We'll call into session.

If we can do roll call, please.

Sure, Council President Burdick.

Here.

Vice President Squire is not joining us for the workshop.

Councilmember Miller?

Here.

Councilmember Williams.

Here.

Councilmember Erdman.

Here.

Councilmember Nino.

Here.

And Councilmember Cass.

Here.

Six members present, one absent.

We do have a quorum.

All right.

Thank you.

Before we get started with the presentation, just like the last meeting, we'll try to wrap up the presentation by 5 30, give council members uh about 15 minutes to ask questions, and then a hard stop at 5 45 so we can prepare for a six o'clock meeting.

Council members have any questions on that before we get going.

All right.

Go ahead and start your presentation, please.

Okay.

Do I have to turn on the mic or anything?

We're good to go.

Okay, well, good evening, Council members.

My name is Tricia Brown.

I'm the executive director of the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition.

I'm here tonight to talk to you about the supply chain focus for data centers in Wisconsin.

Just about a bit about my background.

I am a career economic developer, having almost 26 years in economic development roles across the country, including at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation as the deputy secretary and chief operating officer.

I also spent four and a half years with a company that is very well known to you all, JP Cullen here in Janesville, doing business development for their industrial team.

So working also with manufacturers in that capacity.

One of the manufacturers and manufacturer and company in the logistics area, both Wisconsin-based, were brought into projects outside of Wisconsin hyperscale projects, and in their capacity, we're seeing growth in a number of different entities that have the same capabilities and capacities that a lot of their clients that they have back here in Wisconsin, but not seeing a lot of Wisconsin companies represented in this.

Obviously, most of the data center development up until the last couple of years has been in the Southeast and kind of the Indiana, Ohio market, Texas, some in creeping into Iowa at that point.

But they realized that there is a window of opportunity for Wisconsin to really kind of take hold and participate in this kind of once in a lifetime industry opportunity and in this technology hyperscale space data center space before it kind of plateaus and thinking, you know, whether it's eight years or ten years or whatever your lucky eight ball would guess it would be, there is a ripe opportunity for Wisconsin companies.

So a group of um leaders kind of got together and decided that if they were going to do this, they needed to really kind of um organize and get some um kind of other members on board.

Evans Transportation was really kind of the spearhead of this.

They're based in in Delafield, Wisconsin, and they do um third-party logistics for for um not only just hyper scalers but manufacturers moving anything from small um light loads to large heavy um equipment across the country across the globe, actually.

Um brought in other companies like train technologies, global power systems out of Milwaukee, Alliant Energy Power Providers, and started funding um what was became a cohort of 15 members of all manufacturers focusing on those companies that would be in the supply chain with the pure intention of helping to create economic opportunity across Wisconsin, particularly in those fields, whether it's in the manufacturing space, in logistics and other suppliers, general contracting, electrical, you name it, and we'll talk about that a little bit further.

But that really was the core target of this.

So, not to be confused with some other data center coalition, mostly the federal one, where their focus is policy regulatory reforms.

Ours is on economic impact for Wisconsin.

To do this, we had three primary ways of kind of really making sure that the coalition was achieving its goals.

Obviously, engaging and educating manufacturers, suppliers across the state on how to engage in these opportunities, what it could look like, what it means to be part of this fast-paced, fast-moving, ever-changing industry from a supplier perspective, regardless if you're a tier one, so you're actually contracting with other the general contractor or the owner itself, or if you're supplying fabrication or parts and pieces to one of those other companies, what does that look like?

Second was then taking Wisconsin and our companies and promoting it on a national scale, going to supplier trade shows and conferences that other significant suppliers or owners were participating in and present or representing and promoting the state, but also the member organizations.

And then third was to inform and advocate on what these impacts have meant to these companies, what they've meant to Wisconsin, what the industry has met in general.

And to be honest with you, that third stool, that third leg of the stool was intended to be more of a later down after or later down the road after we had some wins and some milestones achieved.

But as you can imagine, and you're all experiencing the need to be upfront with some of that education and more active than that sooner than later became evident and important, hence why I'm here today.

It's important to note that we are not raise money to lobby.

We do have a lobbyist, but more so just to be a resource to elected officials or governing bodies as they are considering and weighing factors that go into potential legislation drafting, whatever it might be.

But we are not a lobbying entity.

We are a trade organization.

Our membership is consisted of our manufacturers and suppliers, the general contractors, other industries within that like build supply chains, so to speak, energy and transmission as suppliers like the ATCs, the aligned energies, and data center owners.

And then obviously we have strategic partners, which are economic development workforce, our educational institutions, both from higher ed, technical college that have aligned missions, and we both support and help each other through our aligned objectives.

So the next slide, I'm going to start with what you see on here are the member logos.

As I mentioned before, we're not even six months old.

These are the members that have invested in the coalition so far.

And as you can see, it is a very diverse mix of companies from across the state of Wisconsin.