Welcome to the business session.

Our first item is approval of minutes for business session of October 28th, 2021.

Is there a motion?

Second.

I have a question for the city attorney because we've been doing this for six years.

Why do we have to approve the minutes for business session?

I mean, I just we just we've been doing it forever.

Yeah, I I'm happy to look into it to see if there's a legal reason why we've been doing it.

I seems to just be the thing we've always done, which is a dangerous sentiment.

I'll take a look at it and see if there's a legal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll just you know save us 30 seconds.

All right.

Um advanced KC task force update, Ms.

Tyndall.

Thank you.

Low even for me today.

Good afternoon, Carrie Tyndall, City Manager's Office.

Um, so I was asked to give a brief update on the status of the advanced KC task force project.

So gonna move through this quickly because I know you have some other business.

Just real uh high level uh reminder, the original resolution, uh directed staff to undertake some review of our advanced KC processes and scorecard, um, and they kind of fall into three buckets of engaging, reviewing, and creating with an equity centered approach.

So there were some specific groups that we were to engage, some specific pieces of um information we were supposed to evaluate, and we were supposed to incorporate some public opportunities for public comment on incentives.

There were six areas of focus of the project, um, incentive priorities, incentive criteria, applications fee structures, board information, and equity.

So this is just a quick summary of our progress through September, which was the last time we came before business session and gave an update.

So we have um recruited and convened the task force, we engaged facilitators for the project, we assembled a technical advisory uh team, and we've had about 11 committee meetings.

So the committee's been meeting about every two to three weeks since May, and that committee has assessed current conditions, begun to identify potential priority and strategy recommendations, which I refer to as big ideas, and we've begun our community outreach.

In terms of the last 30 to 45 days, um we've had two additional standing committee meetings since I last was here, and um the committee has uh had some introductory discussions about potential models for incentive tierings and for an equity scorecard or equity components of our scorecard.

Um we have undertaken an online community survey, we completed some focus groups, and there are two pieces of proposed policy legislation in the neighborhoods planning and development committee.

So just quickly uh summary of kind of what's included in our community outreach.

We have a project website, a community online community survey, the focus groups, and we are planning to do some additional virtual town halls later this month.

This is just a little quick picture of what our um advanced case project website looks like.

So there's information about who's on the committee, um the community surveys, uh different meetings that are scheduled, our dashboard of data related to advanced KC 1.0, some information about our original strategic plan, and then some specific measurement tools for incentives.

This is just a link to that website for anybody, but it's on the city's website, it's under the city managers department.

Um with regard to the online community survey, I just wanted to give you a quick update on on where we're at with that.

We have 655 responses to date.

My goal was 300 to 400, so I'm super thrilled with that response.

Um, but uh we do have some gaps in terms of um representation geographically, and so we are continuing to put that survey out so that we can get some additional um responses from underrepresented districts and underrepresented demographic groups.

So we're looking for some additional input from bus riders, families with children, and people with disabilities, as well as some of these geographic areas.

Um I mentioned that we held some focus groups, so we held three days worth of focus groups.

There were 11 topics covered.

We sent out 133 invitations, um, two participants.

We had 60 attendees, which was about a 45% attendance rate, and these are the topics that we covered.

So we had a group focused on industrial and logistics development, office and retail development, small and startup businesses, residential development, project financing, a skilled and well compensated workforce, taxing districts, chambers and EDOs, the hospitality and attraction industry, land use and infrastructure planning, and community and social institutions.

And this is just a list of some of the participants from that group.

So you'll recommend, you'll recognize a lot of different development groups, large scale community development, community groups, school districts, lending institutions, and other economic development partners as well as community institutions on that list.

And then this is just a quick summary of the current policy discussions at the neighborhood planning and development committee.

So there's a resolution that would adopt a set of purposes and value statements and directs the committee to evaluate and make recommendations pertaining to three big ideas one incentive tiering equity scorecard and also a housing continuum.

And then there's an ordinance that updates our economic development incentive policy.

So the original policy was adopted in 2014, so it's been quite a long time, almost 10 years since advanced KC was originally adopted, and the processes that we undertook were originally conceptualized.

So this attempts to take some of the feedback that we got from the mayor, mayor and council in your surveys and your interviews that were conducted this spring and put something to paper for you to consider and discuss.

And so what have we learned from our task force activities so far?

We have learned that reform of our incentive policies is really larger than our scorecard, and that what we really need is a stronger vision and goals to effectively determine what we want to measure on the scorecard.

We've also heard from constituents that there's a strong desire for new tools and additional funding sources to meet needs that are not currently being met.

We are dealing with some competing perspectives and objectives that we need to reconcile in conjunction with these policies, and we're overwhelmingly hearing from the community that they want more opportunity for input.

And I'm pleased to say that in the focus groups that we had the last uh few or last week and early this week, we have gotten some new ideas.

So that is very valuable input that we're getting, and it is an additive process that is really helping to create a better set of recommendations to the council in the future.

We're also hearing that Kansas City is a very big community with a lot of different needs, and that a one-size-fits-all economic development policy may not be entirely what is needed here, and that we may need to look at a multi-pronged strategy.

So, where are we at in this process?

This is just a very simple diagram of a strategic planning process, and it outlines kind of the major phases.