(11:00 a.m. Time Certain) Pasco EDC Quarterly Update

52:51Uh now we'll move on to a regular agenda and I have two items but they're on a time certain but we're ready to go, Bill? All right. We'll start with 50.

53:02R fifty. Good morning again and um commissioners. I'm really excited about the item that's following this one. So I'm gonna go pretty rapidly, but before I even start, I just want to comment on the um uh the county's response to uh to Debbie uh was was wonderful. I think our emergency management team, uh our elected officials uh fire department, sheriff's department continue to get better and better and better at this and the calls on

53:32the EOC go really smooth and as an economic developer for people to see us meeting today business as usual sends a powerful message to companies that are looking to come to Florida because it continues to show our resiliency. So kudos to everybody in the room. Um it's my pleasure to present to you

53:55The display's not working. Okay. So I guess I'm gonna do charades here from the uh Pardon me?

54:06Do they have it in their packet? Should

54:09Okay.

54:09What? Do you have the presentation in your packets?

54:13Mm-hmm.

54:15Uh

54:17I didn't put that background in my

54:19I don't think I have.

54:23This is on on your R?

54:26Yeah. R fifty.

54:28I don't have a trust. I can look online.

54:30No, there are no it's not in your agenda, electronic agenda. Or can you email

54:36can you email them? Are you able to open our C D Monsoon soon? Okay, I'll go ahead and get started while while she's doing that. Um and uh so first normally uh as I present our quarterly uh report for uh the Pasco E D C and this would be for quarter three of year twenty twenty four um usually start out with our wins, our capital investment and our jobs and I'll be doing that again today. and we'll actually

55:06see that number increase by the end of the day today. Currently we have seven wins, that's new projects located to the area, 774 jobs, which is just about half of our goal right now. Awesome. Mm. No more charades. And then $250 million of capital investment. We've already uh hit our goal for new capital investment. And again, that impacts the the ad valorem tax um

55:36takes the pressure off our residents by having more of that ad valorem from commercial.

55:45Bill, oh can you go back to that? Is that 14, is that annual? Or is that to date?

55:52today. So we

55:53wanna have fourteen but we have seven.

55:55Yeah, so usually at the end of the year uh is when most of them come in. You you like I said, you've got something coming up today as well too, that that number will continue to to grow and that is a goal. Uh I think last year we finished around twelve.

56:08Okay.

56:11And uh you'll be surprised or happy to see that the majority of them are still in advanced manufacturing, our leads and our pipeline. With all of the focus that we put on life sciences and IT and business professional services with our offices, uh advanced manufacturing is still coming through strong. So that's another one that has a bigger multiplier for us. Active leads right now, 120 seven active projects, 130. You know we like to see the leads bigger than the projects, so that that's actually a funnel.

56:41Um so it does make us a bit nervous when we have less leads than active projects, but to have 130 active projects is um is is beyond normal. Usually we have about thirty five to forty projects. So uh we are busy. training programs and working with our existing business. Um we continue to go out, meet with companies. We had 18 company visits this last quarter 74 to date. And that's where we get to go talk to the companies, find out what their

57:12obstacles are, look under the hood, see how we can help them. Uh and lots of times it's workforce. Yeah, workforce is something that you all still hear on a regular basis of either people can't find good help or the right help, even with twelve hundred people moving to the state every day, uh workforce still continues to be one of our biggest priorities. And it's a good one because we get to keep those workers here regardless of the company's day or or none. Um, telling the story, you know, two point three million in

57:42earned media value over the quarter, that is uh where other people are telling our story. So again, we're kind of the hired help. When we tell the story, yeah, uh we can do lots of press releases, but when other people tell that story, that's even better yet for us. And uh the website keeps getting lots of views, six almost 17,000 uh this last quarter. Most of them were looking at Smart Start Ready sites, uh, and of course coming from states like

58:12California, New York, Virginia, Georgia, and Texas. Several of those states have uh uh the same thing in common: high tax, and they want to get the heck out of there. So uh we're getting their attention and they are they're looking at us. Uh have about twelve thousand followers on social media engagement. Um about half of them are over half of them are actually engaged uh in and having conversations with us online. Um We'll never be at the same number

58:42of the sheriff as long as we don't have canines and dogs, but uh um we're getting there and it's important because this is our locals that are are hitting this to find

58:53Yeah. And then attending events and getting out and learning more about the business as well as networking with our peers. We've had 15 events and trade events, seminars and conferences, 11, presentations to local industry organizations and business groups, six. And that's everything from NAP to SIOR to Crew, some of those large organizations. that are partners or multipliers. And then most recently

59:23in the quarter, we hosted a strategy session in concert with the county uh on June 13th. Ernston Young, as you know, has been hired to do the economic development strategic plan uh with David Engel and his his shop. Uh we brought together several of our business leaders, thirty-three key stakeholders came together to provide input about the growth of the county. our economy, the types of programs we need to be looking at. And they're represented by some uh some well known names that you all know Tico, Energy,

59:54Kalnar, Baker, Duke. uh commercial asset partners, Edura Group, and many more. So a a success. They got lots of good feedback at the strategic planning session and that's something that you're going to hear about again here in about two months. And stakeholders. So we're up to 92 investors. That's a private sector investors. Our biggest investor still is one, that's you guys, but 92 investors on the private sector, 483,000

1:00:25private sector dollars raised, six new investors just in the third quarter alone. So that's where people appreciate what we do, they understand the growth of our Economy and they we leverage private sector dollars to do things that other people can't do. Oops, before I go further, let me mention a couple upcoming events. Um well this happened because I I think we were scheduled originally for last uh meeting. So July twenty-fourth, we had the Pasco County Industrial Update,

1:00:55well attended uh sell out crowd at the Hilton Garden Inn and then September 5th is our 36th annual awards. 36. 36, yeah. Yeah. All these numbers are getting bigger. And that is going to be at the Instructional Performing Arts Center, the PHSC IPAC, as we call, in Wesley Chapel. We still have tickets available and sponsorship opportunities. So I'll go in real quickly, also segue into the Penny for Pasco

1:01:26agreement. Um Ready Sites. This is this is the program that uh that we put a lot of money into, and it's been five solid years of building that up to get the sites that we have, over 2,000 acres of sites, and we've had a couple of them off the market already. Amazon up on 50. We also celebrated Baduco and Zephyrhills earlier this year in October. And a little foreshadowing, probably a little announcement following this about another ready

1:01:57site. You can see that we have another one that has come online personally, one of our best sites in the county, and that's at Double Branch at 52 and I-75, very strategically located. approved over three million square feet of industrial entitlements there. Um that's huge for the communities in East Pasco, but also our drive to market. Uh that will be a super park, meaning that uh they're actually selling pieces of that to bring in more than

1:02:27just one or two big companies. Uh one of our ready sites was chosen as a finalist and uh Again, you'll hear more about that on the next item. And then we've had visits, uh, people kicking dirt going out and actually seeing the sites all throughout this summer. We've had 19 inquiries about the sites, 19 responses to RFPs. That's where site consultants ask us about uh um what we have available for their projects, and we're able to include these sites into our response.

1:02:57responses to those proposals. And then presentations to consultants and developers, 17. That's the people that bring us the projects. And then seven site visits, people actually getting in their car and visiting the site. We went out marketed this internationally, so international program continues to grow. Select USA is the annual conference that the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Foreign Commercial Service through the embassies worldwide bring prospective

1:03:28investors, people looking to move their companies into the United States. They bring them to Washington each year. We exhibited as part of our global Tampa Bay Consortium, and we had our own booth which was busy every single minute. Really good response, and it wasn't just because we had Tampa cigars in the booth. That was a really nice flavor because they've heard what is continuing to go on in our community, and to see us working together as a region really

1:03:58paid dividends. We hosted a regional familiarization tour from uh Germany. Um somebody that uh was looking to bring more companies here and we've schooled them up on all the things that we have in the area. And then we've got a trade mission coming uh September 9th through the 12th. And um that is to Vancouver, British Columbia. We've got some Pasco companies going, Commissioner Starkey is going representing uh Pasco. We also have commissioners from Hillsboro and Penellus and mayors from

1:04:28each of the counties as well.

1:04:30And I almost had a new company, they're very interested, but they're already in Europe that day. But um I'm anxious for you to meet them. They're doing international business in Lutz. That's battery. Oh well

1:04:43I think we'll get them with first. Yes, yes. We'll get them together with first and uh Yeah No

1:04:49they they're they came from the Sheriff's Office.

1:04:50Okay.

1:04:51They just left there and went off on their own and they've got some global business going on.

1:04:55We'll call it Project Dexter. I don't know if they it's

1:05:04so we continue to work with those companies. to take them abroad. 43 counseling sessions over the quarter. Um trade missions, you got a little uh asterisk next to it. That is the one goal we have for the year will be in September at the end of the count or fiscal year. And then we've had six uh trade related events. And uh enhanced marketing. So that's telling over and above the story, especially as it relates to the Penny. Uh we marketed ready sites at most of these, SIOR, uh Bioconference

1:05:35uh that was attended in San Diego, and we had five um Smart Start testimonial video campaigns uh reaching over 164,000 people. Uh I've got some cool stuff about Smart Start, I'll tell you in just a second. But uh Workforce Connect had their paths go fifty. And uh the report and the discussion was about mitigating business risk and workforce trends. So here we are in that season where this was very timely. We had 18

1:06:05annual existing industry visits and the uh uh uh advisory team continues to meet to discuss what the needs of businesses are in using our canal. uh uh application on our website. Executive success program uh ended up part of the Building and Sights tour. They went around and Saw all the assets we have so that they can tell our story as well. And then uh they celebrated with the graduation um with graduation graduates

1:06:36from Advent Health, Greater's Upper Hills Chamber, SKF Development, Saint John's Partners, and South Lake Signs of Tampa. Uh so if you see any of them in the streets, ask them about Pasco, they will tell you a lot. Uh About what they've learned. And then I hinted that Smart Start had something really cool. A couple things. One, we finished a course, a nine-week Co-Starters course called Co-Starters for Causes. And you might recall back on our annual conference last year,

1:07:07our annual Warts event, I mentioned that we were going to actually train up our nonprofit community because they weren't able to scale as fast as our businesses to meet the growing demand of people moving in here. So we scholarshipped 10 companies to come through. Nine of them ended up going through the whole course and graduated with co-starters to learn how to run their nonprofit more like a business and to scale better as they meet the growing demand of

1:07:37service needs in Pasco County. Really proud of that one because that's not necessarily our bread and butter, but we depend on those service providers here in our community because it's about the whole community. We're looking for sponsors for next year to do a couple more cohorts like that. We're looking to do ten at a time of our nonprofits in the community. Uh we had some workshops uh on AI and we actually attended uh SOF Week, uh Special Operations Forces Week, big used to be SOFIC

1:08:08down in um in Tampa. Most of the um exhibits were around AI. About one fifth of them were about AI. AI is quickly moving into almost every industry sector, so this next year one of our task forces might also include AI.

1:08:24Mr Chairman

1:08:26Mm. Mr. Mariano.

1:08:27You know, I attended the Dun industrial Workshop. Uh Commissioner Weightman, you were there as well, right? And what I liked on the discussion was the talking about AI, which a realtor did not know of, uh that we had been doing for like sixteen, seventeen months. So we had talked about setting one up, Bill, and I didn't know you had done the other two. But uh as far as you're along, I would love for you to get with J P. Murphy. get together and let's go plan one. We can make it broad based so everybody in the community knows what we're doing, promote it, hype

1:08:57it up and and make it a big event so they can understand how we've taken these steps to use AI for our own permitting process, which I think a little Help us even more so.

1:09:06Yeah, I think I think it's important the public knows that uh that the county's embracing AI for things like permitting and things that we can do um to increase our speed and efficiency. So awesome. Uh and then lastly, this is the one of the coolest facts out there. We had uh three of our smart start uh businesses from our incubators actually move into brick and mortar. So that's the goal of what we do with our startups is to not just get them up and going, but get them to the point that they're into market-based

1:09:37space in the community. Um and those include Lily Education Center, ABL Brewery, and Mexican Craving. So if you get a chance, stop by, spend some money there, help them out with their uh lease payments and congratulate them on uh how they've graduated into real space. And

1:09:56w what is Mexican cravings?

1:09:59Do you remember? It's a restaurant. Yeah.

1:10:01Oh, it's a restaurant.

1:10:02Yeah.

1:10:03Okay, very good.

1:10:04Yeah. So so our food incubator, of course, is um in in Dade City. It's been turning out a lot of great yummy stuff. Um I don't know how our staff manages to stay fit, to be honest with you. They're sampling everything. Lots of events through Smart Start. We continue to offer events. 742 participants already this year. for Smart Start. So when people ask what you're doing for small business and startups, this is what we're doing. We're helping them grow. We're giving them microloans, three of them to date so far, 115,000.

1:10:35And we're providing counseling, 414 counseling sessions. That's not therapy, that's counseling them how to do better business and to help them not make mistakes. And with that, I'll uh I'll stop so that we can hopefully get to the the next item. But let me ask if you all have questions as well.

1:10:54I'll just say a comment, Bill. Again, you you you guys do a phenomenal job. Um have you've provided such great energy coming here, having great people with Suzanne, the team you've developed has been amazing. Um and I appreciate your helping out with the Scholar Fest. We had two of the uh restaurants from there presenting and get a chance to get their name out in the community, which is great.

1:11:17Thank you, Bill, for your presentation. Very informative and We're moving forward. We keep moving forward. So Yes indeed. So that's great.

1:11:25Were you at um Select USA?

1:11:27Our team was

1:11:28turnerless

1:11:28and

1:11:29so I'm I'm a little curious um and I was put back on the International Economic Task Force at MACO as vice chair again. Um but our focus this last year and you've come on on some of our national calls was to um help commissioners from counties around the country uh learn how to attend and make Select USA profitable for them. So we had quite a few new county commissioners go there and actually make some deals on with

1:11:59they they would each brought some staff. They didn't have booths. But um there were some deals made out there, but someone was standing by the restroom. I don't know. Um but I wondered if they came by our booth because I asked I asked them to come by our booth and say hi.

1:12:13Well we can check the attendance because we captured all name so um I wouldn't be surprised. We were very visible right next to the Florida booth and Florida continue to send us uh business all day long as well. A lot of it because of the talent that we have too. So we've got a lot of people that are out training other communities on how to how to work better.

1:12:34It's my goal to get to a Select USA. I just I haven't made it yet but um I I just it's a bad time for me. May

1:12:40next year.

1:12:42May okay.