Yes.

I couldn't resist.

I know.

Okay, I'm gonna call um the special city commission uh workshop for April fifteenth, twenty twenty-five to order, and um our first agenda item is a presentation and discussion regarding economic development market analysis and visioning draft report, and I see we have Mr.

Um Appleby and Mr.

Cover sitting there to discuss it.

Okay, for the record, uh Steve Cover, director of planning uh with economic development is uh within the planning department.

Uh as you as you remember um a number of years ago, economic development was shifted over to the planning department.

Um eventually what we did was they were originally in the new town office, they were moved to her office here in downtown.

And uh really the next step was uh putting together uh the right team for doing economic economic development here in the city.

And so uh we hired Wayne Appleby, we hired Julie Ryan, and we hil hired Rochelle Gallant.

Uh we did lose Susan Dodd uh during that time frame.

She decided to uh uh go to architecture school in Berlin and uh as of tomorrow, uh she's starting as our new historic preservation planner in the planning department.

So I want everybody to know that.

So yeah, we're we're very excited.

Um so uh you know, with this new entity, a new economic development office.

Um we began taking a fresh look at economic development uh citywide.

You know, a lot of a lot of the the time it was active, it was primarily focusing on a couple of areas in the city, but we really felt it was important to expand those responsibilities and go citywide.

Obviously, you're aware we have you know we've had the the did strategic plan adopted uh the impacts and needs on attainable housing.

The planning department obviously did a lot of work there to uh incentivize uh attainable housing for a lot of the workers here in the city.

Sports tourism is growing here in the city.

Um and also the Moat Marina Research Lab.

Um they have really big plans in the future for drawing um really a lot of talent uh research talent here to the city.

And now we come to a point where we're um gonna be presenting a market analysis report, uh, which is really a critical step, I think, for the city, uh really creating, you know, as you as this is presented to you and hopefully adopted by the commission, really creating an economic development road roadmap for where we're going in the future.

So now I'd like to re pass it on to Wayne.

Good morning, Wayne Appleby, economic development manager.

Um thank you, everybody, for your time.

Uh we're excited to be here.

It's been a little bit getting to you.

Originally, we were planning to come in October, uh, but we all know what happened in October.

So it has been uh moved to today, so we're really excited to be here from an economic development office standpoint.

We view this as a foundational report to really develop what are our goals as a city, as a department, and they're focused on economic development.

You know, what are the strategic goals that we want to achieve?

Um and this to me is the foundation of getting to that point.

Um so last year we undertake a um uh consultant with us that will do a presentation today, provide information to you.

As you may remember, we had a number, I think seven different community events and online surveys, which they'll talk about uh to gather information to really do a full market analysis and uh for the city as that again foundation.

And and uh, you know, I find that really important because uh, you know, your economic development is is small, not just in stature, but uh as numbers as well.

I missed my joke, okay.

Um but so we have to be, you know, you're gonna see a lot of things today through this recommendation report that are be wonderful to employ uh and to do all of them, but like everyone, we have limited resources uh to apply to that.

So what is we're really want trying to seek your input back as to what is most important to all of you that we can then come back at a later date at a regular meeting to maybe discuss actual strategic goals, and then we're aligning our staff time, uh any future funding for economic development.

We know where we're going to put our energy and effort.

So this is the start of the conversation with this foundation report.

And at this point, I'm gonna turn it over to Rochelle.

Good morning, Rochelle Goldant, Business Relations Coordinator with Economic Development.

We wanted to thank you all as city commission and our city administration for allowing us to undertake this project.

Um we've been excited as you know, Wayne and Steve had shared about you know what's to come and to get your input on it.

And I'd like to introduce our consulting team that's worked with us over the last year on this.

Uh we have with us today Lynn Dellinger uh from RMA, she's an economic development consultant consultant and broker associate.

We have Adrian Esteban, our senior project manager also with RMA, and Tom Sakarski, who was with RVI planning and landscape architecture, and he's the project director.

So they'll come up to the table and make their presentation to you, and then we'll take questions and have a discussion.

Morning.

You'll introduce yourselves when you before you speak.

I'm sorry, I'm if you'll introduce yourselves when you get ready to speak.

We need this screen up.

Okay.

There you go.

Well, thank you very much.

Um my name is Lynn Dellinger.

I'm economic development director for RMA and have been involved with this project from the beginning, as has our principal Chris Brown, who is uh lived in Sarasota for quite some time.

He could not be with us today, but he was an integral part of this entire market analysis and visioning efforts.