Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good afternoon. We're gonna go ahead and get call the committee to order. This is August 21 at 3PM. We'll start the economic development committee meeting. I'm chair Steven Robillard, and we'll go ahead and move to item number one, public comment.

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 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Okay. Thank you. We don't have any callers and no request to speak in chambers. We'll go ahead and move on to number two, our presentations, and we'll have the business excellence series on EJ Filtration Inc, aerospace and defense. We'll have Kyle Wozinski go ahead and give that presentation, and looks like Miranda as well.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, honorable economic development committee. We are so excited to be here today and in response to a referral we received at the last economic development committee, we are now ready to kick off what we have named our business excellence series. So this will feature a rotating, spotlight on each of our five areas of excellence and we're adding in a sixth as a bonus which is workforce development. So each month, you can expect to see these updates. Today, we're very proud to have a special guest here, EJ Filtration, and you'll hear directly from them and also our aerospace and DOD senior project manager, Kyle Worsinski. So now I'll turn it over to Kyle.

Appreciative but not necessary. Good afternoon committee chair, members of the committee. My name is Kyle Worsenski, senior project manager in the economic development division. This presentation is the first business spotlight in a series that we're calling our business excellence series. We're gonna highlight one company per month for each of the areas of excellence.

The area of excellence for this month, as you can see, is aerospace and defense. And the company being recognized is EJ Filtration Incorporated. One of the city's areas of excellence is aerospace and defense. This industry is one of the nation's largest economic drivers. There are many types of companies that work in this sector, focusing on building planes, satellites, defense systems, and so much more.

When you see a b two bomber or fighter jet, when you fly on a Boeing seven thirty seven, or watch a rocket launch from California, Texas, or Florida, that product is a result of often hundreds of smaller companies working together to deliver what you see flying around. This vast supply chain of smaller companies, including machine shops, electrical systems designers, metal fabricators, filter manufacturers, and many more are critical for the large companies to deliver the final product. Last year, the aerospace industry had an all time high of $955,000,000,000 in sales nationally, which is expected to increase beyond $1,000,000,000,000 this year. The industry totals 1.4% of all jobs in The United States, with an average salary well above the national average. California contributes the most sales in the industry out of all 50 states.

The state also contains the most aerospace engineers anywhere else in the country. In Riverside, we're proud to be home of over 40 aerospace and defense companies. Our region contains two Department of Defense anchors, March Air Reserve Base and the Corona Naval Surface Warfare Center. The city owns and operates the Riverside Municipal Airport, a key asset in this space, which has seven flight schools in operation today. I will now pass the next portion of the presentation over to my colleague, Randy Solis, the city's workforce development officer, to provide a high level overview of the region's workforce development areas in this area of excellence.

Or sorry, excuse me, workforce development efforts in this area of excellence.

Thank you, Kyle. Good afternoon, committee members. Randy Salise, workforce development officer. And today, have a brief highlight of the workforce development impact within this sector. Our region has a wealth of programs tailored to the needs of aerospace and defense industry.

Institutions like Universal Technical Institute and Spartan College of Aeronautics offer specialized trainings in areas such as welding technology, aviation technology and maintenance. Spartan College in particular has a strong presence providing everything from pilot training to aviation maintenance management. The Riverside Municipal Airport is critical asset to this hosting seven different flight schools including those affiliated with California Baptist and San Bernardino Valley programs. Our local universities are also deeply integrated into this ecosystem. California Baptist University offers a range of relevant degrees including mechanical, electrical and software engineering and even an aerospace engineering minor.

La Sierra University contributes with programs in computer science and cyber security. UC Riverside offers specializations in aerospace engineering within its mechanical engineering program alongside robotics and other vital tech fields. Cal State San Bernardino provides cybersecurity courses and hosts an air force ROTC program with aerospace studies. Riverside College and San Bernardino Valley College offer you central programs in computer science, engineering technologies, and welding. All of these programs feed into the aerospace and defense industry that call Riverside their current and future home.

Riverside's aerospace and defense ecosystem is a dynamic network of businesses, educational institutions, and workforce development programs. Staff continue to map out this ecosystem to introduce our local talent to the vast number of opportunities related to this growing sector. This career field offers a wide range of career pathways for high school grads up to individuals with advanced degrees. This includes aircraft electricians, aircraft mechanics, avionics technicians, defense analysts, quality assurance inspectors, electrical engineers, and aerospace engineers, just to name a few. This synergy not only supports our existing companies, but also makes Riverside a highly attractive location for new investment and talent in this high growing sector.

I will now pass the presentation back to my colleague, Kyle. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Randy. The city is performing various attraction and retention efforts to help sustain and grow this sector through targeted business outreach and rise visits. One example of an effort focused on supporting and expanding this sector is the Aerospace Community Expo held early this year in May. The first annual event was convening of aerospace companies, education partners, industry stakeholders, and the public. Roughly 1,000 members of the public attended to learn about these riverside companies, potential career paths and opportunities, and resources to help residents achieve their career path goals.

The Business Excellence Series kicks off today with the city of Riverside recognizing EJ Filtration Incorporated for their work in the aerospace and defense industry. The company was founded in Riverside in 1988 by Gerald Green and has been a family owned and operated ever since. In 1996, the company moved to its current location on Durahart to be able to grow and expand their operations. The company is the leading manufacturer of stainless steel and wire mesh filters in the industry. A tour of the facility revealed a highly skilled and dedicated workforce of 32 employees using high-tech manufacturing processes to deliver filters that meet or exceed industry standards.

All filters produced by EJF filtration are handmade in a manner that I would actually describe as a work of art. EJ's filters are used by NASA, the US military, and Department of Defense and commercial aircraft, and other non aerospace industries. Beyond things that fly in the sky, EJ filtration products can be found in rockets, satellites, space suits, as well as trains, people movers, and much more. Before I introduce owners of the one of the owners of the company, I want to play a short video providing in-depth glimpse into EGL filtration, their employees, and their operations. And now it's my pleasure to introduce Cheryl Kelly, president and CEO of EJ Filtration, to say a few words.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me here today. As you can see there's Jennifer Green. She is the Vice President of EJ Filtration and she is also my twin sister. As you can tell, we're not identical twins. We're fraternal twins.

So I am incredibly honored to be here today in front of you all. Kyle approached me at another event that we were attending and got my number and asked me to be the first one to just sort of share our story about EJ Filtration and how we got started. So a lot of the presentation that he did, thank you very much, he did a great job, said a lot about the company. So yeah, actually my mom and my dad started company back in October 1988. So we have got thirty seven years.

My dad came from the aerospace Paul Corporation is where he started and then he moved on to a vice president position at a company called Metron Industries. And then myself, you know, I was a daughter that wanted to help out her parents with their business. So I started there back in 1992. I started at their reception desk and there was a bookkeeper that was there. And she taught me everything I needed to know about anything from billing, answering the phones, doing payroll, paying payroll taxes.

And then QuickBooks came along and I was like wow, I don't have to calculate all this on paper anymore? This is great. Then Jennifer, she came to work for the company a few years after I did. And she has worked her way up as well. So she's head of engineering, sales and a quality department.

So we just have a wonderful staff that works for us. We have a lot of employees that have been with us twenty years or longer. A lot of people that used to work for my dad at his old company came to his new company twenty something years ago and they've gone on to retire now. My parents are still around. I'm sorry that they can't be here today but I'm going to play the video for them tonight when I go home.

I'm just so humbled to be here today because we get out a lot and talk publicly about our company. So it's nice to be in front of all of you and then I hope that moving forward that Kyle will be able to contact the other, like the four companies that we saw up there on the screen today and bring some of that manufacturing and the aerospace and defense back to Riverside. We don't have a lot of suppliers in Riverside except for our machined hardware suppliers are here in Riverside. We do a lot of outside processing. We do passivation and chem film.

So we use outside vendors for that. So it would be nice to have some people that were local to be able to provide those services. So, yeah, I'm grateful to be here today and thank you very much for having us.

Thank you Ms. Kellen. And, congratulations to EJ Filtration. Thank you so much for coming down here today.

You're gonna ask me questions, Steven?

No, no. Well, maybe my colleagues have some questions. I just wanted to kick it off of why we started this series. You know, as chair of economic development, we did the we had the study about the area of success that we have in in in the state of Riverside. Aerospace and defense is one of those key areas.

And I wanted to when I when I first started this is that there's so much manufacturing that exists in Riverside already that's been here for decades, and I don't think they get the recognition they deserve. And a lot of people in Riverside, especially young people, they think that they go outside the city for a good paying job. And it's just simply not true. There is great jobs here in the city of Riverside. And when you mentioned the, you know, the lack of suppliers and vendors that to work with that are in the city of Riverside, that's the infrastructure and ecosystem that we wanna bring to Riverside.

And as we're seeing more and more of these types of jobs being pushed out from expensive areas on the coast, we we wanna open it bring them in with open arms. We we the city of Riverside is open for business. A lot of these companies, you can't just pick up and move to the middle of nowhere, Arizona. You you're you're you have workforce that's probably not gonna follow you all the way to another state, and then you can't just create that workforce in a vacuum. You need to be in an area that has the ecosystem existing already to, help nurture that workforce and bring it on for generations to come.

And so bringing these companies together like yourself, having you guys be part of the public, facing so that when we had the aerospace expo, we had, you know, so many kids that when they think aerospace, they think a rocket scientist or a pilot. But it's so much more than that. And my you know, for myself, my father-in-law, he came from the came to this country. He was nine years old from Yugoslavia. Got his air aircraft technician license, worked for Gulfstream for twenty five years, and then they shut down their plant in Los Long Beach.

Now he works for SpaceX. And, he's the only one he jokes all the all the kids that work there, he's the only one who can drill a hole straight. And, you know, he built the Dragon capsule that brought the astronauts back from the space, space station a few months ago. And that sense of pride of being able to build this kind of, machinery that you can't just go off a shelf and buy this stuff. Everything has to be custom made. Mhmm. And so I think there's a lot of, people who see the aerospace industry as a mystery. They don't understand the components that go into it and having you guys get a spotlight on a business like you is a great opportunity. So thank you so much for coming down. Don't know if anyone else has something to share.

Thank you. Thank you so much and thank you and just congratulations. I think that my thought is maybe we can have you give a workshop on how to be so successful in the city because if you don't have to go out and sell yourself, that means you are doing, you know, everything that is keeping you successful in business. And I think it speaks volumes, of course, to this the lineage of your family and what you've done to establish yourselves, not only here in Riverside, but clearly within this field. But it's, you know, really proud to see, you know, three of these are located in war two.

And, I've been able to go see Prism Aerospace, so I would love at some point to come out to get a tour of your facility if possible, and meet, you know, some of the folks that you work with. But I anything we could do to continue to elevate your story and, of course, the impact that you're having here in our community. And I think a lot of people and I'm grateful for the chair to bring this kind of series to the committee so we can help to educate folks again across Riverside about really kind of what we're able to accomplish here. I think a lot of folks don't realize how big a contracts that companies like yourselves are pulling in that are really big dollars at and then what's being created here and going back out to other parts of the nation and beyond sometimes. So I find it fascinating.

I I had no idea really prior to, you know, becoming a council member of how much aerospace and, you know, infrastructure industry that we had here that was taking place in these warehouses that most people have no idea that are, you know, shielded. So I love I love that when we can kind of get get inside and then are able to see firsthand what that impact looks like. And I think what I love and I've been seeing start to happen with some of the businesses and working with the flight schools and working with partners even in neighboring cities to see how we could build that pipeline for career development, workforce development. I know that there's a workforce here. We obviously have a huge sector including the Inland Empire Labor Council, Riverside San Bernardino Building and Trades, and they're always looking for ways to see how we can build the pipeline to support the workforce as folks do, whether age out, retire.

But how do we also pass down the knowledge of the elders that have so much wisdom to make sure that the next generations also can carry and bring that forward. So just congratulations again on success for you and your sister in leading this effort and look forward to coming out hopefully in the future. Thank you, chair.

Thank you.

Well, much has been said and you're getting plenty of kudos because of the amazing work you do here. It's remarkable. And I think that's the point of this segment is to highlight the good work that businesses are doing here locally and find synergy where we can keep growing on that. So thank you for your work. I know, you know, I see little parts here and the little parts are sometimes the most important ones. I learned that as a kid. My father was a machinist and he would tell me over and over, this is a micrometer. This needs to be to oneone thousandths of an inch. Which is when I said I probably should pick a different career. That's too precise for me.

So, I did. But it just, the work that happens right here in our space as we can highlight more and more places, think it's just gonna show how great Riverside is. Although the chair said we can't just move to Arizona, it feels like Arizona today. I'm not sure 1 105 is right. But anyway, thank you for your work. And we look forward to helping and supporting your business and all the many others as we talk more. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, I'd like to present your company yourself with a certificate of recognition from the city of Riverside. And I'll go ahead and read it right now. The certificate of recognition is presented to EJ Filtration Inc. In honor of your community and economic development contributions, the city of Riverside appreciates and recognizes your invaluable contributions as a cornerstone in the manufacturing industry.

Your commitment to commitment to protecting innovation through filtration has significantly advanced the aerospace manufacturing community. Your efforts to maintain a high standard of precision and efficiency not only enhance Riverside's reputation, but also inspire cultivate innovation and strengthen our local economy. Your partnerships and support are essential in cultivating the next generation of American workforce. We extend our heartfelt appreciation for your outstanding service and dedication to our community. Signed mayor Patricia Lock Dawson and council member Steven Robillard.

With that, I'd like to invite you into the to the pit right here, and we'll take a quick picture. Yes. The pit. Perfect. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you for everyone hearing me on that one for a little certificate, but important to recognize outstanding businesses like yourself. With that, we'll go ahead and move on to item number three, which is our business resource update. We'll have Simone Sanders go ahead and give that update for us.

Thank you so much economic development committee. I'll just do a quick introduction. I'm pleased to introduce Simone Saunders. She's a project manager on our economic development team that joined us about six months ago and has done a great job jumping into all things economic development and supporting the many efforts we have going on right now in our team including a 124 goals we're working toward for this year and Simone is really the data guru of our team and has done a great job integrating herself into all of our many efforts. So we've put together for you a comprehensive presentation on all of the business resources that we have available to businesses within this ecosystem and so now I will turn it over to Simone.

Thank you so much, Miranda. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon, Chair and Council members. My name is Simone Saunders, and I am a project manager with the Community and Economic Development Department. Today I'm gonna give you an overview of business resources. These are resources that we provide to small and large employers from local to multinational corporations. We want the message to be the same, Riverside is a good place to do business. So what do we do as economic developers? Well, we are the one stop concierge for businesses. And what does that mean?

Well, we're there from the beginning. We're there all the way from site selection to business retention visits, and we help businesses work through permitting and regulatory issues. We offer financing support by finding incentives and grants. We are the connectors to the workforce. And we also are proud of building bridges and the work we've done building bridges between businesses in our city, as well as our county, our state, and federal partners.

Really the goal is the same. If you're a mom and pop or if you're a multinational corporation, Riverside is a place to grow and thrive. Now, over the past year, we created the Business Resource Guide one point zero really as a comprehensive tool for businesses. This includes small business support, which was launched in tandem with the Riverside Business Hub, financing support through CDFIs, SBA, banks, loans, and grants, workforce and training, which you heard a couple about from Randy, but with our educational partners and our workforce programs, mentoring and innovation opportunities through UCR's incubation, X Sight, SoCal Oasis, and Makerspace. And it also provides legal help permitting, emergency preparedness, and utilities information.

Now, this is available in print and online and has already helped current businesses. But we know that the way people look for information has changed. They expect a interactive, mobile friendly tool, and that is why we are launching the Business Resource Guide two point zero as part of our rebrand effort within our new website. And so that is going to be an interactive tool where businesses can create tailored checklists that meet their needs. This is more than a static PDF.

It'll be multilingual, mobile friendly, and always current. So I kind of want to pause here and just tell a story about why all of this is important. I manage the ED team general inbox, and a couple weeks ago, mom Jenny wrote to me on behalf of her son Ben, who is a Boy Scout earning his entrepreneurship merit badge. In order to do that, he has to create a business plan. What did he use?

Our city resources, our website, and our business resource guide. I think that really speaks volumes and resonates that we're not just helping today's business leaders, but we're inspiring the next leaders and next entrepreneurs of tomorrow. He also had some feedback, was maybe include our links in a user friendly way rather than buried in a PDF, which I agree, we're taking to heart and we're going to include. You gotta listen to the younger generation on tech. And finally, we know that business needs evolve over time.

So that's why we apply a spectrum of entrepreneurship approach, which really means we meet them at every stage. From ideation and startup through growth and expansion to maturity and stabilization. Our partnerships and resources scale with the business needs, and our Guide two point zero is gonna help us be more efficient in that effort. And you'll see on the screen some of the ecosystem partners that we

have

strong leadership relationships with. And finally, I want to end on the note that the economic development team is a dedicated partner for businesses. We are committed to empowering businesses and unlocking futures. We are very excited to launch the Guide two point zero within our new website early next year. Thank you so much for your time and I'm open for questions.

Thank you so much. That was a great presentation. Is that your first presentation?

It is. Did a

great job. Did a great job.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for that presentation. Yeah. We we we asked for this update because I I know a lot of businesses are looking for resources. They don't know where to go, and I think having this update is very, very helpful for businesses. In fact, I just had a conversation earlier today with some regional partners on on how to do startups get started at Riverside and how and where do they go? Who's helping them get started? And there's you saw that list.

Yes. There's a lot.

There's a lot of different entities and organizations, and they all fill a a little niche in what they specialize in and how they help businesses get started or grow. And what I was looking for, and I think what this will do is we need a location because people don't know what to look for if they don't know it exists. Right? And so, usually, when you're talking to a city, that's usually that resource to a lot of these businesses, and then we can then point them to these different resources so they can help get started. But I don't know if my colleagues here have any questions or anything they'd like to add.

No questions. I just think it's great. You know, I know that to the chair's point, sometimes folks don't know where to go. Not because there's not one or two, there's too many. An abundance So, do we figure out how to streamline and say, this is your first stop. And, it sounds like that's what this is trying to capture. This is your first stop. If we know Definitely. We can direct folks through our outreach and our businesses through our outreach to this one funnel. It can direct them to other places. It looks like we're doing that and we're taking cues from those that are the most tech savvy, right? The next generation. So I think it's great. Thank you for this work and look forward to the many iterations that are gonna come after. Thanks.

Thank

you. Yes, thank you. I think this is great. Happy to hear about the steps we're taking. And I was actually just going to encourage, but I see we're doing it, but to encourage to continue to.

On the Instagram page, I love the collaborate the collaborations that have been happening with the council member's office and going, you know, visit Riverside and really elevating the stories again. And I think what I'd love to see is maybe a segment of where we bring in and actually go now to some of the businesses like how we just had with last presentation and show a little more behind the scenes and continue to elevate, know, again, businesses here that have a they all have great stories to tell, but, you know, at least we can to social media to amplify and not only elevate them, but continue to elevate and show what we're doing behind the scenes as a city in economic development. But I think I love seeing that that trajection's already happening. So just, yeah, wanna encourage to continue that, and if there's anything that we could do to support, please let us know.

Thank you so much.

Actually And yes, helped great presentation.

I actually helped lead the RISE visits, which are our business retention visits, and I made a little note to reach out to you guys and schedule something with EJ Filtration. So we're definitely gonna work on those efforts. Thank you.

Thank you for that presentation. And I'm sure when this website is all ready to go and ready to launch, we'll have a full council presentation on it because I think it's important for the rest of the council to know that these resources are available because we get asked all the time Sure. By businesses. Hey. What do I do? How do I help? And we can just simply point them to this website. And and and to what council member Sivanto said about the social media. So much peep so much information is passive. You have to feed it to them because they're they don't know to go find it.

So I think that's very good about that and and with the different council members' offices. I think it's a great idea. But thank you for the presentation. We'll go ahead and close item number three and move on into our agenda for any legislative updates. No legislative updates. Any items for future consideration? No items for future consideration. And with that, we'll go ahead and close that. Thank you.