Planning Commission - workshop

Good evening and welcome to the August 10th study session. I'm going to, the first item on the agenda tonight is about a resolution for an ordinance regarding storm shelter requirements, but the city staff has already prepared a draft ordinance which has been provided to the council and if there's no objection I'm just going to go ahead and discuss the ordinance a little bit and kind of go over a few things on the reason that I have kind of brought this ordinance up and again it's a draft and I'm sure there's some things that we're going to have questions on and may want to change but One of the things that got me in this and thinking about this is I remember the Joplin tornado a little bit here. I went down there looking for, in one of my rolls, I went down there looking for some of my members that lived in Joplin because I could not get a hold of them. And so I went down there to see if I could find them and see what was going on. When I got down to Joplin and, you know, I was on I-44, so I came down 13 into Springfield and shot West over to Joplin that way. And I'm thinking, man, where'd the tornado hit? Because it didn't look like, and then I turned the corner and got, I think it was Range Line Road. And I just got down the street a little bit and it was like, holy cow. I drove around some of the neighborhoods where my members lived and just saw the devastation there. But one of the things that caught my attention there was how many homes were on slabs. And the question was, did they have any place to go? I don't know that anybody remembers, but there were 161 people killed during that tornado. Three billion dollars worth of damage. And so, you know, there are some things in this that talks about two family dwellings. It talks about. It talks about, you know, if you're remodeling a home that. If you're going to remodel it and spend up to 50% of what the Jackson County assessor says the value of your home is worth, that you would have to put one in. Keep in mind, this would only be on future buildings coming forward. And... not anybody that's already applied. But this would not go into effect until 90 days after this would be passed as well. So there are other cities out there that do have some form of storm shelter ordinances. And you're seeing in front of you some of the pictures that, The one in front of you, I believe, is where the hospital sat, and then that's what it looked like after the tornado hit. There's another picture, and I think I saw it on here. Mario, if you don't mind, there it is. You can see one of the storm shelters that was in a house there, and you can just look around and see the house is just level along with everything else in there, but that storm shelter saved somebody's life. I saw another up in the upper right-hand corner. That is Home Depot. Home Depot was completely destroyed down there. But just the amount of devastation that was down there, and my thought is to try to be proactive. I understand that we're looking at you know, a little bit of an added cost here to homes and things of that nature a little bit. But when I met with the homeowners, the Home Builders Association, and had this conversation, and I may refer to Charlie DeSelle as well because Charlie attended that meeting with me. I brought this up to them and talked to them about this was something I was thinking about bringing up. And actually, the conversation, Charlie, if you don't mind, was pretty positive in that room. Was there an added cost to it? Yes. But you just maybe if you want to touch base on some of the conversation that we had in there.

Yeah, glad to do so. Mayor's member of the council, Charlie, to sell assistant city manager. I think the mayor kind of summarized most of it pretty well. But the conversation that we did have with the Home Builders Association kind of revolved around costs that they see for things like this. If I recall correctly, there's actually a business in Harrisonville that constructs these things. And a lot of the builders in the area use them. And they say that that was about an $8,000 additional cost to put these things in. And again, it's dependent on the model and everything that you would choose. And then I think, and I was trying to verify this before the meeting, but I believe that they said there was a couple of communities in the area that that do it. The only one I could see in the area that looked like had anything was Lenexa, Kansas, but I thought they said that Belton, Missouri might have something as well, too. I just couldn't clarify that, or I should say verify that before the meeting, so don't hold me to that, but I know overall they noted that most don't do it, but again, just the ones that do it and the ones that even elect to put them in, even though there's not a requirement, they do see that about $8,000 additional cost

And they seemed, to me, they seemed pretty supportive of it. And I will have another conversation with them. But the response I got, and if you agree or disagree with me, was pretty positive, I think.

Yeah, from the builders that were there, I think overall they didn't have an issue with it. The only thing they did note was, you know, they would like to know that it's a requirement before they go into a development because then they can build that into their performa that they put together. for those developments. So, you know, if somebody has already put that together and then suddenly you're throwing an additional $8,000 per home on that, obviously that kind of could take a perform out of whack. But if we had something in place and there was a little bit of an implementation time on that, I think that would be helpful and give everybody kind of a heads up of what we're doing. I appreciate it.

And just this may, I may look at our council if you don't mind, but when we, when we, when. You were looking at drafting this up. We looked at other cities that had ordinances in place and just some of the cities that have the ordinances in place around here. Obviously, Belton was one. Pleasant Hill, Peculiar, Missouri, Joplin, obviously, Lenexa, Kansas. Wichita, Kansas, Riley, Kansas, Omaha, Nebraska, some of them have some form of an ordinance in place regarding storm shelters. Some of them are just focused on mobile home parks and manufactured homes, but some of them go into single family and multiple family dwellings.

I'd say generally that sounds like a correct assessment of the situation sort of in the metro area, yes.

Thank you. Just one other thing and then I'll open it up if anybody's got requests or questions. I wanted to double check and see if Independence had any public storm shelters around. And there are two. One of them is the fire station number one. The other one is George Owens Nature Park. But as I'm looking at this and I kind of was trying to find out some information on this, my understanding, and I may have Charlie come back up on this one again too, is my understanding is that there's a phone call made to the police department, which in turn makes a phone call to the director, which in turn gets somebody over there to open up the shelter. So it's not something that's, readily accessible at that point in time. The question is, tornado warnings happen so fast we usually may get a 15 minute warning and by the time the phone calls are made and we get it open, it may be too late. But I did find that interesting. I knew Fire Station 1 had one. I did not know about George Owens. But Anyway, I'll open it up for questions. That's about all I have right now. Again, it's a draft, and we're looking at this thing, and hopefully I would love to have the council's input on it as well.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. So you may have said this, and I may have totally missed it, but is that in the picture to the left, is that one of those ICC 500 storm shelters?

My understanding is yes.

Okay.

That is one. There's multiple storm shelters depending on what you want to spend, but this is one of them. Some of them are just made in a garage. They just put concrete walls up in the garage to make it into a storm shelter. There's multiple different kinds.

Mr. Mayor? Yeah. Would you consider trying to incentivize these sorts of things rather than require them? Absolutely.

Absolutely. I have no issues with that at all.

Mr. Mayor? Yeah. Thank you. We've had some good conversations. We've had some good conversations regarding this. The The portion that has repair, reconstruct, remodel, or added to, in the first districts, there was a lot of older homes where this could apply, where some of the basements may or may not hit the ability to not be affected with the exemptions and stuff here. So my concern is with, and as you know, home remodel is just almost darn expensive, especially when you get to those older homes, and then when you have the cost constraints with that. My concern is being able to stifle that. I know we've had a very aggressive permitting, waiving our permitting fees and stuff over the past several years, which has escalated about a $4 million investment into the first district, remodeling and doing new construction. Incentivizing, this might be a better way to really ask people to do this. My concern is – and we can probably walk through it a little bit more of if this is passed, what is that burden and how is that passed on to people who want to remodel older or older homes?

Yeah, and I mean, look, I think this is – subject to us having discussions because I know it's set at 50% right now. Look, that's what is, again, it's a draft and I have no issues having conversations about that. I understand about remodeling and, and the cost that goes along with it. So I don't want to put a burden on somebody, but on the other hand, you know, again, if we, instead of 50%, if we go to 75%, I'm actually okay with that too. Okay. So. Perfect. Anybody else?

Mr. Mayor? Yes. So my list of questions would be, I mean, I think my concern is that we would lose housing developments to the communities right around us. Blue Springs, Lee Summit, Oak Grove, Grain Valley. So I would want to know... you know, what they're planning to do, if they're planning to talk about that. My concern is that we would lose development. I also had the question about could we incentivize this? And also, could we work on targeted community shelters? Would that be, I get the goal, and so would that be a possibility? I'm not sure we've done that as a community. Education, educating people on these storms, and I You know, the Joplin tornado was an EF5, and so I'm not even sure you can, how you protect yourself from an EF5. And so I'm supportive of the goal, but I think for me to support something like this, it would need a lot more work and I'd need a lot more information.

Thank you. I have no issues looking at community shelters. I mean, I think when you look at apartment complexes and things of that nature, that could be something that comes into play. You could have a... a subdivision that has slab homes, but has a community storm shelter there. I'm not opposed to that. I think there's language in here that talks about having a storm shelter within a thousand feet of some of these things. So not saying that it has to be in the house, but if they had a community storm shelter there, whether it was above ground or below ground. Um, but I'm, I'm willing to listen and to look at every option available. So, um, I will just say this and, you know, I, this is important to me, but I will just say this, how much does a life cost? And I'll just leave it at, at that. And,

Yes. Thank you. Um, also with the newly constructed commercial structures or, uh, reconstruction, you know, as we're working with small businesses, when we're looking at, uh, square Inglewood, Fairmont, what we're wanting to do down there, um, just thinking ahead on this being possibly cost-prohibited for some of those smaller structures, depending on what those business types and business structures will look like. Because we're not looking at the big box stores. We're looking at the smaller mom-and-pop stores, the entrepreneurs that are going to be developing those. That's one concern. The second concern, is there a capacity that has to be met If a new commercial development takes place, pick a spot that has an allowable occupancy. Does that storm shelter have to fit with an occupancy of what is being allowed for that commercial development?

That's a good question. Those are things I hope to get answered because that's one of the questions I have with this as well for myself too because I want to make sure that We have the appropriate language in there for that. Sure. Okay. So, yeah. If nobody has any other questions, I'm going to – citizens request. Don't have any? Okay. All right. Seeing none. We didn't have anybody fill out anything or – Okay. All right. All right. So this brings us to presentations. I will turn it over to City Manager Anderson.

Yeah. Mayor, we have a presentation from the Independence Economic Development Partnership. We have Mr. Jarvis Ackman here who has a few slides that wants to go through to make sure that you all know and understand where the Independence Economic Development Partnership is at.

Good evening, Mayor King and members of the City Council. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you on behalf of the Independence Economic Development Partnership. My name is Jarvis Sackman. I am the Director of Business Retention and Expansion for the Independence Economic Development Partnership. The partnership operates under the umbrella of the Chamber of Commerce. I report directly to Valerie Burns, our President and CEO. Before I start, I want to point out our new Chamber logo and branding in the upper right-hand corner of this first slide. We recently rolled out this new design after a lot of careful thought and planning. The three stars represent the three trails, the Santa Fe, the California and the Oregon, and the hope of those who came before us. And as a mark of our independence and proud heritage, independence is a bold reminder of who we are. The Chamber of Commerce represents the business community and is a place where businesses find support and meaningful connections. We wanted a bold, fresh look that represents our membership and this great city. I hope you all agree with that. Tonight, I want to provide you with an update on where we are in a practical framework for how the IEDP is focusing its work, measuring progress, and supporting business growth across independence. The objective of the partner, or excuse me, the objective of the partnership is to provide clear priorities for economic development efforts, align resources with highest input excuse me, impact opportunities, create accountability through measurable outcomes, and support long-term sustainable economic growth. The IEDP dashboard highlights some of the work that is already underway. To date, we have completed 20 retention visits. Through our business retention and expansion activities, we have identified $5.3 million in reinvestment and recent capital reinvestments. 12 businesses that are planning to hire, 12 planned expansions within the next three years, and 13 businesses that we have assisted with follow-up support. New business licenses are also seeing a positive upturn this year, up 64% from this same time in 2025, with 1,369 year-to-date as compared to 834 at this time last year. I would also like to point out the year-to-date amount of the $555 million in capital investment that we have seen in our community. At this time last year, the residential and commercial developments totaled $57.1 million. So in the middle of that slide of the dashboard and at the lower right-hand corner, you can see some of the projects that impacted that large number. There's some good things happening around our community. I mean, you can see it everywhere. There's development in all corners of this community. So not only is the dashboard a report card, but it is also how we identify city, IEDP, and partnership opportunities to unlock business growth. The business retention expansion operating model is the front door for understanding existing employer needs. A retention visit is more than an opportunity to build a relationship. It produces data and action, capital investment plans, hiring plans, expansion timelines, barriers, utility and infrastructure needs, real estate needs, and follow-up support. The dashboard on the previous slide is an adaptive management tool we use for converting conversations into outcomes. In early 2026 the IEDP picked up momentum by adopting a more targeted approach by identifying four key areas of focus. It is a framework that organizes our daily activities around industrial development, commercial districts, small business growth, community vitality, and workforce development. These areas reinforce and support one another while also connecting the community. Industrial growth requires workforce. Commercial vitality provides sales tax support and improved quality of life. Small businesses create resilience. Workforce alignment supports both expansion and recruitment. For industrial development, the purpose is to advance industrial investment, infrastructure readiness, and workforce alignment to support job creation and capital investment. The overall message is that independence must be competitive for industrial investment, and that means our sites, our infrastructure, utilities, approval processes, employer relationships, they all must work together. Commercial districts serve as both an economic strategy and a community vitality strategy. The goal is to strengthen the performance, attractiveness, and competitiveness of commercial shopping centers and districts. We will focus on sales tax growth, reducing vacancies, supporting reinvestment, proactively recruiting and retaining targeted businesses, and improving the overall district experience. Small business growth is about sustainability and inclusive opportunity. Many businesses need help after launch, technical assistance, access to capital, connections, marketing, workforce, and navigation. The goal is to build a continuum of support so local businesses can stabilize, scale, and keep local dollars circulating in independence. The final area of focus is workforce development. It connects employer, It connects employer demand to resident opportunity. The goal is to strengthen career pathways, connect schools and employers, support internships and tours, and provide rapid response workforce support for companies that are expanding or relocating. Workforce is not separate from economic development. It is one of the key conditions for business growth. In conclusion, the IEDP is on the front lines engaging businesses, identifying opportunities, and building the project pipeline. But lasting economic growth doesn't happen in isolation. It happens when business development is aligned with infrastructure, permitting, district reinvestment, workforce, and policy. Our framework and our partnership with the city staff brings those pieces together around one coordinated strategy with measurable results. Our goal at the partnership is simple, move from activity to outcomes. With the city's partnership we can turn conversations into projects, projects into investment, and investment into long lasting opportunity for independence. Together we can turn today's momentum into tomorrow's growth. I thank you for your time tonight and I'll be happy to try to field any questions that you might have.

Any questions?

Mr. Mayor? Yes. You said there's a 64% year-over-year increase in new business license growth. Is that application or approved?

That's a new application. So there are renewals in there as well, but I did not include the renewals. So those are just new applications.

Gotcha, but they haven't been approved yet?

That's a great question. I don't have the answer for that for you right now, but I would definitely look into that.

and do we kind of have a timeline on typically how long the permitting process, uh, for license, uh, a business license takes, uh, kind of an estimate on how long our process is to peer cities.

Um, another great question that, that I would like to get back with you on if you don't mind.

Um, I mean, it sounds like independence is the place to be. Please open a business here. Thanks.

Well, in India, it truly is. There's a lot of development here. And, um, There's a lot happening and vacancies are vacancies are, you know, office is on the high side because of just the nature of what we do as far as with COVID and trying to respond to that. But a healthy economy in our city, in a city like ours is between seven and five percent vacancy and our retail and industry and they fall into that category. So Overall, you know, there are some vacancies that we see that need help, and getting access or have just a list of those. We have a list of those businesses that I receive from the city, but just having a database that kind of makes that more usable and workable to be able to make those more available to developers.

Mr. Mayor. Yes. What types of things are you doing to reach out to small businesses to get them involved in using your tools? What things are you doing to attract people to bring businesses here? I mean, I know you talked about the steps, but what are the types of things you're doing to reach out?

Well, along with business retention and expansion, I also have done working on the business attraction side. So that has been something that's keeping us very busy over this past year. I mean, there's 21 projects on the dashboard that you see, but since then there's been a couple that have come in. So working on those requests for information to bring worldwide national or local, and I say local, but within the United States and global businesses to show off independence and to showcase independence. is one of the things. But for small businesses like that, small businesses, it seems like they tend to, they will reach out to me directly. And I'm not soliciting those businesses, but in business retention visits, I do meet with large employers and also those small employers as well. So just making our services available, the workforce development tool, find out where barriers are happening within the processes of their business and just finding ways to overcome some of those barriers are the ways that we implement those tools. And there's some examples in the top right-hand corner of that dashboard of just businesses that I've worked with over this past several months that have run into some real snags. And just being able to get the right people in the room and to make those connections and to make those connections to where that business can stay open, remain open, or also making just a clear pathway on what steps they need to take in order to get to the end goal of staying open, being the ombudsman to just that one person who can make those calls to keep businesses open. So I think there's a lot of layers within the city, and it's just, Sometimes it's frustrating or hard for people to get to that right person. So I'm that right person for that. And I make those connections within the community and follow those through. So it's been a good process.

What's the cost for a business that's just looking at getting started to use your services, to be a member of the chamber, to attend your meetings?

There are several different levels for the chamber process. CHAMBER MEMBERSHIP, SO THOSE VARY. YOU KNOW, YOU HAVE A START LEVEL AT $175, AND IT GOES UP FROM THERE.

BUT TO BE A PART OF THE... $175 PER YEAR?

$175 PER YEAR, YES. OKAY. AND THAT'S JUST YOUR GENERAL CHAMBER MEMBERSHIP. AND IT GOES UP FROM THERE. AND THERE'S ALSO... SO TO BE A PART OF THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP, THAT'S AT A $2,500 INVESTMENT LEVEL. BUT THAT GETS YOU TO... the table to talk about, to hear about all that's going on in the community. So there are folks in this room that are on that panel. There are also businesses, private businesses within the community that feel it's important to be involved in independence and have jobs and things that happen in our community. So some great community partners that we work with and are connected with.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Mr. Mayor.

Proceed.

So of the 1369 new business licenses, do we know how many of those are brick and mortar? Are they like home businesses?

I don't have the data for that. But some of those are probably home businesses, I would assume, and some food trucks and just different things like that. But I don't know if there's a breakdown on brick and mortar, but I would be very interested myself in finding that information out.

Okay, thank you.

Absolutely.

And then of the 20 retention visits, did any of those businesses identify issues that could affect if they stay or expand?

Say that one more time, please.

Of the 20 retention visits that you did, did any of those businesses identify issues that could affect whether they stay or expand?

I had one in particular that mentioned the lack of workforce, you know, just the workforce needed for that business. So it's something that, you know, I've worked with MCC and some other different areas on to try to figure out if there's something we can maybe channel some people that, you know, just get some programs in place. And they have programs in place, but as far as local hearing independence for MCC, that's just something that it would have to be another campus to do. But nothing that's drastic, nobody that's in peril and that's just ready to leave right now. I mean, that's what I hope does not happen, but that's what I want to try to cut off and eliminate some of those barriers that businesses do face, you know, because there's been some that have had different utility, just different little problems, just little things that won't cause them to move but are just a thorn in the side that they have to deal with day in and day out. And being able to work through that process and to get to results, that is one of the best parts of my job that I love to do is making that business just glad that we are here and that the city is willing to work with them and that the relationship that we have with the city and the partnership is amazing. I mean, we meet at least monthly, sometimes formally monthly, but sometimes even more often than that. So the relationship that we have with city staff and the Ability to be able to just make a phone call and have a quick meeting has been a great thing for the partnership.

All right, good to hear. Thank you.

I've got a couple questions for you. This one just caught my attention as you said you meet monthly. Who do you meet with?

Meet with Charlie, Charlie DeSelle, Tom Scannell, Valerie Burns, myself. So it's just kind of a small meeting. small group that we just talk about projects and different things like that.

Okay. You also have training on here. What type of training programs are you guys using?

As far as workforce training? Yeah. We have, actually we don't provide any training, but we work with the state on their training programs and ACT programs. Also with the school districts, they have certificate training programs. So it's just making those connections for the residents with those programs and also with the full employment council is a part of what that is as well. But we don't actually set that training up. There's professionals that have done this for a long time, and we just utilize those resources.

Well, probably talk because of the Missouri Works Initiative that I've got coming here because I think that would be a great program to team up with. And then just one more question. Sure. We have a lot of vacant buildings around here in the city, and you're talking about several new business license coming in and kind of, Some of them may be work from home, but are we looking at some of these vacant buildings and some of these small businesses that are coming in here? Are we trying to see about filling some of these vacant buildings with some of these new businesses? And if we're doing that, how are you working on that? In other words, are you reaching out to these building owners and having conversations with them? What's the process?

Being proactive with developers. I say developers. Developers, brokers that are in the area that constantly look into real estate signs, just seeing what their properties are, what brochures they have available, and intercepting some of those businesses that are wanting to move into other areas. I've cut off a couple, but it takes the other side to agree as well. I think just being proactive and reaching out to those folks. I mean, there's been a couple of businesses that I've reached out to that I heard were going to other communities just to see if we could offer something here in Independence and, you know, pitched about two or three sites to each one of them. But they had their heart set on another community. But just making that effort and being proactive in that approach rather than just letting them come to us, I think, is key. Also, the vacancy list that I talked about that I received from the city, just having a And that inventory and being able to utilize that, I mean, it's got a lot of addresses and a lot of, you've got to, it would take a lot of time to get that sorted through. But to be able to categorize and inventory that to where it's easily accessible and can be something that we can use as a tool, I think that would be very important going forward as well to present to some of these developers. And just to have, be able to get brochures, marketing brochures, I've got a complete file of available marketing brochures that I try to keep at the ready so that when somebody's looking for something like that, that I have that available.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes.

Can you tell me how much you work with the Innovation Center and the small businesses that are sort of born out of that program?

Sure. The Innovation Center, we work collaboratively together. I actually have a meeting with them next week to strategize about how our new framework will align with their program. And I will tell you that one of the businesses that I mentioned earlier was from the Innovation Center that was expanding, needing more space, needing more workforce. But I think what you find with the Innovation Center, there's a lot of businesses that are food-related. They're home businesses. But we want to get a strategy in place, and hopefully there will be some talks come from that next week in our meeting, that we can work with those business owners, not day of graduation or a week after, but before, proactively get something in place beforehand so that we can take some of that burden off of them and ease them into that situation. And if they need brick and mortar, yeah, that's why I want to have that. vacancies list somewhere where we can have an inventory of that and not have to just sort through all the addresses and figure all that out. So that's definitely part of our strategy going forward.

Thanks.

All right, I'm going to ask a question going back to that real quick. The Innovation Center, how many businesses that have started up in the Innovation Center that you've helped become a business in Independence?

Well, since, like I said, like I commented, the Innovation Center has a lot of food trucks, a lot of home-based businesses, so they don't necessarily, not all of them, I don't know what the exact number is, but they don't all necessarily need a brick and mortar. But I have helped one in particular that, like I said, is expanding. They're in a brick and mortar now. They're expanding, want to have a bigger facility and more workforce. So that's one that I can put my finger on, but others, I can't really, I don't know that there's any that need brick and mortar, to be quite honest with you, from the graduation that they've had. But, you know, that's, again, that's what I want to find out. We want to find out next week when we meet with them to just see what that strategy looks like. And, you know, that's, Valerie Burns and myself, that's kind of what we've been working toward is making those strategies kind of fit together and work together because this is, This is kind of a new approach for us, that 2026 strategy focus that we have. You know, when I came in and before Valerie got here, it was a shotgun approach. I mean, there was a lot to look at. But when you narrow that scope down and you have those four focus areas, it makes that target a little tighter, and it's easier to accomplish goals within that target. So that's kind of where we want to head with the Innovation Center. and just aligning those goals to where we can help those businesses. If nothing else, just to have conversations with the food trucks, the home businesses about access to capital and what it looks like for talent and just those little things that can help a business that doesn't really need brick and mortar.

But I think that's part of my concern here is that there are quite a few businesses that go through the Innovation Center that are not businesses here in Independence. And that's where I hope we can drive these people where they will actually want to open up a business in Independence.

Right. And there may be some other discussions to be had for processes and things that we can do. work on that would make that more appealing to those businesses to stay in independence. Because the key is increased sales tax dollars and just help bring that money back into independence. I mean, consumers don't see city lines. They don't see county lines. They just go where they know they can get what they need. So that's kind of what we want to be able to have some of those things. And like I said, Burlington, there's a lot of great investments and developments happening around our city that are are working in that direction. I've learned, you know, I like things to happen pretty quick, but I've learned that economic development is definitely a long game. And the longer you stay in it, the better it's going to get. So that's kind of our focus is just keep pounding and keep moving forward.

All right. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor. Yes.

Oh, sorry. She can go. All right.

So when I first started as a real estate agent, which we have an office that we don't pay for, but there's still a lot of expenses. So at that point, the chamber actually had resources that were free or available to those small businesses. Are you doing anything that provides some networking, some speakers? Because even the costs that you mentioned at the lower cost, for somebody who's trying to To become a real estate agent is several thousand dollars, and that's with a broker giving you an office. And that's a cheap, self-employed career.

And as far as the space and the availability, I mean, that's available to Chamber members. And hopefully we'll have enough activity in those offices that that space will be used. But that's a different conversation for a different person. But as far as the... The meetings that we have for the partnership, those are going to be more of a, you know, like a panel discussions, things that help people from professionals that can help people with financing or with just different aspects of the business. are going to be that training, kind of like business training, those to have.

So you're not offering anything that's like free services to the public to help them get a handout?

Oh, yeah, as far as like networking opportunities and things. And maybe bringing speakers in. Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I probably misunderstood or kind of getting it confused with the chamber and the IEDP.

Yeah, they used to reach out and be like, you can come here and this will be the speaker, and they made events where somebody who wasn't a member could still attend things and gain something.

That's exactly how we get new members in the Chamber. When you have those events and you can invite those folks, and what we've done now, we've got different events. Fun Friday is an event that the Chamber has. Anybody's welcome to that event. So show up to that event. Of course, we've got a great list of folks. I mean, the first one, we broke a record. They said to only count on about 50 to 60. We had 95 people show up, and then we had 95 at the last one as well. We've got another one coming up September the 11th. So anyone who's not a Chamber member, is coming to that event, we make contact with that person. We always have a follow-up. It can be a month later, but it's a follow-up to try to get as many people from that meeting or from different things that are not Chamber members to come to learn about the Chamber and just hear about what all we have to offer. And we've gained members from that as well. So, yeah, the bottom line for the Chamber, on the Chamber side of things, is to grow membership. I mean, that's what we want to do. The Chamber of Commerce is one of the most trusted organizations in any community, and that's You know, we get people walking in the door every day, all day, it seems like. But that's just a place where people go to get information and to learn about what's going on in the city. So, yeah, we're constantly trying to increase our chamber members. And, you know, we provide those things for free, like you said. Those folks don't necessarily have to pay for the membership. They can come to those, but yeah, we encourage that membership just to get the benefits of the connections and the networking events that are for members.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. So spurred some other questions as others were talking. So are there any particular barriers, onerous regulations that we have here that other communities don't? So if somebody is debating here or, say, Blue Springs or Lee Summit or Gladstone, they go, well, over there we don't have to do this. Is there any sort of recurring theme or anything along those lines that we make it painful to open here?

There... I understand there are, yes, but that is a question that's probably better left to city staff to answer.

Gotcha. Yeah, and if you could please send those over to me as well, that would be great. Absolutely. If someone leaves, whether they're expanding or they're just kind of tired of owning a small business, are there any... again, recurring themes as to why they're leaving. If they kind of give you a heads up.

One of the things that I've kind of picked up early on was in, in business retention visit, our succession planning, you know, just folks that they put their life into that business and they have nowhere really to, to anyone to leave that, not necessarily leave it to, but to turn that over to. And it's just, um, that's one of the reoccurring things is succession planning. Uh, you know, it's not with all of them, but it's with several of them that, um, You know, there's help out there, but, again, on the other side, you've got to have a willing party that wants to follow a succession plan. So just finding the best way. And, you know, there's, like Jackie, like Councilman Dorman, sorry, mentioned. We're all friends here. We're all friends. She mentioned, oh, shoot, now I lost my train of thought. Yeah, so anyway, yeah, succession planning. So one of the things at the IADP meetings, will be like a panel of people that, like a three-person panel, or just a speaker that has gone through the succession planning program and working through it. And there will be key invitations sent to those folks that are having those conversations and those questions and those fears. So that's part of the IADP, and that's part of our plan in not just having a meeting that updates the members and just keeps them informed. It's about engaging and making that more of a learning opportunity. And, you know, we've got some great professionals on that partnership committee that would be great as far as presenting and doing things like that. So using those resources and those folks to help train our community, that's where we're looking. Gotcha.

What sort of industries have looked here but didn't ultimately commit, and why larger employers, why have they not chosen independence outside of maybe our power capacity? I know that that's the big glaring issue.

A lot. So the ones that I have dealt with on an attraction basis, I don't usually hear. Trust me, I reach out and I ask why they didn't want to come here. because I want to know, because I want to be able to get ahead of that for a future business.

Yeah, us too.

So yeah, so I don't always get a good response. Some of them are just power related. They're close to, they're not in a conducive environment. I mean, there's so many little things. Sometimes it seems like it's just kind of a, Just a light excuse to to like say that's there's a probably there may be a deeper reason I don't know, but we've got some great opportunities in Eastgate we've got some great partners with North Point development and I Think that there are some there's it's gonna happen. There's gonna be some more development out in Eastgate and it's it's a Projects are coming in every week. It's just going to happen.

Yeah, something that really stuck with me in our budget was that 17% poverty rate number. That really... it made me very sad. Something that keeps me up at night all the time thinking about just how difficult life is. And I really, I want to have a thriving small business community, but I also want folks to be able to afford to support those small businesses. So whatever we can do to attract those larger employers who may be able to pay some higher wages and benefits, would love to work with the chamber on that.

Absolutely. I appreciate that. Thank you. Council Member Atkinson. Thank you.

Anyone else? Mr. Mayor?

Yes. I feel like I need to chime in. So a lot of discussion on home-based businesses. The General Assembly and their infinite wisdom in 2022 made the home-based business more of an easier, allowable use for residents in Missouri, with the exceptions of high-impact automotive, stuff like that in the neighborhood. So they've allowed that to be just a little bit more easier to be in our community and stuff, which We promote, they still have to go through the proper regulations and stuff with us, but the state has also put a little hand strong on us when it comes to those home-based businesses. Given about the large businesses that we were wanting to acquire, I think our next topic kind of dovetails perfectly right into that, our economic development policy. Jarvis, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any further questions?

All right. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Honorable Mayor, next item on the agenda is just a broad economic development policy discussion. So on the heels of the presentation you just heard and as a follow up to some of the conversation that we've been having over the last several weeks, There was a request to have a much broader economic development policy discussion. Where are we at? Where are we going? Are there opportunities for improvement? And so I've asked Community Development Director Tom Scannell to come up and give an overview of what our policy looks like today. And then we can kind of open it up for discussion on if there's any provisions that you want to see or change in course or direction.

Sorry about that, we're getting the PowerPoint loaded up. I don't have any good dad jokes, and I cannot dance, so.

Yeah, maybe technologies and economic development investment. All joking aside, while perhaps this is getting loaded up, I'll kind of tee up the question, right, of as we start to look at the policy, right, one of the things we'll start asking you all for feedback on is do you think that's appropriately – Targeted and sized right So oftentimes we immediately start throwing around words like incentives and oftentimes those have a negative connotation to them, right and so We obviously want to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, right? And so there's a balancing act oftentimes between sort of how aggressive and cities get in trying to attract and retain business and using what we call colloquially as tools in the toolbox, right? without compromising and putting that burden on the back of taxpayers, right? So the market has changed wildly over the last several decades. We've learned a lot over the years of what works, what doesn't work. Obviously, we try to balance and reduce risk as much as we can, right? And so it's constantly a balancing act between risk and reward. And so the things that we want to try to start exploring are, are there ways in which we can sort of proverbially open up the toolbox and allow more access to the toolbox? For example, just one thing that we've been talking a lot about lately is just housing in general, right? whether it's low density housing, whether it's high density housing, how do we sort of start opening up that toolbox and allowing more folks to utilize the tools that we have to bridge that gap in what otherwise might be housing that is unaffordable or unattainable, right? On the other hand, we also know and we've learned, right, we're not going to sort of backstop those incentives, right? In that way, we put the taxpayer dollar at risk, right? That in all respects, it should be performance-based. It should be based on the investment that's being added to our community and dollars that are anticipated to come into a community that we aren't seeing today, right? that future realization of dollars and how can we use those dollars creatively to spur growth and development. But at the same time, knowing when and where and how, we can look at things like geography. There's a lot of really great concepts out there around things like adjacency momentum, where we're not necessarily trying to create momentum, but we're already seeing capital investment being made by the free market. How do you come alongside that? and build upon that momentum that we're already seeing. So these are all strategies that we want to kind of talk about here in the near future. But again, we wanted to try to give you at least a baseline of where we're at today and maybe where our head is at about how we might want to streamline and improve some of this in the future. Hopefully that was long-winded enough to give Tech a presentation. Maybe not.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Just to kind of dovetail with that, we had a good conversation meeting today about some local possibilities, and we were looking at what is that threshold that would kick in the incentive policy for the city of Independence. So when you say we need to crack that, I mean, as we just had a good discussion on – the chamber and what they're working on, this may be a good opportunity to crack that open just a little bit more, just to see what that small business, medium-sized business can use and leverage for some of our incentive packages.

Yeah, absolutely. We know we have really good sort of data right around kind of where those thresholds are. So for example, historically, about a 15 to 20% economic development package is pretty standard practice, right? Depending on the industry, depending on the location, we're seeing that kind of 15% to 20% threshold really start to get pushed. We're seeing a lot of these projects start to entertain sort of low 20% and those kind of things, just because the cost of construction has expanded so greatly, right, that those margins for recovery are exponentially harder to achieve. sort of comparison I use with folks, right? Is especially when you get into real estate and commercial real estate, we've got some folks in the industry, right? This is really high risk stuff, right? This is, it's really easy for folks to go and kind of park an investment in a, in a CD or in a low risk investment portfolio, right? And get seven, eight, 9%. But when you're starting to talk about real estate ventures, you start to get into some really high risk stuff and that gap is getting larger each and every day. We don't necessarily have to open up the entire toolbox to every single project, right? We can be targeted and go, hey, look, we want to look at these industries. We want to look at these sectors. We want to look at these geographies. We want to look at things like housing and those kind of things that help balance our community portfolio. But to your point, yes, the market is changing, and so we're having to ever – Re-evaluate where we're at and what we're trying to accomplish, but looks like we actually have the slide deck up So I'm gonna turn it over to Tom at this point.

Good evening mayor and members of the council My name is Tom Skanal. I'm the community and community development director I want to give a little overview on the city's economic development policy cover a little bit of history how we did economic development before the policy and dive into that policy, then also talk about the tools that the city uses. So for many years, going back several decades, the city has been involved in economic development. As the city manager has mentioned, that has changed over the years. I like to say that the easy properties were already developed, and we are dealing with the tougher properties to develop and redevelop. not to mention with the increased cost of labor and everything else associated with development these days. So for many years, you know, the city operated without an economic development policy. What that created was a varied approach to economic development. You may have one project that was asking for an increase incentive and they received 100% pilots and 50% eats whereas another project just down the road received 50% pilot and 50% eats so the incentives were all over the board some were pay-as-you-go some were backed by the city guarantee fast forward to 2019 when City Council adopted the first economic development policy in the city's history. So what that did is it created a standardized approach to reviewing these incentive applications. How are we looking at those? How can we participate? It created those clear and consistent guidelines for both staff and for the developer. It encouraged redevelopment in targeted areas, older shopping centers, older neighborhoods. It was looking to attract and retain businesses, provide jobs, that capital investment. After 2019, the policy was updated in 21 through 23, basically to modernize the standards and to improve the transparency. Some of the objectives that the economic development policy outlined, again, encourage high-quality development and redevelopment that strengthens our community, promote job creation, business expansion, business retention, leverage public infrastructure investment, and then use the incentives where necessary to fill a gap. but at the same time trying to protect the public's financial interest. So that's kind of the overview of the city's economic development policies that then goes further into the various policies that the city uses. All of these are outlined and allowed under Missouri State statute. They break out into tax abatements. as well as special districts. So under tax abatement you have a chapter 100 tax abatement and a chapter 353 tax abatement. Special districts are things like tax increment financing, community improvement district, neighborhood improvement district, as well as the land clearance for redevelopment authority. Outside of those state statute specified incentives. We have some other incentives that the city can use from infrastructure agreements, fee waivers on building permits, and layering the incentives with the incentives that the state offers. So now I'm going to kind of shift the focus to go into each one of these tools that we use, starting with the most well-known one, which is tax increment financing or TIF. This is a tool that helps fund redevelopment using the new tax revenue generated both from rising property values as well as increased sales tax to reimburse the developer for project eligible expenses. Within the policy, it specifies that you can capture up to 50% of the incremental increases of both the property tax and sales taxes. Early in my presentation, I mentioned how before the policy, we had some TIFs that were 100% and some that were 50. Majority of them were 100%. The city's policy also requires a minimum project investment of $5 million to start the conversation with TIF. It does limit the public participation rate at 20%, and it also prohibits the use of the city backing of any type of debt associated with a TIF project. There is some confusion around TIF. A lot of people in the public think that this is just the city giving a developer a blank check up to a certain dollar amount. That is not how TIFF functions. TIFF uses the increment or captures the increment from the development project and puts that into a special fund that can reimburse the developer once the project has reached substantial completion and generally we do that through a pay-as-you-go structure so what that means is as money is flowing into that I'll call it a bucket we the city can reimburse the developer from that bucket not from general fund revenue and not for any more money that is in that bucket back to the developer so That's how it gets termed as pay as you go. As there's money in that bucket, it can get reimbursed back to the developer. Within the economic development policy, it does have an investment jobs matrix that you see up on the screen that outlines the public participation percentage based on where it falls within that. Recently, we had the Nolan Fashion Square TIF that the City Council approved. That TIF was above and beyond the 20% guideline that is outlined in the policy. However, the policy also says that the City Council, where they deem it's a public benefit, can exceed that 20% guideline. So shifting gears again, I wanted to kind of give a very simple overview of how a TIF works. So within a TIF, you have the pilots, which are the property taxes, and the EAT, which are the sales taxes. So I have a very simple example where vacant ground is proposed for a retail development, and TIF is approved as part of that. The This TIF was approved for 50% pilots. That means the pilots are shared between the developer and the taxing jurisdictions. And then the EATS or the sales taxes are also shared between the developer and the other sales taxing jurisdictions. So before the TIF was approved, the taxes that were generated from that property in this example is $394,000. After the project is complete, the taxable value of the project after TIF is $2.6 million. So the property taxes associated with that is a little over $227,000. So in that 50%, 50% is captured into the TIF bucket and the other 50% flows into the tax and jurisdictions coffers. So as you can see from that example, the increment that is flowing to the jurisdictions, the $113,533, significantly more than the $394 that that vacant ground was generating. Moving on to the sales taxes, again, vacant grounds not generating any sales taxes. In this assumption, the annual sales after the project is completed is $18 million. To the general fund, that's $180,000. However, the TIF captures 50% of that, so the TIF bucket captures another $90,000. And the other $90,000 not captured by the TIF flows to those sales tax accounts. entities. So as you can see the 90,000 is more than the zero that the vacant ground was generating before. So that's kind of a high level of TIF as well as a very simplistic example. Moving to chapter 100 tax abatement, again this is allowed by Missouri State statute. It's a development tool that cities can offer both real and and personal property tax abatement on a project to encourage that business to invest, expand, or create jobs, or stay in the community. City's policy, in accordance with state statute, does allow for the sales tax exemption on construction materials. That is one unique function of the Chapter 100 tax abatement program. Again, similar to TIF, the abatement levels are determined by an investment jobs matrix. I will get to that on the next slide. Public participation is generally capped at 20%. The city is not providing any credit support for any bonds associated with the Chapter 100 request. So, again, the Chapter 100 allows the developer to retain a portion of the future tax revenue that the project's going to generate. Otherwise, if it doesn't exist, there's no tax abatement associated with that. So the city's essentially temporarily foregoing some future tax revenue. So moving on to the Next slide, here's the investment jobs matrix. And again, it starts at 55% as the lowest public participation, all the way up to 85% tax abatement. But again, any large significant project, the City Council has the ability to go beyond what the guideline allows. And in the case of the most recent, Chapter 100, the NEBIUS project fell in that TBD category given the size of the investment. And as I mentioned, those projects of that size are evaluated individually, and City Council may elect to go above and beyond what the guideline outlines. So going into, again, a very simplistic example, the Chapter 100 In this example, we have a vacant ground that's going to be developed into an industrial facility. That project is approved for Chapter 100 tax abatement. The assumption is they are making a 20% pilot payment for the first five years, followed by a 50% pilot payment for years 6 through 10. And then the last 10 years, there's a 75% pilot payment. So essentially how Chapter 100 works is after it is approved, the property is transferred to the city. That is how you put in place that tax abatement. There are lease documents that are agreed to and signed that outlines the payments or lease the pilot payments back to the city, which then flows to the taxing jurisdiction. So when I say that there's a 20% pilot payment in years one through five, the developer is paying 20% of what the full real estate taxes would be that goes to the city. The city then remits that back to the taxing jurisdictions. So in this example, we have vacant ground. The property taxes before the Chapter 100 was $467. Property is approved for Chapter 100. and the developer makes that 20% pilot payment, which in this case amounts to $110,000, which then gets distributed to the school district, the library, Jackson County, the city, all of those entities, whereas the developer keeps the balance of what would have been due for the property tax payment. Jumping to year 10, that pilot payment to the city increases because the percentage went from 20% to 50%. At the same time, the assessed valuation of that property has gone up. So you can see that the pilot payment at that time has really increased to the city and to the other taxing jurisdictions where it has come down for the developer. So that's kind of a very simplistic overview of a Chapter 100. Moving on to Community Improvement District. Again, this is a special funding district where property owners business owners agree to collect an additional tax or fee to pay for improvements or services such as road sidewalks lighting redoing the lighting buildings those types of things the city's economic development policy does authorize the use of special assessments and or sales tax. Generally what we see here is a retail component and they increase the sales tax to reimburse the developer for those investments. It does require the developer to demonstrate that they need this incentive in order for the project to move forward. Any type of debt that is issued has to be issued by the CID, not the city. And then it limits the duration to the shortest possible time for that project. And again, so a CID is not providing a direct payment to the developer. It is a tool where the additional tax is collecting money and that is reimbursing the developer for their investment into that project. So moving to the next slide, we have a very simplistic example. Again, a shopping center has some vacancies, currently does $1 million in annual sales. They're approved a one cent CID. which allows the developer to reinvest in that shopping center. Upgrades are made. They fill the shopping center. So you can see that before the CID, the sales tax flowing to the general fund, just $129,000. After the CID, they fill the shopping center, sales increase, and the sales tax increases. coming in from that district increases and the developer still captures just that one percent and is reimbursed for their expenses off that one percent sales tax. So again, it's very simplistic, but it shows that the power that these tools can have. So moving to chapter 353, tax abatement, this is again in incentive that allows property owner to pay a reduced property tax for up to 25 years. The goal of this is to encourage investment and redevelopment. The city's economic development policy caps that at the first 10 years at 75%. And that is followed up by, for the next 15 years, they can get 37.5%. Public participation rate, again, it varies depending on the level of investment and jobs, but it's capped at 20%. And again, the developers must show that the project is not feasible without that. So the city and other taxing entities are temporarily reducing their portion of the new property taxes in order to have that reinvestment in that project. The next tool is Neighborhood Improvement Districts. This allows property owners in a specific area to tax themselves to pay for some type of public improvement. It could be a sidewalk, curb, gutter. These are used to finance public infrastructure. So the neighborhood decides we're going to tax ourselves to get those public infrastructure improvements. But in order to do so, you must have a petition that's signed by two-thirds of the affected property owners. The improvement must be consistent with the comprehensive plan as well as other city policies and guidelines. The term of the special assessment cannot exceed 120% of the improvement's useful life, so you don't want to stretch those special assessment payments well beyond what the useful life of that improvement is. And again, the improvements must be a benefit to a subdivision or a larger area. Moving to the next one is the land clearance for redevelopment. Again, this is a statutory public entity that's responsible for identifying blighted areas. They acquire the properties. They clear the properties whenever necessary to help support the redevelopment efforts. City's policy is looking at blight remediation and high-quality residential infill development. The LCRA cannot issue debt or provide tax abatement. Its authority is limited in use. If they use eminent domain, it's for non-owner occupied properties only. And then projects are limited to a maximum total cost of $1 million. So moving to other incentives that I mentioned early on, infrastructure agreements. agreements. These are sales tax rebates. These could be used for some smaller developments that there's some minor infrastructure improvements that may be necessary and agreements are entered into where they can get reimbursed over a very short period of time through sales tax. Fee waivers. We have used this a few times in some of our projects. Reduced utility rates, this is also known as economic development riders. And again, these incentives that the city had can be layered with opportunity zones and other state programs to help them achieve a level of incentive that they need to make their project viable. And in summary, the economic development policy focuses on financial responsibility, looking at the public benefit, and then keeping these incentives aligned with city's plans, whether that's the comprehensive plans, strategic plan, policies that the city has. So that concludes my presentation. I'm available for any questions.

Any questions?

Mr. Mayor? Yes. So we do have the option to modify this policy to target specific industry?

I would say yes. So this is a living, breathing document. It was adopted in 2019, had some early updates in 21, 22. The last updates were in 23. So we are three years removed, essentially, from that. If the council so desires, we could look at fine-tuning that a little bit more. Gotcha. Thank you.

Go ahead. Mr. Scannell, I have a couple of questions. So a Chapter 353, is that used for residential or commercial?

It can be used for both. Generally, how we have seen it used in independence has been on the residential side. A number of years ago, again, before the policy was approved by city council, city created different 353 areas, mainly in the northwest part of Independence, Fairmount-Carlyle 353, St. Clair Park 353, and then shortly afterwards, after the policy was adopted. So in 2019, there was also the Southwest 353. All of those were initiated by city staff with the goal of reinvestment in some of our older neighborhoods. And that's how we have generally seen it used over the last 15 years or so.

And when you use that kind of an incentive, did you see like on the residential side that people did take advantage? Like I think you're talking about when exteriors were improved and windows, am I correct?

Correct, yes, yes. So each one of those programs were used for addressing the blighting influences, so that's everything on the outside. So it could be new siding windows, repair of porches and driveways, exterior landscaping, those types of things.

So does it kind of encourage that to happen?

So the city has had varied success across the three area 353s. Paramount Carlisle was the first area 353. It was also the largest. And that one had probably the best participation rate of the three. Again, that's also one of the oldest. It was first approved in the early 2000s. St. Clair Park, I believe, came in about 2010 and then 2019 for the Southwest. So across that 20-plus years, you want to say, that first one was the best.

Mr. Mayor. Yes. Councilwoman and Mr. Scannell, to add to that, it was very large and there was some good success. If we were to do it all over again, I would probably throw out to me, make it a little smaller so you can have a higher impact, more of a visual higher impact. Because when you do it so big, even though you have that investment in such a large area, it's not quite as concentrated. So that would...

Going forward, that would be more of a thought I would have. Any other questions? Mr. Mayor.

Yes. So I'd like to... I wanted to touch on the LCRA. So we do have that as a vehicle available to us. It's just sort of a funding lack thereof, I guess, to really utilize it and see greater impact. Is that right?

Correct, yes. The city council authorized that. I forget the year. It's either 22 or 23 in an area. Generally, again... kind of in that northwest corner of Independence, basically from the square over to the city limits west and north. To kickstart that does take some funding to kind of get that off the ground, and that's always been a challenge in the past.

It sounds like a lot has been done by the city, and I assume – Councilman Perkins to try to get the northwest part of Independence revitalized. We'd love to see support in the future on making sure that we continue those efforts. It's the lowest income part of our district. I know that You know, we've done a lot there. We've seen a lot of neighborhood revitalization. We've got a long ways to go. I'm hoping the 24 highway corridor helps that. I would love to boost that LCRA. I know we had a really good conversation about that and help some economic development rehab going on in there in the future.

Mr. Mayor. Yes. September 20th, 2021, is when the council approved the LCRA. And just going from some of my emails and stuff, we have set up the apparatus. We've set up the bylaws. I don't know if they've been enacted because we never really had an active board and the funding. But the apparatus is certainly there.

Correct, yeah, the basic framework, the apparatus, the bylaws are basically all there. Thank you, Mayor.

Any other questions?

Yes.

Okay, so what about the Neighborhood Improvement District? Do you have examples of that?

Good question. So we have some older examples. Maywood was one from, I think, in the 80s or 90s. 24 highway sidewalks and streetlights from, I believe, the early 2000s. There was an improvement in the 90s along Nolan Road, again, I think, for streetlights. Englewood, I believe, also had streetlights. Again, I believe it was the 90s. The challenge with the Neighborhood Improvement District is is the property owners think residential, they're self-taxing themselves to do that improvement. I really wish that there was, the state would update those standards. It really has become a tool that really no developers using these days.

Mr. Mayor, last one.

Yes.

I would have maybe a suggestion and I know this will be on our meeting but maybe just this slide to really highlight it on the website that we're working on where people can go review it because I think as a standalone it's fairly informative and I think if you just stick it on our meeting, they may not see it.

Absolutely. We can share this. We have a couple of pages on the website dedicated to the economic development policy. Admittedly, sometimes this stuff is really hard to kind of wrap your head around and understand, right? And so any opportunity we can use, you know, if it's this slide. There's some really great tools out there, just some virtual images, right, of things like what does a tax increment financing district graph look like, right? And sometimes just even breaking it down into images can help communicate how some of the stuff really works, right? This stuff is not easy to navigate. We're not alone in that. And so we try to use it as an educational tool, right, to help folks better understand the tools in the toolbox. But absolutely, we're open to sharing whatever we can, wherever, however, to make sure that we're getting good information out to folks.

Yep. Mr. Mayor.

Proceed.

What about opportunity zones? Have we used those before?

So that is a federal program where it allows a property owner to defer some capital gains tax over a period of time depending on the investment. The first iteration of opportunity zones is sunsetting, but opportunity zones 2.0 begins January 1, 27, we have been working with MidAmerica Regional Council on identifying the four census tracts that we are allowed. So we sent that information to MidAmerica Regional Council to serve for the metro. They are then going to send that to the governor, and then the governor will weigh in on which census tracts, the governor will recommend to Washington, D.C. for putting into the Opportunity Zones 2.0. So we're hopeful that the four that we are allotted will make it all the way to D.C.

Mayor, if I can add on to that just a little bit. There's oftentimes a lot of confusion around opportunity zones, right? While cities have an opportunity to weigh in on what census blocks, tracts, zones are identified, beyond that, cities have no involvement, right? This truly is between an investor and their tax professional as they work with the federal government. Beyond identifying where strategic investment could and should be encouraged, Beyond that, cities don't play any role in opportunity zones.

Any other questions? All right. Thank you.

Mayor, that's all I have for you.

All right. Thank you. This concludes the study session. Thank you.