Megan Cannavan.

Present Steve Flaherty.

President.

Mark Goodwin.

Present.

Brian Jenkins.

Here.

Here.

Sean Keller.

Here.

Philip Whitaker.

Andrew White.

I.

All right.

I did say R.

How do we want to run this?

And just kind of get through.

And we've we're like half an hour behind, so we're gonna make things a little more down and dirty, I think, and try to get room in the meat of it.

Um we talked about this before.

Since this board is completely new, a lot of you are new to the world of group of corporations economic development in general.

Um we thought it was a good time to really kind of have these two planning sessions to right set us, give you some background history, um, and then set some realistic things moving forward that we could be working towards.

Um, and when I say realistic, realizing that right now you're your PBC side of the house is one staff member.

Um staff member with friends, though.

Yeah, staff from our friends.

There's a really there's two really great ideas right here in the middle of the room that help out a lot.

Elaine and Sam jumped in.

Um trying to set some things we know we can accomplish that go back towards the the city council goals, and we'll go over that and then the economic development plan in general.

Um, that you know, we can publicize, kind of show what this the CIC is capable of, which I think helps slayer in terms of revenue generation and things in that nature.

So with all that being said, um to start things off and kind of give you an overall overview of how we kind of got here.

Those change every two years.

Um council has a retreat similar to this where they kind of go over what we've accomplished over the last two years, um, and and then you know, based on several bits of information, including the community attitudinal survey and other things that we we glean information from, they come up with goals uh for how we're we're trying to work together to accomplish the needs of our community.

So I'll have Heather and Andy go over that component of the session.

Thanks, Sean.

Um, I guess I'll start.

So we reorganized in January of this year.

Um, and like Sean said, we meet here and come up with an overarching goal, and then we vote on what our top priorities are.

Um we kept our overarching goal from the last session, which is to make the lives of our resident residents and businesses better or easier.

Um I foresee that kind of carrying forward for quite some time.

After um discussion, um, we kind of divided out.

I will say in our previous session, safety became the number one concern.

Um, but in this session, we talked about what we're already meeting and maintaining versus the policy decisions we need to be working on for the next two years.

And um, the top priority was working on a facilities plan, which we had a facilities master plan, and we are looking at the facilities we have, which we have substantially outgrown on all fronts, and uh looking at where um the future will be.

Do you have anything to add to that, Andy?

Yeah, I think the bigger picture to um want the board to look at these goals independent of council and think about them as they relate to what council's ultimately trying to hand off to the PDC, which is to really run an expedient and efficient economic development arm for the city.

Um with that said, all of the goals that we have out there, all you know, nine of them, there's four primary and and five secondary, are relative.

I see as a point of reference, uh eight and nine, the expansion of downtown areas officing walk building amenities, and then nine retaining existing and encouraging new businesses kind of really important to us.

Um additionally, though, annexation policy and intergovernmental cooperation along with infrastructure traffic congestion, those are all really important to us, but I think council's expectation would be that we take the initial investment that we've got and refine these into something that's gonna be core to you know where we're going.

So the council, these are going to be relevant for the next two years.

And I think beyond that, um, what we set forth in this effort will help influence that next goal setting session that we haven't had in fact.

So it's a milestone to be at this point because a couple years ago, Sean didn't work here.

Council took a chance and invested in the economic development strategy, and then you have all of these deliberals that we've talked about.

And to be at this point is really exciting for me personally to be with all of you because we just came together.

I mean a year ago, we were having this meeting with like three people, and uh so we've come a long way.

And um you can see, I think you can see it in the numbers that Sean represented in his report.

So high level, um, we have an environmental structure, but what this board is going to do is largely going to be independent uh of specifics of that.

So I think it's really up to us in terms of what you all see and you know your representation on the board in terms of getting us to where we really need to be, which is that perpetual quality of life enhancement without raising cost to our constituents, so it's basically growth and an answer to you know some of these ailments that we consistently deal with.

Yes.

The only other thing I would mention is one of council's goals as well was communication and storytelling, which you hit on that a little earlier.

Is we are I would say the city is continuously working on making sure we're telling our story, and I would also say that PDC needs to do that as well.

Um because people don't know unless we tell them.