 So I will call the meeting to order. Ms. Wilson, we expect that anybody else, anybody looking for? Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Erica, you want to call the roll? Here. How's it? Cool. You've got a binder in the agenda, so you will. All right, we're going to start with the proactive business steps to institute a business-first environment. But I want to make a couple of comments, if I could, before we get started. Got some questions. Some questions came up, and they're good questions about, you know, I don't want to say it's a misunderstanding. It may have been misstatements on my part more than anything else by using certain examples of certain neighborhoods in the city as we talk about these business-friendly things. I think the most positive thing of all is a couple of three years ago, before at least two of us here were on council, a lot of these things were derived out of trying to figure out how to do five points. And so those are the examples that I'm most familiar with when we talk about the value of some things. And the cool thing about what we're doing and talking about today is when we were talking about five points several years ago, we were talking about just doing it in five points for three years and moving it somewhere else and somewhere else and somewhere else. And what we're talking about today now is doing this city-wide, not in one place or another. And candidly, personally, from my background in business and things, I think the things that we're talking about doing will be much more meaningful in districts such as Ms. Herbert's than maybe in five points or downtown. And when we talk about a water and sewer expansion fee waiver of, say, $35,000 in five points, if you're dealing with a $700,000 building, I mean, it hurts and it can kill the deal, but it's still $35,000 on 700. If you're in, like, Northman Carter or Broad River Carter or even the two-notch Carter, $35,000 because it's based on size, not value, $35,000 water and sewer expansion fee would be an absolute deal killer. So I think I want to make it clear that we're looking at this is, I think I'm most excited about this is a city-wide deal. And I think we'll have really more impact in places where real estate may cost less than in places where real estate is more expensive. You want to make some comments about that? I do. And I do want to say I appreciate that, Mr. Taylor, because after the meeting, we get feedback from folks. And folks are like, which, I mean, you and I have a little discussion about it. But for the folks who are watching, we get feedback. And a lot of the questions that I got back was, what about our area? What about this area? And so I think that it is important to make sure that we're emphasizing a community-wide approach. But then I do believe at times, we do need to make special emphasis. And when we do, we do. But that was the feedback that I got. So I appreciate that we're going forward, acknowledging that we're looking at the city as a whole. Thank you, ma'am. Does that clarify most of your questions regarding those things? It does. OK. And again, and one of the things we talked about in the last meeting was positions such as a recruiter. I mean, those would be for city-wide. I mean, we're not looking to put them from one place to the other, because a lot of times, I think when we're dealing with recruiters, it could even be people who are doing multiple location things. And again, Dr. Walters had sent me a note that I think was, he's our consultant, our economist, on our tax study. And one of the things that he said, and I just hadn't thought about it before, and I just couldn't bring it up, we talk about food deserts and food deserts and food deserts. But it's also doctor's office deserts, dentist office deserts. And so when we're looking at these things, I mean, certainly we want to attract eateries and grocery stores and stuff, but we want to make the soil conditions right, whereas for every kind of business that neighborhoods want to have. And I think, I really think that with the exception of like a grease trap type situation, we're doing that. It's pretty much nondiscriminatory against any trade or any business. And like I say, I do think it benefits the city as a whole. Will you any comments on that? Cool. Ms. Gentry? You have the floor. We have several initiatives underway. Clint Sheehan is a person. And Clint, if you're OK with this, because it's really a point, point, point, point. As members of the committee have questions, can they just? Yes, sir. Of course. Of course. And I won't belabor the point. I'll just a little bit of background about our sewer expansion fee. It's a fee that we charge to make sure our treatment plan has adequate capacity. And our collection system has adequate capacity to convey that waste. Every new home that comes to Columbia and is built is assessed a fee based on an equivalent residential unit of $2,640. Commercial establishments, their fee, a new commercial establishment sewer expansion fee is based on the anticipated flow of sewer from that business divided by what a home might use. And so we assess a home at a 400 gallon per day value, so it's a volumetric calculation and then multiplied by the number of ERUs or $2,640. For businesses and particularly businesses that are being redeveloped in some of the areas that you spoke about, Calc's Manteo, that can get large. And so what we wanted to do was look at any modifications. Y'all blessed us back in July of 2021 with the ability to do something to reduce the fee for large users. And the Mark Anthony Brewing ribbon cutting last week was a great example of a business that we were able to get as a customer that we probably would not have landed had we not made that adjustment. So that was a great help to us. As we think about redevelopment or commercial establishments that have been one type of business and are maybe being renovated to be another type of business, we have previously looked at that anticipated flow and if that flow is going up, if it was a restaurant and they're adding 10 more seats and they do the calculation, it can add to that fee. So what we've done is looked at several other utilities and what they're doing around the nation and try to look at best practices. And for redevelopment, we're looking at if your water meter is less than four inches in size then we're not going to assess an additional fee if you don't change the size of your water meter. Most of the time for these commercial establishments we don't see an increase in the water meter size. They may increase their usage slightly and that would have previously led to an increase in the fee. As we look at the total impact of this we think it's pretty negligible in terms of our total budget of expansion fees collected. We usually collect around two and a half million dollars. We're looking at maybe 5% for redevelopment. So it's a pretty small economic impact for the enterprise fund but we recognize that it can be a substantial economic impact for each individual business. So that's the change that we're proposing and you've got a memo that explains that, it explains what happens if they do increase their meter size, it still reduces the amount of the expansion fee that they would have to pay under a redevelopment situation. So we've also marked up the ordinance and you have that in your packet as well. We've talked about this with our legal team. We were debating administrative policy change versus an ordinance change because there's a fee associated with it. Our legal team is advising us the ordinance needs to be changed. So we've marked that up. We've vetted that through legal. They asked for a definition of redevelopment. We've given that and they're in the process of reviewing that. So we think it's ready to move forward here shortly. And Mr. Taylor Clint on that point, we're starting with the items that may require some action by the council and this would be one of them. And then we'll separate those that were just more policy or staff level changes administratively. Of course, the committee can make decisions on how you want to move forward. So we decided that this does require an action that can't be administrative. Correct. Ms. Herbert. So I just for lawyers math, I mean, we're looking at 5%. So are we talking about 125,000? Yes, ma'am. That range out of a 2.5 million sewer expansion fee budget, which is again, part of a much larger overall enterprise revenue fund budget. But the impact would just be about, you're estimating about 120. Yes ma'am. And it depends on the number of folks that are being businesses that are redeveloped. So some years may be more, some years may be less. And then for an individual business, what does that look like if they have to go to the other size and had to pay the regular fee? So you may be looking at a delta of 5 to 10,000 instead of 10 to 20, 25,000 if there was an upsize in meter. But again, most of these commercial style establishments, you won't see an increase in meter size. And so the net effect will be zero for them. And that net effect may have been 15,000, 20,000 or greater. Well, you got questions? Let me just a couple of things. On the impact, that would be a worst possible case scenario because we lose a lot of deals, at least I've been told by commercial realtors because especially on, again, on lower income driven properties, I mean low rents and things like that, people walk away when they got to do pay a $30,000, $35,000 use fee. And so we don't get any increase in the water volume. So what we hope we do is by giving up 5% of the tap fee, we gain a monthly, I mean, it's kind of like you were talking about with Mark Anthony. You reduce the tap fee by a couple of million dollars probably, but you gained a million dollar a month water customer. And so at the end of the day it was, the cost benefit was very positive, correct? Yes, sir, you're exactly right. And to that point, Councilman, the 5% impact is assuming we don't pick up any additional business coming through. And for the sake of conversation, when we're talking about, because this helps me, I really wasn't aware of this until we began this discussion. Four inch water line taps, well you make them, that's mostly small, that's all four inches less is small business, right? Yes, sir, yes. And so if a big apartment complex was coming in here, they're gonna do what? They're gonna have a six inch or an eight inch. And so it doesn't, an industrial user that is going up, if a facility was a warehouse before and it becomes a water heavy industry, that's good for us, but also can have a pretty significant impact on the sewer discharge and the capacity of our pipes. So that still stays in the equation, but again, we've got that top end large user rate that can help under those instances. Let me ask you something. So let's say a renovation of, or a commercial space, 2,500 square feet is being renovated from retail to restaurant and it has that four inch and it qualifies. Can you give me kind of a ballpark comparison of what that tap fee increase on the renovation of a restaurant into 2,500 square feet would be versus a new construction build restaurants that has the four inch. What's the delta impact there? What are you thinking? So again, it's based on flow, Councilman, but that is the specific example where you may see a 30 to $35,000 sewer expansion fee for a new development. If the meter size hasn't changed for redevelopment, you wouldn't have an increased fee. So this change encourages redevelopment and the buildings and wonderful. Thank you. One final thought on the ordinance. We, as we were looking at it, it's titled sewer plant expansion fee. And we believe it's more appropriate for it to be titled a sewer capacity fee because it takes into account the collection system and the treatment facility. That's really what the ordinance is written for. So we've requested that change as well. Wonderful. You could call it a sewer impact fee, if you'd like. Thank you. You do it. Any other questions at all? Because what I like for us to do as we go through these one by one, especially this one, since it does require an action by Council is for us to vote yay or nay to move, to recommend it, to move forward. Since there's just three of us, one of you, somebody's got to make the motion for the vote and somebody's got to second it. Absolutely, I make the motion to... We don't vote, so how do we move something? Okay. All right, then I can ask that. Is there a consensus to move this forward with a recommend to pass it at Council? Got it. Thank you, Clint. Thank you. It's okay. Awesome. Before Chris starts on this, let me just say, this is something that we've been asking questions about when we sat down just yesterday afternoon and worked through what we would bring here this morning for you guys to look at. And there's a... Good morning. Taking number two and three, they're somewhat related. Two, we're talking about parking. So Councilman Taylor challenged me to think about parking and how it impacts businesses. And we were looking initially at eliminating parking requirements city-wide for certain size of buildings. Started around 5,000, similar to what we had done in Five Points and also what is being done around the country as well. And looking at our parking requirements downtown that in the new code, we had expanded the area that has total exemptions from parking. It used to be just on Main Street, Assembly Street, Sumter Street. We expanded that further into the core of the business district as well as into the Inovista district. And the proposal in your packet reflects that the 7,500 square feet or less city-wide for any new or redevelopment. And then all it does is take into consideration further reductions for certain uses city-wide. But as you can see from these articles, one is about Fayetteville, Arkansas and one is about Raleigh, North Carolina. The proposal today is to actually take that exemption of no parking requirements further and apply that to all of our mixed-use districts. So this would extend that benefit to most of our major corridors in all of our districts. So that is North Columbia, that's two-notch, that's Divine Street, Millwood. And the impacts are business-related, obviously, for the costs of not having to provide that parking. And let me be clear, this doesn't mean you can't provide parking. It just means that we aren't gonna be the ones to tell you how much parking to build, but it's not outlawing parking. It also impacts affordability significantly if you don't have to build that for the multifamily as well as environmental impacts. And this is for non-residential, so in your neighborhoods, the parking requirements would remain as they are. This would also be coupled with a further reduction as we discussed in some of the requirements for certain uses. So it's not wholesale, city-wide, as our reading has happened in these other cities and not to anyone's detriment in Fayetteville. It's been going on for quite a while with much success. It's a little bit more incremental, but it is taking into consideration all of our mixed-use districts. Questions? Well, I was just enrol-y this last weekend for an alumni event. So I'm gonna have to think on this a little bit more. I don't like not being able to find parking in the commercial corridors. I guess as a, I think it works better, maybe if you live here and it's easier, but because Raleigh has changed so significantly, I think I had to drive around three or four times. So I'm gonna do my research and read into it. That's my preliminary thought, but trying to find parking is a factor for me when I'm going to a place, the easier it is for me to park, the more likely I am to go, the harder it is to park, the less likely I am to go. So I don't know how that, how does this change impact a person such as myself, who's directionally challenged? And easy parking is really important for me until I can get it. Driver, right, no. So it also is coupled, I know we're doing a parking study, having appropriately priced parking is important to make sure that you have adequate supply of on-street parking. If you price it adequately, you won't have people parked there for hours and hours, which allows for the turnover in those on-street and structured parking decks. So that is a key to the puzzle. And I think our parking folks have done a good job of the way finding with regard to finding our parking decks too. And we really do have to encourage that habit of parking in the decks and then walking and then making it an environment in which people wanna walk as well. I don't think this will really have a big impact one way or the other on the ability to find parking places or not. Unfortunately, we've become a city, a downtown of vacant parking lots. And again, these are both very current articles, both university towns. And I think one of the things that I'm discovering now is if it came from something Ryan mentioned at our last meeting is, Columbia has 3,000 people living in the city center, Greenville and Charleston have 9,000 people living in the city center. And we frankly need to replace some of these parking lots with buildings, tax base, and we need to grow. I would tell you that most people who develop buildings have to, in order to be able to lease them or sell them have to provide parking. In the case of, perfect example would be Mr. Arnold's most recent project where he built the palm with no parking, but it'll help us cash flow and create nighttime demand for the parking garage across the street where they'll use it. So it's really, we're dealing with really two issues here. The first is eliminating the on-site parking requirement for 7,500 square foot buildings that exist or do. And again, part of that comes for me and again in areas like North Main, Two Nights Road, Broader Road and downtown. If we're requiring those businesses to provide that parking, it just, it raises the cost of opening the businesses there. I mean, and I think so this, I think this is one way to encourage, again, encourage more locally owned, more neighborhood driven businesses. And again, if we're gonna grow downtown Columbia and other areas and make it more affordable, we just gonna have to let the market figure out where we are on that. Chairman Taylor, let me ask something. Is this, does this go with the business or with the entire development? So we think about Harbison, retail strips. Does it go with the single tenant of maybe sweet bee of a development? Or does it, is it the entire, because that's a big difference. So if there's 15,000 square foot for the whole cluster, specifically getting down to the maybe 1,800 square feet for a single business in that strip mall or parking. I think it would go with the partial real estate. And the way we were interpreting it for five points because you have all of those connected structures, it was each individual structure parcel. Each address essentially is what you're saying? Yeah, I mean, as long as it's a distinct structure, I mean, it can't be just a wall, but yeah, actual structure. It's more like a strip city, that's what we got. And, you know, because this is new, we could craft it as council desired, but in that case, I would interpret it as each business in a structure, but they're still fire rated, it's still a separate business entity. I would think it would be for the piece of real estate, the parcel, in other words, if I have six stores that total 12,000 square feet, it's not exempt. Got to. You know, in other words, and you can't exempt one part of the other. And let me add, here's the deal. Most of these things, it's not the city making the capital investment to build a business or build a store. It's an individual investing their money, and they have to create, they have to be the ones, and they should be the ones that are compelled to have to create the ability to attract Ms. Herbert to come eat or shop at their business. And if not having enough parking on their site keeps people like me and Ms. Herbert at home, that's shame on the business, not shame on us as a regulatory agency. And that's why, you know, that's again, that's one reason we were, Ms. Gentry and I were having a conversation about our parking decks downtown and who takes the risk. And like I said, Mr. Arnold took the risk, not the city. So if he has difficulty renting his units because he doesn't have own site parking, that's on him, it's not on us. And so I think what we wanna do is encourage more investment, encourage more folks to live downtown, get the density that we need in some of our food desert, doctor desert, dentist desert areas, you know, get the density of people so we can attract those businesses into that area. So, I'm all from, I support moving this forward to council. Will? Yes, I concur. I'll support moving it forward for further study for Councilwoman Herbert's concerns. Ms. Herbert? Yeah, I still need to do some more research. What area are we talking about specifically? On the new districts we would add would be what? It would be all of your major corridors. Yeah, I'm not ready. I can send you a map of that. And I can send you some information. There's a lot of literature out there now about the benefit. Obviously, I'm slanted towards that, but there's a lot from the American Planning Association good research about the benefit of reducing parking minimums. And the process would be? Planning commission, advisory recommendation and city council zoning public hearing. I think just from my preliminary thoughts, even if it's something that I could support, I would not, I would wanna try it out somewhere, city center and expand just to see how it works. And we usually talk about start city center and it'll impact other areas. But that's just a thought. Are we trying it out somewhere now? Who? We did it. Tell us what we did. Is it downtown? There are no parking requirements. Yeah, and that's why I never come. No, I'm just being very honest. It's very difficult for me to meet someone for lunch and it's very difficult for me to pick up my cleaning. So, and I may just be a lone person, but that's literally my personal experience. Coming downtown for breakfast or for lunch or even dinner is difficult for me. I'm not the mayor. So, but that explains it. Yes, we've not had parking requirements on Maine's Sumter Assembly since probably the late 70s. And we currently, we expanded it in our new code to be at least half of the remaining parts of downtown. And Krista, can you speak to the broader transportation picture of the intended consequence of something like this is your rideshare upgrades or comment upgrades, maybe light rail one day? Yeah, well, by subsidizing essentially free parking for everybody, I think there's, and I'll have the numbers for you, I think five parking spaces for every car. By subsidizing it, yeah, you disincentivize the other behaviors that we wanna see to encourage a vital downtown. And so, yeah, through rideshare or even parking once and walking, there are numerous benefits in addition to not as much surface parking, you don't have as much surface stormwater, heat islands, affordability, if I don't drive, but I'm still subsidizing all of y'all's parking spaces through the buildings or through my housing, that's not equity there either. So there's a variety of reasons. And when you suspect at some point in time, private developers would build their own parking decks because it gets easier to cash flow. It's lucrative or we're gonna be around an autonomous vehicle someday and just popping in all of those. There are people who are wondering about future decks and making sure that we build them so that you can retrofit them for the time or when we may not need all of these parking spaces. And then, I mean, this is probably the next evolution of discussing on parking once the parking study gets back. And this may be a real, this may address more of the ability if we were to go to more enterprise parking throughout the streets with, you know, enterprise spending is priced at one price at certain hours, another price at other hours and the meters go away and you can do it on an app or you can, I was in New York City this weekend and did not see a single parking meter in New York. They had these little 12 by 12 things and you would punch your license tag number in, the space number you were at, you could put a credit card in, you could do it off of the cash or whatever. And when we do that, I think it will probably encourage greater turnaround. I think one of the issues we deal with downtown today is we check meters, what, from nine o'clock to six o'clock? So if I'm a student and I'm living on Main Street and I get off my part-time job at five, I can put a dollar's worth of time in the meter and leave my car on the street till the next morning. So when Ms. Herbert and I wanna come downtown and eat, that space is taking the whole evening. And if we do enterprise parking, we would probably price it on past six o'clock and compel those young people to park in the garage instead of parking on the street. And so that's what I said, I think a lot of positives. So that being said, are you a favor of moving forward? Because I mean... I am in favor of moving forward. And I'm just gonna do my research on it. Perfect. And that is true with the after hours parking because I talk about that a lot. I'm like, no, you're not gonna get a ticket after six or seven down. Get your right foot off, you can get a handicap space. I'll pass, I'll pass, I'll pass, I'll pass. All right, so the consensus is to move it forward. Thank you. Somewhat related is an issue about redevelopment. I know a lot of our discussion is about redevelopment and the redevelopment of structures and the requirements with regard to some of the landscape buffers and street protective yards for redevelopment. And that we've had some situations where those requirements have resulted in the loss of parking that is existing. And so looking to amend those requirements for redevelopment so that if those requirements were to result in the loss of that parking that those would not be in play. So exempting those redevelopments to facilitate that redevelopment of these buildings. And to keep really what this is doing is you've got an existing condition. Allow the existing condition to remain. So if you have a parking lot that's not conforming, you've got a redevelopment. It is what it is. Let them stay as they are while they're investing all of this money in redeveloping the building. So that I'm clear, if you buy a building and it has a parking lot that was built in the 70s, curb cuts, landscaping, it would carry forward the same condition. Yes. Thank you. I think a lot of this kind of arrived from a project, a really project that was done on Gervais Street that had an existing parking lot where they had to come back in and cut out multiple parking places to plant trees that resulted in them having fewer parking spaces than were required, which then required all site parking spaces to be rented. This is, if you, I think again, let's try to figure out how we can not punish people for making things, growing the economy and making them look better. So to that point, Chairman Taylor, retroactively would that developer, that business be able to go back and pull out that landscaping or moving forward at the, if action is taken in July, that is the start line for this? Actually, I think because of the exemptions on on-site parking requirements, yes, they could probably go take it out if they wanted to. I'm not so sure between you and me, it wouldn't look better if they took some of it out, but everything else, it would probably be going forward. So who answers that? Is that a council decision or is that? Well, they also wouldn't be required to lease parking, but if they, because likely they would fall under that 7,500 square foot parameter as well, so they wouldn't be required to go off-site to lease parking. No, that's correct. So any building that is 75,000 square feet or less and has a large parking lot that could be developed something else without parking requirements could be developed into something else? 7,500 square feet or less. What I thought you said about that one, way off. So that there's continued development opportunities if the parking lot would meet that less than 7,500 square feet total parking. I mean, there's a lot of buildings that are part of, peppered through our hospitality districts that I think could stand to have extra development that's on such a large lot. Absolutely, yeah. Gail, and we'll show this to you when we come for the public hearing. Gail did a public life study and aggregated all of our surface parking lots. And I think the graphic will astonish you about how much surface parking we have. I think that's a good point, but it lets our parking lots get developed in the tax base, but this really was more about just the landscape still. Right, right, right. But that loss of three or four parking spots, two required landscaping retroactively if they wanna go back and reclaim those four. Again, it gets back to your point, Chairman. What is the developer? That's right. We'll see how is this gonna be a successful project. Exactly, and I think one of the things we wanna do is have faith in people who are making investments in Columbia. I mean, they gotta make it look good and attractive in order for people to want to rent there by there, don't you agree? Yeah, and that kind of plays into our future discussion on the new zoning and all that, that keeps those guardrails up. Ms. Herbert, comments? So are the consensus to move this forward for our committee? We'll answer eight requirements, yes. Ms. Herbert? I agree. Okay, thank you, ma'am. Thank you. You're still up, I think. Yeah, you wanna talk about this or you want me to? The signage, just that we're... Are we ready to talk about that one? No, we're just gonna, we're reviewing our sign. Okay, let me, what this is, I think, is we're in the process with no recommendations yet, meeting with some sign companies, sign manufacturers of what we can do to make our sign ordinance match up to other places and a little bit that may be faster and easier to permit and that'll come at one of our next meetings, correct? Okay. The overlay district discussion we're deferring from this, from today. We're still going through that and that gets down to the next group of proposed actions underway that do not require code or ordinance changes. You wanna present those or we just wanna, I mean, we can just, I mean, I don't think any, I mean, the first one basically is just an ongoing deal is to really get a business-friendly kind of development. I want us to make sure, though, that we're not pro-business, we're not pro-neighborhood, we're pro-city. And as you know, we're making the decisions that are best for the city of Columbia, not best necessarily for a developer or best for a neighborhood, but what's best for the city every time. And that's just something that city manager, Wilson, is really kind of working through our staff. And I go back and again, I feel like I'm talking too much, but I do just, my mind was blown at the last meeting when Ryan brought up that we only have 3,000 people living in our city center in Charleston and Columbia have 9,000. And I went up to Greenville, by the way, it took some five points folks up there. Each of the last two Mondays to look at how they did their streets. And it is pretty amazing. You know, fortunately I was able to find a parking place right where we wanted to eat lunch at a place that's getting ready to open five locations in Columbia, Sully's Steamer. And what was even more stunning is, you know, the business is everywhere and they were all locally owned. I mean, it wasn't like they were national franchises and things like that. And I think for us to be able to get that downtown and then North Main Street, five points up Divine Street, I think is just fantastic. The permitting process, again, this doesn't really take a code, it's just how do we, you know, how do we look for ways to give our prospective investors windows of time that they should be able to expect to receive a permit. And that's just an ongoing process. I'm sorry, Gerald, are you on page, you're under the proposed actions that do not require, okay? Yes, ma'am, second page. And we can look, I mean, if you'd like to, anybody who wants to go through those individually, we certainly can. But I think... So we do have the brochure, a sample brochure? Is that what I'm reading? All right, I was talking about the second block about the grease trap. Yeah. All right, I was going through it in the first one, it's anywhere. Oh, you're still in, okay, go ahead, sorry. Now we go to, again, reasonable time, expectation for small business and large permits to be accepted. I just think that's just something that we can help with. Now the next one is that the update, the existing brochure and addressing grease traps. Any questions or comments on that? Let's back up. Are these, all the end process underway, are these coming back to this committee to be recommended to move out or are they? All right, thank you. Steps that we're already taking, so we just got to keep at it, you know? We got to keep working at it. And promote it. And promote it, yeah. Class those as management initiatives, I mean. Because this management with Theresa and Mr. Wilson, Ms. Gentry and Ms. Hampton and everybody in that deal are just taking charge and moving forward with it. And that, and I don't want to skip, but the box that says promoted market business liaison is point of contact for assistance with project development, permitting business needs, troubleshooting and identifying bottlenecks. All of that goes to the same thing. And Greg is here, and yeah. Stand up, so everybody knows who you are. There you go. I enjoy giving Greg's cell phone number out. And Greg Williams, yes, thank you. All right, go back up one. Yes, sir. Is update, the existing brochure that addresses grease trap requirements. There is one change that I would like, I was reviewing all that and I noticed that our rules are it only applies to local businesses. You want to speak to that, Clint? I mean, I think on this, it should apply to any hospitality business. I mean, again, the more business, and again, interesting when you, especially when you're talking about like this grease, the easier we make it for restaurants and food services to open. I mean, look at the tax stream you get. You get a bigger water bill. You get H tax. I mean, when you think about what the city gets to keep, property tax, H tax. I guess there is some local option sales tax and water and sewer, so we get, I just think that if we're gonna do this, which I think is a good program, because we can basically almost do it on a rebate of H tax if you wanted to, that they collect. But why wouldn't we apply it to everybody? Well, so I guess the genesis of the program was really geared toward small local businesses and not a large commercial franchise that may be located out near the interstate. It's only capped at 5,000 bucks. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I understand. Let's make them all feel welcome. We seeded it with an initial $100,000 in the fund, and I think, I know Melissa, you've got an update in some of your slides, kind of where we stand and who we've helped, but certainly something we can look at if we wanna broaden that. The initial direction that we had and feedback we were given was to make it more about our smaller local businesses, so that's kind of what we geared it around, and not more of a franchise type establishment, but certainly good comments, and glad to look at it if need be. And I think historically, a lot of the incentives that we've had were to try and do what we could do for our locally owned businesses, because they felt like all of the outsiders were coming in and being treated better than they were. So many of our programs have had an emphasis on being locally owned. I mean, it's not all, but... I'm all for supporting our local businesses, but I'm all for getting as many jobs as we can get here from wherever they come from. And so, again, my recommendation that I'd like to see us do is take the requirement that it be local. I mentioned, again, the company from Greenville that's gonna open five facilities here. I mean, in all candor, it's a sully steamers. They don't have filerators, it's a grease interceptor deal. So, I mean, 50% of their grease capture cost per store is probably 1,500 bucks. I mean, it's probably a total of 15, so it'd be 750. So let's not, I don't wanna make them not feel welcome if they're gonna come in here and create five places and say, well, you can't have that because you're from Greenville. Understood, yes, sir. What I will say too is, and I just lost my train of thought, but I think a lot of these programs are truly incentives for the locally owned because, for instance, that gentleman in Greenville, if he already has five or is bringing five, he clearly has a lot more capacity than our small guys or the little guys. So, giving capacity to franchisees who already have additional capacity is one of those considerations. But those are the things that we look at in determining who really could benefit and use it just for historical perspective. I also just, in the genesis of the program, we saw that more of a national franchise, we didn't have as many issues with them if they were out with a Greenville site, they've kinda got their standards. If it's a fast food establishment, they've got a standard grease trap they're put and they're used to dealing with a lot of regulatory issues with sewer, all the jurisdictions that they work with. And so, we ended up working more with the local folks, redevelopment folks, and that's where we saw the need initially, again, happy to look at growing the program if that's what y'all would prefer. My personally, my recommendation would be, let's move it forward, but let's move it forward and open it up for all restaurants, grease trap. I mean, it's $5,000 cap. I mean, let's just be candid. I think I looked at a Starbucks the other day on Rosewood Drive that was 50,000 bucks or 40,000 bucks. I mean, it's not that it's a meaningful discount to somebody like that, but the fact that we're telling folks, we want everybody to come invest in Columbia. We don't need to just recycle our own capital. We need new capital in here. Let's don't create something that says, oh, you're not from here, so you can't. And again, we keep it in place for our local folks. I mean, Will, you got some thoughts on that? Ms. Herbert. I've shared my local tax base. We like to keep the money local. So you would agree or not agree that we move forward and open it up for everybody. I would agree that we move forward as it's presented. But I think, I mean, we can take that issue to the full council. What do you think? I'm for across the board to promote hospitality development. So the majority of the committee with Ms. Herbert dissenting wants to move this forward and open it to everybody. So councilman, we'll look at some numbers from past and just kind of see and come back to you with, this is the seed money that what we would need. But I would encourage you to do a cost benefit on it. Yes, sir. If you give somebody 5,000 bucks and they generate additional water, sewer, H tax and so forth, I think you're gonna find that you're recapturing that 5,000 and probably less than, on most cases, less than six months. And that's the kind of deal everybody loves to have. And just so we're clear, Chairman Taylor, I'm fine with moving it forward. I think that it's perfectly fine to have that full discussion with the entire council. Because I think we need to move forward. It's budgetary as well, so yeah. It's gonna have to come back to us eventually. Well, again, we had an initial seed of $100,000 from the Water and Sewer Revenue Fund to fund the program. Melissa will give you some updates on kind of how much we've eaten into that. It's time to consider reseeding again and we can take a look at what we might need to reseed it with. West Columbia does this. It's $10,000 and they rebate you. This is where it's interesting. It's a rebate, okay? And they rebate you out of their H tax money that that establishments collects. So if you wanna look at it from a legal perspective, I mean, there is no upfront money then. You take the credit when you're turning your H tax into the city and now you talk about a cost-benefit analysis that swims. There you go. Thank you, sir. Thank you. We talked about Greg. You wanna, Jeff, spend some time just a quick, because we are pushing an hour and we got a couple more things to really do. Tell us what you're working on the business license because I think this is huge. Yes, sir. Starting this past month through in-business license, during the application process. In the past, we had a verification process for both your income, your gross revenues, including bringing in all your tax documents. Also, we had a process in place for verifying that your business personal property tax bill had been paid and it required bringing documentation in. Over the last month's staff is, you still have to tell us that you've done this and you still have to give us the numbers, but we are not requiring all the documents that come in. It has seen a huge, from an efficiency side, it's had a huge impact. We have a new business license director, so she doesn't necessarily know all of the history of business license, but she has said that she has had a lot of complimentary discussion with our customers as they come through. We did have the end of our renewal period just this past month. There were no lines out the door. A lot of staff talks about that as the fact that we're not going through document after document and on all that. Now, it does pose the question of is there an audit process in place for that? And staff does, is working on a process that will include the Department of Revenue just on the verification of those numbers. State law actually does list out the penalties that are in place for that, so if someone chooses to give us false information, there is a penalty in place. Yes, sir, it is. It is 5% per month. So after a year, that's a 60% penalty. So that would have an impact, so I would encourage people to be accurate with their numbers. Mr. Palms, this helps us as we drive towards, and I wanna ask you to pick a day where people can get their initial business license online or everything renewal online. We're talking about sometime in late 22, early 23, then when you think that might happen. Yes, sir. So we're working towards really all of it and also be online through the State Portal and our city's website, but we're also working on being able to handle a new business license online. We have implemented over the last month for our business license application. It is now online and can be downloaded in Adobe format and has all of the, you can now fill out, it's one of the fillable Adobe. So you can put your information on that and you can actually email that into staff and then they will begin the process of it. So that we have just begun. I'll be interested to see how that's working and see if there's any issues that come up with that, but we'll be tracking that as well. Robert, any questions, comments? No, I'd like to hear that progress. And then one last thing along those lines is we're looking at standardizing our, what we charge revenue wise to where we're in line with what the county does. Yes, sir. That will be in relation to manufacturing and I believe retail. The county recognizes gross revenue. They recognize all gross revenue, but then they deduct from that any revenue that's generated outside the state of South Carolina. Currently the city under its current ordinance recognizes all revenue, including revenue that's generated outside the city. Probably less of an impact on us as we don't have the larger manufacturers in the city. So we're looking at making that change to allow that same deduction as the county does. It does say no ordinance changes here on our sheet. That is the one thing that we will need to bring back as an ordinance change and we'll work with legal to bring that to y'all. And you'll give us a fiscal impact on it. Well, yes, we're working on that. So. I know, this is not gonna happen today, but I think what I'd ask the committee to do is say we support these positive changes to the business license program, including matching us to the county, subject to a fiscal impact analysis. And what we're trying to do, the purpose of this is things that cost you more to be here than it does just on the other side of the city limits line is get us more standardized to eliminate any reason somebody has to be in recent county, but not be in the city. It makes us more competitive. Exactly. Yes, I'd agree. Over the years, Ryan and I have probably encountered a business or two that has just outside the city limits for that very reason. Well, for example, and we won't get into all the details today, but there was a major lawsuit by a couple of businesses in the county that sued the county and the city as a time on this. And they settled it. They settled the lawsuit by doing what the county did. But since neither of the companies were actually in the city itself, the city didn't really participate in that settlement. It was RC McIntyre FM manufacturers and I forget who the third one was. And like I said, we just want to make it to where those guys have as much incentive to be in the city. Michael, do you want to know the truth? Be in the city, on the bus line, everything else than to be out in the county somewhere. Because those are some major employers that we just want to be able to, we don't want to lose them because of a technical issue that we have. Any questions? No, I've got a question not on this before we move on to the next presentation. All right, I think that's it on this. Nice, very nice job. I'm sure we can tailor real quick before we move on. You know, I'm really, the water, the Grease Trap Grant program, I would really like for us to look at a structure like West Columbia for a general water fund, general alternative. I'm very curious about the rebate program and how that could work. I know that requires a couple of departments working together, talking together. Well, more than just a couple, probably three or four departments. But I would like to investigate that more to see if that's something that would work in our municipality. I actually prefer that method too. So why don't we kind of redirect what our consensus is going forward is to not take water out of the water and sewer and see if we can make it a rebate program. And what I would suggest is a rebate program to recapture your Grease Interceptor expense 50% of the cost up to, and we can even make it up to 10,000. We can make it transaction sales numbers first. That's what I'll say. But see, now you're not taking any money out of the budget because you're not getting the H tax unless they open to begin with. Well, I can say let's just, I think what our consensus will be is open it up to everybody and look and see if we can do a rebate program on the H tax where then it has, in the house of the state government, they would say it has zero fiscal impact on the city. Today what you're doing has, I would argue you could probably do a cost-benefit analysis and it has no fiscal impact, but it has an upfront cash flow impact. This way, if we can do this, I would say we replace the program, whatever you have set aside in the balance of the water and sewer fund, it goes back into the water and sewer fund and we move forward. What do you think? And you don't have folks saying our local tax dollars being spent. That's right. Absolutely. I'm right. Good. And again, I would say look to take it up to 10. But it's 50%, it's capped at 50% of the cost or 10, whichever is lower. Because I do think we're gonna see more and more interceptors done over time. And you can do a nice interceptor for, I haven't seen them done for 700 bucks. I'm gonna give you 10 grand to reimburse you for a $700 intercept. Excellent point. Good job, Will. Very good. Ms. Wilson, you want to call the next? Absolutely. The Office of Business Opportunities Director. We had lots of great presentations last time and just kind of ran out of time. So Melissa, thank you. Can everyone hear me? Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having me back today. And we did not run out of time this time. So hopefully I will not linger though. It's nice though to hear the discussion about the Business First Initiative because that is really a good leadway into what the Office of Business Opportunities does. And I think, and you'll probably feel the same way after going through this presentation, that our office is committed to supporting those initiatives that benefit our small minority and women-owned businesses. And we do that through three different focus areas, commercial lending, contractor and supplier diversity, technical assistance, education and advocacy. So what we do actually complements a lot of the things that we've been discussing. Just hearing the discussion from last time and today is not just about having our local small businesses opening and new businesses coming into the area, but it's also about retaining them and sustainability. And we do that really, a lot of that is through this effort. So what we do at our office really complements things that are taking place across the city. We have a staff of nine. I know you can't really see that, but hopefully your thoughts in front of you, you can. Spend that much time on that. So we do have, of course, myself, Aisha Driggers, that's here. She's our deputy director. We have our commercial lending arm that's made up of Brett Whiting. As well as Carla Eichelberger. And then we have our compliance team. And they actually help us in administering our different compliance related programs, mentor or protege program, our Columbia Disadvantaged Business Opportunity Program, our local business enterprise program. And then we have our other outlier, which is our grants administrator and our administrative assistant that helps us keep everything in line, make sure that our federal reporting on our grants that we have received is done timely and they're accurate. And that's something that our office is known for, is making sure that we have documents. I often say we have our own archivists at OBO and that person is Tonya Porter-DeBerry. She's here with us today. So just to talk about some of the results and some of our achievements in last year, I'm gonna start talking about our Commercial Revolving Loan Fund programs that are also administered by OBO. We have four different Commercial Revolving Loan Funds that are housed within our department. One is our Columbia, I'm sorry, our Community Development Block Grant Program, which was established in 2011. We have made a total of 20 loans that have been issued to date of which three are currently active. We also have our first Economic Development Administration Legacy Loan Fund that was established in 1988. We have had a total of 113 loans that have been issued from inception to date of which 17 are currently active and we are currently awaiting our defederalization approval from EDA, the Economic Development Administration for these funds. So I mentioned this in a previous presentation. Defederalization will allow us to cut back on the amount of reporting that we are required to do to the federal government. Right now we have to actually report in these grants. Because of our performance, we have an A rating, we've had an A rating since I've been here with this legacy fund. We only are required to report annually, which is great. But with the defederalization, we will not be required to report at all. One of the provisions is that we still operate and utilize these funds under the parameter of EDA in terms of economic development. And when we submitted our defederalization request, it was to really just continue our Commercial Revolving Loan Fund. Another loan that we have within our portfolio is our EDA Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act Fund. This was by invitation of the EDA, by the EDA. Because of our performance with our legacy EDA grant that we have received, today we've actually issued 33 loans during the disbursement period. And we're now in our Revolving Loan Fund period. And those loans were issued between November of 2020 and September of 2021. And that actually was our goal target date to actually have all of those funds dispersed. And we met that goal. Yes, sir. I mean, are you okay with us asking questions? Sure, yes, sir. These are loans, right? Yes, sir. And so when the money gets repaid back in, does it go back into one of these other two funds? No, sir, it goes back into the specific fund that it was made from. And I actually have, and you have it in your previous report that I gave you, the loan balances. Right, I got that. But I mean, I was just curious. So it goes back in. Okay. Yes, sir, but it goes back in. And that's why you see, it might make sense if you look at this, if everybody has a copy of it. So right now, with the second EDA grant that we received, it actually has the lowest fund balance available right now because it has been dispersed out in its very early stages. As money is paid back, we accrue program income on those dollars interests. We're able to make other loans from that same pot of money. So our next one, I do wanna stop. So we did have one of the 33 loans that were issued. It has been paid back in full by one of our women-owned businesses, a couple months of her son who paid it back for. I'm just curious how much the loan was for. It was $25,000. Your average loan amount is just a guess. Usually for this fund, the average loan amount was probably around 75, 50 or 75,000. We're trying to make loans at different ranges, especially for this one because the requirements, EDA had actually weighed a number of the requirements because they're trying to get the money out to help our local businesses immediately. Our next loan fund is actually one that was established through our general fund dollars. And it was established in 2003, a total of 30 loans have been issued from inception to date of which nine are currently active. So something that we're very, very happy about, even with COVID, we were worried initially about our small businesses being able to stay current on the loans that we had issued. But I'm happy to say as of February, we had a total of 61 performing loans that were out there totaling 4.9 million. And our default rate was at zero. Of the 61, we have 21 that are minority on businesses, 20 minority women on businesses, nine non-minority women on businesses, 11 non-minority on and minority participation is currently at 67%. And we have zero write-offs today. Very, very good. Congratulations on that. Thank you, very good. Thank you. And again, I think this goes back to the staff and our ability to, we all like to talk in my office and we love talking to people, probably more than we should, but we love talking to our small businesses and visiting our small businesses. And I think part of this is that we have developed relationships with these small businesses. And because when you have a relationship with someone, they're more willing to pay you back, I think. But also it shows that you care and you're interested in what's going on. You're not just issuing the money and letting it go, but making sure they're aware of our trainings, the technical assistance that we do within our office, but also connecting them with other private sources if they still need funding. This right here is just a snapshot, the return of investment from the dollars that we've lent out into the community of the 15.2 million that we've been able to put out there in the community, it's generated for every dollar that we've lent, it's almost generated $3 and other sources of funding. So we're excited about that. The loans issued, the 196 loans, we're able to create 1,304.5, that's part-time jobs, and retain 426. Any more questions about the commercial revolving loan funds before we move into CRR? No ma'am, you're doing a great job moving through. I apologize, I'm gonna have to go to another meeting at about somewhere around 1138. I'll rush. You're doing a great job. Okay, thank you. And look here, you don't have to explain a whole lot when you say you got 100% performance, I'm just gonna tell you, that kind of says it all. But we work hard, and again, our staff is committed. I'm gonna just talk about CRR a little bit, because I certainly think that this is one area that was certainly aid in our business-first approach. A little code talking. I'm sorry, commercial retention and redevelopment. Thank you ma'am. You're welcome. And that includes our facade program. And I'm sorry, I do forget about these acronyms. I had to go to school with the acronym school at OBO when I first started. But just to give you a brief overview of the history of facade. So we've been doing facade and CRR since 1997. We've had a total of 137 projects. Total public investment of 2.24 million. The majority of that CDBG entitlement funds, 42%. Facade 505, facade general fund dollars, 30%. That's program income dollars to 30%. Then general fund, 15%. And empowerment zone funding, that was done very early on at 13%. Again, this is just an overview of where the funds have been in regards to commercial retention and redevelopment. Making sure that we're improving again. At first it was the exterior improvements. Then right before Tina left, we start doing interior improvements as well. And as of two years ago, 2019, we added a vacancy incentive piece. Vacancy incentive piece. And what is that? So if someone is relocating and they're relocating in a vacant building, you get an extra amount of money because of that. Quick question. Yes, sir. And somebody, is it possible using the CDBG money or in combination of some of these things that in light of what we talked about with our business friendly initiatives? I mean, could you come up with a food service specialty loan program for some of the areas that we've been discussing? And out in North Maine, but just especially. And it may be, and I don't want to get a complicated, but it may be where it's a mezzanine type piece versus the permanent deal. Because if somebody can get a bank and we provide a loan for the equity or say 95% of the equity that's required for the upfit of an existing building or a new building. And you combine that with what Ms. Gentry and Ms. Hampton are talking about where they don't have to build, necessarily have to build a giant parking lot now and the possibility of a bigger grease trap program. I mean, combine it all into one thing. And I mean, we're probably dealing with a store that's less than 7,500 square foot or smaller. It may have to speck it to that because of some of the things we're doing. But I think it would be very interesting to at least, you know, first come first serve if other loans for other businesses came before it, but at least have that thing that was specialized for, and I would encourage you to be thinking in your areas, what are the types of businesses that you need and we may lead with a food services deal. You could have a doctor's office program that came after that, and you start thinking about how do we target certain businesses for our recruiters to go talk to? I mean, it may be that we do a program where we go talk to one of the hospitals here about putting combination pharmacy doctor's office in the area where we have a doctor's desert. In other words, just, and again, and I think a lot of times if it's- That's a great idea. It sounds like the toolkit is one of our former council persons you saw. When you're going out and recruiting, what do you have that you can help? That's right. Well, you know, really, exactly. So anyway, just- I think, I love the idea. I think it's innovative. I think that it certainly will help, especially in your 29203 zip code where you do have the absence of a lot of healthcare, emergency healthcare providers. Well, and let me say in this, I hate to say this, but we're in the middle of this tax property tax study group and see one of the issues we're dealing with with doctors here is if I have a medical practice, if I want to have my own medical practice in 29203, I got to pay commercial property tax. But if my medical practice gets bought by the hospital, they don't have to pay. So, I mean, let's make it, and I'm not so sure, but I suspect the old school doctors that own their own practice are willing to go see Mrs. Jones at home when she can't get to the doctor and feels bad than the guy paid by the hospital. I mean, I don't know if that for a fact or not, but I just think if we can figure out how to track these independent doctors, independent food service folks, and use these programs to do it and be as entrepreneurial as you can be on it, I think it would be a huge deal for us. That's a great idea. We may have, I don't know if we did it before, but we're familiar with that model, but CDBG funds have been used to help with medical facilities. What's the doctor's name? He has Eau Claire. Oh, CTL. But I think Richland County helped him build a facility. Yeah, and let me tell you, you can be as entrepreneurial as you can. I know Dr. Bussells and Councilman McDowell and the administrative committee were talking about medical things. I mean, do we look at the possibility of empowering, I miss talking now, do we find nurse practitioners and do we make the loan to buy the portable medical clinic that's run by nurse practitioners that we can take into some of these communities too? That's a great point. It's interesting that you said that because with our EDA funds, the CARES Act funds that we got, we actually had a doctor that we were able to fund in partnership with a private bank so that he could buy the building, renovate the building and set up his practice and that is in the 292.03 or 04 area, it's off Two Notch Road. And then we had another, we had a set of nurse practitioners that actually launched their business and they're doing very well to the point where they have a contract with Fort Jackson now to do their physicals and they're out on in 292.03. Let's target neighborhoods, okay? I mean, no offense. I mean, we don't need to fund the doctor's office on Divine Street. Oh yeah. You know what I'm saying? We need to put them where they need to. And it was good because we got the desert. And when we got those proposals, it was nice to see that those business owners, those physicians or medical providers saw those locations because they saw a need there. So they saw a gap and they saw the lack of a presence, especially with preventive type of care. So that's why they want to do what they're doing. So you're exactly right. You're exactly right. I think this helps answer the question Melissa has had too, which was something we would have to get direction from council on. If you notice on the program areas, it's been by geographic locations. This sounds like maybe going in a direction, again, it's a city-wide effort, but it's more industry-specific. That's right. So I think that might help answer the question you've been asking too. I would think it was very positive to target the needs of specific areas. Again, we've talked so much about food deserts. And when Dr. Walters sent that note and he goes, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, man. It's doctor deserts. It's dentist deserts. I mean, that opened my eyes to lots of things. And these are programs that I think were very applicable for that. And I think that the desert part is what determines the geographic area because like you said, I work on Divine Street too and we have plenty of everything on Divine, but we don't have everything on North Lane. So doing, creating something that meets the specific need or the things that we're trying to, the gaps that we're trying to fill is great. Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you. That gives us some direction too. One last question, just, and again, on CDBG money, isn't there a program or a way that you make the loan and it gets repaid and it comes back into a general loan fund that's not necessarily subject to the CDBG requirements? That is our, the CDBG for us, the CDBG loan fund that we have, it is administered in accordance with our overall Commercial Revolving Loan Fund plan that Council approves. And that plan is based on the statutory requirements of the federal programs that are the source for the funds. I don't know, and Gloria would be the expert about the CDBG. We don't want to get into that today, but if that's something you think would help you that we should look at, then I think come back to us at a future committee meeting and do that. I know when I was the chairman of JETA, believe it or not, there was all the bad CDBG loans that the Department of Commerce made, they sent over to JETA to administer and there were things that they were able to do which put it into, always had for public loan money, but if that's something that helps you, we can look at it if you're happy with what we're doing. What I can do is look at the research and see if that's something that we can do, especially with the focus of Council right now and leadership to do more of a different approach into how we collectively work with our business community. Okay. Yes, sir. I just wanted to give you an overview. These are just some of the loans that we've made for CRR over the past two years. And again, both have been through CDBG, some of these businesses you're probably familiar with, Loose-Lucy's Hair Designs, Bainback Pinball Lounge. I was hesitant about that one, but then I thought about it and I did some research and it's something that people really do enjoy doing and he's been very busy. And he was one that actually moved into a vacant building as well. So I'll just let you look at those. Some of the more recent ones that we've done, Five Points Chicken and Grill, Gong Chai Crema, which is excellent, that's good. So make sure you come right in. Good for the, I'm a food customer also, and Blue Pisa. And sometimes you'll see the signs out there of where we are. So make sure you stop by some of those businesses. That means that we're working, doing work at those facilities in terms of renovations. CRR is present at those businesses. So just go in and see what's taking place. I know that the mayor stopped by Blue Pisa. He was very excited to see all the work that was taking place there. So going into our SBSF loan program, this was the Small Business Stabilization Forgivable Loan Program that we administered right at the beginning of the pandemic. So this was one-time funding from our general, not general fund dollars, but from Water and Sewer, what do you call it? Enterprise funds. Enterprise funds, yes. I just spent the money. I don't know exactly the source, but I hope I spend it. But this was very, very beneficial and we've gotten a lot of feedback. So these are some of the businesses and types of industries that we're able to fund because of the funding and really to help them stay open. It almost served as just an immediate gap until federal resources were identified and that money start flowing down from the federal government. So this was something that really, really did help our local small businesses. For this award, we made a total of 322 forgivable loans. We awarded 1.398 million. The majority of the funds were spent in District 2. Sorry, District 4 only got 27%. But I always like to say it's because the District 4 is more residential and it's not a lot of businesses that are there in comparison to the other districts. But again, we've had about 78% that have been forgiven. The rest will be forgiven this month. They were given two years to actually spend the funds. What we did not want them to do was duplicate any type of expenses that they were using for PPP or EIDL. So some of them, because of the timelines for EIDL and PPP, we allowed them to spend those funds before they actually start to use our funds. Going back to the FOG program. So we'll go through this program. This has been a very good program. Again, we, OVO, we work across a number of departments. We work with everybody. We call on everybody. Some people think we call on them too much. But we love working with other departments. Columbia Water is someone that we're joined at the hip with. We work with them often. And the FOG program, this is the grease trap program that we assist them with administering through our office. You heard our discussion earlier. We just, while we move past this and you work and we'll, because I would, when you all come back with a recommendation on that, you will decide who's going to administer what we do. And if they're doing this, great job. We have about 69. No need to change the method. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. And we have about 69,000 left in that fund. So I think what I take from that too is we don't need to make a budgetary decision on that. At least we're trying to put more money into that, Clint. Now, not particularly if we're able to change course and do it the other way, no, we wouldn't need to. So in regards to our contractor and supplier diversity program, one thing that the OBO office has been tasked with is implementing the recommendations from our 2006 disparity study. And out of that disparity study, what was found was that minorities, women-owned businesses were very underutilized in certain areas. Construction, architecture, engineering consultants, professional services, goods and supplies, and other services. So what we did was actually created other programs to help increase that participation. The MPP program or the minority, I'm sorry, mentor protege program, the local business enterprise preference policy was created in 2010, MPP in 2008, the Columbia Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program in 2006, and all of these programs are race and gender neutral methods to increase utilization of minority and women business enterprises here in the city. So just some numbers in terms of the mentor protege program, the purpose is to build the capacity and strengthen the number of local firms competing for water and sewer projects. Under this program, protege's team up with mentors for city projects to increase their existing knowledge and capacity in water sewer construction, engineering and professional services, just to give you an idea of the numbers. So construction teams, we've gone from 12 in fiscal year 1920, we're about at 14 teams right now currently to date. Professional services, we had in 1920, we had about 52 different teams and to date we have about 58 teams. In terms of the mentor protege program and total projects, this is really good. Even with the pandemic, we were able to, because of the work of Clint and his team, they really tried to utilize MPP and protege only projects more so that we could still address increasing the capacity of our local firms here in the city of Columbia. And you can see there's a big difference from last fiscal year, or from fiscal year 19 to fiscal year 20, we had a total of 24 projects in 19 and 35 projects in last fiscal year and there was a total of dollars awarded to the protege it also gradually increased. There is a 20% minimum that protege must receive for our traditional MPP projects. So you can look at this, but the revenue and the dollars actually awarded to our protege increased drastically as well as total dollars awarded under our MPP program. The only thing I have to say is clearly the 20% minimum was a good idea because that's what they get, 20%. Without that minimum, it may have been like 2% or 5%. You're exactly right, you're exactly right. And one thing that we did implement since 2018, 2019 was making sure that when there are change orders or contract amendments done that that percentage is being maintained throughout the project. So to make sure that we keep that balance because what we were finding was that as change orders were done or contract amendments were done the protege's were not actually included in that process. So that's another way that we've made sure that we kept the percentage where it is. The local business enterprise program, right now we currently have 162 LBEs, local business enterprises. And I know there's some discussion around maybe changing the parameters there, how we define local. So I would be willing and look forward to that discussion as we move forward with this policy as well. Let me say this too. I think these are really good programs. And since we're gonna be, I'm gonna be at least a little bit rushed and I know I think Ms. Herbert has a 12 o'clock meeting too. What I wanna do at some point in time when we're out of budget season is come back and have a much longer discussion on OBO and how we can develop more minority business participation, more disadvantage. I mean, I just think, I think it's worthy of a meeting just for that one single talk. Because I mean, I'm a huge small business believer and I just, I think the more we can do on this and create more locally small businesses and maybe even task Clint and his crew of being a catalyst for the creation of those small businesses, you know. I mean, I just think it's worth a longer discussion rather than just blowing through these things right now. Yeah, if there's a lot more detail, we would probably need to go into rather than rush through it. And even thinking, and I know some of the things that you've mentioned to me, Mr. Taylor, I mean, we tend to focus because the programs lend themselves to water and sewer and construction, but I know you've mentioned too, the percentages with professional services, are we being consistent if we're gonna have programs, there be percentages attached to some of our more professional services. That's right. And can we take, I mean, again, and I don't want to get into it today, but can we take some of these funds that we have and create almost a city apprentice program where we're getting these young people or whoever, where we're training our future guys that learn how to do water connections and things like that, straight out of high school and stuff. I don't know the answer. We can do that. That's what I was saying. But I think what I'd rather do today instead of asking you to go through this is to create a special meeting. Because what I think the biggest questions to do today going into this thing is to hear the performance of our loan programs and stuff. And you've done a very admirable job of doing that. Thank you. You got any questions? And we're gonna come back to the OBO if you don't mind for a special committee meeting after the budget season. Is that okay with you, Ms. Herbert? That is fine. That's fine. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you. But we certainly look forward to your direction in working with everybody to do some innovative things. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. And I appreciate it. Thank you. Now you had, you want to, we're gonna pass on that today, okay. Very quickly, I just, on the Marion Street High Rise, I mean, if anybody would like a report, Ms. Gentry has given you a written report. I think the message on that is simply the housing authority has put it out for bid now. So it is for sale. Now likely it will be converted to something other. Let me back up. They've taken everybody that was in that building and moved them into new structures somewhere else. Correct. So everybody that lived there got to live in upgrade, correct? Correct. Nobody went, nobody got downgraded. It was a positive, other than moving out of your place you've lived for a long time, it was a positive, it should have been a positive living experience. Right. And what we talked about and the reason this came up is as we began to look at how can we get more people into the downtown of the city center, having a boarded up high rise, ain't good for business. And so our city staff is engaged, will, and this thing is, do we know who it's been listed with? It's just out for public bid right now. They will list it if there's no results from that after two weeks they'll list it. Could I ask you if you would just a memorandum that's selling that business is out for public bid? Anybody, especially you guys, anybody that has an interest in bidding, this is who you need to contact and if you would send that to all the council members so they have that information. Any questions? What's the new zoning on that parcel? The height restriction I guess is on the, if you tore it down, yeah. Well cool, I could say it'd be nice to get another, I mean it won't be, I think most of those units are efficiencies in one bedroom. They are, they're small units. So if it gets converted out to market rate or whatever it'll be, it won't be 156 living units. So it'd be nice to have people walking around down in that area of town again. Last item today is the opportunity to expand the partnership on GroCo. Ryan, Ryan, you got three minutes, talk fast. Yeah. During our last meeting, we kept off with a discussion at the end, I believe Councilman Taylor, you asked about whether we had remaining funding left in the economic development budget under special allocations, which we do. We've got about 100,000 left here in the current year. And I've been talking with Chris Hively and Joe Queen about what the Build the Fort and GroCo partnership looks like going forward. And if the city wanted to enhance our support of that, what would that look like? Where would they be interested in seeing us support them? They've got a couple of different alternatives that they've provided. Basically they said, listen, you just tell us how the city wants to give us the money and what for and we will use it in accordance with that and move it around. But the main thing that they've asked for is they are beginning a new program called Builders and Backers, which is an accelerator program and it's for small businesses. And it cost about $5,000 per business to run through the cohort. They said, if we were willing to give them that funding that, you know, they would take whatever the allocation would be and would run as many businesses as they could through that through 5,000. Who's funded them to date? Or? The whole thing, who's funded that? We have, Richland County has, SCRA has provided some support. Do you know how much the total funding has been today? It's a pretty good number, isn't it? Well, you have to separate the Build the Fort work, which has really happened in the past year versus GroCo, which started three years ago. But Hiveley's work has probably been around 70 to $80,000. Ms. Wilson, your opinion is meaningful on this. Let me add, I don't know if y'all have looked at the Degum General Assembly's appropriation. But it looks like they're gonna get $25 million computer. Yep. Now the question is, where's that computer gonna go? Because my understanding is that computer is driven off of these two gentlemen's efforts. You agree with that? Yes, sir. I know you got a building that's got a computer room. And what I'm saying is, if that computer thing is gonna happen, one of the things we wanna make sure of is that the people of Columbia have access to that computer. I'm sometimes I worry if computers landed institutions of higher education or other state agencies, will our folks do that? But they were effective enough to get a $25 million deal. And I think I have heard, I don't think that's confidential, but I mean, the Boyd Foundation is looking at a fairly significant deal. And what they're looking for, what I was told was some gap money to get them from here to the Boyd Foundation. And if that's the case, I mean, I would like to recommend that we grant them $20,000. You say you got a hundred left? Yes, sir. I mean, I would be willing to grant them $20,000 a month. And monthly for basically retroactive for May, June, or either make it for June, July, and August. And then reevaluate where they are and see what the deal is with this computer before we do anything else. I mean, I think they've generated more buzz in the business community than anything I've seen in quite a long time. What do you think, Ryan? I mean, is the work that they're doing as worthwhile as it seems to be? Yes, sir, I think when they came in and we really started looking at the ecosystem here in Columbia, we have entrepreneurship, but it wasn't really being driven by technology. I mean, we have people that have been starting businesses. This is really meant to kind of tap in and mine that talent at our local universities. And that's all of our universities. And put those kids in a position where they can come out and start a technology oriented business right out of college. We need more of that high growth, high wage paying, really cutting edge type jobs here. And we've just have not been seeing it. And the participant, I mean, the couple of three or four things I've been to, it seems as men and women, all races, I mean, it's a broad thing. It's not all one or another. It's across the board. I mean, it's the first thing I've seen that is Columbia centric, not institution centric. Institution centric, if I don't want to get myself or anybody else in trouble. I mean, I'm gonna yield to whatever you would recommend, but I really would like to do something that shows that this is something that we're committed to doing here. Well, I think based off the level of discussions that we've had and trying to move forward with some clear direction on how whatever additional funds we have should be utilized, getting away from just any and every grant, any and every entity that says they do economic development in quotes versus moving towards something transformational, Columbia centric. It has something that is moving the mission forward as you all are describing it, pro-city, business first activities, growing our base. Then it certainly is in line with that. So I just would love for this to be the first example. If that is what the council is going to support versus a pool of funds out there that really has it, in my opinion, had the direct tie to things that should have been truly moving us forward. And this seems to meet that expectation. Yes, Ms. Wilson Chairman, I agree completely the, however we can help along creating our innovation economy here and connecting that bridge of talent to small businesses, I think we should fund that. So I am very, I'm excited to hear that that is something that's floating out there for us to participate in, not just participate, let's own it with Richland County. Let's make it, that's our contribution on connecting the talents from our wonderful technical schools, our colleges to these small businesses, which as we know grow into bigger businesses and affect all communities, all hospitality districts eventually. So I think that's the path forward Chairman. Ms. Harvard. You know, although I'm technology challenged, I'm all into disruptive technology and making sure that we keep our young folks who are interested here and they think that they can be viable here. So I don't know what that may look like but I also like disruptive technology and transform a little stuff. I mean, I really do. So I'd like, I'm very supportive of the concept and would like to hear more about what we can do and what role we can play. On the grant role, we'd be willing to do $20,000 a month for June, July and August. I just, on these things like this, I would rather do them in increments to where if it, if we don't, if it ain't working, we're not, we're not stopping. I would say Jeff, we would probably want to not pay it in arrears, but pay the first on the 1st of June, June, you know, Mr. Brennan, you were gonna say something? No, and just back to, I'm always harping to Ms. Wilson on metrics. What, what are we, what are our, what do we want to see from this? Did we meet them? I think we're still in such a infancy stage with this to label what the metrics are. I don't know yet because a lot of it's gonna depend on what happens when they come back for signing down to that computer. If they get a $25 million computer, the metrics that we're gonna expect are gonna do this. You know what I'm saying? We'll go ahead and draft a letter and tell them where we're on board now. Yeah, if they, if they, in other words, if they get a $25 million computer, the metrics we're gonna expect are gonna be greater than what we expect from bearing the railroad tracks. And then we can always ask them to say, if you know, if this, if we give you this investment, what will it help you do? So here's a great point. All right, are we comfortable with making a recommendation that we do a $60,000 grant for June, July, and August $20,000 a month, move that to council? Consensus, consensus? Consensus. Okay, now here's the only thing I would tell you, reserve that, in other words, that's a $60,000 fiscal 22 grant that's gonna be dispersed, some in fiscal 23. It's not fiscal 23 money. Okay? Yes, sir. And let me just, I want to end on this and I, and I want to thank everybody for coming today. This was, this is the kind of meeting that I think, I mean, it just, I mean, we move, this is moving stuff forward, I mean, and I want to, I really appreciate everybody's input on these type things. I think this may have been where you were headed. At our next committee meeting, and I'm happy to do it in June, I'd like to do the OBO, and if it helps you for the budget, I'd like for us to review what we pay into these various economic development alliances, if we pay anything into them. Because I mean, I have to tell you, I'm not so sure that we are not better served to control our own destiny. I mean, I mean, Central Carolina is one thing, but they don't, they look here. They have no interest in urban recruiting. If the I-77 alliance still exists, I don't know if we've ever gotten anything out of that. Yeah, we've never participated. Okay, I can say it. Like I said, I think we should just look at these things and I'm just, you know, with some discussions that we've had on recruiters and project management and interns at USC, I have no interest in being taken on a junket by an economic development alliance. And I think that's what I see a lot of that money going to, not so much here in Columbia and other places. I just would rather see us control our own destiny and with any of those funds that we may have been spending before. Okay. Mr. Taylor, you all may talk about this when you give your report out to all of council. I know the business spurs, pro-city initiatives that we started the meeting off with, many are ready, as you said, to move forward. Are you looking to announce any of that? Today at council, here's what I would like to do. Today at council, anything that's coming down the road that we're not willing to institute today, I don't wanna announce it. Okay? I don't know words. If we have to have an ordinance change on that expansion fee, let's don't stop everything in its tracks for somebody to wait on that. Okay? And then what I'd like to do, if we're willing to, is once, let's get past today, what I'd like to say, we had a meeting, we talked about a lot of things that will help small business growth, help our distressed neighborhood, perhaps grow, da da da da da, and anything else like moving this grant forward and stuff like that. Towards the end of the month, and I don't know, I mean, in the next two weeks, then what I'd like to do is, in all honesty, I'd love to do it on North Main Street at someplace like the War Mouth for a breakfast, invite all the commercial realtors and developers to come join us for breakfast, very similar to what we did in 5.7 years ago, and Will, Ms. Harbert, and the mayor there, and of course, our key city staff that are involved and make it a public announcement, the game on, we're ready to grow downtown, ready to grow in our corridors, all corridors. This is a program that applies to everybody in the city. I mean, if it has to roll into June, it has to roll into June. I just wanted to make sure, because we had talked about it in the meantime. Would you be agreeable to something like that? I would be agreeable with something like that. Okay, Mr. Brennan? I'm agreeable for Councilwoman Harbert to be the keynote speaker for that. Maybe you are not, absolutely not. Especially as we tell every business in Columbia, if you want to see Ms. Harbert, save a parking place in front of you. I will say War Mouth is a OVO loan. They're one of our loan participants. That's right. Oh, that'd be great, yeah. Thank y'all so much, great meeting. Really good, thank y'all.