Travis County Commissioners Court
March 1, 2005
Item 6
Number 6 is to previous presentation -- to receive presentation and take appropriate action on opportunity Austin from city of Austin chamber of commerce representatives.
>> thank you for having us. I'm gary farmer, volunteer, let me underline volunteer chair of the greater Austin economic development corporation. I'm joined by mike rawlings, the ceo of the greater Austin chamber of commerce. We appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning and discuss with you a program that we believe and hope that you will agree is of critical importance to the economic development of not only Travis County but the central Texas region. I believe that you all received a package yesterday afternoon about this program. In fact I think we have in the past visited with each and every one of the Commissioners and you, judge, individually. What I would like to do, judge, if it's permissible is very quickly to go through the program state the goals and objectives of the program, how we intend to accomplish those goals and objectives, give you a quick overview of 2004 and show how we did against our metrics and then I will allow mr. Rawlings to answer any of the tough questions if that's permissible. Opportunity Austin as you know was borne out of really some very rugged economic times in 2001, two and three. They really served as a call to action to the chamber and the business community. So we hired market street services of atlanta, georgia, to come in and spend about 7 months studying this region that we call central Texas and helping us devise a plan to address the problems. Bottom line goal is to revitalize, diversify and make our economy more sustainable over the longer term. The goals would be to create 72,000 jobs over the period of five years. That 72,000 jobs should have an approximate 2.9 million dollar pardon me, billion dollar wage impact over the term. And economists tell us that if we can accomplish that, we will achieve a nearly 14 billion dollar economic impact for the region. If will look in the green book, you will see that one of the challenges that we have had historically is lack of funding. When you look at some of the competitor cities around the country. They have been much more aggressive than central Texas with regard to economic development matters. There's a bar chart on page 3 that would show you in $2,003 how the Austin region has ranked against some of our competitors. Turning the page, we get into the program areas. Job one is recruitment and attraction of new businesses. Market street helped us to identify opportunities by industry sector. Helped us to prioritize those so that we could -- we could -- we could approach the most opportune first and then push some of the later stage out. We wanted to be smart about how we spent the money. In the original 11 million dollar budget we had allocated about a $925,000 to do recruitment -- $1,925,000 to do recruitment activities. The judge is to become very proactive. No longer can we afford to wait for the phone to ripping. We have to be out around this country touting the benefits of central Texas. So we are doing that in our recruitment activities. First year priorities were regional headquarters, bio medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing, wireless technologies and automotive suppliers. We are trying to take the assets, tack we will those -- tackle those first. Clean energy, digital medium and software, software long has been a strong suit here, but we need to pay attention to it. Also semiconductors in year two. Recruitment attraction a very big piece of this program. Second piece is retention expansion. We know by history that 70 to 80% of the jobs will come from our existing employers in central Texas. Unfortunately, historically we have not had any program to make contact with these existing companies to understand what their concerns are, what impediments they might have to continuing to do business in central Texas. So we have started a very aggressive outreach program, it's a multi-faceted approach, with our existing employers. We -- we originally allocated about $800,000 to that program. With recruitment attraction and retention expansion, we have now done a supplemental allocation, added about $500,000 to each of those two programs. Third piece of the program is September present neural -- entrepreneurial support. We don't spend much money there, but spend ... Collaborating with the university of Texas, ic squared, the technology incubators and others. We are a young and smart community, we create patents in this region second to none really in the country, we need to make sure that we support those entrepreneurial endeavors, make sure that they can do the things that they need to do so they can keep those companies right here in central Texas and grow them. Fourth part of the program he is a marketing program. Very simple. It's what those of us in -- in the business do every single day. But we haven't been very good about that. Through research, research out of washington d.c., surveys approximately 180 ceos or site consultants, we found some very interesting things that others thought about us. They recognized dell, but absent that they thought that Austin was an oil and gas town. How far from the truth could that be? We have not done a very good job, quite candidly, of letting the rest of the country know who we are, what we are, what the opportunities are that exist. At the same time, while Austin has high name id, high name recognition, known for many great things, the rest of the region is not known very well, Round Rock, georgetown, san marcos, so we have a job to do there as well to educate the rest of the country about -- about the other communities in our region. The hope would be that as we educate about all of the communities in the region, we can expand the menu of options that companies have while they are looking here. Perfect example is an automotive supplier keying off of the toyota facility in san antonio. They surveyed the and ultimately selected georgetown, they are building about a $15 million facility there, creating 150 jobs. When they break ground the senior executive said when we started this search we had never heard of georgetown, Texas. Now we know that it's a great place to locate a business. And to attract talent. Our belief is that if we can cause companies to locate in any of our regional cities, in any of our adjoining counties, certainly we have Travis County and Austin Texas right at the top of the list, we will all prosper by having those businesses locate in the region. So we are going to have an aggressive marketing campaign, currently running ads in six different magazines that are directed towards chief executive officers, c level executives and site consultant and basically it says central Texas is open for business. We have got to create top of mind awareness that central Texas is open for business. Next piece of the program is market rate conditions. It's really about workforce, judge. It's about the quality of our workforce, the quality of our educational system. As you are well aware, workforce has -- has long been our strongest suit. We need to make sure that that continues to be the case, we need to take special care of our workforce. This whole program is regional with the exception of the primary and secondary piece of this program. That is focused on aisd. We simply did not have the resource to -- to broaden that program to the entirety of the region, so we focused on aisd because that's where we believe we have the most at-risk kids. That's where we can have the greatest impact. We are spending approximately $1,400,000 omen toring, tutoring -- on mentoring, tutoring, job shadowing, we believe that will produce very long-term benefits for this region.
>> how is that program going?
>> we are working in conjunction with Austin partners in education, all of the reports that we have been getting back, it's going very well. Charles barnett with seton medical system is -- has headed that piece of the program up for us. You know mr. Barnett and he is very thor error in his approach -- very thorough in his approach. Measurables on all of that, we are very pleased thus far. Second piece of the market ready is post secondary. One of the things that market street revealed to us when looking at denver, phoenix, seattle, raleigh disturbed ram, we have -- durham, we have to make sure that we can get the technical range to the -- training to the people that need it. We have an employment problem and underemployment problem. We want to make sure that we have a ready workforce that industry can immediately tap into. We are working in conjunction with the capital area training foundation. Market street gave catf very high marks for their programs. They say do not recreate, don't start over, simply work with and supplement what catf is doing, that's the way to go. That's what we are doing to the tune of $1,600,000. The final piece of the program, judge is what I call a dry powder fund. That is about a million, 1,150,000, I believe, that we will hold in reserve, so that we can execute on opportunities that might come along that aren't otherwise contemplate understand the program. Contemplated in the program. We've had a couple of opportunities that we are currently considering. Everything, anything and everything that we would do with that money would be to further the goals and objectives of the program. 72,000 jobs, 2.9 billion in wages and a $14 billion impact. You also have -- a -- an economic impact statement. We thought it was very important to have that. It really -- I think it does a fabulous job showing what this program will do to area segments of the economy. I might direct you to one piece called local government revenues where county governments, the five counties in the region, would achieve an approximate $53 million economic benefit. Obviousry for the counties, most of that will come from ad valorem taxes. The real estate segment shows a $4.1 billion positive impact on residential and commercial real estate. That is the basis of the program. If you have any questions about it at the moment, we will stop and take those. If not I will move in very quickly to the 2004 results.
>> questions?
>> okay. We had our annual meeting just last week, and we reported to our investors -- let me say that we have at this moment in time 251 investors that have put forward $13.6 million. Most of that money has come from the private sector. However, we have envoyed public sector -- enjoyed public sector support as well. But 251 investors have really voiced the need to have an aggressive economic development program. I think they have validated this program with their pocketbooks to the tune of $13.6 million. Everything that we are doing we are trying to measure measure our success. We believe our investors have the right to know how we're doing. By the way our budget is a public budget. We made it public day one. We give periodic reports on it because we think people have the right to greater [indiscernible] every single day. In 2004 we had a goal of creating 6,561 new jobs. Actually we created 6100 jobs. You may have heard a report of [indiscernible] new jobs. The answer is we both are right. That's how we measure them. He uses a different measure than we do. All of our numbers are coming during the Texas workforce commission. We think those numbers are very valid. We are just a little short on the goal, on the job goal projection. Good news is, however, that we had a goal of $241 million in new payroll. Actually exceeded that goal a bit, 249.1 million of payroll gain. Relocations, we had hoped to achieve relocation numbers of 20 companies, actually had 31. And -- in 2004. Retention visits. Again, 70 to 80% of the jobs will come from the existing companies. We had hoped in 2004 to visit with 75 of them. We only achieved 55. Let me explain that. Because that's a -- that looks like a woeful short coming. 2004, January 1st of 2004 we had no money. So we were trying to raise the money and implement the program at the same time. We had to suspend the initiation of a number of our programs waiting for the money to catch up. We were finally able to launch this program in August of 2004 and achieve 55 visits in the last five months of the year. So I feel pretty good about that. Originally we would have done 75 visits in 2005. We have -- we have moved that up to 100 visits in 2005 to make sure that we can see the people, pardon me, see the people that we need to see.
>> [indiscernible] these businesses and encouraging them to remain in central Texas.
>> we are visiting with them, judge, encouraging them to remain in central Texas, but it's more than a courtesy call. What we are trying to do is -- we're sending chamber staff in, we are offering to sign confidentiality agreements or non-disclosure agreements so that there can be very candid conversation. We need to understand again what their plans for the future are and how we might help them achieve those plans. We need to understand if there are problems or concerns that they face, which might be a deterrent for them growing and expanding in central Texas. Over a number of visits, we believe that we will start to see trends. We will start to see common themes with regard to opportunity as well as problems and then we will put the proper volunteers in place to try to address that. May very well be here in front of the Commissioners court at some point in time asking for an adjustment of the policy, or some help on an issue, et cetera, et cetera. I think visiting with the existing c.e.o.s will oftentimes give us the answers to who we want to recruit. Who are their strategic partners, strategic suppliers. I think it will -- in fact it has. I mean, we have -- we have discovered any number of new opportunities by visiting with the existing companies here. So it's a very comprehensive program. It's got some fancy software that I don't pretend to understand fully. But it's a tried and true program. We went around the country, by the way, and looked at best practices, tried to understand the best possible program that we might employ, this is the one that we adopted after that research.
>> I guess, judge, I'm sorry -- I investigation after reviewing and look -- I guess after reviewing and looking at the overall status of what you are doing, where you are going, I really applaud opportunity Austin for what you have done. Of course my opinion we have to be inclusive in this process and five county region, of course economic development is not where it should be in certain segments even of Travis County. So I think this approach is an approach I think in my opinion that the direction that I think that Travis County should go in. Of course with the benefits, with the benefits and the investment potential that we have here as far as Travis County becoming one of the partners in this process, can help overall, help us in our economic development movement in this county. Now, again, though, it's not going to happen unless we make things happen. That's -- that's what I'm going to continue to say. Until we do something about it, we -- I don't want Travis County to be left out of the process, so this is one of the ropes that I wanted to make sure that this particular item came in the presentation came before the Commissioners court today to see what we can do about it individually. Now, I do know that -- I look at the county as a whole. But also the adjacent counties, the regional movement that is -- that it's going to take to attract not only new business, but also the -- the businesses that you went through very elaborately as far as expanding existing businesses. That is very, very critical to us, the labor force, the workforce, having them prepare it and bring it to work because that's one of the key components. Do you have a viable workforce to -- to do the job? And all of those elements that you have mentioned here are very, very critical. However, unless we become partners in this, I feel that we -- that we will not be able to benefit. As much as we should benefit being left on the outside. Of course five county region, heys, caldwell -- hays, caldwell, bastrop, Williamson son and also Travis County, if the county decides to do this I think is something, a movement that I think we need to really look at as far as the private partner. Private-public partnership with opportunity Austin. I'm in fully support of this, judge. I know that, I know probably visit with each one of you individually. I do know that in precinct 1, precinct 4 for an example, there is a need for a lot of development. Also within the whole region as far as economic development is concerned. It's a thirst that's needed in the jobs creation, these numbers are phenomenal. I mean, they really are, when you really look at that. And that -- that means a lot. Increasing payroll, that's -- those are phenomenal numbers. So -- so really I want to be a part of this, how do we get there, where do we go, all of these things, it's going to take money for us to get there --
>> we have already spent a great deal of money, though. I have one question dealing with that.
>> all right.
>> are you done?
>> no go ahead.
>> go ahead and get done.
>> go ahead.
>> two questions. Did you get a chance to finish your presentation?
>> if you all want me to be finished, yes, sir, I'm finished [laughter]
>> it's your pleasure, judge. There are a few more metrics I can go over.
>> let's get those in.
>> let's get them done. We hope to go out of this region and visit with 100 companies in 2004. We visited with 144 companies. Showing that we are being very proactive. We hope to attract a thousand inquiries in 2004. We attracted a thousand -- 1,041. We hope to bring 50 post ects to visit this region in 2004, we got 54, declared victory and moved on. We spent [indiscernible] in 2004, and in your presentation you have a pie chart showing how that was divided up among the various things. I would note in that regard that investor relations of 216,000 included all of the fundraising costs which of course is a non-recurring number, so investor relations will go down. The money is going to be spent to do the heavy lifting of economic development. We also, judge, have the annual report here, goes into much greater detail, I would commit that to you at your leisure, present taiks concluded, ready to answer questions.
>> two questions for me, one is that you did indicate what industries you hope to attract. Is there a written rationale available for our review basically showing at how you arrived at those decision sfs.
>> yes, sir.
>> I would appreciate seeing that.
>> we would provide that to each one of the commissions and you.
>> should I assume that the companies for which we were asked to provide financial incentives by the greater Austin chamber of commerce, were company that's basically complement the overall strategy?
>> that is correct.
>> so we really have been assisting in that way.
>> yes, sir. You have.
>> and are expected to keep doing so.
>> we would hope so, yes, sir.
>> okay. I don't think there's a single person in Travis County that doesn't really support workforce development. But at some point we have to look at exactly what we are doing and what we are accomplishing through those actions and I mean it seems to me that do you think we have an overall strategy for -- for workforce development, job development and also training for those jobs, training available, persons here, unemployed, underemployed?
>> I really do, judge. Again, we can provide to the court all of the background information. I think when you look at the -- at the primary and secondary education piece, as well as the post secondary education piece, you really have a continuum of support. The workforce, as I said earlier, has been historically been our longest and strongest asset. I can assure you that the -- one of the very first questions that the companies ask when they come to this market, it's not about snepts, it's not -- incentives, it's not about parks, it's not about a lot of things. It very often is about workforce. What is your educational system. How many exemplary schools do you have, what's your graduation rate. A variety of questions focused on the educational system. So you see that we are spending about a third of the money, we are spending over $3 million, focusing on workforce, both long-term and short term. Longer term with the primary and secondary education programs. Short-term with the technical training and support of catf. To make sure that we have a ready workforce. The result of that could be, an example like the home depot. That this court helped to bring -- to I think precinct 1 Commissioner Davis. 500 new job, 500 good paying jobs, average salary of $60,000, with 30% of those jobs designated for economically disadvantaged folks. So I think when you look at the -- when you look at the educational piece that we have, and then couple that with the outreach that we are doing around this country to bring jobs here, where we can transition these folks from educational opportunities into good paying jobs, I think that there's a real continuum there. I think that --
>> you have $3 million in workforce development.
>> we have 1-6 in primary, secondary, focused on aisd, then a million four and change in support of catf.
>> well, do you believe that those two efforts supplement and compliment what we have in place already? Workforce has a budget, Travis County funds non-profit agencies along with the city of Austin, there are other entities, I guess I'm wondering whether we are all working to implement a master strategy to meet our needs.
>> I don't know -- I personally am not as familiar with the other programs that the county is doing. What we did, judge, is we took the report from market street services that said you have got to supplement the efforts in these areas. You have got to take great care of your workforce. And they helped us craft this plan so that we would have a market ready workforce. So these are the dollars that we have allocated to that. Mike may have more information. I'm sorry I don't personally have it.
>> judge, Commissioners, I think what I would add to that conversation is when we provide you the details not only on the targeted entities, why they were selected. You will have the rationale for the investment of our dollars, opportunity Austin dollars, in -- primary, secondary and post secondary education, it's very focused and we looked at places where there was some gaps that weren't being funded. On the primary secondary, it's on the mentoring, tutoring program that is directed at the most at risk young people in the community, so we are going to ramp up, accelerate the number of tutors and mentors to those young people. Then on the post secondary side, part of that is preparing to get more people into post secondary education. And we actually are working with the ray marshal center, putting in place for the first time tracking information, what happens to our students once they leave the primary-secondary education, do they go on and if so, what type of -- what type of education, continuing education they are receiving. It's very narrow what we are focused on. I think it compliments all of the other efforts. I don't know that there can be too many efforts.
>> but people unemployed, you can talk to them forever about the need for skills and education, et cetera. If there's not a real job, have a real possibility of getting, then it's all so -- it's also academic. I ask the question because one, the county-city fund job development programs, plus the mayor and I appoint the board of work source, where the federal and state money job training in central Texas comes, so -- so I mean we ought to be able to get a whole lot more bang and now that we're working against one another, all of the different entities, I'm just not sure that we are working together as much as we can. But -- but thank god that I have your phone number for follow-up.
>> I will say this, judge, I have been -- I have been involved again as a volunteer with -- with the chamber's economic development activity since about 1994, 1995. And the last 10 or 11 years I have never seen as comprehensive and aggressive of a program as we have now implemented and I hi we will see a -- I think that we will see a very tankible result from this program. We invite the county's partnership. We sure appreciate everything that you all have done, we are going to continue to bring opportunities to you, judge, I hope. But we appreciate everything that you have done and we would invite your partnership on this effort and I look forward to working with you all.
>> mike, again, I -- judge, I'm sorry, were you -- are you done?
>> I'm done.
>> several things that I have been doing within the same confines that you have proposed in the educational thing, it was a big deal, working with the Austin community college to ensure that that particular venue has -- has a base to do training to make sure that we have an employment arena that's readily available. I'm still working to flush those things out to make sure that they fit into all of this. Yes, I think that all of these things that we are doing, one step at a time, mini steps, many sustains as we go forward, everyone has a role to play. And unless we do this together, then it's not going to be as effective as -- as I think it could be. I'm still pointing to the -- to the information that's been provided to us as far as the 72,000 -- 72,000 new jobs and things like that. Those -- that is -- that is big, big, big, big numbers here. We do have a -- a -- some folks out there that have not been in touch, in tune with the workforce as far as getting jobs and it is a gap, but I think all of us working together to make sure that we narrow that gap is something that I think we all have to do. I think we all again have a role to play, whether it's the city, the county and also what you are doing. So -- so again, I'm really concerned about all of these things. Again I think it's very necessary for the county to become partners. Now, funding, as far as the other investors that are -- that have put their money up front, to make she's things happen, is -- is something -- to make these things happen is something again. However, I think from the county's perspective as far as funding is concerned, we can only fund I guess in one year for that budget. But if it's a multi-year thing, I think it has to go before a corporate -- before a corporation as far as one of our corporations funding it. But as far as one-year funding, requires $100,000 for us to get this thing going as far as our participation level. I'm willing to look at that, do that. I'm in support of all of these things. There's a few things I think that the judge brought up that I think may need to be presented, but as far as we entering into a partnership with you guys, I can really see the advantage of that and then moving forward. Again, I'm going to continue to push the button as far as economic development, not only as far as Travis County, but the entire region, to make sure that we are able to attract the kind of businesses that we need here, not only that but the expansion of existing businesses. And I think that we need to do this together, though, because I don't think no one can be as successful doing it alone. Again I'm going to encourage the -- the Commissioners court to move forward. With that, judge, I -- go ahead. Were you going to say something?
>> I was going to Commissioner Daugherty? Are you done?
>> yeah, go ahead.
>> Commissioner Daugherty?
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> ...and how they'll be doing the funding. You can discuss intents and hopes and dreams, but you couldn't sign anything to commit Travis County to a longer period of time than your current budget year that you're in or that you're planning for the following year.
>> first i'd like to thank you for opportunity Austin because you're the one that's made this thing work. Obviously the chamber has given you a lot of ground, but anybody that knows anything that's going on knows that you're the guy that's gotten out on the pavement and you really need to be recognized for that. I appreciate that. What are the other public entities that you have gotten commitments from to date as far as money? I didn't see that on the list. I looked for the Austin energy and I looked for -- who all is a better giving?
>> there is a list of all of those who have -- at least most of those. We continue to get investment, but I will commit this to you. In January the city of Austin voted to contribute, invest over term -- again, I'm sure they have some of the very same constraints from a budgetary standpoint, but $1,250,000 over a five-year period subject to every year allocations. And in addition to that -- and that really comes through Austin energy. In addition to that, Austin energy committed an additional $500,000 to allow us to focus on the clean energy sector. That was part of the program as outlined by market street services, but there was an opportunity -- is an opportunity to accelerate the implementation of that. So one million 250 over five years to support all of the plan, an additional 500,000-dollar incremental to be corrected solely towards the clean energy sector of the economy. It is rumored that capital metro also will participate in this.
>> [overlapping speakers].
>> you've got to be kidding.
>> they are going to participate, but to date, Commissioner, they have not made any commitment. In addition, we have various economic development corporations from bastrop, Pflugerville, Round Rock -- this is the Round Rock chamber. There are city of Round Rock monies funding part of the Round Rock chamber's economic development activity. And then the industrial development corporation out of georgetown. And taylor, I'm sorry, and taylor as well. So bastrop, Pflugerville, taylor, Round Rock, georgetown, city of Austin, Austin energy, hopefully Travis County, and perhaps cap metro.
>> I guess that's the reason that -- (indiscernible). I can see where they might be doing some of that. I'm happy to go to lunch with you any time you want and talk about things like the home depot. That is really where we can participate. I do think there would be a little irony in that we would be asked to put money into this thing when probably eight weeks ago we were visiting with some of you talking about keeping our tax rate in check and in line because it's sort of a double edged sword there as to what do you want from us? It hard for me to sign off on monies, not that I don't think it's not worth it. We're all in this together. And I promise you that I will go to the sammy and bob show and explain to sammy what the real deal is with regards to us giving our 11, 12, $13 million that supposedly a lot of people in the think that we do. There is some reason to -- having voted for the data center. And those kinds of things when you're talking about job creation and you go to parts of town and where those businesses may not go is above and beyond tax things that we wouldn't have if we didn't have them. Those are great reasons to vote for those things. And I always take a good look at those things, and think that they would be very supportive of that. When it comes to asking us for money, that's a harder thing for me to vote me because I really am -- I think most of us up here look at this tax rate every year. And even though the county tax rate, tax share of your bill is 16 percent, that's 16 percent that people want to be lower, and you have to go out and sell, this is what your tax rate is in the community. I would hope, and I certainly understand, but I want to tell you that there are a lot of us that are trying to throw a big lasso around this thing. And I'm hoping that we will get somewhere, but before I would think that everybody just starts throwing money at workforce development, I would hope that we would look first at are we funding -- when you say that we don't have as many students in our community college as denver or san jose or some of the other cities. I take you for your word on that. I don't know -- do they have a university of Texas with 50,000 students? I know that a.c.c. Would be happy so that we don't have to continue because we were told that a.c.c. Would never be a taxing entity, and now we have just passed a referendum that takes them -- in the next three or four years I think will take them up to 10 cents of a 100-dollar value. So I would hope that the chamber would work towards let's make sure that that is a happy institution. And if part of these dollars need to go there -- because do you know what? If you want to get somewhere in life as far as I'm concerned, we should make sure that there are those opportunities for people that will pull themselves up, they will find a way to go to school. There is no reason for you not to get an education in the united states of america. We give you every opportunity. We almost pay you to go to school. We will do everything but take you to school. And in some instances we'll take you to school. And those are the kind of things that I would hope that we would all work towards. I appreciate what you're asking us, I think. And even though you haven't come out and asked it point-blank, we would like for you to be a financial partner with us, are you asking for $100,000 over five years? What is the number that you're asking for. For?
>> Commissioner, the way we have approached this with all 251 investors is asking them to give what they feel is comfortable and appropriate. $100,000 would be a nice round number for consideration by the court. And if that's the number that you all can find your way to do, then wonderful. If it's less than that, we're certainly not going to turn it down. If it's more than that, we'll certainly applaud you even louder and stronger. So what is convenient, comfortable and appropriate for this body to consider. Anything would be meaningful. Everything would be reviewable and renewable. Again, we're a transparent operation. We want people to know what our budget is, we want them to know how we spent the money, we want them to go over to metrics, we'll do that annually. We're happy to come back to this body each and every year and let you grade our paper in public so that the citizens can know how we've done. It's whatever, Commissioner, that you all feel is appropriate. Although 100,000 does have a nice ring to it.
>> Commissioner Gomez?
>> thank you. You've done a great job. I think -- I really believe that we're already a partner. There are several things that we've met with you about to try to improve the workforce here and to try and include people in the jobs. I really appreciate the fact that you're involved in the education element, which I think is the secret. I really believe that's the secret for getting a good job and then getting out of poverty and getting out of ignorance. And so I really appreciate that part of it. So I don't know. I don't know that I can say that I can commit to an amount, although if the court wanted to do that, I think your proposal is just in time to get into the budget process. I think our budget, the county budgets are due in may, so there's still an opportunity that if we want to take this through the budget process, judge and commission, and so that we we would give it ample evaluation and consideration along with every other request that we have for our participation financially. But thanks so much for everything that you're doing.
>> and I guess, jerry, of course, we've worked pretty hard together. I don't know exactly how this court is going to land, but i'd like to tell you this. I will personally, as Commissioner of precinct 1 of Travis County, I will work as closely as possible with you from my perspective to make sure that we bring the type of development, the type of jobs that we need to a community that is lacking and do not have the jobs. Of course, we as a court have done some things as far as economic development policy is concerned. One example is that we made sure that small businesses have an opportunity to participate in incentive packages just as large businesses, which is great for the small businesses. But I'm concerned about something that's pretty monumental when I look at the unemployment statistics of persons that reside in precinct 1, and it's devastating. I mean, persons that are looking up at -- living below the poverty guideline. Not only at poverty, but they're looking up at it. That's a concern to me and to folks that reside in my area. So what i've done and I'm trying to do on my own is try to make sure that we bring some type of relief to this particular precinct, but it's bigger than that because we're talking about a region that have some of the same ills as precinct 1, a region that has some of the same challenges of bringing opportunity to a community that needs it desperately. These figures that you have put before the Commissioners court today and to the public in my opinion is a wake-up call to let us know that if we don't do it, it ain't going to happen. And it's going to take money to do things. But you spend money, you get money back. You invift money, you should get something back on your return. And the yield on these investments that have been put forth up to today and looking at the yield on that, that is magnificent return on the investment. I applaud you for what you're doing, but again I don't want to be left out of the process of what we're doing here because the court wants to go in another direction. I don't know how the court is going to vote on this. Maybe we won't even take action today, but I'm going to let you know that I'm supporting you 100%. I'm going to do everything I can to help and assist and bring some relief to precinct 1 that desperately needs a plan of action, a strategy that we can get from what is presented here today. And I'm going to do my best to make sure it happens in my precinct and also in the region of precincts that are similar to mine. So the network is in place, I'm going to work to -- assure that I will continue to work with you and network with you. And anybody else that wants to go down this road to ensure that these employment situations improve not only for my precinct, but for this region entirely. It's a mammoth task and I i plawd you for what you're doing and I encourage emp to get on board -- everyone to get on board with you as far as the partnership.
>> thank you very much. We will continue to work with you.
>> we'll have the information requested over today, and we'll have that to you all today. And we appreciate the good work of the court and appreciate your consideration.
>> thank you very much.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, March 2, 2005 10:31 AM