Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. I am Councilmember Steven Robillard and I hereby call the Economic Development Committee meeting to order. I will go ahead and move on to our first item, which is public comment. If you can go ahead and play the recording.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Okay, we have no callers and no speaker requests in chambers. We'll move on to item number two, which is our discussion calendar, and we'll have the Workforce Innovation Initiative, and then Random Understanding with the Institute for Veterans and Emerging Technology Skill Sets, IVETS, and STEM Works for Technology and Workforce Development, and we'll have Miranda Evans, our Director of Community and Economic Development, give the presentation.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Robillard and Honorable Economic Development Committee. We're excited to be before you today, and you're going to notice a workforce development theme on today's agenda. And so I'm very pleased today to present Mr. Robert Nava and Mr. Alan Stanley, as well as their team, in what we'll be presenting to you as a Memorandum of Understanding for a Workforce Development Initiative. And this was something staff had the privilege of engaging with this group on early Q1 of this calendar year. And so we're very excited to have gotten to this point today to bring before you a draft MOU for your consideration. And so with that, I'd love to turn over the presentation to Mr. Robert Nava, who will walk you through the two-phase approach that we have developed as part of this draft MOU. Mr. Nava.

thank you director evans good afternoon council members interim city our our interim uh city manager enriquez good to see you also and um that is not interim city manager that is uh assistant city manager gil hernandez oh gil hernandez my apologies gil thank you the um you know Board members, I have the pleasure today to present a very innovative project that we're going to be bringing forward to you. And I want to share with you that I'm a proud resident of the city of Riverside and live in Ward 4. And I also have the pleasure of serving on the board of directors of the Institute for Veterans and Emerging Technologies, a very creative 501 that's been established to support our men and women who serve our country as they transition out of military service back into civilian life. And over the last, gosh, four months, we've been working with city staff and also with the community and with several university institutions in developing the framework that we're bringing forward for you today. And I'm going to ask our chair of the board, Alan Stanley, to join me up on the dais. And Alan's going to walk you through the PowerPoint for this presentation. And as Alan comes up, I also want to introduce members of the board of directors, Faraz Hatib, is with us, also Dr. Besluk is with us as well, and Sonia Pang. And with that, let me turn it over to Alan for the PowerPoint presentation, Alan.

esteemed members of the committee. Thank you. So what we have before us here is an exciting opportunity to really take a leadership position in California. Important to point out this is a dual mandate program. So although it is veteran forward in focus, it's not veteran exclusive. uh so the dual mandate includes veterans and the general public aiming at the underserved community there's a little clicker right next to your hand Okay, perfect. Okay, so there are also two companies present. IVETS, which is a 501c3, and Stemworks, which is a public benefit corporation. It's a for-profit corporation with a mission for public benefit. So in partnership with the city of Riverside, IVETS and Stemworks, and the advantages of this is we get IVETS as the educational arm of this. So it focuses on the rapid upscaling, the applied AI, the emerging technologies that are forefront in being able to transition into the job market. And this also being the Economic Development Committee, I want to stress, we are lifelong entrepreneurs. This is a very much entrepreneur-forward opportunity in the history of the job market in that the AI revolution is presenting unprecedented opportunities for everybody, not just to get a job, but to make a job. So the IVETS again is the Institute for Emerging Technology Skills focusing on upskilling, reskilling, rapid certifications, applied technologies. This is not competing with the four year institutions. This is somebody who's coming out with a mission and driving towards a focused job angle. Stemworks carries that torch forward. Stemworks is a bespoke employment development company. And so your traditional employment agency is going to take the skills of the people and try and find them jobs. So you go through training and then wonder if you're going to have a job. And this is the other way around. So STEMworks will actually take an order from a company or an agency for what cohort of particular skills they need to complete a project. And then through IVETS and the general public, source that cohort, deliver the last mile of training necessary to qualify and deliver. So when you join the program, you actually have a job that you're specifically training for at the end. Particularly useful for veterans because they're mission focused. So it's about a six month aim to deliver the pipeline. We have the legal structure, IVETS and STEMWorks, two different companies, two different boards, independent, and then the city of Riverside pulling this together. But just to make the point that they are legally separate. And then the program operation framework of how it actually operates, according to our timeline, is we have a space identified in the California building front and center on the ground floor. And if you guys are familiar with that space, but it's formerly a dance studio. And it also has behind it a decent sized back office and So this is hands-on applied stuff, not just academic. So actually bee equipment and machines and hands-on training. Applied technology lab. And our priority is the veterans in the underserved community. People with exceptional opportunity already have access to anything they need. So here our underserved priority is served. And then the career pipeline programs, again, going into what's hot today. Upskilling and reskilling and micro-certification in a fast timeline, getting people prepared for the jobs of today and to be entrepreneurs. This includes job coaching and entity formation and business coaching. So, yeah, we're definitely entrepreneurial forward. What the city brings to the table is it's a city-owned space that we're going into. We are paying a lease on it, but it's a city space. This being a public-private partnership, they get a favorable framework on that lease. Utility capacity planning is important. The city of Riverside is constrained in their power availability. We did meet with RPU and discuss the needs. For the phase one program, this is no more than a standard office space worth of electricity draw. We're not talking about any new circuitry needed, any impact to RPU whatsoever. This does include a phase two, it's called a neocloud server. And this is based on demand and opportunity and the appetite of the city. It's not mandatory to do the training, to do the phase one, to also have the phase two. We wanna present it because that's also an important opportunity. Because we've all seen the prices of AI skyrocketing, CEOs running down the street with an extension cord trying to find where they're gonna plug in their data center. And what happens there is cities are railing against it, access is being limited, saying no more data centers, well if you have something in extraordinary demand and limited capacity, price goes up. So the well-heeled corporations will always have access to it, but who still needs access to it where the city comes in is the underserved and entrepreneurial communities of Riverside. Instead of spending our money on hyperscalers across the cloud, this gives us a local cloud. We're not talking about a 500 megawatt project that's going to require changing the grid and all that. This is a community data center of and by and for the community. The benefit of the community to ensure that the community has access to the AI at consistent rates. Once it's owned, the price doesn't change. We're only talking about electricity is the only consumable. So this keeps prices level, ensures access to the community as well as to the city. There are a lot of requirements for data to be sovereign within the city, kind of like the HIPAA of the city. Giving that data out to hyperscalers, I'm sure everybody trusts Google, right? So the ability to have your own sovereign data center in the city, of the city, by the city, for the city, you have that opportunity to have things contained. So it gives you a sovereign data center as well as a community data center. Also important to note that this This scales according to demand. So this doesn't mean we walk in day one, put in a $50 million data center and have a draw against the grid. It means we set up the capability, we have a workforce that we're training to run it, of San Bernardino, keeping things local. And as the appetite builds and demand of the city, of the local economy and community tap into it, you have the ability to scale this as big as you have appetite. It's not a requirement of the project that this be a commercially viable project from day one. This is really for the community and to ensure that access and facilitate the accomplishment of the community, particularly entrepreneurs. As AI gets more and more capable and demand higher and higher, the people who need it the most are your entrepreneurs starting out. Giving that hand up instead of a hand out is the key here. It doesn't mean that it's free, it means that it's kept affordable because we've made the decision and investment here to create the facility. Again, as demand. I think I already covered that one. So for phase one, again, there's no investment by the city. You don't have to do anything. It doesn't require more electricity than is already there at the suite. But it is sufficient to do the education and the training and establish the facility. And phase two, again, will be as there is demand and appetite. So what this MOU does, it establishes a non-binding strategic collaboration framework. You're obligated to do nothing, you haven't committed any funds, you haven't agreed to anything, we're talking. So this says that you like the idea, we can set the principles, the economic development direction, create a phased exploratory approach to the partnership. Define the city coordination, spaces, intros, utilities, permitting. It's mostly around the phase two. Make sure that there is the legal separation, which there is, between IVETS and STEMWorks so that you have legal distinction. Nonprofit, 501c3. This is important for grant funding and et cetera. And then a public benefit corporation, which is a mission. A standard corporation has a duty only to its shareholders to drive profit. Public benefit has a mission. This is a public benefit corporation. Again, you're not agreeing to anything. You have complete approval of everything. We just want to advance this so we can formally discuss it and get your nod of interest.

Thank you, Alan. Council members, I did want to mention, just as we close, because we'd like to respond to any questions you may have, but this project, it's very innovative. Perhaps we believe the very first in the state of California that would focus specifically in providing this technology and training to veterans. The other item I did want to mention is that we're also collaborating with a number of university and colleges with their Veterans Center. their centers to assist in the transition of their students who are veterans as well as their families. And I just want to conclude right now by, again, expressing our appreciation to city staff. Miranda Evans has been terrific in helping guide us through this, but also I wanted to mention the time that we spent with David Garcia and Tracy Sato talking about the energy needs for a lab to do this. So with that, council members, we appreciate the time and the opportunity to bring this concept forward for the MOU, and we're happy to respond to any questions you may have. Thank you.

All right. I'll go ahead and call for public comment, please.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star nine. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Okay, seeing that we have no callers or speakers, we'll go ahead and move to our committee. Councilmember Hemingway.

Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the presentation. This is, yeah, it's exciting. I think any time we can connect and collaborate with community partners, particularly those that are serving our veterans and underserved communities, it's a win for all of us. And like you'd mentioned, this is just the first step of establishing some collective work together and the public will know this isn't a project per se, this is just the initial stages of what we're thinking about. We know that technology is the future and you asked about Google and we will not say anything bad about Google because we know it's listening. so but yes technology is certainly the future and again ways that the city and our educational institutions can work together to help those in our community I think it's a phenomenal endeavor so I in full support thank you

Thank you, Mr. Nava, for bringing this to us and to STEMworks and to the different groups that, you know, the workforce, the Institute for Veterans and Emerging Technology Skills, IVETS. I just want to thank you guys for bringing this and choosing Riverside as that opportunity to make this happen. I know you have lots of choices to go to, I'm sure, but Riverside, I think we do stand by our events here in the city with March Air Force Base, the NAVSEA nearby. We have a large veteran population, and that always continues to be a challenge for veterans is how they transition to the civilian life, and I think this is a Great opportunity and also something that it's an interesting way of kind of entering the market into the AI and data network space because there's a lot of controversy, as you know, of data centers and things like that. But I don't think Riverside was ever being considered for a large data center just because of our location and other things. But there's always interest in the micro data center, right, and the value that a micro data center can create. And there is, you know, It's just very good timing for us in the city to experience that because we have, you know, double the capacity citywide that's going to be coming online in about 2029. And the opportunity to have safe, cheap, reliable electricity to run this, I think will be good timing for everyone. And then, you know, there is a lot of interest. I can connect you guys with a few companies who are specifically looking to do at micro data center in riverside um and so i think you're catching on to a trend of everyone's kind of seeing the opportunity here and i think that's good for not just you guys but for the city and for our residents of having future job opportunities in this in this field so uh thank you for that and i will go ahead and uh take a vote in favor of this would approve seconds and uh yes we'll go ahead and move that forward to the council thank you thank you thank you All right. We'll go ahead and move on to item three on our discussion calendar, which is the cannabis grant program, retail program implementation discussion, and is presented by our director of economic development, Miranda Evans.

Thank you so much, honorable committee. In addition to the business support updates, business expansion, business attraction, and workforce development efforts, you hear from our fantastic economic development team. Another implementation project under our purview is implementing the cannabis retail storefront program. And so today I'm here to provide an update to you on that, as well as seek your direction on the equity program that had previously been approved by the city council in 2023. So today you will hear program status update overall of where we are at with all seven wards and implementing the storefront cannabis retail program. Review state grant status. So we did receive $325,000, which we're very grateful for from the State of California Department of Cannabis Control to support our implementation with some bonus equity funding. So I wanted to present that to you today and then get to staff recommendation. So as you know, we have been hard at work on implementing this. Right now we are working on one cannabis storefront retail location per each of the seven wards citywide. The table before you shows current status readiness, where we are at each applicant and each ward with their current staff, where we are at today. Where we sit right now, you see the green chart is Embark. They have opened in Ward 6 in March of 2026, and they are operational. They have complied with all requirements that we have set forth in our municipal code, which was updated based on council direction last summer. We're coming up on a year already in August, and also with our cannabis guidelines. Everything you see in light blue on this table, those represent the applicants who are near licensure. And so we have coming up in order of their target open dates from June through the end of September. So where we stand right now, and staff has been working to communicate these updates and ward updates to each of our council members and to city leadership, Where we stand right now is that at the beginning of fall, we will have six of the seven different storefront retail locations open by the beginning of fall. Ward four is a different scenario. They are still in their early phase two and working on their preferred location submittal. So they have yet to decide what site they will select in ward four. Otherwise, the other six wards are moving forward here in the city of Riverside. This is just a quick map to paint the picture of where those retailers are located throughout the city of Riverside with that new one retailer per ward framework. Six identified locations and ward four is still pending their location submittal process. Staff continues to work with them to provide site selection assistance and guide them through that process in addition to our cannabis facilitator's help. As an implementation update, we are following all of the guidelines and all of the adopted processes in the municipal code that was updated last August, as I mentioned. That includes the dispensaries needing to have their operating agreements, insurance, permits, inspections, certificates of occupancy, and also state license. So all of these are moving forward under step 2.4. In addition, this is the state grant I had mentioned of $325,000, and this is to support staff time that is spent implementing the program, also our consultant support that we have for our cannabis facilitator as well. As part of receiving the $325,000 in grant funds, that grant agreement also included a potential bonus, potential bonus is how that was worded, for a total of $150,000 for funding the equity program. This is the equity program that city council in 2023 had directed staff to implement. However, with the new framework, we have run into some conflicts in representing that. So at this time, we have not received any of the state grant funds, that $150,000. It is just a bonus. Should we not move forward, the $325,000 grant, which we have received 80% of to date, will not be jeopardized. So staff is before you today as we're nearing the end of the fiscal year, we're also nearing the end of the grant closeout process for the Department of Cannabis Control. And so staff is recommending at this time that the Economic Development Committee receive and file this update on the implementation of the Storefront Retail Commercial Cannabis Program, that staff continue existing retail implementation as I had shared, the great progress happening moving forward the six applicants in six of the wards we're still working with ward 4 on choosing their location and at this time staff is recommending that we postpone the equity program for council consideration and wait and re-evaluate until after all of the seven retailers are open and operating and we have data available And really this is because we want to see, will the market support additional absorption of additional storefront retail commercial, storefront cannabis retail commercial storefronts? Say that five times fast. To get those seven open and operational, and then after that, come back to council for direction and guidance on if the council's desire is to implement additional dispensaries above that one per ward that would be operating under the equity program. So with that, staff would turn it over to the committee for your direction and how to proceed.

Thank you for the presentation, Miranda. Do you have any thoughts? Oh, yeah, sorry, we have to do public comment first.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Having no comment cards or callers online, we'll go ahead and move on to our committee.

Thanks, Chair. Thanks, Miranda, for this. Remind me, so I heard a few numbers there. We're not on the hook for any monies that we received. Remind me, I heard 150 or 300. There's nothing that we're on the hook for at the moment. Is that right?

That's correct. Council member Hemingway. So we have $325,000 of the separate grant for implementation, which is moving forward very well. The bonus was that $150,000. We've not received any of the funds. It's simply a reimbursement base. And since staff has not worked on implementing this based on the direction last August, we have not requested any of those funds.

got you perfect yeah I know I know this is there's been some changes with how this has happened and been rolled out and so I think at the at the time trying to be mindful of how we give opportunities certain folks in the community when we know there's some very established businesses like this it was important I think it still can be important but I think it also can work to evaluate and see, you know, it never hurts to see how things are working and then make sure that we're moving in the right direction. So I think a pause is okay with me. I think we can keep our eye on it and just make sure that we're constantly thinking of those businesses that might, need a little assistance in this space to make sure that we're being fair and equitable to all those in the industry. So I think that works for me and it makes sense. So thanks.

All right. Thank you. And I also agree that waiting in the scene if the market is going to support more retailers is a prudent thing moving forward. And I'll go ahead and move a staff recommendation second from my colleague and we'll go ahead and approve that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, moving on. Item number four. We're going to move this item to our next meeting in July. There's a little bit more work that has to be done on that, so we'll push that off. And then we'll move on to presentations, which is item number six. We're going to take six ahead of five, if that's okay. Okay, we'll go ahead and move to item number six, which is a business excellence series featuring VoltuMotor. Yeah, I feel like I was somewhere that was called VoltuForge1 Grand Opening. But, yes, I will go ahead and have Juan Artola speak. Go ahead and give the presentation.

Thank you very much, council, city manager. Pleasure. So thank you and Miranda, of course, and the economic development team for this opportunity to provide an update. Of course, many exciting things have going on this past few weeks. So my name is Juan and I'm representing Baltimore, a technology riverside based company. And through that technology is that we managed to launch the only all-electric true heavy-duty pickup truck. Now that is a mouthful, but every word counts and it's important just as all the performance on our trucks are what separates us and makes us lead this segment. Our trucks, of course, manage to comply with what the fleets need, with what our customers need, and truth be told, it's the only one that really stands out in the market. So, of course, these trucks are built here in Riverside. We, in our manufacturing, that was the grand opening was done or the official production start was last week. We are producing from battery packs all the way to the vehicles themselves. So, we start with light themselves and then vehicles roll out. And the installed capacity right now, the bottleneck is on the workforce development, and we are actively engaging with the city, the county, colleges, universities, and CBOs to launch a continuous training program. And this is the first step to the Volta universe and to the clean tech manufacturing hub that we're building here in Riverside. And this is an ongoing hands-on training in which all the participants get to participate with our teams, with our engineering, in our production and assembly lines. And this gives them an industry-recognized certificate, but also offers to a full-time job at Voltu, or if not, any other clean tech companies that we have a lot here in Riverside. And most important, and the start of production was this week, and this same month we're going to be delivering the first trucks to our first customers, which is, we're very proud, RPU and the City of Riverside through General Services. And that is going to be, you know, the stepping stone to delivering the pipeline that we have all throughout the year for the Southern California, LA area, and so on. So it's very exciting times. It's the next phase for us and for everybody here in the community. And finally, of course, we are constantly engaging with new customers. We have been focusing on fleets, of course. Those are our primary customers. But from now on, we're going to be also engaging with the smaller businesses, those HVACs, landscapers, constructors. And for that, we're going to be launching retail test drives all throughout the region. So that's very exciting. It's going to be happening all within July. So we invite everybody to Of course, we're gonna be announcing where that's gonna be happening, but to come on and drive the vote to three and experience the power that it has. Thank you very much.

Thank you for that. I'll go ahead and turn to my committee member.

yeah i just i just have one one comment thank you um it's exciting and yes we were at the grand opening and you've paid attention to every detail and i'm just making sure that this is in every truck that you sell on slide five you'll notice the um the the one more slide back So much attention to detail. You see what that is hanging on the rearview mirror?

Yes, absolutely. I love Riverside.

So anyway, I think that should go with every truck. And the keychain. There you go. All right. No, this is great. Thanks. Absolutely.

Yeah, thank you. And I think the, sorry, don't run away. We got stuff to give you. So, again, congratulations to Voltea for finally getting your grand opening kicked off and manufacturing started. This is a win for the city of Riverside. And, you know, you're one of the first companies that came here to be part of our green tech ecosystem that we're building here in Riverside. And I don't know. who you've been talking to at the schools, but I would love to connect you because I think this is a massive opportunity and the exact kind of thing that we are trying to get our students connected into. So I'll talk to Miranda, we'll talk, but... I know there's a lot of students who'd probably be lining up for this opportunity because I think everyone sees this as a future job that is not going to be going anywhere. And it's got a job opportunity at the end of it, which I think is a really cool thing. So congratulations. We're going to have a certificate signed by me and the mayor to present to you. So if you want to go ahead and come in here in the well, we'll take a quick picture.

There we go.

Perfect. Thank you.

Okay. All right. That was an excellent presentation. Now we'll move on to item number five, Strategic Workforce Development Win USC Sunstone Challenge Outcomes. And we'll have our presenter, Hilda Algular and Gerardo and team.

Good afternoon, honorable chair and committee members. My name is Desi Masei, senior project manager for economic development. Today, we're pleased to welcome Team Riverside from the USC Sol Price School Public Policy Sunstone Economic Development Challenge. Over the past several months, these graduate students have worked directly with the City of Riverside to develop a workforce-focused economic development strategy grounded in research, stakeholder engagement, and innovative thinking. Competing against teams representing cities and counties across California, Team Riverside earned first place for their thoughtful and actionable recommendations. We're so excited to have them here today and to share their work and the opportunities it presents for Riverside's future. Please join me in welcoming Hilda, Oscar, Vanessa, and Montserrat.

Thank you, Tessie. Good afternoon, everyone. It's such a pleasure and honor to be here presenting this project that we worked on for a few months. This was a proposal that we submitted back in December and got the opportunity to present in April and won first place. My name is Hilda Aguilar Jurado. I had the pleasure of serving as the team lead for the group. And I'm a second year MPA student at USC. I'm really excited for you all to hear about our data-driven strategies And before we get into the presentation, I do want to give special thanks to the entire Riverside team, especially Desi, Miranda, and the former Workforce Development Officer Randy. They were very instrumental in providing some very great guidance that really guided us into developing this proposal that, again, was very implementable. I'm going to pass it over to my team for a brief introduction. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having us today. My name is Montserrat Pineda. I'm an incoming second year MPA student at USC. I'm really proud of the work that we did here, and thank you again for having us.

Hi, good afternoon. Vanessa Bautista, actually, Masters of Public Policy at USC, and thank you so much for having us.

Hello, good evening. Oscar Sisko, going into my second year at NPA at USC. And I guess we'll just get started here. So we started off by defining the problem here is that Riverside has identified five areas of excellence to guide its economic growth, which includes health care, aerospace, green technology, and advanced industries. And the city also has strong institutions, a large workforce, and growing industries. And these strengths, however, aren't exactly translating into local opportunities. And so we're seeing that students aren't aligned with the industry demand, workers are leaving the city to look for jobs elsewhere, and employers are struggling to fill the roles locally. While the strategy is clear, the system isn't producing the outcomes that benefits the residents locally. And so we did our survey and we found from the respondents in the city, the businesses, 70% of the employers reported difficulty filling the roles and nearly 80% of residents commute outside of the city for work. And at the same time, healthcare, for example, is one of Riverside's key areas of excellence. It represents over 25,000 jobs and continues to grow rapidly in the city, backed by two hospitals and a new upcoming UCR teaching and research hospital. This shows that even in the city's priority industries, the jobs exist, the talent also exists, but they're just not aligning. And so that's been the core issue, and this points, of course, to a system that just isn't aligned. And so what we propose, sorry, to address this is we developed a system to connect workforce and industry. And so we came up with this system, we call it the Renew Plan, and it focuses on three components. Building the talent pipeline, generating demand for the jobs, and aligning the system over time. And at the center of it, it's a continuous feedback loop using data, outcomes, and employer input so that you continue adjusting in real time. Together, this creates a system that connects talent to opportunity and sustains it. And at its core, it puts the residents at the center so that resident success equals success of the local economy. And to really boil it down, to summarize it, is that the idea is to capture the wages that you are creating by bringing in these industries, and also making the skills of the residents a core component in attracting the businesses. And so I'll pass it over to my colleagues to continue.

And what exactly are we proposing? So we have three solutions that we want to share, starting off with building the talent pipeline. So our first recommendation is to build a workforce development team for City of Riverside by hiring two full-time employees, a workforce coordinator, and an employer engagement coordinator as well. This will allow the City of Riverside to conduct extensive ongoing employer outreach and program management. The second recommendation is formalizing education to employment pipelines in STEAM. And this is going to help align K through 16. And in doing so, we're also recommending to establish formal MOUs with initial employers to complete these education to employment pipelines in STEAM. We're also recommending a focus on a medical and biotech workforce pilot program led directly by the city. We did some digging and created a plan and believe that 60 participants in the healthcare training would be a really good start for the city. This would include paid work experience opportunities and job placement pathways within this industry. We are also recommending a small cohort in aerospace medicine, which we're going to dive a little bit deeper into another slide and talk about why we're recommending exploring aerospace medicine. Solution number two is to generate demand by making Riverside easier to invest in. Our first recommendation is to develop an investment ready site portfolio where we are able to identify and market development ready sites for targeted industries. We are recommending to provide land use infrastructure and environmental data and activate underutilized land through partnerships. Second one is infrastructure. And so we are recommending to fund infrastructure with enhanced infrastructure financing districts. This is going to provide an overlay with opportunity zones. And this can be helpful for funding future parking, utility site preparation, making it again easier for industries and manufacturers to invest in Riverside by locating here. And this is going to reduce development costs and risks. So this is a big component to attracting these larger businesses. And the next one is incentives. So there is a state capital investment improvement program offered by California. And this is an incentive tied to job creation and it focuses on business attraction in targeted industries and manufacturing and aerospace, for example, are some of the industries included that's tied to this program. And we think that Riverside can definitely utilize this type of incentive to encourage more of these larger companies to invest into Riverside and of course, build the workforce. Solution number three is aligning the system. So how exactly are we going to tie everything together and make sure that it continues to work? The first solution is to develop a Renew Advisory Board. So this is a more formal way to continuously convene employers, education institutions, workforce, programming organizations, and different community partners. And this is going to allow a lot of these stakeholders to continuously meet, update, and develop partnerships related to workforce development and, of course, economic development. We are also recommending exploring more private partnerships private private partnerships where we're able to combine different public private and even exploring philanthropic funding to help pay for like workforce development programming so there is a a big growth in the philanthropic funding world where they're they're more open to funding city governments especially if they partner with other smaller organizations And the last one is the employer engagement. So we believe it's essential to provide ongoing engagement with employers. And this was really backed up by the survey that we conducted where a big chunk of employers mentioned that they are not involved in any type of city programming or workforce development programming. And so there is the gap that we identified there, and we believe that there is a way to close that gap and increase employer engagement. This is also going to help identify hiring grabs and adjust programs in real time.

The city of Riverside is in the best position to lead an economic development. Riverside has built a strong foundation with its successful healthcare industry. They can build up their workforce system that will make partnerships and pipelines intentional. The city can take this blueprint and expand it into their growing industries. The city has laid the groundwork and now has the opportunity to reach greater heights. Aerospace medicine is a future. Imagine the possibilities. Riverside youth are already in CTE programs learning about biomedicine. Riverside's roots in agriculture only continues to grow. Strengths in biomedicine and engineering are only pieces of what makes Riverside ready for this opportunity. Cities in the region have already started exploring the sector, and there is no reason why Riverside can't lead, especially through integrating its five areas of excellence, which serves as a North Star. The city's history of being an economic hub for innovation will give it the opportunity to lead in a sector that brings together the health industry and education partners, creating stable jobs for the residents while making Riverside a leader in the region.

Renew is designed to be actionable from the start. In the short term, the city focuses on building capacity by hiring the dedicated workforce team, launching the Renew Advisory Board, and aligning incentives with job creation. These actions create the foundation for long-term implementation, allowing Riverside to expand workforce pipelines, recruit businesses aligned with the five areas of excellence, and continuously track outcomes. performance tracking is built into the model by measuring job placements, wage growth, and employer satisfaction, ensuring programs remain responsive to market demand. Renew aligns the ecosystem within the city's economic strategic plan. So education partners provide the Thailand pipeline, industry partners define hiring needs and create employment opportunities, while the workforce development teams, organizations coordinate services and connect residents directly to those opportunities. Through the workforce team and advisory board, these partners work together towards a shared goal, which is creating a stronger pathway for education to unemployment, while also supporting Riverside's priority industries.

The economic engine that Riverside represents is unparalleled. Investing in Riverside's workforce is investing in Riverside's future. There is no greater opportunity for Riverside than now. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for that presentation, and please, I'm sure we're going to have a couple of questions. I'll defer to my colleague here first if he has anything he'd like to share.

How soon is it starting? Yeah, I'll just make some comments because I think this is great. Thank you for your work, and it's been something I, as I've been a part of this community for a while, that has seemed to be things that we've taken a shot at to try and figure out how to address brain drain and the things that we hear about connecting our students with you know, job opportunities and career spaces. We've tried many different approaches, and I think you've done a great job of distilling it down to some actionable steps, and I'm anxious to see how this all rolls out. So thank you for your work, and it looks like you won some money, and so that's good, too. I hope it went to good use, but this is really impressive, and we'll be grateful to see the impact. Thank you.

Thank you. And it's so funny because I was just talking with Miranda Evans about this and our city management team. And we were discussing a program that my office started in January called LIFT, which is Learning Institute for Flight Technology. And there's a lot of similarities between what you're recommending and what we're trying to do. And we're trying to... It's in the aerospace field and it's just all aerospace jobs. But what was interesting was, you know, aerospace biomed. That's something I never heard of before today. And I think that's a super interesting field because when we talk about aerospace jobs, there's a thousand ways you can be in aerospace. And we just saw a defense spending budget. It's that $750 billion last year got approved at, well, It's currently going through the process, but we're looking at $1.5 trillion in defense spending. It is growing like crazy right now. We are at the center of all that growth. And so thank you for doing this work. And we actually will probably be talking to you guys some more because we are absolutely in agreement that this pipeline, that this system has to be in place. And I think having this kind of roadmap is very helpful for us because We're doing a thousand different things at the same time. And so it helps to have, you know, someone helps you can take the time and put this together. And so thank you for doing this work. Congratulations on the win. I think it's very clear why you guys won. This is this is an excellent report. And we'll be I think we'll be in touch for some other things in the future. Thank you. Right, so we'll go ahead and move on to staff updates.

I'm so sorry, honorable chair and council member may please ask for a photograph. Thank you. We are also honored to have Hannah join us with Sunstone today as well. Thank you again.

All right, so we'll go ahead and I'll move on to our communication section, which is item number seven, which is our staff updates.

Thank you so much, honorable chair. I think perhaps in the interest of time, I may ask if it's the committee's pleasure if we could go to item number eight, which is a staff update as well.

Well, that is fine with me.

Okay, we will condense them. amazing thank you so much so at our last meeting and leading up to this this spring this committee has heard a lot about our business attraction efforts and our plans for a very productive and very fulfilling q1 and q2 and so i'm here today to just close the loop on that and share some of our highlights for business attraction efforts So you previously heard quite a bit about the SelectUSA spinoff event. This was a competitive process that we applied for. This is, you know, SelectUSA, the International Investment Summit in Washington, D.C. every spring, and there's an application process you can apply. And we were successful in this application of less than 10 different spinoffs across the entire country. So this resulted in a day and a half of programming, and our international attendees, of which we had 131 total attendees, had the opportunity to spend time in three regions. So they started in Imperial County, we had the pleasure of their time for a day and a half in Riverside County, and they concluded with their last half day in San Bernardino County. So we had 17 different countries register for this opportunity, and during that time with them, we took every opportunity we could to promote the county of Riverside, this region, and of course, the city of Riverside was shining. We were hosting them right here in our beautiful city and at UCR's campus. From that day and a half of effort, we have six promising prospects, and so we are still actively working in conversations with those companies, making sure they are supported, and we can be their soft landing here in the county of Riverside. We had webinars that were advertising this, a lot of work into the marketing and the prep and the foundation laying to have a successful spinoff event. We had three different webinars. We had live viewing. They're still also on YouTube, and those reached 24 different countries. So many of these guests, they also joined us in SelectUSA. So it was wonderful to have two touch points. And I would just like to share a thank you to our partners. We could not have done this alone. This was led by Team California. GO-Biz also attended. I had the privilege of speaking on a panel with GO-Biz. Our partners at the U.S. Commercial Service, our valued partners at UCR, Excite. We also partnered with Innovation Month. April was Innovation Month. And so all of the guests got to go and see the talented pitches, Riverside County Office of Economic Development, and I need to give a special thank you to the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, who co-hosted a really beautiful reception for us. So these international guests had the opportunity to connect with business owners and leaders here in our beautiful city, and it was really a fantastic event. Directly after that, Chair Robillard and I had the privilege of attending SelectUSA, the International Investment Summit, the largest opportunity in the world, and to serve as delegates for the state of California. This is the California team represented from different partners up and down our beautiful state. At this, we were busy working, we were hustling, we walked over 32 miles together, we made 26 contacts, we had 16 meetings, and we met with over 12 different countries. And so those are fantastic leads that we are still working to bring those businesses, bring that value and create ROI here for the city of Riverside. I also want to highlight and thank our partners again. Chair Robillard says this really well. I truly believe we're the only group in the entire country. We had the city of Riverside and not just the city, our elected leader. We had the county of Riverside and our partners there. We had our education partner in UCR in sharing their tailor-made opportunities to support companies. So anytime we met with a business, they were simply blown away by the unified front we have, the depth of resources and support that they receive. And a lot of these countries, California feels intimidating to them, but Riverside's welcoming. So we tell them, if you want to be in California, Of course, who wouldn't want to be in California? Then you want to be in Riverside. So this is a fantastic opportunity to have Riverside shine once again on the world stage. Shortly after that, we also hit the road for ICSC in Las Vegas. And I'm so incredibly proud of the team. Thank you to my team. This was the first time we hosted a booth. And isn't it beautiful? I'm still blown away. We got so many compliments, people walking by and asking lessons learned, tips. How did you learn? How did you do this? How many years have you done this? And we said, wow, this is our first. It can only get better from here. And we're already off to a wonderful start. So thank you to the leadership. We are joined by Councilmember Chuck Condor, the President and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, Nick Adcock, and shout out to my amazing teammates, Desi Massey, Evan Webb, and Jessica Gonzalez. At ICSC Las Vegas, we made over 64 connections. We connected with six industry sectors, so that includes grocers, retailers, and not just retail, developers. So this investment-ready Riverside, we developed information and we were sharing that to have an investment-ready approach. Brokers and landlords. That resulted in 11 new opportunities and leads. We are actively working with some wins to announce to you very soon, I promise, and three regulatory bottlenecks that were addressed. So it's not just an opportunity to bring new business and new development. We are fostering and we are investing in existing relationships. So those they may have experienced an issue with the permitting process, we're able to sit down with them and troubleshoot those development hurdles. So thank you so much. Great work to the team. Amazing event. Speaking of investment-ready Riverside, this is a little bit of what we had shared. This month of preparation work, thank you so much to my team for their work on this, putting it together, to the marketing team for all of their support. And we are sharing development opportunities, vacant land that the city owns that is for sale, as well as the incredible opportunities we have for development-ready sites at our Riverside Airport. And of course, all of the compelling why Riverside messaging, our value proposition. And we're not done, we're still going. We took a little bit of a breather back to business as usual, taking care of our community here in the office. And then next week we will be participating in Bio International, which no better time building off of what you just heard with aerospace medicine. So we are already working on exploring those opportunities. This is the largest international convention for biotech, over 20,000 different participants, 1500 plus exhibitors, 130 plus sessions. And so this is a great opportunity to connect with businesses who are looking to expand and to grow our life science, biotech and innovation economy. And so with that, just wanted to share a few brief updates and we are working very hard to bring you back that ROI here to Riverside and bring additional growth and investment and development to our beautiful city.

All right. Thank you for that presentation. Any questions? You know, I've seen the – I see this a lot because we talk a lot. We work together a lot. I was there at SelectUSA. So this – people ask why do we spend money on development? Why do we care so much about people outside of our city? Well, we want people to come into our city and work in our city. And I think the example given by the previous presentation of there's that gap where 80% of our workforce is leaving our city. Well, people complain about traffic. Well, you wouldn't have traffic if people got to work in the city they lived in. And so this is a huge reason why we spend this time and time. There are every city around us is doing this work. They are talking to these people, attracting the businesses to their cities. If we're not at the table, they're not coming to see us. They're coming to see somebody else. And so that is why we have to be at these occasions is why to be these events, because you can't just sit back and I use the example of a. I have a restaurant. If you just put an open sign and expect your customers to come in and just fill your restaurant full of people, good luck. That is not how you run a business. And the same way, if you want customers, businesses to come to our community, we have to go out there and get them. And so that's what we're doing. And thank you for all the work you're doing. It's a lot of work. But I think you've got a great team around you that you've built up. And I think we'll have a lot of success from this. So thank you. all right we'll go ahead and move on um there was no legislative update so we'll go to item number 10 items for future consideration none we'll go ahead and close the meeting thank you