Perfect.

Good evening, everybody out there in Radio Land.

Uh anyway, this is Economic Development Committee.

Uh Commissioner Anderson uh chairing the meeting, Josh O'Neill, Vice Chair, Eric Mankins is skewed.

We are also joined by our sketch special guest star.

Really need to learn how to speak.

Uh Kelly Sullivan.

Uh with the Butte Local Development Corporation.

The first item on the agenda, as always, is Kelly Sullivan presenting on behalf of Butte Local Development Corp.

Uh their ongoing uh involvement to make our community better and more livable.

So at this time, I would turn over the meeting to Kelly.

Thank you very much for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

So we'll kind of kick off with some chat about our loan department.

Um we've got one new application going in front of loan committee on October fifteenth.

We have two Brownfields loans in the pipeline.

Um they're pending some contract work, but one is for a nonprofit and one is for a privately owned business.

Um they're both projects here in Butte Silverbow.

We have one prospective client in the application stage right now.

They're working on their application.

Our total available to lend right now is one point three million.

That's across all of our funds.

So we got that submitted uh approved by our board last week and submitted this week.

Regarding the Headwaters Tech Hub, myself and Jay Doyle from our team attended the Tech Hub Summit September 10th to the 12th in Bozeman.

I spoke on a panel of economic development professionals from around the state on the topic of why when you're looking at locating a business in a community, would you want to use your economic development organization first?

Why do you want to go to them first?

We got some great feedback.

There were a few businesses potential potentially looking at Montana in the crowd.

And a few who did not know were not that familiar with economic development organizations, didn't know all the things that we do, and so we're excited to kind of hear us speak on that topic.

I'm partnering on a grant application right now with Montana Tech for a substantial grant that could be put towards germanium usage in Butte.

And Butte's being looked at for a lot of critical minerals work.

But germanium is one that it has properties as a semiconductor and a usage in electronics.

And we're going to assist in the grant application.

Although I confess tech is doing the heavy lifting because this is a topic way outside of my knowledge.

We also met with a client that's considering Butte for an underground mine tour at the Underground Mine Education Center at Montana Tech.

That was the day before we went over to the Tech Hub Summit.

They came to Butte specifically for this.

We had some reps come down from Montana Department of Commerce, leaders from Montana Tech, and then Chief Executive Gallagher was also a part of that.

And these folks continue to work very closely with different departments at my organization.

They're talking to the loan department, they're working with the Small Business Development Center.

They're excited to bring their business here, and they want to come yesterday, but they're realizing how much there is to kind of putting it all together.

So we've been able to guide them through a lot of that.

The Apex Accelerator, which is our government contracting division.

The lead of that, Deanna Langman, has worked for them for about 20 years, and she recently resigned kind of unexpectedly.

So we're not sure what the future holds for that program.

But we're hoping that it continues and that they can find a good replacement to lead that.

We've turned over some SARDA funds.

So the BLDC got some SARDA funds about five or six years ago.

It was before my time, so I'm I'm gonna say maybe it was about six years ago to do some work in the Lizzie Block alley, which is the block behind the MM, and you've seen those lights in that alley, and there's a mural back there.

So there were there were plans for some other work back there, but then the MM burned down.

Now Gamers is under construction, and that alley is kind of not where we hoped it would be, you know, when we got those funds six years ago.

So we were approached by the Uptown Master Plan Association to see if we'd be interested in turning over what remains of those funds, and I don't know the exact amount, it wasn't much that was left, maybe a couple thousand dollars.

If we wanted to turn it over and put it towards the Uptown Master Plan's wayfinding efforts, and we said yes that we would do that because we felt like the Lizzie block is just not in in any shape right now for us to continue that project.

Um I've signed up for the Grow America Economic Development Finance 101 course and two other people on my team are going to be taking that with me.

Oh, I already said that about the work plan.

Uh Sonata, which is the Norwegian battery company.

We continue to have calls with them about every other month, and we had a call with them recently, um, still planning on coming to Butte, but of course, as I report often, there's a lot of work to do on their side of things before they can actually make that a reality.

Um, but their intention is still to land that business in Butte at some point.

Uh we've begun working on our fiscal year 2026 budget.

We'll bring that to our board for approval at the end of October.