 and in the group for what they're doing, and I believe everybody has a bit of the background on where we are and why. I think we all know that it's very significant in terms of the footprint of where we want to go with this and taking a look at some of the things that we can do. I like the concept of building the pillows for taking a look at where we can go in terms of our abilities and some of the areas we may not be looking at, especially looking at where we can go in terms of enhancing our workforce, economic development initiatives and that sort of thing and looking at maybe a new, not a new approach but additional approaches when it comes to looking at IT and research and development. Ryan's been the lead staff on this, so Ryan, why don't you go ahead and slide us into where we want to go this morning as far as the overview? Okay, and I'll open us up and then obviously you want to give Jeff Rubel the opportunity to talk and fill in some and then I think Gary, who has really been project managing this endeavor, he's got a presentation that we want to walk through real quick that will just give you an update. But first and foremost, thank you for the opportunity to have us in to come and update Council on the Columbia Technology Plan that we've been working on it's been no small endeavor to get this done over the, it's been at least over a year since this has been underway. It has involved a lot of moving parts, and so Richland County has really kind of been the umbrella and kind of been the convener in bringing people in. So Jeff and Gary have had a very active role in shepherding this process, but the city of Columbia, Lexington County, South Carolina Research Authority, Central SC Alliance, I mean, the list goes on and on of the partners that are involved in this. And so, it really goes to some realization on the part of it from our economic development side that I think we all realize that as a state, South Carolina has historically fared well in the areas of manufacturing and it continues to do so. But we realized that here in the Columbia Richland, Lexington County area, we have the capability and the assets to compete for more of these knowledge economy, highly educated, high wage paying jobs. And, but to some degree it requires us to take a look at the way out here and get a better understanding of the assets that we have in place, the gaps that we have, and how we need to realign those things so that we can be more competitive in attracting technology jobs or in creating an environment that's conducive to entrepreneurship and startup. And I think that was really the genesis of some of the conversations originally between the city and the county was, we know we've got the assets to do this. How do we properly align these things so that we give ourselves the best chance to go out and take rifle shot approaches at bringing these companies here or creating an environment that's conducive to startup activity? And so we worked over the past year, there were a lot of stakeholder meetings. You know, Deloitte was brought in as the lead consultant and Matt Suhi, one of their, you know, people, consultants who, you know, works involved in the tech sector, you know, he was involved in his team. And so probably around August of this year, we've kind of pulled this plan together. And it looks at a variety of things particularly four areas that we need to focus on, which would be, you know, our innovative capacity, you know, workforce and education, the incentives. And then there's one of the four that I'm missing, Gary, which one? Economic development marketing. The marketing side. And so I think those are kind of the four major pillars, the major initiatives that we'll talk about a little bit today. You know, we'll get into this report and kind of just lay out some of the findings from that and then, you know, give you an update as to where, you know, those initiatives are already underway, where they are now and what that workflow looks like for the next few months. And we wanna have some open dialogue. So, you know, counsel, as we're going through this, please feel free, you know, to give us your thoughts and insights. You know, obviously, you know, your ideas are important and we wanna continue, you know, to incorporate those things where that we can. And I think we would like to be, you know, having conversations and coming back on a regular basis, maybe once there's months to get on an update on what's happening with the plan. I think it's really important for us that the plan continues to move forward and that it stays active and that we keep all eyes on advancing it and just keep that positive momentum going forward. You know, when we started this, we definitely didn't want to be a finish the plan and it goes on the shelf type initiative. So it's very important to us that we keep you all involved and updated and just keep forward progress happening on these elements. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff for his comments. Yeah, and thank you, Ryan. I think this is the first time I've ever presented to the city. So just as a quick introduction, let me, I won't delve into history too much, but for years, economic development was done here in the community through a group called the Industrial Development Board. That was a combination of Richland, Lexington counties and the city of Columbia. And the late 80s, the leadership in the community pulled economic development into the Columbia Chamber and they did it out of there for about five or six years. There were some critics that said that they didn't do it well. They were paying for the rent on the building over in Richland Street instead of doing economic development. And that culminated in 1993 when the head of the Development Board took the mayor of Columbia to lunch and said, you get your butt kicked, you need to improve things. From that meeting, Central SC was born and so was Ryan's office of the city you created the economic development office. That organization was basically, it replaced county offices in four counties in the city. I was their first hire. So this kind of way for me to introduce myself, I was a project manager, which is the, in our world, project managers are the folks that meet the company at the airport, make all the introductions, basically sell them on the community and we handle it from soup to nuts all the way through getting the incentive documents done. I spent about 13, 14, 15 years doing that for this community before there were county offices. And I was sort of in the trenches and during those years, one of the things I noticed was it's pretty easy. It's more straightforward recruiting manufacturing plants to South Carolina than it is recruiting what I would call white collar jobs or tech jobs. The state tax code, the folks at commerce, everything we, every system favors manufacturing. And it's just, it's a lot more difficult to recruit a 50-person engineering office to the state than it is to recruit a pallet manufacturing plant on the side of Bluff Road. In 2016, I came back to the community. I'd been working for Santee Cooper and the electric cooperatives and took this job at Richland County. I started looking around and didn't take a genius to say, we've got to continue to recruit manufacturing. The state, the way the tax code set up, it's the only way to balance the budgets, only way to pay for schools. So we put some plans in place to try to do a better job of recruiting manufacturing. You see those, that's come to fruition with companies like Juicy and more recently, Mark Anthony Brewing. But one thing that struggled, continued to struggle with was how do we grow the white collar? I looked around and saw these big insurance companies like how do we leverage that? How do we get more of those? So I started having breakfast with Gary Powers. Gary, I think, is probably one of the leading, the thought leaders for economic development in South Carolina. And Gary and I started talking. I said, Gary, I think sales is just simple. You know, understanding your product, understanding your customer and figuring out how to convey it. The problem was, I ever spent my whole career recruiting manufacturing plants. I really didn't know how to understand what our product is. So if you walk in Blue Cross, we got all those employees, but what did it actually do? And what makes us different than Des Moines or Hartford or Timbuktu? You know, what is it we're actually selling? So Gary and I had several conversations on those lines and I said, I think we finally came to the conclusion we needed to hire somebody to come in and help us understand what our product is. Gary had spent a lot of his career doing just that for communities across the US. He's a consultant and he would go in and help communities understand what they have. So I turned to Gary and said, Gary, would you do the study for us? And Gary said, no, I'm retired, I've got grandkids, I'm not doing it. But if you raise the money, I'll be happy to coordinate it. So Gary and I went hat and hand around all these different groups that Ryan mentioned. And we were able to kind of pull together enough money to go out and hire. Deloitte Consulting is probably the preeminent site selection consulting firm in the country. So they're the ones bringing these high tech plants to states and we were able to get them on board. I have taught a lot. So I'm gonna turn it over to Gary. He's really the brains of this operation. But again, thank you for the opportunity. Okay, well, thank you and thank you Sam and Will and the, can Ryan, can you see the shared screen yet? Yes, sir, it's up. Oh, good. So what Jeff said about product is that South Carolina has always done a really good job at manufacturing, but we had never really done a good job at either incentives or workforce issues or any of those other kinds of assets that we needed to be competitive. So when Jeff and I first started to talk and we said that when most communities do an economic development plan, it's primarily what are our target markets and how can we go out and recruit companies? And I mentioned to Jeff is we've really had to build our capacity to be able to compete in South Carolina. So that's what this plan is about. So Sam, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just start with a just real brief overview on the project, but then get into some of the things that we wanna partner with the city on and that we'll be coming back to you with more detail on in 2021. But as Ryan said, that there were four areas that we really focused in on and that's education and training, innovation, taxes and incentives and economic development. There were 68 recommendations in the report. They focused on how we scale up early stage companies, how we help our existing industry and how we recruit new companies into the area. The Deloitte, we asked Deloitte, both at the start of the project and at the end, what were the major challenges that Columbia had in being more competitive because they said that we clearly were underachieving in Columbia and they said it was because we were not known for attracting and retaining knowledge-based talent. And they said that that was the primary problem that we had in the community because when a site consultant goes and does a project for a company that's locating, they have this matrix that they go in without our community even knowing about it, they'll do an assessment. And they said that we always ranked poorly compared to our competitors on our knowledge base, the 25 to 54-year-old folks who are in the job categories that any prospect would want to be interested in. They also said the number two thing is that site location consultants said we lacked an identity or brand. In other words, that they didn't know what we were selling because we didn't know what we were selling. And the third thing that really impacts our ability to build homegrown companies is that we have a very limited base of knowledge-based firms here in a very weak entrepreneurial system. And of course, the issue of elevated property taxes and the lack of direct air service came up in that discussion. Now, as Ryan mentioned right up front, there's gonna be a chance to talk at the end, but if you guys have any questions, please, please chip in. So there are, the target industries, they were predominantly in information technology and in certain high growth areas of manufacturing. We've always done well in basic manufacturing, but these are real knowledge-based firm of areas in manufacturing, predominantly in the area of biotechnology and medical devices. And that's gonna build on some of the things that the University of South Carolina is gonna do at their new medical school. But I think the area that we're gonna have the most direct impact most quickly is on the information technology front, especially on InsureTech, Fintech, the information technology areas of manufacturing, cybersecurity, and to a lesser extent in health information technology, that's probably an area that's gonna grow, that will be focusing on more as the new medical school gets underway. So that is the overview on the project. What I'm gonna do now is for each of the four areas that are listed out there on the side, we're gonna go and we're gonna talk about some of the major initiatives that we're making progress on and some of the things that we're gonna come back to you later on and talk more specifically of how this is gonna impact the city. So education and training and talent, as I mentioned, is the most important area. And it's the area that we've made the most progress in over the last six months. And one of the reasons is because the technical schools and the university are so interested in upgrading the capabilities in that area, but also we didn't need any supplemental funds to get moving in this area. So one of the things that we're working with the Department of Commerce on and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the University, Midlands Tech, and Central IC Alliance is we're going to be building a system to be able to recruit specific IT talent into the Columbia area and that will address the hardest to fill IT jobs. We've been extremely pleased at how much collaboration we've had and how much progress we're making on that area and it's a high priority for the university. So that's one area that we're gonna be moving on very, very, very quickly. That we're also working with the South Carolina Council on Competitiveness to do an in-depth analysis of workforce needs in the IT space. There's gonna be an emphasis on fintech and cybersecurity, but we're also gonna look broadly at IT. I've always been amazed at the Columbia ecosystem in IT because we have a high concentration of software workers in Columbia, but they're almost all concentrated in the fintech and especially the insure tech space. We actually have been losing jobs in IT in areas that aren't related to fintech. And to me, that is, it's a tremendous missed opportunity because we have a base in this area and we should be able to expand it. We're also gonna be working with the Council on Competitiveness on a separate strategy that really looks at next-gen manufacturing in logistics, especially the IT aspects because of that and looking at how that builds on South Carolina's strength in manufacturing. And we're also working with SCBIO on helping to upgrade our education and training programs related to both biopharmaceuticals and medical devices. In the Columbia area, we currently have very few biopharmaceutical or medical device companies. We have Wright's Dose. We have, oh, in Lexington, the, oh, Nefron. Yeah, Nefron. We have Rhythm Link and then we have a number of small, we have a number of small medical device and biopharm companies. So this is an area that we really wanna build up on and the Deloitte folks indicated that our strength would not be in the research and development component of this. It would really be in the manufacturing component of this area, which is exactly where Nefron and Wright Dose and Rhythm Link are so strong. So the next area that I wanna talk to you a little bit about is innovation because I believe that this is an area that's gonna take a little bit longer to develop because as Ryan said, there's so many moving parts and it's gonna require investments from both the business community and government to make it work. But we are at the beginning stages of developing strategies for developing specific areas, geographic areas in the Columbia area that focus on information technology, also next-gen manufacturing logistics and then we're moving less quickly on the area in biopharm and medical devices because it will be linked clearly to the new USC medical school over on Bull Street. We're meeting tomorrow to really develop a statement of work to how we are gonna be moving forward with these technologies quarters, but I really believe that among all of the 68 recommendations in this report that this can potentially have an inordinate amount of impact on growth in the city of Columbia. We're also looking at specific technology incubator strategies because currently we have an incubator at U of S C but we really need to upgrade our entrepreneurial capacity to support high growth firms. We plan to partner with the city of Columbia and ensure tech summit that will focus on workforce and on innovation needs of companies, our existing companies. And that's probably 12 to 14 months out and one of the big successes that we've already had and Jeff will agree with this clearly and Ryan is that one of the big priorities of this project was to align our action plan, our economic development action plan with the research priorities at the university. We have always had a good relationship with the university when we had a prospect in town they would be more than happy to go talk to those prospects but we have never asked the university to be strategically involved in helping us to expand our capacity for economic development and we have made tremendous progress in that area just in the last six months. I think Ryan will mention that we've often had trouble getting the university together when we're looking to help specific industries like ensure tech. And I think we're gonna make some significant progress in that area. Hey, Gary, one thing real quick and I know USC is in here a lot and probably tends to get picked on a little bit more just due to their size and the bigger nature of their involvement but Benedict and Allen have both been involved in some of these conversations as well. So could you could- Ryan, you saw me writing my question, huh? That was- Yeah, yeah, then they were. So the organizations on the left are the folks that helped to fund the project. The organizations on the right have been the ones that we've partnered with heavily to make some progress on that. And the last one on there is the Columbia area post-secondary institutions primarily Benedict and Allen. We've talked, they've been involved in several of the planning portions of the project and we are gonna continue to look at how we provide opportunities to their students through this project. So they have been engaged. We emphasize U of S C substantially because of, because there are the research institution and we would like to build off of that capability which we never really have as a community but this is really geared to really increase the flow of people who are going into our post-secondary institutions both two year and four year and are getting jobs out of those institutions. So that's a primary goal of the project. Could that answer your question, Tameka? It did and there's another part but Gary, I'm just writing, go ahead through it. I'm just writing down my questions and we'll get to them at the end. I don't wanna mess up your presentation. Oh, not at all. Okay, so I think the next innovation, I mentioned that we're gonna be, we're developing the strategies on technology incubation strategies that would be in Fintech, that would be in life sciences and that would be in probably one in advanced manufacturing. I'd like to mention incentives and taxation also because of COVID and the impact that has that's had on all of our budgets, that's going to really be something that we're not gonna try to tackle substantially during the upcoming fiscal year. The one area that is such an important component of our ability to build homegrown companies is we are pre-filing legislation. It's SCRA, it's pre-filing legislation. It included some of the input from Deloitte on reducing our state franchise tax. That is so important for our early stage companies because when they go out and rate, it's based on not based on income, it's based on net worth. And so when they go out and raise money, all of a sudden they get a huge tax bill. And so we have a high probability this legislative session of fixing our state franchise tax which will benefit our companies in Columbia. We also desperately need a major revision to the state's Life Science Act and we've based on some of the input from Deloitte. We have drafted legislation led by SCRA again and SCBIO. We have been told by commerce and others that introducing new incentive legislation this year is a non-starter. So that's something that we're gonna have to wait until next legislative session. The one following the upcoming legislation session to make progress on. There's also going to be future legislation that for state and local incentives for white collar firms. A lot of the recommendations along that side are state level legislation. We do not have any, that legislation has yet been drafted. We're working on that with the South Carolina Economic Developers Association. But we do know that there will be, we're probably gonna come back to you with request for specific sector specific local incentives to help build our technology quarters, to help support sector specific incubators, build our entrepreneurial ecosystem. And one of the major efforts that we're going to be having is to, with Central SC, going and recruiting out of state workers into Columbia. And a major emphasis of this is helping the folks who already live here get jobs. But we know in certain areas of IT, especially with experienced workers, that we have a significant gap in being able to recruit out of state workers into our area. So the last area that we're gonna talk about is our economic development marketing. We, as many of you know, the Central SC Alliance, it covers eight counties. And it has always been helped to brand that eight county area. Well, Orangeburg and Calhoun are significantly, their needs are significantly different than the city of Columbia and the urban area, especially the urban areas of the greater Columbia Metro area. So we're working on a branding and marketing strategy for Columbia, it's a, Ryan, do you wanna mention anything about that or Jeff? If you want, I can just mention, I think there's a couple of different efforts underway. I think one thing that we'll probably end up doing both at the regional level, but specifically Richland, Lexington counties and the city of Columbia is doing more place marketing. That is trying to raise the visibility of Columbia nationally and even internationally. And then with that, we're hoping that we become a more attractive place for the talent so that people wanna move here. And if you, we're looking at using the same firm that Charleston used, and if you look at the success they've had, they have people moving there, smart people are moving to Charleston without a job, just thinking they're gonna find one. And that's helped spur a lot of their growth. So it's both a talent and just from a visibility level, we're trying to raise the visibility of Columbia. Yeah, and I think it's been kind of a convergence of, you know, as you see there, the city, Richland County, Lexington County experience Columbia, which does a lot with regards to tourism, but has had an interest in increasing visibility from a business standpoint. And so what you're starting to see is kind of a little bit of convergence between the typical economic development marketing we would normally do and things that promote the quality of place and the quality of life, you know? So selling the physical assets that we have, but also the amenities of the destination as well, which is, it's just been something that's been occurring over the past few years. And we're kind of starting to work at staff level to tighten those things up. I know we've talked about regional marketing, you know, in my 14 years with the city, we've had many conversations about doing that. And, you know, for whatever reasons have never really dialed it in, but we've had some good work at the staff level amongst ourselves and have kind of just started to do some more unification of our branding down low in order to bring ourselves in better alignment with each other. There in the market segments that we identified earlier, there's also going to be some specific target marketing efforts. One of those target marketing efforts is really being led by Ryan and with Central SC and that's where we've identified, there's 40 insure tech companies in the Columbia area, almost all of them are in the city. We've identified six to 12 of those companies that have expansion potential and we're going to be, and we're talking, we're going to be talking with them specifically about expansion opportunities. We're going to be, we're also already in the process of looking at contract manufacturing in biopharmaceuticals and looking at opportunities and identifying prospects in that area. And there will be additional sector-specific marketing done in the areas that we're talking about. There is one area of marketing that, that the Columbia has not done in the past, that both Charleston and Greenville are doing and many other of our competitors across the country is that we're actually going to be marketing very aggressively at attracting talent to Columbia, especially in the IT market. So, so I think that many of the things that we've talked about are a big change from the way we've done economic development before and I think we're going to have some significant impact. Next time we come back to you, we'll, we're going to drill down into some of the specific recommendations that we just discussed and we'll talk a little bit more about what we believe the outcomes will be with that and the value proposition of the city of Columbia. And we're going to be talking about how we invest in some of these initiatives going forward. But Sam, today we're not asking for any money or, so that ought to be a good thing. So, so that's- I don't know. I thought you guys, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, Sam. So, we'd really like to get some of your input now on all of the things. I know it's like getting hit by a fire hose. There's so much there, but please let me know. This is a condensed version of the report. You didn't even see the full one. That's a fire hose. I tried to read the full one. I'm not finished with it yet. But anyway, Tamika and Will, any comments, questions? I do have several questions. I just didn't want to interrupt Gary. So I was writing them down, but I will see. And I apologize if I've missed it. So if I've missed the full report, I would like to read the 68 recommendations myself. So if you could send that to me, I'd appreciate it. And I'll review that. But just a few, so Gary, when you were going back, you talked about the initial report and what Deloitte felt, and one of the things was the knowledge base. And just wondering, I know that we've identified, and I think they're all great, great things to go after, the FinTech, the insurance tech, all that stuff. Is that the knowledge? What knowledge base did they feel like we were lacking? I guess I want to make sure that we're thinking the same lines. Was it the knowledge base to be able to recruit those types of companies? Or what was the knowledge base they felt like we were lacking? So I'm going to start, but then Jeff probably can give you even a better answer. But we have a strong base in software, but it is not growing. And when we've gone out and talked to companies, right now in the Columbia market, there's a tremendous amount of poaching that's going on between RIT companies. And it's causing great consternation. There is simply just not enough experienced workers out there. We're doing a pretty good job at providing some entry-level workers. But as companies need more experienced workers, we're just having trouble attracting that kind of worker. Now, Jeff, do you want to add to that? Yeah, I think it's indicative of what you see across the country. So Deloitte Consulting, I mentioned, does a lot of site selection consulting. I worked with them a couple of years ago on recruiting a plant here. And I was in Chicago, and I had time to grab a cup of coffee with the head of Deloitte Consulting. He's Matt Suheye's partner. And we went in and I just started chatting about Columbia, and he seemed to know a lot about it. And I said, how do you know so much about Columbia? He said, we just did a site selection there for headquarters. I said, who was it? And it turned out it was Prisma. And Prisma was trying to decide whether to put their headquarters in Columbia or Greenville. And I said, why did you pick Greenville? And he said, the leadership and us, we all thought that that was a better place to recruit and retain talent. So Greenville won, Columbia lost. And he said, you know what? He said, that's going on across the country, especially from mid-sized cities like Columbia. You're in a deathmatch, you know, it's a fight to see who can create the environment to recruit and retain those types of jobs, smart people, headquarters. And from that grows so much wealth. We've seen a drain here in Columbia. So we think about NCR was all here, the headquarters basically for that whole division was here. Then Intel left, Cisco left. We've had, we've had other major exoduses of some of our best talent and technology companies. It's going to continue. I mean, Sean Reagan, the head of rhythm length moved to Charlotte. There's, he could easily move the company to Charlotte. We are in a daily fight. So I think that's what they were alluding to. To me, it emphasizes the essential nature of this. We started in thinking, hey, this is a study we ought to do. By the time we finished it, we realized this is a study we had to be done. This is the future of our community. So I've taught a lot, I'll shut up. No, that's fine. I guess a follow up to that, Jeff, would be, and this was kind of my last comment, but I'll move my last comment up before my other questions were is the reason I asked that question, because when I think knowledge and talent, I feel like they're two different things. And so the reason I wanted to ask about knowledge is because we know that we're always, we know that we're competing with globally. And if there is a knowledge issue, how do we make sure to the second question and the one that Ryan and Gary jumped in on before was the partnership with the higher ed, but we also need to make sure that we are constantly working with our K through 12 as well, if there's some knowledge challenges that we're experiencing. So I think we do need to kind of zero in on there if there's a talent gap or is there a knowledge gap or both and make sure that we're addressing both of those. And it goes to, my last comment was about pulling people together. I wanna make sure when we're having these meetings and having these conversations, and Branson, I'm in a position because I sleep with the school board member, so I hear the complaints. But, you know- Explain that sleep with- Sleep. But I hear the complaints and I talked to Baron Davis, who's a really good friend all the time. And I think that we leave our K through 12 out of very valuable conversations, but they are charged with providing us the raw material for what we need. And so I think that as they're planning magnet programs and different things, they need to be part of these conversations. So if knowledge is an issue and that raw material of the knowledge, I think we need to make sure that they're included. And so then my second question was, and Gary jumped in about Benedict and Allen and I saw Midlands Tech participated in this. So they are part of it. But I also wanna make sure, I think it was very clear that Gary talked about making sure that with the U of S seed that we're aligning with the priorities. So even the same thing that I'm talking about with K through 12, making sure that these groups are part of looking at as they're strategically planning new programs that they wanna offer, even student recruitment, making sure that what they're doing is aligning with our priorities. So we're all moving in the same direction that Benedict doesn't decide, oh, hey, we wanna be known for, I don't know, biotech and that's not aligning with our house. These are whatever I think we need to make sure that they're all together. And then my third question was really about, and this goes into also bringing people together, but you guys know there's this, it appears to me a side conversation when the tech study that was just done and I know there's a lot of conversation about the city commissioned it. I had some comments on whether or not we really truly commissioned it or whether or not it was a discussion that went off independently and was done with our name. But my frustration with that is that this information is now out there in the public and it's kind of like dropped with not real conversation about how do we all work together to address the concerns and whether or not even the concerns that are the findings of that study align with the findings that Lloyd had or others. And so I guess my question though is based on what Deloitte said, tax was fourth, which still is in the top five and it's definitely something we need to address, but it wasn't in the top three. And so my question really was on Azure. Azure, we're talking about the taxes and incentives and I love the fact that you guys addressed it but also with recommendations saying that Deloitte addressed it with recommendations saying that there's a bill prefiled, there's a bill proposed, but were some of the findings maybe that might have now been in that or is that part of, is Deloitte aware of that and is that part of these recommendations and what other recommendations can we put forward to address the challenges that we have in the Midlands regarding taxes? I'll start, Jen. I know Jeff will have a, but Deloitte folks said is that property taxes are an issue, but overall our tax structure in the Columbia area is not overall that out of whack. I think that the tax study that was done with the city is that the data analytics on that were very, very good, but some of the conclusions were a little simplistic, especially the one that says that we were losing folks from the Columbia are 25 to 54 year olds that we were losing them because of the tax issue. I think that's a very simplistic response to that. I think that we're losing it because the structure of our jobs in the Columbia area has changed. We're losing our manufacturing jobs, we're losing our distribution jobs and we're replacing them predominantly with hospitality jobs. So if we had more hiring jobs that were available to a broader range of people in our community, I think that that would address a lot of the economic development issue. So it is not just a tax issue and from reading the tax report, it made it sound like that was the only issue and it's not. Jeff, do you have anything else to say? Yeah, on the tax, I think we can talk back to death, but yeah, I think a more overarching approach to it rather than prescriptive, which is what we're doing now, we're incentivizing specific deals. And even with the commercial development program, we're still playing sort of whack-a-mole. We're not getting at the big issues. But I think Gary makes a good point. It's not something that's gonna get solved immediately and it's gonna take a larger group and bigger conversations to address it. The other thing I think you mentioned, Ms. Isaac, is that I think I had the same response from my county council when we presented this. And maybe I shouldn't say it this way, but I'll just come out and say it. This is not a program for white people. You know, the idea is that the expectations have to be raised amongst our post-secondary, or our secondary K-312. We have to make sure that they understand that these are the jobs of the future, period. It doesn't matter where you go to high school or what you look like. If you see Ben Rex's program, it clearly indicates that there is a talent spread across the population. We need to educate those folks so they can take advantage of these opportunities. The low-paying jobs are going away. For instance, Mark Anthony Brewing, they have 350 people, they will have 350 people in a 1.3 million square foot facility. And you think, how can you build such a big building with so few people? And the answer is they have forklifts running all over the place and not a single person driving them. They're all robots now. And that's true across the board. We actually were gonna win a major aviation plant last year and they had engineered the plant from 3,000 people to 1,000 people. And they were able to do that through automation. The jobs of the past are going away, the low-end jobs and they're being replaced by skill sets that require digital understanding, coding, all the jobs we're talking about here in the study. So I go back to, this isn't something we ought to look at. It's something we have to look at. We have to pursue this if we wanna change the arc of growth in Columbia. So you're saying that we need to create the jobs for the people that create the robots, so. That's exactly, yeah, yeah. People in US manufacturing production since the 1980s, I mean, our production has steady climbed while per capita employment in the sector has gone down and it's through technology and innovation and increases in efficiency and how we make stuff. It's not necessarily about putting more people on a line anymore. How do you do it more efficiently with less folks? And that's where everything has kind of shifted in economic development. To some degree, there are still a lot of conversations that happen with companies around, well, do you have an available building and are the incentives right and do we have the utility capacities? Yes, that still happens, but educated and trained workforce has predominantly become the center point of these discussions. And kind of to allude to what we talked about earlier, as you can tell by this report, it's not a one size fits all thing. I mean, this is a pretty comprehensive and widespread reporter. Tax is an issue. Yes, it's something we can focus on. Can we better equip our K through 12 students? Absolutely. Incubator programs, yeah, we can step that up. So I think, we don't need to look at it through a narrow vertical and say, well, if we just lean into incentives a little bit more, if we do this one thing that it's gonna help, there's a lot of levers here that we can push on this report. And if we make even some small to mid changes in a variety of these areas, the bandwidth that we increase in the community could be pretty large on the backend of that pipeline. So I just think, we need to kind of look at this from an all encompassing standpoint, and make sure we're focused on the K through 12, preparing the college students, making sure the college students are equipped with the proper education and skillset, making sure that the companies have the available positions and are marketing them properly. So there's a lot of things that need to probably be just aligned a little bit better too. Well, if questions come in. Yeah, Councilman Davis, I appreciate it. And I want to expand on Councilwoman Devine's comments. This is a wonderful action plan. Can you, Gary and Jeff and Ryan, in your opinion, tell us the near term path forward for us as elected officials and the groups that are out there, what are you envisioning happening in the near term for us to start these conversations, excuse me, the relationship building with a common goal of the big takeaways from this action plan? Okay, I'm going to start, and I know Jeff will want to add in, but I think in over the next six months, the area that we're going to make the greatest impact is going to be on the education and training and talent side. And Tamika, I'm on the board at Midlands Tech and some of the issues that you brought up were we talk about that in every single board meeting. So we're going to make some significant progress on that side. And because it's going to require so much collaboration to accomplish some of the innovation things, especially in the technology quarter, we're going to need the city and the community leadership to be more engaged in that. And one of our primary goals for 2021 is to make sure that our city and county governments are very much engaged USC, but we need industry leadership on board with this. And we believe we're going to be able to do that on a sector by sector basis. And that's how we're going to be tackling that. What form does that take? Is that a committee with representatives from all the players that are needed? I believe that we're going to have to have in the sectors that we talked about, especially in IT, that we're going to have to find the folks that are going to lead the way. Currently, there are a lot of committees and a lot of... But what we need to be able to do is show you specific outcomes and hold us accountable for meeting those outcomes, and especially in some of the areas that we talked about in innovation, I think that those are the ones that are going to have the greatest impact over the next 18 months. Jeff, do you have anything to add to that? I think one of the big things for us, so we just finished an internal strategic plan and we rolled it out to our Economic Development Committee on Tuesday night. One of the things the consultants there at Austin, Texas came back and told us was there's a lot of confusion in the Columbia market about who's doing what. There are a lot of different groups with a lot of overlap, all claiming to do economic development. And I think as much as you can as elected officials, trying to provide some clarity about who does what and how it's getting done. Our contention is that this plan helps us accomplish the goals of economic development. If we can get the elected officials at the county and the city and even at Lexington County to get behind this plan, I think this is the way to go. There's a lot of noises that's occurring out in the leadership community about restructuring. I think this is the plan they need. As much as you can, I think lend support to the professional economic developers. Great, thank you. I've just got any other question, Will? No, sir. Tameka. Chairman, I'm good. Just one thing that kind of overlaps with I think some of Tameka's comments. I was surprised and pleased that I see where Midland's Tech is viewed as a major player in all of this in terms of the end products. They have in my opinion, a unique setup where they, one, they are located in an industrial park, industrial park, office park, and they are right across the street from a high school. And once doing my principle for a day stint, I was fortunate enough to watch and observe their robotics programs. I think that's one of the best in the state. They've won awards and that sort of thing. I see that as a natural relationship transition and a resource for Midland's Tech in terms of some of the things we're looking at now, in terms of the talents are there, but the question is where do those kids transition to when they leave that high school? And they're right across the street and I don't know that there's a real relationship with Midland's Tech and the high school. That's an example of working with, cultivating the kinds of talents that we know that are needed in our job market. So I just throw that out, but I just think that that is a unique situation and the relationship there with the school district. Councilman Davis, can I ask one more question? Yeah, yeah. Jeff and Gary, you mentioned our state delegation is gonna play a part in this action plan. Can you describe how our state senators and our state house reps, what role will they play in helping us with build this kind of foundation for the action plan? So, and I've been in economic development for a long, long time and the legislature does not typically work on and they need to address the needs on or we can show that we're losing opportunities out there. It's not usually you go to the delegation and you make the case for life science. So when we go and we try to sell the Life Science Act, which is desperately needed, the biggest thing we're gonna be telling them is we are losing this project, this project and this project. Can you describe what exactly is the life science at? Jeff, do you wanna answer that? Well, I guess ST Bio has been pushing on that. And Gary, I don't know that I know all the specific details of it, do you know? Yeah, and about 10 or 12 years ago, the Department of Commerce helped in developing in the incentives for biopharmaceutical and other life science, medical devices and all that sort of thing. And in there, they provided some incentives that were very difficult for the company to actually use. So that when we're recruiting life science companies and we're having a very difficult time in the Columbia market compared to Charleston and Charleston is just going great guns at recruiting these companies right now. Greenville is doing a real good job at medical devices, but overall the state does not have competitive incentives to attract life science companies. And in the report, it makes some specific recommendations on how we ought to adapt that. Those were incorporated into a bill that has been drafted. The Department of Commerce will support it, but not in the next legislative session. I can get you a lot more detail on that if you'd like, Will. That'd be wonderful. And Jeff and Gary, I appreciate y'all's time today. Gary, thanks for taking time out from the grandkids to take this action plan forward and really appreciate it. Well, Sam and the other members, we will be coming back with you with some, not with the water hose next time, but with some very specific things that we'd like to partner with y'all on and we'll be talking about what the value proposition is and what the path forward is and what the outcomes are. So that's the next step, but today we felt like it would be good to give you just an overall update on the project. I think you guys hit a home run with this in terms of sharing with us what you've been doing. And as I said, I've been reading the document and there's a lot in there. It's a lot to look forward to. And I see the city progressing as a result of the kinds of work you guys are doing. And by all means, I think it is important that members of council, just as the county, I'm sure, are periodically briefed on where you're going, this impact with what we all want to see happen in Columbia or the Midlands for that matter. Tomika? I was just gonna say, I love it. Erica, it shows you not to look at things on your phone and look at it on the computer. So Erica showed me that the report was attached to her email, so I will read it over the weekend if I have any additional questions. I'll email you guys, but I like this. I think it, like I said, I think it presents concrete stuff and recommendations to move forward. I just would say and reiterate, I think the key to this is making sure that it is collaborative and people understand that Columbia is in Richland County, Richland County is adjacent to Lexland County and what helps one area helps us all. And I think if we can make sure that we move forward together and not feel territorial, I mean, it only helps the Midlands. And that's the only thing. I mean, I usually take personally when people compare us to Charleston and Greenville because people always do that. But one thing I always say is the thing that Charleston and Greenville do well is they work well together. And that has, I think, not been our strong suit and having a document and a game plan and an action plan like Will mentioned, I think having something that we all can coalesce behind and say, this is our action plan and let's move forward together will help. So I think this is great. Yeah, I think that pretty much explains, you know, the example you guys gave with Prisma making that decision to settle in Greenville. It's obviously, I think that the manufacturing in that area has played a major role in that up to this point. And then I think with their movement, looking at the very issues in the very areas that you all are discussing now, but they're pretty much involved in that too, am I correct? Yes. Yes, sir. Right, so we just need to, I think, as everybody is saying, I'm put our heads together and see what works. If it doesn't stick on a wall, then we pretty much know why it wouldn't stick on a wall here in Columbia. And so, and we have high hopes for the people that we want to perform in these basic areas that's gonna keep us ahead of the curve. I appreciate you guys bearing this with us and the work that you all are doing with Ryan. And I think it'll be down the road, very educational for all of council to hear from you guys. Well, thank you for having us again today. I appreciate it. Will, Tameka, any last words? No, just thanks. Thanks again. You know, Columbia, we have to realize how we fit in this big picture of economic development here in the mainland. And I think this action plan lends itself to us doing that. And I know I can probably speak for all of council that we're excited to follow it through with our commitment to work with other local governments to maximize, you know, the potential. So thanks again. Okay, thank you. Thank you all. Thank you guys. Thanks, Ryan. You're welcome. Happy holidays, everybody.