Economic Development Corp. - Regular Meeting

Larry Hammonds. Here. Shane Hines. Here. Tara Thompson. Here. Don Austin. Here. Anatio Campos. Here. Corey Elrod.

Here. Alright. Thank you. Approval of minutes. Approval of of the 11/03/2025 workshop meeting minutes.

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes.

I'll second. I would direct a motion for Rich Tom. Thomas, oh my goodness. Great start to the year already. Yeah. And a second by director Austin. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Minutes are approved unanimously. Item B approval of the 11/20/2025 regular meeting minutes.

That's all moved for approval.

Second.

I've got a motion from director Hammonds and a second from director Thompson. All those in favor. Aye. All those opposed? Minutes are passed unanimously. Item four, citizens communication. This is a time for citizens to address the board on issues and items of concern not on this agenda. There will be no board action at this time. Seeing none, we will close systems communication and move to item five, treasurer's report. Mr. Warner.

President Hines, members of the board, happy new year you. Jared Warner, Assistant City Manager. So the sales tax data for us all throughout fiscal year twenty six is going look quite a bit different than it has in previous years, and that's a good thing. As a reminder, beginning in the November, we're starting to receive sales taxes from HD Supply again. As a reminder, they reworked a variety of their business processes, went through some additional software modifications and are now sourcing all of their Texas sales back to the New Braunfels location.

And so as you can see there for the month of November, that's when we're going to start seeing those sales taxes from a gross perspective impact New Braunfels with sales taxes up 13.6%. Unfortunately, I don't have the detailed industry level data for you all. Usually that's available about forty five to sixty days at the end of every single month. So I'll be referring to a couple of additional metrics on sales taxes when I meet with you monthly. So while November was up 13.6% overall, when you make that adjustment for HD Supply, we're looking at about a 5% growth.

As a reminder, we budgeted about 2%, so certainly trending above budget for November. When you're looking at October and November so far, up about 7.3% compared to fiscal year twenty twenty five. So starting off fiscal year twenty twenty six very well with regard to sales taxes. As a reminder, those HE Supply sales taxes, you will not see them flow directly to the EDC. As a reminder, when we reactivated those agreements, you all decided to allocate 100% of your HD Supply related sales tax back to the company as part of their overall 50% share.

That allowed the general fund to only have to contribute 33 back to HD Supply. Your current commitments, which as a reminder, to give you all kind of a broader horizon of your committed expenditures projected outlay over the next five years because the majority of the projects that you commit funds towards, cash flow typically over a two, three, four, five year period, sometimes even longer. And so several years ago, as a reminder, we adjusted your report to this format to get a better and broader kind of longer term look at your committed expenditures. And so this report includes any expenditure that has been approved formally by the EDC as well as the City Council. So this report includes the latest investments in project expenditures, including Project Noya, Spark and Continental as well.

And again, just one graph that kind of ties together everything. Your current reserves projected out to fiscal year 2030, your revenues and your projected expenditures. With that, happy to take any questions if there are any.

Any questions from the board?

Alright. Alright. Thank you much.

Item six. Presentation and discussion on the strategic planning outcome report and possible action to approve proposed NBEDC strategic priorities.

Thank you President Hines, Jeff Jule, Economic and Community Development Director of the City. Just before we get started, just kind of want to set the table on this particular discussion item. We're going to bring in Karen with Barry Dunn here in a minute. But since 2023, the EDC has made about $45,000,000 in community centric investments. A bulk of those investments have been in parks, trails and open space, drainage and flood mitigation, as well as investments in human capital through expansion of educational opportunities such as the investments in TSDC and Northeast Lakeview College.

And so a lot of those investments were guided, at least half of that $45,000,000 were guided by some previous planning exercise that the EDC did that really started in 2021, where you all identified potential projects and investments for the community and began to undertake a really a multi year effort to study, implement design of and finally undertake construction of a host of those projects. So about $22,000,000 of that $45,000,000 in investments were identified through that process. As those projects began to wind down and those investments were kind of wrapping up, we began to talk about kind of what the next potential tranche of community investments would be. And so really that process kind of kicked off in the summer. Many of you all interviewed with Barry Dunn and they went through a little bit of a discernment process and conducted those interviews, looked at what the data looked at past activities.

It kind of culminated in a retreat in November 2025. And so we're presenting tonight the outcomes of that retreat and the outcomes of those conversations and hope to have a discussion more detailed about what the future direction of those community based investments Braunfels end up being. So with that, I'm going go and turn it over to Karen who we have virtually. And so we'll get that set up if you just give us one second. There we go.

Shannon, am I good to go or are you still setting up?

Karen, this is Jeff. You're ready to go. You're on the screen. If you just want to go and get started, we'll switch over to your sides whenever you give us the note.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Jeff. I appreciate it. It is good to be with you all here virtually this evening. I enjoyed our time together in November with Cara at the retreat. And like just talked about, we're really here this evening to talk about the retreat outcome reports. I believe you all have a copy of that at the dais with you. But on our agenda tonight, which Shannon will pop in a minute, we'll walk through really how we got to this point and have some discussion about the priority areas. So with that, Shannon, if you want to pull up the presentation, we can go walk through the slide deck. And Jeff, if you'll just let me know when it's up and ready.

It is up and ready to go.

All right, perfect. So if you'll go ahead and go to agenda slide. Like I mentioned, what we want to talk about this evening is really the process review of how we got to here. Jeff mentioned the interviews and some of those activities we did. Talk about the strategic priorities that we've put together based upon the work that the group did in November.

At a very high level, give you an example of how the potential projects that Jeff mentioned that you'll be discussing in the future could align to these priority areas, things that have been contemplated and discussed for some time in the community, have any questions and discussion about what we have here, and then work through next steps. So Shannon, if you want to go into the next slide, if you look at our priority development process, really a piece of the work that Jeff and his team asked us to do is look at best practices relative to economic development investment, some of the places that are doing really great work around the country. Many places you all visit kind of as a discipline with visits with your chamber. Look at your current successes, what have you all done recently, as Jeff mentioned, with the trails, the investment in the parks infrastructure, some of those items that really help create that sense of place and place for people to gather and meet and things to do that really help incentivize that work environment. We did the individual interviews.

We looked at the current strategic frameworks. I'll talk about those in the next few slides just to remind everybody what those are. And then finally, we had the Board retreat where you all, in collaboration with staff and others, really walked through what's on the horizon, what's important for areas of focus. So on the next slide, really reminding what the guiding strategic plans are for the work that you all do. So you have the Confluence Report.

You have the City Of New Braunfels strategic plan, which runs through 2029. Then there's also been work around downtown and the West End. So how do those planning processes inform the work that's in front of us going forward? On the next slide, previous strategic framework, we talked about that in the retreat session, that each of these plans really balance jobs, housing and infrastructure, quality jobs, and then bringing jobs closer to people. So focusing on that ecosystem and some of the successes you all have had already in that space.

So we talked through that. We talked about the overarching framework. And then on the next series of slides, Shannon, if you go to Slide six, really what are the best practices and strategies for communities like you all, similar size, similar position, fast growing, that are impacting their outcomes from an economic vitality standpoint? So what's happening from a place making, workforce support, investments in infrastructure? I like to think about that as setting the table.

Where are public private partnerships coming into play? And then the traditional economic development incentives, how are communities continuing to leverage those in ways that make sense for positive long term outcomes? So just some examples to remind everybody. First on slide seven, Chattanooga, Tennessee has done a tremendous amount of work really in multiple of these areas. They are re envisioning their entire riverfront area from the traditional manufacturing to more of an activity center.

There is an exceptional public private partnership they've done with the minor league baseball team on the stadium development project, but then also using public art for placemaking and tourism. So they have a placemaking or excuse me, a public art tourism trail. They've made some significant investments in public art, which really helps round out the environment. I when we were at our retreat, you'll recall, I was working with another client who had just done an intercity visit to Chattanooga, and they came back talking about the long term vision, long term work, and how they really saw it paying off. If we go to the next slide around issues of workforce support, one of the trends, especially post COVID, is around the intersection really of having a good qualified workforce and having attainable housing for that workforce, especially in communities with high tourism and high growth.

As people are moving, as more jobs become remote, and that's had impacts on local real estate markets, what are local communities doing to help support from a housing perspective, housing that people need to fill out the jobs in the community. So one of those examples that we brought and discussed was Missoula, Montana. They are working through their community land trust to help incentivize and bring workforce housing in partnership with their economic development corporation and chamber. So really a holistic approach. Traditional affordable housing, as we all know, has been around issues of housing authorities and all that, but really the next phase of what does that look like for communities.

The next slide, another example that we talked about around workforce support was the issue of affordable and quality child care. So Crawfordville, Indiana is actually really on the leading edge of this. I think other communities, you all being one, are close on their heels, but they actually identified child care as a major barrier to workforce participation when they were doing, the traditional business recruitment and expansion meetings. So their mayor was like, this is the big barrier that's impacting our ability to really attract new businesses and have our current ones expand. So they formed a task force, a multidisciplinary task force across the city, the county, to see what was the gap marketplace.

They identified that even if they invested in a new child development center, that there would still be a need. So they weren't going to inadvertently disrupt the marketplace from the private or nonprofit sector. So where they are in that process is they now have 124 children in a public private triple P child development center. Kindercare runs it. There was a public investment of $5,000,000 across multiple agencies to make that happen.

It's another example that we talked about, about the possibilities. And then finally, the next slide, slide 10, really around workforce support. You all do a great job of this in Texas. Another state that does a really good job around workforce support is South Carolina. So in Marion County, some of the workforce training that they provide around technical education for high school students, as well as they've got a new workforce development center, which really provides the direct technical skills for some of the firms that they're recruiting into their community.

They leverage all that with the statewide initiatives very similar to what you all do with some of the programming that you have in Texas. So that was another example just to what's occurring out there in these ecosystems that might be informative as you all are thinking about your priorities? And then finally, we took all of that and we looked at on Slide 11, the interview theme. So what were you all thinking? What were others in the community thinking relative to the state of the economy in New Braunfels?

So you see that first bullet that the economy is strong, it's growing. Now I just heard Jared's report on the sales tax, which is great news, but there was also some current concern that maybe your economy isn't as strong as it's been in prior that maybe there is a slight slowdown and sales tax is flat. So what does that mean going forward for you all? A consistent theme across the folks that we talked to is about the recent accomplishments. So the investments in infrastructure, trails, sidewalks, and parks.

That's an important component to recruiting employers and workforce to your community, having those amenities. The third bullet you see there, that place making. It's vital for attracting residents and businesses. But for you all, doing it in a way that fits the what makes New Braunfels, New Braunfels. That's something that you all are very keen and attuned to in your community, so doing it in a way that makes sense.

And then finally, the last bullet, a consistent theme we heard across the group was really around opportunities for diversifying your industry mix, investing in infrastructure, and supporting workforce needs. So before getting to the retreat, this is what we heard about what was important in the planning as far as the prioritization for you all as you do your work going forward. So we took all of that, and if you want to go to slide 12, Shannon, we worked with you to develop some ideas around what are the buckets of where the work should go and how should you prioritize projects going forward. And you see here the draft priorities that's in the retreat outcomes report. So really, it was four key areas.

These came together very quickly in that session. One is workforce support, So you'll see the definition there around expanding and aligning the talent pipeline for your target industries and areas of skills attainment, improving career pathways, and strengthening the supportive infrastructure, which includes housing and child care, to make sure that you have an ecosystem that attracts talent. The next priority area that we came out of that retreat based upon your feedback and put together was around planning and infrastructure. You all have a long track record of doing that, and this is really about making those thoughtful and strategic investments in the capital planning process and infrastructure development in areas including transportation, drainage, your public spaces and trails to create that attractive environment that we keep mentioning. The third area of priority that we heard from you all coming out of the retreat was really around enhancing sense of place.

You all know that you're a very unique community with a high quality of life and quality of place, but how do you maintain that and strengthen that quality of place by those investments that preserve your character, improve your downtown amenities, and then create those unique outdoor spaces, all while supporting the catalytic projects that are in the planning stages and coming online over the next decade. And then finally, but definitely not least, is the traditional business recruitment and retention. So what's occurring from growing a diverse high value economy by the attracting target industries, supporting your new and existing businesses, enabling business expansion through capital access, innovation and market development. So what are some of the activities that occur there that help round out that ecosystem? I wanna pause there, I think, and see if there's any questions.

And I apologize. It's hard for me because I can't see the room, so I have no way to tell if you are locked in on what I'm saying or if I've confused anybody. So I just wanna do a a a check on questions or feedback around these priority areas.

Any questions from the Board yet? All right. I think we're good. Thank you.

We're good? Okay, perfect. So what we've done in the next phase of the report is if we go to slide 13, you'll see so here's workforce support. Here are projects that align to that priority area. Example projects, things that are on the horizon, as Jeff mentioned in the opening, the intent is to bring these all back to you to discuss in further detail.

But this report shows kind of where they are in that staging. So we talked about some of these projects takes a long time to deliver, so having a better sense of where they were in that process. So you'll see the projects there on the left include things like a workforce study in partnership with the Seguin EDC, infrastructure and support for child care expansion efforts. Those are earlier on. And then the Texas FAME scholarships, infrastructure for coworking space and an entrepreneurship hub, we talked about that during our retreat.

And then phase two of the Central Technology Center. So those are some of the example projects, the types of things that you all can think about aligned to that workforce support area. We'll go to the next slide. Planning and infrastructure. Not surprisingly, you are a very high growing area.

There's a lot of items on this list. So you'll see here over these two pages from the report is really the things around downtown parking, Union Pacific relocation, supporting some of those catalytic projects like River Mill. The ongoing work that you do to support the AAMPO projects, so those show up here, the corridor investments, some major streets, the streets and utility design master plan, so what do overhead utilities look like, what does that mean from a planning and infrastructure standpoint, the work that needs to occur at the airport to keep it competitive and meaningful from an economic development standpoint in the marketplace, a trail connector for water railing, and then right of way enhancements downtown as well as another Creek Trail segment for Comal. So those are some example projects in the planning and infrastructure. On Slide 15, we get to the enhancing sense of place.

So these admittedly, you can put a lot of these in either category, but what are you doing really to support the placemaking from an investment standpoint? So you'll see here one of the specific projects you all talked about in November was that Springfred Pool and Londa House, the Comal River master plan, the mill project, downtown place making initiatives, what are they, what do they look like, the soccer fields, and then the Camp Comal athletic fields, and then that Zinc Street gateway intersection, that's really a key gateway into the city, making sure that's done in a way that really enhances sense of place. And then the final category in looking at arranging projects into the categories is the business recruitment and attention retention, excuse me. So you have the airport loan forgiveness, targeted incentive plan for River Mill and West Bend, industrial site readiness plan. So what does it look like to have the sites that are ready to support expansion or retention of businesses?

The entrepreneurship accelerator project generator accelerator project and then finally, the continued support that you all provide through economic development incentives to expansion of relocation projects. So that's really the, for instance, the first pass at aligning some of the projects that have been on the docket for a while and some new projects as an initial pass to how they align to the priorities for you all to be thinking about as you go through a deeper dive with staff over the next few months. So once again, I'll pause and see questions, feedback. How does this feel relative to what we discussed last fall? Those of you who are new, how does this feel relative to your vision of where this Board needs to go?

Any comments, concerns, questions? I think we're good.

We're good? Okay. It's very light. I can't hear you very well.

I will get closer.

But we're good? There we go. Okay. So did I hear that everything's good as far as that goes? No questions?

Correct.

Okay. All right. Well, then that takes us to our final slide, is really next steps. Any feedback you all have about the definitions, the priorities, what does that look like, especially the report? We're really interested in hearing that. So we, along with the staff team, can make any updates and changes. And then like we've mentioned, staff will continue to bring more detailed project and funding information to future meetings. And with that, I'll pause. Jeff, anything I missed or anything that we need to cover?

No, Karen, thanks. I think really the purpose of the presentation today was to present to you all the retreat outcomes as well as to put it in you all's hands and have you all digest it over the next month or so. As Karen mentioned, these are projects that have been on some list for some time, but as she mentioned, there are also new projects. But our intent is just to be bringing forward some of these projects for further discussion and study and potentially action in the future as we move forward on these priorities.

Perfect, thank you. And if anybody sleeps on it and has questions tomorrow, I'm sure they can reach out to Mr. Jewell and get with Barry Dunn and get those questions answered. So thank you very much.

Excellent, thank you all.

Okay, I had a request to move item D up. So we're going to go to presentation on a proposed expenditure to support generator and entrepreneurship workforce development Local Innovation Accelerator Project.

Good evening. I want to introduce our guests first. As you guys will recall in our strategic plan Confluence, we identified one of our key priorities as supporting the success of startups. And so we've been looking at a lot of different programs and reviewing them. We know we have great support for small businesses in our community through our SBDC Spark office.

But what we lack in our community is accelerator, incubator, co working space infrastructure. And we really think that's what we need to take concepts to fundable, scalable, successful growing companies. And so that's part of this initiative. And we have Generator here today. They are a recognized accelerator platform.

They have a national network of coaches, mentors, investors and programming. And so tonight you'll hear an overview from them just to get a concept of what they could offer our community and then we can talk about it further later. And with that I'd like to introduce Robert Pieroni with Generator.

Thank you thank you first and foremost Robert Pieroni. I work for Generator but I always like to say I'm first I'm a husband and a dad and thank you for your civic duty. I think the team at the chamber knows I was in economic development a long time ago and so I sat at a lot of these board meetings and I just want to say thank you for what you do for your own community. It is never beyond me, you could be elsewhere and so that's something I think more people should just be recognized for. So thank you.

Thank you to the chamber staff. You guys have been amazing. I get to travel all over and meet people. The comfort that I felt in this community is something I haven't felt before and I feel almost embarrassed. I'm in Houston and my first time coming here was just in November and I just was like blown away and so I was excited to come back and so thank you again.

Like I said, Robert Pieroni, I work for Generator. I'll get into it a little bit more here as what we are but looking through some of your strategic plan and looking through some of your data, it looks like capital access is an issue and that happens all over the world, it happens everywhere. You guys did a study that looked at some of your peer cities, Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, San Marcos just down the street and realized that people were not getting funding rounds. That's angel investing and if there's questions please at any moment just ask me. If I use an acronym also please ask me.

I struggle with that all the time. They're missing on venture capital and basically securing that private equity to really take their company into that next level. I put some things on the slide. It's never about a lack of talent or ambition, we all know that. It's just an access issue.

Usually that's what it all comes down to and it comes down to capacity. Investors, I'm on the investor side as well, investors need capacity because the market is now global and everyone competes on a different scale. And so they're often having to compete with people that are in New York, California, other parts of Texas when it used to just be they competed in their backyard and unfortunately COVID really unlocked this new way investors are just everywhere and they're investing everything. So it makes a little more difficult. So as you can see on some of your peer cities, in all transparency, we're actually in one of those peer cities and I think the chamber knows we're in Round Rock and we work with Round Rock chamber and the city.

And so there are partners there and we've been running an accelerator there and we're very thankful for that group as well. Looking back and sorry if I'm too quiet, let me know. Looking back strategic plan, once again you guys went through this process to look at what helps take you to that next level and a lot of it is the capacity building, the hands on coaching, it's getting companies investment ready and then really it's the regional and national capital access. And when I tell you a little bit about our story and who we are, it's really gonna start to make a little bit of difference in kind of where you guys are looking to head as well. And then of course everything I believe in, and I'm an economic developer by trade, so public policy was my background, is local roots.

If you build within, you'll grow economic vitality within your community. And so I've always believed invest in your own and you'll see the fruits of the labor in the community tenfold. And so kind of I'll walk through that again. Couple of last things I'll say and I'm not gonna read this to you because I know everyone here can read and I don't like when people do that to me when I used to be up there. So capacity building is something the community has identified it needs.

Pathway to investment is something the community has identified it needs. We call it shots on goal at generator, I'm a soccer fan. So how do we get more shots on goal for the startup to actually raise capital? And then kind of how do we build a hub that's an innovation hub? How do we create a nexus for people to go and know this is where we go if we want to create the next X?

And I've been doing this as I said, was a consultant after I left the economic development space working all over the world for thirteen years. So building physical innovation hubs and really helping them thrive, really enjoy that work. And then measurable economic outcomes. How do we show the data to prove that the community's investment is actually showing a return in the community? That's always so important and especially important for mayors, elected officials and people who are fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers.

That is why we're here. And so I want to make sure whatever we do, we always look at the data side because that does matter. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not but we always want to be transparent. And so Generator, pretty simple. Our mission is to be the best partner for a community to invest in its best and its brightest. Why? It's pretty simple. Our two cofounders, they're from Milwaukee. So they grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, went to law school, were working on venture deals and they were watching all the best startups from Milwaukee, Wisconsin go to Silicon Valley. And they said people shouldn't have to leave home to get financing.

That's just not the way it should work. So they both quit their law firms thirteen years ago, raised $5,000,000 For the first five years they sourced every company and invested in every company and it was all local. They raised the money in Milwaukee and Madison, invested in nothing but startups from that area. All of a sudden as they started getting bigger and we're the only Midwest based accelerator, other places started to call us other states, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alabama all the way through. And so they said we need to create something that can actually serve the rest of the community if we're going to be the best partner for the community to invest in its best and its brightest.

Thirteen years later we've done lots of things. We've created lots of platforms. We have an investment accelerator where we actually invest, we take equity. We run 22 of those across the world all the way from North Dakota to Luxembourg to we're looking at Japan at the end of the month. And so we really, how do we go meet people where they're at? We run a non dilutive accelerator. This is one I'll be talking about tonight. This is actually our biggest product. This is a bunch of economic development boards came to us and said, we can't invest in startups but we can invest in resources. Can you do that?

And so all we did was we took our investment model, got rid of the financing side and then said let's just run the same services for them. And so that's kind of what our G Beta, G Alpha is. And then we have a corporate innovation network of 3,000 plus corporations from around the world that ask us for access to startups as they look for technology. During the pandemic, one of our partners Microsoft came to us and said, can you do a skills accelerator? We said we don't do workforce but we'll figure it out when Microsoft asks you to.

And so we launched a skills accelerator and that is looking at the most 10 high in demand jobs on LinkedIn. And with LinkedIn and Microsoft, we built curriculum and we actually upscale and rescale people across The United States for those jobs of the future and the ones we operate in Texas I'm very proud of. It's one in Houston and it's for veterans. So it's something I'm very proud of and it's a great program we have. And then this last two, we call it the love of a founder.

Our founder loves art and music and so we are the only accelerator that has an art and a music accelerator and that's with Capital Records and it's with Motown Records. And then on the artist side, we actually have a studio in Milwaukee where we invest in artists and help them commercialize their paintings for the first time. And so we always say it's his passion projects, it's only in one place and he's willing to do whatever it takes to make it successful. I'll try to go through them pretty quick. But I want to tell you a little bit about us.

We are the number one most active investor in the Midwest. We are Midwest. I always say we're like the blue collar of the accelerators. We're the biggest that nobody really knows about because we keep our head down and just keep moving forward. But we're also one of the biggest in the world. We're one of the most active investors in the world and we are one of the largest accelerators. We've won a lot of awards and we take a lot of pride in who we are. We take a lot of pride in our ethics and the way we talk about our company. This slide just shows you the people who go through our program like us and we think it's because of our niche. We've always believed in small cohorts because we believe in a concierge approach to helping a founder.

A lot of accelerators, they have a tendency to bring in large cohorts and anyone, I went to Abilene Christian so this kind of tells you where I come from. You go to University of Texas and sit in a classroom and then you sit in a classroom at Abilene Christian your senior year with three people and the professor looks at you and says I'll know if you don't do the work. I tell you I did a lot of work that year. That's kind of how ours works. We work with people at the individual level and so our small cohorts allow us to do that.

We also only allow for startups from a geographical region that our partner asks. So most of our cohorts only run with startups from that city. Most other national brand accelerators that are at our scale, there's only two other ones, they bring people from other places, they accelerate them in your community. But anyone who knows economic development, what do they do when they're done? They go back home just like from college, they go back home. But if you invest and bring people into your own community they stay because they were already there. And then we connect them to our global network. But the scores on the side just show from a Net Promoter Score people love us. That means they recommend us to their partners and their friends. Where are we?

We are all over the Midwest. We take a lot of pride in that. We're here in Texas as well and then we are starting to expand into Europe, Asia and Saudi Arabia as well. And so we're really starting that expansion of our company outside The United States. We just started two years ago. But the Midwest and the South is really still always will be our bread and butter. So from a numbers perspective because this is what matters to the EDC boards usually, 12, I'm getting old. Thirteen years, we're in 50 communities now. We've helped more than 2,100 startups. They've gone on to raise $2,900,000,000 in financing.

So when you looked at the communities of where we are and you look at the money we've helped them raise, everyone said you couldn't do it outside the Silicon Valley, Boston and New York and we continuously prove them wrong and that's something we take a lot of pride We've also helped create 15,000, it's more than that, I just don't update the numbers as much, but 15,000 jobs locally in those communities and these are people that are taking no money at the time they get into our accelerator. So they probably have no revenue, they've not raised any money and we've gone on to create 15,000 jobs in these communities at the local level and that from the economic development side means a lot to me. We work with universities. We actually are Wharf University of Wisconsin is investor in our fund back in Wisconsin. We actually came out of the university and so we help with a lot of commercialization and spin outs of university technology and help embed that in communities for the betterment.

And so we look at things in the sustainability space, we look at things in space, we're doing things with biomanufacturing in Kansas so we're kind of all over the place. Once again corporate network is really large. I'll come back before I talk about this slide real quick. Our investor network is about 6,000 on a national level and our mentor network is about 6,000. And so one of the things that I left out was we always seem to have someone inside our network who can help everyone.

And so even if we're running in a really remote spot in Italy in aerospace program like we did over the summer, we were able to connect them with mentors and obviously near NASA because of me in Houston, but also Huntsville, Alabama where we're really big and so we were able to get them connected and we were able to find them financing that way. So that's kind of how our network is able to have that big effect. What makes us different than everyone else in The U. S? We put our numbers online every month because we want to be very transparent. 46% of the companies that come through generator have a founder of color. U. S. Average is 2.6%, 39% of the founders are female founders, The U. S.

Average is 2.3%. And then the last bullet point down there is the 92% come outside those major tech hubs. So they don't Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, 20% is the actual U. S. Average. The one thing that I always like to say and I'm going to add it to the slide at some point, we have an 88% survival rate of our startups. The US average is 20 and we always tell people it's because we uncover every stone when we find founders and we just find people with good ideas regardless of race, place and gender and place is a big one. You saw we're in the Midwest. People said people can't do it in the Midwest, we've proved it wrong. And so something we take a lot of pride in.

As you can tell I smile a lot because I do take a lot of pride in what I do. So our G beta, this is the one that we've been talking about. It is a complimentary program to things that already happen in communities often. So we do work with a lot of SBAs, we work with a lot of SBDCs as well because they have their niche and where our niche is really on that high growth side. So we help them with mentors, we help them do things like that as well because we have a big mentor network and then we bring them in to speak with us.

We bring in the banks to talk about SBA lending. So we're kind of working in these communities pretty hand and fist with everyone but our G beta is really focused on that startup side. We're like the SBAs and the SBDC's are focused on kind of brick and mortar and things along those. Ours are looking at high growth, high job creation, high net investment. So we work very complimentary together. This product works with startups. We connect them right away with mentors. So that's how you're successful. We connect them with 30 plus mentors in like speed dating. Imagine like fifteen minutes speed dating.

So there's constantly meeting mentors that can help them. They can pitch them ideas, they can ask them what's wrong with their business, etcetera, they can iterate. They meet biweekly with our team member that we hire locally. We also hire locally when we go into a community. So the person who runs Round Rock is actually from Round Rock. We want to make sure it feels like it's part of the community. They meet weekly to go over actual issues within their company. That's where it gets into that real concierge, weekly meals, the investors forums, they meet dozens of investors every cohort. That goes back to this whole premise of shots on goal. We need to get them in front of as many investors as possible.

We have a big community showcase. This is the one where the mayor and everyone gets up on stage and shows the community look what's actually happening here because a lot of people don't realize the amount of startups and traction. And I was the consultant to Mayor Turner back when he was still in his term in Houston. I worked for Mayor Turner as a consultant for eight years with my firm. He used to love getting up on stage and it was his moment to just kind of say Houston look at what we're doing here and it's something I've always really enjoyed.

And I'll try to get through this faster. Seven week program, that's where all that takes place. The way we see from a programming programming perspective, once again we leverage our national network for publicity. We hire local, we take occupancy in a space locally. We wanna activate a building. We wanna activate a co working space. We wanna activate a place where people know this is where you can come. We do community meetups. One of the things that even if you don't get into our cohort, we have open office hours. So anyone from the community can come meet with our program director and ask them questions.

Whatever question they may have about their business, whatever question they may have about generator. It's wide open and they can just schedule that online. We have a lunch and learn series. This goes to my economic development background. Originally it was always for just the people in the cohort and I said does it really hurt if we open up to more people from the community? And our co founder was like go for it. So we just started implementing it and we're really enjoying it. So we're seeing hundreds of startups actually get access to our education instead of just the ones in their cohort. So we're really trying to push more into the community. We always say we'll commit to a certain amount of applications so that's always kind of in there.

We'll always accelerate a certain amount of startups and then of course we have the big showcase event at the end so they can get up on stage and tell people how proud they are of what they built. And it's also a time for entrepreneurs to recognize the people who support them. I said earlier I was a founder, I sold a tech company a couple years ago and every time I tell people I get up on stage, if it wasn't for my wife I would've never got there. And so every time I'm on stage I always recognize her because that's who should be recognized and so that showcase gives these people an opportunity to thank the people who are helping them get where they get. On the ecosystem and I think I got like two more slides.

The ecosystem side, we want to become the mayor of startups and venture capital for the community. We want to be additive and supportive. So we don't want to supplant anything that maybe the city's doing, the chamber's doing from a meetup but what we want to do is say how can we help influence it deeper. So this is actually Greeley, Colorado. We're really big there.

We do a lot of office hours as you can see. We do these happy hours, they have a cute pun name for it. But really what we're doing is we're inviting investors, startups, mentors and corporations to just come congregate. We're trying to get those going in the community so we want to do that in partnership with the chamber like we're doing in Round Rock. For Round Rock they see it as we're bringing a different group of people there that might become members of their chamber.

So we're actually kind of helping the Round Rock chamber grow their membership in the way we're doing it with them. Of course the lunch and learns, the investors, the funders and then of course the showcase. And so you can just see this program's just been going for a little while but they're doing it really well and they're starting to really ramp up. Pictures kind of show you what we're trying to do is really create a sense of community. And then the last couple things I'll say, you asked me Robert, well what do you guys do when they leave?

After the seven weeks and you bring in the next cohort, what happens? They stay with Generator forever. That's what makes us unique. Even if we don't invest in them because they're in our non dilutive product, they still get access to the constant deal flow. So we send out emails to all those investors saying here's our new deals, do you have interest, do you want interest? We continue to do lightning rounds, these are free. It was something we did during the pandemic. We were realizing our startups couldn't investors in person. So we started operating lightning rounds where we ask our startups to apply, then we reach out to our investor network and say, can we match you guys up on a Thursday for speed dating? It's about a three hour event.

Usually on average people will get about seven meetings with investors. And so it's just getting those startups more opportunity. This is a secret that we don't talk about a lot. Any startup can actually apply for it and we'll let them in. You don't even have to be a generator alumni company. We just want to help people get funded and that's kind of the way we look at the world. Once again office hours, our corporate innovation network, that's all just part of that continuum. So they can always meet with them. I meet with alumni all the time because they call me because they want to learn about international business development and I'm sure, I got time. Last, I think two more slides.

I think I said that four times. We do have KPIs that we put out there and we want to be held to these. So in all of our agreements we put these KPIs in there and then we hold ourselves to them. I'll show you here this data, this is the last, last slide and I do promise because the last one said thank you and I remember putting this one in there. This is what we put out online.

So when you ask me, Robert, are you guys going to show us data if we ever decide you guys are the right fit for our community? We put this online every month from our co founder. This is our G beta program. We talk about how many people went through it, how many people raised seed rounds, how much have they raised, how many of them exited, jobs created and everything. We're the only accelerator currently at our status of an international accelerator that does this.

And we do it because we want to be transparent to the community. What we also commit to the boards that we go to is once a quarter or once a year, depends on how the board wants but usually it's about once a year now. I'll show up just like this with everything from the statistics from your program and I'll walk you through them, we'll bring founders into the room, they can talk to the board and really we transparent. So you'll know we created 90 jobs this year in the community. We raised this much money this year in the community and it's all there.

And that's why I say we want to be transparent. So our co founder puts this on his LinkedIn, he's got tens of thousands of followers and some months the numbers are actually down, some numbers they're up. It's still posted the thirty first every month regardless because we wanna be transparent with the communities. So I'll take any questions. That was probably a lot at you at once. I do talk fast as well. I'll take any questions or just thank you again. I'm always humbled when anyone lets me get up in front of them.

Thank you for the presentation. Anybody have any questions?

Yeah, I guess I'll ask the, I think I remember a few slides ago if you were to establish a presence here, you'd have a full time employee office space, different things like that. I'm assuming to get that kicked off that's in partnership with the city or EDC or chamber. That's why you're here?

Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir.

I guess more details to follow

on that. Yeah, we actually have an agenda item for executive session to discuss this topic as well.

Okay, great. Yeah, very impressive. Thank you.

Just to be clear, we'll discuss it but any vote will happen in public. Sure.

And Don, just to follow-up, I know Robert mentioned this, but they will hire an employee who lives program. But it will be a resident of our community, an employee of theirs. They're flexible. They have pretty lean requirements on how much office space they need and what access to conference rooms they need and all of those types of things. And it's a very flexible arrangement that we can custom fit for us.

Looking forward to hearing more in the future. Any other questions? Thank you Mr. Pieroni.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you very much.

Item b, public hearing discussion and possible action approving an expenditure of up to a $175,000 to fund the streets and utility design master plan pursuant to section 501.103 of the Texas Local Government Code. Mr. Ford.

Thank you. President Hines, directors Gary Ford, Director of Transportation and Construction Services. We are proposing a drainage area master plan to be funded by the EDC. And really, at this point, we're looking for it to set the standards for public right of way improvements, for city projects and projects in the public realm and partnered with public and private partnerships, really. We're seeing a lot of the projects that we discuss here and really being able to establish the standards in order to set the expectations meeting the community's goals.

They will include underground utility conversions, pedestrian improvements, on street parking standards, landscaping, lighting, and other right of way enhancements. All are key to placemaking and, again, meeting the community's vision. The plan will be provided to private partners in order to provide that expectation of when they're developing a project in a certain area town, they know what needs to be provided in the public realm. The cost of the master plan is $175,000 and we plan to begin spring. And once we kick that off, it will be approximately an eight month process. So again, this is in line with our downtown right of way enhancements and some other projects we've been talking about over the last year. Any questions?

Board. We will open it up for a public comment. Seeing none, we will close public comment. Is there a motion?

Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to approve an expenditure of up to $175,000 to fund the streets and utility design master plan.

I'll second that. I have a motion from director Austin, a second from director Hammonds. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Item C, public hearing discussion and possible action approving expenditure of up to $300,000 to support maintenance and operations of parks facilities funded by the NBEDC pursuant to section 505.152 of the Texas Local Government Code. Mr. Drule.

Thank you, President Hines. This project indirectly supports the strategic plan initiative to expand access to early childhood education and childcare in New Braunfels. You all have received the early childhood education report from Early Matters New Braunfels. When staff got together to begin thinking about how to support those initiatives, we ran into kind of a well, a statutory issue, frankly, that the way that the program is construct with the early matters proposed initiatives, the EDC cannot directly support it. So the idea is to have the economic development corporation directly pick up some authorized expenditures that it can support directly, specifically the maintenance and operation of the Zip Sports Park facility.

Because the EDC has supported this project with capital dollars in the past, it is authorized statutorily to undertake those operations and maintenance expenditures. So with that authorization, that would be shifting the costs from the city's general fund to the Economic Development Corporation and then the city would pick up the early childhood education initiative through a Chapter three eighty agreement with that group. Indirectly supporting the project initiative through a legal authorization with support of operations maintenance of the Zip Family Sports Park. With that I'll answer any questions.

Any questions from the board? Have

we seen this one before?

We've discussed this particular project. You all got that project presentation I believe back in October or November. And we had discussed indirectly supporting it.

I do remember talking about that. Do you know, sorry, I think it's a little bit detailed. We'll address maintenance cost for three years. Okay, so it's kind of a three year the 300 or up to 300 is sort of a three year plan. Right,

right. The city's expected expenditures for Zip Family Sports Park exceed over $100,000 a year. Obviously, that expenditure was approved for this year whenever the sports park does open up in the spring. So those authorizations to continue support with operation maintenance funding in the city's general fund is obviously going to be carried on through the operation of sports park. And so this would supplant that funding that the general fund would normally pick up in order for the general fund dollars to be directed towards a future chapter three eighty agreement with. If approved tonight, it would potentially go forward on the January 26 meeting at City Council.

Yeah, this board has been supportive of this early matters childcare because it's an economic development thing for the community and running into the statutory restrictions on being able to contribute directly to it. This is something that the EDC has done in the past. I don't know it may be prior to current board members but to support other initiatives that they want to support been able to offset expenses for from the general fund and that frees up the funds in the general fund to be able to use the way the EDC wanted them to be used.

May I ask, there's investment coming from other parts of our community for this too, right?

Yes sir, yep, that is correct. The early matters initiative is costing $250,000 annually? Yeah,

the McKenna Foundation has granted Early Matters New Braunfels $300,000 over a three year period. They've received a $25,000 that's called a capacity building grant from the Kronkowski Foundation. And they have roughly just a little over a $200,000 a year budget for the first three years. So the idea is to give it that three year stretch run where it can operationalized.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the board? Thank you, Mr. Jewell. We will now open it up to public comment.

Seeing none we will put close public comment. Any action on this

item? I'd just like to say I think we've heard this a few times and I think it's important that there's investment coming from other areas of our community and I hope we can be successful and this will help and I think worth the investment to see. I would so move for approval.

I'd second.

I have a motion from Director Hammonds and a second from Director Thompson. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. All those opposed. Motion passes unanimously. I'll wait for you. Discussion and possible action to elect New Braunfels Economic Development Corporation officers, president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer for is that city year 2026 to be effective 01/16/2026.

It's for a full calendar year.

For full calendar year? Yes sir. Oh, there we go. Yes.

I think our our current board has done a phenomenal job. And if they're so willing, I would recommend that they continue for another year. I guess that would be Shane as president, Kristen as Carden. Kristen Carden as vice president, Larry Hammonds as secretary, and Don as treasurer. Chris is not here so she can't defend herself.

We could promote her while she's gone.

I wouldn't do that to her but I would nominate her.

Shane would probably agree it takes probably a year to get the hang of this thing. So it's probably not the worst idea to stay intact. I would serve and change doing most of the work anyway. That's appreciated. Was that a second? That's a second.

All right, I have a motion second from director Hammonds for me to continue as president, Kristen Caron to be vice president. Secretary would be director Hammonds and Treasurer would be Director Austin. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously and probably should have started with this but I do wanna welcome, we have two new members today, Michelle Rod and Mr. Campos. So thank you guys for joining us. Looking forward

to working with you all.

Next, we will move on to executive session in accordance with the Texas government code section 551.071. The board reserves the right to retire into executive session concerning the items listed on this agenda to consult with its attorney. In addition, the board may convene in executive session on any of the following items with any final action being taken in an open session. A, deliberate issues regarding economic development negotiations in accordance with section 551.087 of the Texas government code. One, project shoot, two, project thread, three, project Icon.

Four, Green 16. Five, Project Space. Six, Generator. And item B, deliberate pending contemplated litigation settlement offers and matters concerning privileged and unprivileged client information deemed confidential by Rule one. Five of the Texas disciplinary rules of professional conduct in accordance with section 551.071 of the Texas government code, specifically twelve ten South Castel LLC.

In fact, six zero two we will go into executive session. Alright. We are back from executive session at 06:48 where no action was taken. We are back from executive session at 06:48. No action was taken or is taken now. And with that, we are adjourned.