Economic Development Authority Meeting   7/12/2021

So let's go ahead and get rolling here.

Chair?

Yeah, they got sent today.

Okay.

Notwithstanding any provision in the EDA bylaws to the contrary as permitted under Virginia Code Section 2.23708.2a3 Albemarle County's continuity of government ordinance, Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville's declarations of a local state of emergency, catastrophic nature of which makes it impracticable or unsafe to assemble a quorum in a single location,

and the resolution of this body adopted on April 21, 2020, we are holding this meeting by real time electronic means with no authority members physically present at a single central location.

All authority members are participating electronically.

This meeting is being held in accordance with section six 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, 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 also invited to offer live comment during the meeting's public comment period.

Comments are limited to three minutes and must be germane to the 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 that.

Let's see.

Director Wray.

Present in Albemarle County.

Present in beautiful downtown Jack Jewett District.

Okay, and Jennifer, do we expect

Mr. McNaughton would be recusing himself if he does show up.

He was trying to free up his calendar.

Okay.

Well, we'll just proceed.

We do not currently have anybody signed up to speak.

Nobody has raised their hand.

All right.

Then on to new business.

Mr. Long, I'm sorry.

Peter Daniel has raised his hand.

There must have been a delay.

I will allow him to talk with your permission.

Sure.

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me now?

Yes, sir.

When discussions involve the issuance of bonds, as they have in the past, and I believe this meeting will have something to do with that,

Is it possible that we could discuss the term of the bonds that are being issued?

Because it does have an impact on the financing costs, as I'm sure all of you are well-known.

And that would be helpful just to know, because I think the last two was $66 million.

And I believe the all-in financing cost at that time was 1.61.

somewhere in there.

And I just wonder if that could be, was that a 30 year bond or what maturity was that bond?

That would be helpful to some of us that have had some background in that.

Thank you.

All right.

So are we,

Well, I think that I've said I sent you an email, Don, and I thought it was my role to raise the issue that I raised.

OK, I feel like that's in your bailiwick with all that.

And I also sent an email just recently to all the other board members charging the history of charging a fee for a funding issue.

but the resolution is fine.

I've pulled in T.W.

Welcome.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

And thank you for having us and arranging this meeting to take up this resolution.

We really appreciate it.

This is, as I think Mr.

Bowling has alluded to, this is a refinancing of some existing bonds that the authority issued in 2009 for St. Anne's.

And those bonds were issued in 2009.

They were placed with a bank, which at the time I think was SunTrust and as we know now is now Truist.

And

Truist and St. Anne's have been involved in a discussion for a number of months over refinancing of those bonds.

And so that's what the resolution before you would approve is a refinancing of those bonds.

So they would remain held with Truist.

Truist would adjust the interest rate.

and they have agreed to amend some of the financial and other covenants that existed as between the bank and the school.

So this is, the resolution authorizes the issuance of these bonds to basically refinance the 2009 bonds.

We'll be putting in place all new documentation.

So there will be a new

agreement that'll be between the authority, the school and Truist or the affiliate of Truist that'll be officially making the loan.

The school will issue a new note nominally to the authority.

The authority will assign that to the lender as a security for the loan.

The school will make payments directly to the

Lender, and the bond will continue to bear interest at a variable rate as it has in the past, but it will be a lower interest rate than it has been, which will help the school save some money.

And we are, I think the maturity date on the bonds will stay the same as it was.

So it is December 1st of 2035,

Maturity date, and that's what it is today.

And that's what it will be after we close.

And so with that, happy to answer any questions about the resolution or any of the documents, as I think, again, Mr.

Bowling had alluded to, we were really just asking in terms of the fees to try to get a sense of what all the closing costs and ongoing costs are going to be for

the school, and you know that the authorities fee policy was different in 2009 than it is today.

And so just, again, just really trying to ask to understand what it is so that we can account for it.

And if you're willing to waive it, all the better, but if not, we wanna make sure we get you paid the right amount.

And as Ms. Schmack said, I do have

Sally Woods, who is a very new but CFO at the school here as well.

Mr. Bruno, to answer Mr. Daniel and for our purposes, would you detail the, evidently there must be a fixed term that goes with the variable rate.

Could you describe that for us?

What do you mean by... Well, there's a period of a fixed rate that goes along with this variable rate bond.

Well, no, it's just a variable rate on the bond itself.

The school has separately an unrelated, well, unrelated sort of legally to the

to the bond has a swap arrangement with Truist where there is sort of a fixed rate that they pay, but for technical documentation purposes, the bond itself is a variable rate.

And because I can't see her, but I did just get a flash that Autumn Graves, who's the head of school from St. Anne's, Bellfield is also here and in attendance.

But I think she's still up and here she's popping up as a,

Welcome.

Thank you.

Any questions for any of our guests regarding these bonds?

All right, I guess that's no questions.

So I think the issue with respect to the, as I understand it, and Jim, you can correct me if I'm wrong or Roger, is that at one point we did have in our rules a fee for these, an administrative fee for these bonds.

But as I read the rules, it looks like that expired in 2015 and we haven't renewed it.

No, I'm not fairly confident, but as I talked to Jennifer, I think buried in your minutes is something extending the fee agreement in 2015.

I seem to remember that happening.

The trouble with your minutes, I don't know what kind of search function software you have.

You can buy very good

Software to search for keywords, but I just you have to have very sophisticated software to find this stuff, Jennifer.

But I assume you have pretty good stuff.

But I know out there somewhere, I remember I just as I remember the board on the Centaria issue charging a five thousand dollar fee.

I remember renewing this fee that was in existence.

But I could certainly be wrong.

I, too, recall

Something of that conversation.

And what I don't remember is if we simply renewed it temporarily and then deferred discussion of any kind of a change, which I think is what we did.

But I also seem to recall that we we had a pretty substantive discussion about potential changes.

So I don't know if we ever

You did not formally adopt my memory again, which is that you did not formally adopt the fee.

And we're talking about not an application fee or the issue fee, but a one-time fee for refunding.

In this case, for instance, Terry, you assessed the one-time $5,000 fee.

You did have a discussion at that meeting.

My memory again is that you had a discussion at that meeting and perhaps later about making that part of your rules and regulations.

But also, I do not believe you ever did.

I'm also not 100 percent confident, but I think I do recall that you extended the 2015 fee thing.

Whether you extended it or not, though, that's a kind of a

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right.

And I don't want to speak for Autumn and Sally.

I think we understand that

The authority is an integral part of the tax exempt financing market.

And we just want to make sure that if there's something that is supposed to be paid, that it gets paid.

You know, at the same time, the school's a nonprofit.

And if the EDA is amenable to waiving it, as long as that's consistent with what they want, we're certainly not going to say no to that.

But at the same time, I think we

Jennifer sent me part of the minutes from the 2018 meeting and

And that wasn't the fee they were talking about too.

The 2015 date is the issuance fee, David.

That's the fee I'm talking about.

Yes, you did.

The minutes reflect, I'll let Jennifer, you can read what the minutes reflect, Jennifer.

Just to tell you why, if you have them, looks like you do have them.

This is in 2018.

And Rod Gentry really ran this show.

And there was an agreement to pay a fee of $5,000.

I'll let Jennifer read from the minutes.

Again, I think what I'm talking about is they're separate issues.

The issue on the issuance thing, which is not really before you is my memory is that that was extended.

Jennifer also set me straight.

I always assume that over the years you've had the clerk for many, many years.

The clerk of the Board of Supervisors functioned as the clerk of the

EDA.

And she was very competent and kept good minutes.

And my sense is that after a certain period of time until Jennifer arrived, perhaps the procedures weren't as good for documents and whatever as they should have been.

But in any event, that also may be a problem caused by the EDA essentially being cut loose and no longer having the full time help of the

Clark of the Board of Supervisors.

These meetings, these minutes were actually received from the clerk's office.

So these are the clerk's minutes.

OK. And if you want me to read them, I can start.

You want to start with

the pertinent information of, I'll just start.

Mr. Gentry said that it would be appropriate to discuss what fee would be charged.

He encouraged the directors to think of the situation as a modification of the existing agreement.

He noted that he had inquired to the county's cost and learned that they are de minimis, minimis, sorry.

He estimated that the fee would be between $2,500 and $5,000.

Mr. White noted that this being the transaction fee would not affect the annual fee.

Mr. Long asked what the annual fees were to which Mr. Oliver responded that they were in total close to $78,000 and decreased each year.

Mr. White noted that this would not affect the separate issue from 2012.

Mr. Ray then motioned to propose a $5,000 fee

Mr. Long asked if the fee schedule was still one tenth of one percent up to $40 million.

Mr. Oliver responded that if they were creating a new issue, the fee would be $40,000, but the original issue would be retired.

Mr. Oliver then asked if they had already earned this year's fee on a prorated basis.

to which Mr. White responded that they would still be paying this year's fee.

Mr. Mellon clarified that the fee they were deciding on would be a modification fee and not an application fee.

Mr. Oliver seconded the motion and on voice call vote, the motion passed.

That is the end of the minutes.

Right.

I don't think it's necessary to go back and go through the needle and the haystack look again.

but because that's a housekeeping matter you can take care of by just ratifying and affirming the existing fee schedule if that's what the board desires to do.

Well, it sounds to me that we were moving in the direction of adopting a, even if it was an ad hoc adoption of a modification fee and

Just previous to that, Mr. Gentry noted that this is

Not typically what the EDA thinks of as a new issue, but rather a modification fee where nothing else changes except the interest rate.

Mr. Shreve added that the only other difference was the addition of the liquidity facility.

Mr. White clarified that they were not extending the average maturity and therefore there was no requirement for the public hearing requirement to go before the Board of Superfunds.

That's it.

That's literally all that's in the minutes.

My take on this, I would certainly like to charge a fee.

I'd like us to charge more fees.

But with that said, I certainly don't read our rules as saying that we can charge a fee here.

I mean, the way that I read the rules is our ability to charge a fee expired in 2015.

And if we don't see somewhere else where it's apparent to anyone else that they're coming up that they should

that what they're going to be paying, I don't think it's reasonable to just say, well, we think this is a good number for the fee.

And so that's my take.

I mean, certainly if the board disagrees with me, but I think under these circumstances, if we don't have something that's clear to somebody as to what the fees are before they come in, I don't think we can just sort of make up a fee at this point.

That would be my view.

I just want to remind the authority that these fees are really our only source of revenue.

And we've had times in the past where organizations have come to us and they've asked for a grant.

And we've been reluctant to get into the corpus of our money in the bank.

But I've been trying to get

the authority to work with the board of supervisors.

And I think we're making some progress on identifying a way that the authority can generate annual revenue on a consistent basis.

And, you know, I used to run the Charlottesville Industrial Development Authority and we had fees based on the face amount of the fee of the issue for the life of the issue.

And I don't know what the timing is for St. Anne's, but I,

I definitely think that we should reinstate the annual fee, whatever it was, even if it means putting this on hold and adopting the fee schedule officially.

But I think probably St. Anne's can voluntarily agree to pay an administrative fee, but I'm certainly not an attorney.

So Don, you suggested that you you think or I don't think it was a declaration that our authority to impose the fee had expired.

Yes.

Yes.

Exactly.

Refinance fee, right.

Otherwise, I would be in agreement with Director Long that if that authority had expired, he's right.

We can't do that post hoc, I think, and just say,

Well, the problem is, I don't, unless we can find somewhere where it says we did it, I don't know that we can do it.

I mean, I, and I will say that my recollection was I voted to, you know, at that point, I wanted to have a higher fee.

So maybe we did approve it somewhere, but

I mean, unless we can find it in the minutes that says we did it, you know, our current, at least what we say are our current rules say, and here I can even, can I share my screen?

I mean, this is what our current EDA rules say.

Right here, section 4.3, the $1,000 per $1 million, and then it says an annual administrative fee shall be applicable to the first $40 million, except in the case of refunding, the filing fee should be applied as a credit against the first annual fee of closing bonds issued.

So I think the issue we were talking about then was what this except in the case of a refunding meant.

Whether that meant that the fees were in place.

Hey, Don, but I don't think that's the current.

I don't think that's what reflects the amendment that occurred.

Well, I suspect you do, but it's a laborious search, as your clerk can tell you in the minutes, if it's there.

Did you ever get a hold of Rod Gentry?

I did not.

But I mean, you need the minutes.

If I talk to him, it's still not going to do.

Well, he would remember something like that, and I thought so would

Eldon Wood, too, I would think.

But in any event, the other dilemma you have here is that St. Anne's is in a hurry, and I'll let the Bond Council talk about that.

So I don't think, I'm not sure they have the luxury of time to do this.

Well, like I said, we're not talking about, well, I totally agree with Mr. Ray that we need to generate more fees and we need to have more money so we can do the things that we wanna do and that we think this organization should do.

But I think under these circumstances, since it's not clear that we've got

We've adopted a fee structure in advance that somebody could know what it is.

And I think that the applicant would pay that fee if they knew in advance what it was.

It wouldn't make a difference, but I just think we need to be clear about what it is before we do it.

Yeah.

Well, for anything.

I mean, I guess we need to know whether this applies,

I don't recall ever entertaining a motion to change the section, except in the case of a refine.

But it says, I guess the question is, it says it expired.

My memory is that you definitely had an action that you took.

on the 2015 expiration date, which is not at this 2018 meeting, Don.

That's what I'm trying to do.

And it was, Jennifer was lucky to find, I think from the way Jennifer talks, she was lucky to find this, I believe.

The note from 2018?

Yeah.

I'm concerned we might be taking action on a document that's not citing the most recent information.

And I agree with Mr. Ray.

One thing, I don't know if it would help,

is that I could offer to work with the clerk tomorrow and pull up the probably late 2014, 2015, and early 2016 minutes.

And I'm happy to review those and see if we can find if this authority took any action.

I think you're gonna find too that there weren't that many meetings that were occurring.

When did we go onto a monthly meeting, Jennifer?

I think that's relatively only the last couple of three, four years we went to monthly meetings.

Before that it was- They were quarterly.

It should be easy to find.

Is there any way in which we could, let's say that we find what I suspect we will find

and that is that we extended that part of our bylaws and the rules.

And in 2018, in light of that, we adopted an ad hoc refi or modification fee for the Sentara loan in question.

To give Mr. Bruno and St. Anne's some

You've got the authority to impose a fee anytime you want to at a meeting.

The issue is whether or not you want to give somebody some notice whether you want to impose a fee.

So it's not really a legal issue about whether you can impose a fee.

Well, let's say we didn't have this dilemma with our minutes and our inability to define the precise language.

but that we did find it.

Would that notice have come during this meeting today then?

Well, that's not going to address the issue about the refi in any event, because my memory with the refi is that you did not ever meet again and resolve what to do about the refi, the refinance fee, if you will, which is a separate issue from the issuance fee.

Yes, I recall this in the same manner.

And one thing you have to keep in mind, too, is the prior to the these Sentara, New Martha, Jefferson Hospital issues, you didn't have any fees other than a five hundred dollar application fee.

All right.

And at some point, just from the minutes that are before you, you change that also from five hundred to a thousand.

So I think there's other action that aren't reflected in that 2018 meeting that you took concerning fees.

And that obviously did not occur on the meeting where you talked about the refi fee.

So that's why I think there is more minutes somewhere.

But again, the issue is, do you want to charge a refi fee?

Yes or no?

And if you do, then do you want to do it to this applicant or do you want to wait for later applicants and understand now that

The only issues you're really going to get in these days and times under the current tax law is government bonds, local government bonds, and nonprofit bonds.

I mean, I guess you could get solar and water and sewer and that kind of thing, but we've had very few of those.

Jennifer may have some insight about that from working with Suffolk, which is more active than we were, and George may, George Ray may too.

from working with the city of Charlottesville, which has always been far more active than the county EDA, but largely you're talking about nonprofits is who you're gonna be assessing these days against.

No, I think you're right in terms of the universe of people that you're likely to see as applicants.

St. Anne's and Sentara and the Westminster Canterbury and all of which are 501 C3s.

Yeah, you're not likely to get a manufacturing facility.

So this is Kat, and I'm obviously new to the party and wasn't part of the conversations a couple of years ago.

It sounds like that in fairness, it would be good for us to clarify what our fee schedule is and have that be more public.

I do notice that this came up, at least in terms of my calendar, pretty quickly.

So there's good information on both sides, but I'd be willing to go forward with this and have it at the contingency as David

proposed if there is, if we find a legal basis or a paper trail that would allow us to have a fee.

That's great.

Yeah, I think as Jim said, we have that authority.

And so we could unilaterally or in an ad hoc, on an ad hoc basis, impose it today.

Yeah, you wouldn't actually be waiving the fee because I don't really, I think a one-time ad hoc fee thing.

The reason you haven't had more of these, of course, is interest rates have been so low for so long.

Hallelujah.

And in a way, I hope that status quo remains.

Well, so I think the motion what you were trying to say is to approve the resolution without a fee.

Mr. Chairman, I'm going to vote against it.

Because I'm not convinced that the record is reflecting the most recent action of the authority.

And if there's a subsequent action that we can't find because of the housekeeping glitch, then that doesn't make me feel very comfortable.

So I'm going to have to vote against that motion.

Okay, understood.

If we could take two days or defer this for two days, have another

Zoom meeting, I'd be delighted to do that.

Mr. Bruno, could you brief us on the timeliness of this?

I think so.

Again, I'll let Autumn or...

Sally, jump in here and tell me I'm out of turn, but I think the goal is to close this by the end of the month at the latest.

So if you want to take a couple of days to look at it and let us know, again, I think that's fine with me.

I'm again happy to have Sally tell me something differently.

Like I said, we just want to

get clarity on it.

And again, make sure we're not running afoul of anything that the authorities got in terms of what it charges folks that come through here for tax exempt financing.

I guess on the issue, I would ask maybe that if you want, just to make it a little bit easier for us, maybe just to split the,

the issue and vote just on the resolution as a board and then vote maybe on the how you wanna handle the fee issue separately.

That's a reasonable request to clarify that.

So I'm trying to think of whether we should vote on the resolution first

or whether we should vote on the fee issue first.

Any thoughts?

Yeah.

We have a motion that I sort of modified.

So maybe you want to withdraw your motion and then we'll try again.

I withdraw my motion.

All right.

So why don't we have a motion on the resolution to start with?

So is there a motion to approve the resolution that's been circulated?

I'll move that we approve the resolution.

OK, is there a second?

Second.

OK, any further discussion?

All right, all in favor of the resolution, say aye.

Aye.

I've got it.

Nothing yet.

Nothing yet.

We're just voting on the resolution

And then Director McNaughton is absent.

OK. All right.

Unanimous approval of the resolution.

Do we know under the old fee schedule

Well, that's, that's part of the issue is that the, even the old rules are unclear as to what was to apply to a refund.

That's really where the, the, under the old, under the, at least what I have is the current rules, it's a thousand dollars per million.

So, um,

But the language is not clear about whether that would apply to a refunding issuance or not.

That's really the problem is it's completely unclear.

I think you could read it to say that it's just not really clear about

A refund.

So that's really the issue for me is that we can't tell what it should be.

It's not so much, as Jim pointed out, a question of whether we have the authority or not to do it.

I think we can.

But is it fair to the applicant to, if they don't even know what it is coming into this meeting?

And, you know, whether or not we can find a paper trail of what got approved if we were having a meeting and we don't even know what it is, I don't think that's

Hey Don, I'm sorry to interrupt, but could I just ask if Roger's been really quiet.

I do.

I'm glad they offer my opinion, Supervisor McKeel.

I think a $5,000 fee in this case would be very reasonable.

And if Mr. Bruno and his team was willing to pay that fee, if we could adopt that as part of this, we wouldn't have to come back.

And of course we know that that conforms with, at least partly conforms with our actions in 2018,

I'm sorry, go ahead.

I could support a $5,000 annual fee if these bonds are only gonna be out for what, five more years?

14.

Okay.

I'll support a $5,000 annual fee and we'll go back and clean up our house.

I prefer to take two days and review what we've already done.

But whatever the majority thinks.

I think it's no question it's a worthy cause.

I just feel like we have to protect

Mr.

Yeah, Mr.

It sounds like that the applicant is able to and willing to allow a couple of days for some additional due diligence on our part to see if we can provide some clarity around the ground truth here.

I regret and frankly have been embarrassed that we

have put the EDA in this position where nobody knows what we actually did.

And we'll take that and use it as motivation, as Roger said, to clean it up and make sure that we don't find ourselves in this position going forward.

We should certainly know what the record is.

It is true that we're in a lot different place now than we were six years ago.

I would say even four years ago from an organizational standpoint.

But I think the bottom line is EDA really deserves good information.

And I think the applicant does too.

So that would be my recommendation is we take a couple of days if we have it and see if we can't get then a majority, a quorum back together again and revisit the issue of the fees.

So we're all working off the same sheet of music.

That's my thought, Mr.

I have no problem reconvening

I would, if I may speak.

Sure, sure.

We want to be good citizens of our community.

and are fine with paying this $5,000 fee annually for the life of this term.

If that is helpful to you all, as well as helping us to expediate this matter, quite honestly, we're trying to move this along because the refinancing enables us to have a little more funds available for healthcare renewal.

for our employees.

And so that kind of needs to happen rather quickly.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

I think if you're willing to to do that, then I think we could certainly proceed right now based on that information while we and then we'll try to get our information organized going forward.

So I appreciate that.

Not to throw too big of a monkey wrench into the works.

I think we can affirm our our ability and willingness to

to move expeditiously.

So I think a couple of days is likely to be maximum delay.

And I also think that we'll sort of be setting a precedent here.

So we may want to get it right.

Well, I guess where I would disagree is that the applicant has said they're willing to do this and they've made that offer.

I think we can accept that offer, approve it, and move forward, and if when we have the discussion we don't feel that it's appropriate to continue to assess an annual fee, we can always say, well, this should have been a one-time fee.

I don't think they will come back and continue to argue with this if we say that they don't have to pay the money in the future.

Then let's proceed with that and accept that offer.

So I'll just go ahead and make the motion.

I move that we have a annual administrative fee on this particular bond issue of $5,000 a year.

Second.

Well, Mr. Long, in all fairness here, we still haven't resolved the fact of whether or not we're voting on accurate information in these documents because we don't know what happened.

So your motion could be in conflict with something that the authorities already adopted, and we just don't know.

I don't think a two-day postponement, which

My counsel has already said it's probably going to be OK. That seems to me to be a pretty reasonable way to handle this.

OK.

I think counsel for the EDA said we have the authority to do this.

So I'm comfortable doing it.

But I certainly understand.

Any further discussion?

All right.

Sure, we can do a roll call.

It's fine.

Aye.

All right.

And we will continue to look at this and we'll let you know if there's a change.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, you don't have any long awaited vacation plans coming up, do you?

I do next week, so I can sign whatever you need me to sign.

I will be talking with Jennifer, Mr.

We will strike while the iron is hot.

Sure.

Very good.

Very good.

Thanks.

Well, we spent a good deal of time talking about, although we don't have anything else listed on the agenda, one of the things that Roger and I had talked about was this particular issue.

So I think it has certainly come to the fore as something that we need to deal with at the next meeting.

Yeah, well, as you mentioned, Chairman Long, we had already talked about bringing something back to the EDA.

to clean up our rules and procedures and fees for issuance of bonds and what those fees should be.

Staff has already conducted a best practices benchmarking around from EDAs around Virginia.

We'll have that data ready at our next meeting.

So you'll have a general idea how other institutions or authorities do it.

Okay, great.

And then

The other issue that has come up that Roger and I have talked about really relates to sort of our funding decisions as we've started to get more funding requests.

And this has nothing to do with our partner agencies.

They're all doing a great job and that in lies part of the issue.

We've recently funded CIC, the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center.

And as you may recall, the CVSVDC has come back and asked for additional funding, which the EDA approved.

You have funded SEVA Biohub historically.

Dr. Hastings is wanting to come to our next meeting in August to request funding.

And what I see happening

Are these decisions being made in a vacuum individually instead of looked at collectively?

And when you look at these requests in isolation, they all look good.

The issue is we have a limited amount of resources and I'm proposing that you allow staff to come back with a process for evaluating grant requests all at one time against one another so the EDA can make strategic decisions on whom they would like to invest in and how much.

Otherwise, I'm afraid that you're going to get these one-off decisions that are going to be decided on based on who shows up first at your doorstep as opposed to the way you would best like to invest.

This happened in Wilmington, North Carolina when I worked for the city manager there, and we put together a civic partnership.

That sounds good.

All right.

Good.

OK. Well, thank you, everybody.

I appreciate your time.

Everybody getting together on short notice.

Roger and Jennifer, I wanted to talk to you briefly about your request of a few months ago, finding local businesses who hire

Can we call you after this?

Yes.

That'd be great.

Okay.

Sounds good.

All right.

Thanks, everybody.