Economic Development Corp. - Regular Meeting

We will now call to order the City of New Braunfels Economic Development Corporation meeting at 5PM. Miss Woggs, will you please call roll?

Tara Thompson? Here. Kathy Murren? Here. Don Austin?

Here.

Kristen Carden? Here. Shane Hines?

Here.

And absent is Jason Herta.

Thank you. Item three, approval of the minutes. Everybody read the minutes?

I've had a chance to review the minutes. I move for approval.

Second.

I have a motion from director Austin and a second by director Merrin. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Minutes pass. Item four, citizens communication. This is time for citizens to address the board on issues and items or concerns not on this agenda. There will be no board action at this time.

Seeing no citizens communication, we will close citizens communication and move on to the treasurer's report. Mr. Warner.

Thank you, President Hines. Starting with sales taxes, wish I had some better news to bring to the Board today, but we continue to see a pretty volatile pattern of sales tax collections, kind of given the economic uncertainty that is present throughout the entire country right now. More specifically, the most recent month that we have data for, which is the month of February, those collections overall were down 9.3%. When you remove all the adjustments, were actually down 11.8%. Now there are some anomalies within that.

For whatever reason, a lot of our large sales tax payers in the community have been remitting taxes kind of on an irregular basis. And so there is some factors that are affecting the January and February numbers more than what we usually see. And so there could be a little bit of a course correction in March, but we certainly have seen enough this fiscal year to feel comfortable adjusting our projections down for the rest of the fiscal year, which is what we're going to do. So we'll certainly keep the Board up to date on that. However, while again the data has been a little concerning and it's requiring us to make some adjustment within our current year budget projections, not only for the EDC, but also for the city, the general fund.

Certainly don't feel the EDC has any concerns that relates to evaluating your existing priorities and any of the upcoming investments that you're considering either tonight or in the coming months. I think that's the important thing to report on. Again, just update your revenue projections for the next several years each month based on that latest sales tax collection data and any other one time revenues that are received. Again, no changes to this since we met last month. However, though, as you know, your agenda is for another initiative this evening.

Should the Board approve that, we will incorporate those expenditure projections into your next monthly Treasurer's Report. You're familiar with seeing this list of projects. Again, as a reminder, the only expenditure that is yet to be formally approved and incorporated in your treasurer's report is that downtown right of way enhancements projects. Again, this project this will be on here for quite some time as we still have approximately a year of design work on that project before you will formally consider the construction expenditure for that project. And as a reminder, you will be asked you will be given the opportunity potentially to expand the scope of that investment with some underground utilities.

And so the number that you may evaluate could ultimately be higher than this, but this is the original project estimate that was provided. So we're sticking with that at the present present time. And again, combining all of that, you can still that you're still well leveraged with a large surplus reserve. Again, going back to what I said at the beginning of the Treasury report, even though we're seeing some volatility in your primary revenue source, feel that you have sufficient flexibility to continue to make investments and evaluate those investments that you have this evening and in the coming months. With that, I'll close and answer any questions that you may have.

Any questions from the Board?

We will for public no, will move on to advisory report.

Quick interjection. Mandy Scott, Economic and Community Development. You'll recall that the EDC has an agreement with Spark Small Business Development Center for business advising. Ron Richardson is here tonight to give you the first of the two in person presentations as part of that agreement. They also provide you quarterly reports. I'll just turn it over to Rome.

Alright. Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with an update and talk about some of the exciting things that are happening at Spark. So looking at the office summary for the first two quarters of the year, we see that the business plans created are pretty steady We and staying very busy with new clients and existing clients. We have seven new business start ups created or retained over 30 jobs. And the capital infusion right now sits at nine eighty two.

And, again, just for clarification, those are loans and private sources. I can also report that just this month, we already have three additional new business starts and the capital infusion will double due to those. I wasn't able to get them in at the end of the quarter, but they will be in for the next quarter. In terms of community outreach and networking, I tried to shorten this out and just hit some of the high points. Rotary is one of the the clubs that Spark is part of as well as the downtown association, the the chamber as well, and also sit on any any committee that has the word business in it.

So the business advisory, small business of the year, the business education partnership, and the business expo. Also, various ribbon cuttings. This this time of the year is exciting as well with the schools because we have the incubator final pitch night coming up the May for Comal ISD. And then for New Braunfels ISD, they are doing a mock interview, May 14. They did this in the fall, and I was a part of it.

And it's for the middle schools, and it's it's a lot of fun to do the mock interviews with the the students. This is a pretty exciting new new update here, but Spark has met with people at the at the Westside Community Center and decided to partner up. It'll start in June, but it'll be an opportunity for me to go over there and be able to help collaborate with some entrepreneurs at the Westside Center. There might even be some opportunity for child care that may have prohibited them from being able to come see me at the office that I'm currently at. As as well as we've also been in discussion with the Westside Community Center about the commercial kitchen that they have available there, and I've already mentioned it to several of the spark clients that are currently using the cottage law to do some baking and stuff that are really interested in having the opportunity to use those facilities.

So I'm encouraged that that'll that'll happen. In terms of the training events, a lot of start smart presentations. Just for everyone's reminder, the start smart is an entrepreneurial training event. It's a Zoom event. It's very well attended because it's the first event that we recommend for new entrepreneurs.

And then we've also had the in person, the ABCs of SBA lending actually and the ask a business advisor. So far to date, we've had over 250 people attend the trainings, including the Star Smarts. For new expansion and new client businesses, here are the ones from just the current quarter. Kamal Pops, they are a food truck, just made an agreement with the float in, so they'll be there over the summer. La Balde Nossi is a an event center in the Gold's Gym area.

The the Hungry Waffle is actually a food truck as well that is right now in New Braunfels and then has is just found a place in San Marcos as well, so they're going back and forth. But they're actually in discussion with the new owners of the Silos, and the Silos has about six spots for food trucks. So a lot of my clients, I've got them in contact. So hopefully, they'll be able to work out something there. And then Otto's Cheese Shop, that's an expansion.

They moved from their location off of Landau, and now they're in the shopping center where New York Pizza is. And so it's a bigger place that they're gonna be able to serve more clients. I always like to put the the Google reviews. That's something that the the board the Spark board was encouraged to to get our SEO up to make sure that we were being seen in the community. Currently, we have 70 reviews, and I I always take the last three so it doesn't look like I'm cherry picking any of them.

But these are the the most current Google reviews. This is actually my favorite slide here, and this is the conclusion, but it's talking about Spark in the in the future. If you look at the first three, the training, the advising, and the referrals is primarily what I'm doing today along with some community involvement and education. But looking at the the angel investing, the consulting, and the coworking, those are areas that I think we can expand into and provide additional services. So we we just got a new president for the Spark board.

We're gonna add some board members. We're working closely with the chamber to be able to provide some detailed information for you guys next time during the next presentation in October about what it would take and what that would look like to have those additional components to Spark. With that, I yield for questions.

Any questions from the board?

I don't have a question, but I just want to make a quick remark. It's very exciting to hear about your partnership with Westside Community Center. It's such a great spot and there's so much going on over there. It's really awesome to

hear. Thanks.

I was going to say the same thing. Any time that we can eliminate barriers such transportation or things like that, that's big kudos to you.

You, mister Richardson.

I'd just like to add, I think you and your spark are a great resource to our small business community and refer a lot of people your way.

Thanks, Larry.

Thanks, sir.

Thank you. Thanks for your time.

Item seven, a presentation update on the Dry Creek Trail segment two and three feasibility study findings.

Good evening, Scott McClung, the assistant director of transportation capital improvements. Here tonight to talk about the wrap up of one of the projects that you funded that Jared mentioned earlier, the Dry Comal Creek Trail segments two and three feasibility study. So these feasibility studies, we recommend doing really with two two major goals, to identify any project constraints that we don't know about and really to get a good cost estimate. So we know what the next steps look like from a financial standpoint. So this study is by no means the first study or plan that was done on the for the Dry Como Creek.

And so we use the Dry Como Creek Greenway master plan. We use the watershed protection plan, and then also Great Springs project plan to help inform while we're doing this feasibility study, take advantage of those previous studies, the information provided in those that looked at kind of the whole the whole trail segment instead of these individual segments like we did. So in summary of what segments two and three consist of, so we're it's going segment two goes from Walnut to Loop 337 by the Little League fields, and then segment three picks up from Loop 337 goes to Altgelt Lane, which is really the end of the city limits for for the Dry Como Creek Trail as it's playing now. It's about 2.4 miles all the way from Walnut to Altgelt. And then and about half half a mile of that is being constructed as part of Camp Landa.

In that, there's within the trail that we have planned some scenic overlooks in the area, try to take advantage of some of the the natural beauty and kind of the secludedness of this trail that really feels feels definitely like you're out in nature when you're on it. And then also incorporating access to the Little League fields there at Loop 337 with kind of some upgrades to the the existing trailhead and amenities and then also a trailhead at at Altgeld. So in the process, lots of data gathering goes into these feasibility studies. Like I mentioned, we wanna know the constraints. And so a lot of these things that we're we gather the data on are are known known project constraints.

So the right of way required, any of the archaeological and historical constraints that we might come across, we wanna know about those. The water quality and stream restoration. So I mentioned the watershed protection plan. So trying to to build off of that anywhere we can. So it's not just a trail project.

It can be a kind of a project for the whole creek way as well, which ties into the floodplain analysis as well. This area has a large floodplain component. So are there is there a possibility to incorporate any of that into the into this trail project? And then these site challenges, so areas where it might be hard to pass the creek, and so we ran into that a little bit on segment three, which we'll talk about. During the process, we also looked for public input.

So we had a public meeting last summer to with the proposed trail alignment to get thoughts from the community. A lot of property owners arrived, but then also just in general public excitement about the project. Certainly, had people that weren't in favor of the trail, but there's lots of support for the trail. Lots of good questions about how we're developing the trail, what it's gonna be like. So we had 86 citizens sign in to the to the public meeting, which is great attendance for our public public meetings.

Meetings. We had 20 public comments and we left that open, the comment period open for thirty days on the website as well. So we incorporated those public comments into the report as well. So the deliverables are really a summary of the data gathering that mentioned a couple slides ago. So summaries on right of way, environmental concerns, archaeological concerns, the preliminary trail layout which I have on the next slide, recommendations from the watershed or flood plain standpoint as well.

So this shows the preliminary trail layout that we produced with the project. So the blue line is the main flow of the Dry Comal Creek, and then the tan line that's for the most part on kind of the plan north of the of the picture here is the trail. So we do cross over the trail there at Camp Landa to be on the plan south side headed over to Walnut. But for the most part, it's located on on one side of the creek, which definitely helps with construction. We had our consultant.

We worked through lots of different ways to communicate the project constraints. So as I mentioned, that's one of the major goals of doing these feasibility studies is figuring out what those challenges are so that then we can figure out how we want to approach the project. And across the board, the largest constraints, the most complex, the most costly constraint is gonna be right of way acquisition. And so that's something we know from other projects we've worked on. Whether they're trail projects or not, that's definitely can be a difficult step in the process and and expensive.

There's not a lot of flexibility from what we had found as far as the route goes to jump to the other side of the creek without having to go back and forth kind of between willing property owners. And so that that kind of narrows the the options as far as right of way acquisition goes. Some of the other constraints, the land bridge on Segment 3, as I mentioned, is really a site constraint. So there's very limited there's on that side of the loop, there's the the main creek, but then there's also some wide pools. And so kind of threading the needle through, really the only way to do that is through kind of a bridge boardwalk structure.

And so there's over a thousand linear feet of of of that land bridge as we called it in here on that on that segment three, which adds substantial cost. Something that we can overcome, but it's definitely definitely an expense. And then just in general, when crossing the river or not the river, the creek, that could that adds complexity. So as I mentioned, we're crossing down at Camp Landa. That in itself adds permitting challenges as well when we're crossing the creek.

Now we're talking about having to get additional authorization from the Corps of Engineers, and so that boosts up that that last permitting constraint as well. So this this graphic is hopefully helpful to to communicate. This is what we're kind of the challenges that we're potentially faced with, but it's good to know headed into the project. So as I mentioned, the really the second goal after the constraints is coming up with a cost estimate. So we can't can't make a request for for funding if we don't know what we're actually the amount that we need.

And so we broke it out on the slide here. The right of way, we're estimating to be a little over a half million dollars. The design to be about $1,100,000, construction being 5.4. So the construction of of these trails, this is a little bit higher than, say, Alligator Creek West that you all funded that's under construction right now. Has this this project has a couple of trailheads, as I mentioned, that Alligator Creek project doesn't have.

But per per mile, it's a little bit higher than than that Alligator Creek project. We've got that elevated walkway that I talked about that adds about $1,600,000 for that thousand feet of that boardwalk area. So just some components that we need to be aware of as we're going in, maybe those things can be engineered around. But at least in the estimate and the feasibility, we wanted to make sure we were including a good number taking into account all those constraints that we found. And then also having a contingency in there is always good as well. So total project cost, 8 point

to

then feasibility study. And really then the next step we're would be to secure do right that. Of way funding. So that little over half million dollars is really the next step. So before we get any funding for a final design or really move forward with any final design, our recommendation based on the study and the recommendations is to focus on that right of way, figure out where we can get right of way.

Right of way can take a long time to get as we've seen on other trail projects. And so instead of tying up funds in final design or getting final design kind of ahead of ourselves, our recommendation is really to focus on that right of way, see where we can fit the trail, and if there's any any hard stops with right of way, see where we can adjust from there. And so there's no no specific funding request tonight or tied tied with this item. It's really meant to kinda wrap up. As I said, the the effort that you all funded, give you a a summary of what what we found and what those next steps would be.

So we're working on figuring out what the next steps would be from a funding standpoint to move be able to move forward with that right of way fund name. So with that, happy to answer any questions you all might have.

I just have one quick question about your right of way concerns. And you mentioned that those were private landowners. Are those private citizens? Is this TxDOT? Is this railroad land? Like like, what are what types of folks are we running up into?

Yes. So it's almost entirely private private property owners. So we we don't have any there's no Union Pacific right of way on this one, so that's that's a good thing for us. We would have to work with Txot to get under loop three thirty seven. We're also working with the county on the Altgelt side as well. They're doing they're in the middle of realignment project, so there'd be a little bit of work with them. But almost entirely it's working with private individuals.

Questions? Thank you, mister McClellan. We will open this up for public hearing. If you have comments, please state whether you are a resident, non resident, or live in the ETJ. Thank you.

Good evening. Tom Jones, New Braunfels resident. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for the presentation. You have a very interesting, exciting agenda tonight that everything on here will touch the future of New Braunfels for years to come.

I'm particularly interested in the Dry Comal Creek Trail. One of the things that was not noted on the presentation, you're probably aware of it, the citizens of New Braunfels voted for this back in 2013 in a bond election, a dozen years ago. We're finally kinda getting around to really making some progress on it. The phase one starting construction, we're looking at the other phases right now. A lot of things have happened since then, since they voted in.

The Great Springs project is in the work. The surrounding counties, North of us and South of us, are working on that. It would be a real shame if we didn't do anything to connect those pieces. For tourism, think of the trail going from Austin to San Antonio directly with people stopping along the way, eating along the way, staying along the way, a lot of future economic development possibilities for a trail coming down through the woods. So I would encourage you and whatever you can do to help move this along.

Yes, it costs money, but I think everyone here can agree, nothing is getting cheaper. The land that could have been acquired when this was initially voted in a dozen years ago has only gone up exponentially, and land in New Braunfels, it's not coming down. So again, thank you for paying attention to this, and also I would put in a good word for the headwaters at the Comal, another wonderful project where as a master naturalist, I volunteered just today. There's thousands of hours getting volunteered in the community here, and that is a key place that it's happening. Have a great evening.

Thank you.

Thank you, mister Jones.

Evening. I'm Jonathan Alorda, city resident. I'll echo everything he just said. The other point, I like your shirt too by the way, the other point I want to make is I live up by where Alligator Creek Trail West is being built and a lot of us are curious to see how the progress is going. And of course, there are people who are already using some parts of the drill already after hours.

They're really excited about it. This is definitely something that's going to be worth it for decades and decades to come. The one point I'd add to the previous remarks are that the topic of parking comes up so much anytime we want to talk about anything good and anything developing here. The advantage of something like bike tourism is that people can bring their spending dollars without having to think about where they're going to park a big car. And it is a really nimble kind where you can invite you get foot traffic and you get economic traffic, but you don't get the car congestion that comes with it.

And to his point, connecting with the GSP is a no brainer. I know it's pricey and not a complicated thing, but I would highly appreciate that we continue persevering to see how we can get this done. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Loro.

I'm Travis Simmons. I'm a New Braunfels resident and a primary care doctor here in town. I showed up tonight from my office just around the corner just because I wanted to kind of throw my vote from a healthcare standpoint behind trails development in general. You know, I spend a lot of time talking to people about mental health, physical health. And one of the big things that I had in another city I used to live in is just an extensive parks and trail network.

And so it was really accessible for residents to get outside. And I mean I could like bring paper after paper showing the mental health and physical benefit of just having access to more trail and more outdoor space. But, I think anything that we can do to start to fill that need for more trails and more outdoor space here in New Braunfels, which I know is a priority for everyone in the room, you all included. I think it just is going to have untold and kind of multiplying benefits from a mental health standpoint, from a physical health standpoint, which is obviously intimately tied in with the economic health of our city and our population. I think this is a very worthwhile thing from a holistic standpoint for the health of our people and the health of our community.

So, I appreciate you all paying attention to this issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Doctor. Simmons.

Hi, I'm Tim Marlowe. I'm a resident of New Braunfels and I have three teenage boys and I am also a scout troop leader and so the more trails opportunities that we have in the community, the better for the youth. It's better to have them out on the trails and experiencing nature in person than in their homes looking at screens. So anything that we can do to give more outdoor space and more productive to the youth, I am fully in support of.

Thank you, sir. Seeing no others, we will close public comment. Seven b, presentation discussion on proposed economic development incentive to Northeast Lakeview College at Braunfels for an expansion project to promote workforce training and education. Mr. Packer.

Good evening. Doctor. Garcia is gonna present a lot of good data for you all here in a second, and I wanna provide a couple of introductory remarks for how we got here. Three years ago, if you were to tell me we were talking about community college presence in New Braunfels expanding, I would have definitely taken it. I would have probably settled for stabilizing. And it's a really good story. A lot of work that a lot of people can be really proud of. But I do want to point out that it starts with leaders being really involved in the community. And both Doctor. Garcia and Sharon Nitingra have done that.

It's no accident. The numbers you're about to see, how they achieve them, it's through getting involved. And without further ado, I'll turn it over to Doctor. Garcia.

Thank you. And I'm excited to be here. As many of you may not realize, but Northeast Lakeview College actually sits off of I-thirty 5 And 1604. We sit on two sixty four acres in San Antonio. We actually sit in the Live Oak and Universal City. So we're not even in San Antonio. So we're outside of San Antonio. We are one of the five Alamo Colleges. And what you'll learn is that the Alamo Colleges, our moonshot is to fight poverty, not necessarily compete with other universities or colleges, but really focus on ensuring that an average day citizen can earn a living wage by getting that skill set. So Northeast Lakeview College came up.

We're the youngest of the five Alamo Colleges. And what you'll see is that our taxing district is Bexar County. So we have five community colleges that are there. We have 25 early college high schools and 20 P Techs. So we have a total of 79,000 students that are in the San Antonio.

We're the only college that sits outside of San Antonio, so 39% of our students are coming outside of San Antonio, which is Comal and Guadalupe County. Two areas that are not in our taxing district. So that has posed some interesting challenges for us. But as you can see, we service all of these, Atascosa, Wilson, Kendall, Bandera, and Kerr, within the Alamo Colleges. What we saw in Northeast Lakeview College is that we, as I was mentioning, we have been growing in the out of district area outside of Bexar County.

And we started to track that. And we said, okay, we are seeing this population growth. It is a challenge for them to have to drive 12 to 15 to 17 miles to get to the main campus. We need to start having some conversation. And what we started to track on all of the out of county areas is that Comal, originally Guadalupe County was supposed to outpace Comal.

But what we've seen is a shift that actually Comal County in 2040 will be at 95%, Guadalupe will be at 55%. So we started to realize at NLC, we went from 31% to 37% to now 39%. So, we're seeing this growth and we said, okay, what can we do? So, again, we started to track and we saw that in Comal County, there was a sort of intersection where Comal County started to outpace Guadalupe County. And back in 2023, we requested to take over CTTC, which was handled by another partner that was managing that site.

And so we said, we think we can do a better job. We think that we can support the students in that area, and it will be easier for us to bring faculty to them versus bringing the students back to the main campus. And so again, as you can see, the projections demonstrate that there is a definite need in the counties of Guadalupe and Comal for growth and to provide this. So, what we saw is, oh, we said, okay, our projection population, we started to look at what we thought would be by 2030, again, Comal is going to outpace Guadalupe. We started to track how many students are between the ages of zero to 17, 18 to 64, and as you can see, it's 26%, 53%.

And we actually looked at how many individual citizens that are 25 years or older do not have a degree? How many have a high school degree that are 25 or over? As you can see, 25,000. And how many of our citizens have some college and 25 and over, which is 39,000. And we said either way, the median population of the income is at 91, but the persons in poverty is what we were focusing on is 6.9%, and then in Comal County it's 10.3. And we said, okay, here's a population that needs that workforce. What can we do to provide? What can we do to support these individuals? And how can we move forward with not only those individuals, but our ISDs? We heard loud and clear from the community that they wanted to see a larger presence.

They wanted to see more workforce programs. The ISDs wanted to see more engagement from the college. And so we said, okay, here we are. So with that, we started our dual credit programs. As you can see, they have increased dramatically. We have partnerships with Comal ISD and New Braunfels ISD. And as you can see, they're growing quite quickly. We went started in 2022 in Comal with June to September. And now that we currently have this last year over a thousand students that are taking dual credit. What helps with that is that those students are able to not only earn a high school diploma, but to use and leverage those courses to meet higher education at the same time.

So they're able to double dip at no charge to the family. That is a huge benefit and an opportunity for students to jump start their education in higher education. This is an actual picture of the COML, Early College High School Memorial. This is their first cohort of graduating at Northeast Lakeview College. They took a selfie, and so I thought you'd like to see these are some of your kids that were there taking their picture. As you can see, it's quite a nice group, and they were quite loud at graduation. So, we're very pleased that we were able to capture that picture with them. Out of the Alamo Colleges, to give you an idea, as I mentioned, we have 79,000 students. Alamo Colleges graduates over 31,000 students. And we said, how many of those percentage are coming out of Northeast Lakeview?

As I said, We're less than 15 years old. San Antonio is like 100 years old. St. Philip's is 125. So we're like the babies of the Alamo Colleges. But what we can show and demonstrate, every year we've grown in graduation between 10 to 15%. So, this is the Northeast area is the fastest growing area, and we are seeing a progression to graduation. So, out of the 31,000, we graduate 29, 9.2% are coming out of North East Lakeview. And out of those 2,900, seven sixty two students came out of either COMEL or Guadalupe, which is 26%. That's a huge number and it's continuing to grow.

So, what it demonstrated, it just gave us what I would say the data to be able to go back to our district and say, look, this is growing. We need to figure out a way how we can provide more support in this area and how we can establish a facility out here. So again, that's how we were able to convince them to let us have CTTC. So, we share. We have a partner in this building. So, we have half the building. These are all your students that come. We have some nursing program. We have biology chemistry that we're offering in there. And so these are all pictures of your students that are actually showing up.

On the first day that we started, without really heavy advertising, we offered ten secondtions and we had 125 students show up. And so we said, okay, here's the need. We can demonstrate it. And within two years, we were able to get to 400 students at 25 courses. So clearly, we were able to demonstrate to our district office that this is a fast and growing area, and we needed some infrastructure.

So, NLC has invested in operational 562,000 into this building. One was to enhance the technology in that building. It was outdated, and we were offering cyber cybersecurity, and we wanted to expand that to the high schools to offer cybersecurity program. Unfortunately, the building couldn't support that, so we had to actually bring in all of the routers and all this detail. But basically, was $450,000 of what it cost us.

We also had to rebrand the CTTC to let people know that this isn't just workforce, but they actually can complete their higher education. So we had to do some marketing out there. We had some infrastructure. We put some things in there. And we also had to hire One thing that we heard loud and clear for the community is that they didn't want people there part time. They wanted people there that were located, that lived in the community, that were part of the community. So we hired our director, which is Sharon Ennergeberg, who is right there. And she actually lives in New Braunfels. We live most of the people that are there either live in Comal County or actually live in New Braunfels. And the reason we did that, we were very strategic, is because we wanted to make sure that people that live in the community know the community and can make those connections.

We hired a senior advisor. We also hired another certified advisor. This is to help our students to ensure. One of the things that Alamo College is very proud of is that we don't allow our students to take classes just to take classes. We want to make sure that all their courses transfer to the university and are accepted by the university 100%.

Most universities will say, well, we take your classes. And we said, no, we don't want you to take our classes. We want you to take those classes and apply them so that when they transfer, they transfer with 64 credits and they transfer in as a junior, not as a sophomore. And so, that's why we wanted to make sure that we had advisors on-site that can work with those students to make sure that they are taking the correct courses. We are in the process of hiring a full time chemistry faculty.

I just did three interviews today. We're looking at the reference checks, so we'll have somebody permanently there. Again, we wanted to make sure that we expanded in those science areas, which is a high need. We have a college services coordinator that works on the facility to make sure that everything is working well. We have a program specialist because we have a library that we have to have there, as well as a lab technician and a full time DPS officer.

So we have invested over $1,000,000 just in CTTC in the last two years to make sure that that facility was not only welcoming, but that was providing the support and the services that the community needed. So, we quickly realized when we went from 10 to 25, and we started to look at the parking lot, we said, okay, we're filling up very quickly. And so, you know, sometimes it's funny how you put something out and you say, we really need a building. We need to find something bigger. We're not we're gonna outgrow this very quickly, and what are we gonna do?

It's that vision forward thinking. And so I said, we need to find a building. And I just put it out to the universe, which is hilarious because then I got, hey, I was running by this building and it's empty. And so Sharon goes, I said, well, let's find out what it is. And so we were very fortunate to find out that this building has been sitting there for the last couple of years empty. Nobody's ever used it. It's just sitting there. And so, we said, okay, what would it take? Now again, you have to have the challenges we have. This is not a taxing district.

And so, I have to try to find other dollars to be able to buy this building, which is a whole other set of challenges. But we said, hey, if we found the building, it's a great building, it's located right off of 35, it's 58,000 square feet, how can we do this? And so our board was very supportive, and our administration was very supportive in helping us find. And so we were able to not only purchase this building for over $13,000,000 but it's now officially ours. So it will have the Northeast Lakeview College signed.

And so, with that, we said, Okay, we have $4,000,000 left. We can start the phased in approach project, and we can start remodeling. But you you have to be careful when a gift horse comes by. Because then they said, Oh, by the way, did you know there's land right to it? And so, originally I said, well But we kept hearing from the health care community, we really want you to expand your health care. It's great that you're offering nursing, but we really want to see expansion. And we knew that the building wasn't going to be to support that. So, this came out. It came out of the sky and we are at the very tail end. My attorneys you know anytime you get attorneys involved but their attorneys are saying by the end of the month, we will actually own that property as well.

And so, that's what we're excited about. Because not only will we have this building, but we'll actually have the land to expand so that we can move in the allied health. And so, this will have us from the additional will give us 10.7 acres to really put a nice community college presence within the city of New Braunfels. But, again, that deducted from what I had saved for the remodel. So, the goal that we had in this building is to expand.

As I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of the business courses. We have a lot of the transfer courses at the CTT site. We have cybersecurity, and we have the introduction to nursing in that area. But we're being asked we have biology and chemistry. We're being asked to expand the biology labs.

And we're being asked to expand allied health. As well as what we heard loud and clear from business and industry. They really want to expand in construction management, which is not only commercial but residential. And it's not the entry level, it's sort of that mid level, those surveyors, those additional, as well as electricians. There is a high need for electricians in not only San Antonio and outskirts in all of Texas with data centers and everyone else.

There is a huge demand for electricians, and so we'll be putting an electrical lab in that new building. And then engineering technology. So we actually have a relationship with Texas A and M at our main campus where they actually send two of their faculty are permanently housed. And so the students will complete their first two years at NLC, and then they're automatically transition. They don't transfer. They're transitioned to Texas A and M engineering program. Well, some students, they're great. They're really excited about going into a four year engineering program, but some students just say, you know what? I want to get my two year engineering in technology or electrical. Can I go get a job from there?

So this is going to allow us to do both so that the students have some opportunity. As well as we'll be expanding not only our cyber defense and network administration, but AI. These are the programs that I've listed on the left side are the key areas that will be in that building, and then in the land, hopefully expand to the allied health. On the right side is what we're going to be moving from CTTC. Obviously the advising, we need to have testing centers, the library, tutoring, obviously some academic classrooms, some student areas, lab supply storage, and of course signage.

And then student study spaces, which we think we can do that. So, that's what's going to go into the new building. Obviously, as I mentioned, I can't give a gift horse when that land came in. Originally, I had $4,000,000 now I'm down to 2. So it's like the money just flies.

But this is the actual building itself. And so we have a two phased approach that we said, let's start with the electrical labs, engineering technology. We still have CTTC, so we can leave all of classes in that other building until we can, again, gain some additional dollars to raise so that we can do phase two. I think the challenge that we have, again, as I mentioned, we are an out of district college, and so I can't leverage any of those dollars that my sister colleges have because I'm the only college that will be really servicing somebody outside of Bexar County. So, that said, actually reached out to PDK.

We asked them what the initial costs were. In the appendix, you'll see what the breakdown is for the full remodel to do phases one and two. We asked them to break it into two phases. And so we're just basically giving you an overview of what the ask is and what we're looking for. We feel that we demonstrated that we are definitely committed to the community with not only the staffing, but the dollars that we put behind it. We walk the talk, and you can go see CTC. It's a beautiful space, and you'll see our full time staff there, and so I'm here to answer any questions. So I know I went pretty fast, but I was trying to keep to your time.

Any questions from the board?

That was impressive.

Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah, that's very exciting. And I have four kids, youngest is junior, oldest is 25 now, can't believe it, but they've all been involved in some way in your system. And that's just how it goes now with dual credit programs and it's a great opportunity. But I have no doubt you're gonna get this done with your drive and your personality. Thank

you We've for been working hard. Any other questions? Well, you are the easiest board I've had. So, okay, I like this. Alright. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

Thank you, doctor Garcia. We will open up for public comment. Seeing none, we will move on. Item c, discussion action to approve an amendment to the existing headwaters at the Comal Economic Development Agreement.

Thank you, president Hines. Mandy Scott, economic and community development. The EDC has an existing contract with the headwaters at the COMAL. They executed that contract in May 2022. The contract was for $1,200,000 as a reimbursement of the actual construction cost.

So as things were completed, the EDC was reimbursing those those payments. It was based on a thirty six month construction deadline. As you heard from miss Nancy Pappas back in February, the project has had significant delays. They've had unexpected archaeological discoveries at the site, which resulted in cost escalation, which caused further delays. Their current construction expectation is March 2027.

So the request for tonight is to extend that contract from the thirty six months, which would be May 2025, to twenty two months, which would be May 03/02/2027. That's the request tonight. Happy to answer any questions or Ms. Pappas is here to answer anything I can't.

Any questions from the board?

So the items we will open it up to public comment.

Seeing none, we close public comment. Hear a motion from board.

I make a motion to extend the deadline for the additional months to be March 2027 instead of May 2022. I'll second.

I have a motion from director Thompson and a second from director Carden. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Item d, public hearing discussion and possible action approval of project expenditure of up to $2,300,000 to the headwaters at the Comal for the completion of construction pursuant to section five zero five point one five two of the case local government code.

Hello. So a little history about the headwaters of the canal. Back in 2012, NBU began public engagement for a facility, a 16 acre site facility where there were facilities, buildings that weren't used. They asked the community what they wanted to see. The site is so uniquely located at the headwaters of the Comal River.

Of course it was named, the headwaters at Comal. In 2017, it separated as a five zero one c three organizations and began fundraising efforts. Their mission that they created then was to strengthen the relationship between the community and nature and open to the public in 2018. In 2022, the item that we just referenced, you all created an agreement between yourselves and the Headwaters for $1,200,000 for related reimbursed construction costs. Since they opened in 2018, they currently employ three full time staff and the equivalent of 2.5 contract employees.

Fully built, the project will also employ an up to an additional nine full time staff. Since opening, they've seen over 21,000 visitors have planned and executed more than 350 events. And as to mister Jones' comment, many, many volunteer hours, over 12,000 volunteer hours to make that a beautiful facility that is today. The actual work that has completed, the main building was repurposed, there's a new front drive through, they've recycled concrete pavers, they've added hardscape features, rainwater cisterns, and those archaeological discoveries. Those archaeological discoveries caused the delays that I just mentioned and a funding shortfall as Ms.

Pappas went over in her February presentation. I have a few slides from that presentation as a reminder. This is those recycled pavers. Some of the fun events that they've hosted, the repurposed building, and the beautiful work that mister Jones and others have completed at the project. She went over the eco metrics report which shows the the value of the facility to the community as it aligns with their pillars of creating community, educating and demonstrating, partnering and research, and protecting and conserving.

This is summary a slide of the efforts that they've made for the fundraising from our community, just under $3,000,000. This is where they're at right now. Along with the the cost, you'll see the contributions from NBU as well as the EDC and the TCEQ. With those community contribution, there is a remaining funding gap of just over $2,000,000. If approved, the additional items to be complete that the funds will be used for is to formalize the entrance, add common picnic areas, air conditioned spaces, add a visitor center, added meeting spaces, public rooms, a parking lot across the street.

Request before you tonight is for up to $2,300,000 to complete the project. I'm happy to answer any questions, or again Ms. Pappas is here for additional.

Can you run a couple of slides back and let's see the sources of the funds?

Any other questions or comments from the board? Okay, we will open up for public comment. As with previous items, please state if you are a resident, non resident, or live in ETJ.

Jonathan Alorda, city resident. I'm really encouraged by the list of diverse contributors economically next comes Please the ahead. It thing that once I'll it's done, it's done and it's there as an anchor piece to a very unique part of our ecosystem that will be visited for decades to come and should serve as something that really will enrich the lives of everyone of all ages. But I think even more importantly is expose the next generation to look at what can happen when we work to reclaim what we've lost in terms of our our environment around us. I know that movement's really big from things that I see as well online, and I think this is a really good opportunity for that.

So I'd appreciate the support as well. Headwaters have been fantastic ally, I think, to everyone in the city to really raise awareness of treasure and what we have in Comal County. Thank you.

Thanks, sir.

Tom Jones, New Braunfels resident. I would just underscore the fact that this site has obviously been important to the people living here for thousands of years. Those archaeological discoveries weren't people from last week with their soda cans, which could have been if NBU had allowed this to become something else. So I'd encourage anything you can do to help protect it. The hundreds of volunteers who have put forth thousands of dollars of service out there, kind of count on it. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Jones. No others. We will close public comment. Oh, I'm sorry. We will not close public comment.

My name is Leslie Prather. I lived in New Braunfels since or I graduated from high school in 1969 and lived my life, and I'm back now. And I'm very impressed with the ecological care that's been taken with the city. And the headwaters just just sort of the cream of the crop, and it's so accessible to young people, old people. It's a very educational place, and it there is a wonderful community building because there's master naturalists creates high school kids or working with older people, and it's just a gem for our community and to reinforce that ecotourism.

Thank

you. Thank you, ma'am. Seeing no others, we will close public comment. I will entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve $2,300,000 for the completion of phase two construction of the headwaters of the canal. Second.

I have a motion from director Carden and a second from director Merrin. All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? The motion passes. We look forward to We look forward to an update soon. Thank you so much. Item eight.

In accordance with Texas government code section five five one point zero seven one, the board reserves the right to retire into executive session concerning items listed on this agenda to consult with its attorney. In addition, the board may convene in the executive session on any of the following items with any final action being taken in open session. Item a, deliberate issues regarding economic development negotiations in accordance with section five five one point zero eight seven of the Texas government code one, project Ellie, two, project shoot, three, project bovine, four, project Nemo, five, project Chester, six, Northeast Lakeview College, seven, Project Spigot, eight, Project Alamo, and b, deliberate and consider the purchase exchange lease contract terms due diligence or value of real property in accordance with section five five one point zero seven two of the Texas government code one a dash one five four s u r dash three four eight foster Acres 0.94210.16910.1410 And 2.437. Thank you. Alright.

We are returning from executive session at 06:50 with no vote no action being taken during executive session and with no other business. We are adjourned.