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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconomic Advisory Commission - Minutes - 04/18/20181 | Page MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION Date: Wednesday, April 18, 2018 Location: Colorado River Room, 222 Laporte Ave. Time: 11:00am–1:00pm For Reference Wade Troxell, Mayor & Council Liaison Josh Birks, Staff Liaison 221-6324 Erin Zimmermann, Minutes 221-4349 Commission Members Present: Commission Members Absent: Sam Solt, Chair Connor Barry Ann Hutchison Aric Light Denny Otsuga John Parks Linda Stanley Craig Mueller Ted Settle Staff Present: Erin Zimmermann, Admin/Board Support Josh Birks, Economic Health Director Shannon Hein, Business Specialist Guests: George Grossman Dale Adamy Mark Van Ark Jerell Klaver Presenters: Meeting called to order at 11:09 am Public Comment— George Grossman, owner of Happy Lucky’s Teahouse. For the last four to five months, I’ve been to a few listening sessions, worked with staff from Utilities, and met with Economic Health Office employees. I keep asking myself how the City can help with small business vitality. I continually see disconnect with the City and the needs of small business. There also seems to be a disconnect between the Economic Health Office and the rest of the City. For example, the sign code- I asked Economic Health if they had been involved in it and they said no. An EHO department goal is to retain, expand, incubate, and attract employers. I’m coming at it from the small business owner perspective. How do we retain and expand small businesses? I’m here to listen, learn, and offer my two cents, if asked. I did a similar talk at City Council. How does EHO get a seat at the table? The Mayor’s answer was for me to come and meet you and so here I am. Sam: We understand the issue of silos and appreciate that you are here. Being aware that every time something happens in the City, there’s an impact to small business is important. 2 | Page Jerell Klaver: Owner for Solus. We vary from 40-65 employees manufacturing, retail operations. I want to be more of a part of the conversation as more things are happening in the City. We are a natural bath and body care company. Retail location is at 240 Walnut Street and our warehouse manufacturing operations is south of Magnolia. Review and Approval of Minutes: Denny motioned to approve the minutes with corrected Startup Week registration numbers of 1,300 last year and over 1,500 this year. Approved unanimously as presented. Agenda Review— No changes Commission Member/Staff Updates— • Ann: May 8th is the Talent Summit. It is $20 to attend and is at the Embassy Suites. It is a follow- up from the release of Talent 2.0. We will provide a brief update on what we’ve gotten done, feature two keynote speakers, and have some breakout sessions. Info is available on the Chamber’s website. Would love to have EAC members attend. Please share with your network. • Denny: I joined board of NOCO Food Cluster, nonprofit group promoting local food distribution and people thinking about local food business. • Craig: Went to the NOCO Manufacturing Partnership trade show at The Ranch. Twice as large as last year. • Sam: I also attended NOCO Manufacturing and had similar observations. I think there could be some segmentation opportunities. It would be interesting to know about that and see what role the City can play in that. Perhaps we are having a rebirth of manufacturing in northern Colorado. • Josh: It is National Volunteer Week, so we have an appreciation gift for our volunteers. Thank you! In 2017 the City had a total of 8,126 volunteers. Boards and Commissions had 239 volunteers who gave 2,795 hours. AGENDA ITEM 1— City Plan Update Josh: Connor emailed Erin and said his group has not met so he doesn’t have an update, at this time. Ann: Ambassador perspective: First Section is visioning. Kicking off all work groups. Myself and Kevin Jones are trained ambassadors, so we will target some of the key groups we work with, as well as our members. Considering groups like Woodward, some of those larger businesses in town. At the Chamber we would maybe take over the building and have several small groups. Linda: They want us to keep our groups fairly small. Mine will be 10-12 people. AGENDA ITEM 2—Board and Commission Evaluation Update Ted: Met with Jackie and Ginny Sawyer to prep for our meeting on May 14th for the Futures Committee meeting. In process of revising the agenda. Pitch what we have learned. We will report on the outcomes next month. Part of the agenda will be on inclusion. Who participates in these board and commission 3 | Page meetings? It probably is not representative of our community. Three council members will be there, The Mayor, Council Member Stevens and Council Member Martinez. Also open to all other council members. Working with a representative from each of the other boards and commissions and they will also be participating. We will know more in a month. AGENDA ITEM 3— TBL Scan Tool and Business Criteria Josh: Creating evaluation criteria on when and how we provide business assistance. We realized some of this is covered through TBLS, so everyone did an exercise by using Comcast as an example. At a very high level, it might be helpful to understand what the process currently looks like. A lot of projects stop before they even start. Sometimes there is initial contact and we help them do due diligence and they decide not a good fit. If we clear that first hurdle, we then enter in the evaluation stage. We do an economic impact analysis cost/benefit analysis. This is where additional criteria could be applied. Then move into negotiation, may go back and forth between evaluation and negotiation a few times. Then final stage is seeking approval from Council. Our office’s role is to support, analyze, advocate, and socialize. Then it moves to approval. I wanted to give a sense of what the process looks like. We always do economic impact analysis and a cost benefit analysis. Linda: Would TBLS potentially change what goes into the cost benefit analysis? Sam: How often do companies come into the fold? Josh: We get 80-100 leads a year. We provide basic info back to them. Probably 1-2 dozen have additional conversation. I’ve been here 9 years and I think we have done 6-8 packages. We have a pretty small funnel and it is even smaller that move forward. We do no active recruitment. We focus on current companies. All leads come through the State, or region. Woodward is an example where they reached out to Northern Colorado Economic Development Corporation. They helped evaluate communities and sites. We try to have a performance aspect to all our packages. Another example was Broadcom. Tends to be about how to we build performance. We have had Forney, two for Broadcom, Woodward, and Custom Blending. LUNCH BREAK Work session: Split into two groups. Ultimate question: Is TBLS efficient enough to evaluate Business Assistance Packages? If not what’s missing? can TBLS be improved? Do we need more? Report out: Group 1: Ann, Josh, Aric, Sam, Craig Group 2: Denny, Linda, Ted, Erin 1. What part of the TBL-s worked best? Generally A good tool – can draw attention to specific areas where additional work might be needed. Need to make sure you do the tool with others. Economic Health questions were more illuminating than the other sections. 2. What did not work? 4 | Page 1st question about economic activity was difficult – qualitative – not all Econ. Activity is created equal vs. economic activity in general – greater specificity and sub-questions about types of economic activity. Missing a broader way to evaluate different kinds of economic projects – e.g., office job moving into an empty office and potentially supporting a “move up” job – additional questions might be needed to understand these aspects of other projects. Linkage to specific objectives. Need to prompt thinking about specific types of infrastructure – e.g., schools, etc. Need to prompt thinking about new vs. existing jobs – impacts and uses for cost/benefit analysis. Works well for an internal audience but not for an external audience. 3. Does the TBL-s ask the right questions to evaluate the impact of a Business Assistance package (rebate of taxes)? General thoughts are that it does not meet the needs for this use case. This use case needs the cost benefit analysis to be able to make the exercise most beneficial – if doing two steps then maybe consider doing it between. Needs to be done twice – once up front (quick and dirty) and once after detailed analysis. Doesn’t translate well to external partners understanding the decision-making criteria around an assistance package. 4. Other thoughts In some circumstances doing it individually first and then coming together may be more appropriate than doing it together as a group. Attendees on a joint analysis needs to include experts and those that can provide qualitative. Like the idea of doing a homework approach and then doing the “formal” as a joint assessment. AGENDA ITEM 4— 2018 Strategic Plan Review— Tabled until next month Discussion/Q&A: Sam: Would like to see the business survey in its entirety. We may need to revisit time and day we meet. Meeting Adjourned: 1:01 pm Next Meeting: May 16th —We will check if we need to reschedule either one week before or after.