6 2026 in the meeting and the meeting of the economic workforce development committee is now called to order.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilmember Castillo.

Councilmember Galvan.

Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez.

Councilmember Spears.

Chair Via Gran?

Here.

Chair, we have a quorum.

Great.

The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes.

Are there any corrections to the minutes?

Can I get a motion in a second?

I've got a motion in a second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no.

Motion carries.

Madam Clerk, are there any citizens signed up to speak on the item for public comment?

All right.

Okay.

Um we will move on to item two.

This is a big day of briefing, so I hope you all have all the questions y'all need.

Uh item two is an update on the economic development strategic framework.

Is there a staff presentation?

Alright, okay.

The floor is yours.

Good afternoon, Chair, Council members.

Um Brenda Hicksorenson, Director of Economic Development.

I'm actually going to turn it over to the TIP strategies team who you may recall last fall.

We issued a solicitation after we briefed this committee in October and November, went through that solicitation process process TIP strategies was identified as that vendor, and we just wanted to use today as an opportunity as that check-in for where we're at after the discovery and as we're moving forward, and uh just go through the rest of the timeline and want more to come.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to John Karas with TIP Strategies.

Good afternoon, Chair and Council members.

Great to see you all today.

Thanks for the introduction, Brenda.

I'm John Karis with TIP Strategies, and I'm joined here by Tom Stelman, our CEO and Alexis Angelo, our project manager.

And we just wanted to give you a very brief, ideally no more than 10 minute quick overview of where we are in the update to the 2022 strategic framework.

So I'll go over just a background on the project goal, where we are in the process, the some of the economic context, and then a lot of the stakeholder engagement that we've been hard at work at, and then a very brief overview of some of the preliminary findings that uh will then ultimately feed into the update.

So as a reminder, the goal is not to start from scratch, but really to build off of the 2022 framework where we had three big goals innovation and industry, placemaking and development, and talent and workforce.

So we're updating that framework, as well as the the five target industries uh that included things like uh mobility, IT, security, biosciences, manufacturing across many different sectors, corporate and professional services.

So we're updating that, uh looking for fine-tuning and refinements, and then we're also looking at updating the small business ecosystem assessment and the international outreach through the Metro Priority Plan.

We're uh that the two uh different sides there, the on the right side, the process.

Uh so we've got four distinct phases.

We're still kind of in the the early phases of the process.

Uh we're started work on a lot of the data analysis.

I'll give you just a teaser of that, and we've done a lot of the stakeholder input.

We're still gathering input, not just from uh council members and community members, but I'll I'll give you an update on that, and then we'll be heading into the opportunities for growth and then the implementation phase later as we get into the end of the summer.

But I wanted to start with uh the larger economy.

So, what has changed since 2022?

Well, we're in quite a different economic landscape.

The market conditions are quite different.

The international trade policies are substantially different.

We have new opportunities as well as challenges with things like automation and AI.

The labor market is very different now than it was coming immediately out of the pandemic.

So I just wanted to set that context for uh where the city is going.

You've had a lot of positive things that have happened here in San Antonio since 2022.

Um, there's a lot of new opportunities with reshoring and investment uh coming into not just the city and the region but the state as well.

But we've got new challenges to deal with.

So I wanted to start with that.

Um, and then I also just wanted to share uh some of what we've been hearing, some of the major themes that have come from the input that we've had.

We've had a staff retreat with the economic development team, the entire team, so we wanted to get their input.

We've had one-on-one interviews with uh council members and other key leaders.

We also had 20 separate round tables with different stakeholder groups and industries, everything from creative economy, arts and culture to energy to real estate to downtown to citywide placemaking, and a number of different audiences.

And one other thing that we did differently this time around is we've created a 50-member advisory committee made up of representatives that wear multiple hats as leaders of public, private, and nonprofit organizations that are connected to economic development in the city as well as the region.

And I'm not going to read all of these, and again, these are not exhaustive.

These are just some of the themes that we've heard coming up from many of the different round tables.

That my summary, three things that have really jumped out.

The opportunities around existing as well as emerging industries.

So emerging sectors that have really been emerging for decades now, like automotive manufacturing, aerospace manufacturing.

We see continued opportunities for growth there.

The unique differentiators around things like defense, cybersecurity, biosciences.

We're going to be looking at RD and innovation opportunities within each of those sectors.

So the industry opportunities is one thing that I wanted to highlight.

Another thing we've heard a lot is the competitive landscape.

But we heard that there needs to be more emphasis on creating the sites, the workforce, the innovation and the placemaking to really continue to be competitive, but also start to outcompete some of the peer cities and metro areas, not just in Texas, but around the U.S.

and internationally.

So really this to sum it up some of the themes that we've been hearing so far, the future economic health of San Antonio is really going to require attention given to all audiences.

That includes existing residents, includes new residents that you're trying to attract, it includes small businesses, it includes large companies, it includes every corner and sector and corridor throughout the community, areas that have seen a lot of development, areas that have not seen as much development.

So that's something that if I had to sum it up, we're really hearing that it's not an either-or dynamic.

You really do need to continue to invest in infrastructure, workforce, creating the policy and business climate that is attractive to new companies as well as supporting your existing companies to help them stay and grow here, both large and small companies.

So one of the things that we've been very intentional about is asking the same input questions from each of the 20 roundtable groups that we we met with.

So one of the questions that we asked was what are the factors that are limiting San Antonio's ability to be competitive for attracting new new investment.

And on a scale of one to 10, the most competitive thing that we heard was utilities, both the cost and reliability.

Folks generally were in agreement, that's not a major limiting factor.

On the other end of the scale, we heard pretty pretty strong consensus that workforce availability, the external perceptions, and transportation infrastructure, they ranked higher than the midpoint, so people saw those as areas that need some improvement in order to continue to be more competitive.

So that's that's one question that I wanted to highlight some of the results from.

And this is by the way, for the 20 round tables, as well as the advisory committee that we got input from, and then one other question that we asked every group that I wanted to bring up, just to give a sense of where people see the priorities.

So this one is really how do you define economic success?

What are if you had to pick the top three, and we did force people to pick just three metrics?

Number one was retaining and expanding your existing businesses.

So that was a pretty clear message, and then tied close tie for a second place was overall job growth and high wage job growth.

So I think that's the having not just focusing only on high wage jobs, but just growth in general was seen as a priority.

And then the next one was improving educational attainment.

And the answer at the very bottom of that is it doesn't mean it's not important.

So this new commercial and industrial space, uh, the way I interpreted that was along with new housing construction, those are not necessarily the end game, but they are important in order to be uh successful in job growth and high wage job growth.

You do need to have more commercial, industrial, and residential space.

But it's interesting that people didn't target that as a specific measure of success.

So I I did also want to point out that our team has been hard at work on a comprehensive economic and demographic and industry analysis.

So this is just a snapshot of the interactive data visualization.

Um, there you could just easily spend many hours just kind of poking through this, and I did uh spend a few hours taking another look at this.

It's not a hundred percent complete.

There's still a few key areas that our research team is building out, but just to give you a sense, the three major categories of data.

So the competitive landscape and benchmarking that includes a lot of the demographic information, employment as well as industry sector trends.

The economic foundations includes a lot of that small business analysis, it includes a lot of the real estate and neighborhood-specific data, and we do have a uh subcontractor that specializes in site selection that's helping us hone in on some of the key sites and the readiness around infrastructure to really dive deeper on the priority sites, and then that third one on the right, the opportunities for growth, that's really a deep dive on the target industries and the opportunities within those niches and innovation and RD and small business growth, as well as the talent pipeline.

So you could literally pick any any one of these, and there's uh multiple ways to interact with the data.

So I'm gonna pick just one of them.

That uh the one that's in that competitive landscape and benchmarking in the population category, the socioeconomic comparisons.

So if you were to click on that one, uh it takes you to a screen like this, and within just that one tab, there's 23 different data variables that you can look at and compare the city of San Antonio to the seven benchmark cities, as well as the state of Texas, the U.S.

and Bayer County, and in many cases also the metro area of San Antonio metro area, eight county metro, compared to those benchmark cities and their metro areas.

So I just picked the educational attainment uh data snapshot since that's we heard that as a priority on the metrics, and we know that talent and education and workforce are key inextricable links to economic success.

So just wanted to give you a sense of of what we're gonna be looking at on each of those different data points, the comparisons.

Just a couple more things to point out from the data analysis.

We also wanted to look at where are you attracting talent from and where are you losing workers to from an overall level?

San Antonio's been successful at on a net basis, consistently attracting talent from outside of the country as well as outside of the region, outside of the state.

So we've we've got an interactive map that shows all of that in the analysis, but this is just the the total net worker flow over the decade leading up to 2024, and you can see that you're consistently attracting people from some of the major metros like LA, Chicago, New York.

The one area that there was a significant net outflow was to the Austin metro area.

But actually, if you if you were to add up all the regions in South Texas from Brownsville, McCallan, Corpus, Laredo, and then kind of going up the border to El Paso, that net inflow is about equal to the net outflow from the Austin area.

So I think there's still a great opportunity to tell that story about San Antonio being that hub for all of South Texas, but also attracting people from outside of the area.

One other thing that I wanted to point out from a more of a business attraction and investment standpoint.

We looked at the past decade, just the total number of uh out of state capital investment projects that have come in to uh not just the city but the entire region, and there's been clearly an increase in the amount of total investment coming in.

There were before 2020, there weren't any years where you had a billion dollars of total capital investment coming into the city, but since then every year has been at least a billion, and it's been kind of consistently growing in the region.

There was a little bit of a downturn from 2025 to 2024, but still significant amounts of new investment coming in.

So a lot of the projects that the economic development department working with its regional partners at Greater SATX and others have been working hard to attract from the JCBs, the Toyota, some of the other big projects, they certainly add up to those multi-billion dollar investment totals.

And this is just a snapshot of where those companies are headquartered that have been investing in the San Antonio region.

So you can see that I mentioned JCB is one of those companies from the UK.

Of course, Toyota is not the only company from Japan, but you can see some of that international uh investment coming in from Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and significant investment from lots of other US states coming into the San Antonio area.

So just to kind of wrap up the preliminary, very very preliminary areas that we're seeing opportunities for priorities in the update to the framework, really finding ways to further support your existing local small businesses and providing new pathways for them to scale up and grow, especially in light of the generational investments that are happening throughout the community in transportation at the airport, a lot of major highway construction projects, the significant higher education investments that have been taking place throughout the community here in the downtown area in particular with UT San Antonio, but really community-wide, and then the sports investments, and then what we did hear that the perception is still a challenge.

So doubling down, maybe even tripling down on that investment to tell the story of San Antonio as a destination for business and making more of a cohesive partnership with all of those channels that are telling the San Antonio story from a talent, from a visitor, and from a business and investment standpoint, and then continuing to focus on the sites and infrastructure to be competitive because there are a lot of economic development projects out there.

And we know that workforce development and upskilling have been a priority for the city and its partners.

Those efforts really need to continue, and we that's where we've seen some of the biggest gains in things like educational attainment, uh, workforce training credentials.

So continuing to make those connections for your existing residents to be able to benefit from the job growth that you're attracting.

And another thing that we've we see just a tremendous amount of opportunity is the innovation and entrepreneurship within your existing and emerging industries, and then that international business attraction is something that we've seen a lot of effort really gone into that.

More effort needs to be focused on those efforts as well.

And just a snapshot of where we are in the time frame.

Our goal is to really present the preliminary findings to the full city council in a B session in a couple of weeks and reconvene our advisory committee to get their input as we kind of move closer toward the midpoint of our planning process, and then at the end of the summer, we'll be reaching that final round and moving into the implementation phase.

So that is the end of the update.

Welcome any feedback, questions, and thank you so much for hearing the update.

All right, thank you.

Lots of information there.

And we'll begin with we'll go ahead and start with uh council discussion.

Uh, I'm sorry, committee members discussion.

Uh is it who would like to go first?

Anyone?

Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

And um, thank you, John and Tom, for uh your work on this framework and the presentation.

Uh, I think a trend that stands out to me in terms of the slides is in terms of the focus on talent retention and workforce development.

Um, we see that um it's it's recommended that we continue those workforce development initiatives uh as well as it's been highlighted in the stakeholder engagement that talent retention and workforce development to support higher wages.

So I think in terms of the context of ready to work, for example, as we look at the 2030 sunset date of ready to work, right?

What conversation should we be having as a council to ensure that we continue that workforce development and that upskilling of our workforce?

But I think what also stood out to to me is in terms of the slide that you have of the workforce that's moving to the city of San Antonio, and I want to ensure that um, well, there is lots of value there.

I want to ensure that we continue to provide San Antonio residents with the necessary skills and trades to ensure that they have an opportunity to participate with these larger industries that are coming to the city of San Antonio.

Uh and I believe as I shared in our one-on-one, there's opportunity to partner with trades unions with some of that work and upskilling, but also within the educational and opportunities committee meeting, we've also talked about the role of our independent school districts in helping create a workforce, and uh what I mentioned in committee was Somerset IST, for example.

Um, they have so many certifications for their high school students, and they have a partnership with Toyota and JCB.

And I asked who is the facilitator of those conversations that work, was it greater SATX or what it looked like?

And the superintendent shared that uh it was him having conversations with JCB, and essentially now with their automated program in the high school level, uh the students will graduate with certain certifications and then potentially work at JCB.

Um so I think there's a lot of value in those relationships, but also ensuring that our high school students are getting the appropriate uh certifications.

Um in addition to the stakeholder themes and something that we've seen in our district is in terms of the secession plans with existing businesses, and I appreciate that there's a focus on the importance of infrastructure, but I'm thinking in terms of the scope of district five, where it's older infrastructure and established mom and pop businesses, and what type of policy recommendations can we establish to provide support for those established generational businesses and plan for the next generation of ownership.

And I highlight that piece because uh in D5, when we have small businesses close, it's in conversations that I've heard from the business owners, it's because they didn't train the next generation on how to take ownership of the business, how to run the books, so on and so forth.

Uh, so I think, in terms of of recommendations to identify what that secession planning could look like, are a couple of uh the key pieces that I would hit on.

Within the presentation, you mentioned, or it's mentioned rather, like the sports, not necessarily the sports district, but sports.

Can you share a little bit about like what that could look like in terms of of amplifying what that looks like?

Yeah, so I think part of the context there was, yeah, here we go.

Um it's so the two major sports districts, kind of at both ends of the downtown area, uh, as well as thinking about Nelson Wolf Stadium on the farther west side along highway 90, you've got these large projects.

How can those be used intentionally to create opportunities for local small businesses?

So I think that's something those are big investments are are happening.

So building the capacity for your existing small businesses to really provide support and benefit from those large projects is something that I think there need to be strategies around.

And then uh in addition to that, um, I I know it was brought up in our one-on-one as well about like district-specific profiles, right?

Like Texas Housers has renter profiles of each district, and I think there'd be value in seeing like how many um businesses we have in our district, what is the average employee size?

Uh, just to give us an understanding of our districts of what we have.

Uh, and I always think about um district three and four, for example, many of my constituents go to AM San Antonio in the South, so they see the opportunity for employment and workforce.

Um, but I'm curious like what the inventory in terms of like D5, what that looks like, and how can we be connecting um some of our educational institutions and constituents in terms of what type of opportunity uh is in the district, and it would be interesting to see the a profile of all of our districts of what that uh makeup looks like.

Definitely, those are all my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, uh Councilman Spears.

Thank you for your presentation.

Um, I think I'm gonna sound a lot like Chair Via Gran here.

I am hearing that we need to be aggressive and step out into spaces as council members.

Maybe we haven't before.

And uh some of my questions are around slide 13 where you're talking about the cohesive marketing.

Can you speak more as to what our next steps need to be in that space, who needs to be at the table, how we can move aggressively into that cohesive marketing strategy and develop that further quickly?

And I'll add because this will go with it.

Concerns for me are about the regional approach versus also the single unified marketing for San Antonio.

Because when you start talking about New Bromfels, well, they're benefiting from us and Austin, and it's like I'm in San Antonio, I care about San Antonians, I care about everybody, but I care about you know, I gotta this is who I represent.

So I have this sort of tug and pull about that.

Um I don't want us to be so much of a commuter city type situation.

So what can you speak more as to what we need to do in our next steps for cohesive marketing messaging, who we need to have at the table, and I'm ready, I think my colleagues are ready to like get really focused on this and really really move quickly because I I think time is of the essence because clearly our competition is not only regional, it is also industry driven with San Diego, Jacksonville, Phoenix.

We gotta be first, we gotta be all those folks to the table in those industries, plus also just the best thing about being Texan is being Texan, right?

So, you know, we just have to be better than than our regional competition too.

So can you speak to that cohesive marketing strategy?

Yeah, great, great question.

So I I think from our experience working not just in Texas but around the country, the the most effective economic development efforts really they're ambitious, they're outward-facing, and they are regional in nature.

So I think commitment to that uh San Antonio regional approach is something that uh we will we're not gonna shy away from that, but what is the city's role in that is one of those questions that we'll be looking for you all as well for for guidance.

But yeah, more more investment in uh economic development generally, but really telling that San Antonio story and message rather than less.

And and you're right, it is intensely competitive for businesses, for investment, for talent.

And if you're not out there telling that message, somebody's gonna be telling it.

It's it's not like the brand of San Antonio goes away if you're not out there working through greater SATX or visit San Antonio.

The brand is there, you want to be part of it and positively influencing it.

Um we've been working in some places where there's been a significant cutback in uh the promotional efforts that ultimately do lead to business development and business attraction.

And while in the short term that might seem like an okay investment in the long run, it's you can miss out the the overall pipeline for activity can shrink if you're not out there proactively telling the message.

I don't know if that answers the question.

No, it does.

I think I just feel this sense of urgency about it, and completely agree that the story we tell about ourselves should be told by us and not people who think they know, and um so I I see that too.

I hear what you're saying.

The messaging's gonna be the most important part.

I want to echo what um councilwoman Castillo was saying about the trades.

I see where the slide talking about bachelor's degrees, etc.

I see opportunity for trades there also.

Um I don't know if that do you think that really hurts us that much?

I mean, considering we could move more into trades versus other markets and the things that we're going after aren't necessarily um higher ed gear, well, some of it is higher ed, which we can fulfill, but there's other areas of opportunity that aren't so higher ed focused that we can capture in those blue zones.

Yeah, I think on the the four-year degree, that's certainly something that is used as a proxy for an available workforce um by a lot of companies.

But we've seen nationally some shifts away from that, requiring a four-year degree as an example.

Um, but one thing that jumped out we didn't share this slide, but the current school enrollment is actually higher in San Antonio than uh all of the the benchmark cities, so that includes everything from uh preschool up through K-12 and higher education.

So whatever the ultimate outcome of that education is, whether it's a certification, associate's degree, bachelor's degree, all the way up to a PhD, that focus on your work for your existing workforce that is enrolled in school, it'll have more of an impact here than it will in other places just because you have more kids and and adults that are enrolled, so um, yeah, and tying that to those industry opportunities is gonna be really important.

Rick will love to hear that.

All right, I'll I'll wait for the rest.

Thank you.

Uh, Councilman Galvine.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for the presentation um and the work done in the background on this.

Uh I appreciate the conversation we had as well with my team and I, or my team and y'all uh think about the context of district six within our economic development framework, um, and the kind of regular story there uh for a lot of our folks where a lot of our folks uh worked at either Kelly or Lackland or other kind of military bases, um, and maybe another they're their spouse also worked at the school district nearby and found a home uh in the further west side of our city and continue to move that out that word uh that way.

Um so interesting to see kind of like what the I think the Calgary Castillo's point what the the anchors are in each of our districts and what our profiles are.

Um, there's any similarities that we can continue to build on.

I think you know, I think there's always gonna be a little bit of a focus uh to kind of capture the white whale in San Antonio and find a way to bring uh a big generator back that can have spillover effects, and I think that's so fine.

Um, I think it's okay.

Um, but I I always worry about you know, are we chasing a white whale without building the the foundation for it?

Um I think we talked a lot about education, and you know, we all agree on on that and what the needs are for workforce development there, but I'm also interested in ways to look at I don't know which part it had uh which slide it is particularly had the small business focus um on uh large-scale investments.

I think you know, I can certainly appreciate that, but I'm also wondering what it's like to to strengthen the markets for small businesses in their own right, looking at things that the city can actually can uh encourage a little bit, whether it's with housing or density or transportation, um, that are able to build different markets for small businesses that they're able to kind of still they've become more resilient by having a market nearby them versus waiting for either a large business to be able to contract with them or even our our governments to contract with them while still good right to do that.

I'm worried about if they're all competing with each other to try to get that.

If they don't get that contract, then where does the rest of them fall into versus finding ways to make those kind of micro markets for them nearby them?

Um and that also hopefully would I would assume spill over to the larger neighborhood nearby them.

Um that way we can continue to build upon these existing corridors of markets versus trying to find everyone to scrunch out in downtown or scrunch up into medical center, um, and to contact with whatever the biggest, no shade to medical center, uh, to the biggest like uh entities in our in our communities.

So I'm just interested in guess what that looks like and building those foundations of our of our city.

I don't know if that was um that was something you saw within this at all.

Yeah, definitely.

Let me go back to um this one had it you're right.

The the small business opportunities are are by no means only tied to the large projects that then small businesses can benefit from.

Um yeah, we we've heard a lot about stakeholders, they really want a more comprehensive approach to supporting small businesses from capital to real estate to uh whatever city programs through procurement or other policies that help support uh and it's not just the city, but there's a lot of other large entities that that have uh procurement needs as well.

Um, but yeah, citywide there's opportunities for small business development, small business growth.

So, yeah, certainly not not just tied to the airport expansion or whatever big projects are happening in downtown or at some of the major anchors, but throughout every district and every major corridor, there's areas that can be further developed.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I don't know if there's any strategies that y'all looked at with other cities too about how to kind of incorporate that, whether it's looking at uh building the finance, building the capital, frankly, of the area, um, or what strategies there are there to kind of assist with that.

I know a lot of small businesses looking for that kind of first loan to expand their business for the first time, be able to kind of move out of their area or find a better spot.

I don't know if there's any strategies that you all would recommend that we'd like to look at that the cities are working on or have done implemented in the past.

Yeah, there's gosh, there's a ton of uh great examples.

Um one actually it ties back to another point that uh councilman Casillo's making about the succession planning.

Um we worked on a project in uh the Grand Rapids region in Michigan where they had a similar, a lot of their small and mid-sized manufacturing companies.

The founders were aging out and the children were not stepping in to take those companies over.

So those companies were at risk of going under or maybe being acquired and sold off for their assets.

So the economic development organization for the region uh is called the right place.

They partnered with one of their major banks and utility companies to create a fund for uh underrepresented business founders, specifically black and Hispanic founders, to be able to acquire those companies to help keep the companies running, but also create more wealth generation for historically underrepresented communities within their region.

Uh so that was kind of a creative approach.

Um I think they raised 20 to 25 million for that first uh round of the fund, uh, so they were able to actually start getting some traction and keep some of their local manufacturing employers in operation while providing ownership opportunities for people that may not have had those.

So that's one example, but yeah, we're we're kind of still in the middle of that small business uh analysis task, but we will definitely be providing a lot of case studies on things that the city of San Antonio and its various partners could uh undertake to really further support that small business.

Got it.

Thank you for that.

It's really helpful.

One last thing I was gonna ask was about um, I don't know if it was one of the first slides.

It mentioned the it was in the stakeholder themes, the underperformance, yeah, the number one uh that underperforms relative to peer metrics.

Can you talk a little bit more about what uh what's within that?

Yeah, I think that one that that's just kind of the uh the reality of the check that it's a competitive economic landscape and especially when we look at other other places that have been really successful in attracting a lot of economic development wins the the Dallas Fort Worth region, other places we've worked, the Tampa area, the Atlanta region, and even within Texas some industries that you all have a significant asset base in aerospace.

But down in the our Rio Granley, they're attracting a lot of that industry energy.

Of course Houston is kind of the juggernaut but San Antonio has significant energy, not just oil and gas, but a lot of significant sustainable energy assets.

So that and then I think some of that ties back to the the educational attainment that is one of those where there's been underperforming historically but significant efforts to in momentum to improve that.

So those are just a couple things that that jumped out that fell within that theme.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

These are all my questions thank you again for the work and thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman Miss Gonzales.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

And for the one on one we had uh a couple of months ago I I think when I'm when I'm looking at the framework it reminds me of a lot of I was around when we were developing the affordable housing framework and the ship came after that framework and the ship now is like our gold standard of how we our goals for affordable housing and so I'm looking at something like this to be similar and like how do we really um do something with this right other than the priorities that you're telling us here like how do we get into the weeds a little bit as policymakers to push on on any one of these and so I don't know if the framework will include that or the opportunities to go a little deeper in that whether it's other committees or stakeholders that come together I guess that's where I'll start like generally speaking I don't know she Brenda got a so the the 2022 framework just by way of background I mean it definitely included a lot of specific recommendations throughout that and then we use that framework to build out our annual work plans.

So when we're presenting at budget for example it's really going back um to that framework my copy is completely trashed for example it's so flagged and you know up and whatnot.

So we really it's a living breathing document we uh reported back to EWDC on a semi-annual basis as to the performance on those various items in the work plan.

And then we also have the large uh an implementation matrix that'll be part of this document uh just like we had for the 22 um admittedly we use that more as an internal document but we are having conversations around how do we make sure that we're publicly sharing that implementation matrix as well so a lot more to come on that but definitely see this as that living breathing document for us.

Okay thank you.

I think too when I think of site development I I agree I think that's almost number one making sure that the businesses that are coming have the sites ready in prime for development and so who's in charge of that or I guess who's the lead on that do you know you want to share a little bit I think it's it's a partnership approach.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah certainly so we're we're uh always partnering with greater SITX with that as well as Brooks and Port SA on their different sites.

I know Brooks just presented and talked about some of the work that they're doing kind of beyond their traditional boundary, if you will.

But then as far as this particular exercise, we've been working with those same entities and really that kind of those next sites in addition to what's already being presented as opportunities.

And again, it's a collective effort.

And we certainly anticipate it will continue to be.

We'd also be remiss if we didn't mention CPS and SAWS because that infrastructure is so absolutely critical.

And then, of course, the transportation infrastructure as well.

So it's definitely a collective effort.

Okay.

And then how do we just as far as our incentive program?

How do we make sure that it's geared towards or is there is there space in this framework to ensure that our incentive program is geared towards the businesses that we want?

That we are recruiting.

Yeah.

So the framework is not going to go deep into the details on the incentives, but it will ultimately inform the incentive update.

But yeah.

Sorry.

Just stay.

Yeah, as John mentioned, I mean, so we uh like last time when we updated this, we definitely use this and all of that stakeholder feedback, the target industry, the deep dive that's happening right now to inform that those guidelines.

Our current guidelines, both the well, chapter 312 of the tax abatements expire at the end of this year.

So our team is already taking a lot of what they've heard during the framework, the stakeholder round tables and so forth, the feedback you've all provided, as well as doing those comparisons with benchmark cities so that we're ready to hit the ground running when we get the final input and bring that forth to you.

And then uh on the global market, the the last point on that slide on uh I think it's 13, the international business opportunities.

Just because of our historical and geographical geographical closeness with South Texas, can I?

Is that because of our geographical and historical proximity to South Texas?

Are there goals there to how do we expand those opportunities with the Brownsville's and Laredo's McCallans of the world?

Yeah, definitely.

That's that needs to be part of that larger role that San Antonio plays as an international business destination and a regional hub.

And will that be in the framework?

Yes, that will be okay.

Yeah, looking at how a lot of hopes for this framework.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, those are all my questions for now.

Are we coming back?

Thank you.

Thank you.

So thank you for your comments.

I want to thank you all for the work and the effort as we do this.

Um, you know, sitting here and getting to this point, it's it's exciting because it provides us an opportunity to kind of look how we're gonna move forward.

You know, I just want to be mindful in that as we talk, um, and thank you, Tom, John, and Alexis, for your work.

Um, this was really where we had you come in and do the conversation so that you could help us guide and give input.

So in the second round, I really do want to hear input from the councils in terms of what direction you want um Brenda and the team to take.

As we remember when it in regards to policy, we are the policy makers.

So some of the challenges I have for you, and I think that was brought up, and I'll start with slide number five in terms of the stakeholder engagement.

Uh 10 is quite I like lists, but 10 is quite a few for this.

I feel like number one, the underperformance is critically connected to uh number eight.

Oh, that many believe while we are underperforming, many believe we have the ingredients to be nationally competitive.

So as a committee and as we move forward, how are we going to address this needs to kind of see what ingredients are these stakeholders coming to?

If you guys could share any insights of that in terms of where we move and create policy to do that.

The other is number three, the opportunity to capitalize on emerging sectors, and I think we'll have that conversation come up next with when we have the conversation about opportunity zones, uh we we'll look at the geographic.

But when we when we talk about emerging sectors, actually looking at the um industries and where we're competitive, and you know, understanding that there's the San Antonio way and anything we bring from another city or another region, we have to accommodate for the fact that we have quite a few sunny days, and when it rains, it floods sometimes.

So we need to make that into the consideration.

So looking forward to having the next conversation.

Number nine, balancing growth, affordability, and inclusive opportunity.

I think where we as a council and as we move forward with the business community is how we have conversations about economic growth and what sort of investment it takes to grow.

We do you do need to spend money to make money as a small business owner.

You don't hope they come when you know your next door, your burger joint next door just put in a drive-thru.

So we need to think about where we're going to invest and when we're where we're gonna spend the money and prioritize.

So I think when we talk to the when we go out into the community, whether it's our community members that have their jobs at USAA or you know, HEB or any other corporate job they have, Toyota, uh, you know, international, that we have the conversation of in terms of business growth and economic development, we need to invest in certain issues and and of course, infrastructure, which I think we're addressing is one of them, and then the accountability piece on number 10 stakeholders consistently call for a greater focus, accountability, and implementation uh discipline.

We like to use the term accountability a lot, that one and transparency, we really love those terms, but you need to get specific and detail on what that's going to look like.

And as a committee, the challenge is going to be, and I ask y'all to look at this as we create the framework and we give Brenda and her team the opportunities of what are the details.

I don't want you to just say we want it to be affordable.

I want you to give them specifics of how it's going to be affordable.

We're not going to have accountability.

What does that accountability look like?

How many local contracts, percentages, you know, things like that.

I think we need to be specific on that.

When we talk about focus, of course, we're each gonna say my focus is the south and southeast side of San Antonio, and Rick's is gonna be different because we are going to focus in our specifically in our geographic area, but how do we look bigger pictures to to look at that as we move forward?

So I really am impressed.

I think when we go back and we look at slides six, um, seven, five, six, seven, and ten really are the opportunities for us to create the policy within this committee and really think this is where we're gonna hone in.

This is which of our stakeholders we're gonna bring in, whether it's the chamber of commerce, our um our economic development groups, how are we going to bring them in to make sure that we we are retaining the talent and we are we are continuing to grow people?

So I I really liked all of your comments.

I think each of you had good points, the succession plan key.

We talk about that from everything from businesses to to um our leadership here within the city, um, SA jobs for current SA residents, and then how do we bring in the new people that move here?

Um, the cohesive marketing, exactly what we need to do to go to other counties to go to other regions to do that, the anchors and the profiles that were mentioned in terms of who who we are district-wise, because you're looking at a city that's so large, and I don't know if y'all gathered some of that information and could share it in more detail about what when they when they think south side, when they think north side, east side, west side, what are they thinking, and then of course the policy.

What framework are you gonna give us to create the policy?

How do we do that?

Do we do that within committee?

Because we can do it within committee.

Do we do that with the the council as a whole?

How do we do that?

Do we let staff kind of help direct us and and shape that policy, or do we look outside for other things and understanding that economically we face challenges, but state level-wise, we still are a state that is has the GDP, but how are we going to invest the money that we have back into our people in our residence?

So I really uh look forward.

I'm assuming some of y'all want the second round.

I really want your input in terms of things from here that you're like, I'm ready to champion this because I I hear subcommittees in our future, guys.

Um, so we'll we'll take a second round, but thank you again, Tom, for the presentation and all your work.

And I know 16 interviews, I don't know how many I don't know if out of those 16 interviews, 10 of them were with council people, but God bless you all for doing that.

So uh we'll begin the second round.

Who'd like to go first?

Anyone, second round?

Councilman Spears.

I'm glad you asked.

Um I'm gonna be honest, this has been my hyper focus.

I I see this as extreme the thing for San Antonio as our economic development side.

So I really want to see us to your point, Council Chair Via Gran, is that we have um maybe subcommittees to really dial in on some of these.

I see it as the bioscience and healthcare, cybersecurity and AI, advanced manufacturing and logistics, the quantum, the space manufacturing, um, advanced manufacturing, even um food and beverage manufacturing.

There's there's so many areas that we can do well that I don't think these other cities will come close if we get really aggressive, and so um I'm I'm interested in this and the incentives.

I want to see some flexibility there.

Maybe they can't, some of these cities can't meet that benchmark on the wage requirement, but almost because of the number of of jobs that they can scale up the high the upward mobility within their their organization.

Maybe you start out a little under that wage requirement, but quickly accelerate forward, and that is important to note, and maybe make an exception for it.

There has to be a little flexibility there if it's a good investment, and on that too, small businesses incentives for pipeline industries around the things that we're really focusing on.

When when I was in Taiwan, and some other efforts I've made, pipeline industry is one of the greatest barriers, and we are so close, like like councilwoman Mizakonzales mentioned, that's where the southern region can really help us, and Mexico can help us in our proximity there.

We beat Houston all day long on that, and we've got nuclear coming here, and we've got to take advantage of these opportunities, our military presence, these things nobody can touch us on that.

When you put it together, and I don't know, I'm sure you all feel the same way.

Like the stars start to align when I really start to think about the opportunities we have, the higher ed we have here.

Who has a law school and all of these higher education?

Um, you know, universities and our Alamo College, like who has all this?

I don't think anybody else does, and we're just got to leverage it really well.

So those are the stakeholders to me, and the private stakeholders as well, because they're gonna benefit.

Um, it's still the best place to live because of affordability.

So how we the messaging is gonna be hugely important.

Um, getting people here to experience San Antonio and how we court these these potential um companies coming here, how we court them and our how we do that, have a formula like really know how to do that well, and I know we tailor that for each industry, which we should.

It's like a you do a resume, you do one for every company you're applying to, right?

So we should be doing that.

So I could go on, but I won't.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councilmanskonzals?

Um thank you so much.

On on number two on slide five, um, number one and two, I guess, like number one for me on possessing major economic assets, right?

How do we um talk about that more?

I think that's part of the marketing strategy, is I'm assuming.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that's certainly part of it.

Okay, um, what what else is part of it?

Um, I think working directly with those focusing on the industries and building up the the workforce for them, connecting all the small businesses to that industry, uh, identifying the current constraints and who's maybe out competing, what regions are out competing San Antonio for those projects and why uh what kinds of policies or incentives could be put into place to make the city more attractive.

So there's a number of things that would fit into how to better leverage your current assets.

Okay.

And I guess too on the regions number two, the strongest um differentiators, all of these areas, and what are the jobs associated with each of these areas?

Is it a smaller share of our larger workforce because we still have a huge hospitality uh convention, which aren't necessarily high wage earners, but how are we competing with those two?

I guess the sector of one, two, three, four, five here listed defense, cybersecurity, health care, and then the existing pool we have downtown, right?

Which is convention and uh hospitality.

Yeah, good question.

I think the the everything on here, this is not the end all be all exhaustive list.

Um, those are just some of the things that we heard multiple times from the stakeholders saying, yeah, San Antonio really is unique when it comes to defense, cyber security, healthcare and bioscience.

But yeah, there's the significant tourism and hospitality, uh, that's another asset and opportunity that kind of maybe can connect to some of those emerging sectors too.

Yeah, and I guess I I agree that it's unique.

I just want to make sure that it's also um it has jobs connected to it, right?

So like I think that would be the most uniqueness of it all.

I'm trying to under I like I I appreciate that it's a unique position that we're in, but only if that's a majority of our workforce is coming from those industries, I guess is how I'm seeing it.

It's is that wrong or just trying to better understand that's a big chunk of your workforce.

I wouldn't say just looking at those differentiators, that's probably not the majority, but that's maybe close to half if you added all of it up together.

Okay, and then the cohesive uh marketing too, does that I mean where do the chambers play a role in that marketing or or uh greater SATX?

Are they part of that marketing or is that different as far as what you're talking about when you say marketing?

Yeah, it really should include everybody in that ecosystem.

The because the internal messages are just as important as the external messages because the organizations that are telling the stories within the region, those people are going out to their uh peers and and folks outside of the region and telling the stories.

So it's really both, I would say.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Councilman Castilla.

Thank you, Chair.

I think uh to answer the councilman's questions in terms of the the priorities on the stakeholder engagement themes.

Well, it's not explicitly listed.

I know uh commercial land banking is a priority for our team given our older infrastructure and vacant commercial buildings and the opportunity for us to activate those spaces, whether it's partnering with the small business organization to purchase the property and activate it.

Uh, I think Basilla Frox is a great example of the opportunity to have uh local contractors um rehab the building, preservation, and then because of uh the support from the Westside Tours, we were able to work in an affordability component for rate rents uh for an individual who lives within 7827, which is where Basilla is, because that affordability component, whether you're renting a suite or office space, uh, is really important for my constituency.

And I understand this isn't at the same scale as a JCB or Toyota, um, but uh given the the entrepreneurs and small business owners in my district, um, there's a lot of need for smaller, affordable commercial spaces, and I'm reminded of my uh reminded of my Nell Tech.

Um her she subleases the landlord raised the rent by a thousand dollars, so they're not renewing that lease.

So now she's like, where do I go, right?

So I'm trying to help her find a place to get placed, but it's really hard within district five because um many of the structures are vacant.

If you buy it, it's gonna need X amount of thousand dollars to rehab it to come into compliance permitting, so on and so forth.

So uh I I think while it's not explicitly stated on there, I think it's worth exploring commercial uh land banking within this committee, whether it's um a subcommittee, a council consideration or quest, whatever that looks like.

Um but also with the talent retention and workforce development.

Uh, I I know uh again, going back to ready to work and how that's set to be sunset.

I think we have a responsibility to invest in workforce development.

Uh, because while we talk about uh many of these key industries and cyber security and defense, uh, for example, those require security clearances, right?

Uh, which the majority of our constituency do not have.

So, how do we ensure that our constituents have the training, the certifications to participate in these larger and very competitive industries so that way we're not leaving uh our constituents behind.

Again, going back to the data that you presented of the folks moving here, right?

And it I draw parallel similar to the councilman in terms of housing, right?

We talk about how the AMI um uh has increased in the city of San Antonio, but poverty is also remaining high.

Um, but it's because we have folks with higher income, higher education moving to the city.

So on paper, it looks like wow, we're moving the needle, but really we're we're not right.

So I just want to be sure we're not leaving uh families behind while we focus on these emerging sectors, and I think a way to do that is to continue to support and invest in um ready-to-work uh initiatives or workhorse training initiatives, rather.

Um, but in addition to that is also uh placemaking.

I know it's um highlighted to downtown, uh, but we know with the facade grants in our district, it's made um just so much of an impact, not just for the business, but for the neighborhoods as a whole.

So I know we're working with a limited budget, uh, so we shouldn't be asking for more, but I just want to highlight the impact of the facade grants uh in our communities, whether it's public safety, economics on and so forth.

Thank you.

Councilman Galvan.

Thank you, Chair, and uh I guess to answer the question directly.

I think similarly, um, of course, education is always gonna be a big priority for myself, but I think is a true key here, right?

Looking at the education career pipelines, Council Ricastillo shared a bit about Somerset nearby, but even some of the magnet programs we have here are trying to directly tie ourselves or tie themselves a little bit to some of the local industries in the area, and so finding ways to continue to leverage that.

And of course, we're a little different than other cities, right?

We have multiple ISDs that are kind of disaggregated, so finding a way to kind of um uh align all their strategies as well there.

Uh I know some of the work that we're doing, the education opportunities committee of trying to figure out how can we be a bit of a mediator if we can um to kind of bring folks together and a connector in some way, uh, of course, along with higher education connections there.

Um beyond that, I think multimodal transportation is really crucial here when we talk about any kinds of density, we talk about any kind of uh encouragement for certain certain type of um business we're trying to recruit here.

They're looking for sometimes more walkable areas, more uh urban environments, and so finding a ways to continue to uh encourage that is crucial, but what's really crucial there is the transportation modes there, right?

Making sure that we have quality public transportation, making sure we have uh quality infrastructure to keep folks safe who are walking, who are cycling, who are moving uh on the bus or et cetera, I think is really critical here, and to connect our folks from all across our city, right?

So a lot of folks in district six are further out edge of the city who frankly don't have another car, right?

Only one parent has a car, whatever it may be, um, and they can't get to the internships or to the uh the schooling or to the uh the jobs themselves, and so finding ways to expand that uh translation system is really crucial here.

Um I mentioned density already as it relates to um to housing and even to commercial development, uh but I think tied to that, some of the counselor Castillo mentioned about placemaking, kind of tying in, of course, the public space too, right?

Whether it's parks or recreational spaces, so folks have that feeling of there are things nearby me that I can also enjoy versus going to only one uh one place all the time.

Uh that's away from their area.

There's ways that we can incorporate that tied to some of our economic development, that'd be really interesting to see how we can do that and leverage that.

And I think similarly too looking at the cultural aspects of it all, right?

We don't want to lose sight of, I think is our own identity, and then of course uh some of the things that highlight the certain areas of our city that have their own kind of histories there.

How can we make sure that those are really highlighted during this kind of work doing this place making efforts?

Um, last two things I think that are really crucial here, maybe three.

Affordable ground lease as well for small businesses, really crucial there, making sure that our folks are able to afford to uh actually run a business here, flexible capital, however that needs to be created.

I know we do a little bit with the LIF fund for sure, um, and seeing what ways we can continue to expand that um to make it easy for small business owners to plug into.

Um, and then I think you know, community benefits in some form, whatever that looks like through CBAs or whatever incentives we're doing, uh bringing in those, create those affordable use space, creating um the policemaking efforts too, being partners within all that work, and then of course, primarily highlighting higher wages and benefits, right?

Um making sure that the jobs we're recruiting here are providing those kind of direct tangible uh results for our residents who have long been waiting for this kind of work.

Uh, they're not just kind of being moved away to someone else who already has the criteria, already has the ability to move into that role, but trying to get folks who typically have not had the opportunity to be able to get into that.

I think that's those are the big ones that I'm looking at here.

Uh those a little bit all over the place, but I think, at least in my head, it makes a little bit of sense of like how we're kind of creating again, building the foundation here, building the market here for folks to want to invest here.

Think you chair.

Thank you.

So uh Brendan team, I think you got uh an earful about where the uh committee is willing and ready to help, and um I think we now have kind of the for the steps forward to help create that framework and where you need to plug them in.

So um uh again, Tom, John, Alexis, thank you for giving us that information.

We look forward to getting more details.

I know we have tons of committees that work on this that we can if we need a subcommittee we can grab from, or we can take that assignment down to our uh committees.

Brenda, would you like to share something?

Um I was just gonna emphasize this is really still kind of early in the process.

We are coming back to the B session, and then we'll definitely be following up before we bring this back to full council for that consideration.

And again, it'll have a lot of that implementation and and more of those specifics.

So look forward to that discussion.

Okay, thank you, Brenda.

We just want we want to make sure when you take this to be session that uh everybody, our council colleagues know that the economic workforce development committee is ready to work.

So thank you.

Thank you again for all your input.

Thanks.

All right, we'll go on to the next item.

Thank you.

All right, uh, the next item.

Do you need to read the item or no?

All right.

Uh you've got this, the uh recommendations for the federal opportunity zones.

This is one I think everybody's been waiting for.

So Anna, the floor is yours.

Yes, ma'am.

Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee.

I'm Anna Bradshaw Assistant Director in Economic Development.

And today I'll be providing an overview of staff's recommendations for opportunity zones 2.0.

Uh so this program was originally authorized in 2000 and 2017, which is really intended to spur development in what is defined our low-income communities.

Um, this is a federal program that allows us uh municipalities, counties to nominate census tracts uh that state governors designate as opportunity zones.

Um, and again, this is a tax incentive tools that allows for the deferral of capital gains taxes, but can be utilized by communities to spur development in specific areas.

So currently across the country, um, under the what we'll call opportunity zones 1.0.

There are a little over 8,700 designated opportunity zones.

Twenty-four of those are in San Antonio and Bear County.

Um one question we commonly get is how much investment has occurred in these opportunity zones over the last um nearly 10 years.

And I would say that's the greatest challenge of the current program is that there are no mandatory reporting requirements beyond um IRS reporting that that the has to come via the opportunity funds.

There is no requirement uh to report on incentives.

I'm sorry, um on investments in these particular areas.

However, you can see from the highlighted map here, there's a number of areas that have experienced high growth in San Antonio, but we cannot say for certain that there's a direct uh causation that it's the investment happened because of opportunity zones.

But we are very hopeful with this new iteration of the program.

It does have mandatory requirements in additional, in addition to annual uh IRS reporting requirements, there is required reporting to the Department of Treasury on investments to really enhance transparency to communities where these investments are taking place.

So there are some criteria changes again.

Again, the objective of the program is to spur development in low-income communities.

Um but that definition has changed a little bit.

And again, this is all governed by the Department of Treasury.

But under the prior program, the communities had to either have a medium family income of 80%, no more than 80% of the surrounding area, or a poverty rate that was greater than 20%.

And then this last or was a piece that has been removed, and that's what we call the adjacency provision that it could be a census tract that didn't meet one of those two prior criteria but was adjacent to a census tract that did.

So you'll see under this program the requirements were tightened to really hone in on those areas of lowest income or greatest poverty by lowering that threshold to being no greater than 70% of the area media family income or having that poverty rate that was greater than 20%, and the median family income not exceeding 125%.

So it's a multifaceted program, but this guidance along with it, the government use the American American community survey data to identify those census tracts that were eligible for nomination to become opportunity zones.

So I wanted to provide a quick overview of the timeline.

In earnest, our team has been working on it since late last fall, once the program was reauthorized to understand the requirements and to develop a model whereby once we found out where the eligible tracks were, we could prioritize them using a data-informed model, but also being able to reach out to our stakeholder community.

The Treasury did release that list of census tracts in April, and we've been actively working on again populating our model, getting that stakeholder feedback in order to develop the recommendation that I'm presenting today.

The deadline to submit census tracts to the state for nomination is June 26th, so just one month away, and the state Office of Economic Development and Tourism is the lead agency on this working with the governor's office.

The federal nomination period opens up on July 1st.

We anticipate it will be open for 90 to 120 days, and the state has indicated that the governor would submit their nominations in early August.

So you can see there's a period of time there between when the nomination period opens and it closes and the governor submits.

We have confirmed with the state that changes can be submitted.

So during this time, we're going to be closely monitoring those submissions, along with working with uh Sally and the government affairs team and our stakeholders to be really actively watching that.

And then once nominations are closed, new designated opportunity zones will take effect January 1st of 2027.

Now I will mention that those 24 tracks that are currently nominated, those will remain in effect through December 31st of 2028.

So there is a bit of overlap with the program to allow those initial projects to be able to close out and and those things take place while the new opportunity zone tracks are effective as well.

So as I had mentioned, the state economic development tourism office has led the effort for prioritization.

And when we received a list of eligible tracks, there are 2,420 within the state of Texas.

So governors of each state may submit no more than 25% of them.

So for Texas, that means across the entire state, the governor may nominate 605.

And unlike last time, the EDT has provided clear methodology on how nominations should be submitted.

So there is an application process.

But all of that is culminating in the development of a nomination packet that must be submitted to the state again by that June 26th deadline.

So the state has prioritized four areas and requirements for those nominations going forward, and we really focused in on the local incentive support and project viability areas and taking those and understanding how could those be interpreted to San Antonio specifically, utilizing data we would have.

And we developed four buckets of areas where we wanted to focus in on identify data points and utilize those to develop a scoring tool to prioritize the eligible tracks within San Antonio.

Looking at, you know, what are those economic drivers in each area?

We know with the investments happening with Green and Silver Line.

We wanted to prioritize those areas as well as those are adjacent or a current opportunity zone to promote that continuity as well as adjacency to the airport.

Then looking at investment where public and private investment has taken place or will take place, including those areas where we have an active incentive agreement, utilizing data from neighborhood housing services department to understand where affordable housing projects are happening, as well as bond projects from capital delivery, and utilizing external data sources such as COSTAR to look at commercial real estate activity, which can be indicative of private investment happening within certain areas.

Then we've looked at geographic attributes.

So what are our regional centers and economic nodes as well as adjacency to hospitals, universities, and then looking at what existing infrastructure is available.

Again, what are those things that contribute to a project that is viable within the next 24 to 48 months?

And then finally, looking at the community demographics.

Again, this is a program intended to support low-income communities.

So factoring in data on median family incomes, poverty, population, as well as mass transportation usage.

So all of that entail, the team developed a model and were able to produce a recommendation for San Antonio.

So again, with the 2,420 tracks across San Antonio and Bear County, I'm sorry, across the state of Texas, 146 of those are eligible within Bear County, and those are shown here on the map.

And based on the criteria provided by the state, Bear County may nominate up to 116 tracks.

So the recommendation developed in provides 69 census tracks.

So again, this where this slots in over the overhauls overarching 605 is that would be about 11%.

You can see there from across the community, including areas such as downtown as well as the near west side, the east side out by Frost Bank Center, Port SA, Brooks, and a comprehensive list was provided in the agenda packet.

As I did mention, we sought out to build a data-informed model, but really wanted to also focus in on having that stakeholder input.

We have been in communication with Bear County, and I know Marshall from the county is here today in terms of how we could potentially collaborate on this.

We've also been working with Greater SATX on potential collaboration.

We have briefed our Small Business Advisory Commission, and while we we did not have the specific tracks to present to them there, we spoke with them about the overarching methodology, and they really highlighted for us the need for access to capital for those existing small businesses that may want to utilize this program.

So it was very valuable feedback from that committee.

Piggybacking off the last presentation, we worked with the TIP team to have them ask at specific hearing, specific round tables on this, as well as meeting with a number of departments that would be stakeholders in this as well.

We were able to garner additional data sources from this, um, some input can uh contributing to us looking at additional areas so that 69 uh tracked recommendation may change slightly as we go forward, and would certainly keep the committee update as we go forward with the process.

So, as far as next steps, we will continue to finalize that recommendation.

Again, we're just one month out from the deadline, um, completing that state application, which includes providing data, but we are also able to submit supporting documents as well as letters of support from stakeholders, um, that we think will help bolster our application with the goal of hitting that June 26th deadline.

Um staff and I are available to answer questions.

Thank you.

Yeah, um thank you, Anna.

I think I uh the map on recommended tracks for selection.

I I appreciate the effort.

I'm gonna need to see a more detailed map of well, all the neighborhoods because I know we're like I I know you did the research and you looked at the opportunity zones, but again, the council members are the boots on the ground, our staff is on the boots on the ground.

We can tell you where we're gonna get.

I need a list of who were those 50 stakeholders that went to that meeting because if it's not the people that we see come and walk into our offices or come to our neighborhood associations, there's gonna be pushback on this.

And the other thing is some of us represent areas that don't know that they are in a census track that is in the poverty level, and how do we explain that to them when we we start having these conversations?

So there's a lot of kind of details I'd like to see.

I like the way the map looks.

It looks like it's very um, it's distributed very well.

Uh I just want to make sure we're leveraging all the opportunities that we have coming forward.

If fingers crossed that more opportunities come in the legislative, so I um at the federal level, I'm hoping soon we'll get some news.

So the one thing is seeing what sort of affordability we have there, what sort of housing, who are the businesses already there, what tours is that, and we can I think that's key for a lot of us.

Is I look at that map and I'm like, I don't know how many tours sit in my opportunity zones, but it's gonna be a few, and that's making sure that we kind of have that that gist of the idea.

So if we could get that list, uh I'd appreciate it.

I think y'all, you guys did a good job.

I'm glad y'all started working on it before.

It's just when we get into the neighborhoods and we we tell people this is coming, they're like, we didn't want this change, we didn't ask for this change.

If they're not, they're not briefed on it.

So we want to make sure we get that detail.

Um so you mentioned uh Brooks, Port Essay.

I know we have parts of downtown.

Um I think people don't understand how some of these poverty tracks may sit right next to like on one side of the street, you have you know, 80%, 90, you know, 100%, and then on the next you have a poverty track.

Um so I'd like to see that, and then the um just the eligibility that we have for other uh aspects, and then again looking at the small business and the retail.

I know in some of these these tracks that are potential opportunity zones, uh zoning is kind of key also because some of them are industrial or light industrial, and they have neighborhoods around them that don't want that.

So if we could get that information, um, this is one that we were we're excited about because the eligibility to go up, but we want to make sure that we've got all the information we need to take out to our residents.

So thank you for the work and I will take comments from our uh committee members.

Who'd like to go first?

Rick.

Councilman Galvan.

You're good, thank you, Chair.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

Um, generally supportive of uh the updates here, like the map looks.

Uh, I appreciate the the inclusion of some of these tracks within district six.

Uh that's been look that's definitely looking at uh new investments here.

Of course, I know one of the stadium overlaps here along with some of the other ones, near luckland terrace.

I do think if I don't know if I would like to see if we can include um the census track right above Luckland Terrace 1718.01.

It's just the other half of the neighborhood uh right south of Marbok.

Um it's very similar uh in scope there, similar development style, everything of the sort.

There's probably a little bit more opportunities than the one that's currently listed there in terms of the site ready development, um, but don't want to leave out any kind of opportunities that we can have just adjacent to their um it's a similar profile, I would imagine so.

And so I just wanted to see if we could incorporate that one uh or at least take a look at it.

Let me know what you all see on there in the background of it.

Otherwise, I think generally a really good distribution here, as a chair said.

I think those are all my points there.

I know you mentioned a little bit about the lack of tracking beforehand.

I don't know if there's any kind of uh other evidence we have, not maybe evidence, but any kind of other highlights we have for any of the opportunity zones we've had for a while now that we can try to draw any kind of conclusions about or if it's just best to leave that where it is.

I I wouldn't recommend because we can't directly point that this investment happened as a direct result of opportunity zones and that it came from a qualifying opportunity fund.

So it would be very loosely correlated.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Those are all my comments then.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, sir.

Councilman Spears.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, can you tell me our is EDD?

Are we checking the zoning classifications before we recommend these opportunity zones?

So we did review zoning as part of it, and and I will say that this designation does not um supersede any zoning requirements or anything or uh historic requirements.

This is just purely designating it as an opportunity zone, but should someone want to develop that, they would have to follow the city process for that.

And we did include development services and planning as as stakeholders as part of our process.

So I think that's more of the cart before the horse in a lot of ways in practicality of this actually manifesting into investment because that's just a barrier for entry if we can look at how places are zoned.

You see what I'm saying?

If they have to also then worry about zoning, and can we get through this on top of that?

It's just an easy thing we could maybe fix on the front end, and um I mean, I know that affects development a lot.

I well, I know it does.

Um I too had the same same questions.

I wanted to know uh who was involved in in selecting the opportunity zones and um how much input they had.

I'd like to see it too with the breakdowns and the metrics and the scoring to help me understand why you picked these 69 tracks.

I'm not saying I'm I'm sure I I'm just curious and interested in how that methodology comes about.

I'm sure it's very structured.

I know the criteria is there, um, it's just figuring that out, and how we just to help us capitalize on that as we are out trying to recruit businesses here.

Um I too am glad to see the um sports and entertainment district there and the rock area, um, and how we can pull all of that together with the other opportunity zones because I see them, you know, it all really works together when you start to think about it.

Um but I mean, overall, I'm I'm I don't see that many differences.

Was there anything that stands out to you that we learned um from last the last time to now from this time I I think the biggest challenge was the not being able to to report on it and to be able to track those investments that were happening.

Um I think there are also some I I guess it using census tracts presents as interesting.

So one area I will mention that's not included is Lone Star, and that's because it's positioned in a census track that includes a higher income area.

So while there's certainly areas we would have hoped would have been potentially included that because of the census tracks and how they're situated, it didn't perfectly align with with how we could um select those areas.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, um, and I am interested to in and seeing how this really helps our residents, um, and not just the investors.

Um if there's a way for us to see how it's impacting and uplifting our actual residents, um, improving their lives.

It's gonna be important to me.

But I do appreciate your work on this, and uh I think it's great that we're going after it and uh that we're being strategic about it.

That was one of the things I really wanted to make sure we were doing.

And if we can be um first at the table with the governor, I think that'd be ideal.

Um, so he can see our needs first.

But uh thank you, thank you very much.

And Chair, if I may, I I will share that this is not just a commercial development tool.

Um, this is frequently used in housing.

We did have a number of um housing developers at our stakeholder briefing, and they utilize this tool along with all the other affordable housing tools to produce housing units and mixed-use development.

So this that is one way that it can be directly seen.

Uh typically it's not used for single-family homes.

So it's going to be mixed use and multifamily housing.

So that's one way that our residents may see it more directly, but also just in the availability of more businesses and additional jobs coming in from industrial development.

Councilman Messi Gonzalez.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um, I I appreciate um I'm glad to see, excuse me, the medical center identified in here as an opportunity zone.

I think it's uh critical that we prioritize this location in our recommendation.

Um I think the work that the residents are doing already in that area is delivering results for San Antonio as a whole.

So making sure that they're in that final recommendation, I think is important so that we can continue accelerating the investment in that area, whether it's business or housing, like you was mentioned.

I think it's important that uh that's that's also um part of that conversation to include uh how this benefits uh those in the in the housing space.

Um, on question two, or I'm sorry, quite my question too.

Sorry.

Um, slide slide, not slide.

Uh, where is it?

I think it was really it was on the um 1.0 and 2.0.

Where is that right here?

Yeah, what's the difference between the surrounding area and the state or metro area?

That was how it was defined uh by Treasury, so um or how did y'all define it, or how did you so again?

This was the criteria used that then Treasury ran through the census tracks utilizing the American community survey data.

So we did not, we received a list of tracks that were eligible for San Antonio and Bear County, but these are the criteria they used with that data set in order to select it.

Um I think the 2.0 version reflects that tightening of honing in of surrounding area being a larger geographic area versus uh state metro being smaller.

Okay, just okay curious, and then uh just making sure too.

I think we've said this uh somebody else said it too, but just ensuring that our uh small and local businesses in the designated zone are aware uh that they're in the zone and then how they benefit from um a program like this.

So I don't know if that in requires any sort of targeted outreach to to those small businesses, but uh I hope that's something that we can uh include.

That's all thank you, Councilman Castillo.

Uh thank you, Chair, and thank you, Anna, for the presentation.

In terms of the uh tax break that's provided through opportunity zones, can you walk me through what that looks like?

So if an investor places the um capital gains from the sell of a property or a sell of an asset into a qualifying opportunity fund, then and invest that money into one of these areas via that opportunity fund, they are able to defer the capital gains tax on that investment for a period of I believe it is 10 years.

So it allows them to defer that gain by making investments.

Yeah, and ask that question because the National Coalition of Reinvestment has identified with the 2013 to 2017 use of opportunity zones uh that it could potentially serve as a catalyst for gentrification.

So uh while we're identifying these trenches census tracts, like one, I would like to know who the stakeholders were, particularly around the housing component, because an analysis of 2013 and 2017 found that many of the projects that received the tax breaks were projects that were already financially feasible.

So they intended they were going to build those projects anyway.

So I want to ensure that as we navigate this conversation about navigating and identifying the census tracts, is that um we're not uh facilitating gentrification in our communities, particularly within the west side, because there's just data that shows that it is a catalyst, and then we just essentially are giving tax breaks to folks that already have the wealth to construct the project.

Um but I I would like to see the list of folks who participated in identifying the census tracts, and then also was there coordination with the county uh in terms of of what census tracts would be submitted to the governor?

That is some that coordination is actively ongoing.

Okay.

And then is that something that's done with the county's uh economic team, or is that something discussed with the county commissioners?

So we're working directly with the county's economic development team.

Okay.

I think I would also again just to reiterate, I'd like to see the list, and I'm curious in terms of like the internal metrics for consideration.

Um I think there would be value.

Uh I understand we're identifying where there's set to be economic development, whether it's the baseball stadium or the old Nelson Wolf Stadium, uh, or Project Marvel, but I think we should also be looking at in terms of geographic attributes where there's also been school closures, right?

Um the school districts have identified a need for economic development, particularly around housing, uh, to help sustain their attendance for their school districts.

So I think there's value in terms of place for us to take that into account, but also in terms of spurs of economic activity to take into consideration where new market tax credits are eligible in terms of where there's potential opportunity to identify those census tracts.

Um but again, I think I'm just hesitant, right?

Uh in terms of just seeing the impact that it has on communities of color and facilitating displacement.

I want to navigate this with caution in how we move forward because again, it's typically to construct market in the housing realm market rate housing, which according to the strategic housing framework, we're already exceeding uh our market rate housing goals, so just want to ensure that we're not creating uh more issues in terms of affordable housing by giving tax breaks to construct unaffordable housing.

And and just to clarify, and actually the new market tax credits was some feedback that came up at our stakeholder session.

Um, and we were able to pull in that data and those areas overlap overwhelmingly.

Uh, I would have to give you the exact percentage that don't overlap, but uh where those programs can be utilized in tandem to promote affordable housing.

Um, and just want to clarify so staff we developed the model and the recommendation of the initial six uh 69 census tracks, that then we took to our stakeholders and really wanted to know are there additional data points, uh upcoming development that we might not be aware of or that our external data sources might not be tracking, trying to bring in additional input.

Um, we we very much so did not want it to be about pointing to a specific tract and saying we want this one included because we knew that would damage the integrity of our model whereby we wanted to provide a prioritized list that we could back up with the information to again make that really strong case to the state that these are areas that are our prime for opportunity.

I appreciate that, Anna.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, uh thank you for the comments.

That's very insightful.

So the other thing is we look at the map, um, is understanding that we've got the child care deserts, we have the food deserts, we have very we have quite a bit of aging infrastructure, and um we have the needs for health care in terms of the um mortality rate versus north and and south.

So there's a lot to take into consideration, and I knew you you all worked with the census tracts, and I really appreciate that.

And I think we just need to make sure that we are we are looking at that and seeing when we talk when we when we go out into the community and we say we have an opportunity zone.

What are we going to prioritize to bring into that opportunity zone?

Is it gonna be housing?

Is it gonna be business?

Do we have people coming in?

Is are they going to help develop that old very aging infrastructure in the area?

Which is, and I mentioned this before with the other thing.

Of course, I'm gonna say it all needs to be in the south side because we have the most aging infrastructure.

But I know that it's important that we take this out.

So Anna, tell me we take this, we we get our list together, we take it to the governor.

The governor can either move all 69 or only certain tracks forward, and then he sends it to the federal government, and then they make the final decision, correct?

What goes to the federal government as nominated are those that will be designated as long as they meet the uh treasury criteria, those those first three criteria, they would become opportunity zones.

Yeah, and I I think that's kind of our call is okay.

Who are the developers there?

Who are the stakeholders there?

Because that way, if our area gets selected by the governor and it comes back to really, and we talked about this early, the accountability to really tell them, but this is what the neighborhood needs.

If you're gonna bring something in, I need you to bring the infrastructure.

I need to have that affordable small business that that retail space for small businesses.

We need the housing that takes into consideration the the workers of international or JZ JCB that are gonna start at this level.

Um you're gonna bring in the nursing home because we've got an aging community here, and this is what we need here is from you know, a full facility nursing home.

So I think that that's kind of the one thing we want to kind of get an idea of like who was at the table, uh, who else can we bring to the table and in terms of opportunity zones?

So as soon as the governor signs off on how many of our tracks he's taking from Bear County in the San Antonio area, we as Bear County in San Antonio can then go out to those developers to the business community to get different organizations to kind of invest in saying this is an opportunity that's coming.

Are we ready to go?

So uh that's I think a lot of motivation behind our list is because uh wanting to know the list of who was there, wanting to know how we're gonna take this out to get what the services we need, the businesses we need in our areas.

So I appreciate all your efforts.

I think in terms of I you know I would go and testify that it was an opportunity zone that brought the growth and and the change in development, but because we didn't have any reporting, I know you can't do that, and I can't just make things up.

I can only give testimonials.

So I think that's one of the things is we all as elected officials, we can go give a testimony and say it is in our belief that the opportunity zone brought this to our community, but without the data, we can't we can't have you, the city um government do that.

So thank you so much for the presentation.

Um, Chair, if I may, I wanted to just thank Darien Gibson from our research team.

He's been with us a little over six months and dove in head first to this and has done all the mapping and modeling, and so I really appreciate his efforts.

Well, Darren, Darien?

Darien, welcome.

Uh way to go to please stay.

I know that was a lot of work, but um, thank you, and thank you for uh being part of this commit committee and helping us with this process.

Chair.

If it's okay, I just wanted to mention on slide seven, uh-huh.

I know there was a lot of questions as to how this list was identified.

Each of those sub bullets, um, there there is a beautiful Excel model that they walked me through, and we can definitely do that with anybody who is interested.

But each of those sub bullets basically has a point value associated with it.

And then we went through and evaluated which of those um really rise to a certain level to where they should be recommended.

Um we, if there's a certain like I know there was one census track that was already highlighted, we can go back through there and figure out where what did not prioritize it, where where did it fall short based on this criteria, and is that other criteria that we should be considering.

I will also say that they have vetted this criteria.

Um, I believe at least preliminar preliminary preliminarily with the state, and we did get some pretty positive feedback about how they appreciate us taking this type of approach instead of more of a blanket, you know, everything we can get.

We're going to try to get.

Thank you.

And so my I'm pretty sure you all will get calls from my committee members to go through the point system.

All right.

If there aren't any other questions, comments, we'll go ahead and move on to the last item, item number four.

And we do have a presentation.

And he's been waiting so patiently.

Troy, the floor is yours.

Yes, ma'am.

Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee.

This item is following up on the resolution that was passed by City Council on February 12th.

The resolution supports evaluation of strategies protect all San Antonians.

There are a number of strategies that were included in that resolution.

Of those strategies are specifically five that during the city manager report on April 9th that were referred back to the Economic Workforce Development Committee for y'all's consideration.

And for the finance department to go back and specifically look at how that could be implemented through through procurement based on the statutes that govern our procurements.

Very quickly, these are the items, the five items that were included in the resolution that impact the city's contract and procurement practices.

I won't read the entire things, but the first item is a council policy to not do business with entities providing support to ICE.

You also have non-contracting policies.

What is the city's legal authority to decline entering into contracts, renewals, or extensions with vendors that provide service to ICE detention facilities, procurement standards, and value-based criteria where those can be included in our in our procurements, those related to civil rights, community impact, ethical business practices, and if those can be included in our contracts.

Then you also have vendor accountability and disclosure.

So are there mechanisms to require disclosure of vendor participation in detention or immigration enforcement?

And when we talk about the slides in the next couple of slides, we'll probably start with that one because you have to be able to disclose the interaction with ICE and their contracts for the other items to be applicable.

So the next couple of slides are going to focus on the top four, and then we have a separate slide talking specifically to insurance liability and risk exposure.

Y'all have seen this before, but really is kind of the foundation from a procurement standpoint on what we can do where those items on the left are those items that really are ingrained in state statute, and those items on the right are items that do not have statutory prohibitions to um for those four or five things that we talked about on the previous slide.

When we talk about state statute, there are really three areas.

We have invitations for bids, requests for competitive competitive sealed proposals, and requests for offers.

Invitations for bids, we've y'all have heard me say this before, but it's gonna be bids that are gonna be awarded to the lowest responsible bidder.

That lowest responsible bidder is gonna be defined.

Did they meet the specifications and were they lowest provide the lowest price?

That is um ingrained in the local government code, chapter 252 and 271.

And when we talk about invitation for bids, it's typically going to be applied to things like office supplies, fleet, auto parts, furniture, streets and construction materials and services.

It can also be done for janitorial landscaping, electrical and plumbing, but we typically do those under a request for competitive SEAL proposal because there's other factors that we can um that we can consider.

So talking about the RSCSP or request for competitive sale proposals, we often hear that referred to as best value.

As I mentioned, we can request other factors, experience background qualifications, the proposed plan, um, that may impact the quality of the services or goods that are being provided.

These are also ingrained in Texas Government code chapter 2269 for things such as janitorial services, landscaping, electrical, HVAC, and things of that nature.

Then you also have the last category of requests for offer.

These are gonna be things for that are exempted as a public safety exemption or cooperative procurements under Chapter 252 and 271.

Some of the things that you commonly see us buy through this area are going to be fire bunker gear, rescue equipment, specialty fleet vehicles, or IT license agreements.

When we talk about these three areas or these three buckets, there's going to be limited opportunity to actually influence or employ any of those four items that we talked about on the prior slide under the resolution.

And I'll talk about that specifically on the next couple of slides.

As far as the non-statutory where it may apply, it's kind of on a case by case basis.

Typically gonna be a request for qualifications.

This is ingrained in statute as well, typically in planning, architectural and engineering and land surveying.

And then the area that everybody's familiar with is request for proposals, financial consulting, marketing, things of that nature.

In this area where there's discretion, typically we can apply those criteria on the prior slide, but it's really gonna be on a case by case basis, and I'll talk about that in a second.

So focusing on the left side of the slide where they were statutory procurements, again, the invitation for bid, RSCSPs, or the RFQ.

When it comes to the ability or it comes to vendor accountability and disclosure, in other words, can we ask a vendor during the procurement process?

Are you doing business with ICE?

Are you doing business with ICE or detention facility?

Generally, you can ask, it cannot be required.

And if it is, and if they do respond, we can't use it as a minimum qualification or to influence the procurement.

Because when it's an invitation for bid, an RFCSP or an RFQ, it's gonna come down to specifications and price and other factors.

So we can ask, they can deny providing the information, and we can't really hold that against the vendor as we go through the process.

So as far as a policy to not do business with entities providing support to ICE, again, we can ask the question, but we cannot limit competition.

Council can elect if they do, basically say they're doing business with ICE or a detention facility.

Ultimately, council awards the contracts.

Council can elect not to award or recommend to the responsible lowest bidder, but under that process, you can't go to the second ranked vendor.

We have to cancel the procurement and resolicit.

As far as non-contracting policies, you know, city council, as I mentioned, has the ultimate authority to award new contracts and contracts, renewals, and extensions.

But it's all on the basis of asking the question, do they do business with those type of entities?

As far as procurement standards and value-based criteria, again, state law restricts the criteria and specifications on low bid procurements.

Can't ask those additional questions, or if we do ask, it can't not be considered into the procurement.

And then under the RCSP and other areas like alternate delivery and RFQs, evaluation criteria must focus on the quality and the competence, and we can't consider those factors in an award as well.

So ultimately, under these, an invitation for bid, an RFCSP, an RFQ, we can ask, but really you can't consider that in the award of the procurement.

And council can ultimately not decide not to award a contract to a vendor.

On the other area where there is a little more flexibility, the non-statutory procurements, you hear us talk about this all the time as far as discretionary procurements.

Under an RFP or certain RFQs, again on a case-by-case basis, when it comes to a vendor accountability disclosure, we can ask the question.

We can require that they respond as far as if they are doing business or not with an ICE or detention facility.

May be limited due to contracts funded by federal and state grants.

Kind of for example, the contract in the airport for airport concessions.

It's discretionary, it's a revenue contract, but it's really governed by the FAA, so there's limit you cannot apply it there.

If it wasn't funded by a federal or state grant, certainly we could apply it.

Policy to not do business with entities providing support to ICE.

If they do respond and they are required to respond, then the result of those disclosures can be used to determine responsiveness.

So for example, if we had a farm in the procurement and we asked someone, are you doing business with ICE or a detention facility?

And they say yes, then we can deem them non-responsive and move forward only in these type of procurements.

Same goes for non-contracting policies.

The results of the disclosures can be used to determine responsiveness.

And again, city council has the ultimate authority to award new contracts and contract renewals and extensions.

Procurement standards and value-based criteria, this can be included as well in terms of civil rights, community impact, and ethical business practices.

I think it'd be worth if council wants to move forward in that direction.

So we can actually include them in our procurements.

So they would need to be established.

So those priority slides cover the kind of the gambit of our procurements in those five different buckets.

When it comes to the insurance liability and risk exposure, it's a difficult question to answer.

So when it comes to evaluating how a vendor participation in detention operations affects liability exposure, insurance costs, or reputational risk for both the city and its contractors, and assess whether additional safeguards or exclusions are warranted.

We looked at that, we talked to risk, we talked to the attorney's office.

This is very difficult to quantify.

We don't have the visibility into their insurance contracts, and what considerations those insurance companies are taking into consideration as they assess the premiums on those businesses.

So this is some area that's it's going to be difficult to quantify the impact of the city doing business with a contractor doing business with ICE, if not impossible.

So in summary, as I mentioned, the city may apply vendor accountability non-contracting policies or values-based criteria only to discretionary contract types, those on the right side of the list as we talked about earlier in the presentation.

These typically are going to be professional consulting services not governed by statute, leases of city-owned real property concessions agreements where they're not governed by grant or federal contract, or other revenue generating contracts, and as I mentioned, this would even be on a case-by-case basis, and state and federal laws limit our ability to apply these criteria to other contract categories.

So that was a short and sweet presentation.

Be happy to answer any questions.

So we do have to be careful what we say too because we do approve audit committees.

Now, that go to full city council.

Troy, is it possible for the council to put together a designation?

Not minority-owned business, not, you know, any sort of equity-based business, but just businesses that are good neighbors to the community, like a designation of community approved or community star five-star rating, kind of like a Yelp review to take into consideration on who we do business with.

Is that possible or would that be because we have a bad actor list that we want to put on?

We have that for apartments, and we have that for contractors now.

Could there be like a, you know, five-star or you know, top list that we could put community members that volunteer all this information that give back to the community, uh, have a recognition like that.

Does that have to come from us, or should it come from a community group that kind of creates this sort of approval of businesses here in San Antonio?

I think it depends.

Um, and you mentioned the ordinance that we in place for that we have in place for like bad actors on the construction side.

We can certainly expand that to do in other areas on our goods and services and our discretionary contracts.

As far as a gold star list, I think I would say we do that already, especially on the discretionary side.

The evaluation committee evaluates kind of their experience, evaluates our proposals.

I think you can do that on the discretionary side.

Yeah, and I understand on the RFQs that we're limited on what we can do with that because of where we get the funding.

But in terms of what you mentioned, in terms of the last one regarding our contracts, our concession contracts, things like that.

If there is some way that we would know, if people want to volunteer this information of how they give this commute to the community for the council members before, I think that that would be um helpful if they could do that.

Um because I want to be able to understand is we are doing business with good neighbors.

We are we are doing business with people that uh show up for their community because businesses and companies and contractors are part of our community too, and we want them to uh we want to understand and see them giving back as we make decisions regarding that.

Um, and then I think part of the um part of the the process, the statutory procurement process.

I think that needs to be presented to uh council members individually.

I I don't know that this needs to go back to a B session for conversation or if we could just bring alternative ideas on how we can know our businesses and and our our community members that are doing business with us in terms of the the um what was the slide called the non-statuary procurements, how we can do that um and how we can kind of get that information for our discretionary contract types and be confident that we're doing business that our concessioner is supportive of everyone in the community and things like that.

So um I'm looking for if my council colleagues want to uh chime in, I'd like to hear that uh from them.

So we'll begin discussion.

Uh anyone want to go first?

Rick.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Troy, for the presentation.

I really appreciate kind of the thoroughness that you provided uh to help us kind of better understand what we can actually do these kind of do these kind of uh new policies or whatever we may call it.

Um, or we can't, right?

I think that's always the biggest conversation that I have with my residents pretty frequently when folks reach out to our office about some of these topics and you know we talk about the differences and what this city can do because other cities and what it you know what's all available at our what tools are tools do we have.

Um I'm supportive of utilizing disclosures, um, the way it's listed in slide six.

Um, you know, I think that's just the best way we can do is to get more information from any of our businesses that are looking to um procure with us or do business with us.

Um, supportive of individual conversations with other council members uh for any kind of further feedback.

I don't know if we need to do a full B session here, but you know, if that comes to it too, that's fine.

Um yeah, overall, really appreciate the presentation and the work and the diligence you and your team have done to kind of go through these uh as well as the city attorney's office uh to go through uh what's possible and what's not possible here.

So thank you all.

Who would like to go next?

Councilman Casilla.

Thank you, Chair and thank you, Troy, for the presentation in terms of uh the recommendation of applying vendor accountability to the non-contracting policies or the value-based criteria.

Uh, I'm supportive of what you all have laid out, um, similar to the councilman appreciate you walking us through what is is what is and is not feasible uh in terms of uh what the three signature memo or the council consideration request was calling for.

Um I'm curious in terms of the financial impact or economic impact.

I understand that can't be quantified, but I'm curious if the master research agreement uh can help us understand uh the impact to our businesses by um supporting vendors who support um ice.

Um so more comments than questions, but I'm supportive of what you've laid out.

Um and I know it's for briefing purposes only, but can you walk us through like what next steps would be uh beyond today?

I think we need to go back and look at, but my recommendation would be if council is supportive of some of these policies specifically on the non-statutory procurements, that we would need some type of policy to implement in our procurements that in the event that they um that we require the disclosures, and to the extent that they do not respond, we'd want to deem them non-responsive where they cannot participate on the city procurements.

I think we want to memorialize that in an ordinance.

And when can we anticipate that being um agenda for a B session?

Um I have to go back and look.

I mean, I think it depends on um going back and sitting down with the rest of the council and getting their feedback, and certainly we would probably come back after the break.

Okay, all right.

I think there was gonna be a little pointing on everything that was on the discussion for all of the council.

Yeah, Ray's reminding me.

So the entire resolution I had, I don't remember how many points there were.

I think that was actually going back to the council for a full briefing as well.

Okay, sounds good.

Appreciate it, Troy.

Thank you, Chair.

So, so Troy, if you could um if you could if your team could go and look for a disclosure as an example to take to the council members to get their input in, um, that would be appreciative.

And then if you could bring that back to us after the break so we could see what the disclosure was and just get um an updated version of that.

And I this may not work with the timeline that the full council wanted, but I think it's important that we that you go and you talk and explain this to the council members who wish to be informed on this, show them an example of a disclosure we'd we'd have to do that, and then that's the other thing in terms of policy that would have to come from us as the council members to write policy that we know would non-responsive if they do not fill out this disclosure and really work with legal on what that would mean, and then but I'd like the disclosure to come to this committee first so that we can look at what was the consensus um of kind of this is how we ask the question.

Is it is it negatively asked, or is it positively?

And like you I you know, you know what I'm saying.

Uh how we ask that question, and that's the thing is I want to see how many want to be like, do you support ICE or do you do business with ICE?

Or do you work with government to tease that imprisoned children?

I'm sorry, I just that just is me.

But uh let's just um kind of look at how how we kind of ask that question.

So if you could if you could go out there and look for a disclosure form, I'm not sure what other cities have done this or if they've done it on something else.

Um I know there's a lot of communities, smaller communities of course, that have done this on on environmental issues.

When I go to NLC, there's always like, oh, well, we don't let people use plastic bags or things like this, and part of that is is something that they put in to when they're uh negotiating that contract.

So if you could go and look at that and take that to uh bring that back back to us after you visit with the council members, hopefully we can have that come to the council in a briefing in the fall.

So um that's what I'm thinking in terms of timeline.

But if you could send us a memo about what you're thinking in terms of timeline, uh I'd appreciate that.

Uh any other comments?

Councilman Spears.

Um, yes, I I am interested too to see how other cities and counties are maybe implementing this and the outcome.

I know Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose, Philadelphia, LA, they're all trying to do things, but I wanna I think they're all a little bit different than what we're trying to do here.

Um, I really want to make sure.

This gives me pause because it's just something that I feel like it's not gonna be as easy to implement, likely ineffective and hard to ascertain, and then it just appears like an economic development barrier to me where we're not being cooperative with law enforcement agencies across the country uh at every level.

And I I really want to make sure that we stress how important public safety is for San Antonio and the the state and our nation and legal defensibility is gonna remain key for to me.

Um I don't know how you can say, well, because they didn't disclose it, then somehow we it maybe I misunderstood what you're trying to say about the ordinance there.

Councilwoman, we will look at all of the options and we'll look at the other um cities that are implementing similar policies and have in the past as well, but we will make sure whatever we implement fully complies with the law.

I guess what I'm thinking this makes me bring this to mind.

This like the questions when you're doing an application for employment and you decline to answer your race or ethnicity.

What you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, uh those are those are what you would would uh term, those are classifications that really trigger a higher level of scrutiny.

Right.

Um these are these are a little bit different.

Ultimately, on contracts, it is on these non on non-statutory procurements, it really is up to the discretion of council to vote yes or no.

Um what grounds those are, those could be for many different reasons.

So there's a little bit of uh more discretion when you're talking about these types of procurements.

Sure, I mean I understand the difference there.

I'm just trying to think about like I don't want to discourage competition or or um timelines, how it's gonna cost what it what the cost would be to taxpayers because we're making it drawing assumptions, you know what I'm saying?

And and I I I just don't think this is gonna deliver the desired result that many of my fellow colleagues intended, so why do it?

Is kind of my thinking behind it, but um, and I think it can maybe only hurt us, which is why I want to look at what the other cities are doing.

Um, I know uh I maybe stand alone in this position, but I just feel like we gotta back up our law enforcement entirely.

So thank you.

Councilman, that's good.

Thank you for the presentation and thank you, Troy, to you and your team for laying all of this out for us and um sharing the viable options that we do have, we're limited.

Uh but uh on the a couple of folks have already said this, but just curious on what other cities you know have have adopted similar vendor restriction policies.

Um, and then for us specifically, these are disclosure mechanisms that we're expanding, or are we having to create from scratch?

Um, we'd go back and look what other cities are doing to see if we can leverage some of that.

But at the end of the day, disclosures are fairly simple.

Okay.

I mean, do you do business or do you have contracts with facilities that contract with ice?

It's gonna be very simple.

Yeah, um, but we'll go back and look at the other cities, we'll try to see what they do so we don't have to recreate the wheel, and then of course we'll um visit with Ray and his team as far as the legal component as far as how that is phrased and how it's worded.

Um okay, thank you.

And I guess when we talk about the small businesses that could be impacted on the with this, I don't know how we protect some of those small businesses from that, right?

Because they are local, they're um raising families off of that income coming in, and so how do we kind of draw the line there?

Uh don't have an answer to that question.

I mean, because it's kind of depending on how we structure this and what the ultimately, if there's a policy and it's passed what it looks like.

Um if you do business with one of those entities, then on a discretionary procurement, it'll be a pass fill.

You don't move forward.

On the other side, on the statutory side, um, like I mentioned, we can ask the question.

They can decline to answer.

Um, and it can't be held against them in um in the procurement process.

So I don't have a good answer to your question.

What would if we created a floor for for the those small businesses?

Is that uh typically on these type of policies?

That's a good question, like on local preference and others.

We have 50,000 as a floor as the floor.

As a floor.

Um so it only in those cases it only applies to procurements 50,000 or more.

Okay, that's something we could certainly do.

Just thinking, yeah.

I mean, you're gonna see what other cities are doing, but I'm curious if they put anything in place here uh regarding a floor.

Okay, we can certainly look at that as well.

Okay, uh, those are all my questions.

Thanks again for uh the work you're doing and um the options that you've presented back to us.

Appreciate it.

Any other comments?

This item was for briefing only.

Um thank you, Troy.

The time is now 4 09 and this meeting is adjourned.