City Council - workshop

Let me call to order the April 21 Deer Park City Council workshop. Did anyone sign up to speak?

No, sir. We definitely did.

Moving on to workshop items, the presentation of the Economic Alliance Houston Port Region Annual Report. You just assumed you're supposed to it's your time to get up there.

These these burks.

It's a burks. It's like there's burks everywhere we go. Burks everywhere. Welcome.

Thank you mayor and council. I think we're pulling it up as we speak.

Somebody gonna pull it up?

Think it's minimized.

Is it just the podium for you? Oh, There we go. Easy peasy.

There we go.

Thank you, sir.

There we go. And gonna bring my glasses. Yeah, did. Mayor and Council, it's an honor to be here tonight on such a special day. I just want to say personally what a great event that y'all just had. And thank you from my dad and the family and just for the community to have such a phenomenal facility that you guys have built. It's really, really special. It's going to be used as a just a gathering place for just decades. So great job. Appreciate it. And thank you all very much. I'll take a few minutes. The mayor already told me to be quick. Interrupt me.

Did I say that at lunch? He did. Did. Y'all He said that? You're going to get

me in trouble. I will try and be brief, but do interrupt if you have questions as we go through the slideshow. It's our honor to come and give you an annual report from the Economic Alliance Houston Port Region. I do want to make sure that I introduce Karen Gregory. Most of you all know her. She handles all of our contracts with public side of our house and does a fantastic job, as well as runs our trip to D. C. Every year. We'll talk about that here in just a little bit. I'll jump right in.

Again, the mission of the Alliance for the entire region is just to grow the economy through adding new jobs and new capital investment that goes on the tax rolls of our schools and cities and colleges, hospital districts and all those good things. So in essence we get a chance to work on the American dream and that's a lot of fun. Our board made up of some fantastic people. You can see that. You all had a chance to meet most of those folks. But you can see it's a nice cross section of the people that we represent in the region. And we have a phenomenal staff. Hope you all get to know them if you haven't gotten to know them already. The footprint does continue to grow. We added Chambers County this last year.

And some of the cities to the south of us passed down into Kemah and Texas City are actually in conversations with us right now, trying to join the group of 13 cities that we have already representing the region. So we really appreciate Deer Park being one of those founding members way back in 1985. So our mission is the economic development to grow it. We do that through several specific initiatives. To be competitive for those capital investment dollars, we have to be really good in some of the cost centers where companies decide where they're going to locate.

Public policy sets the regulatory environment. Transportation and infrastructure in this key region determines your transportation costs in and out of the region. So, work really heavily in infrastructure. Workforce development is obviously the cost to build, maintain and operate these facilities and move these products in and out. So, we have to be really competitive in that. And so, these are some of the real key areas that we work on for economic development to be competitive. And then we like to support our cities with our quality of life initiatives. So we work on that. And then we take the information that comes to us every year through all of the activity in the economy. We try and push that back out to our member cities or members throughout the year with events.

Insights and thought leadership is just a fancy word for events. And so we'll talk just a little bit about that. Economic development, again, we're trying to capitalize on those or capture those capital investment dollars. Everything from front end real estate all the way to helping permitting and facilitating relationships throughout that those project developments and construction. This is our historical chart.

We at the '5, we were at $19,500,000,000 over the last fifteen, sixteen years now. The last three years, know, if you live in this region, you know that the chemical industry is going through kind of a down cycle. It will cycle out of that. Some of the more recent things that have happened over on the other side of the world are actually helping us get there quicker now. So it's going be interesting over the next year to two years.

But still, project work in this region. Last year in '25, you can see we had three project wins, about $325,000,000 in capital investment. Not big projects, but projects all related to our industry. So it's always good to see that money moving in this region. So far in '26, we have our first project announcement win was a $617,000,000 NRG power generation facility.

We got called into that project to work with the school districts on their Jetty agreement. It's a tax abatement that the cities can I mean, the school district can offer? And that really helped to kind of spur some of the activity and the progress on that project. One that is probably not in this one, but you'll begin to hear this. Chad Carson, our VP of Economic Development, just rolled it out last week at our board meeting.

We've been helping and working with Marathon Petroleum on about a $1,600,000,000 pipeline project that runs from Mont Belvieu all the way through Baytown. It will cross over the Ship Channel and hug the coast all the way down to Texas City where their large facility is there. So we've taking them city by city as this new pipeline travels through and introducing them and talking about the permit process and everything that they have to go through with the city leaders. So that's been a fun project as well. And we're just now making that public.

Current project pipeline, these are the projects that we're working on right now. You can see it's about half in the petrochem industry, about half manufacturing, 19 projects, almost $6,000,000,000 And so like I said, the end of this year is going to be really interesting. These are some of the things that are kind of happening trends wise in the industry. A lot of the large cap petrochemical projects are still on hold, even though margins are increasing. And our advantage again in the world because of our oil and natural gas and manufacturing capabilities is really coming to bear.

The short story is Europe and Asia gets their chemicals off of naphtha, which comes from oil, which has stopped moving for that part of the world. And Ron, I know you're probably familiar, but a lot our member companies are being asked to fill that gap right now globally. So again, the eyes of the world are back on the Houston Ship Channel for the right reason. So that's that's going to be fantastic over the next couple of years. But everything from some CCS work, like we said, energy, power generation, and then Port of Houston is actually looking right now, studying their third terminal location.

So that will continue to kind of grow out the Port Of Houston as well. Public policy or really just kind of the quick snapshot before we go to policy is what the impact of the region is. It accounts for 20% of the state's GDP, and it's basically the busiest port in the country. You can see the numbers there. They're pretty staggering. The $9.00 $6,000,000,000 number is about three years old. The new study comes out in about two months. And they're fully expecting that number to be over $1,000,000,000,000 that impacts The U. S. Economy right here in the Houston Ship Channel region.

Again, as I mentioned, the port is growing faster than anybody else. We're about double the speed in growth in containers in and out of Houston, and second place, Savannah. Again, TEU volumes are 4.3 last year. I've been told that they're expected to double again in the next decade. So sometime within the next ten years, we'll probably be approaching 7,000,000 or 8,000,000 TEUs.

Our Ship Channel is working really well now. The widening project is complete from five thirty to 700 feet, which allows twenty four hour traffic in and out and a lot safer traverse up and down the Ship Channel. Again, what we import here are things that we consume. About 67%, almost 70% of what comes in the Port Of Houston is things that we either buy at Home Depot or can order off of Amazon, if you will. And then almost or over six in 10 of the boxes that go out of here are filled with goods that we make here.

And that makes Port Of Houston unique in all the ports in the country because we're the only ones that make things and export and import at the same time. So we're considered a fifty-fifty port because we import as many full boxes as we export with product that we're sending out. And again, gives us an advantage and makes us really competitive. That process is like this. You've probably seen this before, but I love to explain process.

We manufacture things. Those create jobs. Manufacturing jobs create eight indirect jobs in the petrochemical industry for everyone inside the fence. Those jobs create our retail, our housing demand for our communities, for great things like the DAC and the Jimmy Burke and all the cool things that local communities can do comes out of that. Then just like I do, we order things off of Amazon and consume products that come from the other side of the world. That brings us containers. We take those empty containers. We turn around and refill them back up with product. And then we ship them back across the world. So that's kind of how it works.

And like I said, it's a unique ecosystem that we have here unlike any other. So we're very, very, very fortunate. These are just some of our member companies and some of the products you're probably familiar with. Everything from coffee to soap to toothpaste, makeup, Sharpies, just a little bit of everything. It all comes from here in the Houston Ship Channel.

Priorities to create a solid business environment. Again, policy sets that groundwork. We work every year in D. C. Year round.

We do take a large contingent in the spring every year. We took over 50 people about a month ago now and held over 40 meetings across two days to really bring home the priorities from this region. And then we do the same thing in Austin every other year. We've already worked with the Speaker of the House to set the interim charges. Most of those charges and studies this summer will circle around transportation and infrastructure, specifically transportation infrastructure here in the Houston Port region.

The project to expand Highway 225 has been studied. It is at HGAC. We've got one more small step to get it on the unified the UTP, the Unified Transportation Plan. And then we have to fund it. The problem is they don't have any money right now, so it's not going to get funded in 'twenty six.

We're hoping for funding in 'twenty seven or 'twenty eight. And I know, Mary, you're on the TPC now, the Transportation Policy Council, which is a great advantage to have one of your city representatives on that because that policy council decides which projects get funded in this region. Everybody has been able to see the construction around the Beltway Direct Connectors. Again, a transportation committee jumped on that early on when the county and the state didn't neither one of them wanted to pay for it, and we ended up getting them to work a deal out together so that shared that cost. But those are under construction.

The first four are under construction right now. As soon as they finish those, they'll start the second four. So eventually, in the next three or four years, we'll have all eight of those direct connectors. And if you come down two twenty five like I do every day, you've seen the overlay beginning, right? They're going to overlay with asphalt the entire distance. So great things. These are just some of the projects we've worked on over the last decade now. The Kemah Seabrook 146 secondtion. Of course, the La Porte section is under construction right now. We've gotten TxDOT to agree and identify the money to expedite that project. It's not planned to be finished until '28. That's taken too long. So we have worked with them and the Port Of Houston. It's an extra 14,000,000 to $20,000,000 to expedite that project try and get it done next year, or at least before the end of next year. It looks like TxDOT's agreed to that.

Obviously, the direct connectors there at Beltway 8, the '2 25 overlay is happening right now. And then sometime within the next decade, we're going to have to replace the Ship Channel Bridge. And that study has already begun. Okay? Lots going on there. Our workforce development, as I mentioned, we just sell the story to young people of these great careers in great jobs in this region. So we market that. Mia Young is our workforce development director. She's a retired CTE director from Channelview. And she will probably talk to close to 6,000 students this year with volunteers showing them the great careers and the pathway to those careers, primarily through our community colleges, specifically with San Jacinto College.

And then you all used our grants before, our quality of life grants for our local cities. We've given away over $128,000 over the last several years just on wonderful projects around the region. And we're always open to accepting new options to work with you all on that. Our networking is really a key part of what we do. Last year, we had nine events, you know, almost three sixty people at every one of those events on average.

And it's a way to network with what's going on and hear the information about what's going on in this region as far as trends, economy, workforce, policy, all of those good things that go into making this region better. And then finally, I want to invite everybody again. I know the City of Deer Park does a great job of attending our Gulf Coast Industry Forum. This year's lineup is fantastic. It includes everybody from obviously our port chairman. We've got CEOs of some of our chemical companies. We've got the land commissioner. The mayor of Houston is going to visit us this year. So it's going to be a great day. So I encourage everybody.

That's on September 17 this year. And any questions? Real quick. Well, thank you all again very much for your support and everything that you all do to help lead the region. Cities have their own personalities. You all know we have 13 cities. I'm fixing to be 14 cities in a couple of counties. When you have great leadership, you're well represented in this region. And you all are well represented in this region. The voice is heard. Mary, you do a great job. Council does a great job as well. So we really appreciate you all.

I have one question, Chad. You guys do a fabulous job and really excited about the program you're doing the CTE program for the kids and all that. How are you guys are you able to track with her going and speaking to those 6,000 students how many actually funnel in and go through the San Jac program or

just in general? That's a great question. It's really been kind of hard to put your finger on for because we do track pretty much everything throughout that entire system. We track obviously how many events, whether they're school, whether they're parents, the type of people we're talking to. We track the demographics at every event so that we make sure we're tracking and we're speaking to the students and young people that match our Harris County precinct two demography.

And then obviously the total numbers at the end of the year. So we've got the metrics. Now, one thing that you early on this process, about ten years ago, we got with Sanjak and we said, show us your five high you know, your P techs and your instrument techs and your welders and those types of things. And then we tracked their enrollment for about three years. And we saw that once we started talking to five or 6,000 people, those enrollments started increasing every year.

And I just came out of a meeting with Jim Griffin and the CPET folks last week, And their numbers are up to their highest that they've ever been. That's almost the only way that you can tie it. And we do survey our Ship Channel HR group, which is HR for the plants. One, to make sure that to identify what their hot spots are, what they really need help with, so that we make sure that we and the colleges are pushing them into the right careers. So we try and tie it back like that.

And then one last thing that we do is when we present, whether we're in Sanjak's district or Lee College's district, which covers most of our footprint, Lee and Sanjak, we take contact cards. And so at the end of the presentations, if any of the students want to be contacted, and most of our students are juniors and seniors. If they want to be contacted or if they're interested in that degree or that career, they can fill out a card. And if we're in San Jac's footprint, we'll deliver it directly to counselors so that they can then call back and physically contact whether by phone or email those students to really kind of tie that knot off on that career path. It's not quantitative. Yeah, but you

can show trends.

Exactly. I mean

it'd be fantastic when you guys started this program to track a cohort all the way to them being a coming up from Sanjak all the way to being a CEO or whatever. And, you know, and I think that's a great story for you

guys Yeah, to I think we can I might pull in some of that data from Sanjak because they do a real good job? They track there several years after graduation. So, that's a good idea. I like that. We're always about the numbers. If you track it, you can improve it.

Metrics. Yep. Thanks, John.

Appreciate it. Any other questions? Thank you all

very much.

No, he wasn't supposed to ask questions.

You told him he had to keep it short. You didn't. It's my last It's my

last meeting. Short It's time. When he asked the question, I turned him and said, you're leaving.

Yeah. I was like, what do you say you're leaving?

Why do

think? Item number two, recognition of employee awards for the first quarter. Mister Stokes.

Thank you, mayor. It's always a privilege to get to do this every quarter. I would ask mister Van Raffer to come up for our first employee of the quarter for Field.

Good evening, mayor and council. I'm here to present this award to Tomas. Tomas works in the HVAC and electrical division of public works. He got nominated because, and this is what was written up for him. He exceeds expectations by repairing equipment others may not have deemed unworthy, saving the city money while keeping operations moving.

Excuse me, I don't have my glasses. Initiative is resourcefulness and accountability, consistency support consistently support his team and improve department's efficiency. So at this time I'd like to present him with this award. Thank you.

Okay, next up is Delcia.

Good evening mayor council. We'd like to present this award to Daniel Orta. Daniel recently exceeded our expectations by developing an innovative solution to a long standing right of way permit tracking challenge by creating a KMZ file, which is a file that geographically displays data that was done in Google Earth. The whole team can now quickly and easily identify active right of way permits in case we get complaints or whatever. Those can be identified by address.

That way, we improve our efficiency, accountability for who is doing what out there, and of course, our response to citizens concerns or complaints. His forward thinking approach, attention to detail, and commitment to process improvement continue to strengthen operations and support more accurate planning and development reviews across the city. So thank you, Daniel.

Okay, next up is Nicole. And Sarah's going to do that. I want to say just real quickly that this employee is one of my very favorite employees. She's a tremendous asset. And when I saw that she won, I sent her a text and I said, congratulations, you are the LeBron James of the city. And she wrote back and she said, no, I'm not. I'm the Michael Jordan.

Okay, yes. So Nicole's son had a band concert. She was very sad that they happened to occur at the same time. But luckily for me, that means I get to present you with this. So the supervisor of the quarter is Tracy Peterson.

Tracy is a very beloved employee. I've been fortunate enough to not only be Tracy's direct supervisor, but also experience her in another capacity once I moved to the city manager's office. Tracy consistently goes above and beyond demonstrating exceptional leadership, initiative and attention to detail. As chair of the employee awards banquet committee, she successfully led the planning and execution, as always, of a seamless and meaningful event that strengthened employee engagement and morale. But, I think even more significantly, she proactively completed an in-depth analysis of over 800 pages of payroll data to support the big beautiful bill about overtime taxes and payroll and all that fun mumbo jumbo someone has to do all that and it was Tracy.

Her work ensures accuracy compliance and efficiency and payroll operations while making a positive citywide impact. Her dedication reliability and commitment to excellence makes her truly deserving of this recognition. I am very happy that Nicole is absent, so I get to do it.

Okay. Finally, it's Kenny to do our team of the quarter.

Okay. So I'm honored to present the team of the quarter award to the Parks and Recreation membership services team at the DAC. Probably one of the biggest compliments I get from users of the DAC because everybody there is just so friendly and just so nice. And the customer service there is amazing. And that's a testament to the staff.

Many of these faces that people that use the DAC probably recognize a lot of the faces because they're at the front desk, the first face you see. The DAC can be a little get very busy, especially evenings and weekends. It can be challenging. The group does an amazing job maintaining professionalism and courtesy and representing the city extremely well. So with that, I just want to recognize the team at the court, a very well deserved group that works tirelessly. Every month, we do a member appreciation event that everybody looks forward to and loves, and they take the lead on that. During the membership services during January, we did a drive that generated over 600 new members. And they did a great job. Tour give people tours of the facility. They promote the facility.

They're passionate about it. They care about it. And they're a great representation. I wouldn't want another group being the first people that you see when you walk in. So, the team of the court award goes to The group is Tara Campbell, Haley D'Alessandro, Sarah Walker, Abigail Garner, Kara Tippi, Clarissa Corona, Jessica Alvarado, Jaylen Fisher, Trevor Salazar, Brent Lewis, Kara Hernandez, and Jimena Behar. Y'all can come up front.

Who's running the deck right now?

That all the items we have?

Yes, sir.

This meeting is adjourned, and our regular city council meeting will start here at 07:30.