Pasco County meeting record

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1Aug 9, 2022
Board of County CommissionersR80Regular businessNo disposition in the minutes
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24m
Kathryn StarkeyChair
Okay, let's go to R eighty then. Because I see Mr. Cronin is here. I know a little conference going on down there.
When you're done, we'll have R eighty.
Mike Moore
That's
Kathryn StarkeyChair
you. Uh
Bill Cronin
I'm just waiting for somebody to tell me where to go. Thank you again and and it's my pleasure to present to you the uh third quarter report for the Pasco EDC to the Board of County Commissioners uh and to our stakeholders. I have a clicker um Bill Pronen with the Pasco EDC uh 16800 Ivy Lake Drive in Odessa. Um they start out with the MOU presentation and that's the agreement that we have with the Board of County Commissioners Per our memorandum of understanding, and this covers
a lot of the general activities, not the Penny for Pasco activities, which we'll have following. Um nice slide at the beginning. Not necessarily a company uh groundbreaking, but just like uh the conversation you just had about solar, education and talent is also for the public good, and it's one of the things that we really depend on here, not just the uh The companies, but also the workforce. Looking at the pipeline, and this I think is probably what gets most people most excited. Right now
we've had seven wins already this year. This is through the third quarter, so we're already into the fourth quarter. We have one more reporting period to finalize the year, and I can tell you that those numbers are going to change. As a matter of fact, I anticipate you're going to have. A couple big wins here before the end of the fiscal year that you'll be hearing at the Board of County Commissioners, and one of them for at least 500 jobs coming up in the next couple weeks. So manufacturing, good stuff. I know that Commissioner Starkey's gonna be happy to hear about
more. Manufacturing, advanced manufacturing. If you look at our lead pipeline and our project pipeline. Advanced manufacturing still the biggest bar on the graph by far. And that's again because we can do clean manufacturing here. We still have land and we have people. But coming in not quite second, but close, life sciences. And that should be no surprise to us at all with what we're doing with Moffitt. That seems to be the gift that's going to keep on giving because we have companies
that all want to. Co-locate next to Moffitt, including another really big manufacturer looking at uh right next door. So that number is going to change as well, too. But a very robust pipeline, 96 active projects. You guys want to know where we're at? That's where we're at working the project. So these guys will come at the drop of a hat, come do site visits, and we've got to sell, sell, sell. Normally our pipeline is about 35 projects. So 96 is about three times our normal
workload and each one of the projects have just as much heavy lifting as they normally do. So we are busy. The leads 47, so that's the funnel. You know, coming into it if you look at it. The leads. Projects here, successes here. So we need to get some more leads in the front end while we're working the project. We're gonna continue hitting shows and um doing a lot more one-on-one calls where we're actually going out to companies, meeting them at their place. For example, the company
that we're getting ready to announce uh in the next few weeks. was a meeting in the Bronx, New York of all places. So we don't just rely on people coming to us, we actually go to them and get them to move, and especially the companies that we want to see move here. Just a little more graphic of it, the the big number there is a capital investment. And that's uh that translates to property taxes and a good return on investment for the Pasco uh for the Board of County Commissioners in Pasco County. Uh incidentally,
these numbers uh on the MOU side, the general fund side, that we get uh tax money and tax dollars and general fund dollars, the return on investment. for the last couple of years has been right around uh 200, 230, up to 290 for every $1 we get from the Board of County Commissioners, our return back to the county in terms of gross product is almost 300 to 1. I mentioned that because when you look at that capital investment number, that's where a
lot of that comes from. So already this year, we've got almost 163 million of new capital investment coming in, and that's even without the jobs. But I foresee no problem in us hitting each one of those numbers before the end of the year, and I know that's what you're most interested in, is how we're going to end up at the end of the year. Yeah. Commissioner Starkey, did you have a question?
Kathryn StarkeyChair
Nope.
Bill Cronin
Okay. Um I'm just
Kathryn StarkeyChair
thinking where are these people gonna live?
Bill Cronin
There's yeah. You know that's it that's interesting because a lot you remember back when I first came here we talked a lot about forty percent of our workforce leaving every day to work somewhere else. So a lot of those jobs can actually those people can work here instead of leaving every day.
Kathryn StarkeyChair
You know, um I think we need to do a marketing campaign to promote that. as as much as we can.
Bill Cronin
And and that may mean that we've gotta go in you know, maybe sit on the highways as people are in traffic every day and remind them that they can work here.
Kathryn StarkeyChair
Much as I hate billboards, you know, maybe the county puts them up. Stay here, you know, work here, whatever.
Bill Cronin
Sounds like a historic day already, but if
Kathryn StarkeyChair
we could do that, that would be amazing. Yeah,
Bill Cronin
I think I think you're starting to see some of the trends and uh some of those will change. So when we talk about these jobs that we're creating, it's not just new people coming in filling those jobs. The people that are already here can fill those jobs and they don't have to get on the road every day. So that's something that we always have to remember. not just about the new people coming in.
Kathryn StarkeyChair
Yeah, because I I'm hearing of companies that were going to come to the Tampa Bay area but they couldn't find that their employees could not find housing that they could afford and they've gone somewhere else. So we're starting to see that.
Bill Cronin
Yes, we are um we're no longer a low cost solution or alternative. Uh for quite a quite a long time, we could still do well during downturns of the economy because if you're in New York or New Jersey. Florida still is a low cost solution compared to those markets. We are still a low tax solution, though. And business generally goes to where the tax burden is less. So keeping an eye on your cost and making sure we keep our costs low and keep taxes low
will continue to do us well in this. But we are no longer a low cost solution, that's for sure, especially when it comes to Housing. Working with existing companies, and this is where again we spend a lot of our time. Each one of those big companies that we mentioned, if they don't land here, we don't get a single job. The companies that are here already are creating jobs. Uh, it may be incremental, but it's a lot easier for us to get a hundred companies to hire one person than to recruit one company with a hundred jobs. So we spend a lot of time visiting our local companies,
both with our BRE. program and also with our Workforce Connect program.
Kathryn StarkeyChair
Um I'm sorry, couldn't you go back to that slide? I think
Bill Cronin
so. Maybe.
Kathryn StarkeyChair
I just want to remind you about and and I think it's in our agreement with you, about including AMP skills, especially with these manufacturing in the in the uh 'cause I don't see anything there.
Bill Cronin
Yeah, it's in the third item there. So the workforce connections uh for Q three, so those would have been referrals over to AMP skills. Okay. Okay. No, that is in our that is in our agreement, both for the MOU and in the Penny for the Workforce Connect program, which is a Penny program. And I'll we we talked a little bit, so I'll go through some of these rather quickly. Uh conferences, trade shows, events, yeah, people are back, they're meeting, things are happening again, there's a lot of pent-up demand to get out there, and
a lot of business that has pent-up demand that needs to move. Uh so we did hit a a lot of events this last year, a lot of co-marketing with Moffitt. Moffitt actually will join us to go on these trips. To recruit companies to locate next to them. That's the beauty of this campus, is that we're bringing in for-profit companies around them with talent and innovation, and they recognize that this campus is not just going to be for cancer. It's a city that they're building. So they need everything there. Local
presentations are still getting out and speaking locally. Incidentally, I just got The text from the Tampa Bay Partnership. They did go out and did a op-ed today about supporting both referendums for the schools and for the penny for both ourselves and Hillsboro. So that came out today. We're starting to see a lot more regional efforts to make sure that we're all growing in the right direction. Marketing uh 3.59
million year-to-date earned media value. Um We can't deposit that, you know, that's not money that we get to keep. That's that's that's actually the value that we leverage in our advertising, working with those other partners. But had we gone out and actually purchased this, that's what it would cost. Uh 90% 97% of uh users to the website are new. I believe that is because they reset it each month. So each month we're getting new users each month, which
is fantastic. And I'll go through these. Ninety-one investors right now at the Pasco EDC. On the private sector, we've raised over a half a million dollars so far this year into the third quarter, uh, goal at 550,000. And that's uh the private sector funding is what we use to leverage things like if we're gonna take somebody out for entertainment. Private sector helps us with those expenses where we can't use tax dollars for for that. We've been great partners. We're at 45 uh board
members and policy council members, 10 policy council members to date, including uh with the Cucci, who's here with us tonight, uh with the Cucci River Electric Co-op. Four new investors, Winston Consulting, Commercial Partners, Schaefer General Contracting, and Amarant Bank. You have new a bank in the community. And uh just some general updates before I hit the the penny information. I I put on there the IEDC board meeting and future forum in Dallas as something to highlight.
Uh the International Economic Development Council is um is the industry certification group for our type of industry. Um I'm on the board of directors for the International Economic Development Council. And they have asked me to actually get involved with a strategy to define the industry for our industry. So we're actually going through some changes looking at workforce development, entrepreneurship, things that Pasco is already really strong at, and a lot of our our peers are taking note and
looking to copy us. That's great flattery for us. We attend a lot of events. As I mentioned, some of our own. We had Meet the Members back on May 18th. This is for our entrepreneurs, our incubator members. So our startups have the opportunity to meet our existing business. So that's one neat thing that with us actually running an incubator, our our members can have that business-to-business connection rather than business just business to consumer.
So our board members actually will work with our entrepreneurs at the incubators to give them opportunities. For example, St. Leo's hired several of the uh food incubators to start selling food at the campus as well. So that's I I love it when that happens because it's us taking care of our own and making sure that we're we're helping everybody rise in the process. The Crate Grand Opening June 4th. If you haven't been to the Crate Park over at the Grove, from really cool food there, where your
stretchy pants, lots of neat things there. We have a crate there for our food entrepreneurs to be able to have a pop-up place for their products to try their hand at selling it. So there a lot of them are here in the Dade City incubator. They'll go to the crate. To sell their goods if it works, hopefully they'll go into market-based solutions. And then the executive success, I'm sorry, Pasco 50 was June 9th, where 23 companies work on that. That is our workforce development
HR sounding board, where we find out what each of our HR practitioners are going through, uh, what they need with talent, what kind of trends they're seeing.
I told you somebody will tell me where to go.
ESP uh is the executive success program and this was something that Mike Bishop created when when he came, it replaced our CEO roundtables. But as new companies come into Pasco, we now are taking the leadership from those companies and running them through a program that's kind of like a leadership Pasco or leadership Tampa Bay. And at the culmination, at the end, we hope they'll become more involved and engaged and become board members. But really that first year is so critical 'cause they are so busy and they don't know anybody. So it's a way for us to get them plugged
in.
And then of course their graduation is August eighteenth next week. Uh and then coming up we have our Awards again, so going back to the old model of the awards, but a new location. So since COVID uh we haven't had the uh the full blown awards like we used to do at Saddlebrook each year. Um we're gonna be doing that. It'll be September eighth, the Thursday after Labor Day. and it will be at the IPAC. the uh Performing Arts
Center and we will be probably the first big event of this type there. Uh so something very new and different but we'll we'll have that same feel uh and we'll recognize our local companies uh for their work. So I will stop there before I go into the penny and I promise to go through the penny fairly quickly. Any questions on MOU? If not. Um
Kathryn StarkeyChair
Commissioner Yeah Mariano has
Jack MarianoVice Chair
a question. Bill, I just want to say you're doing a phenomenal job. Uh taking every opportunity we've got, you keep on bringing great stuff to us. So we greatly appreciate it.
Bill Cronin
Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. So so I'll I'll do this really, really quick because I know you guys are short on time. But this is the Penny for Pasco. Okay.
Jack MarianoVice Chair
Good.
Bill Cronin
This is the Penny for Pasco uh portion of the presentation. So really important is We're getting ready for the referendum coming up that we point to these activities that we're doing. And I think a lot of people know about the transportation programs that we've done, education. I think pointing to the buildings that have come up and the jobs that have been created are going to be important to a lot of people when they go to the polls this year to vote because there's so many people here that weren't here 10 years ago when we talked about the last referendum. So we need to make sure that we're all talking
about these things that we're doing. Some of these programs that we do, remember, these were ab over and above what we do normally through our MOU. And we use the penny to do that so that we could be more competitive than our other counties in the state. So I've included a summary, and there's a report card for each of the program activities. But the summary, if you look at ready sites, ready sites, you remember when when we first started looking at this, we had a lot of land, but they weren't really sites yet. So we
used the Ready Sites program to go out and assess those sites and certify them whether or not they were quote unquote pad ready or shovel ready. Once we did that, we we now are at over 2,000 acres of ready sites. That means we actually have land to go market. So we have been marketing those like crazy. So when we market a ready site, those ready sites are are generally 50 acres or more. Those are gonna be big industrial users. That's not uh um you know somebody
that uh uh is just looking at one little site. They're probably looking at several sites in several states. So that puts us in a very competitive position and it's paying off. We've had a couple of the ready sites already sold on this. So we've got uh probably right at 2,000 acres left. But they're going fairly quickly and we we still have to be very vigilant about what they're used for, making sure that they're used for manufacturing and industry. Um international program. So
international uh again last year there wasn't a lot of activity until what in November we went to Germany and and Switzerland, we saw a window of opportunity to go out and make some calls on companies uh in And a lot of those communities closed again with another COVID round. We went back out and attended the World Forum in Edinburgh, and we complemented that with lead generation in England, London, Cambridge, and
Oxford. And as you can guess, a lot of those were life sciences companies looking to come here to co-locate at at the near the Moffitt facility. Uh but out of ten uh meetings we've got eight leads or eight projects that uh uh will be projects that we will continue to work with. Some are small that will land in our incubator, some will actually uh buy buildings, I hope. We continue to work with the counties to the south
and partnering regionally to promote global Tampa Bay, looking at doing a trade mission to Panama in September. We have at least one company looking to go to Panama and they will be participating as part of the Enterprise Florida mission. We'll also be looking at Europe again later in the fall. And then SEUS Japan, the Southeast United States Japan conference will be in Orlando also in November. This
is the first time in 14 years the conference is back. So seven states are a part of this conference. And every other year the event is held in Japan, and every off year it's held in the United States. Last time we hosted this was 14 years ago. Uh it's very important for us to to keep a presence with the Japanese. Uh I don't know how many people in the room know that we have a Japanese, very large Japanese manufacturer right here in Dade City, uh Clark Dietrich Steel. Sounds German, it's Japanese.
Kathryn StarkeyChair
It's so funny.
Bill Cronin
Yeah, it does not sound Japanese at all. But uh and the Council Generals historically have come up to visit uh that location and visit it with our leadership here too. So we anticipate we'll send a delegation there uh to continue to support uh um that relationship. Uh we also hosted a competitiveness committee at Santander, which Santander agreed. Of course, is an international company in itself. Commissioner Starkey chairs that particular committee, robust conversations, but it's nice that now the new
companies coming in that are international are actually participating in those international committees. And then enhanced marketing. So this is marketing over and above what we do general marketing. So these are marketing those programs that'd be the Ready Sites, International, Workforce Development, and also Smart Start, which is the incubator program. Workforce Connect again mentioned we hosted the Pasco 50. We also have a really cool video that we produced talking about careers in
target industries in Pasco County. So we continue to look at this talent pipeline, it becomes really, really important to us. 14,000 jobs for Moffitt alone. A lot of those kids haven't even been born yet. So we need to know where they're coming from and we need to grow them locally. Locally as well as bring some from other places. This is probably the first time you're gonna hear me talk about talent attraction. Years ago we would only look at jobs just for the people who already lived here. Now we have more company needs than
we have people, believe it or not. So we're gonna see us bringing in certain types of talent that are needed for certain types of position, but this is a big change. for for Pasco. Uh the executive success program I mentioned is uh closing out this next week. The companies that participated, they'll graduate will be uh Moffitt, Santander, True Simulation, Baymar Solution, Synorama, Mettler Toledo, and Bravado Pharmaceuticals. So the companies that uh many of you have met in the past and
and uh quite a few of them had incentives associated to them when they when they first came here as well. Uh and Smart Start. I mentioned the the crates open, uh the grand opening uh June fourth. They also hosted a Meet the Members event there I mentioned um especially the food incubator members are getting a lot of traction there. Uh I don't know how that our staff has managed to not be hundreds and hundreds of pounds because these guys bring samples every day uh to the things that they're they're trying out. So I
think they call it r and D. I think that's a research and development portion of it. Um and I'll just go through some of these fairly quick. There's the ready sites that I mentioned if uh especially for those of you who haven't seen this before. Uh that's that's our ready sites. That's where you you We'll hopefully see factories and lots of high paying good jobs for our people. Uh if you look through our report card, you'll see lots of checks. That means that it's been completed. And then a lot of airplanes, which means they're in progress. But uh ready
sites at eighty eight percent progress per the year. international program 78%, executive success program 75%, which makes sense. We're at three-quarters of the year. 80% on the Workforce Connect program, as far as the deliverables per hour agreement, and then the incubator network. Wow, I mean mean knocking it out of the park. Year to date, 711 event attendees this year. 711. Uh it's a lot of people that that are hungry
for information. And going through the smart start, let me get to the end here. Ninety percent of the smart start goals uh have been completed. Microloans. We still need people to get the word out about microloans. We've there was a lot of money on the street the last couple of years thanks to COVID, PPP, things like that. Uh these microloans again are still they're up to fifty thousand dollars. You have to be refused by a local bank. or a commercial bank otherwise unbankable. We're kind of a
lender of last resort in that. It's a very low interest rate. But we find it's also a very low default rate too, because we're the only ones helping a lot of these companies and they're very loyal to us. It's a very, very good program and it allows us to touch people that we normally weren't able to touch. Uh and overall, so for all the penny programs together, uh as of end of third quarter we were at eighty two percent of our deliverables for you. Uh that was like you were gonna
Kathryn StarkeyChair
go over a hundred percent.
Bill Cronin
Not to put any
Kathryn StarkeyChair
pressure on you.
Bill Cronin
No pressure? Yeah, there's some there's some that are cumulative over the the period of the contract and then some are annual year to year. Um but the annual year to year we've been we've been cranking it out and getting a lot of attention, especially the programs like Workforce uh Connect and the entrepreneurship program because that's become so important and uh I think you'll hear that fr from me a lot in the future. The talent is still our most precious commodity that we have here, uh, and
it it is an asset. And the other is gonna be making sure that we've got those opportunities for small startups because that entrepreneurial attitude is what's really gonna shine through and how we take care of those small businesses is the best testimony we have in getting those big companies to come and locate. So with that, I think I'll finally stop. Yes.
Kathryn StarkeyChair
Okay. Any any questions? Perfect. And we're right on time for eleven o'clock. So
Bill Cronin
good job. I do have one one last parting comment and uh is to thank uh Commissioner Moore who's been serving as our liaison this last year. I just realized this is the last meeting We'll be presenting to you at least as far as our quarterly report goes. Uh we'll do something to embarrass you at our board meeting, I'm sure, coming up, but I did want to say how uh how how great it was having you with us this year. A lot of transition going on this year, going from hybrid to in person, uh and you're no stranger to the
organization as well. But thank you again for for your help too. Well thank you so much. Thank you.

BCCA-22-0106

Official title

Every appearance1 of 1 are in a recording