Okay, good.

The time is now 2.17 p.m.

on Wednesday, February 11th, 2026 in the city of San Antonio.

Be session is called to order.

Special sessions called order.

Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Councilmember Corps.

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez.

Present.

Councilmember Via Gran.

Here.

Councilmember Mungia.

Councilmember Castillo.

Councilmember Gaulman.

Councilmember Alarete Gavito.

Here.

Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez.

Councilmember Spears.

Councilmember White.

Mayor Jones.

Mayor, we have Quorum.

Great.

Thanks, Madam Clerk.

This meeting will include a briefing on the Greater SATX Regional Economic Partnership 2016 plan and agreement.

Let me provide some remarks before I have to leave here shortly and turn it over to Councilman McKee Rodriguez.

As we are also looking at the changes in the uh in the federal environment, there's an opportunity, I think, as evident by uh the Taiwanese delegation that I hosted, as well as some of the follow-on activity as a result of that, but also other countries that are looking at onshoring the importance of making sure this is a really robust capability, which is why we are having them brief their plan to us here in light of the major investment uh that the city makes into this and ensuring we have a really strong ROI.

Um again, as we take each of these topics um, not in silos, but in the aggregate, um, obviously the Greater SATX team works quite closely with with Alex Lopez to help us understand um and ensure that the return on investment for these incentive packages um is exactly um uh as as strong as they can as they as as they can possibly be in light of you know our understanding of the things that we are not going to invest in as a as a result of those foregone property tax taxes, for example.

Um I want to thank the um the the Greater SATX team, they've um given me a couple of pre-briefs um on this, and so as we look at making sure that this is the best a resource that best serves the city, uh Greater SATX um serves other um communities, municipalities as part of their efforts, but obviously we really care about San Antonio only and want to make sure that our ROI is in fact um the strongest it can be.

I appreciate the updates to the presentation as well.

That um if you haven't had the opportunity, I would encourage my colleagues to read in in full the Tarlandton report, uh which is the um uh report that goes over how how well this has um worked over the year over the years and where we are still lagging when it comes to our counter our peer cities on some of these things.

In particular, the one that sticks out to me is wage growth.

Um so again, we're when we look at the uh incentive packages and the ROI, we have to see the long-term um movement on those and wage growth is something that I know we all um care about because you know if we don't have that, we then look at the monies that we have to put into these assistance programs, whether it's CPS or SAWs or anything else, right?

So ensuring that um we our efforts are tied to ensuring we are best supporting families, and we best do that by advocating for good uh good wages for them and their families.

Okay.

Um, Eric, I'll turn it over to you uh for comments.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um so yes, so we we we uh and I want to thank Sarah because we we had to adjust this date a couple of times, but we wanted to, as the mayor laid out, um, have Sarah come in and cover uh the organization, what they've accomplished over the last five years and where their scope and focus is going forward, and you'll hear about that in the presentation.

It's also important uh for you uh to have an opportunity to understand and be able to ask questions because uh in about two weeks, we'll bring forward our annual contract with Greater SATX.

It's our funding contract for our portion, and Brenda will talk a little bit about that.

Um we we work very well with uh with Greater SATX, they're an important partner, as the mayor said in making sure that uh from an expansion uh of existing companies and the recruitment of other industries, key industries that we continue to take advantage of San Antonio's position.

Um so I'm gonna hand it over to Brenda.

Brenda's gonna do some um opening comments and presentation on the proposed contract, and then uh Sarah will conclude.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

I'm Brenda Hicksorenson, Economic Development Director, and as mentioned, joining me today presenting is Sir Carabius Rush, president and CEO of Greater SATX Regional Economic Partnership.

Together, we will provide more information about our partnership and the impacts that has had on San Antonio and the region.

This relationship is focused on a few of the areas that we address within the economic development department, specifically the corporate recruitment efforts, both domestically and internationally, as well as supporting existing job creators with services, advocacy, and support, so they continue to grow and call San Antonio home.

While Greater SATX celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2025, the public-private partnership between Greater Bear County and San Diego San Antonio was established in 2010.

As Greater continued to expand their organizational scope, they also expanded that partnership and in 2021 expanded to 14 regional partners with the launch of their all-in strategy.

At that time, the City of San Antonio shifted to a performance-based contract.

I will touch upon that contract conclusion as well as the proposed 2026 contract.

Here you will see a few years of historical performance as well as the projected 2025 results, which are pending final validation.

There are several items greater directly controls, such as lead pursuits and leads converted to active projects.

Of those items, GRADER has met or exceeded their targets.

There are other factors, such as job creation and capital investment, in which GRADER influences.

Those results were not as anticipated, and Sarah will provide more insight into the factors associated with those results.

We will you will also note here that in 2024, we pivoted our foreign direct investment or FDI strategy and began partnering with GRADER for an in-country lead generation efforts.

Again, all numbers are pending final validation.

This slide highlights the anticipator the anticipated public sector investments as a result.

But I'd like to outline first what that means for our 2026 proposed agreement.

The general services agreement portion of the agreement decreases from a maximum potential of $635,000 to a maximum potential of $110,000.

That $510,000 is based on the per capita model, but instead of shifting entirely to the per capita, we are proposing 70% or the 357,000 you see here to be paid in three quarterly installments to support the work done every day by Greater SATX to achieve those longer term results.

The remaining 30% or 153,000 remains performance-based, which will be the final contract payment and paid at a rate of $500 for every job anticipated to be created with wages at or above 100,000 annually.

The FDI attraction plan is proposed to increase by 55,000 to accommodate our account for the Japan led or Japan lead generation efforts.

The FDI portion continues to be reimbursed on actual costs incurred for approved activities.

The total potential investment is proposed at $759,250, as earlier mentioned, representing a possible minimum decrease of $70,000 in 2026 from 2025.

Sarah will be providing more information about their anticipated five year impacts from their momentum 2030 strategy, but the 2026 COSA impacts represent one year of those anticipated impacts specific to San Antonio.

Here is that quick snapshot of the overall impact of the per capita model for all investor communities as referenced earlier.

There's 14 partner communities.

Good afternoon, Council members.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you.

And I hope you'll be kind because you can see I have an injury on my shoulder.

So thank you in advance for that.

I'm really thrilled to be here with you and have the opportunity to share more about our Momentum 2030 strategy and the ways that we will partner over the next five years to drive economic mobility and prosperity for our region.

As we wanted to begin with our contract details, and so we're going to continue that here by looking specifically at how our organization is funded and the trajectory of what that funding cycle will look like over the next five years.

As you can see here, we you know we're we're well positioned as an organization through our public and private sector partnerships to be able to offer the services that you will hear about today at no cost to our clients.

We think that that is really important.

We know that that's critical in how this business operates around the United States, and so we we need to make sure we have the correct funding streams to manage that.

You'll see that we're supported primarily directly by the private sector through our C6 funding agreements that makes up 58%.

But there are buckets within these other categories that are also private sector investors, particularly on the grant side and in marketing agreements.

And so overall, our makeup today is 70% private sector, 30% public sector.

And that differentiation is important.

The private sector has leaned in and said how important this mission is, and we're grateful for that.

As we work move into this year, we have budgeted conservatively as we are beginning a new uh campaign for our work, and so we are looking at a projected revenue this year of $7.87 million.

Um, but we are working towards a commitment of $9 million from our investors by the end of this year, and working our way up to an $11.5 or $12 million a year funding stream.

And just to put that into context, when you look at economic development organizations in our peer set, I want to highlight the Dallas region sits at $16.1 million, Denver sits at $12.2, Jacksonville sits at 10 million, and Phoenix sits at $9 million, and I believe San Antonio deserves the very best in terms of representation, as I know you do.

Looking forward at our planned expenses, you know, the work that we do is very staff heavy and staff focused because we are in the customer service business of providing direct services to companies as they are considering either expansions or new new facilities in the region.

And I want to highlight quickly we have quite a few of our team members here today that are excited to get to see here and enjoy the work that we do together.

When we are looking at this year ahead, we are working towards a staff of 31 individuals.

And when you look at the averages throughout the United States of our peer economic development organizations, the typical staff size is 35.

And so we are confident that we'll be able to achieve that as we reach our new fundraising goals.

I think more importantly, here on this slide is to recognize that at least 75% of our expenditures go directly to our service delivery efforts and engaging with our clients and marketing this region to companies not only engaging locally but throughout the United States and globally.

Brenda mentioned that our results in 2025 were not where we were hoping they would be.

And I think that unfortunately, when we look at last year, there were a lot of uncertainties that really inhibited businesses' ability to make decisions.

They were unable to predict, for example, the cost of building a new facility because all of a sudden there were tariffs they needed to consider and they didn't understand those full implications.

They also were having a hard time projecting what it would cost to be able to build products if they were in the manufacturing sector.

And in business, uncertainty equals no decision.

It equals delay and oftentimes equals the end of a project.

As we were starting out at the beginning of last year, we were confident we would be announcing about 7,500 jobs last year.

We had them at the finish line and felt really, really good.

Unfortunately, that did not happen.

We however continue to be in ongoing conversations with and supporting these businesses that were looking at making those decisions.

And we are seeing, you know, this wasn't just in San Antonio.

I think this is really important to mention.

It wasn't just San Antonio, it wasn't just Texas.

This was a trend throughout the entire United States.

And looking at the Southern United States in particular, this was last year was the worst year in over 30 years for corporate location announcements.

So again, this was not just us.

As we look at the tailwinds, however, that are coming up and influencing corporate decisions now.

We look specifically at the defense sector.

There is an increased spending happening right now in the defense industry, and that is driving a significant amount of corporate activity today.

And of course, we are extremely well positioned, and that is showing up well in our pipeline.

Life sciences is also reassuring, as is the semiconductor industry and other manufacturing facilities.

I like to call national security-oriented manufacturing, thinking about things like our electric grid and transformers, those elements that we really need to make sure we have confidence will serve this community in the long run.

All of these projects are certainly showing up in our pipeline, and we're feeling confident about the direction of those industries here in San Antonio.

It's also a really great convergence of investment that is happening here in this region right now.

We are investing in ourselves in unprecedented ways, and it is going to show up in our results.

When you think specifically about what is happening with Alamo College's near nearly one billion dollar bond program, if you're looking at UT San Antonio's merger, the work that you all have committed to with Ready to Work, Alamo Promise, all of these workforce development efforts are going to lead for transformational opportunities here within the region.

But we're also seeing that level of investment within our infrastructure, right?

And we need to continue to invest in our infrastructure as we want to effectively manage the growth that is coming our way.

Right now, the tech arena is changing extremely rapidly.

That's influencing a lot of different programs and project opportunities, and we certainly see that both in the pipeline, but also as a challenge that our local businesses are trying to learn to navigate as they're thinking about upskilling their own workforce.

So just quickly, I wanted to speak to what does a typical lead cycle look like for our organization and what are the ways that we are engaging with companies throughout the life cycle of that relationship.

So first and foremost, our job is to make sure the brand of San Antonio is known to companies around the world, that they're thinking about San Antonio as a potential business investment destination and not just the city they want to come to for tourism and a great time, right?

We want that too, but we want them thinking about us as a business destination.

So that marketing and what we call top of the funnel lead generation is really important to our overall work.

And making sure that companies are getting the right information, actionable insights, and quality customer service so that they can make these decisions quickly and easily.

Our lead generation cycle, you know, we really began ramping up in 2022 and 2023 and have added more than 2,000 leads during the last few years to our pipeline.

So when we talk about a lead, that is engagement with marketing to, connecting with companies at that top level, right?

And trying to convert them into a conversation where they're willing to hear more, they're engaging with us.

As you all know, I worked in in the Dallas market before moving here to San Antonio.

And in 2012 and 2013, we were visiting stock exchanges in New York and Chicago and talking with them about the Texas market as a destination for those businesses, either to relocate or otherwise.

And just this past year we were able to see that what happened in Dallas with the Texas Stock Exchange, which is going to benefit all of Texas.

But my point in that is really just to showcase that these relationships take time, and we're planting seeds at that early generation cycle level.

On the qualification side, this is where we have an active project, and I'll give you a definition on that in just a moment.

But this is where we have an active project, which is a company ready to start making an investment.

They've put a dollar amount to that project, and they've identified what that employment cycle needs to look like.

And we're responding to the opportunity and showcasing sites here within the region.

So we submitted last year 76 requests for information, which was up 55% from 2024.

So our efforts at that lead generation stage is really starting to show results in that qualification stage.

On the conversion point, this is where that active project has taken a look at the initial data and information that we provide in the qualification step, and they are now in the process of what we like to say kicking dirt here in San Antonio.

They've got their feet on the ground, they're coming in for site visits, they're learning more about the region so they can make their ultimate decision.

And last year we hosted 51 site visits, which was up 8.5%.

And at any given time, our team is working anywhere from 40 to 60 projects in this stage of companies that are working through their process.

And then last but not least, the engagement sector.

I like to call this the service after the sale category.

This is once a company has chosen to locate here in San Antonio, we need to make sure that they're going to be successful through active relationship management, helping them identify problems and solve for those problems.

When you look at last year, we actually had almost 200 unique individual visits with companies that resulted in over 200 BRG assists.

So really great engagement there.

And this is a cycle, right?

Eventually, that company is going to look to continue growing here and make an expansion, and so we're supporting through that process.

I mentioned just a definition around what a project looks like for our region, and want to highlight that typically when we're identifying a project that our team is going to support, we're usually talking around 50 employees as a minimum, and usually about 10 million dollars in new capital investment.

We're focused on some key industries.

Advanced manufacturing, of course, has come such a long way in this community, and we are so well known for that now nationally.

But we're also focused on identifying those corporate headquarters opportunities, life sciences, aerospace and defense, cybersecurity, and new technology opportunities as that industry evolves.

Important, our team spends a decent amount of time thinking about how do we support a particular project so that we can effectively allocate our resources.

And we do that and we give it a literal budget, right?

That our team uses to help support a company through this through this process and allows us to be very disciplined in how we are prioritizing those high high impact projects.

So we like to track and we do track every year our competitiveness against our nine peer metros that you see identified here at the bottom of the screen.

We are focused on making sure we're moving the needle across these major sectors, right?

The work we do doesn't always directly impact where where you see these needles moving, but it certainly influences it.

Super proud of the performance that we've seen looking specifically at our jobs area, really growing career pathways for our residents.

Today we are ranked at number four.

The same is true at project activity.

So the number of projects that we had announced five years ago sat at eight, and it has now since moved up to number four.

So great momentum there.

Workforce is certainly one of the most, if not the most critical element that we need to focus on as a community so we remain competitive.

I think this is indicative that we are doing the right things as a community to make a difference here.

If you look at our educational attainment rate change, we have gone from 10 five years ago to number two.

And our poverty rate change went from 10 to number two.

So we're doing the right things.

So this is our jobs competitive dashboard.

Overall, we moved from 9th to 7th within the jobs category.

On the people category, we moved from 10th to 4th overall.

And on the place category, we moved from 9th to 8th.

So again, some work cut out for us overall as we continue the work of our comprehensive economic development strategy.

I wanted to also highlight quickly across some of our target sectors, the movement that we saw.

This data is looking a little bit more broadly.

It's not just our peer set, but you're seeing the 50 largest metros in the country, and how do we stack up against those in our target industry sectors?

We had some significant movement over the last five years, and I'm especially proud of the work in advanced manufacturing, where we moved from 20th up to second amongst all of the top 50 metros.

In the life sciences and health sector, we saw movement from 47th up to 19th.

And in cybersecurity and information technology, we went from 39th up to 25th.

We didn't see the kind of momentum that we wanted to see in a couple of categories, and that's where you're going to see a very intentional effort in our new strategy to lean in because at the end of the day, we're not we're competitive, we're competing, right?

All the other communities in the country are doing a lot of the same things we're doing to position their community best, and we need to continue to do that.

So just a quick snapshot of the results over our last five-year strategy known as the all-in strategy.

When we work together and we align our investments, we see much greater impact.

And these results show that.

Regionally, you'll see that we landed 118 major projects, and of those 99 were located within the city of San Antonio.

Those projects are investing $7 billion.

And when you look at the City of San Antonio investment specifically, it was $5 billion.

The jobs created sat just under 19,000, and in the city of San Antonio, it was 13,000.

And what I'm especially proud of is that average wage number of exceeding 80,000 per job that was announced over this last five-year period.

Overall, that led to a 29 billion dollar economic impact for our region.

We did a very general economic impact number here for the city of San Antonio.

Unfortunately, our number really just gets us to Bear County, so bear with us, it's not perfect, but essentially a 16 billion dollar economic impact for the city of San Antonio.

And we did the math and thought it was so outrageous, we shouldn't put it on the screen.

But when you look at the investment coming from the City of San Antonio over the last five years, it sat just under $3 million.

And that return on investment, again, simple math, was $5,525 the investment that you all made in our organization.

So first of all, thank you for that investment, and we're we're really proud of those results.

So key lessons from the all-in strategy that we are really focused on pulling into our new strategy is a couple of things.

Obviously, the largest projects have the greatest impact.

It makes a lot of sense, right?

But we need to be able to balance some of those bigger project opportunities with other growth opportunities and making sure that we're being thoughtful about how we're allocating our resources accordingly.

JCB is a great example of this.

They have already announced that they're doubling the size of their facility and the investments around that.

And they're leveraging local companies to build out their facilities, and they are investing in significant ways in our local philanthropic efforts within this community.

They've done some incredible things already as a new member of our community.

The second point is our growth depends on talent.

We cannot compete if we don't have the right workforce here that is trained and skilled and ready to deliver, that's also flexible, right, and learning as upskilling and is going to be required with all these changes in technology that are coming our way.

So really focusing on our talent market is crucial.

And the last point is that speed wins deals.

When we move fast and we move smart, we're going to be in a position to win.

Unfortunately, we're able to point to seven different projects that we didn't win over this last five year period because we just were not able to pull the site readiness together quickly enough.

We weren't able to respond quickly enough from an overall incentives perspective or other issues like that that may delay project decisions and then drive us toward a project loss.

So essentially our mission has not changed.

And for 50 years now, we have existed to diversify this region's economy.

And in doing so, we we focus on driving the location and expansion of quality employers, always with a lens towards economic mobility and prosperity.

What we have done here is further clarify our role in these sectors.

So when you look at making sure that we're leading the efforts where our expertise is required.

So accelerating job growth, that's our core focus, our core mission.

We're going to be supporting in those areas where our partners are best positioned to lead.

So on workforce and quality of place development, we're going to be there to support, right?

But it's not necessarily our place to lead.

And then we also have layered in an area of focus to influence where alignment and momentum matter most, the things that are going to empower our modern economy.

Essentially, we're working to maximize the impact of our work and the region's growth.

So what is changing?

We're sharpening our focus to increase our impact.

We're prioritizing sectors with significant wage with scale and growth potential.

We're shifting our workforce strategy towards graduate retention and direct career connectivity.

We want to make sure we're graduating the career-ready students and keep them here in San Antonio.

We're focused on turning data into actionable intelligence and not simply allowing that great work that's being done only to go to our clients, right, that are considering location decisions.

We want to turn that into information that drives our regional economy and the discussions we need to be having to make sure we're successful not just today, but 50 years from now.

And we're getting really serious about our work on site readiness and infrastructure.

We need to be able to meet those aggressive deal timelines if we want to be competitive.

Essentially, our changes are about winning in a more competitive environment.

What's continuing?

Our targeted corporate recruitment efforts, obviously, with a focus on those projects that deliver more jobs that align on our high wage thresholds when possible, and focusing on those core industries that we defined before.

Deepening our our partnerships regionally and with our partners here at the city of San Antonio, making sure that we are working together, that we're all moving together in the same direction to drive impact and looking at our mega region more broadly, which we consider engaging and partnering with Austin because our our region is growing into one that is going to happen at some point.

But also thinking about the connectivity and relationships that we have into Mexico.

These talent pathways and making sure that folks are able to get into quality jobs are absolutely crucial.

And supporting San Antonio Airport.

So 125 projects generating 20,000 direct jobs with an average wage of 100,000 per year, aiming for $5 billion in capital investment.

And then some of you know we have some fantastic youth uh youth uh work-based learning programs and ensuring that we get 25,000 students through those work-based learning programs and connected directly to companies.

The regional impact of all of that you can see below.

I think one of the most important goals on this chart is that educational attainment goal.

We know that we get cut from projects before we're even before we even know about it, because our educational attainment level isn't where it needs to be.

And so as we continue as a community to lean in on that, working towards a 45% uh educational attainment rate is a big goal for us, and one you'll see a lot of focus on.

So, Momentum 2030 is intended to build on what works.

We like to say it's evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Um, it's allowing us to sharpen our focus and build on on what has been working, and you know, as we think about diversifying our corporate base and our economy, we also are addressing long-standing gaps in educational attainment and moving the needle on our high poverty rates.

These it takes time, right?

These are not things that get solved in year one or even in the first year of a regional economic development strategy.

It requires and frankly demands of us that we have a cohesive and holistic lens on our economic development strategy.

And when our community is all pulling together in the same direction, we're going to see that needle move.

So, with that, I'm super grateful for the partnership that we have with each of you with the city of San Antonio.

It's a long-standing partnership, and we're grateful for your leadership in economic development, and we're grateful for your support.

Thank you so much for the presentation, Sarah.

Um, Eric, did you have anything additional you wanted to add?

Um the only thing I was gonna add is that you probably noticed as Sarah went to the presentation, there's a lot of uh overlap with um priorities of the council, um, our own policies later on this year.

Uh, we've got to refresh uh our uh economic development ordinances, so it's a process we go through, and and as we go through that process, close coordination with Greater SATX is key.

Um, one of the things that I think is as you look as we look back, and and Sarah and the rest of the executive committee had a board meeting yesterday to really kind of look at the last five years, um, and there have been uh as she pointed out major improvement from regional standpoint in a lot of areas, but there are some areas that are still lagging that we should stay focused on.

Um she didn't go into a lot of detail about this issue, but uh as part of the laying out the next year, the next five years, it is what is Greater SATX's uh fundraising plan around getting more private sector involvement engaged and more dollars, um, and and as you you saw in the presentation, the return on investment uh from the last five years just from the city's contribution is is significant.

So that that effort um I think as we go through our own planning uh with you all, we'll need to we'll need to continue to evaluate how we invest in those things to get the results that uh that I know all y'all want.

Thanks, Councilwoman.

Thanks, Eric.

Um we'll go ahead and start, and thank you also, Brenda, for the beginning part of the presentation.

Okay, we'll start off with council discussion.

Councilwoman Alde Gavito.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Uh thank you, Brenda, for the beginning part of the presentation.

Thank you, Sarah.

Um, thanks for for being here.

I mean, I know that Greater SATX has such strong leadership with you.

I see Randy, Romanita, and and y'all's y'all's team, y'all have put together a killer team.

Uh, I think what's what's important and what I wanted to get across is that what we as a city invest in sends a signal about what's important to us.

I to me, that's why it's critically important that we invest in economic development.

For me, an investment in economic development is a investment in jobs, which is an investment in our community, which is an investment in opportunities for our residents.

So I I when I think about us managing a four over four billion dollar budget, you know, we allocate funds for a lot of things, you know.

We talk about 24, 25 million in nonprofits and 40 something million in homelessness.

And so I I think it's important to think about what we're trying to incentivize with our budget.

And we always all of us are constantly talking about the importance of economic development, right?

And the importance in of investing in opportunities for our residents.

And so this to me, what the work y'all are doing is where the rubber meets the road.

So thank you so much for the critically important work that y'all are doing.

And I just I wanted to share that perspective with my colleagues because again, we we talk about it in different ways, but what we're talking about is is the work that y'all are deeply involved with day in and day out.

And so um yeah, y'all are um just extremely important partners for us.

Um I also think it's important to highlight the work Greater SATX has done that has turned into helping some of our nonprofits.

I know we all know that, and you know, we have some some fun discussions about how we help nonprofits, but you all have single-handedly recruited some companies here that are doing major investments into some of our nonprofits.

I know that JCB invests in United Way of Bear County, they invest in Haven for Hope.

Um, they have a partnership with uh Harlando.

Uh Accenture has an apprenticeship with SASD and St.

Phillips College, Toyota partners with East Central ISD.

So you know, we talk about how sometimes our nonprofits can get other sources of funding.

You all you all and the work y'all are doing is directly contributing to that.

So thank you for that.

Because you know, it is important to keep these nonprofits afloat.

They're doing so much important work, but it can't always just be on the city dime, right?

We need these other players in our ecosystem to help us out.

So thanks thanks for that.

Um slide 14 slight site selection, Brenda.

This might be more of a question for you.

Oh, there you are.

Um what work or are we working with OHP, the Office of Historic Preservation, on um looking at our vacant buildings and seeing like, hey, if a if a potential company is coming to wants to relocate here, are we looking at are they looking at some of the vacant buildings that they could be using?

Because I know vacant properties are a problem in all of our districts, and I I just see that as a way that we can kill two birds with one stone.

I don't want to kill birds, but you know, understood.

Um so in economic development, we were we work closely with a number of departments, including OHP and variety of programs, including their legacy businesses and so forth.

Um we do particularly more on the revitalize uh SA corridor program.

That's where we tend to engage with them more so with some of those kind of smaller properties, more historic properties.

Uh, you know, there's a number of uh corporate real estate executives and individuals that we both work with when looking at some of those larger projects.

Yeah.

Um and so depending upon the specific conversations, we'll certainly loop in OHP and the various partners.

Yeah, and I and I I just stressing that because I think it is important too.

I mean, you know, we know that um like our our uh uh partners that look at affordable housing are they have a very good they have a very good landscape of what vacant buildings are, you know, and where they could potentially um renovate for affordable housing.

I wish that we would have that same lens for our employers coming here because we have vacant buildings small but also massive um in our communities that are really just deteriorating our neighborhoods, and so we'd love to see that come to life, not only with affordable housing opportunities, but with job opportunities as well.

So just wanted to leave that with you all.

On the all-in strategy, um, I don't know what slide that was.

Um on number three, we're um when we we went when we moved fast and smart.

Uh we we know that, and and you're mentioning delays cost opportunities.

Um, however, we can be partners in that, um, however, council can be partners in removing barriers so that so that way we're not losing opportunities because of delays.

Um at least count me in to help, you know.

I can't speak for my colleagues, but you know, I think we're all one team, and so um I think that we need to act as a team, and so if there's ways that we can help expedite things um on our end then and count us in.

I know one of the items that we discussed in the pre-briefing on this was um data centers, and I know that uh Councilman Gavon's gonna uh push for a larger discussion on this, but one of the things that we mentioned, and I did want to share is that I I think when when we're thinking of potential data centers coming in our community, on we we could also take a step and think about thoughtful placement and saying, okay, if they are if they can be supporting a community with potential infrastructure needs, that might be a win-win for every for everyone.

So I I just wanted to highlight that.

Um then also too, when you were talking about investing in our workforce, there's obviously a lot of moving pieces there, but you know, um earlier this week we were signing linear high school students up for free via bus passes.

To me, this is this this all leads to a stronger workforce.

We know that higher graduation rates equal a stronger workforce for San Antonio um years down the road.

It's a it's we're planning to see it in a small way now, but we know that um it will bear its fruit in the long term.

Um, but really uh again, just want to thank uh Sarah and the team for all of the wonderful work y'all are doing.

Y'all are uh extremely important partners.

We we can't do a lot of what we say we want to do without you all, and so um you know that's why I just feel that we we need to invest accordingly.

That's all my comments.

Thank you, Mayor Pur Tim.

Thank you, Councilman.

Councilman Viegran.

Thank you, thank you, Mayor.

Um, thank you, Sarah, for the presentation as uh chair of economic workforce and development.

You I am fully aware and serving on the committee for the last four years of the work and the efforts that you put forward and the team has put forward uh historically to move this city forward.

Um we all know how we got here uh and I think it was 50 years y'all just celebrated, correct?

And we all know that um before that, after the reason we've got hemisphere is because the city was a little conservative on how they invested and how they moved forward, and it took very bold strokes, unfortunately, bold strokes that relocated people uh down in Hemisphere to get us started on this pathway.

But I think as the years have gone on, we have been very thoughtful about it.

And as I sit here with the new council and new council members, what I want to stress is while we have the larger city agenda that our city manager and his team take forward, is that if what we want to see is something specific within our districts, we need to set up those meetings with Brenda and Sarah and her team to do that.

And I am proud to say that my predecessor, and I have continued that, and I see Leo Gomez in the audience is because of that, we have seen growth come.

So that we're sitting with Water's Edge, turnkey ready for those businesses that we're trying to attract.

And so I'm really um happy that we see this adjustment.

Uh we understand, I understand that some of those those tailwinds and headwinds were a result of national trends, but I do think as we transition council into this new era that we need to be mindful of if we are going to make this successful, we need to start getting involved.

We cannot just sit and wait for city managers team to uh direct that.

We have to kind of direct that within.

And so I look forward, and is uh councilman councilwoman um brought up the data centers.

Um councilman, we are working on that, and I look forward to working with Councilman Galvan, uh Councilman Spears and um Councilman Mungia to bring kind of the stakeholders together because I think public and private is going to be key, and learning from what we did in District Six and what we can do better in different districts is going to be key and understanding that district nine is where a lot of these businesses are going to headquarter out of because it's turnkey ready with office space, is that how that how do we do that?

So um I look forward to having those wider discussions and the collaborations within um the council.

I know that as we look at the recruiting companies and locating them, that it they're not just looking for um while they're looking for the space and the ease, they are looking for the in infrastructure and they're looking for the um the corporate culture that they're bringing in.

And is this an environment that people feel like they can they can they spend their weekends here?

And that's the one thing I think as we move forward in San Antonio and everything's related in terms of our VA conversation yesterday is do they feel like they can live downtown, get on the bus, head to another part of town and enjoy themselves because we don't want them to work Monday through Friday in San Antonio and then weekends head out to Austin or to Houston for the theater or for a sporting event or things like that.

So I'm I'm excited to see all of you that are here.

Randy's here, and we know what they're doing downtown with the uh baseball field where we look to grow and make sure that people companies want to come and that their employees have something to do.

So as we move forward, I think um some of the questions that I have is as we move forward, Sarah, in this process, and we move um, we try to move on the ranks.

What are some other things do you think we as the city can do?

Is it is it more of us uh creating policy and incentives or and I'm it's kind of a guided question, or is it more of us celebrating what we're doing well right now in the city?

So if you can answer it, because you know what my answer is, but I'd like to hear from you.

Um I agree.

I actually think that that this audience, obviously, you all have a responsibility to address challenges that that our community is facing, but I also think a big responsibility is to be our biggest champions.

Um this community has so much going for it.

Um we are at it an inflection point where we are literally starting to take off.

Um and the growth that is coming is not going to slow down, and so we need to be really thoughtful about the growth, and we need to do that together.

But I think championing this this city um is really the most critical role.

Um and then the second point I would say is just let's make it as easy as possible to do business.

Um if we make things easy for companies, they are going to choose San Antonio.

We have such an incredible culture, we have such an incredible uh talent base, we have so much again, so much going for us.

We have sites, we have buildings, we have it all.

Let's make it easy.

Um, and and they'll choose uh they'll they'll choose San Antonio.

Thank you.

And I'm not sure if you were there yesterday.

My staff was uh, and I know the mayor was there for a bit with the uh the delegation coming from Japan that are are building their headquarters.

And I think one thing that resonated with me because my my sister was there and my staff was there, is they wanted to share the culture with the community.

And as we continue to show that we value the culture, we are going to get businesses that appreciate that.

So uh my challenge to you, council members is to really find that one thing in your community that stands out and how is what's gonna help us attract businesses.

Thank uh thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilman, Councilmember Gavan.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, and thank you uh to Sarah and to Brenda and the whole team that's here today.

Um I always like to point out it's not me that points brings up data centers first.

Uh so that's uh get out of the way.

Um I'm just kidding.

But I do want to ask a couple questions.

Uh well, first of all, thank you for the briefing uh earlier.

Man, was it this week?

Goodness.

What a week.

Um well, I appreciate the conversation we've had there and some of the uh initial questions we were able to get answered already.

A couple quick things I wanted to mention.

I really appreciate the focus on education, of course, within the entire framework of the all in strategy, something we talked about a whole lot also during our briefing.

Um I often talk about when I talk about education and the importance that it plays within the city, right?

Lots of lot of folks will say that's not the city's purview, it's not for the city to worry about.

And I talk about one key folks, which is the residential view, where if someone's looking for a place to live here in our city and they want to live here, it's a couple different things that they think about.

It's can I afford this place?

Is it safe?

Is there a good school to say my kids do?

I think it's a very similar thought too with economic development and with businesses too.

And that's what I heard today, and what I continue to hear, right?

How do we get that talent?

Um that talent pipeline that we need here.

One of the questions I want to ask with that was um based on the strategies.

I think it was strategy two within the larger momentum strategy, um, or goal two, sorry.

Um, sorry.

Um, convening higher education and workforce partners.

Is there any um is there any any value in convening some of the ISDs as well for the K 212 kind of view?

That's a great question.

And the answer is yes, certainly.

Um I think as we think about opportunities, that is a big area.

Uh you know, today we typically engage with, and and Romanita and Joshua Scott who are here have led this work.

We typically engage with those high school students that are looking at connecting into career opportunities, and that's critical.

But as we think about how technology is changing and what's required of our workforce today, the earlier we can expose students to opportunities so that they can imagine what they might want to be when they grow up, the better.

Uh so the the short answer is yes.

I think there certainly are opportunities there, and and we're happy to explore that.

That's great.

And I think especially that point about high schools, right?

But I think even, of course, I'm a little biased with North Side North Side ISD and Edge IC are both in my district, and so I think about their CTE programs, some of the early magnet schools as well.

Northside I see has a lot of ones in the middle schools already that are focused on a lot of these target industries.

So just trying to identify ways that we can continue to build with them and you know, really build up that pipeline before they get to even college, right?

I really love the Animal Fellows program.

But if we can get any earlier, that's great.

So really appreciate that.

Thank you.

Um I wanted to also ask about uh is there any way that we can get a breakdown of some of the jobs that we've gotten, or actually all the jobs that we got through greater SATX, but based on council district and kind of the impact that we've seen in like the different areas, the different parts of our city.

Absolutely.

Uh we have that information and happy to follow up with that.

Great.

And I would also love to see, I know.

Sorry, I know we're bringing you back to the next one.

No, you're good, you're good.

Um I wanted to also see was like if we could see any trends in local hiring versus relocations as well.

I think it's good to capture that data about not only who are we hiring here locally, but even folks are moving here, right, due to the impact that you all have, um, as well as the kind of job titles too, right?

What are the major we know the major industries that are growing, but what specific titles?

I think that's something that we see often, even with ready to work, right?

Where we see this industry is doing really well with ready to work training opportunities, but maybe not these specific titles.

And so trying to make sure that we're targeting our investments too here at the city level to continue to build that pipeline with you all.

Um kind of on the note of ready to work, is there any um data connecting to investments like that or even investments in VIA or the UT San Antonio merger that are that are pushing this kind of economic development here or pushing any businesses to come look at us a little bit differently in a positive way?

Uh if I understand the question correctly, um absolutely, every investment that we make as a community, you know, regardless of where that comes from is gonna help better position us.

Um so the short answer is yes.

Okay.

The long answer is uh we could dig in with you and find some specific examples.

Great, that'd be great, yeah.

Uh I appreciate that.

Um thing I asked, I think in economic workforce development uh committee, it was on a different conversation, but similar, right, about economic development, was asking about um our sister cities, right?

How are we using utilizing them?

Um, what are some of the results that we're seeing with sister city partnerships?

Uh thank you for the question.

Uh specifically with our sister cities or friendship cities, a lot of that, as you know, is really around the relationships, but those relationships are really focused then on how do we drive investment in our community.

I mean, Toyota's Toyota is always the one that is highlighted the most, but um, you know, Senko, the one that uh council member via Gran mentioned yesterday.

That uh some of those initial conversations took place starting back in 2019 when a delegation went to Japan and really started nurturing that relationship.

You know, these as was highlighted during the presentation, they don't happen overnight.

So a lot of what we do with the sister cities program is again not just on that protocol and the diplomatic aspects, but really focusing on those investment opportunities.

Great.

I would love to see any data that shows that kind of trend line between multiple sister cities, right, and the work that ReacTX is doing, how it all kind of connects together.

We'll follow up.

Thank you.

And then, of course, my last questions are gonna be around data centers.

Um, but more so I mean, I mean, with the new tech kind of focus, does that encompass a lot of data centers?

Is it encompass AI?

What does it fully look at?

Yeah, uh, so when I think about data centers um specifically, I think about them as a necessary infrastructure.

Um, if we want to grow our tech industry, um until quantum computing takes over and we no longer need to store data, uh, we're we're gonna be in a position where we have to store data.

Every one of us has a cell phone with more information than we've ever had before.

Every one of us has uh I I don't know about y'all, but I certainly love Claude, uh, my AI friend.

Um and I think we all have that's my favorite, right?

Very good, very good if you don't know Claude.

Um I uh I think that you know every one of us are using these tools and they're helping us.

They're evolving our region, they're evolving our economy, they're evolving you know the world essentially right now.

Um so data centers are a very important infrastructure.

Um I think we need to be super thoughtful about how and where we're supporting the growth of data centers so that we're leveraging those opportunities as a community to build out, you know, we're building tremendous infrastructure to power these facilities.

And so can we leverage that infrastructure that's being built to make sure we're opening opportunities for other kinds of investment?

In particular, I I'm most focused on job creating investments, right?

Um we want to make sure we're driving those strong job creating opportunities within our our community.

And so uh the answer is we have to have data centers, and uh let's do so thoughtfully where we're partnering with them and making sure that we're we're leveraging that as a community.

Yeah, no, that's helpful.

And I think it's gonna go, you know, rightfully so with the uh CCR that we put forward and kind of conversation we'll have at EWDC and PCDC and the rest of the council.

Um things I guess I just wanted to really focus on with that kind of investment, right?

With that kind of recruiting, is any ways we can always, to your point where the job creating aspect, making sure that folks are being hired local as much as possible, uh the folks that do work in those facilities, um, or the relocation as well, tracking that data that we know if it's not remote work, at least the folks are coming here as well that we're attracting these folks to be here in San Antonio.

Um and even any kind of uh, of course, looks at how they can uh how the companies themselves are looking at addressing their environmental impacts.

So we know already up front, right?

Okay, maybe they're not gonna use this kind of water in this way anymore, they're gonna use this kind of power on site or whatever it may be.

Understanding that I think will help not only us and uh our larger kind of regional economic development, but also our community's perception of what this all means, right?

What this kind of new development, this new industry looks like, particularly within the entirety of new tech.

We talk about AI too, right?

How is it impacting jobs locally?

How's it really support?

How is it um a tailwind versus a headwind?

I think is the real thing we need to get into, and finding ways to do that with our partners that are wanted to come here, I think is gonna be crucial to all that.

So thank you for that.

Um I think those are all my questions.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Mayor Pro Temp, just real quick, just to remind the council uh beef session on March 4th.

Uh in particular CPS and SARS will be there to talk about data centers.

Yep.

Thank you, Eric.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um I just wanted to kind of start on slide five, as if I as if nobody's ever heard about an EDF or Greater SATX.

Can you kind of just um explain more about what that regional partnership looks like?

Because we're technically competing with, I'm assuming some of these cities.

So just can you kind of uh expand more on how you create that wall if there's a wall every um I think that's such an important question.

Um regional economic development is uh essentially the the norm within the United States today, and here's why.

If you think about uh New Braunville's and Go Medina and Cibelo, right, they have very different, I'm just picking cities, by the way, uh, very different uh assets and focus areas, and uh the city of San Antonio has its own focus areas, right?

And so regional economic development allows us to bring that comprehensive story to our clients.

At the end of the day, the client, to be frank, doesn't care about city boundaries.

They are not thinking about what city they're in, they're looking at the site, the talent around that site, how easily can they access what they need, and is that going to make sense from a logistics or or other consideration?

So they don't care about city boundaries, and um of course you all have to care about city boundaries very, very much.

So with regional economic development, our goal is to get out and tell the comprehensive story together, and then once we have uh an opportunity in hand, then you all are competing for it, right?

Um, and we make sure that we are open with our partners.

Our regional partnership is actually very unique in that we um we do share with each other on a regular basis.

What are the deals that we're all working on together?

And uh I've I've actually never seen communities partner quite in that way.

I mean, there's a willingness here to share information and learnings more so than anywhere else I've been.

Um but it's so it's very collaborative, and also uh everybody has to compete, right?

And so um we like to say we partner everywhere we can and then compete when we have to.

Thank you.

Um as far as your um target industries, we had this conversation earlier, but your life sciences is your biosciences correct.

So are those target industries the 10 million new capital investment?

Does that leave out any mid-size companies, or how did you all get to that 10 million dollars?

Sure.

You know, there are going to be exceptions to that 10 million dollar investment.

Um you could think about an office project, for example, uh, where maybe they're only doing, you know, building out the space a little bit, maybe it's a million dollars, but it's a it's a kind of project that we want to see in the community.

Typically, the 10 million dollar threshold for us is more around uh industrial projects given the the scale of those operations, and so we're always weighing it, right?

We're gonna look at every opportunity.

If it's a target sector and they hit nine million dollars in investment, we're still gonna support it.

Okay.

Um, and I on slide these are not these are small, slide 11.

Uh, you know, I think we can talk about greater SATX, but that educational attainment uh is really key, right?

And I think San Antonio is so unique in that we've really truly invested in workforce development from cradle to adult, right?

But there's that gap.

Um we've got pre-K for SA, then we've got Alamo Promise, and then ready to work, but that gap between pre-K and Alamo Promise, I think there's a lot of opportunity there, and how do we catch kids sooner than later in high school?

Um, so I know that I've talked to Romanita before, um, but I'm just a huge believer in workforce development sooner than later, especially with essay what with with what SA Works is doing, and so however we can maximize those efforts is important.

So I think uh councilmember Galvan asked this question, but I'll ask it again about how what's the work that you guys are doing with ISDs currently?

Is there work being done?

I don't know if you, Romanita can answer that.

Sure, if you'd like to, come on.

Good afternoon.

Um yes, absolutely.

So, Councilman Galvan, I like to say that my team and I have like CTE directors on speed dial uh for all 19 school districts.

That really has been the core of what SAWOS was established to do, work-based learning focusing precisely in the middle to high school critical years so that we can be much more preventative and ensure that these youth have a clear path and handoff direct to college and direct to uh to work in many cases too, where we have seen some of that work.

So our high school internship program has really been uh one of our stellar programs.

It is across all 19.

I have to emphasize 19 school districts that it's a lot of coordination that happens.

The team under Joshua Scott is going to host a citywide uh job shadow that we typically have around 2500 high school students.

We work so closely with our school just our school districts to provide the logistics behind that, not only in terms of busing, but then the staffing, and then of course our employers who host actually host the students, and so that's one component, but certainly the paid high school internship component has really led uh a lot of our employers to really start looking at talent early and investing and creating awareness uh and interest in career pathways that perhaps otherwise they would have not known about, and then how what's a what's the direct pathway there?

And so there's that real connectivity there that we have been providing, and so it has I I do have to say we partner very closely, we partner closely with the future ready uh Bear County a partnership team.

They're working holistically in that collective impact model, and then certainly communities and schools, city education partners.

So I think that's really where the big impact happens.

It's in our collaboration.

There's a very small workforce team, so we leverage a lot of those uh nonprofits that have bigger teams directly inside the schools where we need to support.

Okay, great, thank you so much.

Um, and I also appreciate the where was it on slide um well?

I need glasses.

14, I believe.

14.

Um, I think that growth depends on talent is always number one for me because we can bring as many jobs as we want, but we need that talent to fill the fill the room, right?

And so uh whatever we can do to be helpful um and promote that, uh, count me in.

Uh, can you kind of expand a little bit on the site selection?

Do you have is that internally, or do you bring in consultants for that, or how does that work?

The site selection process overall.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I know a lot of these companies have have their own site selection team as well.

So correct.

Um so site selection process, um, you know, company can go a couple of different ways.

Sometimes they'll do it on their own, uh, and then you know, we'll we'll have a conversation directly with the company and support them through uh the analysis stage, a lot of information and data.

We'll take them and show them buildings, we'll we'll serve on a variety of different roles as their help as they're going through the process.

We'll we'll serve on a variety of different roles as their help as they're going through the process.

A lot of the largest companies typically work with site selectors, and they are paid consultants that do and manage that process for uh for a company.

Um the site selectors, you know, we have a lot less influence on the data that they're putting in front of a company.

And so a site selector is evaluating, you know, let's call it 25 to 75 different considerations that a company might have for what's driving their location decision, and their goal is to cut as many communities as quickly as they can because that's a lot of work, frankly, and they don't want to take their client to you know 15, 20, 50 different cities.

Um, so our our job is to make sure that those site selectors are aware of what's happening here locally, and we're educating them, marketing to them all the time, and then serving as that intermediary for our community uh with the site selector on behalf of the company.

Okay, thank you.

Um one last just comment, I guess, or uh question.

When we were talking about the sports and entertainment district, um, the Philadelphia study obviously came up a lot of times, and in the cover page of that study showed the local chamber of commerce and their local EDF participate in that study.

Um, and I was hoping that in a perfect world, our EDF would allow would produce some sort of peer review to that study.

So I don't know if that's something you guys have talked about for future projects or uh development, but um if that's even something you have room to do, but um would like to just kind of hear more about that.

Sure.

Um, as part of this strategy, we are looking at building out our uh our research and data function significantly to be better positioned to be able to take that information and and bring that to the broader discussion on these big topics.

Um so we do a lot of that information in-house already.

Um but but let's take it beyond simply our clients viewing that information.

Let's allow others uh within the community to see that and drive the bigger conversations.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you.

That's all thank you, councilman.

Councilman Spears.

Thank you, Mayor Proton.

Thank you, Brenda and Sarah.

Great, great uh presentation.

Um, I love to talk about economic and workforce development.

I am uh very honored to be on the committee with my fellow council members, and um, this is a top three pillar for me, because quite frankly, I don't want my kids to move away.

I want them to have good jobs here.

I love living here.

I've had great opportunity here, and this is the path forward for it to continue to be the best place to live in San Antonio, although I'm not sure how much we want to really share that with everyone.

But um so I just wanted to ask a few questions on the momentum 2030.

Is that fairly flexible based on results to pivot to to whatever it is we see we need to do more investment in or shift?

Certainly.

Um so thinking about the momentum 2030 strategy, this is our second five-year regional economic development strategy.

And the intent of having a longer five-year strategy is that it takes time.

The world is changing fast around us.

Um in our prior strategy, we actually did a mid-point check-in where we evaluated were we working on the right things, were we seeing the results we wanted, and then course correcting and areas where we where we weren't seeing the results or the intended purpose didn't really you know make sense as it as it did when it was initially drafted.

So that will be part of our process with this five-year plan as well.

Okay, that's good.

I liked I like that um because I agree it is moving very fast, and um I completely agree that we need to be able to jump on every opportunity as fast as possible, whether our whatever the obstacle is, we need to just be ready.

Um San Antonio has unique opportunity that nobody else has.

So I'm I'm excited to see that moving forward.

Um let me ask this too.

So, how do we support our local smaller businesses?

Because that's a huge part of our economy that maybe are moving toward rapidly toward being mid-size and kind of meeting those thresholds.

Are we able to track that or do they need to reach out?

Is this something we need to push through our districts?

Absolutely.

We would love to support that.

Uh, the economic development department has a number of programs.

In fact, we just presented to EWDC that we'll be rolling out the grill stage grants again.

That was a pilot in 2023, targeting those again, those growth companies, the small business innovation research, um, small business technology transfer.

So again, a lot of those companies with that nine, 10 employees, but really looking to to grow, and and again, it's always our hope that they become those mid-sized companies and and who knows, even those next large corporations.

Um, and so there's also we tend to uh we mentioned the business retention and growth program just briefly, but we collaborate on that, and so a lot of our BRG visits, and again, our target for 2026 is 750 visits between the all of our partners, including Greater S UTX.

Um, and a lot of what we target are those mid-sized companies uh in our target industries to again, how do we continue to help them them grow?

I I love to hear that.

I have a few uh constituents already talking about they really just need something to help them grow their manufacturing industry, just a smidge.

I mean, it does seem like a huge ask, and it would help many, many of the businesses locally.

So they have some really good ideas.

So I'm glad to hear we have something in place that can push them toward in that way.

Um let me ask this too.

It ha would it change our strategy or how would it change our strategy if we were looking at talent talent development as as our main driver for economic growth versus supporting a support function of recruitment.

Uh that's a great question.

Um I think it is a critical uh element of our strategy today.

Uh, there are pieces of it that we support, and I think when we say support in in this sense, we're really talking about, you know, we don't have the the direct control over the outcomes, right?

And so um a lot of what we do is serving as that bridge and that intermediary between in some cases the student, you know, at the high school level and the employer, or making sure that the employer voice is being amplified with um uh our community uh colleges, with our universities, with the workforce development ecosystem, and because so much of that work is is sheer influence, it's a different kind of measure for us.

Um so I think you know, I answer the question that I actually think it is a very important part of our strategy.

It's very critical to the work that we're doing.

Um and and I I'm sorry if I downplayed that in my comments today.

No, I think I just um for me.

I mean, we we really are all talking about how education and our workforce is key, but yeah, we've got to be be making sure we're hitting the targeted um players or targeted businesses and industries that we want here.

Um it's sort of like a tug and pull, right?

Sort of a you you kind of keep going together in tandem, right?

That's right.

That's absolutely right.

Well, um fully supportive of the AI uh jump in the deep end approach because the first one out the gate there is gonna win, and I I want it to be us.

And I think we can there's so much opportunity here.

I'm not gonna pretend like I know much about AI because I don't.

But but I do know that that's where we're headed, and and I appreciate that y'all are looking at that closely and how we can expedite those those efforts to get our workforce ready, and um I do want to help in any way possible, real quickly on slide 17.

Shout out, love the emphasis on the airport.

Um totally agree.

Anything we can do to help with more direct flights, just I mean, completely agree.

I don't think anyone completely understands the impact that the airport really does have.

So I'm glad we're moving on it and um completely agree there.

So I think you'll know where I'm going next.

Um veterans.

How are we going to make sure they're moving into good civilian jobs?

I'm thinking mostly for the it seems like natural areas would be cyber or defense, medicine, um, technology, um, moving into civilian jobs, and on the other end of that, I um I noticed too on slide 18 talking about the youth and in their education, but you know, our their families when they move here, lose some of their ability to attain jobs for what multitudes of reasons, and I feel like that's a lost opportunity.

They're super talented and credentialed, but maybe it doesn't travel with them.

How can we grab and employ them?

One which makes their life better, but also grab that talent for us.

And we know that a lot of veterans stay here because it's such a great place to be.

And um, I'm really interested in how we we serve our military, serve our active duty, our veterans, our reserve duty, our their families, and I see that as a missing gap.

And there and how we can serve them, give them the education that they need.

Um maybe encouraging our employers to really focus on them as well.

It's a great thought and would love to explore that further with you.

I mean, I know there are some uh fantastic programs that are ongoing, and we have some amazing employers here, right?

That have helped bridge that I think of USAA and others.

Um but I would love to explore that further with you.

Yeah, I me too.

Um but really excited about what you presented today, and um thank you so much.

I do think this is a huge return on investment.

I I know San Antonio is the best place.

We're so happy to have you and um just really enthusiastic about where we're going.

So thank you for the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor Purchin.

Thank you, Councilman, Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Uh, thank you, Brenda and Sarah, for the presentation.

I would like to vote upon the point, right?

Ensuring that whether you're uh veteran uh or someone who's a recent graduate uh wages, right, and benefits that come along with many of these industries that you all have attracted to the city.

Uh can you help me understand um what is greater SEATX's uh definition of uh a high wage it's a little bit of a moving target um and we have um thought about it in a couple of different ways as an organization.

Um and here's why.

When I think about, you know, we're we have this extreme focus as a community on wage levels, and we need to, right?

We need to see the wages go up for our residents.

I also don't want to inadvertently leave behind elements of our population of folks that don't have the skill sets to take those higher wage jobs, and so we think about it a couple of different ways.

We think about the um kind of are we at or above that median income level as a kind of first gate, if you will, on a high wage job, because technically speaking, that would make it high wage.

Um, in our definition of the work that we're doing this year, uh or this next five year period, we're focused on those jobs that are greater than 100,000 as as a as a high wage, um particularly within those core sectors.

Um obviously for manufacturing, uh, we may need to think about that slightly differently.

We may need to think about uh overtime, right?

And the benefits and the programs that that employers are offering.

Um so it's a nuanced answer as everything seems to be in economic development, but I think um I I do think that that's uh where we're sitting today.

Yeah, I appreciate that context because uh the proposed agreement for the fourth quarter has a hundred thousand as the goal.

However, the 2024 agreement has roughly $50,000 as the wage.

Uh and I just want to understand how we could continue to increase that $50,000 wage to at least meet the chapter 12 uh 312 agreement, which is like roughly 59,000 uh because these are great industries, and I understand, right, depending on uh the training credentials, right?

The entry wage, and I think that's also part of the conversation too, right?

With many of these industries that we're attracting, uh, what are expectations with contract labor that typically pays less and offers no benefits?

Uh so something that I would like to see in terms of these agreements, are we tracking uh what percentage of the jobs created are contract labor uh and what are those wages?

And I think it could help us understand just the lay of the land uh as we're uh negotiating and attracting businesses, uh, but also where are we having uh the greatest impact and uh I would like to also receive the report that Councilman Galavan requested in terms of uh the industries across the city, what are the wages and the industries that um Greater S SH has invested in and attracted to the city, um, but also right going back to the point that um we are military city USA and we want to make sure when folks are getting out, they have opportunity to high uh wage jobs.

Um, so that's a priority for us.

Um but lastly, I did want to thank uh you all and staff.

I know we are working to identify roughly two to three schools in district five to partner with uh paid partnerships and industries within our district.

So pleased to hear that uh and also grateful that you all are prioritizing and fill and adapted for use within district five.

So just thank y'all for that.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Pur Tem.

Thank you, Councilman, Councilmember Mungeous.

Thank you very much, sir, for your presentation.

And I know we got off to a little bit later of a start today, but I'm glad y'all were actually here for the earlier discussion, uh, because it really ties into slide eight, which I have on my paper, which is is one of the headwinds, which is immigration restrictions.

Um I think that's just um very important for us to hear that that is a barrier to your ability to attract businesses to America, as well as tariffs.

Um, so I want to highlight that.

And I appreciate our chat the other day, and I saw you know slide 13.

The return on investment, I told you that's probably the largest return on investment we get from anybody that we work with.

Um and that's really amazing.

You all do fantastic work that the city could never do on our own to attract all these businesses.

And district four has benefited largely, right?

We've got to we have JCB, we have some other great manufacturing facilities in our district.

Uh and so that's really beneficial to us and the community.

And I know you had a slide about sort of the um top um industries that we were recruiting.

But you know, we had a really good conversation about we were doing really well with advanced manufacturing, um, but we also want to make sure that we're attracting greater cyber uh technology, especially with Port San Antonio, right, and healthcare life sciences.

Um I just want to be, you know, we talked about this, but I want to highlight this publicly.

We want to be real sensitive to uh spoon feeding schools, industries that we want them to have versus what kids want to do.

Uh and I think that's a real delicate balance, right?

Of course, there are some jobs here that people are getting that it is life-changing for them, no doubt about it.

But I want to make sure that when we set up these infrastructure with our local colleges and our schools, and we're going to the schools and telling them, you know, these are the jobs we want you to train for or get you know down the line, um, that it's also something that they want.

And I want to make sure that when we target those schools, we're being intentional, that it's not just certain parts of town that we're going and telling them you need to do these types of jobs, or um, you know, encouraging them to think broader, right?

Because I as we spoke, we have a huge health care gap on the south side.

And it's my belief that the more we get high school kids and even young people into um uh health care, they're gonna reinvest in their own communities, which is what we want to see.

So I think that's really beneficial.

And um, I also think that um I'm also interested in that report, so maybe you can just send that to everybody, right?

About the the different things coming on the the wages, and that's another thing too, right?

It's not just a number, it's also um the long-term success.

So, yes, going from you know, yeah, $13, $14 an hour job to 25 is is going to be life-changing for sure.

But what's that job going to be in 10 years?

Right?

Are they are these gonna be obsolete, right?

In some cases, or is there upward management mobility for these folks?

Um, what's the long-term success, right?

Because you know, I've been into the manufacturing plan, I've seen the lines, and I know people companies are doing really great work to try to mitigate um physical activities and the long-term effects.

But you know, when you're doing the same thing over and over, you know, for 10, 15, 20 years, um, you know, what is that a long-term effect on them?

And so I worry about that, right?

If they get injured on the job, what is their recourse, right?

If any of us get injured up here, we can still be here, right?

We can be on TV or on camera, but uh other folks don't have that privilege and that liberty, so I want to make sure that that's being considered also.

Um but no, I think y'all are doing fantastic work, and I look forward to seeing all that you do, and I know you've got some great partners here.

And I'll just also say that you know, some of the nonprofits that we help fund are helping kids finish school.

And so our ability as a city to invest in that is very important for you all, right?

Because we talked about they're not gonna come here if they're seeing data that suggests we have low graduation rates.

We have a lot of schools, especially in my community, that are underperforming with reading level in third grade.

Uh, we have real lack of health care, real lack of child care in our community, and that all affects your ability to get folks here, um, as does you know, I'm sure the homeless um situation in our city, right, across the the country.

But our continued investment there, I think is important in addition to what y'all are doing.

I would not recommend, and I don't think that's what was asserted, but removing all of that and sending it to you to fix uh and having other people corporations you know pay into that is certainly not, I think the solution, but continued investment from us, and I we always want to hear from you all what the concerns are, right?

Because everybody up here wants these high profile jobs, we want Fortune 500 companies to relocate here, but you need to be very, very honest with us.

If it's like the graduation rates are not what they are, your college rates are not what they are, your homeless population is not where it should be.

That's something that we need to hear from the business community also.

Um so I really appreciate your candid honesty and your follow-up email to me, also.

So thank you very much for all your work.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you so much, Sarah, for your presentation today.

Um Councilmember Gulvan turned to me when he saw the dashboard slide come up because you know we all have our little pet favorites and obviously mine's dashboards.

And so I loved I I mean I I do truly love the dashboard, and I'm uh y'all also know I love competition.

And uh those dashboards uh give us a good little bit of a competition to be able to see where we are in relation to other cities.

The one thing I did ask for though is the numbers, because while ranking matters, I think it also matters to see how much that growth looks like.

And so I know you guys are gonna follow up with that.

Um, and and we're hoping to look at that soon, particularly on some of the um jobs and people component.

Those are the two ones where we didn't get to see as much as I think we would have hoped.

We did see some, but I think there's a lot more work to do, which is evident and based on what your strategy that you have outlined moving forward.

I did want to highlight the place dashboard and most importantly, the thing that so many of us have been working for, which is multifamily affordable housing.

I think what that mainly goes to show, and I think Councilman Radha de Govito started with this.

When you put your dollars towards what something that you care about, you see change.

So this council prior to me getting here invested in affordable housing with the 150 million dollar affordable housing bond in 2022, and quite frankly, even before that, with the restructuring of the housing trust and how it was playing in the sector.

And the housing trust now has done so much incredible work, and I think that is a huge portion to why we see that multi multi-family affordable housing growth in that rank.

So the more we invest in things we care about, I think the more we will be able to see and in that place component, it's a little bit easier to track growth because you can kind of put dollars towards it, and it's like buildings, right?

It's easy to put money into a building, it's harder to put money into education and in and it takes time to your point to see some of those changes occur.

Um, but the nonstop uh that council member Spears and I do agree on some things today, um, with the nonstop with the airport being really important, right?

And we know how much um folks need to be able to access, especially if we are traveling getting trying to get folks from different countries to be able to travel to us quickly.

We have to be able to do more with the non-stop destinations.

And I know Jesus and the team are working very diligently over at the airport.

Um, and we quite I actually asked uh in our briefing, and a lot of what I'll share is what we kind of talked about in our conversation over this week, like we got a lot of learnings from Condor, right?

And and sometimes what I also learned from our conversation with Sarah is I think we can all also learn more uh from our mistakes.

And there's always something that we if we try something and it doesn't work, let's make sure we say it loudly.

And I know we don't always like saying our mistakes loudly, but at least come back to us in exec.

Maybe not, you know, a full-on public briefing, but at least we should be able to come back to exec and do more.

This is what happened.

Because even the uh the other mention you mentioned, Sarah, there were seven deals that we didn't get.

I didn't realize that last year.

And I I remember the last one we got briefed on, and I quite frankly didn't realize the direction it was gonna go in after we were briefed on it.

So to your point, councilwoman, and we do have a role to play, and I think if we get to to communicate and work with you all ahead of time, you'll be able to see our priorities so that when it does, once you've worked a deal for three months, it feels so frustrating to not be able to go close it.

So I feel like if you engage us on the front end more and know, okay, this is probably a non-starter, we shouldn't go down that line.

It would help us.

And um, and Councilman Viergran said Councilman Virginia just goes and does it.

She just takes it, which I really appreciate.

And but for the rest of us, I I think what you've seen up here is folks that want to be engaged in the economic development conversation.

So let us be your champions.

Let us um sit at the table with you as you're talking to folks.

And uh you guys did invite me to do that when we had our one Indian company that was exploring, and I would try to wide wow them with my uh Hindi speaking ability, it didn't work.

But um, so just continue to use us, and and that's I read your strategy for your momentum 2030.

I like that it was a good, it wasn't like a hundred-page document, so I could actually read through it.

Uh, but goal three is relationships, right?

And I didn't see city necessarily city council identified as one.

So I think that could be an opportunity for us to be um stronger partners.

And I know you and Brenda have that Dallas connection, but you can also use us too whenever you need it.

Um as far as the takes time and progress, I would love to see more of what are those indicators.

So you mentioned in our one-on-one that you you're working on leads and how you're actually growing, like how much time it takes for a lead to grow and what that metric looks like.

If we can get more progress measures um throughout even just like quarterly or whatever you send to your board, I know I get the traditional um like your report that goes out to everyone, but if there's something that you can tailor that would be helpful for council, I think we would appreciate seeing um metrics like that.

Um and then economic incentives.

Eric kind of brought this up, our policy is up, and I heard some ideas.

So councilman, some of my council colleagues have mentioned the nonprofit support.

Do we require, do we say like you will uh I know we can't necessarily say how much to give, but how do we encourage the be a good community partner in our incentive deals?

It's in our aspect of the world.

Well, it depends, right?

It depends, but but uh I'll I'll I'm kind of jumping ahead of Brenda, but that's on our side of the table to deal with and and not Sarah's.

But but I think where Sarah and Greater SATX can help is in that recruitment phase, being able to explain the expectations, the landscape, the environment, um, and the the giving culture that that many of the major employers and businesses have yeah, and I'll just quickly add that when we look at our when we do our due diligence on the companies, we do look at their kind of corporate citizenship, if you will, um is kind of our broad uh explanation or kind of review, and then we do a lot of times and working in tandem with the greater SAT Axe team, try to steer them to those great opportunities that are available.

I would love when you're briefing us to include that.

Like I maybe I missed it previously of like what they've historically done, but it would be really interesting to see what type of organization that we're we're um for the lack of bad analogies today, getting in bed with, right?

We want to see um what exactly their history is, and it it incorporate giving, I think is a huge piece because we have such good companies here that give back in such great amounts.

So we want to be able, but also all the nonprofits are tapping into the same ones, so the more we can get there to councilman's point, not that we should not stop, not keep giving from the city because it's a collaboration.

Um the other thing I wanted to add, and I told you guys this.

I was visiting the early child care facility on the south side that pre-K for SA has in partnership with um uh Holt and a portion of their kids go there.

And and if you're in education, one of the things that really helps from an early onset is if you are doing diverse learning experiences where kids from all over are getting to learn with each other and getting to build that social capital.

Because think about that kid that's living across the street now, getting to go to school with the kid who's working maybe in the C-suite at home, and that social capital is something that you can't, no money can buy.

And so I as much as we can would love to create an official policy that creates child care in partnership with our companies coming in, whether that's pre-K for SA being listed officially, and I know you guys do a great job similarly of saying we have this awesome program, but it is a top-rated one in the whole country, and so I think we should create like an official policy that says this is what we can provide you for your employees should you choose to move your end.

Um I'm surprised Councilmember Mungia didn't mention it because he always talks about port, but port has this big goal.

Oh, you did?

Oh man, I missed it.

Darn it, sorry.

Um, but they have like big goals there too, and I know Brooks is working uh at on it too.

So we uh I think the community is seeing how important it is to start early, like for if Mark was here would say early matters, it does, and then continuing all the way through through the continuum.

I love that you have all of the CTE coordinators on um speed dial.

I wish it wasn't 19.

What would it be like if it was like even 10?

I mean, um, I think that's something that we should all as a community eventually have to think about because it is is makes it very difficult.

And so this is where I'll end with, and just something to think about.

And I know Randy's here and you have some other board members.

Your board is rock stars, and I absolutely think every single one of them is incredible, and I wonder what it would look like to, and I know you guys have a big give guy, at least I think it is.

Um, but I wonder what it would look like, and I even mentioned this in our board in our our one-on-one, to diversify the board just a little bit and think about who from the K-12 CTE space would be a really good add-on.

I know you have some really great leaders there, but who else could really provide voice into the talent perspective?

Um, we talked about our unhoused community a bit, and who could might be a good advocate from that space so that we can they can speak to that if businesses are coming.

So just thinking about if there's an opportunity and if it's not at the board level, maybe it's an advisory uh board that's shown on the website, and that has real voice into the changes that you all are making.

Anyways, I really enjoyed our time.

I know you spent a lot of time briefing every single one of us, and I want to thank you for that.

I know it's it's like you're repeating the same conversation 11 times.

I think I started off the meeting like you don't have to give me the whole presentation, and if you're giving it to me on Thursday, but I just want you to know that it's valued.

Okay, I probably went over 10 minutes, but I guess if you're moderating the panel, you don't get timed.

All right.

Does anybody else have anything else add, Eric?

You want to go ahead and yeah, just just a couple of issues.

Um so when when Sarah says seven deals, um uh she her her ocean is vast, right?

And and those boats don't land on your shores until they get closer.

So some of them you'll never hear about, some of them for a number of different reasons.

Um so I don't want you to think that that you can only remember one.

It's probably because there was only one.

For other reasons, things happen.

Um secondly, Condor wasn't a mistake, councilwoman.

Condor was a huge success because we were able to determine that there were at least 290 people flying either way, and we proved the market.

Uh, what happened with Condor, and I I think this happened before um the the new council was seated, so I think it's a good time to explain again.

Uh Condor and Lufthansa were in a legal battle in Germany, and uh the the German courts sided with Luftanza, and Condor had to pull out of six cities in North America because of code sharing issues.

So it worked well for us, and certainly we're using that data right now to make pitches to other European airlines.

Um and and we have the data in our hand.

And then uh third, you know, the the nonprofits, the culture of giving, um, the um the the other aspects of that what you all talked about, those are really key for our portion of the work that we need to do um later on in the year.

But but it's a threading of the needle in a sense, right?

Because uh you heard what Sarah said, uh it is uh about speed to market.

And so the more um ornaments we hang on the tree, the more likely it is to lean.

And and so that's something that is a constant in terms of the engagement between Brenda and Sarah.

But I think it is important for Sarah to hear some of the big issues that that you guys talked about today because they're not really unlike uh some of the things that uh are discussed at the executive committee meeting when we meet periodically.

And then the last thing, and I should have said this at the beginning, uh a lot of the a lot of the uh comparator cities that that uh you saw up on the presentation, the the part that is said is not said in in Sarah's presentation, but is really our primary job, are all the other things that you all do, right?

The public safety, the infrastructure investment, uh the quality of life, the neighborhoods, all of those affect those measures which enhance her ability to sell San Antonio.

So while while we have multiple fronts that we work on, uh and economic development is one of them, the other all the other stuff we do is really key to making sure that San Antonio looks really good uh to that company that wants to expand or wants to move here.

So um, and we didn't really talk a lot about it, but it's the it's all the other stuff that we do that is really critical um and important for Sarah.

So thanks, councilwoman.

I was just to uh say one last thing.

The one thing that we do that did did drop, and I didn't call it out was the average travel time to work.

And that dropped from like two to seven or eight.

I were you gonna say something about that, Sarah, real quick.

Uh to me, to me, that is actually not a measure that we need to worry as much about right now because that means we have a lot of construction going on on our roads, which is a good thing if we're going to manage our growth in the long term.

But that's a it's a very important point.

Yeah, that's that's a good way of saying it.

All right.

Oh, man.

I didn't know there was construction.

Okay, does anybody else have anything else that they want to add?

All right, thank you all for your patience with us today.

The time is now 4 02 p.m.

and special session is adjourned.