Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen at this time.

I'm gonna call the Economic Development Committee meeting of August 5th, 2026.

Call to order.

Present.

Josh O'Neill, Eric Mankins, Trude Healy, Tommy Walker, Russell, and Butch, Girbrand.

We have a full house.

With us tonight, the famous ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kelly Sullivan.

The executive director of the Butte Local Development, also known as the BLDC.

Kelly, welcome.

Thank you.

We're gonna throw your ad out there and we'll take questions after.

Thanks for having me.

So I might have touched on this last month about the housing development series that's coming up this fall.

So Nancy DeRosier, who is the housing coordinator for Butte Silverbow, is putting on a three-part series of uh she'll have panelists at each event, and this is in an effort to bring people who own buildings in Uptown Butte together with people who might want to develop housing on upper floors, uh, maybe above commercial uh enterprises.

So September 3rd, October 13th, and November 9th.

You of course are all invited to join us any of those evenings from about 5 to 6 30.

And we're just kind of doing all of the planning right now.

We're in the planning stage, um, but just kind of bringing together people that might be able to look at you know developing some of these buildings that sit empty.

Uh Brownfields update.

We've currently got about six projects in Butte in various stages from assessment to cleanup to redevelopment.

So our new Brownfields coordinator, Brennan is quite busy.

And uh yeah, there's a lot going on in Brownfield.

We have a new food and ag director.

Her name is Jessica Leducer, and she has just joined our team, so we're excited to have someone in that role.

And we are now fully staffed again.

Uh the BLDC and Headwaters participated in the Department of Commerce's summer road show.

This was the it was it was entitled The Governor's Road Show.

The governor didn't um make it, but uh a lot of folks from Commerce were there.

Uh they were in Butte on July 9th, and they talked about the programs and services available to economic development organizations and our clients, the stakeholders in our community.

Um we had some of our clients were there and talked a little bit about how we've helped them with different projects over the years.

Um projects that maybe the funding came to us through commerce.

And then some of those programs, a number of those programs are set to sunset in the 2027 legislature.

So one of the things we wanted to talk about with our area legislators was how we can get that sunset extended, and the request is going to be to accept extend that sunset for nine years so that it doesn't land right in a legislative session.

Um that's like our food and ag program, our small business development center program, the uh CRDC program, all of that funding is set to expire.

And so we're trying to get that extended, and hopefully, you know, our area legislators have been really uh open to they understand the work we do, and they've been really open to extending those programs.

Uh we put out that request for proposal.

I've talked about this for a potential business accelerator in conjunction with Montana Tech.

Uh we put out the request for proposals and we got four submissions.

So scoring by the committee is due by August 14th.

Uh we have a gal from the Headwaters Tech Hub who helped us develop an online score.

She worked in an online scoring portal.

So it'll be a really slick way to be able to score these proposals and see who comes out ahead to do this is for the feasibility study to see should we do an accelerator in conjunction with Montana Tech?

Does Butte need this?

Where should it be?

Who would operate it?

The feasibility study will hopefully answer all those questions.

We had recent meetings and red carpet tours with two new firms to two firms new to the Butte landscape.

They're looking for locations and potential industry partners, you know, who can they work with to further the work they're doing?

They're pretty new, so I can't say too much more about what industry they're in, but July's been busy with meetings such as that.

We're going to take on loan management for the newly formed Montana Women's Finance Cooperative.

They are a nonprofit and they're looking to do small loans across the state to women-led businesses, and they needed help from an economic development organization that maybe had a little bit of capacity to help them with those loans.

And right now, I think in their fund, they only have around 87,000.

So they're not going to be big complex loans, but smaller loans to help uh women business owners.

So is it around business?

It would be new businesses.

Yeah, great question, Tommy.

New businesses.

We met with a developer who was in the Utah, Colorado area for many years, and she has extensive experience in bringing new businesses to fruition in communities.

She sees a lot of potential in Butte.

So she met with my team.