Bill Strong Economic Development and Penny report

1:49:22Bill Strong?

1:49:26Good morning

1:49:27everybody. Happy Tuesday. Um before we get started, I just want to confirm that you actually you have our presentation in your packet. In case we go through it rapidly and you can look through it at your convenience. If not, I've got extras here as well. Where do where

1:49:40do we have them? Sent to us email.

1:49:43Would you like uh me to bring it to the clerk just in case? Yeah,

1:49:46I'll take it. You have a

1:49:48powerful

1:49:49run

1:49:49full forward?

1:49:50Second. Okay.

1:49:51Roll call.

1:49:54Sorry. District one, Commissioner Oakley. Aye. District two, Commissioner Weightman. Aye. District three, Commissioner Starkey. Aye. District four, Commissioner Bradford. Aye. District 5 Chairman Mariano.

1:50:04Aye. Okay, well thank you everyone and everybody loves a good ribbon cutting. We'll we'll s start out with a slide with a ribbon cutting. But I did want to make comment on our microloan program since uh it got a lot of great advertisements this morning. Um That microloan program, a couple things just to to to kind of prime the pump, and I know Commissioner Weightman's got interest in this. The microlan program that we have currently has about $4 million out on the street right now creating jobs and creating

1:50:35small businesses. Um those microloans require that the bank actually turn them down. So they are high-risk loans. They're very high-risk loans because they have to be unbankable. With that in mind. We actually work with the companies to make them bankable as part of that loan process. But the general terms of the loans are usually about two to three percent over prime. And because they're high risk and because no one else will actually uh lend to them,

1:51:05uh they become very, very loyal for us. And uh both the Penny for Pasco and the private sector, uh the banking community through their CRA funds. Funds generally provide that funding in there. The item that you had earlier in consent, I believe that that also was an extension of a previous agreement made by a previous commission. So I think that was the light that we looked at this when we met with the company, that this was a loan that had been satisfied that was given by the previous

1:51:35commission, and it was extended for the previous.

1:51:40So hopefully that provides some clarity. It might ask you might ask some additional questions later, I suspect too.

1:51:48Interest free is is is bothersome, I agree. And we we don't do it with um Uh with microloans that are out there. And I think again, because this particular one was a previous loan made by a previous administration. I think that's the angle that most of us looked at then.

1:52:04The first loan had a three and a half percent interest rate. The second loan has no interest.

1:52:10I'm not aware of that.

1:52:11That's right in the agenda back of three years no interest. The first loan had three and a half percent interest rate and they paid down. Sorry, Sairman, I apologize.

1:52:19Yeah, that's over now.

1:52:20Chairman. Yeah, it's over now. It's over now. No worries.

1:52:24You should worry about the twelve million we just went through.

1:52:27But the but the point is is that uh we've we've got about four million on the street that it's actively working right now. And and l and a very low rate of default, believe it or not. Um we'll get into the MOU part first and then when we get to the penny maybe there'll be some more room for discussion. So Report card. I think this is probably the thing that most people are most interested in. And when I presented last, we were in the middle of a lull. We've seen a lot of things come through in the

1:52:57last uh uh three months. This is for Q3, of course, but ten wins. And of that ten, uh seventy per or seven of the ten are actually expansions. These are existing companies.

1:53:12That type of announcement is the best advertisement for us. uh when we go out to try to recruit other companies because how we take care of our existing business And showing that existing business is growing is the best ad we can actually have.

1:53:26Like a point distillery?

1:53:28Like a point distillery. And if you look at the seven projects in the final Somebody else is getting advertising today too, evidently, but they're all our businesses. If you look at the um ones that are in the final phases coming up, we've got another seven that are on their way. And we've forewarned uh county staff that these are coming, don't know how many of those are gonna be able to come in before the end of the uh the fiscal year, but included in that about seventy percent are also expansions. So this is a really

1:53:58good sign of the health of our companies that we already have here. And here's a breakdown of the types of companies that are that are coming here. And you'll see the um the the pipeline is still really robust, over a hundred projects. Normally we're about 35 projects, so we're busy. And of that, a lot of them are in advanced manufacturing and, of course, life sciences.

1:54:23Training programs. Um in the first item there you see one year to date. I'll just remind everyone that career source uh for most of the year did not have applic they weren't accepting applications for that program. So that program they started again last um this last quarter. So we started going out and promoting that again. Uh but as far as company visits and getting out there, um 58 you year to date on a goal of 80, we're trending really well three quarters of the year. We're about three quarters through our goal. And

1:54:53then the workforce connection. This is a good barometer when you look at um when when the economy may be possibly going into a downturn, you start to see a lot more focus on talent and workforce. And I think that's where we're at right now.

1:55:09Uh conferences, events. Some of this is the fun stuff. The ones that are in bold in the middle of the events are the events that the Pasco EDC actually host and organize and put on. But in here is uh international conferences, some of the uh trade shows that we exhibit, some that we exhibit jointly with companies like Moffitt. But uh very busy year this year. And again, part of that I think is with COVID ending, you've got a lot more people traveling and a lot of pent-up demand.

1:55:41Earn media value. Yeah, for the longest time I couldn't get my head around this, but every time that somebody tells our story. that we're not telling our story, that's earned media value. So as your marketing agency for business, this is a really good stat. And we'll try to uh uh highlight those more often so that you can actually see what other industry publications and uh even newspapers and media outside of the state are picking up. And that's

1:56:11our uh unique web page visits for quarter three. And audience is still continuing to grow. 82,000 impressions, this again, four quarter three. Up to eighty two investors. Um we're at 577,000 of our private sector goal, private sector goal. uh was around five hundred thousand last year, so we've already beat that number and we're up around uh seven hundred thousand and we're again trending well with where we're at

1:56:41in the year. Some new board members or new uh investors. Southern Group, you might recognize a former commissioner has joined, Mr. Mike Moore. Community Foundation of Tampa Bay and floor design consultants, all new investors. Community foundation also is really important because. It's the economic development community that provides them with the details of where the need is for growth. So when they give out grants. They base it on what the economic development community

1:57:12is telling them, what the needs are in communities. So having them close by to Pasco, very, very important for us. And then uh one of the events I just mentioned want to mention used to be called uh Meet the Developer. Um y'all were participants uh as well in this event, sold out, 125 in attendance. We were originally at the residence in, we had to move venues. And of that in the present the presentation, 64 of the presentations that were uh presented were downloaded

1:57:42through a QR code. And these are a lot of graphs and stats and stuff, not the stuff that people normally would reach out and want to download to read in their spare time. Uh so that means they're really intentional about understanding what type of products that we have. Yeah. Uh awards banquet coming up in uh September 7th, just around the corner. And we're gonna be awarding our companies again and a leadership award. Great time by all. And then ground groundbreaking for Pasco Town Center. Pasco

1:58:12Town Center, of course, at the intersection of 52 and 75 is scheduled for October 5th. That's probably one of the best pieces of property that we have. that we have in the county as one of our gateways to the county.

1:58:24What district is that in?

1:58:30So you want me to answer or shall he

1:58:33100,000 jobs.

1:58:36So that was it on the MOU portion of our deliverables for the county and I'll go ahead and switch over to the penny. Maybe. There we go. It's amazing that my m my clicker is doing all that activity from here, isn't it? It's like a magic wand. There we go. So it we'll start out with an action shot and you might recall on my last uh report we had just came back from an international trade mission. I touched on it a

1:59:06little bit. Uh but here you have uh our Chair, uh uh Commissioner Mariano and Commissioner Starkey. With mayors from Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater. So we had three mayors, we had four commissioners. Um it was a very, very well attended uh trip for the three counties and several appointments uh for new business coming in as well.

1:59:33Where is this, Mr. Croner?

1:59:35That was in London. I'm sorry.

1:59:43Talking about July fourth?

1:59:45No. We did. No, we didn't. We'll save that for the next trip.

1:59:54That was actually Commissioner Weightman, that was kind of funny those stuff. We did.

2:00:01Um Diplomacy, right? So when we talk about um um the penny, usually I I go through and rather than each of the items on the scorecard, I want to bring to you the highlights because there's a lot of stuff. Because our Penny for Pasco uh agreement has lots of minutiae for us to check, but it's in your packet and you've got it there. Um ready sites, probably one of the The uh uh largest programs and probably the biggest culture-changing program of the penny programs

2:00:32that we had, and that is to change the uh the idea and the culture of land ownership, getting people who own land to prepare it. for industry. And we helped them do that. It's been about five years to get those up and going, but now we have over six uh ready sites and This last quarter, we've had uh two foreign direct investment prospects coming to look, uh, as well as um several other target industries. That we're looking at those ready sites. And that's important because they know that

2:01:02that the boxes have been checked already, that they're ready to go. International. I mentioned the the uh UK mission that was with the Global Tampa Bay Group, the three-county uh consortium. We also had a side trip to Germany that was just pure foreign direct investment. Uh, had another 11 meetings in Germany with 11 prospects. So between the two, just on that two weeks, we ended up with 12 prospects from the

2:01:32UK and 11 prospects from Germany. So very fruitful. We're continuing to to work on trade missions for our local companies. We've got a group leaving for Dominican Republic in about two weeks, right after the awards. and then uh another delegation heading to SUS, Japan, and will be co lo or co uh exhibiting with Moffitt at the bio show in Yokohama, Japan. So we're doing a lot of things already to to spur the life science growth

2:02:03in the community and then working with our partners. And honestly we're the hired help so it's great when Moffitt and people like that come and talk about our community because they expect it to come from us, but when they hear it from our companies it's it's that much more important. Uh Workforce Connect, we had our very first Bizblast event. We did it on Gun Highway at Weimar, and uh County came and also brought some of their resources as it relates to redevelopment, uh facade grants, uh tree. grants, landscape grants,

2:02:33those types of things. Very well attended. We had over 30 employers that participated in And we're gonna start doing that around the county in different places where we've got a a consolidation of industrial growth. Executive success program. uh graduated a recent cohort. One of the cohorts, one of the uh the members actually took the skills he learned and is one of the expansions that we talked about. So uh RPN G is is one of the um Companies, it's a printing company, and

2:03:03they expanded based on the knowledge that they learned from ESP. So it's working really well. And then Smart Start. Our incubator program continues to grow. We've got our third location on the west side that will be co-located with AM Skills, and we've already got classes. That are being held on the West Side. So we're we're anticipating and and I mentioned before with with a potential downturn in the economy in the future, we're gonna see a lot more emphasis on startups, we're gonna see a lot more emphasis on

2:03:33workforce. And uh luckily over the last three or four years, we've really put a lot of investment into those programs. And without Jinx and myself, I'd like to say we're ready. And with that, I'll let you uh Ask any questions or you can review the rest at at your leisure because it is uh a lot of Boxes that were checked.

2:03:55Great stuff, Bill. As as always, I mean you've you've since you've come on board with Pasco County, you've done just a phenomenal uh PEDC, you've done a phenomenal job helping us get out there, helping us create that awareness and the research has is just created so much investment in this county and uh we appreciate you. Thank you.

2:04:12Uh I have a question. Commissioner Starkey Um with the economies that are out there in the country right now ha

2:04:20has

2:04:20anything slowed down here or are we still humming along at the same

2:04:24pace? No, it's and it's funny because when when we say slow down, sometimes the after effect um still lags because somebody might say I'm not gonna build anymore, but there are some things that they're still building. So it's when they make that decision making that the decision making is slowing down. Um yes, we are seeing a couple sectors, and of course, one of the big ones is distribution. Um slowing down in terms of the big distribution centers and market is fairly well saturated. If everything if

2:04:54everything that has been committed is built Uh in especially around that seventy-five uh fifty-two corridor, we could have close to seven or eight million square feet of distribution. And for us that's that's probably too much at that point. I think if that at that point uh we'll come back and probably remove that off our target industry list because those jobs aren't as high paying jobs. And um and may actually bring down our county average. Other areas that are slowing, I think uh I sent an article

2:05:24just r recently about multifamily, and you are starting to see uh uh a little bit of chatter about that, especially as it relates to the banking community. Deja vu all over again. It feels like uh some of the same things they talked about were the things that we talked about in 07 and 08. 08. Um so I would say you'll we're We're cautious as we're moving forward, maybe a little bit of the s the slowness. It doesn't feel slow to most of our residents here because all they see is growth. And the growth that we're seeing

2:05:55right now is a largely a lot of the residential growth that goes in the back of an MP. A lot of the commercial group, but not as much of the employment center. We need that employment center because the best thing that we can do for that growth and that congestion is to create jobs here locally. And I think a lot of the congestion that we're seeing are people that are still getting in their car every day and going to Hillsborough and Penella. So once we get more jobs here, take care of who take care of our our people, we'll start to see some of that congestion and uh uh uh

2:06:25traffic go down a little bit.

2:06:26One more thing. Um do you think it's too early to talk about our little fifty four State Road fifty four project? Or

2:06:33Yeah.

2:06:33Okay, next.

2:06:34Yeah. But I well I can I can allude to the fact that uh we've got a lot of areas of the county that have had uh heavy industry in some parts that historically were okay. And now they're in areas that are really high traffic areas and very uh very nice looking areas. We do have uh places in the northern part of the county that are actually working to attract more of the heavy industry. So those are things that uh uh as we see growth in the county, you see a lot of that land moving, dirt,

2:07:05cement, all of that is needed more in the north than it is in the south. So hopefully we get those trucks off the road in the south southern part of the county. and uh and get the northern part built up. Kinda surprising we're talking so much about the northern part of the county. Five years ago that wasn't an issue.

2:07:22Thank you.

2:07:23Just to kind of reiterate the Well I talk about every afternoon. It's fantastic to see these sites and you know, Hayes Road is coming to life. We have, you know, part of Eagle Industrial Park coming around the corner, soft soft winds. Mm-hmm. I just want to to be sure this is for the county attorney and Mr. Engel, the Davids and Mr. Engel touched on this at our at your industrial luncheon. I appreciate Mr. Ingle talking about it. But to protect these sites, these truly job creating

2:07:53sites from live local. I don't know how we do it. I'm not sure if we're vulnerable, but if we are. I just urge tremendous caution that we hold What these sites are for and not a road one square foot away from what these intended uses are because of that bill. So

2:08:13I will tell you that Mr. Cronin asked me this question. I sent him an example of a deed restriction that we use for rezoning that restricts these sites to industrial only. I think he called it Brilliant or something to that effect. So um you're not sure though. I don't know. Some super um but I thought I think he was i inclined to do something similar for These sites, was that right, Bill? Yeah.

2:08:40And and and yes, I did use the word brilliant. And uh um and and I have to say it it it was brilliant, very proactive on the county attorney's part, and I know that Commissioner Weightman also had a hand in that because um Yeah, some uh sometimes we we we want to preserve these sites and some of these programs existed long before the Live Local Agreement. The current agreements that we have actually have similar language in there about the voluntary deed restriction, but not for the specific purpose that we

2:09:10talked about. They are under a deed or a voluntary restriction right now to use it only for industry. But each of those ready sites are under agreements. I believe they're five-year agreements. So they'll get a chance to revisit those at the end of the five years. Our role, our goal is to get somebody in and located on those sites within that five years. So, but each of the sites, that is really the intention, is to preserve those for industrial development as we start to see that growth around, and

2:09:40then also to show less risk to invest in those sites because we've identified where everything is. But yes.

2:09:47Yeah, the advantage of those sites is since they have agreements with the property owners, they can say as a condition to you being part of Ready Sites, you've got to commit to it being industrial. the more difficult sites we have are the ones where They're not ready sites. Right. They're just zone industrial. But they happened before Live Local, so we didn't require they be deed restricted. Those are the ones that are most at risk. And the commercial sites that fall on that same.

2:10:12How many do we have now? Since you're the keeper of the numbers,

2:10:15at least six projects.

2:10:18I think uh I think you guys were able to to kind of stop some of that activity. There may be

2:10:23no, I gotta we'll we'll see, but there's at least six. That have come forward to the county. Mm-hmm.

2:10:29Um one one thing to mention, we're no longer a low cost environment. We are a low tax environment. Um, which means that our industrial land isn't quite as cheap as a lot of other people. So for them to get this to pencil out is sometimes more difficult for those developers. But you know they're gonna try. And I appreciate that everybody's working together to protect that because um we heard from from uh Mr. Engel last year about the cost of losing these industrial sites, the opportunity cost, and it is uh

2:11:00well over two million dollars an acre that we lose an opportunity cost. for job creation. And uh besides the fact that You know, do we really want our residents living in an industrial area? I mean It comes down to how we take care of our people and I I think that's really important too.

2:11:16Well Bill I'm glad in your forefront and I appreciate the article you sent over. It was last night I think I got it um about the apartments and just like how these

2:11:25Companies, na national companies are just kind of buying up projects, rehabbing. They were gonna if their revenues drop down they get stuck, they get in trouble and now they gotta go refinance and now they can't make the refinance and all the banks gonna decide whether to take it back or not. So I think it's it's classic to say that good residential housing is a lot better than the apartments because the quality of life you can lead, better for your citizens and now with these national companies they go under. Who knows what happens with it next. Yeah, that's as we've got

2:11:54we'll be okay.

2:11:55Well great greatly appreciated. Thank

2:11:56you all.

2:11:57Thank you very much.

2:11:58Okay.