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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconomic Advisory Board - MINUTES - 10/16/2024Page 1 10/16/2024 Minutes Economic Advisory Board REGULAR MEETING Wednesday, October 16, 2024 – 4:00 PM 300 Laporte Ave, CIC Room 1. CALL TO ORDER: 4:00 PM 2. ROLL CALL a. Board Members Present – • Tim Cochran • Denny Coleman • Thierry Dossou • Erin Gray • Val Kailburn • Braulio Rojas • Richard Waal • Renee Walkup b. Board Members Absent – • Chris Denton c. Staff Members Present – • Ashley Kailburn, Sr Specialist, Economic Health Office • Erin Sporer, Business Support, Economic Health Office • Tyler Menzales, Sr Manager, Economic Health Office • SeonAh Kendall, Director, Economic Health Office d. Guest(s) – • Dave Montoya, CFO, Poudre School District 3. AGENDA REVIEW 4. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES a. Braulio motioned and Renee seconds to approve the September Minutes as amended. Motion carried Unanimous. 8-0. 6. NEW BUSINESS a. City of Fort Collins Budget Conversation • 2025-2026 Budget • City was told to only put in offers that were necessary this time as there is a budget shortfall. • Economic Health only put in two new offers. • Ongoing offers Page 2 10/16/2024 Minutes • Offer 43.1 Downtown General Improvement District (GID) • Funds parking, pedestrian, and street beautification improvements in the Downtown commercial area. • Costs support enhanced public space beautification • Sidewalk pavers, Downtown alleys, signage, tree grates, bicycle racks, and Downtown lights and flowers. • 2025: $229,631 and .25 FTE • 2026: $230,761 and .25 FTE • Offer 43.3 Business and Workforce Support • Business support (BREA) and workforce development support, including 3.0 FTE positions • Program and activities • Business Appreciation Celebration, Larimer Small Business Development Center, DEIA Talent Series, Sector Partnership support, NoCO Works, BRE surveys, language access, and data such as the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. • 2025: $560,757 and 3.0 FTE • 2026: $573,308 and 3.0 FTE • Offer 43.4 Economic Health Leadership & Capital Projects • General EHO operations, including policy work, small business/entrepreneurship and capital projects • Programs and activities • Regional economic and workforce policy, small business support (Founded in FoCo, Small Business Season), Innopshere Ventures, Capital Projects Grants, and overall economic engagement and activities. • 2025: $734,504 and 2.76 FTE • 2026: $763,180 and 2.76 FTE • New offers • Offer 43.5 Multicultural Business & Entrepreneurship Center (MBEC) • Funding the classification of 2.0 FTEs for the MBEC to ensure access to resources, communication channels, and support. MBEC Business Connectors meet clients where they are at, whether at hosted community events and/or at a partner hosted site. • We asked for 3.0 FTEs and they are funding 2.0 FTEs • We are looking at additional funds for the 3rd position. • Programs and activities • Bilingual business navigation of City services with coordination of other City departments, ensure businesses are aware of, properly licensed, and in compliance, advisor to internal city departments, collaboration on community events hosted by groups that serve underrepresented, underserved community members • Programmatic funds will be from other sources • 2025: $108,670 and 3.0 FTE (1.0 FTE contractual, 2.0 FTE Classified) • ARPA funds will be depleted in 2025 before General Fund dollars are utilized. • 2026: $392,495 and 2.0 FTE Page 3 10/16/2024 Minutes • SeonAh can get updated numbers as she believes the numbers have dropped on the 2026 numbers. • Offer 43.6 1.0 FTE Lead Specialist, Development Business Liaison • Provide centralized small business navigation through planning and/or zoning process • 2025: $ 84,250 and 1.0 FTE • 2026: $114,118 and 1.0 FTE • Currently unfunded. Four Councilmembers wanted to move it up. It will be reevaluated in the 2025 mid-cycle process. • SeonAh also reviewed the Council priorities and mentioned that Economic Health is part of many priorities aside from the Economic Health priority like conversations around water, electrification, and improving social health. Questions • What is the percentage of allocation? • General operations is 45% of our overall budget but if you took out grants, it would be 35% of the budget. • Mike gave a great presentation on Innsophere and the new grant. Thing that struck me was does he have the intellectual fire power on his staff to handle the new initiatives on this grant. Are you getting him additional help and resources or is it all covered in the grant? • Last year we prepaid $60,000 to allow them to use those funds for the compliance components. I also sit on Innsophere Ventures executive board, and I pushed them to hire an inhouse accountant and they have done that. From the NSF Engine side, they have brought on a quite of bit of staff specifically for this. They are getting folks from all over the US that are doing really great work. So, it won’t just be Mike doing the work. We are talking about what does that mean in terms of collaboration. This $60,000 is supposed to go to ongoing operation support for incubation. We gave it to them early so they could use it to get the $150 million allocation. We are in constant communication with Innopshere. • So getting back to the $175,000 in grants. How do small businesses know how to apply and what are the deadlines for this go around? • It is rolling and based on specific capital projects. We like to walk the streets. We take our team plus Utilities Key Accounts and sometimes sales tax. Some examples are Mason, Oak Street, and Trilby. It is based on capital projects. For us, it is also relationship building and for the businesses to see us. A big conversation around College and Trilby was that they were annexed a long time ago, but they don’t have the sidewalks and gutters. A lot of that is triggered through redevelopment. When we walked the street for the first time, one of the biggest things noticed was most of these legacy businesses are doing well and didn’t need our grant but they are also probably not going to redevelop soon because they are happy with what they have. We shared this with Council and ELT to see if we could start updates before redevelopment because they still need it, even if they won’t be doing redevelopment anytime soon. • For MBEC, I heard it is doing really great things. Do you have data on how much it is creating economically dollar wise? • We have how many new businesses have started. Once of the pieces Tyler is leaning into is what the ROI is. • One of the big pushes that I have started to make with MBEC and everything else is how do we quantify the impact. I am sure we can Page 4 10/16/2024 Minutes pull the number of new businesses licenses but when an entrepreneur comes through the door, if they are renting a place in Old Town, we should figure out how much they are spending on that. Are they hiring employees and at what wage? There are ways in which we can quantify that but there has been a lack of consistency in gathering that data. MBEC has been doing surveys of clients but only some are returned. I am pushing the MBEC team to figure out all the things we want to collect from clients and make it part of the onboarding or offboarding process. We are still looking to refine in on that process but as we approach the next budget cycle, I want to be able to approach Council, City leadership , and the public with the impact and why it deserves support. • As we were preparing our leadership for the budget process we did a lot of small business ecosystem mapping. One of the pieces we have said we have to meet them where they are at in their cycle. With SBDC or NoCo Biz Connect, yes there might be some cross over but we are hitting different clients. We are also doing referrals. Fort Collins has over 9,000 businesses and the Chamber, Larimer County, us, SBDC and Innosphere are still not servicing every business. We all help with formation but it is okay because we want more formation. MBEC has done well navigating internal systems and getting more folks in compliance. We take a different approach, we want you to get in compliance and here is what that looks like vs here is a fine. Poudre Fire Authority has also asked to partner more. • It has partially been addressed but I have always highlighted the relevance of having indexes or how to measure programs and that would be really important moving forward. It can be difficult because there is not consistency over time. Indexes or data don’t have to be elaborate. Simple data can give a lot of information. Based on the information you just showed us and the state we are in today with the budget process, how do you think we can collaborate with your office at this point? • We were very mindful of not throwing too many offers in. MBEC was a priority. Keep your eyes and ears open for additional funding to keep that other FTE. In addition, would love to have your input on does MBEC need to stay within the City or spin out like SBDC where we are just a host. We could have them come talk about the work they are doing. For the development review process, at the end of the day we are not the leaders on that offer and can’t be the ones to say we know best. We are okay with it not being funded and having them think through the development review process as a whole versus trying to plug a hole. We did not go over numbers in terms of increases of programs. The only increase we made is on employee pay. We have 10 FTEs in Economic Health and I think that is as big as we need to get unless we take a new division on. We need to get smart on our operation pieces. This year I challenged our team to just be. We have been running since Covid and we need to start documenting our processes, talk about the value adds, do the things we have said we are too busy for, and do the things that we do well. In 2025 the add on is business attraction. We had this year to get smarter and understand what is happening in this space, what is missing, and what is needed in the community. Business retention and expansion is very important. Keeping those we have and growing is important. As of March 2024, MBEC has helped create Page 5 10/16/2024 Minutes 64 business and served 248 clients since August 2022. • Would a memo supporting your offers be helpful? • Yes. We cannot advocate as staff. At one point we were asked what it would look like to cut 5% of our budget. • In my opinion it would be mindful or relevant to write a memo. It is a growth thing. You want to feed success. Sounds like you are showing success, it should be something we emphasize. If we can come to an agreement that we should produce a memo, then we can open the conversation about the details around it. • Braulio moved and Denny seconded to write a create a memo of support for the funding requests. Motion passes unanimously 8-0. • Braulio will write the memo. b. Poudre School District Mill Levy Ballot Measure • 2023-2024 school year • 92% retention rate for teachers and licensed staff. • The average PSD teacher salary is 9-12% less than similar districts along the Front Range. • $6.6 million reduction in staffing and operations budgets in schools next year due to declining enrollment. • $1 billion estimated capital improvements and maintenance needs in school buildings with no dedicated funding to address these needs. • $800,000 is available in the general fund to maintain the schools and facilities and they are at the tail end of their current bond. • 32 schools do not have mechanical cooling. • Student success • 623 students received CTE certifications • 98% take four or more courses in one of PSD’s career pathways graduate high school on time. • Graduation rate for 2023 was 86.9% • 80% of PSD high school students are participating in career and technical education courses • 66% of graduates earned free college credits • 21.6% increase in literacy reading scores at the elementary school level • 16% of high school students requested work-based learning opportunities. • School District Revenue Sources • Local revenue (property taxes, specific ownership taxes), state revenue (equalization, categorical funding), and federal programs. • Total Program, which is a portion of their revenue, is a combination of state and local funding and part of the School Finance Act. • Enrollment x Factors = Total Program Funding • Factors include size, at-risk (free lunch and some emerging bilingual), and cost of living. • Even though it is expensive to live in Fort Collins, compared to other districts, Fort Collins is not getting a large cost of living factor. • Enrollment this year has declined by about 350 students. Some growth happening in the secondary level (11th and 12th grade). Biggest driver is cost of Fort Collins. • Big difference in numbers between graduating class and Page 6 10/16/2024 Minutes incoming kindergarteners. • Due to this formula PSD is considered a floor funded district. They get the bare minimum of what the state provides. • Colorado is at the lower end of the funding stream across the nation in that we don’t fund K-12 education well. • The state share is provided to each school district whose local share is insufficient to fully fund its total program. If the local share goes up, the state share goes down. This means that increases in property tax collections do not automatically result in increases to PSD’s funding. Voter-approved mill levy overrides are needed to increase funding. • 2024 Mill Levy proposal • Provides $49 million annually (increasing with the rate of inflation) to maintain the district’s schools as part of the state’s Debt Free Schools Act. • If passed, it would create a dedicated revenue source to improve and extend the useful life of the district’s buildings and allow the district to re-prioritize more of its general fund for recruitment and retention, classroom resources, career and technical education, and neighborhood schools. • It would give them time to be thoughtful about the enrollment issues and consolidation conversation. • PSD would also use the Mill Levy to attract and retain the best teachers and staff through competitive salaries and providing necessary classroom materials, provide well rounded education, support small, neighborhood schools, maintain and improve school budlings and facilities, and provide arts, music, library, and physical education supplies and facilities. • PSD has been using bond cycles, but they are at the end of their current 8- year cycle. Once it is gone there is currently nothing to replace it to maintain schools. • What is the debt free school act? • It is an act created by Colorado State Legislature in 2016 for school districts to collect ongoing funding for maintenance and infrastructure needs • Allows districts to move away from bonds and have a more fiscally responsible way to fund maintenance. • How will the money be spent? • $21.5 million in qualifying expenses (building maintenance and infrastructure) will be allocated to the mill levy and the equivalent amount will be repurposed in the general fund to be used for salaries, classroom materials, career and technical education, and neighborhood schools • $22.9 million will be dedicated to building maintenance repairs, and replacement cycles • $4.6 million is state required pro-rata share for PSD authorized charter schools. • Impact on taxpayers • Based on residential home value. • 27.9% for businesses and 6.7% for residential properties. • If it fails, there will be tax decreases. Questions • You talked about the bonds and how they can’t be used for short-term Page 7 10/16/2024 Minutes projects. Are we planning on issuing any bonds for bigger project improvements? • Right now, with declining enrollment, I don’t think we are going to be having a conversation about that. The only place I think that might be relevant is Timnath Elementary. It is a very antiquated building and there is population growth in that area, but I don’t think we are planning on that anytime soon. • I have seen some school districts that are very corporative and collaborative with economic development organizations and some very contentious especially when tax incentives are involved. How would you describe your process or how you deal with those situations. How is the general tone of the relationship here? • You started by saying some are contentious and I would say that might have been true a while ago. I think Superintendent Kingsley has made great efforts to reach out to various different government agencies to start collaboration and really try to expand in those areas. For one of our big pathways for manufacturing the Bohemian Foundation and Larimer County gave us a grant to do that project. • There is a lot of discussion these days around school safety. Are any of these projects related to enhancing school safety for any of the buildings? • There are projects that would have safety in them, like door panels with RFI readers. We have an old system, and the alarm systems need to be updated. This is money that could be used for new security enhancements too. If we learn about something that we should be doing, we will have a revenue source that we can go to. • Having a strong school district is vital to keep a strong economy. The decline in enrollment is really alarming. How can we help that? How can we make sure we all work together to help because they need to work together for everyone to succeed or nobody does. I don’t know if you have an answer but if you think of something, let us know. • How long, realistically, can you keep those schools open with declining enrollment? Does it even make sense to keep them open. I am saying that from a person who was in an area where one was closing. If I was a business, I would close them. Are we just placating because there are loud voices and is it a really bad financial decision. Should that go to paying teachers more and being more fiscally responsible? • Our voters and community members were vocal around give us an option to do something else, and one of those options was to go back to the voters and ask for a Levy Mill override to do that. I think our Board of Education thought that they needed to take that opportunity to listen to them. • But how long can they stay open? • 3-5 years is what our goal is to delay that conversation. If enrollment continues to decline, we must have that conversation. It buys us time to see if that is an ongoing thing or not. It is not just Fort Collins. This is happening across the nation right now. DPS just announced they are going to close several schools. • The numbers don’t add up to me. You’re talking about 50 million dollars a year for 5 years and it gets you $250 million, but you need a billion. I don’t see how it works it just seems low. • It doesn’t work. It gets us a lot further along than where we’re at. The reality is we also looked heavily at our polling data to see where Page 8 10/16/2024 Minutes voter tolerance is at. We could ask for more, but I am not sure voters would have tolerance for that. • Does that mean next year you are going to come back and do the same thing? I mean I understand things like HVAC and making sure schools are safe but then you add in a scoreboard or sound system. Those two things to me, there should be a major prioritization of what’s required as opposed to wanted. It seems like a disconnect to me that those are thrown in there. • I could probably answer this a little less politically. I grew up in a public school without great facilities and we were always jealous of the other schools. It weighed on you as a kid. I would bring equality into the equation as part of this. • Nobody wants the school district to suffer. The voters are going to decide. I think the root of the problem is enrollment and that is not going to change. Today we can create bonds, and the mill levy in five years we might end up in the same place. I have kids. My wife works for the school district, and I think the rational decision got trapped in the fear for voters. Sometimes when you have a rational decision and people who need to make that decision get intimidated by what’s going to happen at the next election, you could go down the wrong path. People that ask for votes should be more responsible for what they need to do vs the votes they want to count at the next election. I think your staff is bullied at times. I hope you can continue to visit this board. We are open for you and PSD. Let’s see what the voters say. 7. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS 8. STAFF REPORTS a. Tyler Introduced himself as he was in person this meeting. He is the new Senior Manager in the Economic Health Office. 9. OTHER BUSINESS 10. ADJOURNMENT a. (6:06PM) Minutes approved by a vote of the Board/Commission on 11/20/2024