Jenna Greathouse, if you would like to go to the microphone and do your thing. I'm not sure I like being put under the, would you call it, the starting gun. I don't know about that. But I'm Jenna. Everybody, I hope everybody knows me, but maybe not everybody, maybe Jeff. I haven't met you yet. I'm Jenna. It's good to meet you. We presented our quarterly report, as was noted, on January 7th. But what we thought we'd do today, that was just our written report to let you know where we are in terms of our numbers. If anybody has specific questions about that report, I'm happy to answer them. But for you guys, we did do something special today. So we put together a presentation with year-end, some year-end statistics. That's calendar year, but I thought it might be helpful if we could put that presentation up. And I'm going to ask Bob Quick, our CEO, to come up and make that presentation. But let me open it up to questions first, if anybody has any. And you all, you have the presentation, and you've got the quarterly report, too, but I think we're going to be able to hopefully put it up on the screen. Okay, here we go. Hi, Bob. My name is Bob Quick. I'm with Commerce Lexington. And as Jenna pointed out, we'd like to go through our year in review, and that's looking at 2011, the calendar year, and kind of showing you the complete picture. So in 2011, the partnership, and I want to emphasize again, the Bluegrass Business Development Partnership, that's Lexington Fayette, Urban County Government, it's University of Kentucky, and it's Commerce Lexington. And in all of our efforts, the economic outcomes that we focused on produced 1,290 new jobs. And I'm going to go through and highlight some of those companies with an average wage of $52,201. So $133 million in new capital investment. And then above that is you'll see the postcards. I was one of those maybe a little bit skeptical about how important the brand was as far as keeping people out front with images. And I've become totally sold on how effective that really is, and that's the image that people see and understand our region to be, Lexington to be. The second slide, it talks about our project leads, our goals versus our actual, actual versus goal, existing business visits and site visits. And then what we've tried to do, and you've got a handout there to look at it if the numbers are hard to interpret, especially in some of the colored sections, but it breaks down on the recruitment projects the type of projects we look at. So you can see there's quite a great diversity of different project leads here. The next slide shows existing business projects broken down. And then the startup projects. Thank you. with call center or anything like that. That's not what they do. They are that piece of a company that when you do business with, let's say it's in satellite or cable TV, Internet, when you call into a company, you may be dealing directly here in Lexington with AllConnect. So they are the front edge, very highly professionally trained folks. 220 new jobs, over $24,000 average wage, nearly a $2 million investment. We had the corporate CEO in, and I want to emphasize, when those folks are in town, we do everything we can to connect with them, talk with them, and start that relationship or continue that relationship on because we want more jobs down the road. And this gentleman here was absolutely phenomenal, CEO of All Connect. Florida Tile moved its U.S. headquarters from Lakeland, Florida, to Lexington. It has a manufacturing plant for tile production in Anderson County. So it was a natural fit here, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion that it was going to be Lexington. And again, working with our other partner that I didn't mention earlier, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Economic Development Cabinet, we were able to convince them that this is the spot. Again, average wage, $47.5 million, $1.8 million investment. More news. SIS, you really feel good about these. It's a locally homegrown company. They are a solutions, internet technology solutions company. And they added 15 new jobs, 80,000 average wage, 5.5 million investment. This is something that tells you that the community is doing a lot of the right things when we can grow our own here and have this kind of success. once again i i told the story the other day that when i was much much younger your existing companies you just always expected they were going to be there forever and the thing that we've learned today is don't ever take that for granted we want to work very closely and here's one ashland And Valvoline has a strong presence here in the market. Again, they've made a major expansion. But what's unique about this is this could have been in Ohio. And again, with state incentives and local participation, those 40 new jobs, 80,000 a job are right here. CMX text, it's just what it is. It's a texting company where they have added 135 new jobs and average wage, nearly $40,000, but a $4.3 million investment. A mobile marketing company, I'm sorry. A&W, you've all read and seen Long John Silver. A&W broke away from Yum, and we feel very fortunate to get the A&W headquarters here in Lexington, and that's progressing 1.8, nearly two main investment, 72, 73,000 average wage, 30 new jobs. Lockheed Martin. Lockheed, as you know, is the logistics company out at Bluegrass Station. it's logistic support services they're adding 224 new jobs nearly 40,000 average wage 26 million dollar investment frog dice if you're addicted to gaming on your phone it may be one of those frog dice games you're playing video gamer phenomenal seven new jobs 49,000 average wage transposagen company that's been here a growing company small but it's been growing 21 new jobs 45 49 000 average wage again another high-tech firm here in town tempurpedic their global headquarters is being built at a cold stream everybody in the world wanted them and i think it's a great testament again as they went through the due diligence and were looking at where they wanted to put their investment or expand their investment, once again they chose Central Kentucky. And again, it goes back to the cooperation of everybody pulling together, working together from state to local and public and private sectors. But you can see this 17, $17 million investment, $72.5 average wage, 65 new jobs. And it will be a great entrance out as people come by our front door off the interstate. GE Lighting, they expanded their manufacturing facility with an energy efficiency lighting product. And this is very significant. They had two plants here, one they shuttered. This one that they put this investment in, that's big news for us because that means that plant is going to be building their new front line and gives us some needed jobs here that we'll be producing for years to come. And I think Tiffany and Connie probably got a lot of play, not just here locally but nationally, and I'm sure internationally. They are a well-known company, added 125 new jobs, roughly 39 for average wage, $2.5 million investment and a nice investment out in the business park. But they've gotten an awful lot of attention. They have a very visible product that a lot of people like. And I just want to point out that Tiffany & Company is the company we often talk about. Vice Mayor, when you went through our little economic development exercise, and we had a, I think we called it Project Craftsman, that mirrors Tiffany & Company with the fact that we didn't know who we were working with for many, many, many months. And when they did come to visit with us, they wanted to get to know us on a personal level. Don't talk business, just talk who we are. And that's what sold them. That was what got our foot in the door above four other cities that were much, much larger than we are. And then the economic development team sold them on the jobs we're here, and we had the jobs and we could train them. Neogen Corporation, I remember the day we went out because they had to announce to us in 2004 that they were probably going to be pulling out of Lexington, and it was the link that Jen and her team put together between the University of Kentucky and Neogen. It's an animal bioscience company. Their animal safety division is here. and they renewed that connection. But since that time, instead of shutting down Lexington and moving out, they've now shut down two other facilities, one in Baltimore and one in Chicago, and moved that here. So here are 75 new jobs, $42,000 average wage, $5.6 million investment. Shatterbox, a branding and kind of a full service company with new media design. Added 15 new jobs, again, a technology company, $60,000 average wage, nearly a million in investment. We also wanted to show you some trends we're coming across and we're seeing. I know that Dr. Trotsky has talked about how the GDP in 2010 is at pre-recession levels. Obviously, the employment numbers are not. So we put together a little chart here where we're starting to see actually that drop in our market. We did a 2010-2011 comparison of September, October, November months, and you can see the steady decline there. And we're all hoping, like everybody else, that that will become a lot more new employment. we have seen increased project activity already in 2012 we've got we've had three site visits and very strong visits so i mean that's that's another good new trend and also we've noticed on our job portal that the numbers are down and we're taking that right now until something shows us otherwise indicating that people are starting to find jobs and are not searching but we'll know in the next few months what that trend means. So we put all the different companies up here from Lockheed, Marmot. Bapcock and Wilcox is a defense contractor. Ethrim does a lot of advanced research in the health care area. But we put all those companies up, their investment, jobs announced, an average wage. And at the bottom of this slide, I just want to point out Lexington Venture Club, that was from our 2010 investment of these companies. Our technology company has got over $65 million in investment in a variety of sources, public-private funds. And that sector, those that we can measure, that was 154 new jobs announced, average wage is 63. So that cluster is forming and building, and each year it keeps getting better and more robust. And here is an ad, I hope, that we can get that done. I don't know how to work this. It's a little ad we had on NDC. That's what it looks like. Ah, okay. No, it's not in. Okay, I didn't know if that will come off on our. Yeah, thank you. Okay. All right, see you there. Okay, we have a little video, the very 15-second piece on our rankings that we showed during the fall meet of Keeneland. If we can't, we can, I think, get your copy of that. It's a pretty neat little piece that brings together our key rankings. Any questions based on that real quick rundown? I would just say, in general, we've had, again, some of our better years and some of the toughest times. Now, you've got to say that. It's all relative to somebody who doesn't have a job. It doesn't feel good still to them. It doesn't make us any less aggressive. As a matter of fact, I think with our success in some of these projects, it gives us more to sell, more to tell people about. I had a gentleman from the U.S. Department of Commerce in the other day that's been transitioned to Nashville, and he drives through communities larger and smaller than us and many in between. And he just said the feel when you get to Lexington is vastly different. You don't have the same negative feeling you have of shuttered office complexes and buildings. He goes, it really grabs your attention coming in. And I think that's a testament of how the community collectively is working and working together. Okay, we have at least one individual that has a question. Kevin Stennett. Thank you, Chair. Bob, thank you for coming today and giving us an update, and I appreciate the success story from last year. You know, it's definitely a step given the economy and the time in the right direction. Just curious, as you analyze those 1,200 jobs and those different companies that have invested in our community here, do you all track or have we been able to find out why they picked Lexington? Because, you know, whether it be a personal relationship or whether it be tax incentives, do we know why each of those chose Lexington? You know, you may be by far the better. It's a variety of reasons. You know, I mean, incentives play a huge role in it for the companies that take advantage of incentives. Not all of them have. So some of the ones on the list did not, frankly, have to use incentives. But incentives play a big factor for us. We competed with Ohio for Tempur-Pedic, A&W, and one other company. I can't remember which one. And our incentives that the state offered were better here than Ohio had. but you just need to know that we're consistently competing with other states. So incentives were the main reason why people chose Lexington? Yes, on those three companies very specifically. When we come down here, maybe I don't need to be this close, when we come down here with our clients and request approval for the local occupational license fee, that's an opportunity for them to come down here and let you know how important it is to give up that 1%. Bill, and I ask this because we're constantly touting Lexington as having an educated workforce, but yet we see an article a couple weeks ago, a company won't come here because they don't feel they can attract enough people to work in their company. We hear it's about somebody they knew in Lexington, that's why they came here. Or we hear in your case that, as you pointed out, sometimes it's not tax incentives. That's not really a reason why they choose Lexington. They choose it because of where it's located, the interstate. So I'm just trying to pinpoint really where is our best sell at and what are we really trying to sell as we promote Lexington, why are people choosing us? I think it's hard to pinpoint, but I think the big thing for me, and this is what one of my big sales is, is our educated workforce. I mean, almost 40% of us have a college degree or greater, almost 40% of us 25 and older. So I think that is a big selling pitch. And frankly, most companies don't know that when they come to Lexington. They don't realize how educated we were. So that's when we're out there meeting with companies and clients and consultants in different cities, That's what we sell. We sell our location, we sell our incentives, and we sell our workforce. So we're very fortunate to have 75,000 students within 35 miles of Lexington. But when you see jobs up there, our biggest category is, I think, manufacturing last year and the biggest bulk of the jobs were there. How important is an educated workforce to a manufacturer like a Tempur-Pedic of that nature, of the first group, they all connect? Tempur-Pedic is not manufacturing. It's a world headquarters. You don't put them in the manufacturing category? No, not for us. No, they're not. I was going by the pie chart who was in there. But, again, how important is the educated workforce to those kind of people who we seem to want to go after manufacturing jobs? Well, manufacturing jobs are critical to our community. They have the most indirect and direct spinoff jobs that come because of them. They have the largest multiplier, economic multiplier. So if we were to break down manufacturing jobs, and you look at our Paul Coombs, the economic impact reports we do, that's where the largest multiplier is. To recruit a manufacturing company causes the most indirect and induced. So manufacturing jobs are key. Yeah, I'm just trying to help us understand what our sale is to people. And if we could start, as a new company does come here, ask them, point one, why did you choose Lexington? And let's start charting that because I think you'll find our story is a good one to tell, but we need to know what words to put in that story in order to get other businesses in the future. And, again, it may not fit every mold, but I think the majority of people do come to Lexington for the workforce. Is it quality of life, things like that, and that would help us do our job better. Okay. Do we need to develop better? I'm happy to do it. We can break it down, and as the companies are improved for incentives or as we have an announcement, I can have them come down here and talk to you all as well. Yeah, about why they chose our city. Thank you. Happy to do it. Thank you, Chair. If anybody doesn't have any other questions, I want to make sure you guys have some dates on your calendar. I think you probably have them, but I guess I should wait until anybody has any more questions. We've got one other person. Vice Mayor Gorton would like to ask a question or two. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Tom Blue's first. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. and thank you, Jenna and Bob, for this report. When companies come to town to set up corporate headquarters, Tempur-Pedic, for example, and they move to the Coldstream campus, all Connect is out there. I suspect that almost all of these, if not all, are out in our suburban areas. Do we try to recruit new business to downtown? And to the extent that we do, what are the constraints on that? I realize, of course, it's going to be more difficult in certain ways to do that, but I'm interested in what we might do more to get more businesses, more corporate headquarters downtown in the heart of the city. Do you want me to do that? I can take it. We try. We don't recommend sites, so we ask them first, what your needs would be. And usually they'll give us a square footage or we want to be in a campus type setting or I need an available building of a certain size. If they don't have those needs, then we'll ask them. Okay, so give us a little bit what you're looking for. So if they want to be in a downtown or if they just need 25,000 square feet, we'll put together a list of all those 25,000 square foot properties. So I think once you get them down here and they get a look and they get a feel for it, you know, it's an easier sell. You have to get them here to get them to see it. But we don't push somebody one direction or the other. We want them to come to that conclusion on their own. You know, we'd love to see them downtown, but they need to be where they can do business the best that they can. Right, I certainly agree with that. And you've done a great job of bringing people here and helping them be at a location which works best for them. But I'm sort of hoping that we can learn more about what we can do to make downtown a more attractive place for certain businesses. Not all we want and could be downtown. But if there are things that we can do better in our downtown area to bring folks here to work, to build, then it would be great if we could. Parking sometimes is a perception, but parking is a need that we run across when we have large companies that have big staffs that might all be on one shift. So parking can be an issue. Their employees either have to pay or we have to find a spot for them. So that is generally the concern we hear from companies of reason why it doesn't work, where they can't find huge pockets of space. So if you need a 200,000-square-foot space, it's just not in downtown. There's some space in several buildings, but it's not always on one floor. It's not always contiguous. So it's just varied. Thank you. That's helpful. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Did you have one? Something else, Jenna? I just wanted to make sure that you all had dates, and I think she got them. But tomorrow is the legislative reception, the evening in the bluegrass, and it is at Buffalo Trace. If you can come, it's free. and we'll be networking with our legislative delegation to help further Lexington and Frankfurt. On the 19th is Pamela Troutner's Business and Education Network's annual meeting. It's a great meeting to come to. It's at Locust Trace Agri-Science Farm. If you guys haven't been out there, you need to go. If you can just RSVP, there's no charge on that one. The Lexington Venture Club's annual celebration of entrepreneurs, February 1st at Buster's. It's a lot of fun. I encourage you to come down there and hobnob with our key entrepreneurs and investors, frankly. And then our annual dinner comes up February 9th from 5.30 to 8.30 at the Lexington Center, and we do need an RSVP. So if anybody wants to RSVP to me or you can RSVP to our list, this is the RSVPs and things are in the report. But you can always call me if you need me. It's in the report I submitted on the 7th. It's on page 2 of your packet that you were distributed last Thursday. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hope Willie will restart my time. Thank you, Jenna and Bob, very much. This is a real helpful format to see these companies that have come. And I had a couple questions on the second slide, under the recruitment projects, the pie chart. Can you tell me what different kinds of companies might be included in bio? Lots of times those are University of Kentucky-related projects. So if we've got researchers over there who need help starting a business, they're oftentimes biotech companies. We have a program we're doing right now to recruit SBIR, STTR recipients to Kentucky, and we have a special incentive to those types of companies that look at Lexington. And that's small business innovation research grants or small technology tech transfer grants. And those generally, for us, fall under the biotech category for us. So we're recruiting them from outside. In the beginning of October, we sent an email to all the nationwide recipients of the SBIR grants and we're receiving a lot of great feedback from it. We sent a second one on Friday, and I've gotten four phone calls already. So it just varies. Okay. Where would you put Neogen? Neogen would fall under bio. Okay. And you kind of touched on my second question, which is what are the different ways that companies get in touch with you, or how do you initiate or do they initiate a contact? It's a little bit of, well, there's threefold for us. So we do outreach right now. We call on consultants in a variety of different cities, so we'll set up one-on-one meetings with consultants. Kimberly's leaving Saturday, Sunday, to go to an event in Florida with 27 different consultants, so she'll be with them one-on-one. We do trade shows and special events. We, Kevin, Adkins, and Kimberly, and Tyrone went to Detroit back in October, and we called on the headquarters of companies. So Wobasto Roof Systems is here. We went and visited with Wobasto up there. But also while we were in Detroit, we met with potential leads that we found through a market research firm. So we picked a targeted industry, and we have a market research partner that we pay to help us find some of these leads. So we're actually out there doing proactive marketing, direct mail. We've got a great website. We do a quarterly e-news to consultants and clients that we've already made relationships with. Am I missing anything, Kimberly? And they come to us directly also. And, again, the Economic Development Cabinet helps us with our leads too, so we try to keep up good relationships with them. Okay. And then my final question or comment was Bob mentioned the very first slide and the different photos and how they're representative of our community. And three of them are, I would say, either agricultural-related or farm-related or countryside. It looks like a horse farm, a vineyard, and then I'm not sure what the other one is, but nowhere in here or in the packet did you mention agriculture. So I was curious about, I mean, we can't increase the land in Fayette County, but there are a lot of jobs that are related to agriculture, and we just had that really good report of the increase in farm cash receipts from last year. And so I wondered if very many agriculture-related businesses contact you or if you go after that segment or how you approach that, since it is kind of our signature. but it doesn't seem to relate too much to the new jobs or the report. Some of them actually are. I would say they're more on the equine side of things. So we right now are working with two small companies that are equine-related, two of the companies that are located over the past two years. If you remember Orthopedics, Orthopedics was a medical device company. The way I described it back then was they have a goo that they put in your back. So if you're having spinal problems, this goo kind of helps with the pain. So this is the best way for me to describe it. Well, when they got here, they found that there may be some applications in the equine industry. So they've started another company called Equinext. And Equinext is one of our venture club companies this year. So they came here from Austin, Texas, and have subsequently spun off another company. So we're seeing those types. And you might see those equine projects fall under bio. So you'll see them too. So it's just not necessarily pied out. So it fits under one of these. But we track now. We keep a list of our active projects, and we track where they fall. So we have seven strategic targets, and we'll know the companies that we work with where they fell into those targets. Okay, very good. Thank you very much for your information. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Chair. Gina, thank you for the presentation, you and Bob. And I just had a couple of questions about during the recession. Do you have any way of knowing how many jobs that were lost, and at where are we in a recovery? I personally can't tell you where we are in the recovery. I think that's a better question for Ken Trosky. We keep a list of companies that we know laid people off. So if it was announced, and if any time someone lays off 100 jobs, they have to do something, I think it's called a WARN. A WARN thing. Kevin, you might know more about this. So if there's going to be a 100-job layoff, they have to let the city know in advance. So we know those. We see them in the paper, and we have tracked those. But it's very difficult to know those one and two jobs that, you know, with the equine industry being down, you may not realize that there are marketing firms out there that develop ads and place ads in the blood horse. Or the blood horse. That's right. You know, you just don't realize where those small one and two jobs are affected, or five and ten jobs in larger firms. but they don't know what they won't tell us you know i mean we can track from year to year when we do an existing business visit and we can see okay well in 2010 they had 102 employees in 2011 on our visit they may have had 105 or you know worse 95 so we can see that but it doesn't necessarily mean we you know when we go in those meetings we're going in with confidential nature But Kevin goes on a lot of the companies, and he meets with those as well. Yeah, I was just curious, because it seems that most that I've heard were in small numbers, but over numerous companies, so it really adds up. But as far as impacting an entire company and it moving out, I didn't hear a lot about that. We did see a few. We lost one of the GE lighting plants. I'm not sure if that was so much the economy as it was trying to be a greener company and not meeting the use for the old light bulbs. Lots of retail. You remember Hamburg looked a lot smaller. Some of those jobs have been replaced with different companies. Help me. We keep a list. So I've got this running list of companies, and I'd be happy to email it to all of you. I'm not sure if I sent it this month or not. GE was the biggest. Lots of retail were the big ones. Okay. And then I know that economic development is like working a puzzle, so you have to match our employer, what their needs with the employees and so forth. But I was just curious, if you target manufacturing, for instance, if there's 40% Lexington residents with at least a degree, a bachelor's, then there's 60% without one, correct? Or they may have an associate's. But, yeah, we're targeting all kinds of jobs. I feel firmly that you have to take care of everybody. Right. And I guess I just wasn't sure if that's one thing you take into consideration is the matching of what we have to offer as far as employees with the employer's needs. We do. We sure do. Good. We could give you a sample agenda. We've had three client visits in 15 days, which is pretty good. One client was here last week. We put a full agenda from the morning if their company, and I'm just making this up so this is hypothetical, if it was a manufacturing company, we would give them existing business interviews and set them up to meet with three other manufacturers. We'd have them meet with employment agencies. We'd show them the sites and buildings, hopefully have lunch with business leaders, meeting with the mayor or council members, meet with the University of Kentucky and the Center for Manufacturing Systems. It really depends on what the client wants, so we try and tailor it to what they might need. Good. Because I would be curious, I guess, to look at the unemployment roles, those that are still receiving unemployment, what their skill levels are, what their education levels are, that sort of thing. But I would just be curious to look at that. But thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you all. Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you guys for the presentation. I have a few comments, but I have a particular question. What role does our business here in local government play in the recruitment that you guys carry on when you're trying to invite folks to come to our community? Just the role of local government in economic development, whether it's LFUCG or City Hall at competing cities, What are some of the things that the interested businesses may ask of you guys that may directly or indirectly impact their decision to do business in our community? What are the fees that they might encounter when they come here? You know, how much their taxes are, their tax base. We work very closely. Kevin's always at the table with us when a client's in town. Last week, Chief Administrative Officer Richard Maloney sat down with us on a client to help us answer some questions regarding permitting. They help us with zoning issues. Your planning and zoning is always an integral part, particularly when we have a company that needs to build and how long it will take to get your permits and get ready to break ground. So city government plays a big role. And for us, one of our selling pitches is we're a merged city-county government, and thus you don't have twice the red tape. You just have one process to go through, and I think it makes a big difference. So some of those things that you just mentioned, and thank you for those responses, perhaps are some of the things that naturally may directly impact their bottom line. But have there been conversations, whether formal or informal, because there's so much more that we do at local government, that may impact the quality of life for the employees that may come with that business, public safety, crime, and other things. Just from you guys' experience, do those things play in as well? They do. Crime rates has been a consistent question for us. So, you know, I mean, I'm just trying to think of other things very specific. Parks and Recreation is a big one. Quality of life. Sorry, the most important schools in our school districts. This is a part of when people talk about our downtowns, Councilman Blues. They want to know that we have a lot of activities for their employees, and they like to see a vibrant downtown. I'm trying to think of others. Lots of questions on the neighborhoods. Okay. And I appreciate that. And I guess, and this may be an exercise that this council prior to my service has engaged upon, but if there are ways that perhaps the chamber that you guys could advise of things that we may do to enhance the ability to not only bring people here, but also to retain those members that are already working with the chamber, I think would be great. I think that we should understand is we already do that. We're competing against other city halls and other governmental agencies that are working just as hard to bring folks here. So I look forward to working with you guys to know more of how we can do that. Secondly is also the retention, and this presentation on the recruitment is great, but can you guys give us a sense of retention, how businesses here locally are managing, not necessarily in jobs lost or those quantifiable things, but I'm certain that you guys not only work just to recruit new businesses, but you work really hard to keep those here. If you could speak just briefly on the roles. If you look at the second slide, we do, well, this year we did 152 existing business visits. Some of you guys went on those trips with Kelly Kane and occasionally Kevin. We call on 150 companies a year, ones that we know can, big and small, but ones we know that can make an impact on our community if they did leave or if they did downsize or if they did grow. So not only are we out there calling on new companies, it's just as important, if not more important, to keep the ones we have. So we're out on the streets every day. I'd love to have anybody go if you want to participate in it. We were calling them council district days. But if you just want to go on an existing business visit that's not in your district, we'd be happy to take you on those, too. The companies like to hear from you guys, too. And, General, just the last question I have for just less than a minute to go is in regards to minority and disadvantaged business development. I know you guys have worked really closely on that. and we passed a policy that I guess is about 20 years old now, that we're continuing to strive as a government to improve in that area. In 30 seconds, would you like to just give a quick update on how that has hopefully flourished in calendar year 2011 from the Chamber's standpoint? I can tell you Tyrone Tyra, our senior project manager for minority and community business development, he works tirelessly on small companies but particularly with minority businesses. Not counted in that existing business visit, Tyrone calls on 50 minority businesses a year to try and help them. The issues there are more along the lines of access to capital to help them grow. So you may have heard of our access loan program. That's kind of our little lending tree in Lexington. We've got a committee of about 15 banks. We prepare those companies, get them ready to go make a pitch to try and help them find access to capital. So, yes, we're a firm advocate of minority business and helping them grow and succeed. And oftentimes we have companies that very specifically want to know that we're doing that. Thank you, Jenna. Thank you for the report. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lane? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome. How are you? Good. Thank you. Good. I just had a couple of questions. The Bucks for Brains program, which is tied in, I think, greatly with the universities, but it helps in recruiting research companies and researchers to our city, is coming up for consideration over in the General Assembly. How actively is the Chamber addressing that particular legislation, and do you have any thoughts on that? I better let Bob ask that one. I'm not actively involved in public policy. I know the Bucks for Brains is working because I was with a client Saturday, and we were at the Gluck Equine Research Center. And one of the doctors over there that we met with brought a division here, and he referred to himself as a Bucks for Brain recruit, Dr. Hororov, and some of the technologies that he's working on to help with various ag and equine diseases, not just for horses. It also affects humans and cattle. But it was interesting to be over there and meet with him. But I'll let Bob get more into the public policy side. Thank you. The partnership that we form when we talk about economic development with you all, it's the same partnership we have when we go to the legislature and with the University of Kentucky as an example. When we all sit down together, we work on each other's agendas. We promote each. So legislators look at us and want to know if they don't see a particular issue on our list, why when the university does or if the city does. So we are very much all connected in. We don't have those differences, and we all work seamlessly. Bucks for Brains is a tremendous asset that we have here, and that's something that we promote and we'd love to have more money for, but that's something we're very strongly supportive of. Okay. Another question I've got is some of the cities have developed clusters of businesses to promote because of synergies between similar type companies. Do we have a plan like that? you're working on here, or are we doing something like that already? You want to touch on the Intellects? We have several different networks that we work on. We have a biotech network. We need to meet with them again. Without us, they probably wouldn't get together. It's kind of random. They're all sometimes in the same building, and they don't know each other. So we have a biotech network, a manufacturer's network group, Intellects. It's technology-related companies. RunJumpDev is a mobile developer group. There's a gamers group, a group that's now getting together to talk about how to program games or make games. Who am I thinking? Customer Service Center Network. We just started. We had our first one in December, and we had about 40 people there. It was a pretty good-sized group, HR people. Did you see any possibility for getting into aviation area? Because Lockheed Martin is here, and we have Belcan. We have engineering at the University of Kentucky, and our airport has a lot of facilities that could be utilized for aviation businesses. Have you all thought about that a little bit, or is that a new idea for you? That would be a new idea, but I'd be open. Networks aren't too hard to coordinate. It takes a little bit of time in identifying those companies out there, but I'd be happy to do it. Okay, my last question is, you know, Lexington is a very attractive city, and we have one of the lowest unemployment rates of any major city in Kentucky. I think that's attracting people to move here for employment opportunities and quality of life issues. Has that impacted the size of our workforce or the availability of more people to work for employers if they came here? I think there's still plenty of people out there that need jobs. So, you know, the unemployment rate is still 6.7%. I can remember times maybe six years ago when we were at 2% unemployment. Having the higher unemployment helps us from a recruiting standard. So I really can't answer it otherwise. On some of the demographic data you presented today, it showed that our educational level had just gone down just like a percentage or something, and I thought that might have a bearing on people from the rural areas, something moving here which have less educational levels, and it brought our average down slightly. Do you have anything on that at all? I don't have anything, but that's a good analogy. I actually had more concern when I saw that the educational attainment went down slightly that maybe some of our folks left. so I hadn't thought of the other side of it. When the census data came out, I took a look at the median household income. We presented that in our last quarterly report, and it was discouraging to me because I keep thinking about Dr. Karp and all the things that he's done at the University of Kentucky and bringing in the researchers and the doctors, and I kept thinking our per capita income might increase a little bit. So when that data came out, I was disappointed at best. But when we put it into comparing it to Kentucky and the U.S., it reminded me we're in a recession, or we were in a recession, and the same things were happening in other cities of our size. So having our folks lose a little bit, or our averages lose a little bit in education and lose a little bit in terms of per capita income and media household income was disappointing. But if you put it in perspective, it's a little easier to understand. With the per capita income, I would say that people that work on commissions, maybe their sales dropped some, so their average income came down a little bit during the recessionary period. I wouldn't be so worried about that because hopefully we'll be going back up. That's all I've got. Do you want to say something, Bob? I just want to add one other thing. That's the value of a region is that when they're looking at employment numbers, they're looking at a whole region, and on census tract information now, you can see where people commute from. So that helps us when we may have a low number. The other thing I thought is we just redid our website for economic development located in Lexington.com. That was one of the most critical things that we have done because all these companies, or if it's a consultant, site consultant, or whoever it is, they're looking at our data. And if we don't provide it to them, they're going to go find it, and they may not find the most accurate stuff. So when we put that out there, that helps draw that picture. The other thing we have going for us on the job site is they also look out there and they see 75,000 students in the region. That's huge. And that's why when you have the institution of higher education like we do in the region, that's a real plus for us. So some of those different issues. And the other thing is they'll call and talk to our existing companies and find out if they want what the real feel for here is. But one of the things that we're going to have to really focus on going forward, as we have the baby boomers retiring, we're losing some very qualified skills here in the region. We've got to make sure that we have the skills of our new workforce to move into that, and that's something right now that the BEAM project, which is huge, I don't think people really thought through the implications that's going to have, but we're learning an awful lot about how we've got to really ratchet up our education, especially in the manufacturing areas, the skill areas. Or we're going to find a region that's not competitive, and the good thing is we're way ahead of most other people and making sure we know that we've got the skill sets we need and the number. Do you know when the Brookings Institution will have their report? And that can do sometime in a few months? I want to say it's this fall where we'll have some of our hard data that we'll be able to start breaking down. But that, October? Okay. That's all I've got. Thank you very much for coming. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. You said that our unemployment rate has dropped 1.1% since this time last year. Figured in that are people who are no longer looking for jobs. so the 6.7 percent in november included people who were no longer in the job market yeah there are a lot of variables and factors that make the number today your unemployment number um you got a question and wonder you can so we got to start looking for trends in the months ahead you know you have at the year end you have a lot of people getting uh part-time jobs um some with the idea maybe to be full-time, but to become part-time. So you've got a real mix and match. I mean, I know a lot of people are underemployed because... Yeah, and that's hard to decipher as well. Or they have just quit looking. The other question I had was on the manufacturing. Again, 60% of our people don't have a degree. and what kind of wages are unskilled workers making in these manufacturing jobs? Do you have any data on that? I don't know. I can say when we go out and call on some companies, the average starting wage is usually around $10.50 or $11 an hour. There are some that pay a lot less when they're a lot less skilled, and there are some that pay a heck of a lot more in manufacturing. And then they have overtime, so you'll see manufacturing jobs. But if you put them all together in the entire facility, if you added in some of the more skilled jobs, again, manufacturing makes up a huge portion of our economy. Certainly, and a huge portion of our citizens depend on those types of jobs. And the other thing, just as a follow-up, talking about more and more of our more skilled, educated people are retiring. They're also, we're getting top-heavy on retirees that don't pay payroll tax. And so because we are so dependent on our payroll tax for our government, that's certainly something I think we all need to be thinking about and addressing and looking toward the future. I'm trying, I promise. That's my job. That's your job. That's our job. We're supposed to be creating and helping find jobs. So we really are. We recognize that. And we don't rest on our laurels. I mean, we are out there on the streets. We're in different cities. We're at different events and trade shows. And we're trying really hard. Good job. Thank you so much. If I could just say one final thing here. The rankings, don't ever underestimate the significance of those really neat high-ranking rankings that we get, and the more we get, the better. Because as we're out traveling nationally, or I'm working with some of our national associations on the economic development front, our name keeps popping up, and the question comes up to a lot of people who didn't know about Lexington, Central Kentucky, is why. It's an easy story, and it's a great story to tell. So those rankings, the more we can promote them in your own areas, telling your friends, the more we get companies to send them out, it just puts you in a strata with some very high-end other cities in America that may be well-known for their economic development, may not, but we're there now. And with that comes a lot of branding value for us. So, again, knock on wood that we continue to do well. We have our first number one economic development ranking, which we had sent out about a month ago, and that was very, I mean, it got people's attention. So we just got to keep finding ways to promote and communicate. Thank you. Any other questions from my colleagues? But it's my turn. U.S. Postal Service situation, can you kind of bring this up to date as best you can? I don't know that, Kevin, you may be more, and I don't know that you know the latest on that. I know we've been advocating, but working with the city. Mr. Chairman, we had the regional postal manager over on a couple of occasions now to discuss why we thought it was a good idea to keep this facility open. And we have, as you saw, the mayor and Congressman Chandler also from the Washington end have contacted the Postal Service. I've talked to one of the postal commissioners I've known for a while. So we're making an effort. But ultimately, as I can tell you, having worked for a member of Congress, this is something that will be made, decision that will be made within the Postal Service. and they're looking at their numbers, and so we're still awaiting the decision. But it is something that is front and center on all our screens. Okay, thank you. And either Bob or Jenna, we cut a deal when Bell Can arrived concerning parking and the number of people they were going to employ and such, I understand those targets as far as the number of employees at this time anyway aren't anywhere close to where they had anticipated, I guess. Is that parking arrangement still working? They still have the parking arrangement, and they still need it. So, I mean, it's an issue they raise with us every year. You know, if I recall correctly, it was supposed to be around 300 jobs. That's correct. I think that's correct. And I think they're about 150 right now, and they're right in the heart of downtown, and they're very appreciative of the parking spaces that the city and Lexington Center has done to help them. I hope you'll continue to help them. Fine. Thank you all so very much. I'm going to ask Kevin if he could come to the podium and introduce a new piece of the puzzle, actually. A new member of the team, and that's what we really look at everybody that participates in this on a daily basis. As Council Member Lane knows, he attended the interviews for the final two candidates for the new executive director of the Downtown Development Authority back late last year. we had a great deal of interest in this position which tells you there's a lot of interest in this community from out west to even South Carolina I think was one of the places so it was geographically spread out what we ended up, the individual we ended up hiring is somebody the mayor likes to refer to he represents that somebody who grew up here, moved away for a while, and decided Lexington's a great place to live and I'm coming home. And everybody on the authority that was in on the hiring was just blown away by some of the ideas that Jeff brings to the table and the new vision with which he comes. So I think you all are going to all enjoy. I think he's met with a few of you already. But Jeff Fugate is here today to introduce himself, and so I'd like to introduce Jeff as the new Executive Director of the Downtown Development Authority. He started the 1st of January. Welcome. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you, Council, for having me today. I won't take up a lot of your time because talking about myself is not nearly as much fun as talking about other stuff. but just kind of give you a quick version of my story. I grew up in Bowling Green down in Warren County. I was a college brat. My dad taught marketing in Western but I came to the U.K. for undergraduate and while I was here, one, I fell in love with Kentucky during my time here. I was one of those high school kids who actually thought that success was leaving and I had a change of heart somewhere in my senior year and came here and actually just really fell in love with the state and also really fell in love with Lexington. Though at that time, as an undergraduate, there were three things you went downtown for. UK basketball, Tonio's Mexican restaurant, and midnight movies at the Kentucky. So that was my downtown experience as an undergraduate. But I did learn to live in the neighborhoods. And so upon graduation, I decided it was time to maybe go away and see what else was out there. And so my then-girlfriend, now wife, and I headed off to D.C. And we were there for a few years and then moved up to the Boston area for what was supposed to be two years of grad school. Seven years, two kids, and a Subaru later, we decided it was time to come home. And when we started thinking about coming home, my parents were still in Bowling Green. Her family's in Huntington. We actually got married on the steps of the Gaines Center over on Maxwell Street. and we kept thinking about home. Home wasn't Huntington. Home wasn't Bowling Green. Home was Kentucky and more specifically home really was Lexington. We had friends in Louisville. We kept saying, hey, come to Louisville. But really our heart kind of settled on Lexington and when we come back to visit we realize that, hey, there's a lot more going on now than there was when we were an undergraduate. And so building on that it was an easy decision when we finally were able to put the pieces together that allowed us to move back a little over a year ago. And then I took a role at that time that was exciting, but it wasn't really where my heart was, because my heart was urban planning. And so while I was in Massachusetts, I had the good fortune to be able to study urban planning, architecture, and real estate development at MIT. It gave me great exposure to a lot of great people, like great minds, like great ideas, some of which are applicable, some are not. But I look forward to sort of bringing those experiences and those connections in that network to the work I do here. I'm very excited when this role came open. I was very excited to take it, and I am really looking forward to working with you, the council, in the next many years, hopefully. So thank you for having me, and this will probably be the most exciting time that I have at this podium. But I do look forward to tougher questions in the future, just not this afternoon. Are there any questions of Jeff from the group? Are there any questions about anything from the group? I will, if not, sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry, it's building up. I didn't really have a question. I just wanted to say that I was on the selection committee, and Jeff was a highly energized, very bright, enthusiastic type person. And I felt that in dealing with both people in town and people from out of the city who were interested in developing downtown area and helping in our planning process down there, that he would be a terrific asset to our community. and I'm very happy that he decided to move back and to accept our position here, and I wish him the very best here, and thank you for being with us today. Appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. Yes, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome. Is it Fugate or Fugate? You have landed on a great dispute, my family. Yes. Which do you prefer? I grew up saying Fugate. However, I do actually have cousins that say Fugate, which I think is the correct Kentucky pronunciation of the name. So we can go with either one. You answer to either one. Well, welcome. We hope that you stay a long time here. I think that a lot of times people in Lexington think it's a negative thing when our young folks move away, but I happen to think it's a positive thing when they move away and get experience such as you have and then come back here. You know, my children have both done that, And when they come back, they're very excited about bringing what they've learned in other cities and other places to Lexington. I think that's one of the things that makes it a great place is we have a lot of people who've had experience in other places. We're not so insulated anymore like maybe 40 years ago. And so I think that's really good, and I look forward to getting to know you. I have one question. Have you figured out yet what your job is? I have not yet had a chance to meet with each of you to find out. No. Okay, that's all right. That's probably the most exciting part right now is I am, as anybody I've tried to schedule time with knows, very aggressively trying to get out there and meet with as many people as I can. And, you know, I have some great experience, but I don't have all the answers by any means. And there's no way I'm going to come in here and determine what the right path is without really tapping into the many, many, many minds and the many, many, many people who have dedicated their thinking and their heart and their effort to this. There's a lot of, you know, as I said in my interview, there's a lot of great thinking and a lot of great ideas about downtown. down. There's not a lack of great ideas. And so I'm sort of in collection mode at the moment, and I'm really looking forward to that and also looking forward to sitting down with each of you guys. Very good. Thank you very much. Councilmember Lawless. Just briefly, I've heard wonderful things about you. I've had an opportunity to meet you on an informal basis, and I'm very excited about you being in this position and working with you, and I knew you were really, really, really bright when you chose to move into my neighborhood and the 3rd District. Thank you. Is that it for my colleagues? If not, Jeff, thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. And we'll get you up here again a few times in the rest of this year. Anyway, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Thank you. All in favor? I mean, generally people just run for the door.