Economic Development Authority Meeting   6/15/2021

because we do have a quorum to start.

And then while we go through the steps we need to get going and then hopefully others.

Do we know?

Well, there's Steve coming in.

Okay.

All right.

Well, let's get going.

So I'll call the meeting to order.

And Jennifer, you want to put up the

Hello Steve.

All right.

They've changed some options here.

It's taking me a second.

Yep.

All right.

Notwithstanding any provision of the EDA bylaws to the contrary, as permitted under the Albemarle County's Continuity of Government Ordinance, Chapter 1283 of the 2020 Act, the General Assembly, and the resolution of this body adopted on April 21, 2020, we are holding this meeting by real-time electronic means with no authority member physically present at a single central location.

All authority members are participating electronically.

This meeting is being held in accordance with Section 6 of the county's Continuity of Government Ordinance.

All authority members will identify themselves and state their general physical location by electronic means during the roll call vote, which we will hold next.

This meeting is being recorded and will be uploaded to the county's website.

The public has real-time audio-visual access to this meeting over Zoom and real-time audio access over telephone.

both as provided in the lawfully posted meeting notice.

The public is invited to offer live comment during the meeting's public comment period.

Comments are limited to three minutes and must be germane to matters on today's agenda.

The public is also invited to send questions, comments and suggestions to the authority through the county's Economic Development Office at any time.

I will do it.

Director McNaughton.

Present in Troy, Virginia.

Okay.

All right.

Great.

So, matters from the public.

We do not have anybody signed up to speak.

Nobody.

All right.

Then let's proceed.

So approval of the minutes.

The minutes have been circulated.

All right.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

I think that's a unanimous vote.

Financial report.

As of May 31, the EDA can report fees year to date and interest year to date totaling 108,790.47 against expenditures of 2,670.24 year to date.

That's relatively unchanged from our last meeting, save for a small accrual of interest.

We've had substantial pass-through revenue and expenditures this year to date, totaling $1,078,070.

This includes pass-through expenditures for habitat, willow tree, Seville Biohub, and Brookdale.

And then we have a total of $171,400

of committed funds not yet expended.

Okay, is there a second?

I second.

All right, all in favor?

All right, so the financial report is approved.

So on to new business.

I do.

Jennifer and I are going to tag team this introduction.

I think it's important to provide some context before these speakers address this group of directors.

And about over three years ago, the county approved a strategic plan called Project Enable.

You're all familiar with it by now.

One component of Project Enable was to launch a business retention and expansion strategy.

So about a little over two years ago, we hired our own Jennifer Schmack to start a program and launch program.

And today you're gonna hear about some of the results of this program, at least as it relates to domestic expansion and international expansion.

But mostly we wanna inform you of these particular programs and ask for your extended outreach as you go meet with other businesses and how you can share these opportunities with them so we can reach more businesses than just one person per se.

So with that being said, we launched the BRE program and in that was domestic expansion and international expansion.

Jennifer went to visit with these businesses, told these business owners and or managers about the programs and then helped them enroll with the programs through our partners at the state level called the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

So Jennifer is going to introduce the next two guest speakers who are going to talk to you about the international expansion program called Valet and Economic Gardening for the domestic expansion programs.

Yes, so from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, we have Caitlin Maxwell.

She is the international trade manager.

So speaking about valet and then we also have Jason Smith.

Oh, there he is.

I was afraid he was not going to pop in quite right.

Jason is the business retention manager and focuses on the economic gardening program.

So with that, we didn't discuss.

He was going to go first.

Yep, I can go.

Perfect.

I'm sure that that front picture is familiar with everybody.

Really appreciate your time, Jennifer.

Thanks for asking me to participate today and talk about the economic gardening program.

So just to give you an idea, Roger hit on it from a VDP standpoint.

My role as an existing business manager with VDP is to focus only on existing Virginia companies.

VDP has an arm focused on business attraction from outside of the state.

We've got numerous divisions from research, site selection,

To Talent Solutions, my role is just on Virginia companies.

So as an existing business manager, we'll get to the next slide in a second.

We've got territories throughout the Commonwealth.

But I can't stress enough, you know, our main mission is to work with Virginia companies.

And not just, you know, learn about business climate, pain points, what's keeping folks up at night, but also at the end of the day to share resources.

and I'll just mention that Jennifer and Roger and the Albemarle team have been awesome to work with.

There's a ton of positive energy.

I spent about five years in Savannah County.

I'm a little familiar with Albemarle, but I can't say enough how much of a pleasure it's been working with Jennifer on this initiative from an economic gardening standpoint.

And we've got a lot of good momentum.

So this is just the bird's eye view of our regions.

COVID has made a lot of folks adapt, including me.

I'm up there, number four.

My goatee has expanded a little bit, but we still, again, we still have the same.

And that's worked Virginia companies and helped them succeed.

You can go to the next slide, please.

So what's economic gardening?

When I first heard of gardening, I thought about,

I can go outside and plant some trees and flowers and I even told my wife about it and she's like, you should come to Kauai and talk to them about your gardening program.

I'm like, Jana, it's a little bit different than that.

It's more exciting.

And so economic gardening was started, gosh, almost, you know, a little over 40 years ago, Chris Gibbons and we'll get to a history slide in

in the next round, but he started the program back in Colorado.

It's geared towards facilitating growth

for Virginia companies.

This is not about finding that next big base hit or home run.

This is about working with folks in our backyard.

This is about working with companies that are looking to grow.

They might not have that, you know, that million dollar budget like the Googles and Amazons have.

This program will create an even playing field.

For those companies.

It's geared towards stage two traded sector companies.

So we're not going to be able to work with retail.

We're not going to be able to work with

Service-based organizations, banks, accountants, et cetera.

It's geared towards its traded sector manufacturers, folks that are doing niche products and coming up with the next big thing.

And this program is going to help them get the word out and market to the clients, get in front of the folks that need to hear about their new products.

Stage two traded sector companies are defined as having

employment from 10 to 100, annual revenues of one to 50 million.

And once we've vetted the companies and get them in, it's a simple process from an application to the end of the program, the engagement, and I'll get to that in a second.

But really what the program is geared towards is helping assisting companies reach that next step.

It's going to help accelerate domestic sales through search engine optimization, customized market research, and finding qualified sales leads.

Next slide, please.

Maureen.

All right.

So, yeah, we talked about Chris Gibbons a little bit.

You know, he's still on most of the calls.

Jennifer, I don't know.

I think you've probably been on a handful of calls.

I'm sure he's been on those calls.

And it's really cool because the amount of knowledge that just Chris brings to the table, but the research team that we work with, he's been on over

probably he's been over 3,000 phone calls with various companies throughout every industry you can think of.

He created the program, a company back in Colorado decided to leave Littleton back in the eighties and his board said, hey, figure something out.

We need to find, you know, we need to make up for this loss of revenue, loss of employment.

So he created this term economic gardening.

and here we are over 40 years later.

He's been with over 3,500 companies.

They're in over 25 cities and states and it's not just something that a state can get involved in.

If localities or municipalities want to contract with the National Center for Economic Gardening, they can do so if they have the funding.

Let's go to the next slide.

I think that's the engagement piece.

Yeah, so how does our role look with Jennifer and her team, and how does a typical engagement look?

We're going to find, we have a research division within VDP that can pull basic information.

We don't have access to revenues, but we do have access to Virginia Employment Commission.

So we can kind of, we'll pull the last five years of

The Stage 2 criteria, the 10 to 100 employees,

and kind of get a good feel for what companies, how they're growing.

Most likely if they're hiring folks, we're going to assume that, yeah, revenue is probably looking good as well.

So from that angle, we'll share that with our partners and really dig in to find out, all right, do you know anything about this company or that company or these companies?

Is it worth an email or a phone call?

Last thing we want to do is bug somebody or if they're pushing agenda down their throat.

If there is interest, we have a number of

Case studies, we have an engagement sample.

And Jennifer, I'm not sure if you shared that.

I think that would be something that we could share as a follow-up action item after this call.

And that would maybe better prepare you all for a conversation or maybe grease the skids as far as what other companies could be interested or qualify.

A typical engagement is going to take about six to eight weeks.

The application we've made very simple.

It's just point of contact.

We want to verify the last five years of revenue.

We want to verify the last five years of employment.

We're looking for the traded sector states to criteria.

We've got flexibility on those employment and revenue numbers.

I'll give you a quick example.

In a rural community, Central Virginia County, we had a company that moved to the state from

from Pennsylvania.

Barely been in Virginia for a year.

They had about $250,000 in revenue.

They had about four full-time equipment employees.

That's a little off of what the stage two definitions are, but we were able to get them into the program because we

One, we saw the potential.

Two, we saw, yeah, they're growing in revenue.

They're growing in employment.

This can be that next little push that they need to get over that hump.

And again, that's what the program is geared towards.

It's all about creating an even playing field.

After the application process has been filled out, I'll go in and approve as the state program coordinator for the gardening program.

I can go in and approve the engagement and then we're off to the races.

We get assigned a team lead from the National Center for Economic Gardening.

And that research specialist basically shepherds us through that six to eight week process.

The last question on the application that companies have to fill out, we're asking the company to tell us what their top three or four domestic growth challenges are.

And those growth challenges are going to be

The research and data, they're going to get answers to those issues.

Throughout the engagement will take about a week to two weeks of time to dig in, find data and research that's going to help answer some of those domestic growth challenges, right?

So throughout that six to eight week process, we can provide, oh my gosh, pages and pages

a huge amount of research that normally would cost the company anywhere from three to five, maybe $700 an hour to utilize our research team with.

So we partner with the National Center for Economic Gardening.

The only thing the company is gonna pay for it is their time, which is usually about eight to 12 hours.

That includes emailing.

Maybe you spend an hour on the phone call.

You're collecting or you're having the presentation on your market research depending on what you've asked the research team to pull.

And then we're off to the next action item.

So typically, you know, that six to eight week period, about two months, we can get a lot of information back to the company because at the end of the day, it's all about providing that information and those resources for the company to go back out and do their thing.

We're not trying to get in anybody's way.

We do have a resource that can provide information and data to help them get over that next step.

Next slide.

I think I might be done.

Jennifer, can you go to the next slide, please?

All right.

So I try to keep it short and sweet.

I hope it wasn't too short.

Yeah, so we've got two companies, Gropen and Biomic Sciences.

Now Biomic, we've signed an NDA.

All the engagements, we've signed an NDA with the National Center for Economic Gardening.

So we don't share any information that

It goes on between NCEG, the National Center of Economic Burning, and the company.

In this case, Biomic, they're producing a new product.

They're not very familiar with it, that industry, and they needed some assistance from our research specialists to really lay the land.

So they're pulling information based off of their new product line.

You know, it's

It sounds simple, but for a company to pivot and try to get in a totally new field, which, you know, Biomic Sciences, they're smart people.

They know what they're doing.

This is a perfect program for them because they're not only getting into a new industry, they're also going through a small rebranding process.

So from a search engine optimization standpoint, the team's been able to provide them with certain keywords,

That getting into this new healthcare product into the new industry that they want to get into, they're learning these new keywords that they can then implement into their website and

Again, create an even playing field, they're going to get the same amount of more hits than their competitors.

Because the research team is pulling, they're doing a quick Google search and they're going to pull all those keywords and all of the information that the company needs to then utilize as they're going through their branding process, if that makes sense.

Gropin is another good example.

They've got custom signage and I think our last call

I believe it was part of a listening post, a watering hole.

If you're not familiar with that, essentially it's collecting corporate intelligence.

So maybe you're interested in setting up a watering hole or listening post and you're trying to find corporate intelligence around

competitors.

Maybe you want to link up to their blog and listen for keywords.

Maybe they're talking about new products.

Maybe they're talking about old products, how things, business climate, whatever the case may be.

I think they got a 20 or 30 page report on their watering hole

This was part of their action item.

And it's again it's a ton of information but the hour that we have our hour and a half that each company has with the research specialists.

I always tell folks.

Pick their brain.

I don't use the word consultant, even though in a sense that's what this program is doing.

But when we're talking with a research specialist about a specific project in the engagement, I always tell our companies pick their brain because they do this every single day with

I'm not sure if Jason finished, but I would like to just encapsulate these tier two companies get vetted through the VEDP and they get access to data, research, and intelligence they wouldn't otherwise have.

We're able to determine where they should expand, when they should expand, and what their competitors are doing that puts them in a better position to be successful long term.

And we've got a couple in our community that are in these programs as a direct result of the VDP and Jennifer's outreach.

Thank you, Jason.

Yes, sorry about that.

Thank you, guys, for your time.

So

It's all above, and I'll be honest with you.

It's not a very complicated program.

And I say that a year and a half old of being a part of

you know 20 some engagements but it to answer your question it's all the above sometimes we're working with you know companies that have an HR manager that's also their marketing manager we just got done working with a company that is going through a branding process and they've hired a third-party digital marketing firm I'll tell them if you want to focus on search engine optimization

Let's bring whoever your key players are, even if they're not associated with your organization, but they actually go out and do the work, bring them on.

Let them be a part of that engagement.

Let them be a part of that conversation.

I think one of the biggest hurdles is

You know, from a BR&E standpoint, for us, when we're talking with companies, we're having a generic conversation.

You've got your generic questions, you know, how's business doing?

You know, what's this like?

You know, tell us a little bit more of what's keeping you up at night and so on.

But once we get into that conversation and we can ask the right questions, like, you know, how do you get in front of your clients?

You know, what are your aspirations?

You said you're looking to grow in the mid-Atlantic.

How are you doing that?

We can find out more information, you know, what their processes are.

And if it makes sense for us to bring up economic gardening, because we don't want to over-promise and underperform.

If it makes sense, we will.

But we really kind of rely on the company to tell us what they're doing, what they want to do.

I think, you know what?

You can get a feel, you can get a sense throughout the conversation and it hasn't come out like that.

But we had a company who had hired a third party.

They're going through branding out in Roanoke.

And when we first started talking, and I was telling them, hey, bring them on.

When we get to the SEO section, bring them on.

And that'll be a lot easier for you to say, hey, here's what we want.

Here's what the research guys are saying.

This is what we want.

Go out and do it.

You kind of get that feeling that,

It's good for the company, all right?

How do I say this?

The company, I think the company knew there was a little bit more that could have been done over the last few months before they got to this economic gardening engagement because it really does open their eyes, right?

Because they don't know digital marketing most likely.

That's why their HR manager is responsible for the social media marketing campaign or whatever the case may be.

Whether it's confirmation or it's

This is what we asked for three months ago.

I think when we get to that point in an engagement and companies are hearing from a digital marketing standpoint, this is what we could be doing and this is how we can do it.

That's an eye opener.

I kind of feel like if or when the third party is on the phone and they can be a part of that dialogue, it makes it a lot easier from a transitional standpoint to go out and do the work.

Because the company knows what to ask for then, right?

They're gonna be given, let's say they do the SEO and they pull, all right, here are 20 keywords that your competitors are using.

And we can show you, they're getting, you're in the red here, your competitors are in the green.

This is why they're in the green.

You can implement these 10 to 15 keywords and be up here as well.

So how much of your work is,

It really depends on the company and what they want.

You know, so part of the vetting process is going to be just a general overview of economic gardening.

We'll supply the samples to kind of get their brains wrapped around.

Hey, here's an option.

Here's an opportunity.

Oh, I can ask for this and get that?

Okay, I'd like to have that.

I think the hardest part is trying to narrow it down to, for the company, it's narrowing it down to what they can do, what they can get out of the next hours, because we only have 36 hours per engagement.

And that's why I said, what are your top three or four, tell us your top three or four domestic growth challenges.

I'd say typically the SEO component, 70% of the time we're pulling the SEO.

and that can be a huge help.

I mean, I talked to, we had a company go through the program last April, which was a tough time to go through the program.

I just talked to them a couple of weeks ago and they're actually, they made it out, they're looking to hire, they just hired a part-time marketing person to help out with just the information from the SEO that they obtained through the gardening program.

But they also need a hired business development person because

They've got over 100 sales leads and they can't, it's like three guys, they can't keep up with it.

So the program has actually benefited them because they see the value, they have this information, they don't wanna see it collect dust anymore.

And you know, and to Roger's point earlier, this helps, this program, it can help companies take those calculated, I don't even like to use the word risk, but it helps set them up with the data and information

that can show them not just how to do it, but hey, we're talking to the research specialists and they have an idea.

You know, I'm going to tell the company or if we talked about it, I'm going to bring it up and say, hey, we talked about this.

Could you expand on on your thoughts?

And that's why I go back to the institutional knowledge that we have when we're on the phone with the research team.

It's one thing to go through an engagement and get the questions answered for the company.

But as we go through the engagement, things change, you know, issues happen, things pop up.

Just because we didn't have it in the initial application doesn't mean we can pick their brain at the end of the call.

Does that make sense?

This is Kat.

I just had a quick question for Jason.

Do folks pay a fee?

This seems like a tremendously valuable program.

I'm sure people are knocking down your door.

Yeah, so BDP, we've got, it's about an $80,000 budget, so we have enough monies budgeted for about 18 engagements, and we pay for the entire engagement, so it's about $4,300 for the engagement.

All the invoices get funneled through me.

You all, the companies, they don't fiddle with any of that stuff.

The only thing that they have to work on is to make sure they're getting their questions answered.

And from a quality control standpoint, I'm kind of high level up in the bleachers during the engagement.

We're kind of monitoring that situation as well.

But the companies don't pay for anything.

The only thing that they're committing to is that eight to 12 hours of time.

Now, there might be times where the team lead from the National Center will call me and say, hey, I haven't heard from so-and-so.

OK, I'll pick up the phone and, hey, Roger, we haven't heard from you in a few weeks.

I think we've got another presentation ready to go.

Do you have any time in the next week or two?

Business happens.

Things happen.

So that's when we'll get pulled in sometimes.

But for the most part, it's a free program minus the company's time.

And during that vetting process, you know, I'll be up front with the company.

Hey, we're on your time.

If you don't have two months, if you've got a busy season coming up,

Let's hold off.

Let's punt until the fall when you have a month and a half or two months.

You know, again, there's no rush on our end.

I would connect with Jennifer, talk with her, and if it makes sense.

I think at the end of the day, we would want to have

you know, a phone call with the company, ask our basic bedding questions.

Hey, tell me about your company.

Where are you guys, where are you going?

Where do you, how do you get there?

You know, and if some of the challenges match up with the gardening program, what it can provide, then it's a no brainer.

Hey there, guys.

Can you all see my slide deck?

Yes.

Great.

Well, thank you all for letting Jason and I speak with you this afternoon.

I'm excited to be here.

I'm also excited to kind of share my enthusiasm with y'all for the UVA baseball team and those games over the weekend.

Fantastic.

It was great stuff to watch.

So I work specifically in BEDP's International Trade Division.

We have just one single unit within the larger BEDP organization.

Our mission is the same as any business retention expansion economic development effort.

We want to grow jobs.

and Grove Virginia's tax base.

And we do it very similarly to kind of what Jason was explaining with economic gardening, whereas that program is designed to assist companies with their domestic marketing and sales efforts.

Our resources are geared toward assisting companies with international marketing and sales efforts.

You know interstate commerce can be complicated, but at least you're kind of all communicating it with your with your customers and your partners in the same language with the same kind of operational regulations standards and

where international business, it takes a lot more of a input on the front end in order to kind of figure out what the different regulations are and how to operate within sales channels in another country or another region.

So we tried to kind of lower that threshold of effort and input that the company has to offer up by offering them an opportunity to kind of leverage a pooled resource that VEDP has created over the last 20, 25 years.

So I'll just scroll through this slide deck really quickly.

This just kind of gives you a picture of these numbers of what Virginia is doing at a state level internationally.

Exports support more than 257,000 jobs in Virginia.

And you see that 2 billion number in terms of tax revenue.

This is a bit of a breakdown on our exported goods and services and what that looks like.

Clients that our office works with are split pretty evenly 50-50 between services and product exports.

And this is a picture of kind of the contribution that these programs are offering the state of Virginia and the number of companies that we're working with.

and I can tell you a bit more about companies and Albemarle specifically.

Basically what we offer up is resources that fall into two buckets.

Support, that's grant money, frankly, that companies can apply for and then they use that money toward export related, international marketing related expenses and we reimburse those expenses for them.

There are different sized grant programs for companies of all sizes.

The smallest can support a company with as few as two full-time employees.

And kind of the largest program, which is called the Virginia Leaders in Export Trade Program, and the acronym for that is VALET, is 20 employees or more.

So

Still pretty small thresholds for company size for across the board for these grant programs.

But they all offer kind of a different amount of money and grant programs used for different types of international marketing related expenses.

So, for example, we have a trade show program that helps companies reimburse their international trade show expenses.

and we have a regional export program that helps companies pay for international trademarks and patents if that's something they need to do or hiring, setting up a bank account in Germany or doing all sorts of the kind of the nitty gritty work that you have to do in order to tee up your company for international sales.

For example, I'm working with a company now that has to register their product with Health Canada

and then has to do the bilingual labeling requirement to sell into Canada.

Labels have to be in English for food and cosmetics and beverage products and so forth.

So that company is using its regional export programs to do all of that work that otherwise it couldn't afford at the stage that it is right now.

And then we have the global e-commerce program, which is specifically for companies that have online shopping carts and are selling B2C overseas internationally.

And they can use their reimbursements on additional Shopify plugins or working with a 3PL provider in another country to warehouse and fulfill their international orders.

or like Jason was saying, international SEO.

It's way harder than domestic, doing it domestically because there are different algorithms for different countries.

And so that's just an example of kind of what some of our grant programs cover.

The smallest that I mentioned is actually federal money.

We apply for a federal grant from the Small Business Administration each year.

And that grant program, it's called the acronym, it's under the State Trade Expansion Program under the SBA.

And the acronym for the grant is STEP.

And we allocate that money in years past to help pay for international travel for companies.

So paying for international airfare.

So a company can go and meet with a potential new distributor or customer or client.

So that's all.

On the grant side of things, our biggest asset and really what has proven to be the most helpful for Virginia companies over the last 20 years of these programs is what we call our global network, where VEDP has identified and contracted with international business development and sales consultants in 80 countries.

And VEDP basically subsidizes the work of these consultants to assist our Virginia companies to identify new clients and new customers, identify potential

and even due diligence on if a new potential partner has reached out to a Virginia company saying, hey, I would really like to be your reseller or distributor, but Virginia company doesn't know anything about this foreign company.

The thing that Jason was explaining earlier about kind of just the discovery process of realizing that a partner is not potentially not doing what a Virginia company needs it to be doing,

That's a huge part of what we do.

I have a company that I'm working with now from the Charlottesville region that has a distributor in China that they're really not confident in and they're not sure that they're getting the full story about the sales channels that they should be selling into.

And so we're doing a little background research on our own to say, okay, what should the markup be?

What should a distributor be getting?

And does there really need to be a sub distributor in this market?

So really kind of doing kind of that type of work for companies is another huge thing that we do, regulatory research, identifying trade shows and events that they could participate in to network.

So really our consultants can really do anything or really like an on the ground sales team.

And again, it's just a pooled resource that we've created that our Virginia companies can dip into and leverage on an as needed basis.

And again, all of that work is further subsidized by our office as well.

So for example, I just got a scope of work from one of our consultants.

and the cost of that project is gonna be around $2,500 and all the VDP charges is a $250 copay.

So the Virginia company just has to pay VDP $250 just to show us that they have a little skin in the game.

And when VDP foots the larger bill for this project, this deliverable, we hopefully turn it over to the company at the end and say, here, now do something with it.

This is now an actionable,

Report that you have in your hand, show us what you can do.

And so, and that's basically it.

It does the grant programming on the support side and on the assistant side, it is largely our global network.

We do have a small team, internal market research team.

So for example, if you're selling some sort of widget, you wanna know what are the top 10 international markets for your particular widget so that you can try to prioritize your international efforts.

We do have a small team that can help in that regard too.

Just today, I was working on a project for a company

that was trying to register for VAT in the UK to be able to sell into the UK and pay the UK VAT and also get refunds for the UK VAT.

So, and I was working with our internal research team on that.

That is not something that we would need to necessarily hit up the UK consultant for.

We're just trying to handle that in-house so that it doesn't cost anything extra.

and that's basically the gist of these programs.

I did, I pulled up the records earlier.

I think we have about 14 programs, excuse me, 14 companies, maybe 10 that are in our grant programs now and maybe another four more that are not in our grant programs that are utilizing, currently utilizing our services, Global Network or internal market research or otherwise that we just consult or chat with to make and try to help them along.

So if you're taking questions just one quick question.

How much do you work with agricultural products?

Yeah, so I actually, I worked at VEDP for a few years, about seven years ago, and then I left VEDP to work in the VDACs, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Office of International Marketing.

And so they, agriculture and food products, forestry products as well, actually have an added benefit.

They can dip into both VDACs and VEDP resources, international marketing resources.

And that means different things for different companies.

I could go, I could speak for ages about it.

Different about the different resources and depending on the type of company what they can what they can access through VDACs as well.

But obviously with VDACs I worked quite a bit with the wine marketing office and only less than a handful of Virginia wineries to be quite honest were ever interested in export and quite frankly couldn't

It would be quite difficult to compete internationally with Virginia wines.

Part of the reason being, up until probably last year, most of our Virginia wineries could sell their entire year's production out of their front door on a Saturday and Sunday.

They don't need to go through the added effort of trying to export product.

Many of them would like to export a small amount just to have that kind of, yeah, we sell our product into the UK and Canada and that kind of cachet, but

Canada is a really difficult market for spirits and alcohol.

It is run by provincial monopolies just like Virginia ABC whereas wine and beer can be sold.

outside of the ABC system here in Virginia, in Ontario, for example, everything, wine and beer included, have to go through the provincial government-owned monopoly.

And there's a very rigorous process for getting product into that system, and frankly, our wine is too expensive.

for that system.

And when they place an order, it's a really high volume order because they're putting it in lots of stores.

And frankly, that's not something that our wineries have ever been interested in.

Virginia's put a lot of effort into wine, exploring wine export over the years.

Kat, it may be of interest to you to know that we talk about this with some of the wineries that we visit with our BRE.

And apparently there's some magical number about 50,000 cases produced per year before you can even start bottling effectively.

So our wineries here aren't necessarily large enough in scale to produce at a level that's cost effective enough to market overseas.

By the time you put value added taxes and some other things on it, it just didn't make sense for them.

I have one.

Thanks, Caitlin.

To what extent do you find, I see that you had last year,

about a little over 300 companies engaged.

Looks like about $52,000 in sales per employee if you divvy it up for companies that are participating in this.

Are most of the companies that engage in this, are they looking for an international market that is going to dominate their sales or is it

It depends on the industry, frankly, and the type of company and the type of product or service.

So I'll tell you for some, especially in kind of Charlottesville Albemarle, for some of the biotech and healthcare related companies, I would say that

Domestic sales and sales in Europe are, you know, I think that's a dual priority there.

I mean, I'm working with a number of small companies that are making a lot of effort internationally at the same time that they're kind of doing their domestic business.

It's not like

Yes, we conquered the United States and now we're ready to move on.

It's kind of all a simultaneous effort.

And it's partly I think because, especially in those industries, it's their, you know, the shared knowledge among their customers and clients.

It's really kind of a global knowledge base, you know, it's not

Oh, certainly, absolutely.

So a company engaging in just experimental marketing without patent exclusivity would be

Maybe dipping in, but then getting out if they don't strike gold.

I would certainly say that, you know, there is for many types of products and many brands.

I mean, there is kind of you strike while the iron is hot, if you will.

I have a company, like a board game company that is in that position now.

We're doing really well, but we need to get in while we have this momentum going and we really need to kind of sell into these markets while we have this velocity.

So that's certainly something that many companies have to think about is kind of adding, again, kind of

Thanks.

Anybody else?

All right.

Thank you, Caitlin.

Appreciate your time.

All right.

Sure, sure.

Rebecca came to us a couple of months back and presented to this particular authority.

And this authority asks if there's ways that they may be able to help, please let us know.

Rebecca reached back out, I guess through Don Long initially and then through me to ask to speak to this board so she could request help.

In particular, I think I'm, I hope I'm not stealing your thunder, Rebecca.

She's asking for the EDA to make a contribution and that contribution would allow her to leverage a Go Virginia grant and bring forth an additional $66,000 to improve the,

and scope and scale of services that the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center provides.

So I think you met Rebecca.

I'll not go into a long introduction.

Rebecca, before you get going, I just want to say, so I'm going to recuse myself from this just because I have not had a chance to because CIC serves as fiscal agent for

for the SBDCV, is that right?

Series of letters.

It's a problem.

So I'm going to just, I don't think I have a conflict, but I'm not sure of that.

So I'm just going to recuse myself so there's no question.

So I will just stay, I don't think I need to leave the meeting, but I'll just not participate in the discussion in any vote.

All right, do I have the floor?

Okay, well, thank you all for letting me come and see you again.

I'm gonna go ahead and share screen.

You know, I appreciate that you let me present in March and I'm back as Roger said, because we have an opportunity to leverage some dollars through the Virginia SBDC grant that they received from Go Virginia.

So just as a really quick reminder, because I did present to you for the first time in March,

SBDC has a number of programs, international market research, strategic planning, government contracting.

We tap into VEDP and to our international trade group, into federal, state, and local resources to do everything that we can to support small businesses.

And we have a large and growing team.

The top row is our staff.

To the right is David, who runs the Culpeper office, but the rest of us are in Charlottesville.

And the bottom row is all of our part time.

business and technology contractors, all of which are quite busy serving businesses.

And we have a number of other teammates that we don't have to pay for, that we tap into very regularly.

A number of folks, this is just a few from the state office and some of our affiliated organizations, as well as you all know, CIC is hosting us and we work together on a number of companies.

So I wanted to just remind you what I presented in March.

I was sharing that Albemarle County makes up a significant portion of the work that we do.

It is the largest recipient of our resources with about, you know, clients being about 44 percent of them for the 10 municipalities we serve.

We do have the city of Charlottesville and the nine surrounding counties.

We go all the way up to Culpeper, Dubrapahannock, you know, Nelson, Louisa, Flubana and so on.

and our counseling hours, this was what we counted at the end of 2020, were almost 60% going solely to Albemarle County.

We now have this opportunity to avoid the funding cliff.

I shared with you all then that we are anticipating about $130,000 funding cliff in March of 2022 when the CARES Act money and the Go Virginia funding that we have right now will end.

So, as Roger shared, we have an opportunity for a $66,000 Go Virginia match.

The requirement for that is that we show $177,000 in local cash match.

That unlocks that $66,000 for us.

So right now, first, 100% of our municipalities have participated this year.

Some have significantly increased the amount that they've given us over prior years, and that's brought us up to 144,000, which is great, but we're not quite there.

We will end up with about a $33,000 gap, or that's what we have at the moment.

However, we think we can get 8,000 from private sources,

So what we're asking you all to consider is if you would provide $25,000 to the SBDC to help unlock that $66,000.

That would bring Albemarle County up to providing about 31% of our municipal match.

as compared to the other counties out of that total of $144,000.

And we need a commitment for that in order to get that money by August 1st.

So I'm asking if the EDA would consider it if you would be able to let us know by the end of July.

And that's it.

That's my ask.

So maybe this question for George or for Roger.

Is this something that we could vote on to support at this meeting?

Or do we need to have more public notice?

Richie, I'm going to defer to you on that particular question.

I'm here.

I mean, it was put on the agenda.

I don't think there has to be notice.

We don't have requirements for public hearings.

It would be an appropriation from the existing funds, as I understand it.

And Jennifer has prepared a resolution.

But it could be deferred.

I like any time we can leverage other people's money.

Are there any other questions from the board?

If not, I can read the resolution.

Hearing none, I will read the resolution.

It's entitled Resolution to Provide Funds to the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center.

Whereas the Economic Development Authority of Albemarle County, Virginia, the authority in parenthesis, has supported previously the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center, parenthesis CV-SBDC in parenthesis,

A501C6, nonprofit serving the small business sector community.

And whereas the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center is eligible to receive a portion of a Go Virginia grant, Virginia Institute for Growth and Opportunity, totaling $66,000, if it obtains a commitment from the authority to provide $25,000 in support.

These funds will mitigate the CVSVDC's $130,000 projected 2022 funding gap, and whereas the authority finds SVSVDC's mission and operations advance to promote economic development in Alamo County and the surrounding locations, localities, and finds that it is in the best interest of the county for CVSVDC

to pursue these goals.

Now, therefore, it be resolved that the board of directors of the authority, the board, hereby grants FY21-22 budget $25,000 to CVSBDC on the condition it first receives a $66,000 Go Virginia grant to support the above stated goals.

Any discussion?

Is there a second?

Second.

I can do it.

Let's go ahead and do that.

All right.

Mr. Long has recused himself.

Mr. Munson?

I'm sorry.

Sorry.

And Mr. McNaughton?

Aye.

All right.

That passes 5-0.

Yes, sir.

Rebecca, I have one question.

Sure.

I think I know the answer, but I just wanna be sure.

So the funding gap of 130,000, the 66 plus our 25 would help reduce that.

But the other local match that you've already accounted for is already accounted for.

So that's not going to go toward the funding gap, correct?

Correct.

Yep, that and there's 117,000 from the SBA.

But our total budget, it comes in around 480,000.

But was my math correct that the 25 we voted to contribute plus the 66 will go toward that funding gap?

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you all so much.

I truly appreciate the support.

All right.

So next on the agenda is the director's report.

Thank you, Chairman Long.

Fellow directors, I'll wait for Jennifer to pull up the director's report.

It's going to be a short one today.

I just wanted to make you aware of a recent happening within the county and how important economic development was in that particular process.

As you know, you supported the use of EDA to create some bonds, some $68 million in borrowing.

Myself, the County Executive's Office, which included Doug Walker and Jeff Richardson, as well as some folks from our Finance Department, CFO Kelsey Burch and Treasurer Daniel, all spoke to three different rating agencies.

We presented them some information.

The net result of that was the county received a triple AAA rating, and what that translates into was a rate around 1.61%.

To give you an idea how important that is, our county executive mentioned in a recent OLT meeting that the net result of that will be somewhere in the neighborhood of

greater than $1.2 million annually.

So we just wanted to take just a second to show you what went into that.

I promise you I'm not going to go through the whole presentation and some 70 some odd pages long, but I thought it would be helpful for you to see what the rating agencies looked at.

So Jennifer is going to scroll through that.

We retained it.

Well, and if anyone on the board is interested on the Economic Development Authority Board, the full report, Roger, was sent out to staff and everyone.

Be glad to share that.

In fact, we'll put that as an action item and send it out.

Jennifer, if you'll just go ahead and plow through it, I'll just make a couple of highlights while they look at it.

So Jeff spoke to, here are the folks that were involved.

And you can see I mentioned those names earlier.

Jeff spoke to just the general information about our community, University of Virginia.

Slow down just one second here.

I want to point out this is where economic development spoke.

It included UVA's contributions, the diversity of employers we have.

Go ahead.

National Ground Intelligence Center, their economic impact, what's going on in our business community for primary businesses and the expansions associated with those groups, what's happening in the public-private partnership arena and how we're growing our tax base, what's happening with Sentara, a big medical facility, and how we keep this money in our community through commercial and retail health.

And then also what's happening in the world of travel and tourism.

And as you can see, I might as well pause back up one more, if you would.

Look, if you'll note the blue line on the right-hand side, if you can highlight that.

That was the normal trend.

The yellow line that dips down is what happened during COVID.

and then the blue line is our 2021 numbers and you can see we're starting to rebound which is a very good trend line that's well above what you'll find in other tourism destinations we're exceeding the performance of most of our benchmark organizations or benchmark cities so

Obviously the travel and tourism didn't happen by stance.

Bringing folks here have a bucolic community.

It appeals to the affluent.

If you want to go on, Jennifer, I'm not going to go through all this.

Obviously our agritourism is growing and we have a parks department that's increasing opportunities for outdoor activities and the like.

So I'm not going to go through the rest of this.

I just wanted you to see what went into it, if you would.

All of the rest is sort of charts, tables, and graphs presented by our financial officer who said, hey, we're in good financial shape, and here's kind of why.

The net result of that was very positive feedback.

Doug, I don't mean to put you on the spot.

Generally, if you're going to call me out, I have something to say.

So I participated in a number of these credit raising presentations in other communities.

Actually, also in Albemarle County, the last one was back in 2017.

We actually went up to D.C., excuse me, up to New York for the presentation.

And that's typically what happens.

You go there and you meet up there in their offices in Manhattan or they'll come here and you spend a couple of days and you take them around and

and introduce them and orient them to let them see firsthand kind of what the community looks like.

Generally, they will, to the extent that they can, will utilize analysts that are familiar with Virginia, familiar with the local government, right, to do similar work in this area.

But as often as not, you're also getting new analysts that you have to reintroduce.

And so when you're defending your triple, triple A,

And it really is a defense.

You don't take anything for granted.

And so you have to kind of lay the breadcrumbs out and walk them through as if they have never been here before.

And what was so interesting in this case, why I mentioned in my previous experience, is doing it all virtually is new for us and new for them.

I'm glad we're doing it a year plus after the onset of COVID and not a month after the onset of COVID because we've gotten pretty good at it.

I think that they have two.

But it is largely quantitative stuff, right?

These are analysts.

And so by the time they get to the presentation, they've gone through our data.

and if they have questions they've asked them or they'll follow up with questions of either our staff or of our financial advisor team at Davenport & Company.

And so our role really is to tell the story and so you see as he went through the slides that there's data in there that's reinforcing really what they've already seen and hopefully reinforcing impressions that they've already

kind of made for themselves and so if they haven't been here you got to paint this picture for them and it's just it's a fascinating process and there's a lot at stake to Diantha's point defending your triple AAA and you see the result of that with incredibly low interest rates it's really kind of driven by also by market conditions right now

But it is a testament to decisions that have been made over time that really reinforce the health of our economy, the management of our finances.

And the last thing I would say is what was most interesting, and actually the role that I played, I was a transition slide because I was really the only one

who was there in 2017 that was also now here in 2021.

County executives knew, the CFO is new, the economic development director is new, and so to the extent then that they like continuity,

and aren't really kind of averse for reasons that you can appreciate, then that's kind of the role that I was able to play is to be the continuity from where we were to where we are to where we're going and introduce the new team.

So anyway, thank you for the opportunity, Roger.

That's what you get when you call me out.

I'm often going to say a few things, but it's very, very, very important to this community that we engage with them in this way and that we get the results that we get.

We talk about it a lot as a cliche, triple, triple A, but it actually means something very important to this community.

And the thing I wanted to accent was to connect the work that you're doing to the impact on our ratings agency's results.

You saw in there Willard Tree and Lighthouse Instruments and Afton and Perron and Potter's Craft and the Public-Private Partnership.

Those groups recognize the work that Economic Development Authority is doing in conjunction, obviously, with the county.

But I wanted to tie your work to the direct results and the bottom line for the county.

Doug, I didn't see a slide that says we are not Orange County, California.

No.

Again, when they come to this presentation, they've done their homework.

They've done their due diligence.

And so you're not trying to do but so much.

You can certainly screw it up.

But mainly just trying to tie all the pieces together.

And as I indicated, a lot has changed, frankly, in the last four years.

So they are interested in how we have managed through the pandemic and where we now are, as you saw in Roger's slide on performance within our hotel.

And so those are the things that kind of help to complete what impression that they've already made by the review of the documents.

But if you're triple AAA, if something bad had happened, they'd know it long before we got to this meeting.

Well, that was an efficient director's report.

So the next thing on the agenda is the closed session.

So, Jennifer, if you can, there we go.

So I move that

The Albemarle County Economic Development Authority go into closed meeting as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act Section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 5 to discuss and consider prospective businesses or industries and the expansion of an existing business where no previous announcement has been made of the businesses or industry's interest in locating or expanding

their facilities in the community to wit the location and development of Project Leopard.

Subsection six to discuss and consider the investment of public funds where bargaining and negotiation is involved and where if made public initially the financial interest of the authority and county would be adversely affected to wit a performance and jobs investment agreements relating to Project Leopard.

All right, all in favor?

Aye.

All right.

Aye.

Aye.

The closed session motion passed.

I think Jennifer had to send it through email.

Yeah, you're right.

Dave, I don't have a chat.

Kind of interesting.

It's in your email.

I don't see it.

How do I view my email with this on my screen?

What do I do to reduce it?

I've never done that before.

I know.

Just go to the top where it says view.

or View Options, there's either one of those.

Exit full screen?

Right, yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Oh, I see it now.

Jennifer, did you send it to C. David Shreve or D. Shreve1 at Albemarle.org?

I sent it in.

Oh, here it is.

Okay.

The problem was I had

Okay.

I'm sorry, I stepped away for just a second.

Oh, she's gone.

Hey George, you are in the wrong meeting.

We didn't take roll for you.

OK. That's impressive.

Sorry that I came in late.

I apologize.

Probably is.

I was talking on the phone to someone earlier and they mentioned the bird, right?

So I was a friend.

It is a great day to be in a meeting outside on the screening porch.

It really is nice.

Yes, it's a work in progress.

It's all good.

Don, you want to read the certification?

OK.

I was waiting for everybody else, but let's go ahead and go.

I move that the EDA certified by recorded vote that to the best of each director's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

I will do that.

Director Shreve?

Director Munson?

Aye.

Should be fine.

OK. All right, so that's the closed session.

Any unfinished business that we need to consider?

Other matters?

So.

Our next meeting is July 20th.

I will not be here for that meeting.

I will also not be accessible.

Yeah, we might want to... Roger, do we need to have that meeting?

Do we want to

I think it's suffice to say myself, Doug and you and Jennifer are scheduled to meet here I believe in the coming days and one of the subjects we wanted to talk about was creating a path forward for a sustainable income for the EDA.

So, you know, we thought that may happen in July, but there's nothing magical about July.

We have a board, a joint board and EDA meeting scheduled in October, I believe it's October the 13th, where we wanted to ready that subject as a topic.

Okay, great.

And Roger, if there's a joint meeting, I don't have that on my schedule.

That's a Wednesday.

If you could send or Jennifer, someone could send us or me the details about what time we should be holding on our calendar for that October.

Well, it's October 13th.

Yes.

Yes, ma'am.

Hey, Jennifer, I know that we've talked to Seaville Biohub.

OK. All right.

I'm going to get the Wi-Fi at the Granite Park Chalet in Glacier National Park, thankfully.

No, you will not.

All right.

I'll second.

All right.

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Aye.

I'll see you guys.

Thank you.

Take care.

Have fun.

Bye bye.