Economic Development Authority Meeting   11/19/2024

And I'll call the meeting to order.

We have a quorum present in the room.

And we have Director Storm has asked to join remotely for a personal reason.

So I would move that he be allowed to join the meeting remotely for a personal reason.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

No.

All right.

So you can be admitted to the meeting.

We don't have any speakers from the public.

Then the next item on the agenda is the minutes.

Are there any comments on the minutes?

Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

I move to approve the minutes.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

The minutes are approved.

Thank you.

So the much awaited financial report.

And I'm going to very quickly turn it over to Tia Mitchell, who is the budget analyst in the finance and budget department that supports the Economic Development Office and the Economic Development Authority in managing the funds.

And then there's a third fund that I believe Tia will end up

Hitting on a reference to that sort of acts as an interplay or can be an interplay between the two.

And so based on feedback from the EDA prior to my tenure, we have been working to pull together what we hope is a more legible financial report.

And we can continue to kind of refine it, but we think the mountain of work to sort of be responsive to the feedback that you all have given us is behind us, we hope.

We'll hear from you.

And I'm going to turn it over to Tia to help walk us through it.

And in front of you is a copy, because I understand that this is probably not super legible.

I'm Tia Mitchell, as Emily said, she stopped the introductions, so I'm going to jump right in, which is great.

And so on your screen, one other thing that I will add is this report is intended to give you all a picture of the Economic Development Authority's financials for fiscal year 25.

So we kind of, when we provide a financial report, we need like a starting place because things are always moving.

So this is intended to show you all what is available and what is happening in fiscal year 25, which started July 1st of 2024.

So for the revenue slide, the first slide that you'll see, these revenues reflect a few different things.

They reflect bond fees for previous bond issuances that the EDA has played a role in.

They reflect tax revenue that comes from the general fund related to performance agreements that you all have also played a role in.

There is one loan repayment and you will see who that is for.

There's an agreement with that as well.

and then the last that you will see is interest earnings that the EDA gets to benefit from based on the investment work that our Office of Investment and Debt Management oversee.

So you will see that number.

We've had a couple really good investment years.

I'm sure you all are aware of the interest rate environment and so that is reflected here.

Moving to the next slide.

This piece of the report will focus on expenditures

The first section is the expenditure side of the tax revenue that comes from the general fund related to those performance agreements that I just talked about.

So the revenue will come in from the general fund because that is where taxes get paid.

And then based on the milestones and the performance agreements, we will then turn around and the EDO will pay that back based on that agreement.

So that's that top section.

The next two sections reflect grant matches and contributions that the EDA pays based on agreements, whether it be with the county and other entities or just with the other entities.

So example of those you'll see spelled out between the Virginia Jobs Investment Program, Commonwealth Opportunity Fund, and then your Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Grants.

Also, there is a contribution listed there for the wet lab accelerator.

or I'll also add that the amounts that you'll see, this goes back to the very beginning part, the amounts you'll see in that first column labeled budget reflect how much is left to pay on each of these agreements at the start of fiscal year 25, which was July 1st that we talked about.

But does that extend beyond the fiscal year?

Yes.

And what you'll see is as we get more into the year and you see more in the paid-to-date column, if there's a remaining balance in that last column at the end of the fiscal year, based on that agreement, we will carry that forward to the next fiscal year.

So one example of that, I believe, is the wet lab accelerator.

It's $300,000 total, but $100,000 for three years.

The administration section, which is the next section, reflects a small amount of funding that's set aside each year to pay for legal and federal services along with a small amount for office supplies.

And then the important part in the last section that you will see is the section labeled contingency.

And this reflects the amount of funds that EDA will use to leverage or support current or future initiatives.

So this amount will change once those initiatives are identified.

For example, EDA decides that they want to do another Go Virginia for whatever the program may be, and it's $300,000.

Depending on whether that, this gets to the third fund that Emily talked about, depending on whether the EDA and the county come together to pay something or it is just coming from the county, if the EDA wants to put a portion of their funding to something, you'll see that 1.292 decrease and then you'll see a line item be added for whatever you all have agreed to, whatever the next agreement is that you all have agreed to.

And I'll also add that there's not a lot right now in the expenditures for the pay-to-date common.

That's not uncommon for this time of year.

A lot of these agreements have specific timelines included in them, so you will see them hit about the same time every year.

For example, the tax incentive financing are usually paid after the county's tax due dates.

So in June and then in December.

So you will see this report change based on when those agreement timelines are.

And so that kind of ends my report out of kind of getting you guys oriented to this report.

So I have a few.

So the contingency, those are funds that the EDA has authority to, purely the EDA has the authority to expand those funds.

It's not money that the Board of Supervisors has appropriated.

Correct.

With one caveat that the Board does approve the reappropriation of this fund every year,

And so what you're seeing here assumes that the board will approve this on December 4th, 2024.

They usually take reappropriations in December.

And then, so in the revenue section, we're showing a general fund transfer for the tax rebates.

So that lines up with the tax rebates that need to be paid out to people.

I guess the part that I'm struggling with the right way to present is then in the grant matches part, you don't seem to have a matching,

line that says here's where that money is going to come from.

That's a great question.

So there this is the third fund that Emily spoke to.

We have an economic development fund that is used to transfer money when the when the county wants to pay for an initiative and they're using the EDA as the channel in which they do that.

We will transfer money from that fund, 5807 is the Economic Development Fund, to the EDA, and then the EDA will pay that.

But that's great feedback.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I guess, I'm certainly not used to it.

I have some familiarity with public financing type documents.

I'm not as familiar with those, but it seems to me we want to kind of line up.

If I'm showing we're going to spend a bunch of money, it's nice to know where that came from.

So we can figure out how to do that.

I wonder if

You know, kind of moving the grants and sort of another separate them out so that it's easy to see how that money flows.

Maybe that's not the right way to do it.

And then the other part of it that I think we should think about is because this

Balance, like these other figures like the tax rebates are single year figures, but in the grants we're showing potentially multiple year figures.

I wonder if we ought to put the year figure in the column, you know, the fiscal year figure in the column and the balance remaining for the fiscal year and then

indicate sort of what the total is.

Sure.

I wonder, I'm just tossing out an idea.

I wonder if it would be helpful if maybe not as part of what you're looking at here, but if there is a report that shows that separately, like if it shows all of the agreements that you all have and what those full dollar amounts were and then the pay to date,

I think that that's more of like a how we cross over fiscal years report.

Yeah, I think that'd be great.

I think that's a great suggestion.

I don't know, right off the top.

I'm going to look at Emily a little bit.

That information lives.

Yeah, it seems like, I think that's a fantastic suggestion.

And if you had a list, then kind of

the total amount and then where we're at.

And then, you know, it also shows, I think, as you know, where this money's going, obviously over the years, but you know, there's a lot of projects that EDA has supported.

Even when we look at CAP, where are we putting future dollars?

And you can see, okay, we put this much into, you know, the biotech, this much into this area and this much into this, you know,

No, that makes a ton of sense.

And that's an exercise that we've done internally in a couple of instances to sort of see on balance across the target sectors, what does that kind of look like?

And I will say that Bea and the other folks have done a tremendous amount of work to dig back through the years to find the balances that have been out there.

And sort of what went on was there was a huge effort to make sure that we had the right number.

And I think at the forum this is really good and we're very close to having some success.

Great job on this, really.

I mean, it's so much more user friendly.

Sure, yeah.

I think also if there happens to be any people looking, can we chime in and learn?

I mean, it's easier to kind of translate than the previous ones.

I'll take just one second to just echo Chair Long's appreciation.

Andy Bowman, Tia Mitchell, and I'm sure Ryan Davidson got pulled into it too.

It was a really wonderful opportunity to make sure that we had that multi-year look back to ensure that everything was where it should be.

And moving forward will be very easy to keep current.

And I think it was a good forcing function to go back and make sure that we had everything lined up the way that we should.

And I think it allows us to be in a position now that we know what that balance is, to be able to say, okay, are there things that we specifically as the PDA would like to put this money toward and know what we're talking about?

Does it make sense that I don't want to just create more work to create more work?

This is truly a question to have, like commitments that we've already made, identified, even if the numbers are zero, like for just thinking Home Depot.

Like we made it significant.

I mean, it's a pretty big commitment and it's not it's hanging.

It's common, but it's not like visually represented anywhere.

Yes.

That would I think would go into whatever this little

This is additional, yeah.

Any other comments?

All right.

Thank you.

Not new business.

We're gonna rearrange the schedule.

So we're gonna skip to the bottom of the schedule.

We're gonna move to unfinished business so that we have all of the directors who are here able to participate in the MOU biscoe, and then we'll come back.

Very stylishly looking MOU.

It looks very official.

With our own logo on the side.

And so this is, we discussed the MOU at the last EDA meeting and wanted to give you all one more opportunity to review it.

To approve the draft and if it's amended today as amended, transmit it to the Board of Supervisors for consideration.

And so this item is on the agenda for the Board of Supervisors on December 11th.

And so we're actually already in review for that board meeting.

And so pending any edits from the EDA today, we'll incorporate those and then get that

So really the purpose for today is to any final... Any ideas, comments that have been percolating since the last meeting we need to share?

Sensing none.

Do you want me to read it or just make a motion?

Is that satisfactory?

You're going to make that motion.

Is there a second to that?

All right.

Well, any further discussion?

Hearing none.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

I think that's everyone.

So thanks, everybody.

So that is taken care of.

All right.

So now up to Nubius.

Well, let's just roll with it.

So this is the draft meeting dates for 2025.

It keeps the standard third Tuesday timeframe.

And as is tradition, we adopt through the next January so that you can have your annual meeting in January.

This is not an action item for now.

This is really just a first pass at what the calendar would look like.

And one thing I will say about this calendar, traditionally we have canceled

the July meeting, sometimes the August meeting.

We're going to put all these dates on the calendar so we have them because we've also found occasions where meeting to meeting is easier to have it.

And I guess I'll throw this out.

We've never talked about this, but I mean, this is assuming that this is a good time for people and we can talk about that.

There's another time that's more preferable.

I mean, my own preference is either beginning or end.

Yeah, this is fine.

It makes it easier.

The first thing is more.

I think it's felt strong.

I like the end of the day because I work in the center of structures, so I have to thrive.

All right, okay.

So over the years, the IT department has done their due diligence to make sure that the counties

Digital infrastructure stays safe and secure, which means that they continue to add training obligations and some software.

For example, they just introduced multi-factor authentication that uses a third party app.

to do the multi-factor authentication for accessing county digital resources.

And so the requirements of being a credentialed user in the county's IT system have increased a bit over the years.

And so we wanted to sort of do a check-in with everyone.

And sort of the question at the front end was, is there a way for

County to provide an email address for the public for directors that would not require you to be credentialed users in the system.

So therefore, you wouldn't have to do the training and some of the software items.

And I worked with IT, and they identified a solution where we could set up a forwarding system so it's

an email address that would be posted to the website but would actually just auto-forward to another inbox of your choosing if that was the direction the EDA wanted to go that would then remove you from our system as a credentialed user.

The drawback on that would be

Because that email account doesn't really exist, anytime you replied to an email received at that address, you would be replying from either your personal email or an email box that you would have to kind of set up on your own through

one of the email providers.

So there's a little bit of a give and take there.

But that was sort of the question that we went in with was, is there a way to do this?

The solution that they've come up with, I think achieves the spirit of the challenge.

But I just wanted to be clear that there is a little bit of a drawback there.

So I think it's really just a question of what we want to do.

I'm personally using it basically as email forwarding right now, and I've replied back out of my work email address.

So for me, not having to worry about all this other stuff.

I don't know if that might make some technological problems.

Sounds great to me.

So I leave it up to others today.

And I assume we can just kind of do it.

So basically everybody has to be off or we have to be off.

I think it's great.

There's way too much email in your life.

And you know, it's hard to manage it all.

All right, well, one last date.

I have no preference one way or the other.

There are so many email accounts already.

Okay.

All right.

Staff will reach out to you to, the next step would be to get an address to forward to.

Okay, and I'm the confusion part right now, hang on, sorry.

Okay, so just some staff report items.

We are so excited we have a new face at the table.

Avery Thompson joined yesterday, the office.

He's a management analyst three, and he'll be keeping the financial report and all of the funds updated and making sure that we're

There's a little bit more work in public finance than you might realize in making sure that you're doing all of the right moves as you're shifting funding between the funds.

And so we're just, we're so excited for Avery to really dive in and make sure that we are making sure, keeping all those things the way that they need to be.

And, you know, as well as small office.

So one of the benefits is you get to kind of dive into lots of different things.

And so we're

Just excited about Avery's talents and interest in joining the office.

I'm coming from just across the street from Charlottesville.

What a lovely area to be here for another few years now.

The strategic plan 2.0, we shared at a previous meeting, we were overwhelmed by the volume of proposals that we received for the economic development strategic plan consultant support.

We have come to the end of contracting, and I had a call with the firm on Friday of last week, its residents.

They recently did the City of Charlottesville's

Economic Development Strategic Plan.

They've also done work in Arlington and around the country, but they've got some really good examples of some commonwealth work in their recent portfolio.

Because of where we are in the year, we agreed that a public kickoff in January was probably appropriate, and so we'll have a meeting with them mid-December.

to kind of flesh out a schedule for the beginning part of the calendar year 2025.

So we're a couple months behind what we had originally hoped for, but we think we've got a good kind of plan moving forward.

And then the other thing I wanted to make sure that you all were aware of is the staff has been doing just a wonderful, wonderful job diving into the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program.

That's a grant program that the Virginia Economic Development Partnership offers to do site readiness work.

And we're putting forward or we're putting together a package proposal for that program to do some work up at the Rivanna Futures property.

And so

We're still kind of working, it's an iterative and collaborative process with VEDP and so we're working right now with our staff to put together the right package that hopefully will be wildly successful in their grant program application.

It's an iterative process and so we won't have a final award notification until June of 2025.

but there's some kind of steps along the way that we'll get some good feedback from them on how we're doing and we'll keep you guys informed as we move through that.

The staff, as always, has been out in the field.

We had a great tour of the Charlottesville Regional Airport, led by the new executive director, Jason Birch, for all the regional economic developer staff.

We also were excited to have some folks from the state join that tour.

Just to learn about some of the recovery work that they did post COVID and the real impact that that had obviously on flights and a lot of the work that they're doing to try to get some of the flights that the business world is interested in back.

So folks have asked for another Chicago flight.

Folks are interested in a Boston flight.

and so they sort of gave us a little peek into how they approached that work with the airlines.

And then the county also had a sponsorship at the Minority Business Alliance gala that was rescheduled because of Hurricane Helene and it was just a couple weeks ago and we were, Albemarle County was really excited to be there because a staffer in the Department of Social Services, Kalila Jones, for

A business that she runs was recognized as a leader of the year, and so it was really fun to have a table of leadership be able to celebrate Kalila Jones's great work.

I should have brought the magazine.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership issues a quarterly magazine that talks about what's going on in the Commonwealth.

The fall issue features, this is a clip from the web art link, University Partnerships Accelerate Innovation in Albemarle County was a feature story that they did.

talking about some of the opportunities in biotech and national security with a little bit of a focus on Rivanna Futures, but also a lot of exciting work sort of across the region.

We were really excited.

The author of the article did a really wonderful job finding private sector folks to interview and sort of talk about why they value being in our community.

And so we'll make sure that we get you a link to that article

It's nice to see other people sort of saying nice things about you in print.

And then just a couple other things.

We were able to attend the Our Community Salutes Military Service Awards recognition that the Defense Affairs Committee of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce hosted a couple weeks ago.

I'll mention when we're talking about events, the reminder about the Common Threads thing that's coming up in, first week in December.

And we'll send another link out to that too.

and then we like to do, we've started adding just a little bit of a look into the business retention and expansion work.

So we've had some great interactions with food and agribusiness this past month, defense intelligence and biotech.

Just a good opportunity to check in with CEOs on what are the challenges that they're facing and what resources, if any, can we help connect them to.

The state has a lot of resources

Private sector businesses are not often aware of.

And so when we do those BRE visits, we're kind of listening for is there something that we're aware of that could help support the work that they're doing.

And then a report from the ecosystem.

The Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development has a formal process by which they consider

sites to add to their program of work.

And their program of work is really around business attraction and marketing.

And so they voted to add Rivanna Futures to their program of work as a regionally significant site.

They have three regionally significant sites now.

The other two are Shannon Hill, which is an industrial park to the east, and then Northwork Discovery Parks just across the street.

from Rivanna Futures.

Not here.

And then they also provided a letter of support.

They voted to provide a letter of support for the grant application that the county is submitting to the EDP.

And then I believe this group has heard over the past couple of months, there's been discussion of an innovation corridor or regional collaboration around talking about all the exciting things that are happening when you think about Charlottesville, Green and Albemarle.

And we continue to have meetings with the regional team to sort of work through, you know, what does that look like?

Any questions?

All right, flow session.

So we're going to go to the other room?

Yes.

All right.

So I move that the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority go into a 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 the location of the prospective industry in the Rio Magisterial District.

A previous announcement has been made of the industry's interest in locating its facilities in the community.

and subsection 6 to discuss and consider the investment of public funds for the location of an industry in the Rio Magisterial district where bargaining is involved and where it may public initially would adversely affect the financial interests of the media and the county.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right.

I think in your box for the closed session meeting.

Okay, so we're going to restart the meeting.

I move that the EDA certify by recorded vote 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 identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Is there a second?

Second.

Richie, you wanna call the roll?

Aye.

Director Long?

Aye.

Director Mottola?

Aye.

Director Johnson?

Aye.

Director Storm?

All right, so we're out of the closed meeting.

The only thing left is other matters.

Anything else the board wants to bring up?

Hearing none, we will adjourn until December 17th.

This is our next meeting.