Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Delray Beach City Commission workshop meeting this December the 1st. Welcome to December. If we could have the roll call. Commissioner Marker. Here. Vice Mayor Long. Commissioner Cassell. Here. Deputy Vice Mayor Burns. Here. Mayor Carney. Here. We have a quorum. We have a quorum. Great. Mr. Moore, let me turn this over to you, the considerations regarding the economic development priorities for the city of Delray Beach. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Much appreciate being here. We initiated direction to this effect a few weeks ago. The principal purpose, of course, is to create an environment for the city commission to outline not only expectations relative to economic development synergy and priorities for our community, but to also do so based on the understanding of the related dynamics in Delray Beach. To take under consideration land use considerations, other priorities, other community focus, as well as the opportunities we've been able to achieve to date. Can you start that last line over again? I missed what you said. I'm sorry. That's okay. That's okay. Thank you. So, to paraphrase my last commentary, the purpose is to take under consideration the specific footprint of Delray Beach, Florida as a community to include... Can you start over again? To include applicable land use considerations. I think the Madam City Clerk is recording this quite fine, so I think we're in good shape. Madam City Clerk, can I get a witness, please? Okay. There you go. I did say I'm sorry. All right. I didn't mean it, but I did say it. So, in any event, ladies and gentlemen, to get to this place, this was not purely a function of the Office of the City Manager. It did involve a level of teamwork to help us get to this place as we discussed prior, and this included a meeting that took place in my office two weeks ago today, Monday, November 17th, with leadership of the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Downtown Development Authority, of which Stephanie Immelman is here, along with Executive Director of the Downtown Development Authority, Laura Simon. We also had the opportunity and privilege to include Kelly Smallridge from Palm Beach County and the Business Development Unit in that particular organization to help us to outline and underscore what opportunities can, in fact, be made available and why. This exercise also necessitated an update to the Economic Development Profile that was first presented to the City of Delray Beach back on September 24th, excuse me, September 14th, 2021. Mayor Kearney, you initially brought that to light as part of the initial conversation that resulted in the direction that I'm outlining at this particular point in time. The Office of the City Manager felt that that was appropriate, ladies and gentlemen, because, of course, we need to have as up-to-date data as much as we possibly can. And objectively, we were able to achieve that task as a result of bringing on board a brief consultancy services with an organization called GRIP to help us update that profile and that information has been included in your agenda transmittals, not to mention an information letter report in advance of the compilation of this particular consideration. Likewise, Assistant City Manager Jeff Orris, who actually enjoys an economic development professional background of note, certified in that area for a number of years, having spoken at state conferences on the subject, I've asked him to provide the brief overview based on the economic development data analysis footprint I've just summarized. You also have an opportunity to briefly hear from leadership of the aforementioned organizations, specifically Stephanie Immelman, specifically Laura Simon, should it be deemed necessary to help you consider the avenues and the approach you may wish to take in terms of economic development synergy and priorities for Dairy Beach as both a municipal corporation and as a community. I likewise look forward to this simply also because in the next few weeks or so, the Office of the City Manager will be at liberty to outline for the City Commission what are the steps and what potential resource needs are necessary to pursue the expectations you will set this day forward. So with that, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to proceed with the presentation and let the record reflect that Vice Mayor Rob Long has joined us since the roll call was facilitated a few moments ago. So with that, Mr. Mayor, if we may be permitted, Mr. Jeffrey Orris, if you would, please. Mayor, Commissioners, as stated, I'm Jeff Orris, the Assistant City Manager. What we've got for you today is a quick presentation that essentially updates the information in that previous presentation you saw from 2021. I can tell you, I do want to give you a quick idea that some of the numbers that have been updated don't necessarily come from the same store sources, but they are reliable. And those that are very different, it's not a relationship to the source. It's because the numbers are very different. Some others will be fairly similar, but maybe not exact. And I'll give you a great example, population. Population in this one, you see is 67,542. In our initial one, it was a little over 68,000. That's essentially the same. We're a built-out city. We're not seeing significant growth in population. Our population also is changing a little from more family to a little older demographic. So we are kind of switching out to a little smaller households along the way as well. Our civilian labor force is up and our total employment is up. Of specific note here, though, is our median household income, our average worker, annual wages. Mr. Orris, please forgive me. Mr. Mayor, please forgive me as well. As of today, we are following the protocol for public comment to be the first item on the agenda. And it just dawned on me that that is the case, and therefore, I'd like to have that acknowledged before we conclude or continue with the presentation. Of course. Thank you very much, Mr. Orris. Please forgive me, Mr. Orris. If you pause your presentation. This meeting is open for public comment. Anyone wishing to comment on this agenda item, please come to the lectern. Give your name and address. You will have three minutes. Name and zip code, and you will have three minutes. Can I ask a question about this protocol? Why don't we have the presentation, then allow the comment, and then allow the discussion so that the people who are commenting can see what the presentation is before they remark? I understand what you're saying. Mr. Long brought it up, and he made a good point, which is people should get to speak before we discuss. But I think after the presentation is more appropriate. I agree with that. Thank you. Okay. The pleasure of the commission. Again, I just thought it was appropriate that we acknowledge the new protocol. Is that what everyone would like to do? I think it's beneficial to the individuals. Do we have agreement? Thank you. Sorry about that. We'll give you an opportunity to come back. Mr. Orris. We're workshopping our workshop. We're workshopping our workshop. There we go. Thank you. To continue. It's December the 1st. It's a month in progress. I mean, you know. Always working to make it better. Constant improvement. As I had mentioned, our median household income, average worker annual wages, and median house value have all gone up significantly. Just to make you aware, it's a difference of, in the previous presentation, the median household income was $60,746, with the annual wages being $61,092. And the median house value at that time was $280,200. So we've seen some very significant changes here. Our per capita income is at about $56,000, almost $57,000. Our poverty level is at 15.8%, excuse me, not $1,000. And the cost of living in Delray Beach is 17% higher than the U.S. average. I would tell you that can be expected. One, because, of course, we're a beach community. We have some high-income folks. We have a lot of businesses that cater to that set as well. As well as, in the state of Florida, we are one of the more expensive places to live in the country. As compared to, say, Cheyenne, Wyoming, we're a little bit up there. Our top industry sectors currently are health care and social assistance, professional scientific and technical services, and the retail trade. By wage, it's finance and insurance, management of companies and enterprises, and utilities. All of which, one with some knowledge would probably assume, even before seeing this information. We've updated the livable wage calculator, included it for costs for family, different levels of children. Certainly, I'm not going to walk you through all of it, but you can certainly see by the bottom line the required annual income before taxes to be here in the city. So, some of the updated development goals, we haven't really changed very much in here. There's things we want to do. For the most part, what we really did add to this, of course, is working to retain existing businesses. It's a very important part of our economic development program because, like any other place where you have customers of some kind, it's much cheaper to keep the ones you have than to go and attract the ones you don't have yet. While we want to attract everybody, we certainly want to make sure that we don't lose ground by losing what we have. So, where can we make the biggest long-term impact? Again, we haven't changed very much here because we're looking for more of your input, but the strategic framework focuses on those clusters that we've already talked about that are already high wage and those that are already here. We want to build upon our strengths. We want to make sure that we show that we see some positives out of some of those shifts. Again, one of those items there is that the recent employment shifts show that our region shows some growth in the sectors, including education and health services. And traded industries certainly are something we want to explore further. Traded industries basically are those things that we will turn and export out of the city, which brings money from outside the city into the city. So, the capital investment numbers are positive here. While they're substantial, they're still, for South Florida, not super high. We see other communities that see a lot more investment. Why? They have a lot of vacant land. They're building large buildings. We just don't have that space available to us right now. So, where can we make the biggest improvements? You can see, again, similar to what we had last time. We've got essentially the same kind of layout in our grid here. Some of the things we can do, we can expand those export-oriented high-value clusters. Again, importing money by exporting product and services. Increasing local income and career mobility. Part of that's our education, our workforce development. Attract committed growth-oriented firms. Trying to get those firms that are on their way, not those that are already there. Align development with social and environmental goals. We want to make sure that we're putting together businesses that meet the city's objectives, meet the city's, what's the word I'm looking for? Our culture, what we're looking for. We don't want to create a lot of dirty business that changes the nature of what we are, who we are, how we are. So, let's talk a little bit about our economic development and programming right now. We do have some existing grants through UDAG. They're very difficult to get in the hands of the right people because of all the requirements on them. That's why that money has been around for a while. Important to note, the city does have a program of incentives. It has not been used for quite some time. We do have $500,000 in an economic development fund for these incentives. So, should something come along, it wouldn't bust the budget if we were putting something together. Hopefully, it wouldn't bust the budget, and we'd be able to do that. Now, of importance here also is to remember that the city is not the number one in the economic development food chain. It's the state which then grants money through the county to a project, and often we would have to participate in incentives they are granting. We don't control the state money, we don't go to the state for the money, we do that in conjunction with the county. Some of the gaps identified, we really haven't changed any in that our fund use is restricted and it's underutilized. We certainly can, once you all have set a desired path of the types of businesses you'd like to have here, we can massage our incentive program to gear it towards those types of businesses. We still do not have a real estate or business database. We are working on that. It's one of the things that I have recently tasked the economic development manager with doing is starting to get his arms around a database of vacant property in the city, whether the city owns it or not. Business grant programming, we're pretty much limited to whatever the CRA does within the CRA, as well as what we might be able to do through any incentive program we put together in the UDAG program, of course, as well. We don't really have a cohesive strategy at this point for what we want to attract, what is our cluster. It's easier to attract when you have a cluster of businesses that feed on one another, that share similar sort of infrastructure, and you can build that infrastructure in place. When you talk about tech, the type of tech might use specific type of banking, so you need to have that specialty in the area. It's easier now than it was 20 years ago, of course, because of the Internet and telephonics, and we can all get on and make a Zoom call to somebody, but it still helps when that infrastructure is in your backyard and a lot easier to attract more when you have that infrastructure ready to go. Roadmap capacity. We have our planning documents and redevelopment initiatives that are active. We could definitely do a lot more planning as far as what to go after based on our current statistics. We don't ourselves have access to a lot of those key databases. We weren't really using those, and we gave up a very costly subscription to some of those, not all of those, but some of those, so we would have to look at some of that as well. Some of the immediate opportunities, of course, this is going to require some additional talking about, but property tax abatement. The city did have a program. The mayor was very instrumental in telling us his involvement in it and asking me about that program. That program has a 10-year lifespan and did expire in the city. However, if the commission is interested in having that again, it goes out to referendum to the people. It must be reinstated every 10 years, so if that's something you want to do, we can certainly look into that and start a process to do that. Again, that would just be another toolbox that we would have, a little more difficult and not necessarily as positive when you're dealing with the built environment than when you're building, working with new construction. It takes a lot clearer form in the new construction than it does in the built environment. Business Navigator, we do have a program. It's on our website that essentially we're there to help concierge businesses through the process. We have not seen a lot of demand for this. We have used it recently. I think I mentioned to you all, BJ's is putting in a new scaled-down prototype of their business that's essentially more of a grocery store than a full service. I can buy a pressure washer and meat and, you know, diapers. It scaled back. They had some difficulties in getting through the process. We engaged through economic development to help them move through the process. It really wasn't so much as holding them through the process as making sure that they had somebody to sound off to, that somebody was there to answer their questions immediately, and they could get anything. The Development Services Department was doing a great job moving things through. There were just some things they didn't quite understand until we had the opportunity to bring them all in, hold their hand, get them through the process. That's the sort of thing this does do. And quite frankly, in all my time in economic development and writing the kind of plans I wrote in the past, it always talked about having that concierge person. Most of my work was done through CRAs. It was always have somebody who can walk through the process, who can essentially be their guy, their woman, their, who can answer the questions quickly and keep them moving and make sure that they don't get stuck in a process that they don't understand. Again, part of our program is expedited permitting for economic development programs. If you're bringing a certain number of jobs coming, we will bring you forward and make sure that you are put towards the front of the list. You don't have to wait your turn. But if you're creating more than 25 full-time jobs in life sciences, finance, technology sectors, and you're paying at least 10% of the county average wages, we jump you to the front of the line, should move you along a little quicker. I think we've only seen one of those during my time here. So I can't tell you either that that's been extensively utilized, but it has been utilized. The city did adopt a resolution that has its package of incentives and such in it. It's a little outdated at this point. We really do need to get into it. Again, have the commission guide into what type of businesses you would like to see us bring here and make sure that we craft those incentives towards the types of desired businesses and the programs that might help them the best and be the biggest bang for our buck, whether it's our staff time or tax dollars. And that's, I won't go through all these one at a time, but we've got a couple different programs that we do have on the books, all of which should be revisited and determined if they are what is going to get us what the commission desires to have here. We did update the Congress Avenue vision. It did give us a bit of an idea of what's going on there right now. If you ask my opinion, I would tell you Congress Avenue is a mixed mash of all different types of uses. And that does inhibit us growing there. If you have an industrial, first of all, if you have industrial land, you probably want to build a residential there. Residential is a quick in and out. Industrial, generally, you have to hold on to for a while before your money comes in. So the quicker I can get in and get out, the better off I am financially if I'm a developer or a property owner. So that's kind of one that's held against us a bit. It's why we've seen a lot of residential development along that corridor in what used to be industrial. It's also not the desire of an industrial user or a big office user to go in an environment where there's a lot of residences and a lot of other uses there. They are used to having a kind of a more single use or more defined use and not trying to mix in with all that. So while that does kind of describe what's out there now, we can certainly work on changing that and changing that belief of that's what it is out there. We did have a chart in the previous presentation that was some of the programming elements really haven't changed anything here. This is the chart here to give you a little bit of idea of some of the things that we have, some of our challenges, some of the opportunities we have. So, and this is actually the conclusion of this presentation. So I'm available for questions. Our partners are here. We should hear a little bit from them as well as to what they think we should be latching on to. I do want to say we have some great partners. We've worked together with them quite well. And everybody's on board to discuss what should be next and work together for it. And to include that, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to formally acknowledge, since we began the meeting, Dairy Beach Community Redevelopment Agency Executive Director, who joined us for the meeting I discussed two weeks ago, Renee Jada Singh is here, and also Kelly Smallridge is here as well. We appreciate her for joining us, representing Palm Beach County in her capacity as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. So thank you very much, Ms. Smallridge, for joining us. So, again, a nice cadre of individuals who are involved in the process one way or another to assist in the dialogue and engagement for Commission's consideration. So with that, we yield at this time. Mr. Mayor, please feel free. If there are any members of the public, this is the public comment portion, any members of the public wishing to speak on this agenda item, please come to the lectern, give your name and zip code, and you will have three minutes. My name is John Jasper, and my zip code is 33444. I am a 26-year veteran commercial real estate office leasing broker, and I've been with CBRE for almost 24 years, and I am at the front lines of office leasing for downtown Del Rey. I have a huge banner on Atlanta Crossings and have been leasing that for going on almost seven years. And I continuously get calls from Greenwich, Connecticut, New York City, Boston, and C-suite executives who are buying houses in Ocean Ridge, Del Rey, East Del Rey, West Del Rey, and Gulfstream want to have their financial services firms and companies here in Del Rey. And for a myriad of reasons, and we need to open up our coffers in tandem with Kelly Smallridge and with Laura, we need to spend money to try to get these financial services firms. Because when I talk to the C-level executives that call me on my banner and come in and tour properties, as CB has up and down Atlantic Avenue, they all want to live here. They want to work here. They want their employees here. We keep hearing the same thing over and over and over, and we're losing these deals, these financial services, these good, white-collar, high-paying finance jobs to other markets. They go to Boca by default because they have more Class A office space, but there's reasons. And I would just humbly submit to you that as the front lines talking to these executives that are moving here and moving and wanting to move their businesses here, we need to start advertising. We need to take a proactive approach. I just saw an interview the other day in Bloomberg. Jamie Dimon reads five periodicals every day in a very sequential order, and we need to go out and start targeting these C-level people to try to tell them that Del Rey is a viable option, that downtown is committed, and that we want to start bringing these high-paying jobs here and start bringing these corporations here because it gets frustrating when they keep telling you that, hey, we really want to be here, but they go sign a lease in Boca, or they go to West Palm Beach. They want to live here. Their children go to school here. They're buying homes here, but they can't lease office space here. And I've lived here my whole life, and I just feel like there's a way that we can go out and start spending money to try to lure these companies here and tell them, and they keep saying the same thing. They live, work, and play, and that needs to be our moniker, and we need to figure out a way to try to advertise in some of these Wall Street journals and Bloomberg and do digital advertising in concert with what the BDB is doing successfully, and we need to kind of mirror what Boca is doing, quite frankly. They're very proactive, and they're CRA and mayor, and they are going after these companies, and they are really being proactive, and I think we need to learn and take a page out of their book and start really going after them. Thank you for your time. Can I ask him a couple questions real quick before you sit down? Well, first of all, thank you. It's very useful information since you are in the trenches right now. That's the kind of thing we need to hear. And I think that's precisely why we brought on Gript is to help us with some of that marketing that you're talking about. But I want to, like, if you could give me any examples of some of the deals that we lost. Folks looked at Delray, and we lost them. What were some of the incentives offered by other places like Boca where they ended up going that we're not offering? So, Rob, I don't know what incentive package is. Those deals are always done behind the brokers. Of course, we're dealing with, you know, hey, they offered us some incentive in Boca or in West Palm Beach that we just couldn't match or whatever. But we just keep hearing the same thing. We really want to be in downtown Delray. You know, M&A was one that we did that ended up going. They were here. They signed a lease here, and they went back to Boca. And the CEO and the whole C-suite, we want our analysts here, and we want to live, work, and play. And we just don't want that trend to continue. So we just want to figure out a way, Rob, to get these tenants that want to be here. We want to figure out a way to bring them on board. And it's not even an inventory thing. I think that that's just kind of a cop-out to just say that Boca has more office space. They do, but they have a lot of functionally obsolete office space. There's a flight to quality. These companies that are moving down here, the C-suite guys, they want nice new buildings. They want, you know, some of the nice amenities that downtown Delray can offer these companies. And I just think there's such an opportunity here. If we can figure out a way to put some earmarks and funds here and go after these companies, I think it would just be a home run for everybody. I totally agree. Thank you. Could I ask a question as well? Thank you. And I'm glad you pointed out that it's really not the inventory because we aren't always sure. But then when we see something like Sunday Village come and it quickly filled up, I mean, and it's impressive. But the incentivizing, does the owner of that property participate in that? I mean, when you're trying to make that deal. They don't with the incentives. Right. We offer incentives to try to lure the tenant and to bring them in, but they're not going to hand them cash or they're not going to. That's just not something they do. But all of my ownerships all are like we would love for some marketing CRA or some collective to go in and start to go actively court these companies. And if, you know, if that's something that we would, if we had to contribute, I'm not saying that they're going to. But it's not technically the job of the CRA. If it's in the DDA district, the DDA participates and Laura's been amazing at bringing some of the biggest companies here, like the $4 billion international materials, I believe. So if there is a way to get this done, then that's why we're here exploring. And thank you for your input. I appreciate it. Any comments? No, I'm good for now. Thank you. Are there any members of the public wishing to speak? Are you looking at me, Kelly? Do you want to? You're welcome to get up. Even though you work for Palm Beach County, we still consider you a member of the public. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the commission. Kelly Smallridge, President and CEO of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. And I'm going to preface my comments by saying I've got a bunch of notes and things I want to just go through with you and shoot at me with questions because I really am on the front line. But I've written some random sort of comments based upon what I've heard. Let me just address the latest one, incentives. Yes, incentives are important. It's the icing on the cake. It doesn't make or break a deal. You have a question? Yes, Ms. Smallridge. Just a protocol clarity. So in this particular context, ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Smallridge, Ms. Jada Singh, Ms. Simon, Ms. Immelman are extensions of staff in terms of the workshop meeting engagement. So the protocol regarding the three-minute time piece I don't think will be applicable in this context so that you can comfortably speak to the commission. I was going to have her have two minutes and 50 seconds. Thank you. I was going to talk about it. She joined us two weeks ago to prepare. We really appreciate that. So I think we should oblige her accordingly. Well, and on that note, look at me as an extension of your team, right? I represent all of Palm Beach County. At the end of the day, our goal is just to bring them here. I can't stress real estate enough. You will get what you plan for. If you have a million square feet of Class A office space going up, you will get Class A office users. If you do what is down Southern Boulevard with light industrial space, you're going to get light industrial clients. I would also encourage you when it comes to targeted industries, what are the target industries that you want to identify? If we know what you're looking for, then we will make it a point to market for those target industries. I would encourage you when you're looking at targeted industries to align your industries. We have about eight, but to align them with ours, which are aligned with the state. And the reason why I make that statement is because when incentives are granted, incentives are granted based upon whether or not it's a county-targeted industry and a state. So the comment before about going for incentives, you're not going to believe this, but out of 250 Wall Street South companies that have come through the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County and landed successfully in this county, I'm going to venture to say only three of them have received an incentive. However, ServiceNow, which is the latest, biggest deal to land, and I don't put that in a Wall Street South category. They're a fintech, and they came out of California, received a $17 million incentive. It is 856 jobs. A lot of the Wall Street South companies have been 10,000 to 15,000 square feet. There are less than 50 employees. They don't want to turn over three years of financials, but I'll tell you what they want that you really should have and have it perfect. They want an expedited permitting process. So go back to your ordinance that you adopted maybe 15 years ago. When you do an incentive, if you do an incentive, the mayors that I've dealt with that do it the absolute best will put together a commitment letter in less than five days. And all the last four from the Business Development Board is vouch that it falls within a targeted industry, that it pays higher than the average salary of the county, which is $76,000, as you already saw presented, and that it is bringing in more than X number of jobs, typically more than 25 net new jobs to our city. Assuming that it checks all of that criteria, if the company wants an incentive, then they will put forward an incentive. So in the case of ServiceNow, the mayor walked in, he knew the criteria, and he had a $2 million incentive letter really ready in less than five days to prevent that company from going and looking at another city. And then the state came in and put in $15 million, so it was roughly a $17 million package. But let me go back to real estate. You can do all the ad campaigns that you want to do in New York and Greenwich and wherever. However, if they come here and you don't have this real estate for them, you will have spent your money on bringing leads to your neighboring cities that do have space, right? So when you look at West Palm, and like I said, I don't care if they go to West Palm or if they go to Jupiter or they go to Belle Glade. When you're dealing with a million square feet under construction in the city of West Palm, and then when we look at Delray, how many square feet do you have going up right now? Exactly. All I'm saying is, plan for what you want. If you want new targeted industries that were just presented, you have to have the Class A office space to bring those in. If you want manufacturing, you have to have the light industrial space. Class A office space has to look, if you want that particular type of a client, has to look like Class A office space. You know, when I look at things along certain roads in this county and they call themselves Class A, the reality is, based upon where they're coming from, they're really Class B. Okay? So expedited permitting, real estate, a clear-cut incentive program in case you have to bring it out. I'm of the mindset I'd rather close a deal without an incentive and only come to you when we absolutely need it. Right? So if a deal, if I know we can make the deal happen without it, let's make it happen. Save the money for the next one. We're not on the corner of the street offering incentives to everyone that comes in. Incentives also are not available to retail companies. And expedited permitting in most cities are not available to retail companies. So you don't have every retail operation coming in. It's for a very select group that meets the criteria that was already presented. High-paying jobs, targeted industry, net new jobs to the city. Schools, public and private schools, are all your schools A-rated? Can you help us with that? Okay, perfect. Because when you go into certain cities, when I'm with the CEO in the car and I pull up to X city, they'll say, I want you to know we have all A-rated schools. It doesn't matter whether you go public or private. There's no hidden tax here. And the hidden tax is to send your kid to a private school. You can send your kid to an A-rated school. So can you help us at least get them to A's and B's? And I'm having the same conversation with many other cities in this area. Housing. They will pick a place right on Atlantic Avenue and say, draw a five-mile radius around this office building that I want at Atlantic Crossing. And show me where all your affordable housing is. Where's your workforce housing for our people? So be able to at least answer that or have some sort of point in the direction of what is within five to ten miles. And I think that's it. And I'm open to any questions. Those are just like three right out the gate things you have to do besides before you go on some wild goose chase to bring all these people here without the proper office infrastructure or light industrial infrastructure, incentives, workforce, housing, and great public and private schools. You're welcome. Questions? Questions from the commission. Not so much a question. Just thank you so much for being here, Kelly. Thank you for being a partner. I think we should be incorporating everything Kelly just said into our vision plan going forward, Mayor. You know, I think that the fact that we're having this workshop shows that economic development is a priority for this commission, right? And no one knows economic development better in this county than you do, period. And so if we're going to take that seriously, I think that we should take this as the gospel of what we're going to do. And I'm hoping that bringing Gripped on is going to give us another tool in the toolbox to work with in terms of having maybe an accurate sort of up-to-date inventory on what our Class A office space is, for instance. So like you said, we can do more targeted recruiting and make sure that we're not bringing down folks that really aren't the best fit for what we're going to have. But, yeah, I would – I mean, listen, I have one more meeting after this. I would love to see this commission continue to focus on this, and I will be doing whatever I can to help assist from elsewhere. But I really appreciate this, and I think this was a really great step towards what we really should be focusing on. And I think the one last thing I'll add here, we already know this is a priority, but just thinking in terms of what – you know, we have Vertical Bridge coming in. That's going to bring like 200-plus jobs into downtown Delray. All those people are going to go to our restaurants for lunch. You know, how late do our restaurants have to stay open, slinging drinks right now to stay in the black? You know, that impacts the entire downtown, having those people downtown using our services. And imagine if we can fill up all of our Class A office space downtown with high-paying jobs. It creates a much more sustainable economy in Delray Beach. As we see our population apparently getting older, this is going to become more and more critical if we're thinking long-term, just to really highlight that. So anyway, I'll stop, but thanks again, and I'm really excited about this step. Do you have anything, Mr. Markert? Yeah, I have a whole bunch of things, actually. First of all, thank you very much, and absolutely every word you just said resonated with me. I'm new to politics. I sat on the other side of the desk as a CEO in the New York and the Boston area and have been out looking for space in previous lives. And everything you said is 1,001% true. So I'm glad we put the facts out. I have a few things that I think we should be thinking about. Number one, what we're doing right now is basically not proactive marketing. We're accepting inbound calls for the most part right now, and that's not where we want to be. We want to be out proactively hunting. That's how you win in this game, and that's what other sister cities in Florida and New York State and others are doing. They've got a team that is dedicated to doing this, so I think we need to think about a dedicated team. Will that require an investment? You betcha. Is that a good place for us to spend some money? You betcha. The third thing I would say is we need to build a package about Delray because we have all the ingredients here. There's nothing missing. Been there, done that. The only thing that is missing, to your point, which you raised, we don't have a lot of dirt. So we cannot go out and get Kraft to build a macaroni plant here. We don't have space for that, so we shouldn't be hunting there. That's right. That just is not an area we should waste any time on. We can't attract a manufacturing facility, so we have to find the industries that will fit into our footprint in Delray, and there's plenty of them. And to me, you know, the primary targets are going to be private equity. That's a great place. You know, they're buying companies, they're building companies, they're looking for management teams where to put those companies. We fit that profile beautifully, and their executive teams will like that. I was just in New Orleans two weeks ago for a big security conference. Security is a big issue right now, and there's a lot of startups happening in security right now. I mean, a lot, more than you'd ever believe right now. And they, you know, I was there for another reason, but there were companies coming around that represented cities that were knocking on doors at that conference saying, hey, we got a great place for you to put your next business, and, you know, they were going from booth to booth to booth, and there's no reason we shouldn't be doing that. Consumer packaged goods would be another opportunity. Consumer packaged goods are people that make, like, Campbell's soup. You know, their plant is in New Jersey, but they might put their management team down here. That's very, very common. You know, we don't have to be sitting next to the plant anymore for that, so consumer packaged goods would be another area. Artificial intelligence, that's a booming area. We all know that. You can't watch television or anything and not notice that. You know, those are people that we should be targeting right away. So I'm passionate about this. I think this is an area that Delray needs to make an investment into if we want to be successful. I think piecemealing it, we're going to just get what we get, and we're not going to get what we want. So I certainly would be in favor of developing a plan and putting some financials behind it and seeing what it will take for us to be competitive in this space because I desperately think we need to be. There's some low-hanging fruit, to your point, that you could think you can do right now. If I came in and wanted to apply for an incentive today, do you have an application for me to fill out? Is it okay if I fill out the state application? Because that's probably the easier way to go about it and the way other cities do. Do you have an expedited permitting ordinance? Can your city manager just go ahead and work with your PZ and B department to get that done? Those are things that are not that hard to do, but it makes the biggest difference. A lot of times people say the greatest incentive is an expedited permit. They'd rather not take public money. Well, you put yourself in the role of the CEO that's making that decision. They don't have time. Exactly. That deal's coming now. That's right. And if you can come and say, hey, in five days we can wrap this up, that's going to be a whole lot better than saying, yeah, we don't really – Exactly. So if you tighten that up. It may take 60 days, 90 days, 100 days, and I've been there. The CEO doesn't have time. Him or her is going to get fired if he doesn't make that decision on the spot and get it right. That's life in a public company. There was an Amazon deal years ago, a million square feet. They did not get one incentive to move here. Now, imagine a million square feet is the size of the Boca Raton Mall. We want it on expedited permitting in eight weeks. Love it. Instead of two years. And the property was the most expensive property they were looking at in the region. Yeah. You can do that. I think we can, too. I think we just have to put our minds – look, we've done – we do really tough things at Delray. We can do this. This just requires a plan and some resources to go after it. And I think we should absolutely invest in it. You have a lot of good things to market here. Yes. Sorry. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Burke. Are we commenting or is this her – I thought these were just questions to her. Yeah, right, questions. Through our comments. Okay, so save my comments for later. I would just say thank you because all the things you're pointing out we've been discussing. We don't have adequate schools, so a business looking to come here can't really say, oh, you have a great school system. We don't. We don't have adequate workforce, affordable housing, and that's a problem. And unfortunately, over the years – and I've been a strong proponent of not doing this – we've converted a lot of our commercial property into residential. So we lack the property for these new businesses. But I think in this current commission, we're all more or less on the same page, so it's a positive outlook, and thank you for your reinforcement. You know, your last comment was very important, and I think that is oftentimes mistakes that cities make is they're so quick to rezone for a big residential development and afraid to hold off instead of keeping it as a commercial saying, okay, we have these eight parcels in the city that are empty. Two acres out on Corner of Congress and Atlantic, 12.48 acres. Decide if you want that as your – what do you want as your economic development properties. We then take it, and we start to market it nationally and internationally, along with your efforts. We just work with you on that. But sometimes it's hard, and it goes – a multifamily residential developer comes in, and you rezone it, and it never will go back. Never goes back. Never will go back. Lost it forever. Yeah. It's terrible. Tragic. Thank you. Got it. Please. One of the things I've done in a lot of other places is I always talk about land as a savings account. You don't want to spend it all right now. You need to save some for whatever happens in the future. Unfortunately, we kind of let a lot of ours go. We don't have a lot of savings left. We need to make the most out of what we do have. But it really is, instead of – you know, the developers come forward and they say, hey, listen, look at all these tax dollars you're getting. We don't have to go back. We don't have to go. We don't have to move on. I'm going to go back and go back to the next day. So a lot of cities are quick to jump to that without understanding that holding it back to actually, you know, a whole lot more later. because you need the jobs. You need the people working there to go to the retail. One of the reasons retail is we don't incentivize is because it feeds off all the others. You know, you bring in somebody with a high wage, they're paying the dry cleaner, they're going out to lunch, they're buying handbags and they're buying suits. So they're feeding that retail marketplace. And retail follows the rooftops. So you can't really make a retail market happen by going to the retail. So those are just some of those things to remember as we're moving forward is what is the best bag for the buck for the plan that we can have? How do we make sure that we maintain that plan for future jobs? I mean, obviously we do need an integrated plan, which is what you've described, because you have all these components you want to fit in. I find it interesting you talk about, you know, what do you have within five miles? Well, if I'd used this as point zero, five miles to the south would put me three miles inside of Boca. Five miles to the north would put me three miles inside of Boynton. We're four miles by four miles. And as good as the DDA is, for example, they don't have the ability to give a tax rebate over a 10-year period like the CRA does if it's a qualified CRA type of redevelopment project, which was what the incentive program was that we passed back in 2013, which unfortunately has expired. But the whole purpose that I pushed for that at that point was because I wanted – that applied citywide. It was outside of the CRA. It would have provided incentives for – at the time we thought, you know, and I still do believe that Congress Avenue has a lot of opportunities on it for the relocation of smaller family-type businesses or, you know, the 40 to 50-employee type of businesses, which we really should be focusing on. You – at the time we had met with this corporate relocation person. He was working out in New York, came down here, and I was running for office, and it was all these exciting ideas. Delray doesn't have a seat at the table. I've mentioned this several times. You go to some of these trade shows where these – which Mr. Marker referenced, and Delray doesn't have a seat at the table. Palm Beach County may have one, and you may, but you've got a lot of clients you've got to worry about. You know, we've got one. And so – and I think that – and while I'm applauding Steve Singer, who's my great friend, and goes to have everyone go to Bucca, as I said to him, they're going to come to Bucca, but they're going to come and eat up here, and they're going to end up loving this place more, Steve. So, I mean, thank you so much for helping our downtown. No, I mean, but we do need to have our own marketing for our own town because we have some unique stuff here. Yes, we have some challenges. We don't have a lot of land, but we do have a corridor such as Atlantic, which really is the ability to do some – get some of these small businesses in, you know, 40 to 50 businesses, which are – and in the financial services business, you know, in the private equity businesses. And the pharmaceuticals, by the way, are now having their offices not next to the factory. They're locating them down. And in New York, where I was up a few weeks ago, the company was saying that they brought all of their support staff and everything, are now relocating either to Austin, Texas, or actually they chose in Fort Lauderdale in Broward County. But, you know, they're sending down a couple of thousand employees over the next three to five years. That's where they're going to be headquartered. So I think we have the opportunity here to develop some kind of an integrated plan to do it. But we just need to resolve to do it, and we – which is one of the reasons I pushed for it, and we all pushed for having this kind of meeting because – and as I said to Mr. Moore, you know, when this got scheduled, at least we're starting to discuss it now because we need to discuss it. We need to have action, but we need to discuss it. We need to come forth with a plan. Expedited permitting is always on the top. As I represent a lot of developers in life, expedited permitting is – I can't describe how – enough, how big that carrot is to a developer when you say, okay, you can get this thing done and this. They like incentives too. So there's a lot of work we have to do, and we have to focus on how to do it. You know, the help of your department would be great in terms of giving us some ideas of how other cities have developed their expedited permitting process, what are the criteria, so we don't have to invent the wheel. Those things would be very helpful because – Happy to share. I don't know what their ordinances look like. Yeah, happy to share with you. But it would be nice to know what they look like so that we can start to look at them and say, okay, what businesses are we targeting and what could work, and when would expedited permitting fit and have a whole separate kind of a pathway for these companies? So I'm very encouraged by everything my colleagues are saying here. Great. Happy to work with you. Thank you. I have a lot of resources and templates that you don't need to reinvent the wheel at all. Be careful what you ask for. It's all right. Look, we're really good at not reinventing – I don't want to reinvent the wheel. We don't – you know, we are behind in terms of where I think we should be in some of this stuff. We're ahead in others, but we are behind in certain others, and I think it's those we really want to focus on. All right. Have your staff connect with me, and I'll share everything I have with you. Okay. That's all I wanted to ask you is, would you do us that favor to help us with – Of course. Give us some of the examples of these – what these other towns are doing so we can look at their ordinances, and we can discuss them and maybe implement some of them ourselves. Absolutely, Mayor. That's huge. Ms. Perry. I don't have any questions, but I just want to say thank you as well for reiterating our path forward here in Delray Beach, and I agree with Commissioner Marker that we need a plan that's exclusively for Delray Beach. So thank you. And that's so great you can work with us. We won't ask you to give us anything proprietary, but if you could short-circuit – well, the mayor will. But if you could short-circuit our learning and make sure we get our plan right, that will save us so much time. So we would really appreciate that. We only have 35 minutes left. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, Mr. Mayor, I do have a concluding summary, however, if the commission sees fit to offer – I think we have two more speakers, don't we? That's where I'm going, Commissioner. Sorry. My interest was to acknowledge the other partners in this endeavor, if you will. So if there's an interest to hear from Stephanie Immelman, Laura Simon, perhaps Renee Jada Singh, regarding their experiences to that effect, I think that would be helpful. Once they're done with their presentation, it will be an opportunity for commission to chime in regarding some specific expectations above and beyond what you've already shared. I've already taken a couple cogent notes, and I do have some path forward considerations that I'll be bringing back before the commission within the next few weeks or so. So if I may be inclined to do that, that would be productive. Meanwhile, Ms. Immelman, I think we'll begin with you in terms of the next cadre of speakers. Okay. Well, what she said. Okay. What Kelly said. I'm not going to add to it. Every single point she made and more were on the list that we had. But what we really need to do is hear from you and get your direction. We need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of what we actually have here before we go out and reach out to anyone. We've got to have the database updated. The expedited permitting is crucial. The infrastructure needs, specifically for software firms, is really important. But financial services firms, we hadn't thought about that, but Kelly brought that up in our meeting as well. And then we can engage with the BDB and South Florida Tech Hub and determine the firms to target, which is something that you talked about, and then develop a marketing plan. But the other things, get your house in order. Again, what Kelly said, that's what we need to do. Go ahead. We're all on the same page. No, it is. We're together. And I think, you know, from, first of all, thanks for bringing this together and including all of us as part of this process. And I appreciate John Jasper bringing his frontline knowledge of being a Delray Beach native and part of our process, especially in downtown. But the inventory to yours, knowing what that is, you know, we are unique. Delray is a unique piece, a unique city. We're not West Palm. We're not Boca. We are very different. And I think really being able to tell that story wherever you are at the table and why it's important from, you know, 10 people to, you know, 200 people as an office or industry leader coming into our town, what makes it special? Why did Vertical Bridge move their 180 employees to Swinton and Atlantic Avenue? It matched their mantra of their business model. That's why they're here. So they're spilling out on Atlantic Avenue, which is fantastic. And, you know, why is International Materials in downtown or in Delray Beach? Well, they want to be here, as John said. So how do we create that story and be ready for it and have the plan ready for and know all the tools that are in the toolbox? Because some of these tools that, you know, Jeff shared weren't necessarily there were there, but, you know, how do we make sure that everybody knows about them? So communication, information, all of the resources that are available are going to be really important for all of us to be on the same page. So, but having the plan and we'll eliminate some of these changes in uses of our land as well. So I think that's what ends up happening when there's not really a solid plan or solid direction. Some of these other areas start to, like, creep in. So I think we just need to have a commitment to do that. But, and then having great partners of all of us to work together, I think, is really important. So. All right. Hi, I'm Renee Jadison, Executive Director of Delray Beach CRA. So I'm sure you all are well aware of the things that we have going on and really our role in, I think, filling in the gaps of some of these things. A big focus for us, obviously, is acquisition of land, affordable housing where we can. But, you know, land is a very, very much at a premium right now. We are looking at these extremely high prices. So we're trying to do our best. Our focus really has been in West Atlantic. As much as we can do incentive programs, we can absolutely look into that. I think you mentioned the IMI project. That was a, I go pre-2019 and after 2019. So before 2019, there were much more incentives. So IMI was in, or is in the IPIC building, which was a project of the CRA, which we gave significant incentives to, including public parking. We're still giving a public parking maintenance to assist with the public parking costs in that building and also another subsidy to the building itself. Also, we had a job creation bonus that we provided to the company themselves. Again, this was before 2019. When the statute changed, some of those, like, I guess, more economic development focused incentives were things that we could not do. So we actually removed those programs. But we could still look into if there's an incentive for a tax rebate, like you mentioned, the program that was citywide, which is similar to what things that CRA can do. We can absolutely look into that. I think the benefit is we're all the same. We're all here together. So we know, and I'm very involved in what's happening with Jeff, with the Economic Development Department. So if we need to suggest something, happy to do it. And we'll continue to do so. Thank you. Mayor, if I may add, one of the things that's really going to be an asset to us is the fact that all of us are on the same page. I was not in the city of Delray Beach back years ago, but I do know one of the things that made it what it is today was the fact that the entire city was on the same page moving forward on what they wanted. So having all of these folks with us, and I know I can call on any of them and say, hey, we got this economic, what do you want me to do? It's really been great working with all three of them, as well as with some other of our partners out there. This is going to be the base that moves us forward. We just really need, as many of you have stated, we need that plan to give us the direction of where we want to be so we can start moving in that direction. You know, one of the things Ms. Simon said about knowing what programs are out there, in my research of after the thing was passed in 2013, before it expired, I went to see how many times it was utilized. I could not find one instance where the person went to wherever they were outside of the DDA district where they tried to get that incentive to relocate the business. Either they didn't know about it, and my suspect is they didn't know about it. The city didn't promote it, we weren't trying to do that with that office, and so it expired without ever being used, and I think we have to, as articulated very well, we have to let everybody know what's actually, we have to, A, understand what Stephanie said, what's in our toolbox, and then we have to really know how to promote our toolbox, because we've had some great programs over the years that just are gone, which is not helpful. I appreciate all your input. Thank you. So, quick question, I wanted to wait until, I don't want to force them to continue to stay on, my questions are more general, I want to make sure no one had any actual questions, but, so I wanted to ask, do we have the ability internally to sort of track and manage what the inventory in Delray Beach looks like, or is that something that, in terms of our real estate inventory, or is that something that we would need to more or less outsource to a business consultant, such as GRIPT? So, quite frankly, much of this, including what you just described, will likely necessitate external outsourcing services to get to that place, and part of my summary touches on that, so if I may be permitted at this time. So, based on the input having been provided by our external partners, some of the commentary I've experienced here today at the dais, the focus relative to expedited permitting, considerations of ordinance to support thereof, or rules, regulations, whatever we can come up with, so that we can ironcladly share with the development community what opportunities are available in that regard, or what will ultimately become available, not to mention resource commitments to support marketing, advertisement, recruitment activities, as well as inventory and other associated tasks would necessitate some level of external or internal investment financially to help us identify external resources to help us get to the absolute best place possible. My interests, based on feedback, guidance, direction, having been summarized thus far, would be in the coming weeks to come back before the City Commission to outline what that might look like so that we can get down to business accordingly in every possible regard. So, with that, that needs to be tabulated. However, it's important that the City experiences the feedback and interest from the City Commission before we proceed down that path. But nevertheless, that's where I think we need to go. Well... Yeah. That's exactly what I was going to ask, is what concrete direction could we give to staff in terms of a bring back? Like, what analysis can we ask you to do that then this Commission could consider? Because there's a lot of kumbaya here today, but how do we keep moving the ball down the field? And I think that would be the analysis that you're talking about. And anyway, I won't be here when it comes back, but I would certainly be in favor of going down that path for now and seeing what you guys can then, you know, how you can move forward from there. I mean, we've had a lot of good ideas here, but we are going to have to put together what our plan looks like, and it's going to have to include all these things. It may include having to do a referendum, again, to reinstitute a citywide, you know, border-to-border type of incentive program, which would include, you know, parts of where Germantown is and parts of where Congress Avenue is and parts of, you know, other parts. And I think we need to really consider that again. And all kidding aside, the whole idea of these programs, when you go to these places, they have a book. They hand you, this is what we have. They hand you this marketing material for the city. Right. And, you know, people look at it, and they say, well, geez, I've heard of Delray Beach. And so then they read it, and it's, we're going to have to spend some, we're going to be committed to do it, and we're going to have to spend some money to get there so that we can properly incentivize people to come here. Because, you know, we've talked about it, and we've talked about, you know, but family offices are moving down here. I mean, we had two family offices move down here to Delray in the last three years, which were major families of major corporations got sold out, and they moved down here, and they're doing all their investments out of here. These people are all buying big houses. They're all spending money. They're all hiring people. They're all doing, nobody has really tried to focus on trying to attract the family office, which is. The smaller businesses. 15, 20 people. Right. But they're all pretty well paid, and they're all, you know, coming downtown. And I think that it's, there are areas, there are niches that we can try to focus on because of our particular size and what I think we can do, that we can attract better than anybody around us. And I really believe that. Agreed. I agree. And I think you're right, because the space that we have, that's really what we're left with. That's what we're looking for is the smaller businesses. I do also think we need to update the website at some point. If you go on and look at economic development, I mean, there's stuff on there that's considerably older. There's programs that probably are not active. There's not a lot of information. I'm in favor of trying to figure out what our, what we have out there in terms of property. And I feel like that's something we should be able to do with our real estate agents. There's got to be some way to create a database. They know better. Ms. Morrison is here. She probably knows that off the top of her head, and the gentleman who spoke as well. So I'm for that. The idea of continuing to focus on our partnerships, the chamber, the DDA, obviously, thank you, and the CRA, very important. But what Ms. Smallridge said is really the case. We need to start immediately. I'm hoping, crossing my fingers, that that South Tech school is going to come in and take over Carver along with Milagro and give us an A-rated K through 8. Well, we'll see. But we need better schools. We need more affordable housing. We need to protect. This is my list. And I also think, while we're thinking about economic development, we can't forget that we really need to support our small businesses that we currently have. Because that's one of the unique things about Delray Beach, is that we have a lot of these small businesses, and we want to keep that style for ourselves. And speaking to Ms. Simon, she says, processing the BTRs more quickly will help the people coming here. And that's what we need to look at. Growing and expanding and retaining small business. I'm just going to go through my list quickly, working in conjunction with the Chamber and the DDA. Infrastructure investment is on here. Because, right, we can keep talking about how are we going to get people here. But we have to be able to support for those people here. We can't have our roads flooded. We need our streets paved. We need lighting in certain areas of our neighborhood. So we have to continue on our pathway of getting money for infrastructure. And that goes hand in hand. I mean, in our last debate on taxation, you know, that factor should have been in the forefront. And we weren't discussing it. But it's relevant. We need money for infrastructure. We need to continue to make our city look fabulous. If we want to attract, you know, high-quality businesses. Affordable housing, we already discussed that. Placemaking and walkability. We need areas on Atlantic Avenue to be pedestrian-friendly, but also, like, seating areas with public spaces. You know, Sunday Village, put that little space in. But these are things we need to start thinking about as projects are coming in front of us. How can we – how does this project contribute to what it is we want to see in the future? I said schools already. I talked about protecting our commercial land use. That should be our number one priority, in my opinion, and I've always felt that way. Cultural development. The one thing that we have that's also remarkably unique is our cultural campus. How do we keep on increasing funding for the arts and organizations and events to attract people to come here? Because so many people that you meet that come here or have come here have come here for the beach or our cultural arts. That's what they really say. So that's critically important. We need to look at tourism and real estate, diversity of our economy, attracting a range of businesses. Now, there's talk about what kind of businesses. I'm not in a position to say what kind of businesses should be coming here. I think what dictates that is the market, the space available, and things like that. I need to understand what type of businesses could be here. And I think the mayor is correct, not looking at these giant businesses, but looking at smaller businesses with 20 employees. Congress Avenue is a great location. And then we talked about public-private partnerships, and I think we need to start looking at them more seriously to work on major projects in the city. And I'm excited that we're having this conversation and thrilled to move forward. Thank you. Are there any further comments? Well, basically, I'm echoing everything everyone is saying. However, you know, I do want to understand what we have available because what I thought the land that we have available is on Congress, the one that Commissioner Cutsell mentioned earlier. But, you know, if there are others, to know what they are and to make sure that we're bringing in a variety of businesses and, of course, small businesses because we don't have the space for those larger businesses and figuring out what we want. One of the things that the young lady said, and to have a plan, we need to have a plan before we can move forward. We need a solid plan specifically for Delray Beach because we are, as everyone has said, unique and we're different. So that's it. So, Mr. Moore, you've heard all our stuff here. When do you think you can come back to us so that we could – I mean, next Monday is good. It will not be next Monday. However – No, but I'm serious. I mean, we've thrown out a lot of different ideas. I think I'm all set. If we want to do another referendum, what would we have to do to do that? If we want to start creating ordinance changes for – you know, I think we need to really actually start. If I may, please. Yeah. Thank you. So, quite frankly, I do not envision – and, again, I do not envision – a follow-up workshop meeting on this particular topic because you've all offered your expectations and guidance fairly clearly. So, the vision coming from the Office of the City Manager are regular meeting updates early in the new year. So, beginning January, a couple meetings thereafter or so. Principal initial focus will be expedited permitting considerations, what ordinances or regulatory structure would look like to get to that place so that we can formally make those opportunities available. As I mentioned a little while ago, resource commitments to support marketing, advertisement, recruiting activities, et cetera, as well as inventory availability so that the City Commission can have a solid breadth and understanding as to what the capabilities truly are. So, this will be actually quite soon. So, I'm anticipating potentially the second meeting or so in January, regular meeting items to answer the question, Mr. Mayor, in terms of when we'll be back, and we'll work with everybody involved in that regard. So, in addition to the various partnerships, again, we do anticipate some level of outside support to help us get us to the place in which we can bring a cogent structure for economic development policy and execution based on the feedback having been achieved. So, I think today's workshop meeting was quite productive. You've heard a lot of good, valuable information, which was the intent and purpose in this regard. Likewise, I anticipate some specific recommendations and considerations to be made available via early 2026 regular meeting agenda items so that we can go from there and build the pieces to move forward. Great. Any other comments? I just have one. We're definitely going to get a return on investment on this initiative. I think this is right where we need to be, and I think if we have a plan that we can all review in the next month or so, and, you know, with the financials associated with it, because it ain't going to be free, but there will be a return on this investment. So, I think this is a good time to spend money. You may. Can we use the funds from our, excuse me, Economic Development Fund? Can we use some of that money? I don't know what the restrictions are. I haven't looked at it. To pay for some of these studies or some of the work that we're doing? Again, studies not anticipated, but some of the work being done, and that is the first point of evaluation, and that will be part of the presentation coming up in the early part of the new year. Okay. Because, again, I'm thinking financially what makes sense in this regard. On the surface, that may very well be an eligible activity. We've already thought about that and contemplated that. Okay. Sorry. So, part of our upcoming presentation early new year will include that particular consideration. So, you know how it's restricted, or you don't? I have a general knowledge in that regard. There are some restrictions, but, again, I like to dig more thoroughly and advise the city commission accordingly in terms of how that makes sense financially or not. Right. But that is a target focus because that's what this is all about. Thank you. You're welcome. And I just wanted to say that I'm just really happy to see the working with the coalition of partners with the DDA, the CRA in the chamber, and then others. I think that's key to getting this plan done and having, you know, all heads at the table or many heads at the table. Yes. Yes, ma'am. And happy we're collaborating with the economic development from Palm Beach County and looking forward to getting that information from you as well. So, if there's nothing else, see you all at 5 o'clock.