Odessa Development Corporation - Regular Meeting

Anyone want to call your meeting together too? Okay. Call this meeting ordered. ODC and City Council. Are we legal now? Almost.

Okay. All right. Close it up. All right. First issue is going to be introductions. We'll start with Thomas Blackstone of the ODC Board.

Thomas Blackstone. I'm at Prosperity Bank. I'm also chair of the ODC Board. Let's go around the room and then we'll go the other way. Judge McDonald.

ODC. I'm Peggy Dean and I'm semi-retired CPA.

And I'm the vice chair of OVC.

President of the Bay Area National Trade Council. Gavin Norris of the D.C. Board, and Gavin Norris of All Front.

Tom. Tom Manske, Odessa Chamber of Commerce, the Economic Development Office, and we are the contractor for O.D.C. through their economic development operations. Cal Henry, Mayor of Odessa.

Ray Connell, Council Members, District Court. Eddie Mitchell. Craig Stoker, Councilmember Atlar.

James Farker, City of County. Aaron Smith, City Manager.

Crystal Keller, Deputy City Secretary.

All right, we're going to move the agenda out of 2.1.2. Is that our top match? Discuss the Texas type A self-tax corporations compliance process and textbook variable code section 5.01.103, infrastructure improvement project.

Yeah, I'm just going to discuss our, and I had some paperwork for this, but I got a new computer Friday I'm really excited about. When I went in to that just after a meeting in Midland to try to run things off, it wouldn't let me. It also said that right now it is not 1.35, it is 11.35 on my computer. So if anybody wants to help me change the time, but I will go over our compliance process, how we do it here locally, and it was approved years ago. And I know several members of the ODC board and maybe some council members have been on compliance before. But typically our office works with projects, retention, expansion, recruitment, all of the above. We certainly try to find projects that are within the NAICS code that we can legally support or be creative otherwise. that are gonna add jobs to the area and also add more tax to the taxing entities. Once we get the numbers, that's probably the hardest part of any project is actually getting them to fill out an application and getting the complete information. One of the items we've actually lost projects on, we've got one right now that would be a great one. I think they're still going to do their project, but they don't want to turn in their personal financial information. If the company is owned by one majority owner that has better than 50% of the company, it's required the past three years of personal financials in addition to the corporation or business financials. A number of companies don't want to do that. And so we struggle with that. We struggle with getting the actual application in. Once we get everything packaged, all their financial information, we verify their NICS code, work with them to be conservative on jobs created, capital investment, everything like that. Then we put it into the matrix. It kicks out three levels of support. with regards to different factors that are built into the matrix, 30%, 45%, and 60%. Typically what that's based on to get the higher percentage, the 60% support, is you're within city limits. You're diversifying from oil and gas, things of that nature, kind of the usual things you would imagine that they look at. Once we have everything that's needed, we package it, put a cover letter on it, we provide it to our compliance committee. and call a meeting, depending on when the chair is available to have that meeting, and then they go through. And compliance committee, surprisingly to me, because a lot of EDOs don't do it this way, they take their job very serious. They go through every one of the applications in detail, and then at their meeting they come with questions. Sometimes they have more questions than they want to support a project for and so then they instruct us to go out and find answers from the project, put those together and come back to them. Sometimes if we can't get the answers we come back to them and tell them we may not have all the information that you require to support this project. Doesn't happen a whole lot. The personal financial part, probably 25% of our applications, they would prefer not to submit personal financials. A majority of them typically will go ahead and do the project, but we have had some. There's an existing business in operation today in Odessa, and they chose not to go through the expansion because they didn't want to submit their financials. We've run into all sorts of different various reasons for things like that. I know for our larger projects, some people question, well, why does it take so long? We've got several projects right now that we've been talking to for well over two years, including the data center. And so depending on the size, scope, financing, available capital, these things can take. a very long time. A good recent scenario that kind of backfired was Nasero. Large-scale project, several billion dollars, and at one point, unfortunately, it just went away. And so we deal with all of the above. I know some of y'all remember because you were involved with this on Project Phoenix about two years ago. was going to be a large project out on the west side. And for various reasons, they chose to go to Oklahoma. There's another project. They then later got sued by the Oklahoma Attorney General. And now that project's in limbo of not actually even happening. And so I wish I could have brought a hard copy for you to kind of detail some of that. But like I said, I'm getting used to a new computer. On the other one, I just wanted to highlight The statute that I know a lot of y'all are pretty familiar with. I know Councilman Thompson's even recited the number back to me before. But we did use it with Bass Pro. If you recall, when that project came to fruition, it wasn't an agreement between ODC and Bass Pro. It was an agreement between ODC and the developer. And what the developer requested was some infrastructure support in accordance with the statute 501.103 and I'll just read that to you and what that does is allow them to be kind of if they determine there's going to be growth in this area and it's going to set off business development because you're going to put some infrastructure needs there it allows the OEC board to support that and certainly I'm not trying to give legal opinions if I skip a little bit off the proper definition feel free to jump in sir city attorney So Texas Local Government Code Section 501.103 defines the specific infrastructure improvement projects that a local economic development corporation can fund to support business growth. So it's deliberately kind of broad. Allowed infrastructure projects, the law lets a development corporation spend money on essential public works if the board decides the work helps start or expand local businesses eligible projects fall into three strict categories basic utilities and transport i.e streets road rail spurs water and sewer lines electric and gas utilities drainage and site improvements digital infrastructure telecommunications and internet service upgrades environmental work beach remediation along gulf of mexico Key rules, board decision, obviously it has to be a vote. The board of directors must formally vote and find that the project is required or suitable for business development. Site improvements, this term covers permanent enhancements made to develop a piece of land for building or structure. And so that kind of gives you an idea of how broad that is. Kind of like the city's use of a 380 agreement, it's a very broad program. I think with the developer for the Bass Pro development, it may have been the first time the ODC board actually used that statute on a project. So those are just some quick things I wanted to share with y'all, and happy to answer any questions if you have any.

Thanks, John. Anybody have a question? Correct. Is the ODC application typical? Is there a standard that we follow, or is that something that who do you see has come up with?

I think it's... I wouldn't say it's standard. But from what I'm told, because the same application was here before I got here, that obviously they looked at the rules and regulations, the required information, things of that nature. Now when we package everything and send it to the city's legal department, they now have, there's certain questions that have to be answered. So they now have a spreadsheet that we utilize, or just a little question and answer sheet of about, I don't know, eight or nine. things that they have to write into the agreement.

But that application was prepared by legal in the city of Odessa when it was started, is that not true?

I believe that's what I was told, yeah. But I can't tell you how many years ago that was. Yeah, what was his name?

It was George Roberts.

George Roberts, who's been the city attorney forever. Right. I think he came up with the application form. Right. So what they're... Go ahead, Peggy.

I think that, you know, part of the problem is, in my mind, and I've been on compliance a long time, and just a couple of years on ODC, but we have different ways that we do things. And for some of those things, I think our application is overkill. We have... When we're going to pay somebody, when we're going to calculate, we're going to reimburse them. That's the big deal. You know, they're going to sign that they're going to do certain things. So many jobs and so much capex. And we're not going to give them anything until after they have accomplished those things. are over a five year period of time. We just spread it out and that happened because we got burned one time apparently. And so we don't pay up front, we pay in arrears. And if we have no risk really, I agree that I think sometimes our application is a little overkill. Now with that being said, We've done a lot of deals in the last couple of years that are not structured that way. We have given money up front. We've advanced some money. We have given more than a fifth of the money. There have been deals that are different deals. And on those deals, when we have any risk at all, of losing money, then I think that our paperwork is very appropriate, because in my mind, what we have done then, and I know Thomas and I talked about this, we've made a loan, and they're not gonna pay it back unless they give and do it, and then we'd have to sue them. But a bank would not advance money up front without having the proper, all of that paperwork. So it seems to me that we have overkill on some projects where we have basically no risk. I mean, the biggest risk we have and the biggest punishment that we would have is that we would set back monies that now are no longer available to do other things and that project doesn't happen. But beyond that, I think our structure could probably be changed a little and I know several people because I've talked to several people on compliance and how important it is that you go through everything and I've had several people say this is you know this is 300 pages this is really over us and so I don't know exactly how we would change that or what the structure would be But it certainly seems that it could be streamlined on certain things, particular ones that are reimbursement.

That's my opinion. Do we really need the personal financials on everything?

I think it was originally set up that way so some guy that had a whole lot of money couldn't just come in and say, I'm adding jobs. It was like,

okay, we want to see your stuff because we're giving you money. And so I think part of it was we didn't want people that really didn't need the money to just come in and get it. But if they disclose all that stuff, they qualify.

Well, partly that came from banking because you guys know in banking, you want to see where you loan money, you want to see if it's personal finance.

Well, there's so many businesses out here today that there's nobody behind them. They're all joint ventures. They're equity players. The guy that used to own the business, he sold out and he's still running it. But if the thing crumbles, there's nobody to go after. That's the reason why. So it's like, well, who's behind this deal? And who's going to pay us back? Or who's going to meet the contract? I guess we've all been burned, and the oil field slows down. People just leave.

yeah you can almost not go anywhere and lease equipment in rental business or anything like that and don't have to sign a personal guarantee and that's why it comes in well i don't think we'd be i don't see any impediment to y'all coming up with a different idea or plan or not i mean i think y'all know it better than we do right so if y'all have suggestions and we've talked about it on some of the like

colleges coming in and wanting money and we've modified what we normally do for especially public entities they don't have to meet the same criteria it doesn't have to go through all the stuff that compliance wants well in answer to your question the application for everybody and they do look at that and go my god that's too much you know and that's their choice

It's kind of like anywhere you go, you want to be looked at through a magnifying glass or a microscope, and that's what it is.

I think oftentimes that, I think what we're looking for is for compliance and we need to have discretion. If we have, Kevin can come in and provide three years, five years, short of financials, and they're doing an expansion, and it has one owner or two owners and one of them is 51 there's a little bit of discretion compared to a brand new entity that's coming in that is backed that does not even have a balance sheet yet that has not turned a dime and it's backed in the wherewithal and the ability to do what they think they're going to do is solely dependent upon the personal financials of that financial backing of that 51 So there's just gotta be common sense discretion applied to the applications. If I was on compliance, we had a couple come through, and I remember specifically, somebody didn't want to provide their personal financial statements, and okay, well let's just move the scrutiny to the company and the source of cash that's gonna make all this possible. And they were able to do it, and I remember that. So unfortunately, applications are black and white, And the process is great.

And I think that could be mitigated somewhat. We don't know that that issue exists on ODC. We don't see it. If they don't fill out the application, we don't know that it was because of the personal financial statement. And I think that if somebody decides not to applied, I think it would be really, really important for the quality of our work to know what happened. If we've got applications and they sent some information and after Tom explained to them, either before or whatever, particularly if explained before, and then they decide not to and they say they're not going to do it because of XYZ, I think that should be a report that we get from our economic development group because that's the best way that we would know that we've got an issue.

And all of that is pre-compliance. It is. That's the sole original conversation between the economic development group and the potential clients.

And compliance isn't going to change anything unless we say, look, and I'm not trying to take away from compliance. I'm just saying if we've got a problem, we don't know about it because we didn't know that someone applied and wouldn't do it. You know, a good example of when that personal financial statement was really important is when we were working in that, the rail car.

Yeah, the inland port. The inland port.

And because that ended up, and I mean, I scrutinized those financials like you wouldn't believe. That was so far from what was presented to us, it wasn't even close. And so there are times when that's really, really important. But I do think we could give compliance discretion over what somebody's asking for. They're asking for a five-year reimbursement after they've already done it. I don't see why the personal financial statement of the owner is important because if they don't do it, they don't get any money.

I think some of the owners that want to expand, they don't want to share that personal information because they think everybody in the city is going to know we need your money and that's the whole reason how come y'all funded this deal and y'all won't fund me i said give me your financials it's none of your business i'm not gonna give you i'm gonna give you money then so i don't know you want to be in that or just say well you gotta give it or you don't and we try to to let them know i mean as hard as we can that

We don't share information. I think that's the biggest concern, is information sharing. And, you know. And that's the reason we're compliant. And so we provide that information privately to compliance. When it's, you know, when that meeting's over, we put it in the shredder bin. We don't. I mean, I'm ADHD. If I can't tell anybody anything within about two hours, I forget it. And so, but we, you know, we tell them, we take, you know, it's really important to us to keep that information private. But do they believe us? You know, they still have concerns.

But they still have to do it. And so that's a concern I've heard from one or two examples that it's just not worth it. Why do I want to fill out a 300-page application for... whatever amount of money we're going to get, whatever the equation gives them, wouldn't work the time to do it.

Well, the application technically is like 10 pages. But when you put in all the financial information they require, that's what it's the packet that can sometimes be 300.

The majority of the tax returns, again, maybe not using the right word, but at the end of it, wasn't worth their time. Yeah.

But is there, somewhat to Peggy's point, looking really at the numbers, are we talking about two or three people out of 300, or are we talking about two or three people out of 10? I don't think we know that, right? I mean, it may not be the problem, but we think it is, so we don't really have a number.

Well, that kind of goes back to what Peggy was saying. Maybe the situation where we have fallout reason on it. We do get a report on the current applications that are being worked through, and ones that are still pending compliance, we get that on regular basis. And you could add to that, these guys went elsewhere and they told us to stick it in this slide.

No, we can certainly add that. But I would challenge and kind of butting in here that beyond The regular grants, the facade and infrastructure, I think those are entirely too hard to get. And I think the proof in that is that nobody's applying for them. Or maybe they are one or two here and there. But if they were easier or whatever to get, more people would be doing them.

I think we approved four or five last week

And the biggest problem, I think, is just in the past, it just took so damn long to get the money.

Well, I think at one point in time, there were a lot of them that were, if I'm wrong, they were left in some desks or something like that and didn't even realize that there were applications out there. doing pretty well, I feel like.

And I think that we have a list of everybody that has been personally talked to down to I-20. And I mean, they literally have been talked to personally. to say, this is something that you would qualify for. And that was brought to our attention. And I know NJ did a really good report on that and who she talked to. That hasn't garnered a lot of attention. But I think there's still other ways that we could advertise that. And there again, that's a reimbursement program. The biggest problem is that a whole lot of people that need to do stuff on their buildings

I think what I'm hearing is that you want to be more user friendly and give more money out to people that want to help. So any suggestions y'all can have or figure out through your compliance or support, I think you just jump down and work it out. I want it to be easier. I want somebody to have to do all that just to get... You know, if they've already done it and paid for it, then it should be a simple process, right? There's no risk there. They've already done it. Well, they're, you know, all of my children do it, whatever.

Well, one of the things we're trying to get across to you is we still live in the good old-boy society, but we don't want you to know what you're doing. And that's part of it. That's part of it, you know. We don't want to know what we're doing over here, but we have to have that because, like the old saying, follow the information. Our quality decisions are made on quality information. And that's all we want. Can you do this, or have you done it? And we have, we're talking about it. We've done three or four. They've already done and finished, and the applications are in their desk for it. And I'm like, well, yeah, let's give them money. They're finished. It's already done. And they're an asset and an help. So the city looks back, once it was the pancitos and burritos. Now they're on the south side. It's a rat hole. But they had good food and good people. And so it was invested in, and now it looks good. there's a lot of things like that but the people you know for the most part like all of us you don't want people nosing around your business it's just the idea and you have to overcome that james is not because he understands that you know what may be sacred or secret to you pretty soon everybody will know you know i know one case down there is you got more than one yeah i want to say yes i don't say no so it came through

It's two different things.

Yeah, I understand. And it is, and we're all for the same thing. We're all to help, and it would be better to help in our same business than to be the other. We can all agree on that. The first thing to look at is, you know, I've been after somebody. I think some of it is just a lack of being informed or aware yeah I sit on another board

had a meeting a couple weeks ago and they just really didn't have any understanding really or they knew generally about it just didn't have any understanding and so that's not you know whatever we can do to put more out there but i think people know about it but maybe just the lack of information and some of it's on them they need to look for the information too ahead and on the website because if you go on the website you can you can find information it's pretty well there so well we we had an example last or two weeks ago uh with a building owner that came in and met with us and she said that that she wanted to do a facade infrastructure grant and her contractor told her not to

that it was too time consuming and too much of a pain. Well, you know, now contractors, if you think about it, it was probably a deal where he's already started and he doesn't want to have to slow down and wait on this building owner to wait on her grant funds. And so, you know, his recommendation to her was don't do it. And so she wasn't going to do everything initially she had intended on doing, but now she's circling back around and revisiting the deal. And so you're, I mean, people on the street will give false information. And a lot of times, it's kind of like social media. They're listening at first rather than, you know, pick up the phone and call us.

Speaking of the false information, there were some people, I don't know, two different people. and then get downtown buildings last year. And there were signs up front that still said, and we went to the realtor who's representing the city on those sales, they were talking, oh, it's under contract, or somebody else was looking at it. And those buildings never changed. So that needs to be, if there's not a signed agreement for this building to be purchased, then whoever, if they are holding back, they need to be stopped. You either have the money or you don't. That's how we do business. If you want to take some equipment, you can make a part. If you don't, the next guy comes up and he gets it. We understand that a little bit in business of having to wait a little bit. Not to tell people, you can't have that because my buddy wants it. I understand this. I don't know for a fact that money... But I know the fact that I took the people downtown myself, that they had the money to invest, and I took them to buildings, and there were real estate signs in front. Boy, we like this one. We like this one. Well, here's who we call. And when they called the realtor, who represents the city and the seven of those buildings, they told them they were not available. The city doesn't own any buildings.

Well, it's the downtown area. None? None that are for sale? So the ones y'all own, y'all just hanging on to them hoping something happens? I was wondering. I thought y'all owned some real estate in downtown Odessa. Y'all are real wealthy. Y'all are 50 grand.

Y'all torn everything down you own. I don't believe we own anything. But this was individuals that owned it. Because there have been some that have been under contract.

And that's what somebody, that's where they were going to start. Sidney Owens started one of those. And Matt Gillis, that guy. Yeah.

I don't need any buildings that have been under contract at all. To Tom's credit, because when we got our building last fall, we were looking at doing a facade grant. And when we did the application online, it was very user-friendly. I think we did the application in 10 minutes, or the initial portion was super easy. And within, I think, like 48 hours, we did it on a Friday, about Monday or Tuesday, we got a response back, following up, and we decided not to do it. We were going to do some things later, do some things differently. But there were several follow-ups to it. I mean, so finally we were like, hey, we're not going to go a different route. But if someone puts any up, from having personally experienced it, I know that it's not a lack of the cities or Tom and his group following up on that, because they continued following up until we finally said,

Exactly.

Leave us alone. Yeah.

I think Greg had a question. Greg? Well, I almost had sensitive answers. I think you were talking about, touched on a little bit of the complexity of possibly the application. And my question really is to Tom, because in that question, I was wondering about, you said the reluctance sometimes of putting in the financials. That was my question, is that it's not private. You said it's private.

relaying that it is confidential so my final question would be if a business isn't doing an application do you still call for personal finances it depends on on the ownership structure giving example liberty which did their big project

the frontage road there. It's in Odessa. They're a publicly traded company. So what they did is they gave us access to their SEC page, which was volumes of information. But they didn't have to do anything. They just, here's the link. And I think we needed a little help with the login. But it just depends on their corporate structure.

But on the... Of course, a publicly traded company is not going to mind you.

They're both.

We don't have a whole lot of publicly traded companies that come to us for money.

I mean, the two most recent are the Oxy with the DAC, and that was the biggest capital project we've ever done, and then Liberty with their... consolidation of all their offices throughout the Permian into Odessa, and that was the most employees.

I've never had others, but those are the ones I can think of.

Back in the day. And right now we're working with Champion X, who was actually purchased by, I don't even remember their acronym now, SJB. And so I'm pretty sure that's probably Detroit.

Anyone else have anything more to move on? Well, Mike, let me say this about that, everyone. There's obviously a way that this stuff's available. We want to get it used and used to get together where there's better information to track. Let us help you get to this, get to that, get to that without people wandering around going, well, the city doesn't have it. Well, this guy, no, he doesn't have it.

I think one way the board would know more about the ones that don't finish, if they've applied or partially applied, tell us what they did and why they backed out. It's more working on Tom's group again. I think if we do that, we might be able to say, well, this one... But we ought to reopen that.

Because a lot of them go to compliance and we never see it.

That's right. Compliance decides. So I get asked the question, why didn't y'all approve that deal? I never saw it. We never got that far.

Some of that may be, though, because they didn't comply. But if we knew, for what reason?

Well, we needed this and y'all didn't want to do that.

We can...

uh compile that information especially some of the local people that have been around and we've known them for a long time something like that only thing i want to add about the facade grants would be worth and this is probably the worst idea ever shoot i know we've done a pretty good job in the effort into going business to business door-to-door compiling what is following that offering we need to talk to the contractors make a list of contractors i mean there's a million of them out there but is that just a can of worms it is when you're talking about people who are complying to to are applying for to get stuff done

You can ask anybody. I'm not running down the city management in any way, but it's a nightmare to go through permitting just for stuff. I know guys that want to do a cigar bar out in the cotton area for making better time on each side. And they're into $70,000 just in permits and stuff. it's a building that's already finished and they all all they want to do is go in and finish the inside i think that was impact speed we don't have that yeah well that was part of it but the part of it is is like okay here's the here's the appliance for the building color and all that you look at it and finish it instead it's like okay here's this one all right you do this one That's the job of a contractor, to know how to build. It has to be, it has to be simplified.

And there's a fee every time I come to get you again. Listen, I've had five calls, and I know every time I've directed them to Aaron, all five of the contractors didn't do the right thing. Yeah, and that's part of the truth.

They didn't do it, and therefore what they've done, it wasn't the city's fault, it was the contractor's fault. Right, well, that's how communication is what it is. Like, you have to do all this. I mean, I helped build a big church down in Katy, Texas several years ago, and we did everything at one time. We ordered the steel. We did every part of it and everything at one shot because there's so much crap going on. Excuse my language, but so much going on with it. And it was all done. So it was like, here's this. Here's this. And each phase of the building was done. It was a big project. And that's it. It needs to be more of a better communication of This is what it's going to take you to do all this, and if you're just filling it out, and then you won't be coming back for them the same day, you won't be bothering inspectors all the time, other than to come look. You know, and I don't know, everybody's different. You know, we all know that. We all, we've got a big old tower right here in the middle, and everybody has a different idea about how to do it. And so, it just helps. Communication is everything. It's everything we talk about. Communication or miscommunication or misunderstanding?

I'd be curious a little bit, Jefferson, to know, along with the facade and infrastructure, because it does seem, especially on some of these South Grant projects, that while 25,000 would go far on some of the buildings on Grant, or Gavin, like your block, $25,000 isn't going to do a lot on some of those buildings on South Grand. And so how do you either build the vision to say, look, we get it that this isn't going to redo the whole front of your building, but here's what it can do. And I think Panchito's or the burrito place is a good example of how you could market this as, here's what you can do.

I will say inflation has cost all construction. But I think if you look at a project like anything on South Grand, you're gonna have to spend way more than, if it's a matching dollar for dollar, you're gonna have to spend more than $50,000

to do what Juan Chico did, or even the event center up off of MLK. I can't remember the initials. But if you look at that compared to what some of the facade grants that have been done, Patrick Clay's or Woodhouse didn't do it, but if you look at what Tobias Hunter did, that was way more than $25,000. But I think just revisiting the grants at that point, because even the 200, for bringing the buildings up to compliance, Patrick Clay struggled, because they had to get the buildings sprinkled, they had to build in the fireproofing, they had all sorts of things that came along with converting that space into a restaurant. So they've got skin in the game too, but I know on some level there's a scale because there's two zones of it.

the odc would need to come to the city council and ask to increase those dollars is that how it works i don't know the answer to that but i was going to say here and i left spoke today we mentioned construction costs overall construction costs since 2020 about 70 percent so whenever that number was chosen maybe it needs to be explored and moved up

That would have been 2016-ish when that gateway plan, the overlay district with the design guidelines, was when those. Do we come up with it, Aaron? I think 2016.

That was just decided at one point in time.

Do they come to us and ask for more, or do we send it to them? How does that work? I'm not sure, but we'll take a look at it. We'll find out.

I didn't take a look at it.

one of the things though it's called a facade grant which the facade is the front yeah the other part is total infrastructure yeah the two grants and we've done it where we give them so much for facade and so much for the industry maybe facade goes to 30 and 35 i don't know

I know a customer that's got a subway. Two subway signs cost $25,000. That's insane. That's the problem. Construction is insane now. It's just for the sign. It's not to put them up. It's just to buy the sign.

When I was on council, every single bid, and I still got some, every single bid that we ever got had a 150% kicker on it because it was so expensive to do business in Odessa.

which while we probably need to look at increasing those numbers to make it actually more, give people a reason to fill out the form and give them more incentive, there's a little more to kick at the end.

I think it's just going to boil down to how we want to spend the money on whose façade and at whose... You know, we can raise our amount that we give to facades, and that decreases the amount that we have for other things, including, yeah.

Yeah, but the facade, that comes out of the marketing side of it.

Well, it does, but we spin the marketing side, too. I mean, something had something to raise it, it cost something.

That's part of marketing. That's a nice, when you're bringing in a site selector, bringing them up South Grant, and I-20, and this is what they're seeing as the canvas on which we're trying to get them to paint.

He'll come out of the budget, so he's going to come from somewhere. Exactly. I'm down about that. All right, I think we all have some ideas to maybe work on in our different groups. Let's go ahead and get down to about 2.1 and 1.3. It's discuss a round table economic development discussion with Thomas Blackstone under OEC General Development, Council Priorities, and Downtown Infrastructure Program.

I mean, I guess one of my questions is what are the council's priorities? Because sometimes, and I don't want any of y'all to take this wrong, but sometimes one of you will say one thing and then somebody else will say something else. So y'all have a cohesive plan on where you want ODC's money to go? We have a strategic plan. Okay. So again, getting back. Because we all look at Odessa, and there's a lot of places you can spend money. Yes. Spend it all day long. And so, you know, I think sometimes we get frustrated. Well, my city councilman says we want to do this. Well, mine says we want to do this. And it's like, y'all as a city council know what y'all want to do. or want us to do?

Well, I think we've been very clear about that. It's about roads and infrastructure. We've moved around town. We've invested a lot of money in these AI stuff that keeps the lights moving so that it recognizes traffic. I don't know if you all know that or not, but that stuff works sickles. It says, oh, this is stacking up here. It flips around.

I can tell because it's time-sparing. Yeah.

I went all the way down 8th Street the other day from the far east side of the hill all the way to, you know, it never stopped. What kind of day? It wasn't in the morning.

It wasn't.

I think we've been very clear about what we want. We have to have infrastructure, we have to have roads, we have to have open passes, and I sit on the MDO, and Bill, I sit on the MDO, and, you know, I was both prioritized from tech stock And we're going to have to kick in to do some of that stuff. So that's where a lot of your money could go. Because the more we kick in, the more we kick in, the higher up we go. And I'm looking at projects.

And we've earmarked certain projects, but if y'all have other projects that you think need to be done sooner, then we can move that money around. Yeah, and that's what I was looking at. Correct me if I'm wrong again.

You had a list of stuff in here.

We got like $14 million of earmark for textile projects. And we also did another $15 million for the city of Odessa for roads.

We have five districts, and each member has a different geographic area. And while anybody may want to see growth in the south in this part of town, you may want to see it on the east part of town.

You know, I think what needs clarifying is that we as ODC felt like when we put in our development plan that we would allot 50% of our annual revenues to the city for infrastructure. We felt like that was a big deal. What I think we don't understand, and we don't have a clear understanding of it, I don't understand it and don't have a clear understanding, is what else, how do we handle when you want more money over the 50%? Because to come in and look at a balance that is, you know, unreserved 25,000, That doesn't mean that that's available, but it's sitting there doing nothing. And so I think every time I talk to somebody, the expectation is a little bit different. And I don't know if we have a policy that You've got 50% right up front. You can do whatever you want to as long as it works and it's eligible. And then it looks to me like if you have other projects in the year that you want to do, quite honestly, I think you should go to compliance just like everybody else and say, this is what I want. I mean, we've used the seven and a half million. I'm just using that. It'll be an instant change. I mean, that's just my opinion. How do we know what else you want? Because it feels like there's this little black cloud hanging over our head, and you're just going to come in and say, okay, we want all of this money, and we're your bosses, so give it to us. And I don't think that's the appropriate way. What's the problem?

I don't see the problem. I think you need to divide that up between the five districts.

Because I came in, and I got voted in, and I didn't come to you guys, but I went with ODC and said, these roads are tied into the interstate. Repave them. Get them fixed. That's two years. I ain't heard nothing.

So hold that thought because it's coming back to my discussion. Here's my perspective.

And I'm asking respectfully.

Oh, absolutely. I take it respectfully. Look, part of this treaty council's problem is the state of Texas. And by that, I mean the state legislature. By that, I mean they have limited our ability to raise taxes. 3.5% max. Inflation this year is 4%. You're not going to build a road with the same budget as last year when you lost 4% due to inflation. So we have, for example, this year, if I'm not mistaken, $16 million for public works, for roads and stuff. Pretty sure it's $16 million. Well, to build a mile, one mile of two-lane road is $8 million. To build a five-lane road is about $20 million. Do the math on that. You can't build a road, right? I mean, look, the inflation cost of roads and water infrastructure and pipelines are killing us. And now we have no ability to raise funds. So, where in the past, I would have, as a prudent way to run a city, I would think, is you gotta keep infrastructure up. And by that, sometimes you have to have revenue. You have revenue, you have to have taxes. We don't have the ability to raise taxes.

I mean, it's gone.

He wants to cut our budget, so we're gonna either defund the police, or defund the fire, or defund both, because that's where our two biggest costs are in departments, okay? That's 60 to 65% of our total budget is those two departments. Who's gonna be cut 60 feet? So look, that's our problem. So that's why we're coming to you saying, help us with every company, the world comes here, or wherever it stays here and grows and expands. We need roads, right? So I mean, that's a logical thing. Now, I have, I don't have, I have to agree with Eddie that the only fair thing to do is do it, for example, 50 million, five districts, three million per district sounds pretty fair to me. Except the problem is $3 million doesn't build jack anymore. It doesn't complete one road. And so it does no good giving any $3 million and building a half a block. So you almost have to have one year, it's district one. and use that money to build, because it's gonna cost 10, 15 million. One year district two, one year district three, one year district four, one year district five scripts. Because I don't know how she can do it, right? Because one, you can't divide it by five, and you'll get nothing done, nothing.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful, I'm just saying, you don't have to feel that, but that money is, back to Kyle's point, we got no other resources, you know? I mean, short of taking the core, the quarter away from OTC. I mean, this is no way to do that without doing it. But you know, and trying to do some other things with it as well, if they pop up, but you got to look at what you got going on right now. And to the point, you know, quality road extinction up there, you know, we we bid at 38 million 38. I think Dan went pretty close to the budget here. On which one? Baudry.

Baudry was a little before my time. It was built during my time, but it wasn't funded. I think it was, it was north of 30 million. It was 38. Especially for all the, because of all the boxed over.

Yeah, because of all the drainage stuff that we had to do.

Beautiful road, by the way, 38 million. That would take two years of that. You know, so that's the problem. I mean, I just want you all to know right up front, the problem is, The fair thing to do is everyone gets a third. But the truth is that won't do anybody any good at that district because it doesn't go very far. So I'm here to tell you it's a struggle for us too. The reason you feel that is because we're all struggling with how do I do Eddie right? How do I do Steve right? How do I do Chris right? How do I do Greg right? We're struggling with a limited budget with a lot of needs. And that's why you're probably feeling the weirdness or the

just not dissension really we all understand that we all want some of our district uh i respect that i don't know how to make it happen so well and i'm not even getting down that granular i realize i'm just trying to figure out if if you all believe that we that we should give a higher percentage for roads are that you feel that the unreserved amount that we have now, which I think is like $19,000. I think it's like 19 million.

Yeah, and so, you know, we,

We don't, that's really the money that we have to work with. And plus we'll have the other seven and a half, the seven and a half million. What the issue to me is, and you all may just throw me out of this room, but we have a lot of money because either in the policy are the city's policy or it's required by ODC. And I don't know what the answer is on that. But we have set aside 100% of all of our obligations. And we know, I mean, that's a lot of money. And it doesn't, just like those people only get the money, a fifth at a time, basically. that's the remainder is earning interest and we're still, I mean, we are completely 100% collateralized for what our obligations are. I don't know if that's necessary. I mean, I don't know if I'm suggesting something that maybe, I don't know if we can do anything about that because that's a lot of money sitting idle And it is making some interest. I mean, maybe that interest for unused monies could be available for roads. I mean, we haven't talked about this, so like I said, I might get kicked off ODC, but there's interest on that money that's doing nothing. You know, we use that quite honestly to pay our operating expenses to cover a good part of those.

But there is some extra money there.

There is, if we knew we had access to get more money, but we can't look to you all because you're looking to us. If we knew we had access to get more money, then we could dip into the 19 million. Or we can tell everybody that applied, no, until we have another seven and a half. But you can see how that just doesn't feel right. The problem is, what do we, in my mind, because we've all talked about it, and you all have talked about it, is do we, are we obligated to give you the $19 million? Because that's really what we're talking about here. You're already getting 50%.

and are we obligated because you clearly steve clearly feels like you should i mean he's told me that multiple times so i'm just thinking just to clarify a little bit you know i'm trying to look for 50 000 feet and when i look around town and i see what's going on a lot of what we're having that we're suffering with is lack of vision And I certainly, you probably don't think of me as a visionary, but I can tell you right now, since the county got that acreage west of town on 302, UConn is now going to get, I know what's going on beyond 491, what's fixed to happen up there, you haven't seen it yet, but I'm telling you, UConn has got to be paid, got to be five lanes, and it's got to go from 302 to the airport. And that's what the basic plan is. That's millions of dollars. Maybe a billion dollars, I don't know. But the middle of the county is going to participate, so will the city of New York. But I'm telling you, I'm trying to look at the big picture. UConn, I've screened UConn for six years. And the only reason I stay there is I can see it being a major thoroughfare. And it's just two lanes and it's a county road. And something's got to be done. And so a lot of what we're dealing with today with our infrastructure, oh. Nah, that's not spending money. Kick it in the back. Kick it down the road. Let's do an inland port. You know, something like that. Crazy. Instead of fixing a box of, you know, water. That's just me. I'm just trying to be forward thinking.

Well, anything that we all do that increases our sales tax is the most positive thing that can be done.

And you're not talking about the rate. You're talking about the dollars.

Yeah.

Which... That is what increases taxes is development.

That's what increases the budget, is development. And retail is just as good as industrial. And we haven't had much luck lending industrial deals. besides liberty there's not been a lot showing up so you know either we either we're not marketing ourselves correctly or uh we've got something wrong there's a disconnect somewhere in there because we can't like we haven't landed anything that i can see i've known the board six years ago and if i'm wrong tell me but we pretty much filled up that industrial part of jbs out the town

But obviously, you know, obviously worked on that together.

Sure.

And we built that up and that it wasn't industrial, but it's an industrial part. And I don't know if all the city council understand, but if you're in the industrial part, they don't pay city the property tax, which is equivalent to what they were in the city. But it's not. But we were told, well, the reason that data center is not an industrial park is because C.D. came to us and said, we don't want any more industrial parks. We want to annex everything. I'm just telling you, that's what C.D. told us about five years ago. So we didn't put that in an industrial park because we were told not to. I don't know how we... I look at ODC's money as money to spend to expand the economy. It's not to maintain existing roads, it's to build new roads where we're bringing more business in, and we expand the economy, that increases sales tax, it increases property tax, so it increases the city's debt rate. That's what this money was set up for. That's my opinion of it. If I'm wrong, then maybe I need to get off of this bill.

But I think you're right, Thomas, except the state has changed. The state has caused us to change. It's not your fault, not our fault.

But we still have to use that money for what we can legally use it for.

Absolutely.

Well, we need to use it north, south, east, and west.

And that's one reason we put the inductors there.

Three million people come down to Center State, 20 times as much as 191, and we're not developing anything. 3 million people are passing by. Well, we want them to stop in Odessa and let us collect some tax money out for them. We got Bass Pro out there. Nobody knows Odessa even has a Bass Pro. Nobody's going over there spending that money. Nobody stops and goes to Bass Pro.

Here's what I would say. And again, I'm teasing. I'm saying this tongue-in-cheek because he's my representative. We can replace you at our moment's notice. But I'm not going to. I think this very argument we're having, not the argument, discussion, is what we have to have. We need to talk about this stuff, right? I mean, this is good to me.

Because we need an understanding. Yes.

I'm cheating on y'all because I'm looking at page 195. four of the deals in there, our budgets, it just has y'all's, it's just the EDC funds, right? So I'll let Tom put that in, but for example, this year we'll be getting 15 million plus a three in interest income, so total, you know, 18 million. I'm just throwing this out for thought. This is not a directive, it's a thought. What if you took half that and built new roads, or built infrastructure, whatever you want to call it, and half of it you get for,

doing exactly bass pro shops and nasario that worked out so well for us you know what i mean liberties whatever and then you sort of get the best of both worlds and no one's getting a hundred percent everybody's doing that that's what we're doing now we've budgeted seven and a half million dollars for city infrastructure we've already right we've already marked that for the next fruit y'all have done the deal yet but we did we thought we were going to do seven and a half and 26 seven and a half to 27. That was the $15 million we get out there off of Utah. I mean, we're already committed. We've got it committed. I had one of them. That's what happened every year? No, this is brand new. The thing is brand new. Yeah, we're doing it.

But our development plan specifically says, now we put it in there, that we would give you half of our income every year.

from this day forward?

That's the question I bring up. I'm doing it permanently. It's permanent. That's what I said for you.

or different well i mean we changed it i mean that's we've already committed to doing that i got a call this last week wanted to know where we were on getting funding for one of those guys out on yukon and and where is it held up and so i called who did i call i don't know what you're trying to look out we we We approved a deal, the contract hasn't been done yet, where they were gonna start working on widening UConn.

Two projects the board specifically approved at the request of the city. One was the widening of UConn from 191 towards Midland.

and the other was the extension of dorado and he had signalization there at the uconn 191. right that was the 15 million which was going to be so one of the guys that's trying to do the contract was calling me and says do you know where we are on the contract i didn't know so i called and gave him somebody to talk to in uh planning i guess whatever, that's supposedly where the whole thing was.

According to our legal staff. DJK. Yes. DJK is the problem.

They want to know where the contract is so that you start working.

Yeah, they're wanting to, they're, they, I think we're waiting on a development agreement. However, I think it's important to know that maybe DJK... No, they have. DJK and Beat Boat Homes have not given us everything that we've needed when we've asked for it. I didn't know that. Always wait for the time frame.

But we're good with it, but at the end of the day, that doesn't say we provide the information. So that money's sitting in the way for that job to happen. So what else are we supposed to do about it?

Well, you're not supposed to do anything other than develop it. We need those guys to give us the information.

But I'm saying, is it our responsibility to be able to divvy it up between the districts? No, I don't think so.

I just think, is that an agreement? I heard you did at that time. That was a one-time thing, aren't we?

We actually, in our development plan, since we did that.

I never saw that. I apologize. They have more communication with my representative.

No, but that's one of my questions. That's one of my questions is, do you have asked for the amount that we have from the past that with sales tax, that we still have that is our, because we don't get down to zero every year.

You've asked for that. Here's a question I have. I know some of that were dedicated already. There's 82 million in fund balance, right? How much of that is dedicated stuff y'all already promised? All but 19 million. All but 19 million of it. Well, that's all you left is 19 million. I got you.

But what Peggy suggested is, let's say we get an ODS in college. We get $10 million. okay that's over a we did it over a three year period instead of a five right but we take that whole 10 million out of those available funds i think that's good but you know she's suggesting maybe we should only do a third of it and then we have this much money available what worries me about that is that we end up in a place like midland no i would say i would never vote you running out of money i would never vote to take the money away i'm saying that's what creates the problem

Because if we give you that $19 million that is unreserved, All we have is a monthly check because that means everything else is restricted.

It's going to be seven different, seven people are going to vote. I'm just telling y'all from my perspective, I think y'all have been physically conservative and you've stayed the course because I think that's dumb to spend money that you've already dedicated to something else. That money's got to stay in the bank from my perspective. But I'm just one vote.

But the $19 million is not designated. That is our unrestricted monies. That's our, I mean, we have funded all the other obligations.

I'm sitting here looking at your development corporation, this page 40, and see, I don't understand your numbers because it says county infrastructure grant, seven and a half million. You're giving the county seven and a half million?

No, we put it in our budget because we knew they were going to ask for $9 million. We haven't approved that. We've tabled that. We don't know.

That's going to die on the table.

That's why it was in our budget, because we knew that was an ask, and so we're trying to allocate all the money.

And that is the portion of a total $30-some-odd million project that they are doing. That is the portion of the number of parking lots, parking spots, the public space. And in my opinion, when you got, what, $500 million worth of construction going on, where can it benefit from that? I mean, the city is going to benefit from that. Our quality of life is going to be better. People are, I mean, it is an economic driver.

So you think the parking garage and spaces are going to draw people down now? Yes. I do.

I don't know that the parking garage will, but I know that the library and the courthouse and the rabbit and all of the, I mean, yeah, I do. If you could talk to the people that I talk to all the time, about the pride that they feel about what the great things that are happening. The Marriott was the only thing that's been new in Odessa since I've been here in 30 some odd years. So if you don't ever go downtown right now, you don't really understand that. But yes, I do. And our Centennial is going to bring, we believe, 20 or 25,000 people downtown. and reacquaint them with Odessa. We talk all the time about how much money we can spend for a pride in Odessa. Well, as far as I'm concerned, about half a billion dollars is being spent to make people proud of Odessa. So yeah, I do.

Well, I just, I didn't, they asked us for a whole bunch of money, too, and so, you know, they put their garage and so forth, but that's why I was wondering about that number. I didn't understand that. Because one of the other problems I had is it seems like, and I need to say this, and I don't want to make my feelings hurt, but every project I look at, it seems like, and you say there's no space in Odessa, but there's parts of Odessa that can be repurposed. And I don't think we've looked inside enough to blocks where we could repurpose that. Little streets of land, water, that stuff. And pull it inside instead of having it go out on the campus. Does that make any sense?

Sure. One thing that could help, I guess, is the city owns land that they've torn down buildings on. Does Tom have those properties in his still where we can tell this?

leverage as a creator, for instance.

For the right project. For the right project. So it has to fit those criteria of what you want.

The right project is, I think what we all know it is, something that's unique and different and will drive people to downtown, will attract people to downtown that otherwise wouldn't have come to downtown. I mean, that's really what it is. I'm not interested in maybe putting in just a couple regular office space, but something that is He knows the spots the city owns. Yeah, for instance. There's not many of them. And one of them is right across from the Marriott. Those two lots right there. And the other one is what we're leveraging actually for OC for that land swap downtown. And it kind of dovetails on the question I think you asked. What are priorities? The council did a strategic plan. I have this. I'm going to share it with you all. Because there is an economic development section where the council has gone through and said, hey, these are what we want to down development of downtown and workforce development so that really fits into the mold I was seeing what they're doing down there a couple of things the one you're taking something that is undeveloped and then you're putting in a pretty big injection of cash and capital but also disposable income you know those folks that Burgundism usually disposable income and things like that's here. Those people are being introduced to the downtown that otherwise wouldn't have been. So that's just one example of property that's being leveraged.

Speaking for a word on placebo death support, and I say that to mean death. In Hector County, they created a co-active. That means if you build something in Hector County, the county gets 100%. Even the annex, you still get 100% of the sales tax, which is our number one. income generators. So, we're not really excited about building an extra county, but they're gonna give them 100% of that. Even if we annex, if we get 100% of the sales tax, that's nearly unfair. And so we're having a little problem counting on that issue. I thought he was grieving 50, the local government is grieving 50-50 split, and they won't agree to it. That's a problem for the SIBO VESA when we're getting basically cut out, even if we annexed, if we defaulted or annexed, we're still cut out. It's a problem. So you see our irritation with the situation.

I absolutely saw that happen.

And it was just tragic.

But all I'm saying is that to have another 300 parking spots downtown on the floor the festivals and the events. I mean, it's important. It's important to the city. That's all I'm saying. Let me make one more point about the $19 million. Because we have the policy to fund 100% of whatever we promise, that means that if we could fund and if we gave you the $19 million, We cannot fund another project over the total thing would be, I don't know, seven and a half million, so divided by 12, you know. We couldn't, we would be limited to any kind of project would have to be 750,000 or less because we wouldn't have any money to put over to fund another project. So, I mean, it's just, it just doesn't, I mean, you basically are just saying, okay, that's it. I mean, we're going to do small projects and we're going to fund them. We won't do anything for a few months until we get a couple months of sales tax because that would be the limit that we can fund because we've got to take 100% of it and put it into our collateral. So it just leaves us with nothing. I mean, does that make, do you see what I'm saying? Why that's so tough?

Yeah, it will get it at a month. We'll get it by then. Yeah.

and next month somebody comes in with a $10 million project, you don't have the money to deal with this. Wouldn't we sign that now? Right.

We're going to take out of that $19 million and we're going to move it into restricted.

Truth is, you haven't had any of that in five years, have you? Yeah. How many deals have we brought in? How many deals like that? Five now.

Okay, how big was the one you just talked about, the $15 million? Liberty was $2.5 million.

That's what we gave them. We're giving them that over 5 million. 2.5 million. Most recently, which they're coming back because they have an employee question. They're being on the agenda for the next meeting. A large expansion because they're going to build a new facility. Team refurb was approved for 2.8 million. We're trying to get Champion to... they're going over their agreement champion X that was sent to them. They are north of 2 million. Odessa College is 10. Theirs was that data analytics deal. It was about It was $800,000.

The first time I'm chairing the meeting, we gave $20-something million away. Yeah. Me and Mr. Conservative, I'm giving my money.

But the point is that that $19 million, there's $4 million that's getting ready to come through. If we put it back, then that $4 million comes out of the $19 and goes into restricting it. And so if we gave you all the 19 million, we are basically out of business until we get an $800,000 check every month. And we would either have to accumulate that or we would be limited to doing a deal that size. Does that make, do you understand what I'm saying?

It does, but it may be a year or two before we take the 19, you still can't. do what you set it aside but you still can use that knowing that 800 is coming in every month right we don't take it now it's back to robert peter to pay paul peter he got some money that odc board wants to keep a minimum

Unreserved fund balance for projects that may come to fruition, basically. So that's what I'm hearing. We wanted 25.

And we're already below the 25 million. You know, we've always had that in our budget.

I don't understand, though. You say 25. Where are we on that? I don't guess I fully understand. We're at 19. But you've already funded everything 100% in theory, right?

Everything so far. On the books. On the books. It's funded.

So you tell me.

to do, we have, and we have $4 million of requests that are gonna come in at our next meeting. So now we're gonna take the 19 and we're gonna take four out of that and move it into restricted.

So you're down to 50. So now we're down to 50. Well, let's put it there at 19. We're at 50 right now. Well, are you sure you're going to vote yes? No, no, I'm not. We're not.

But the point is, is if we give you $19 million, we're damn sure not going to vote yes, because we won't have any money.

See, I thought you already gave us that, and it's already set aside.

That's 15 million, which is half of it. That's the 15%. We're already giving you 50% of everything we give. We're talking about the money that is an accumulation over the last several years of monies that we have not given. That was my question. What about that? We've already committed 50% of the other to you.

Is that anything we ask?

I don't guess I'm understanding. We've never asked for any of that. Yeah, you have.

And Aaron and Steve, Steve's already told me we're coming for that man.

Absolutely. So what I, so again, I'm going to, if Tom said there was a, no, not Tom. Not Tom. Who was your friar? Jake. unrestricted money that you have and I said well anything over 25 I would recommend that the county take and move I'm sorry the city city take and move into into projects absolutely so that was that was my point and I do believe I think once you decide what your what your baseline is, that any dollar over that needs to go toward.

But you came to us and said, we need $15 million for these projects. Right, for UConn. UConn. And we earmarked that. And the ride home. The ride home. $15 million. we're going forward we would do seven and a half million a year or half of whatever our revenue is a year to the city for their infrastructure and that gives us half of what comes in for new stuff the part that has you have a hard time with this balance with this fund is all this money that's sitting here in 80 something million dollars most of that's already assigned to jobs we've already committed to over the next five years.

If you look at our financial statements.

Right, $56 million reported as page 41.

Yeah, if you look at our financial statements, it has every single thing on it.

Right, already signed. It's dedicated to something else.

And if you look at that, what we've got then is leftover monies from years of $19 million. Gotcha. David Butan thought that we should always have 25 million plus our restricted. He wanted to have 25 million set aside for the big deal, thinking that we were going to, that really, and he showed that as reserved, not restricted, reserved, okay? i don't think we don't even have that now no we have 19 to drop out yeah i mean we took out that reserve of 25 million of our budget what we have left right now is what we have left to do deals period and then we'll have another 800 000 every month starting in october

figure out a way to OVC funds and turn, and the normal turn of obligations to be able to fill any budget volume of constructing any major project. We can do 50%, we can try to get a 25% drop out of reserve, but anything more than that, we will, you will be cutting into future development.

Well, part of the, again, I'm just going to hold them. don't know why i don't know why look if you talk about 25 million if you have 19 now and six months you'll have 25 and you maintain that just again just dedicate it put it over there and hide it you can't use it it's dedicated to our future projects and then we do 1550 so it's pretty all that will do is help offset a cost that's $30 million, and I'll take it down to $23 or whatever.

So the thing is, we're only going to be building our reserves for future projects if 50% of our project is $50.

Once you hit a $25 million cap, it sounds like to me, then you've always got $25 million. I mean, no offense, y'all just kept me on the project the last five years. It ended out at $8 million.

Well, that was before data centers, too. And I don't know that we'll even do anything with the data center. I mean, and $25 million may be, you know, that was back when we were working on the CERO, and that's whenever we have all these big things. But these data centers are talking about billions of dollars.

Which is why I just can't see funding something that's going to cost $40 billion. The stuff that you can do that they can do at $40 billion, Number one. Number two, I think there's a real concern with water and with power and if the right deal comes along, I'm all for it. But there's a lot of problem with data centers and they demonstrate to me that they're a good corporate citizen and they're gonna do their job and I'm all for them. But not if they're gonna use five million gallons of water a day, that's not gonna happen. It will not happen. So I'm telling you, And by the way, we're talking a building, this last one we heard about, I heard three billion, 10 billion, 40 billion. I don't know which one's right, but it definitely matters. If you have 40 billion, 10, what do you mean three billion? You don't need our help. No offense. Y'all, I can't affect that number. Okay, what'd you give? You give 25, that's a drop in the bucket. You're talking about three billion. So I just don't see that ever being a project. when we're supposed to be done we started three-third our next meeting our city council uh workshop and city council see what i'm saying i think that here i think i understand now so i apologize i was already thinking but y'all just want to build 25 million reserve but i don't even know if the 25 million has to be that no that's a i mean that's the 25 million that's just the worst thing

Well, it's kind of going back on some of the opportunities we had and things that we didn't even come to fruition, but things we were looking at, and opportunities that could have happened, that we were lucky we were able to be a part of.

I mean, we had, what, two or three pages of prospects. that potentially, but certainly.

But for example, project .

What did they want? Well, they got, they promised, what, 100 million from Oklahoma? Yeah, but what were we talking about trying to do?

Do you all remember? We didn't have an exact number at the time because we hadn't gotten to that part of the negotiation yet. The considerations for it were going to be 1,000 new FTEs and a $4 billion CapEx. Tell me what you thought. What were you thinking? I'm just asking if you were thinking. Well, I mean, if you compare it to Nicero, which had fewer jobs, a little higher CapEx, ODC committed $20 million over 10 years. Two million a year.

I can see it. I can see a project like that. But the truth is, the truth, in 100 years, again, that project, since they built it, our plan has not been a project like that.

We haven't.

Not that they won't, but I'm just saying that.

But we have.

But ODC, those two power plants down there on the south side, ODC helped them come in, and I think C gave them tax abatements.

If you look on the rolls, they're being taxed over a million dollars, 15 million, I can't remember. I looked at one of them the other day, and I thought, they're paying a lot of property tax. And I think that's in an industrial park.

know we did family dollar we did that agreed to do was it wasn't an industrial park what was it that they needed to do they wanted they wanted an m and d yeah which one the one just But if we did give them money, it would be contingent on giving Eric to that agreement. So we would get something out of it. Now, it wouldn't be $25 million, but we do have some money to leverage that, and that's what Eric said, that's what we need to do. These guys right now, you know, they're just blowing smoke, but one of them told Tim the other day that he might give us $6 million for the library. Now, I don't believe that. I think they're doing a lot of talking. But the one company that is the partner, it's legit. I mean, they have several data centers. So we have some leverage to make them do some things if there's something that we need them to do.

if they need our water if they need our water and they need our sewer they need our fire protection then they we do have leverage at the end of the day if they're outside of the city limits and they don't need it right now we're not a big fan right now but you wanted but you want that agreement in return we would have to we would give them well with an mmd it doesn't work that way with an mmd they would It's kind of tricky, but the MMD, I'm sorry, Municipal Management District.

You can tell me that after that, because the point I'm making is that if there's something we want them to do, we would not do anything with ODC with them if they didn't do that. That's the point I'm making. It sounds to me like we need to, as ODC, that we need to figure out what we think we do need based on what we have used. But you understand why I said we couldn't give you the $19 million.

I understand now. It's a little confusing. I get it now. I get it. And this, you know, health workers, both from a political perspective, page 40 and 41, kind of see it. See the dedicated money that's already set aside, $16 million.

That's a lot of economic development. Well, I know. And you've got that potential each one of those years.

Yeah.

Well it's seven and a half million dollars a year.

Yeah, but I mean if you take that and go five years, what are you looking at, 15 million?

I'd like to say something real quick. Yes sir. Just because y'all been on here, everybody here. We always talk about not having enough money and you just talk about the county getting all the sales tax and this is not popular and we can't raise taxes but there are certain things we need to look at and you guys will know and I may be speaking out of turn but there's so many main camps here. I live in the hotel, motel tax. they're in the city of augusta they are they are yeah anything we could do like that's the fact that people when y'all heard me say it's about farmers we've hired a company to do that to make sure there are no ways like you look at airbnb trying to get out of the radar and pretending like they're workforce housing yeah

and they're being rented for longer than 30 days.

And there's a lot of them, there are more than 25 people that aren't related to the house at one time. They do all that stuff. You guys are all business minded. Get creative about it. Some way we can make the people that take all the resources pay for the resources. There's got to be something legal and fair and just. But same thing, police and fire are the two most expensive things. Whatever it takes them to, they take care of all them and they pay for nothing. And so we have to get to that mentality. You're a locust. And you come in, you take everything, and you leave, and you don't leave anything when the rest of us are farmers. And we're trying to help grow a crop and grow a seed and make things look good. And so it sounds like a soapbox, but it's not. I've been here my whole life, and I see this over and over and over. So there's got to be some way, an illegal way, not to be against them. Put your heads together and let's come up with an idea that, hey, we can start with a little bit more here, a little bit more there. Even the water bill, $5 more. If you have to use this for an example, you go to Texas Burger or Rosewood or another barbeque restaurant, whichever one they're talking about, and you buy a large glass of tea, it's five bucks. So if you pay your water customers, you're gonna have to give me five more dollars every month. Well, I don't have a going towards. If you need more money, can we have a sewer treatment plant? If you need five dollars to get your water or sewer, if it's legal, just do it. And tell them, hey, we gotta have it. If you don't have it, you have to, well, let's send a senior over and dig a hole in the backyard and move it in and out of the house.

We need seven, seven million.

Well, we have to have the, look, Christy's on our, agenda which is here i hope not to hear christy but i don't have enough can we keep doing it for 30 seconds whatever you want to i can give a quick recap or we can come up here for a quick recap

but we'll make it short. We've got a show and tell in the packet. I'll let y'all take a look at that and maybe just hit a couple high points. I have Brittany Mann with me, my business partner too. Just a couple of things, and we talked about this last time. I think we get our directive on the marketing side from the general development plan and from the board, of course. We do have target audiences, site selectors, C-suite executives looking to build or expand here. key decision makers and businesses in the five target industries that were established about three years ago. They're also in the general development plans. And then our prospective local businesses. And I think the main thing that I want to mention too are just some of the things that we've done since the last joint ODC and city council meeting, just so you kind of have an idea of what we've been doing. We've devoted more, and the board was already going this way. They had already asked for more local advertising. I think that most of the city council, when we had that meeting in November, felt the same. So a few things that we've done or are doing. Right now we have a business retention and expansion strategic plan. Several, I think everybody got links to the survey that we're doing right now. There have been in-person meetings, virtual meetings, trying to get a good feel for our businesses here in Odessa and what we need to do to meet their needs. So this is something that Tom and George and the ED department are gonna take and use this for their strategy, but it's also gonna help us on the marketing, making sure that we're sending the right messages to our local people. We've done more educational videos. We have people talking from the board, from businesses, different testimonials talking about what these funds can do for them. We're working on a website redesign. We keep adding to the website. It keeps getting bigger. We're going to kind of streamline that a little bit. It'll launch in January. We conducted site selector interviews in April. So the high ground of Texas met, several site selectors were here, we got to meet with them one on one and come up with some tactics that we think are better. And so we're kind of changing our strategy just a little bit in the next year to meet some of those needs externally. um one thing i wanted to mention as well um the canvassing that was done by the ed department and i know mj's list was mentioned earlier um i think it was uh craig stoker who mentioned that you know why don't we follow up with a letter to those companies like that which we did letting them know how to contact letting them know what the the grants are for and what they can be used for and who to get in touch with we also launched a downtown infrastructure grants ad campaign very small campaign on facebook um that has had really good traction We have a Did You Know campaign on social media trying to speak to the things that ODC can do for the public. And then one, we have a new Trailblazers campaign. So as a result of this meeting, trying to do more things locally, we have a new campaign that is highlighting businesses or people in Odessa who have received ODC funding. So our thought was, in this testimonial format, that we can speak to these other businesses, let them know how it's helping others, kind of use that format to let people know that way. Again, hitting the high points. One other thing I wanted to mention, A lot of our LinkedIn advertising and then a software that we have called Lead Forensics, it gives us a lot of very good information on the companies that are visiting us, looking at our ads, looking at our website. We don't include that in our reporting. Just in case Tom and his team are working with one of those companies, we want to keep that confidentiality. So we're not including this, but we are sending it to Tom and team, and they're always available. So it's a great list to tell us who's looking and why they're looking. So I just wanted to mention that. So you won't see those.

So we are even just looking, also engaging. We can see who's clicked on our ads. We can also see the pages on the website they've gone to, how deep they've gone, all the way down to people seeing if they've downloaded the application, for example.

And other than that, I didn't mention that we do a lot on the workforce side too. With everything that Monica is doing on the workforce, we actually have those channels as well that we're putting those messages out. And that's really, that wasn't 30 seconds, but it was a couple of minutes. No, no, no, not a problem. Any questions at all for us? I know that was super short.

You want to have your questions? The budget was a little bit larger, but $50,000 of that was contingent.

Correct.

So we're not going to spend that unless we do what?

Unless we have a big announcement. So that is really set aside. If there's a big announcement, if we want to stream it out from the rooftop, then we add that $50,000 in. So, no, you're exactly right.

If you take that out of your budget, you're about $10,000 or $70,000 higher than last year. Correct. that was it it increased so it did and the number guy and i looked down there oh it's a big increase and we have a new tactic that we put in this year as a result of those size selector meetings and that was part of the other seven percent as well all right thanks before we leave we got the rubber city workshop

I thought that they were really helpful. Do they help, what, twice a year or more? I don't know, y'all tell me what were y'all's thoughts. What are y'all's thoughts?

I think there's a, I think, I made a whole list of things we need to talk about, so there's a lot of open issues. I think it's a good conversation.

And we really haven't had that since we've been here. We've had one little meeting together. I think we need to try to get it to one page.

Yeah, maybe not a meeting once a quarter, just for a while, just until we get, and then we all might be in a better place, but again, some of this stuff, you heard it, but then you, there's just so much going on in the world, and you gotta keep your head on everything, so I felt it was very helpful, and put a lot of stuff in my head, and we're not all gonna agree, because quite frankly, there's a lot of needs, we all wanna help the city, and everyone has a little different perspective, different push, so. disagreement but that's okay you don't have to agree on everything but i think it's important to communicate i think that might be more important than anything to hear y'all you hear our perspective and have questions i'm sure what's best for odessa so i do have one one question jump out of here but on that media i mean their contract is almost a million dollars

is what they do measurable about what effect they have on well I mean you hosted that

Those guys came on site selection. He hosted their dinner. I mean, I got a lot of information out of them about what are they looking for? What do we need to do to meet their criteria? They've got all this criteria. You know, back when we got Family Dollar, we wouldn't have got Family Dollar if we didn't have public bus. Public city, most cities, many of us hated public transportation. We didn't. And it's brought some business in, and I think it gets us on a lot of radars on companies, because at least we're big enough to have public transportation. It's not all the time, but...

got it we did get built over the whole city the whole north side of town to get covered there's nothing in parksville there's no stop from parksville