Welcome to business session.

Our first item is approval of minutes for business session of July 18th.

Is there a motion?

Moved.

Second.

I've been moved and seconded.

All in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Motion passes.

Our topic for today is introduction of economic development consultants planning sessions and process to review.

Has my name on the agenda, but really the uh the queen of this wonderful idea and the work in the spearhead is Councilwoman Andrea Boo of the Sixth District at Large.

Councilwoman Boo.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um it is I I am very excited to kick this off today.

Um, our consultants are joining virtually, but as you all know, they will be here next week to meet with us individually.

Um today they're going to take an opportunity to do a brief introduction, kind of an overview of where we're going with this.

Um but next week we'll have an uh opportunity to get into detail about your thoughts, your desires, your um your ideas about what economic development means in Kansas City and where we want to go with this uh uh review of our existing policies and a new plan.

Um also um in the audience today, of course, is Tracy Lewis uh from the EDC.

Um and I also want to suggest that for those new members who may not have a detailed understanding of all of our economic development tools.

Um he and others of us stand ready uh to provide you with some additional information.

I know there will be a discussion about um economic development in general, um, an overview today, and we'll get into that more in detail as we go along.

Um I just want to thank you all for your um cooperation in this.

Today is kind of our opportunity.

I'd hope to get us all together in a strategic planning session.

Uh but this is kind of that opportunity, and uh next week we will be in smaller groups, and I think it will give us an opportunity to have um a more uh robust discussion.

So with that, I will turn it over to Matt Patton with Angeloo Economics.

And he has a presentation, but also wants to provide an opportunity for uh dialogue and interaction.

We won't get into the the weeds, I guess I will say, of where we want to go with this, but uh just kind of to provide an opportunity to get to know them.

So with that, um I will turn it over to Matt.

Thank you, Councilwoman Boo.

Uh it's a pleasure to meet with all of you virtually, and I look forward to meeting with you individually next week.

Uh as councilwoman mentioned, uh I've prepared some remarks about what we intend to do and describe and discuss economic development.

Um I am Matt Patton with Angelo Economics.

I'm the uh executive vice president.

And on our trip, forthcoming, uh we will be joined by our CEO, our founder Angelos Angelou, and our director of research, Marshall McDaniel.

Um so for those of you who are new to Angelo Economics, I'm not going to take any of that personally.

Uh, we have been around for 28 years, and we have done projects in 43 states and 12 countries.

Um may or may not be aware of our work in Dallas, Texas, uh, where we did a complete revamp of their economic development strategy, incentive policy, and going from district to district uh to make sure that each district is achieving the goals that it needs to achieve to best serve its people.

Now, just because we've done work in 43 states, 12 countries, um, you know, a thousand projects, whatever it may be, that does not make us experts in Kansas City.

Uh, and that is why we need to meet with each of you to better understand what's going on in Kansas City in each one of your council districts.

Um our team, we're well versed in many things, but again, uh not Kansas City.

Right.

I've been there as a tourist, and I've enjoyed watching you beat the Ravens uh when my Browns can't make it that far, so I appreciate that.

But now it's time to learn more about Kansas City as a functional city, its economic development trajectory, and what each city council member wants to achieve in their district in the short term and in the long term.

So a little bit more background about Angelos Angelou.

Uh prior to founding Angelo Economics, he was the chief economist for the city of Austin and helped uh bring in more than 800 companies to the city, including IBM, Apple, Samsung.

It's a very impressive list, and we're proud of the job creation record that he has.

But I also like to mention that he created all the traffic problems in Austin.

So with economic development, there's always a need to appreciate the infrastructure around it and how do we manage growth?

Myself, I was formerly faculty at the University of Nebraska, but I've since switched to consultant work.

And my background's in geography and GIS, so thinking about supply chains and how do we orchestrate those supply chains functionally across the city.

Our director of research, Marshall McDaniel, more of the finance side of things really gets to do those deep dives on statistics and analyses to make sure that the data makes sense and is actionable for each community because data is fine, but without that qualitative piece, without understanding what's actually going on, the ground in Kansas City, data is just that, and it's only part of the story.

If we think like post-World War II type of late 40s, early 50s, economic development 1.0, it was really just company attraction.

You get the big Ford plant, the big GE plant, you get that company there, everything else will take care of itself.

If you take care of the businesses, then the people will come, the jobs will come, and everyone's happy.

This works for a period, and then we kind of graduate into economic development 2.0, which is more of an emphasis on job and placemaking, making sure that a city is attracting talent, there's some quality of place, there's some focus on business expansion, but limited downtown development.

This is more of that suburban sprawl era, and we're looking at well, how do we make neighborhoods a little bit more interesting in terms of attacking talent?

The newest phase where we're in today, and where a lot of economic developers around the country are thinking about things is this 3.0.