City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. Sounds good. Let me give me a second here. [snorts]

Okay, I've got 5:00. All right. Well, when Chelsea's ready, we'll go. I'm trying. I think James has that one. It always [snorts] works, Tiffany. It always works. I can do without the slides if you'd like. Yeah. Yeah, give me a um And we have them, too, in our packet. So, even if you can't see them up there If it's the same one as you I have faith in Chelsea. So do I. It's always me. Always. I did test it earlier and it was working.

Of course it was. Of course [laughter] it was. Allison, can you maybe help Chelsea? I There's something not working and for some reason it always seems to be You can come look at it real quick, but Yeah, like you're getting You're just getting no signal. What did you guys do with the little slides? [laughter] [snorts] [snorts]

Somewhere you're saying? It has to be. 4:13. There you go. Work session, yep. So, you can end the work and then we'll come up with a view. Paint it. So, which one of these? The top one? This is the presentation. Okay, good deal. This thing gets a mess. Yeah. Is there another one? Yeah. Do you have another one for you? One upstairs. Okay. Um Let me try it on the [snorts]

So, why this isn't working, I [laughter]

We'll take a breather. So, nothing? It's searching. Just think about it. No signal. Okay. We'll just have you guys give your presentation. Does that work? I'll leave this up here so you can kind of follow along. It's the easier of the 48 of them. Yeah, so we have that. Okay, here's the clicker. [laughter]

Start? Yeah, we'll just wait. I'm going to bring the meeting to order and then we'll go. So, we're going to bring our work session for April 13th, 2026 to order. We have one item on our agenda and that's a presentation from Greater Des Moines Partnership on economic development opportunities for the city of Polk City. And Tiffany, it sounds like you're going to start. Okay, welcome. We just ask people to tell us who they are. You got it.

So, good evening, everyone. I'm Tiffany Tauschek and I'm the president and CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership. I am joined today and you will hear from my colleagues, Stacy LoVan, the SVP of economic development at the partnership, as well as Courtney Shaw, our chief communications and engagement officer at the partnership. So, uh please follow along with the slides here. Thanks for your flexibility. Uh we appreciate it.

Ooh. Okay, we're going to do this. So, just want to share with you a little [laughter] bit about the partnership. Um hopefully you are somewhat familiar with the partnership as we have been um partnering with Polk City in different ways for quite some time and really excited about this conversation tonight and where this conversation could go. So, thanks thanks for the time and the interest. So, as the Greater Des Moines Partnership, we are the largest business organization in the state representing and focusing on economic development and talent development, and we leverage public policy as a supporting strategy in that work. We are funded by about 400 investors and we represent a number of affiliate chambers of commerce throughout the the region and have 7,200 regional chamber members. So, essentially the chamber members that are members of the affiliates of the partnership, they are also members of the partnership. So, it's a dual membership model that is very unique. In fact, we get phone calls and emails about the the unique model that our organization has probably on a once or twice a week basis uh from around the country. So, it is unique and I do think it really just speaks to how collaborative we are as a region and how we work together. Uh but that dual membership model is part of what makes us uh such a large footprint in in the region. So, want to share with you just about our population. So, we currently have 940,000 people living in our CSA. So, our combined statistical area and that's an important designation, a federal designation, because as soon as we hit 1 million population, we will instantly be eligible for all kinds of additional economic development projects. And of course, we all want additional economic development projects uh and more vibrancy throughout our region. So, that's a very important number that we're working to reach and we are trending in the right direction there. As I mentioned, our dual membership

model is really unique. So, it's also what sets us sets us apart from others in that we are the second largest regional chamber of commerce in the entire country. And that is again because of the the dual membership model and so many of those regional chamber members that uh are affiliated with us and members of us through their local chamber of commerce. We of course has have worked with the Polk City Chamber in uh in many years and excited to again have this conversation with you about getting Polk City specifically involved. So, at the partnership, we go out and fundraise for our operations every 5 years. So, currently we are looking to find additional investors to join and be a part of our organization and that's part of what we're going to share with you tonight and then we have some unique ideas that we want to talk to you about tonight, too. But every 5 years, this uh investor campaign that we go out and raise funding for our organization, we set forth 5-year strategies or a vision for the future. And those 5-year strategies, hopefully you're following along on your screen, uh really are all rooted around economic development and talent and positioning our region for the future, as well as focus on inclusion, so inclusive economic growth, placemaking, and storytelling. Every year, we go through the process of working with our investors and of course, our board of directors, our affiliate chambers, and our regional chamber members to listen and learn about what are those key initiatives or priorities that are most important to them that would ladder up to our 5-year vision and strategies. So, the 2026 strategic priorities are that next slide. So, again, focus on economic development, talent, quality of life, AI and innovation, positioning our region for the future, and storytelling. Our next slide, regional momentum. We recently shared this stat, which we are really proud of and excited about because it's unique for a region our size to have this amount of economic

development underway and capital investment underway, 5.7 billion in capital investment and economic development projects underway right now in our region and another 2 billion in the queue, which again is is great news and Courtney will tell you a little bit more soon about the storytelling that we were able to do related to that data point. Next up, I'm going to invite Stacy LoVan to talk about our economic development efforts specifically. Good evening, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here and talk with you um tonight. Um so, when we talk about economic development, we want to first set the stage as to what um the partnership does and where we focus. Really, we put um the work that we do into two buckets. One, we work with local companies who are already here to help them grow and expand, help them meet the needs that they need to for their business to be successful. We also are the community of the region's um sales people and marketers across the nation and internationally. So, we are out marketing the region trying to attract more companies and bringing more business into the area. Since the partnership was formed in '99, we have assisted 787 businesses, attracted more than 16.5 billion dollars in capital investment, and assisted um created or retained 39,000 jobs um

[clears throat]

throughout the region. Um the next slide it just has a several logos on them. Those logos just represent companies that we have worked with in 2025 and that are growing and expanding. Um we know from a business retention expansion, when we are working with local companies, that is so important to what we do in economic development because we know 80% of growth um, in the economy comes from your local businesses who are already here. So, we are out there talking with companies talking to CEOs and executives and saying, "What keeps you up at night? What is it that we can be doing within our community to make this a better place for the businesses and for residents? And how do we um, make that happen? And how do we come together to work on a strategy to solve those issues?" We also, when we are on marketing trips, we have several companies in the region who are not headquartered here. They're just satellite plants or operations. So, when we do our national marketing trips, we are out talking to headquarters and getting meetings and seeing how corporate feels about their location here and how the operation is going. From a business recruitment perspective, we talk about the marketing angle. So, of course, the Iowa Economic Development Authority is out marketing the state um, nationally and internationally. The partnership joins with the Economic Development Authority on many marketing trips, but we also do some of our own, which we will get into. Um, and why is it important? Why do we need to be out marketing our region um, across the nation? There are over 10,000 economic development groups who are trying to attract the 100 to 200 major economic development projects that happen within the US every year. Um, and when we say a major economic development project, we're talking about a project that's probably $100 million or more. So, we do a lot of economic development projects that are not of that size, but just knowing that you have to be out

promoting yourself regionally or you are going to be overlooked. We also know that economic development is a process of elimination. So, we have to put ourselves on the radar and tell them why we are the place they want to be before we um, can before we are eliminated. Um, the next slide outlines the six targeted industries um, in our region. Advanced manufacturing, insurance financial services, ag innovation, logistics, data centers, and technology. We work with many companies that do not all in these six target market areas, but when we are out promoting and selling, we have to have a focus or you you just shotgun everywhere. So, we um, focus on these industries. Primarily because that is what we have here and that is what we are good at. Um, each year we or last year, we'll just use last year as an example. We did 27 marketing trips outside um, of Iowa promoting the region. You can see the list here. Of those marketing trips, six were what we call metro recruitment trips and that is where we're going into a major mark major area. Let's say a Dallas or a Minneapolis or Chicago and having 12 to 15 appointments just one-on-one that we have set up and cold called and said, "We want to talk to you about why Greater Des Moines is a great location to be." Um, for our lead generation, so the projects we actually land, we did 100 We had 140 Let me step up. Not the projects we landed, our prospects who we are trying to land, we had 140 prospects identified last year. Um, 83% of those were locally generated and 17% came from the state of Iowa. Um, and that holds true um, if you look at the past 10 years, it's about the same percentage. Um, and then the next slide shows you where leads were generated from. Um, our leads came from 20 states and 11 different countries. Look at that technology.

So, I'm going to cover some of the talent development work. Um, Jenae Sikkink is our SVP of talent development and inclusive strategies. She couldn't be here tonight, so bear with me. I'm filling in for her. Uh, so we have uh, on the first slide related to programming a number of talent development initiatives that our team leads. Um, many of these are built in close collaboration with education partners, business community, industry leaders, and government partners. So, uh, basically, if you if you were to zoom out, you would see that our talent programming runs K to 12. It runs in the college university uh, time frame, so internships and then of course, those that are currently in the workforce. So, there's a number of initiatives designed to help any of the talent in any step of their way throughout throughout that talent journey. And I'm happy to talk about any of these initiatives that are on the screen if you'd like greater detail. Uh, I'll just highlight two real quickly. One is our the Legacy Project Career Ready Collective and that is where last summer we worked with 266 public high school students who were able to receive career ready training and help them understand what different pathways to opportunities were available to them here in our region. We connected them with over 200 different leaders in the region, helped them with learning more about is whether it's applying for a scholarship or different trades. It's really just to help them understand we want them here in our region and that was a very successful program. We're doing it again this year as well and expanding it. Uh, we also have the DSM intern connection and that's another very popular uh, talent program that we offer. Last summer we had 517 students and they were from over 60 colleges and universities from around the country that were here in the region for the summer. We get all of those students together, help them network, get to know each

other, build that network, and also further connect them to the community. And what we heard is about 90% of them at the end of that program said that they now want to move to our region and live here when they graduate because they had such a great experience. So, that's really the goal and we tell them that up front that that is the goal is to get them to stay here or move move here full time. We have a number of other talent initiatives as we work through that talent pipeline including our welcome welcome guide. So, individuals that are considering moving here or looking on online, we are able to target them through marketing, which Courtney will talk more about, and serve up ads to them about moving here and then we serve them up with these welcome guides helping them see what life could be like here in the region. We have a number of DSM MVPs. Uh, I believe we have one located in Polk City as well. Uh, but these are individuals that are super ambassadors helping sell the region and what your life could be like here in the region. So, we connect these individuals and of course, they volunteered and they can either connect virtually by the phone or if the individual if the prospective talent is in town, they can meet with them in person if if they feel comfortable for coffee or maybe ice cream on the square. Uh, and they will learn about what life would be like for them here in the region. We also leverage these DSM MVPs for individuals who have just recently moved here. One of the reasons we heard we learned through data that Courtney and her team led that some people would choose to leave the region is if they did not find their their group of people. They did not feel as though they were fully engaged in the region. So, this program was designed specifically to help with not only the talent recruitment, but the talent retention piece. So, that program's going very very well. We just rolled it out uh, fairly recently. We also have a number of ways that we help connect rural, urban, and suburban

communities and leaders. One way that we do that is through our regional summit. We have a number of regional roundtables that we host where we're talking about key initiatives or issues that are really important to our rural, urban, and suburban leaders and then of course, a number of different resources and research that we provide in addition to of course, storytelling and promotion. Small business support is also one of the initiatives that our team works on. We see that as part of our economic development and talent work and we have a number of programs designed to help support those early emerging entrepreneurs to those that are looking to scale up. And some of those programs uh, and again, we work closely with our affiliate chambers on this as well because we want their members to participate in these programs. They are at no cost to that small business. Of course, their time we know is very very valuable. So, they are investing their time in going through this program. But we make it as easy as we can to ensure that we are helping support that business to grow and thrive here in our region. The Spark DSM program is an incubator program. So, those individuals, those businesses are um, going through the process and applying to be vendors at our downtown farmers market for example, at the World Food and Music Festival and other big events that we host. We also have the Scale DSM business uh, accelerator program, which is designed for businesses that are looking to scale up their business. So again, these are free to those businesses. We want to do all we can to help support that continued uh, business growth in our region. Every business started small at some point, right? So, we want to make sure that we're doing our best to help continue that uh, growth of small businesses throughout our region. As I mentioned earlier, public policy is our sup- a supporting strategy that we leverage to drive and advance economic growth and talent development. We have a state policy agenda that is uh, consensus based. We are a non-partisan

organization. We are a nonprofit and therefore, we go through a very rigorous process of ensuring that our investors are uh, affiliate chambers and our regional chamber members are all invited to have a seat at the table as we're designing what our state policy agenda looks like. And then that goes to our executive committee and then ultimately our board and is approved and then we move forward. So, our featured priorities are economic growth, workforce readiness, and housing for this year. And we are very well engaged at the state capital. We have a lobbyist on the team. Laura Book is her name. She is at the capital every day during session. I'm up at the capital quite a bit as is a number of other team members who are up there to ensure that we're advocating for our investors and our affiliates and regional chamber members. The process related to our consensus-based agenda is similar with our public or excuse me, our federal policy agenda. So, for this year's featured priorities, regional transportation, permitting reform, workforce funding and programs, and housing. We also and you may see the mayor there in this picture. Thank you You've got a better picture for your normal [laughter] presentation, right? This is just for us. This is This is one of our great pictures of you all engaging on our DMDC trip. We do appreciate you taking the time to go. It is one of the largest fly-ins that any organization like ours across the country does. And it's It is a big deal. We take about 160 to 200 depending on what the the plane that we charter can hold and how many people sign up, but we appreciate your participation. It's a great way to have additional conversations certainly with other leaders. It's kind of like a big field trip for a couple of days in DC, but it's also a great way to get in front of our congressional delegation and the staff. We have a number of public policy events that we also host. And again, this is

all designed to help ensure that we are advocating on behalf of our investors, affiliates, and regional chamber members. We have a legislative breakfast every December where we invite some members of our state legislature to address to address our investors. We have a legislative reception where it's the first night of the legislative session. We invite all of our legislators as well as all of our all of our investors, affiliates, and regional chamber members to meet with them. It's always very popular. We also feature our affiliates and their food offerings in their in their local communities. So, it's a great way to for our legislators to have a quick bite and to get to know others in in our region. We host a legislative softball game and support that. So, it is a the Democrats versus the Republicans. It's always a really great game. I would highly recommend it. I don't know if we've publicized the dates yet, but we do have one coming up again this summer. And then of course, DMDC which registration's currently open June 3rd through 5th. We'd love to have you. Regional momentum. So, I touched on earlier the really exciting stat we have related to the amount of capital investment that we have underway in the region. We also have great rankings. So, part of our role is to get the word out and leverage third-party validation and credentials if you will to help sell our region on a national and international scale which Courtney will talk more about here momentarily, but one specifically on your site that I wanted to lift up, one ranking, is that we recently were named the number two top metro for the number of economic development projects. And that is a really big deal. Again, really proud of the team and the work that we're doing. It is because we focus on economic development and talent development. Those are our areas of focus. We do not stray from those which is again why we're excited to talk to you tonight about being part of that.

Population and employment growth and then I'll turn it over to Courtney. Want to share with you just a quick snapshot. Our region continues to grow and that is really exciting and it's something that we certainly also don't take for granted. We continue to outperform our Midwest peers in terms of both population growth and employment growth. This is important to site selectors and to businesses that are looking to grow and expand. It's also certainly very important to a number of the talent that we're looking to continue to recruit into the market. And can't recruit talent or business without fantastic storytelling. So, with that I'm excited to introduce Courtney Shaw, our chief communications and engagement officer. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. So, when you think about communications and engagement, really it's about storytelling and connection and our organization does a really good job at that if I must say. So, really our goal is about telling the DSM USA story loud, bold, and broad. And we do this for various reasons. One, it's to connect with our audiences so they know who we are and what we're doing. And two, so people know about us because no one's going to tell our story for us. And so, we're out there. We have an economic development digital marketing campaign, a talent attraction campaign, and a DSM local campaign that I'll talk about here in just a moment. So, first I'd like to touch on media relations. And the reason that we have a laser focus on media relations here locally, nationally, and internationally is because our audiences are tuning in to the the communications and wanting to look for who we are and what we're doing. And so, last year alone we had over 7,000 earned media placements in over 100 almost 100 countries. We had a really great number of page views on our stories and we had some amazing national media placements. That work still continues into this year with goals that we're even stretching farther.

Last year we heard from our investors the need and the opportunity to tell more positive stories about our region and about their organizations and their workforce. And so, with our goal of telling the story and hearing their needs for elevating positive stories, we created and launched the Greater Des Moines story which is a positive storytelling hub where stories from all across our region are shared and elevated. So, it's not only on our website, but we also use the content in our newsletters and our social media channels as well. And of course, we would love to tell Polk City's story in the storytelling hub and would love to connect with you on some more opportunities there. A couple of campaigns that I would like to elevate with you all. One is 515 Day which is coming up on May 15th. This day really is a day that we lift up and celebrate the 515 area code and those who love the 515 area code and we encourage those who live here to support local specifically on this day and it's really a grassroots campaign where we leverage social media to promote all the local businesses in our region. Now, yes, this is just one day. Our DSM local campaign, that's all year round. And so, we are what we're doing is promoting all the different local businesses all across the region to our residents to encourage them to get out and support local. We do have different tactics that we use, mostly marketing, mostly social, but the goal there is we vary the content by season encouraging those who live here to support the businesses that are here. Additionally, we host various events and I know Tiffany's touched on several already, but just calling out, we hosted

Downtown Farmers' Market. This year we kick off on May 2nd and we'll be hosting that every Saturday for the next 27 Saturdays all the way through the end of October supporting over 300 local businesses and having I think last year we had almost 800,000 people from all around the state and even outside of our state come to enjoy the farmers' market. Additionally, you'll see here regional activations. You may or may not be able to tell that your mural's in the background right there, but last year we worked with you all on a regional activation called Hide and Seek an example of an ornament being hidden here in Polk City. What we do is we encourage those in our region to come find the ornaments and while they're finding them to support local while they're looking for them here in Polk City. And we did this at several other communities within our region. And then World Food Music Festival, it's the last weekend of August every year. We have I think over 40 vendors preparing and providing foods from many different cultures from around the world. It's a fabulous event. It's free and the the tastes are amazing and so is the music. Highly recommend. So, now just switching over to investor benefits. So, what we continue to hear from our investors, one of the number one reasons that they are part of our organization and contribute to our organization is that they want to have a seat at the table to help guide the future of our of our organization and our region. And so, with that in mind, we curate different opportunities for engagement and benefits. So, that varies from serving on boards, councils, committees, roundtables to events, newsletter content, investor and stakeholder emails. We also provide data that is needed as well as the opportunity to sit on the partnership's government policy council

which helps inform the state and federal policy agendas which Tiffany mentioned. We also provide storytelling support as I mentioned. We additionally have numerous engagement opportunities and that is in the form of events and other engagement and networking pieces. So, we have special tours, behind-the-scenes opportunities, conversations that are limited and exclusive, and we also have numerous networking and engagement events and receptions. From a communication standpoint, we offer the Greater Des Moines Storytelling Hub as a resource and a place for stories to live, and we also offer PR consultation. So, if you have an a challenge or something exciting, our PR team is here to help support that effort in a way that you would be interested in. We have monthly communications that only go out to our stakeholders. We have photo and video library that's very extensive, and we can provide assets for Polk City, and of course, data and statistics. And now, on this slide, our local government investors and the benefits there. As you can see, this is kind of an overall snapshot of the benefits that we would be able to provide, all the way from regional promotion and growth to business and entrepreneurial support, research support and tools, and public policy. All right. So, we've just walked you through what the partnership does, who we are. You've met a few of our team members. We've shared some of our results. Now, we want to talk with you about what we hope that we can do together with Polk City. So, what Courtney shared was our specific or our ongoing investor opportunity. So, any

investor, those are the sorts of benefits that they receive. What we're going to share with you now is brand new idea. It is a proposed pilot program that we would be trying just with you, see how it goes, in part because over the last year or so, the mayor and I, Chelsea, our team, we've been engaging and hearing and learning more about what your needs are, and we believe it very, very specifically aligns with our goal of economic development and doing economic development in a new and different way than what we currently have. But, we have the resources and and skill set to do so. With that, I'm going to turn over to Stacy, who's going to walk you through our idea. Great. So, so as we were talking, we were looking at, you know, we were talking about, this is what the partnership does. And it's like, okay, so wait, you guys are out there marketing the region and identifying these leads or identifying what could happen in our communities. Well, how do we tap into that? What do we do? And so, as we were talking, we really came out or what we picked up from the conversation was that you're really looking to accelerate your commercial growth so that you can capture the spending of your residents, but also give them the amenities they want locally so they are not having to drive to a neighboring community. It's also the idea of how do we create the commercial space and attract businesses that the visitors who are at the lake or from somewhere else would want to come into Polk City um just spend their dollars and to use um the resources we have. So, we took that and we as we thought about that, we went back to the office, kind of brainstormed on what are some different ideas. And really, what we saw was the need for a local economic development focus. Focus on building your community and getting the it's the [clears throat] place making aspect as well as the business growth within your community. So, we came back with proposal saying, you know, we see five different areas that could focus that

could be a focus area. Expand and strengthen strengthen the local commercial base to support the growing residential development. You have some exciting residential development happening here. So, how do you give them the amenities and the places where they can go shop and to get what they need while from living here. We also talked about or looked at the attraction of targeted retail and dining and service oriented businesses that are tied to that residential growth. We talked about ways that you could work to attract the lake visitors and how to bring them into town for whether that's an event or just a at the end of the day, come to the restaurant, come eat at the creamery, get a coffee in the morning as they're headed out to the lake. We talked about the need for a defined commercial identity and visitor experience where people recognize, hey, we need to stop at Polk City while we're on the way over the lake. And then, the need if you're going to grow the commercial base, if you're going to build out the small businesses that you're wanting or even out in the industrial park, you have to have the infrastructure and the development readiness. So, how do you tackle those? And how can economic development support that work? So, taking those ideas, we developed a one-year proposal because we wanted to say, we have not done this before with a local community where we put this extra effort into the community. So, we want to test it to see if it works for you, if it works for us. And we're also hearing some of the similar concerns that you're hearing in some other communities. So, it's kind of a pilot program. How do we address your needs and help you get to where you want to be? We understand that you're not quite where you would like to be or where you're not ready for a full-time economic developer, right? You you don't need something you're not sure what you would do full-time with them yet. So, how do we get you to the point get you started, and eventually you could grow into um

[clears throat]

that if you wanted to. So, we are proposing 15 hours a week of paid staff support where we would have a staff person. They would spend 15 hours of their time working specifically on Polk County or Polk City. The this will be a combination of on-site, meaning we would want them to have an office or a location here at the at City Hall, and remote support. And I'll kind of get into what I mean by remote support because I don't mean them sitting at home or sitting at our office doing work for Polk City. Um We will talk about the Well, let me go a little bit further into the on-site and the remote support. We see on-site meaning they are here, they are meeting with businesses in your community, they are meeting with developers, they are meeting with the community and learning and getting a good base for what is happening in your community today, and where does it need to go? And so, they would be here available for businesses to come in to meet with them, or they would be scheduling meetings and be out and about. We anticipate early on that would probably be a couple days a week. Over time, it would be probably one day a week would be a week would be remote. They might be meeting with developers in the Des Moines area. They might be out calling on businesses saying, hey, you've got a great retail business here or this would be Polk City has a great location for you to be in their community. So, really, we see that as a combination between the two, either they're here within the community or they're out specifically building the case that is needed to attract somebody here. We also I'm going to go through several items that we kind of ticked off as tactics that could be used, but really, we want the deliverables to be something that we could procreate with you. We don't want to come in and tell you, this is what Polk City needs. We need your buy-in to, yes, this is what we need, and this is where we go forward. So, we would definitely set up some metrics and

some standards where we would procreate those with you so you we would know what the deliverables deliverables were, and you would know the deliverables. And then, we would establish a progress reporting [clears throat] structure, thinking of probably a monthly activity report so you knew what was happening each month, and then having the leadership team come back in 6 months and at a year to say, how's it going? Do we need to adjust? And of course, at any time throughout the process, we would be open to those conversations as we move forward. The next slide really outlines the potential areas of focus of where we see opportunities. You know, the commercial growth strategy would be really looking at your retail, restaurant, and service businesses that you have today, and where do you What are those gaps? And then, identifying people or companies that could fill those gaps, and having the stats to show that your demographics could support it. We can go out and try to call on a business all day long, but if you want a Texas Roadhouse and your demographics do not support a Texas Roadhouse, you're not going to get one. We're wasting our time and energies. So, really looking at the statistics behind it, and what can you support, and what would grow here. And then, making that outreach, making those calls on your behalf. We would look at business recruitment and expansion. As I mentioned earlier in our slide, we see this as core. At early on, it would be out talking to your local businesses, local businesses out in the industrial area, your downtown businesses. What is happening in your community today, and getting a good feel for what's here, and how can we support them? Maybe there's gaps right there that they are ready to grow, but they're facing one or two obstacles. If we know that, we can help

[clears throat]

identify ways to solve those issues. We have on here developer and site readiness support. We know that you have housing developers, and we understand that several of those have some commercial tied to those housing developments. So, understanding what they are looking for in their developments, and helping them identify prospects to come in and to build on those areas, as well as then to what's the infrastructure needed, and making sure working with the city's team to [clears throat] identify how do we get the infrastructure there if it's not already there today. I've already talked about or mentioned the lake to town visitor capture, identifying strategies, you know, looking at the patterns and the traffic patterns that are happening today and looking at opportunities and then how do we get the word out and how do we market and actually um tell people, "Hey, you need to come over." And maybe it's um this [clears throat] chamber may already be doing several of these so we would not want to step on toes of what they are already doing for events but are there things we could do that would be supportive.

[gasps]

Um the commercial corridor and downtown activation, again working with the chamber understanding what they already have going and then what what could we do to create more activation that would draw people into town um and then funding and implementation support. Sometimes there might be grant funding that would be available to sort of to support the efforts that are happening. So identifying what those opportunities were and then helping um go after those. So really it's really a multi-pronged approach and different avenues we would work with you for those 15 hours a week. Where do you want us to focus first? Maybe it's one or two items focus here. Let's get some traction and then let's [clears throat] move to the next but it would really be that constant conversation of how do we get there? Um so as we were talking through the um 15 hours a week um internally um I know you want to know what's it going to cost you. I I can I can see it on your faces. Okay, you're talking about all this. Um so first we would need um Polk City to be an investor which is the 2500. So the items that Courtney covered and the things that the partnership does today, that 2500 covers that work. For a 15-hour for 15-hour a week person focus just on Polk City we're saying $50,000 to cover Now that person could be the point person that you would have tapping into the other resources. Um so when you think about um when we work with some of our larger suburbs that have the economic development staff they will be working on different projects but they know when to call us when they need um communication support. They know when to call us, "Hey, we've got somebody going after a state of Iowa grant. Can you help this company go through the process?" They have somebody who's constantly doing it and tapping into the resources we have. We would see this person working with you being able to tap into what you would already get from being an

investor. But then the um other 15 hours a week, what that's doing is focused on the um business development and um retail development here. So do you have a role or even a job profile in mind for that person being We do. We have We have um a job description that's laid out. Um we would be it would be a new hire for us. 15 hours would be dedicated for you um and the rest of the time then we would tap into some of the other work that we are doing um from the economic development front. Okay. What sort I mean we don't need to go too in-depth but like what sort of experience does that um does that uh um job uh look like in that? We'll see probably somebody who's got um a year or two um of economic development experience but also what's probably more important is that they would have the entire economic development team for support behind them. So for example, our economic development team has uh we've had we've had some change but in economic development we probably average 15 years of economic development experience. And um our economic development team has eight people on it right now and [clears throat] they would be tapping into us and we would be constantly engaged. Now it's your time for questions, Council. I mean I like I'm I'm liking what I'm hearing so I don't think I have any Rob's covered several things already so Well uh what [laughter] was that? A couple of the questions that I had in mind as well.

Um I I mean first off I I think what you guys do you do very well so appreciate as part of the metro that we are um a a part of that and a benefactor of that and having involved in some things I've I've seen that for quite some time so kudos on that. Um the thing that I would want to point to and and where I was going with the job profile question is I think it's going to be different where we've struggled with economic development is the uniqueness and I like everybody thinks they're unique I get that right but I think there is some validity to you know, our proximity to Ankeny and Grimes, our lack of uh access to like there's a very limited suite of of businesses that are going to be able to pick and justify the decision to come here outside of of other communities and so um if we're going to pay for someone to spend that time I'm that's lived experience and less uh studied so that would be a initial concern of mine is how can they differentiate through conversations with businesses to to you know, maybe have some tough conversations and say this is this is what's going good and this what's going bad and and see that uh through to be able to tell um okay, you need to need to change this, need to push that, need to uh you know, lessen the restrictions here so um Lots to think about though. Appreciate the content. So when you're saying push back, are you saying push back on the businesses or push back as in like coming to the city and saying, "Hey, you need to make these changes in order to attract"?

Yeah, I well I mean I I should [laughter] maybe had not used push back. I should have used critical feedback or or being able to discern you know, what is what what's the what's the underlying problem here that you know, we've got uh you know, some undeveloped land or uh why we don't have this particular business or why we don't have some of those things that you know, again can't be studied and need to be experienced. Sure. I understand and agree with that. I think we would start with some data to show what the growth of your housing has today and how far you are coming um [clears throat]

because when it comes to the retail side it's the rooftops that determine what can come in. So that's what we would be looking at first from a community development standpoint and from the data what makes sense today and as you continue to grow what makes sense tomorrow. Just a follow up to that a little bit understanding the the rooftops drive a lot of that but just based on your limited [clears throat] amount of coming into Polk City and seeing seeing what you have to deal with, what do you what have you guys kind of pinpointed as some of the primary challenges that this community might face that maybe some of the other communities in the metro don't? Well I would think from a um let's go I'm I'm looking at this more from a commercial and a retail and a smaller business environment because if it's um the highways coming in and out it's not going to be a logistics hub heavy manufacturing it you've got two lane roads coming in. So if you're not on a four lane those do not work. So I think it would be focused on you know, you could do uh some smaller light industrial definitely could work for the right sites. I think you've got the commercial capability because of the rooftop growth as well as you do have an asset with the lake right here but how do we tap into it? Anything else? I like I like the the idea overall um of course there's specifics we need to to talk about, you know, what does that really mean, what does value mean, how do we make sure our KPIs are you know, like we're we're all trending in the right direction. Uh one thing we haven't had over the past years is consistency. Um there's just been a lot of different people coming in trying to figure out what the right recipe may be and we probably will never know what that recipe is because it's

constantly changing. Um but the ability to do the uh those things that we can't do literally the state legislating advocacy, you know, you're doing that in on our behalf if you will and um the additional services from start starting up and being able to tell businesses as they as they come in, hey there's somebody you can you can talk with that knows how to integrate um is a best practice cuz we really don't have that on staff. Uh we don't you know, we don't have what's a best practice for a certain thing. We just know what we've experienced to Rob's earlier point sometimes that's where a pain point. So I like thank you um all for coming in talking with us and look forward to looking at what this may look for look at in future. Thank you. Jeff, anything? Good. Thank you. Okay. Well sorry, one more thing I'll add to the I guess as part of our decision I I know I don't I'm not expecting you to invest a bunch of time up front before we make a commitment but the established progress reporting structure that you'd talked about here on uh one of the slides is that something that we could do it to help us make our decision because I my concern is if we're going to invest $50,000 roughly of taxpayer money we want to have um have ways to justify that ROI. Now when you talk economic development you don't talk in in months you you it's longer term than that right? So what can we without saying you know at the end of a year four businesses are going to be here. What what can we do that that's a inner version of that. Is that does that make sense? Yeah, I think and one thing you'll notice or you may have already noticed or that you will notice is the partnership is all about metrics. We have metrics every single board meeting. Um, we have to turn in metrics. As for an

economic development team, we have a I look at metrics every single Monday morning. I get metrics from our team. How are we doing? What are our what's our lead generation? How many business recalls did we make? What are we doing? We track that all the time. So my suggestion um, I can't tell you what they would be right now because I would want to have the conversation with you to help develop [clears throat] those, but it would be how many of your local businesses have we met with? How many of those have opportunities where we can assist and being able to report back to you what we are learning. I think you can look at um, the number of outreaches when we get to the point where we are doing the business outreach and we're trying to um, attract [clears throat] um, businesses to come in. How many companies have we contacted? What was our outreach? How many people did we actually get in the door with? How many conversations have we had? I think it really comes down to the without being able to say in I'm not going to tell you today that you're going to have two businesses here in the next two months but showing what is the activity leading to that and what um, is there a feeling that what's the feedback we're getting? Why is it happening? Why is it not? Um, I think it's talking with your developers who are doing the housing development and having those serious conversations as to what are they doing and how can we come and support their needs? So I see the activity report being this is the activity we're doing and then the check-in being show the results, here are some feedback um, that we're getting and here's the prospects we have on the line. That's fair. That that helped. Thank you. Okay, I think that um, if there are no more questions from council, we want to thank you Stacy and Tiffany and Courtney for coming and giving the presentation and next step is for council to discuss more and then we will be talking to you again.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you for coming. Appreciate it. Um, okay, that's the only item that is on our agenda for tonight for work session. So I item number two is adjournment. So I'll ask for a ask for a motion and a second to adjourn, please. So moved. Second. All in favor say I. Any opposed, same sign. We are adjourned until 6:00 council meeting. [snorts]