,000.
So that definition ties to that specific tool.
I've got a question on changing the, basically the packet has to be complete with all that information.
Yes.
Are we expecting an applicant to know if they're compatible with the NIT and 30/30 plan and the building code
and the city ordinances and put that in the packet or is that something that's backed up?
We would review it with them.
Generally it's a, I wouldn't say they kind of hand it off to us and we've never met with them before.
Generally we've had meetings with people who are considering applying.
And one thing that we tell them is certainly making sure that your use is compliant with your zoning
or is there a path forward if you need to seek a zoning change that would be compatible.
What we don't want to do, this is a bad example, but say we wanted to have a heavy industrial user
and they wanted to be in downtown Denton.
We would probably say that's not the place and there's no compatible use in any continuous area for that to occur.
You might want to consider this location.
Again, that's kind of an off the wall example, but we try and work with the applicants to make sure
that they're familiar enough with the code, that they're not bringing in a project at that point,
that regardless of what incentive we offer them, development wise, it can't happen.
We try and head that off right at the beginning.
Has there been a problem with incomplete applications that we're adding that language in there?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
So we want to make sure that kind of from the shop clock perspective, once we have a complete application,
we want to get applicants through the process as efficiently as possible.
What we don't want to have happen is preparing our analysis to bring to the board
and find out that we don't have the information that we need.
So we try and work with applicants ahead of time.
And then we're updating the census tracts map.
I guess we have one census tract that has fortunately risen above the line.
And then I guess we're also adding, we're picking up another qualified census tract in the north part of town
between Sherman and Locust.
These come from the census.
Yeah, I understand.
I'm making sure I'm reading the map correctly.
Yes.
That we've picked up one qualified census tract.
But then fortunately, one census tract kind of in the heart of town has risen above the line.
So if folks living there, that's a good thing for people seeking certain grants, maybe not so much.
But generally for our town, that's a positive development.
So this is just a couple small items to get us through the end of this process with the strategy
when we come back with a holistic view of the whole thing.
Yes.
Anybody have any more questions or comments, discussion?
Or if not, would anybody like to jump out there?
I have one question because I think I saw where you can only make amends or change it.
What was that?
So after, in the two-year period, you have to have a three-fourths vote to make an amendment.
So when this gets adopted or if this gets adopted by city council,
you would then require a three-fourths vote of the city council to amend it.
During that two-year time period.
I will say that we've kind of thought this out and, you know, how do we move forward in a timeline?
Based on the recommendations we get, we're not asking TIP to rewrite our policy.
We assume we'll be getting the plan later this year.
It could be a six-month to a one-year process for us to workshop and rewrite the policy of the plan.
And we thought that was just too long of a way to go without.
We have companies we're speaking to now, active projects that we think are going to submit applications.
And we certainly didn't want to deny them that opportunity.
And denied this board or council the opportunity to receive those applications and consider them.
So we do have to have something by law to be able to consider those.
Just kind of follow up.
So it can still be amended, it's the three-fourths vote that is the qualifier?
Yes.
And we would always hope to have a policy that is 100 percent.
Right. For sure.
That's our goal.
Right. Okay. Thank you.
Anybody else?
Anybody want to make a motion?
I move that this body approve the changes to the tax-cutment policy as presented here today.
We'll obtain a motion for a second.
Second.
We have a motion and a second.
Any further discussion?
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
All right. Motion carries.
Our next item is to revisit with our friends from TIP Strategies about the process we're going through.
Thank you guys for coming back.
Such a lovely day.
Yeah, I'm not going to take responsibility for the weather.
Although we were in Detroit earlier this month.
Except it's not frozen yet.
Well, thank you guys.
It's great to be back and continuing to meet with the leadership here.
We've already had a great 24 hours as we got in yesterday about lunchtime.
As usual, Jessica keeps us really busy.
Lots of meetings.
We'll talk about the meetings that we've had so far and what we have ahead of us.
And are really interested in your feedback today.
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.
But right now, we're getting a lot of anecdotes and opinions about what's going on.
And so our job next will be to go back and really validate some of the things that were here.
And we will be excited as we get through this process to make some recommendations as we review your current incentive policy.
But as Jessica mentioned, the details of how you would go through that.
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.
But so just a quick project update.
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.
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.
That will be what we do on the next.
And then the third phase is implementation.
And we are right on track.
I don't feel the need to go through a timeline with you guys or a detailed scope.
But we're right on track with where we need to be at this particular point.
On the last trip, the Chamber, Erica did a great job of pulling together a group of businesses for us.
We also held what we called a tech/entrepreneurship roundtable and then more of the traditional industry came together.
Thank you, Peter Belt and others who came to that meeting.
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.
Also, you know, we meet with economic development staff in between just about every meeting, so we appreciate your feedback.
And then had a city executive leadership that was Todd, city manager, and a couple of others got some feedback there.
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.
And then on this trip so far, we are going to be meeting with every city council member.
I think we've got everybody scheduled and we really appreciate you guys taking the time to meet with us.
And unfortunately, we only have about a half an hour, 45 minutes for those meetings.
But just know that we're going to be available after that for additional meetings as this process goes forward.
And Jason was in here a moment ago from TWU.
Did he have to go to another room?
Yes.
John keeps it busy.
That's right, so now I can talk about him now.
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.
But he did a great job telling the history, and so we shared notes there.
And then we had an energetic meeting with the judge.
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.
And so it was a great meeting.
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.
But I think they -- I don't know if this is public or not.
No, it's all right.
It's in the works.
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.
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.
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.
And so I thought that that was one of our best sort of feedback sessions so far.
And then -- what else have we done, Jacqueline? A lot. Met with Councilmember Paul. Met this morning. Met with Development Services from the city.
And then we have a busy afternoon, more meetings and a roundtable with you.
So are we wearing you out just talking about it?
Yes.
All right. All right. Just letting you guys know. Just letting you guys know this is our schedule.
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.
So any questions?
Is NCTC and UNT on the right over?
They definitely are. We actually met with the Chancellor from NCTC as part of the first workforce and education group.
But we'll also reach back out the fact that he serves on the statewide association -- are they called community colleges?
Community colleges.
Community colleges, talk boards, something like that. Association of Community Colleges.
We've been keeping UNT up to date through both AMLA and through the President's office.
They just weren't able to attend the February meetings or the meetings this time.
But we're working for some more university-focused meetings in March, hoping that we're not falling on their spring break week.
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.
Any other questions, Marty or anybody else?
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.
So some of the emerging themes, and Jacqueline, feel free to pipe in here. I don't want to take over.
So remember last time we asked you guys to do some little pollings, some real-time polling?
And one of the questions we asked was around, you know, rating these statements.
Is it economically competitive? Is it an attractive place for young professionals? Does it have the capacity?
There weren't any big surprises in terms of how this went. I was a little surprised by the 3.9.
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,
but they also felt negative about certain things, which came out in other themes, you know, access to affordable housing and transportation.
Some of the things that were very important to a younger professional group felt like they were still lacking in this community.
So it's interesting to hear, you know, this crowd says, oh yeah, it's great for young professionals.
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.
You know, it's not enough to make assumptions. Yes, sir?
Yo tengo una pregunta por las razas diferentes. ¿Tú tienes la habilidad para comunicar con los áreas diferentes en esta ciudad?
Sí, o hablo español.
Muchas gracias.
Sí, pero también tengo un compadre, un empleado que puede hablar español mejor que yo.
Pero yo veo los vistos allá, no veo los africanamericanos, los mexicanos, los asianes.
Yo creo que es muy importante para incluir estas partes.
So you guys are getting the gist of John's, including the populations, and I appreciate the test.
I'm making a point.
I think you committed to purchasing a car for me.
You heard it.
That's what I heard.
I'm giving away cash.
I can tell you some stories.
So I'm married to a mexican-american woman when I first left home to meet her dad.
And he asked her and my mother-in-law in Spanish, you know, "Does this white boy eat beans?"
And I apologized for that really.
I mean, he said, "¿Este gingo come frijones?"
And so my wife answered, "Yes, Dad, he does. Andy speaks Spanish."
And that began the relationship I had with my father-in-law.
It's really shifted things quite a bit.
Would you catch my drift?
No, I do. I do.
As a matter of fact, when we were in Detroit, this was the last we could read before.
I don't know if it's coming together.
But part of what we did is we helped facilitate several different sessions around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And anytime I'm in those sessions, I always realize I'm really not the best person to be in that discussion.
But actually you are.
I mean, in a way, I opened up the session by asking what does diversity mean to you?
And so everybody in the group started defining what it meant.
It started with race. It started with income, LGBTQ.
But then it went to age, sort of the diversity of ages.
And right now, there's biases against whatever you want to call millennials or whatever you want to pick on.
There's the OK Boomer.
At that, in my house, it's like, OK Boomer.
You know who's paying your insurance bill right now?
But those discussions, it's really fascinating.
And so we take that very seriously.
And we will continue to work on that.
So thank you for pointing that out.
Thank you.
But the last time, we also asked, you know, you compete with Dallas, Frisco, Plano, Alliance, Fort Worth, McKinney.
These were some of the items.
And so as we start thinking about comparing you guys to others and understanding what other groups are up to,
these are some of the communities that we're going to look at, but we won't limit it to these.
We also asked what constituted success for the project, buy-in, actionable strategy, measurable action plan, unified direction, clear vision.
A lot of common themes around, we want to have a plan.
We want to feel like there's consensus around what that plan is.
Question.
Yes.
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?
This was just your group.
Okay.
Right now.
Just curious what I'm seeing, right?
Right now.
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.
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,
you guys may have other things on your minds.
I can't imagine what it would be.
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.
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.
You've got major medical that's delivered here.
You have, you know, Razor Ranch, another retail that's in this community.
You have a downtown that's now, at least a portion of it is more vibrant.
And while we know that only four people actually drive the A-Train, that's about right.
So I promise I wouldn't quote anybody.
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.
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.
So this is no longer sort of that sleepy college town, and that growth is moving this direction.
And I've worked in a number of communities, and I've lived in Austin for 40 years.
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.
And you guys are in that position where growth is going to come this way.
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,
what's happened with Alliance and what's kind of coming up, you know, 35 West, you know, you are going to continue growing.
That pressure is going to be there.
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.
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.
You know, just the way that it is.
So people are attracted to Denton's Authentic.
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.
And that's what we're looking for, is like, you know, your reactions.
Is this off or is this different than what you hear or what you think?
But one of the, you know, this authentic charm and quirky culture is seen by many people as a differentiator for you.
You know, that's something that's harder to find in a greater DFW area.
And probably a lot of that comes out of the universities that are here in the industry,
similar to Austin and how we became, you know, weird and quirky in different ways.
That that's one of the unique factors of this community.
Lots of assets.
You know, you own your own utility.
You've got the multiple universities, the vibrant downtown.
You've got, you know, an industrial park that has major, you know, world-class tenants in it.
You've got a number of assets here that, you know, are very valuable from an economic development standpoint.
You know, byproduct of the growth, outpacing, you know, the infrastructure is that your development services guys and the infrastructure,
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,
what do we do second in terms of the infrastructure that's needed.
And this, the infrastructure question doesn't happen in a vacuum.
When we met this morning with development services, you know,
we're pulling up text-dot maps and they're showing where the planned sort of loop, the outer loop is
and how that's impacting current road projects that the city has planned because of text-dots,
decisions about connections to that loop in the future.
So, you know, infrastructure is a big deal and it drives a lot of what's going to happen.
So, competition from DFW communities such as Frisco and McKinney.
I mean, what do you guys, when I ask the question about who you compete with, do you really compete with Frisco and McKinney?
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.
Well, we put a new facility in McKinney, so yes.
All right. From an economic development standpoint and definitely.
I feel like the comparisons comes because McKinney is or was similarly sized city on I-75, so on a highway.
And it seems like the growth kind of, you know, a lot of different growth happened over there.
They've got a square happened over there first.
So because we're north of the Metroplex, I think that's that draw.
I don't know that we competed for projects against them or there's things going on over there.
Frisco, you just see they have attracted a lot of stuff, but they started with farmland.
We've got a hundred and fifty, sixty year old infrastructure here and it's not the same.
So they can go in and say, we want to have a sports themed, you know, growth and offices.
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.
They don't want there.
But it just seems like that's where you hear major announcements.
It's South Denton County, West or East Denton County.
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.
Any other reactions to who you compete with?
It really just depends on the circumstance and what kind of competition you're talking about.
We offer a completely different product.
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,
sure, there's some competition there, but that's almost all population driven stuff.
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.
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.
I think we just offer a completely different product, and there may be competition in some sectors, but we're not going for PGA.
We're never going to go for the PGA. Charles Schwab would have been nice.
Why not the PGA headquarters?
What's that?
Why wouldn't you want the PGA headquarters?
Why wouldn't we want it? It's not a fit. It never would be an economic development fit for them.
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.
It's not that we would want it. We're just, we didn't offer the things that they were looking for.
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.
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.
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.
So there's some things that maybe we are in competition for, and that we'd want to be in competition for.
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.
What are we really wanting to be competitive for, and what are we going to leave on the table?
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.
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.
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?
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.
My brother was the city leading scorer at 5'6", but he got overlooked because they weren't looking for 5'6" people.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And so, you know, it's going to take some additional growth coming up, maybe 35 to improve your numbers.
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.
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.
Because it's a $175 million worth of first days investment.
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.
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.
And we love those. Those do well. They pay a lot of taxes. You know, it's like you want to support those.
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?
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.
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.
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.
You know, how do we leverage that for economic development? What does that really mean?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you. Because that's kind of what I'm looking for, sort of the creative ways we think about using your assets.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We do offer those for larger companies, too, and corporate headquarters.
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?
Are there opportunities for that?
You're from Austin. So what's your perception of our education? What do the Austin people think of our identity?
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.
And the things that they do happen to leverage, or happen to have huge economic development value, but it hasn't always been perfect.
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.
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.
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?
You mean?
Knee-jerk. Oh, well, I mean, I think of music and arts as being a strength. That's the reputation that we've known.
And then just sort of discovering over the last 10 years that they're strong in engineering and business and some other things.
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.
Can I make a comment? I used to travel to Austin a lot about 10 years ago.
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.
They stayed in Austin because Austin could give them the job opportunities they needed.
I don't think that's the case here for us. Unfortunately, I think that's one of our biggest challenges.
I was reading this morning, I guess in the last 10 years, that Dallas-Fort Worth area has created a million jobs.
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.
And some of them would love to stay here, but there's just no opportunities for them.
Call me about Detonate professionals.
Pardon?
Call me. The Detonate professionals are being task force.
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.
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.
That's an opportunity I think we've been missing for a while, is a strong young professionals networking group.
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.
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.
And make available jobs to those people that are graduating with finance degrees, business degrees, other than the music degrees.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So how do we get those jobs here? I'm going to come to you and then I'll come back.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You know, so if we can focus on that, it may start to work. I have a question.
You know, when you talk about jobs and talking about jobs, who has the real number of how many jobs are created each year.
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.
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.
So is there a measure? Yes. And who's doing the measure?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The file data capitals are increasing. The research contracts are increasing. So as a community, we're becoming more vibrant, more attractive, more saleable.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All right. Maybe I lost power. Turn it off. Wait three seconds. Turn it back on.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But you guys are not alone in, really in the country right now with access to what we consider workforce housing or affordability.
Not just during the section 8 housing, but housing at different levels. You know, that's a challenge everywhere we go right now.
I mean, every single community that we go, especially communities that have any kind of opportunity, it's a challenge.
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.
And yet the pressure on real estate in most communities puts that, you know, even the inexpensive stuff out of reach.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
But that's, maybe that's just perception. We're meeting with universities and the city and feel like that needs to be approved.
And then, I don't know what we meant by leadership transitions. Do you remember?
That there have been a lot of transitions at the city and the chamber.
Okay. And I assume that's mostly going to work out the better. This is a new opportunity for the community with new leadership.
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.
Thank you.
Anything missing from that list?
You asked me to stop, Marty.
So, you didn't let me skip over that.
Yeah, a couple of quick data points.
Can I just open up Tableau?
So, I had mentioned earlier, these are communities that have 4A.
And I think I can just scroll in here, just within the county.
And I don't have the numbers for what they're collecting right now, but I know that data is available.
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.
And you may know it off the top of your head.
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.
Do we know how many of those cities listed give a large percentage of their sales tax to public transportation as well?
I'm guessing that none of these do that have 4A or 4B.
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,
they would be somewhat limited in what they could participate because the one cent that's dedicated to the city stays with the city.
Now, the one cent is the other flexible.
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.
And I believe eights is the limit right now from the comptroller on what you can do.
I don't think you can use 16ths of a cent.
And so there's only so many ways you can divide that one cent.
And so generally, communities that are participating in 4A and 4B don't participate in Metro Transit.
It was the same in the Houston area when I was down there.
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.
Yeah, I wasn't going to tell a lot of stories around this particular data set,
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.
One interesting story, I think, is if -- can I select both 4B and A at the same time?
No.
No? Okay.
Well, I'll pick on 4B then because there's a few more.
But it's just always fascinating to see if you scroll out the concentration in the DFW area.
You guys are -- we're in the majority of the 4A and 4B sales taxes are using or where they exist.
But I'm going to be as much interested in how much is being raised and coming back to you guys.
And then in addition to that, in the areas where we can actually get information about staffing and how funds are being spent,
to be able to share that with you as we're thinking about how creative does Denton want to get.
So any questions on that?
I think Tauga has $12.36, and they're fine.
All right.
Oh, wait, no way for Tauga to be listed there.
Dairy Queen there, right?
Was there -- let's see, if I go down my list here, which one do I want next?
Number four?
Okay.
And so we're just now taking a first cut at looking at the revenues for different cities
and how they're generating their revenues in terms of general revenue.
And so Denton for 2018, and anybody from the city needs to correct me on the fly here for free.
We're not going to publish this data yet.
But if they're -- so 35% actually comes from property tax.
And then you've got 20% sales, 14% franchise fees, and then 32% other revenues.
And I think you had a question.
Yeah, so we were talking about earlier why our -- know that that is capturing development fees.
So if you look at, in the standard report, the number of the increase in building permits,
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.
Because my question, does general revenue account for income from utilities?
Utilities.
Yeah.
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.
But it is interesting to see how much -- what percentage is -- you've got all that greenfield new development that's going on,
how much of the revenue for Frisco is coming from property tax, McKinney, Flower Mound.
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.
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.
Same thing that Boston ran into for a number of years.
We have the state capital, we have the university, and until we reached a certain size where we had a lot more private investment
from other companies, we were a little bit out of whack there.
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
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,
what does it make sense to focus on? It's easy to say, oh yeah, let's incentivize a particular type of business,
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,
it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Tom, I have a question.
Yes.
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?
And how would you define strength of that tax base?
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.
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.
Not necessarily a higher rate, but we have more taxable value.
Right.
And that generates more property taxes, which to me is one of the things that we would like to have here.
Gotcha.
Can you differentiate between residential and commercial?
I think we can do industrial, residential, and commercial property taxes.
Yeah, the CAD breaks it down in those three general categories, because that determines how they use different methods to value the property.
Generally, yes, we know how much value is coming from each of those broad categories.
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.
Jacqueline, do we happen to have the community data on this one?
Did you pull it up?
Yeah, it should be up on the other tab.
Which is right here?
Okay.
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,
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,
we want them to align with where your strengths are.
Could you go back to that one that you had in the blue?
If I could make a suggestion?
Yeah, it's that one.
Let's say in the blue, you put the dollar value that's generating that 35%.
Yeah, how much is industrial versus --
How much industrial is generating, and you go look at Frisco, and that tells us how much industry they have.
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.
We've got data on sort of general obligation debt based on other communities.
Good question. Do you have residential versus --
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.
But I will say that it's very difficult in comparing cities to find apples to apples.
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.
Some have -- they're a municipally owned utility that helps offset certain other costs that you might not have.
Some rely on fees. Some rely on their sales tax.
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.
And that debate's still going on right now, so you really have to continue drilling down.
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.
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?
Where are they going to? Because that question of how many people live in Denton that are educated, that are currently leaving the community,
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.
And what age groups, what are their current earning levels, and where are they going?
Obviously, Dallas is the number one destination with Fort Worth being number two.
But this is a relatively new, even though the data set has been available for a while, you can see where people are commuting.
Being able to drill down below that and find out characteristics of those who are leaving.
You really couldn't get to any of that unless you did a specific survey.
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.
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.
There's a little pod on the other side of the lake.
Can you tell me what the source says at the bottom down there? I'm trying to...
Yeah, it's the... Oh, gosh. Do you know LEHD?
It's like a combination.
Yeah, I'll get that to you. I'll get that to you.
All right, guys. I'm going to switch back. We have about 20 minutes left.
We are going to put together what we will consider a draft of a SWAT.
And I'll actually send this to you guys afterwards so you'll see our first attempt at populating this.
But when we think of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, many times it's really just something that's local.
In other words, this isn't a weakness in the greater metroplex area that's just a dent in weakness.
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.
You know, whatever, if you want to see that as a weakness.
And then also sometimes things are beyond our control. They're happening nationally or globally.
And I'm going to go through this relatively quickly and I'm going to give it back to you guys as homework.
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.
And so we're going to take each one of these strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
And on the strengths side, I think I'm missing, I looked at it just a moment ago, I'm missing its ETC.
So make sure you put that in there.
But availability of water. I think that came up in some of our industrial meetings.
That's not an everywhere in Texas thing. It's definitely not. That's a big deal.
The universities, they're, you know, relative to other communities that are landlocked.
In the DFW area, which many of them are, that I've worked for, Rowlett, Saxey, Wiley, and you know,
a lot of those communities have very limited development opportunities.
You guys still have a great swath along I-35 on the south, west side.
There's still a lot of land available on the north side of the community.
So there's still a lot of room for this community to grow over the next 10, 20, 30 years.
That's a benefit.
Concludes of the interstates. Overall, affordable cost of living.
Manufacturing, workforce, music and arts downtown, location and a growing metro.
Unique culture. There's the word unique. So we didn't use quirky. That one I like.
Alright. We're good. We're good there. Alright.
Airport. I don't really have a good feel for the airport yet, but we're going to meet with those guys.
So I'll get a better feel for what's going on out there.
Your park system. While not 100% lots of plans for improving that.
Competitive tax climate, which is really an overall state competitiveness issue that Texas has.
And just overall economic growth for the US.
Some of the weaknesses or challenges. As I mentioned, your housing mix, limited resources.
It's interesting with the young professionals. We had a pretty diverse group there.
And for them, some of them, they felt like, yeah, a lot of people think of this as a very progressive community.
But there's still a lot of exclusivity. It's hard for us to feel like we have opportunities that others have.
And, you know, in Austin right now, we're having that discussion every day.
You know, it's a big part of the discussion. We've got all this tech growth.
But you have communities that don't get to experience the benefit of all that growth within the community.
How do we help those folks? Not a lot of Class A office.
Some of the corridors that come into the city, you know, don't give off the best sort of impression of the city.
One of the interviews that we had this week talked about somebody that hadn't been here for a long time.
And they didn't really, they had been coming through by the community, but they didn't even know that downtown existed.
And they had a child that was going to the university, or they wanted to go to the university.
They'd come into town, and they didn't know to go to downtown.
You know, it wasn't part of the sales pitch. They just didn't know.
And we all, you know, who have been in the downtown, when we talk about Denton, we talk about that as an asset.
But is it, you know, something that's known to the broader community?
Workforce for skilled trades, that's a statewide, national issue, probably should be out there.
And you've got a community college that pointed out to us that they operate without the taxing district.
They operate off of state funds and fees, tuition, fees. Interesting.
Let's see. Opportunities. You know what, I left this off, Heather.
When I was talking about strings, the growing taxing. I want to point that out.
I want to point that out, because I feel like we heard stories yesterday when we went to Stoke.
Of course, it's your business to help us understand, but it's real.
I mean, the number of small companies that have started here and have grown here,
some very heavy on the tech side, some, you know, Etsy-based artwork that's done, that gets converted,
and before you know it, you're selling stuff all over the globe, and one of the top sellers.
You know, so there's an entrepreneurial culture here that I think needs to be leveraged,
and I think that's a big opportunity.
So expanding tech, R&D innovation, leveraging higher education.
I know this is a sensitive issue for some, but mall redevelopment, telling the story better,
utilizing utility funds for economic development. That's a question mark for us.
It's like how far down that path, what can be used from your electric utility to support economic development.
You know, I kind of grew up with economic development in Texas being led by the electric utilities.
I worked for the State Department of Commerce. We didn't have any money.
Most of the economic development in Texas was done by the Texas utilities.
I can't list them off. Houston Light, I'm naming all what they used to be called.
Houston Lighting and Power, Gulf State Utilities, Central Power and Light.
I mean, these guys had budgets. When I was running the International Department,
Central Power and Light paid for my travel to go to Asia.
You know, here I was a state employee running state offices in Taipei and Tokyo,
and I couldn't afford to go, but they could fund it because they were the economic development engine
for many of the communities in Texas.
So what is the question for you guys, in other words, what does it mean to have a utility?
Is there a possibility to be created in the way that utility supports economic development?
And then threats. We should have started with this. We should have started with coronavirus.
We were there, right? And climate change, trade policy.
All right, so we are going to send this to you guys.
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?
What have the consultants not captured yet?
I could have given you a bike slate, but the idea was to give you something to start with.
So any questions on the homework assignment that I'm going to be giving you guys?
So once you send this to us, what's your expectation?
So the expectation is for you to review it, and then you can just email us just any comments that you have
about who really missed something in one of the strengths or weaknesses.
Well, I'm kind of sensing that we probably need to wind down here, Mark.
We've got about 10 minutes left, but I feel like I've been doing too much talking.
Let me talk about next steps, and then if there's any closing thoughts, we'll do that.
All right, so we are going to be developing opportunities, and I'm going to flash through this real quick
so that you don't see that we're actually starting to think about what the recommendations are going to be.
And I'm going to skip ahead.
So we are going to be back in March, and at that time, we will have done additional homework
on where we think specific opportunities are.
We will have met with all of the council members to get feedback.
We will have met, hopefully, with UNT or at least have a phone call here.
We're planning to have an additional meeting with TWU, and then we've got some other things planned.
And so we will be back in March.
We're also going to be looking at the best practices.
Who else is comfortable to you guys that is doing economic development for you guys
to consider a framework for what happens?
So we need to -- we're going to change an R reading to back a week to the 18th.
Normally, it would be on the 11th.
Yes, so as it fell, that was the week that -- the week before that is actually the spring break week,
I think, for Denton ISD and I think for both of our universities.
NLC.
And NLC, and so we were going to lose, I think, quite a few people.
And so we were more comfortable with the 17th, 18th being the dates that they're here.
So pushing back your March meeting one week so that it wasn't occurring on any time
when someone had family or children obligations or maybe a student home from university
that you want to spend time with.
So that was our thought.
Yes.
Unless someone is still on spring break that week, I think every week in March is a spring break for someone.
All right, we've got to have a homework assignment.
And then you'll also be able to react to all the other slides if there's something in there
that went over a little too fast or you didn't capture it.
But from our perspective, we feel like we're on track.
We're partway through our meetings of this trip, so we have a busy afternoon and then a busy day tomorrow.
And then I think this evening at five we're meeting --
We're meeting with a number of local developers by representing some commercial development,
some residential development, and some industrial development.
So we have a good group coming this evening to give a holistic perspective of what they're seeing and experiencing.
Yeah, we always feel like giving the developers an opportunity to be candid with us is important.
And we recognize their perspective and appreciate their perspective.
Did you find some that are willing to give their opinions?
More than so.
And what time is that? Is that here?
What, the developer round table?
Yeah, it's at five.
Is it an invitation only for some people or what did their communities put it out and open for anyone to come?
No, I contacted the developers directly and asked for specific representatives from --
It's just for them to have a specific discussion about development.
It's not -- when we move into the later stages we'll be having open community meetings to get feedback.
It's for them to just provide their specific experience as a developer.
Yeah, and we'll definitely -- we won't attribute the feedback to any particular developer,
but when we come back we'll share with you guys what we said and the perceptions that we have.
I just know there's a large community, so I just want to make sure there's opportunities for more than just --
Yeah, we kept it pretty limited in this.
If it gets bigger than about five or ten people, it can have a big conversation.
It's hard for someone to get their opinion, so we did keep them somewhat limited.
But our goal would be in March to start opening it up to the broader community.
All right, guys, anything else?
Any surprises so far?
Mostly positive.
No, I mean, like I said, I have not been in Denton for a while since we worked here.
I'll try.
All right, thank you, guys.
All right, thank you, Tom, appreciate it.
That's a lot of really cool information.
Looking forward to further discussions.
Our next item is EDP 20-009 staff reports, given the short amount of time we have left.
Anybody want to bring it up?
We don't have anything specific to report right now, but I will say we're talking to a number of prospects,
and you might see some applications in the very near future, so I'm excited about that.
Charlie, Erika, anything from the Chamber side that we need to be aware of?
You'll see the new format for the report in the back.
It's a narrative reporting.
It's one page.
There's not a lot of metrics, but Charlie, do you have anything?
No.
Any other items we need to talk about or place on the agenda for next time?
Looks like we'll look for a calendar rotation for March 18th, Wednesday the 18th.
And other than that, I'll take a motion to adjourn.
So moved.
Second.
We're adjourned.