The workshop was interesting since it was a continuation of the contract agreed to during the August 17th meeting.  The City received a valuation and marketing plan (at a cost of $17,500) that looked at our three signature marketing opportunities; Western Day, Railroad Park, and the new Arts Center.  This valuation (presentation attached below) basically was a market research piece to determine how much the City should be shooting for when pursuing naming rights for the facilities.  In summary, The city has a potential annual revenue of $529,000 per year from these three items and ancillary naming rights.  Realistically, the marketing firm thinks $300,000 per year would be more reasonable considering the economy.  Their numbers also would be impacted if we could get branded naming signage on I-35 for the sponsored Railroad Park, as well as turning Western Day into Western Days (a 2 day event).

Editorial comments:  Good night the three gentlemen from CSL marketing could talk sports.  Sitting next to them in the room it was a constant barrage of names, ranks, stats, and opinions.  There's a reason I don't tune into sports radio.  In the interest of complete disclosure I watch the Superbowl Big Game for the commercials. 

I did have a couple issues with their presentation (aside from the obvious 300 words per power point slide.  .PPT is simple: keep the slide to 5 points and under 7 words per point.  If I have to read the slide it needs to be in a supplemental doc, not on the wall).  First off their market research seemed light.  They gave one example per item.  The examples they gave for Railroad Park and the Arts Center were both fund raising examples, not 'after the facility has been built'.  Funding these types of facilities with a tax is either not common or they didn't do enough research.  I personally think this will eliminate some of the funding opportunity since there's no goodwill attached with donation to build these facilities.

With regards to Western Day, they compared us to the Mesquite Rodeo.  A two day event with a signature sporting event attached.  Not even close in my estimation.   This was poorly researched.  The only upside is that it gives us an idea of ways to improve Western Day.  I could see a Vintage Baseball Championship Series as the signature sporting event attached to Western Day.

The next steps as agreed by Council, allow CSL to move forward with the understanding that there are already 4 potential sponsors that would not be part of CSL's search.  Council and City Staff have already reached out to their contacts in the business community and seem to have a few takers, which is good news.  The city will pay CSL $5,500 per month for up to 6 months to acquire the sponsors.  If, at the end of 6 months there has not been a minimum of $33,000 in sponsorship revenues contracted, the city will receive a rebate of $16,500.  So we basically break even, worst case scenario.

Not being privy to the discussions, I would have liked to have seen some sort of commission incentive for CSL, motivating them to shoot for a larger revenue stream with little to no up front cost from the city.  This would have eliminated the potential of us having paid $33,000 for $33,000 in naming rights.  I'm also not sure how CSL continues to make money from this program after the first year.  If I were CSL I'd probably have a contract with the naming rights partner that gives me a % and then passes the rest through to the City.

And now the meeting:

Ms. Deborah Wiseman (apologies if I got the spelling wrong), discussed speeding of up to 40 MPH down alleys on Teton Trail and Sierra.  The city has placed signs on the alley ends to no avail.  Personally, this kind of nonsense needs to be met with motion activated trash can launchers that scare the crud out of the drivers.  Or Nerf guns.  Everything's better with Nerf. I feel Ms. Wiseman's pain.  I've got a neighbor in a Chevy Aveo that likes to speed and text down my residential drive.  Of course if that Aveo hit a kid the car would probably collapse like a jiffy pop container.  This is the kind of thing that neighborhood watches can assist with.  Taking down license plates, setting up cardboard cutouts of police officers with radar guns,and other ideas might help.  I've even seen setups where toy radar guns actually set off a light bar in people's yards to really slow drivers down.  I'm still working on a trash can launcher.  Of course, an official radar box and some increased police presence will probably be the next steps.

The consent agenda passed with no dissent.  There were three items that were discussed: 

Item 6:  $913,000 in Recovery Act funds for upgraded traffic signaling and more efficient light fixtures. This was passed with only Councilman Watts voting against.  He has consistently voted against all Recovery Act (federal bailout) funding in Lewisville.  He stated that while not against the improved lighting and better traffic flow, if it was worth doing, it should be worth doing with our existing tax revenues instead of using 'monopoly money' from the bailout. Councilman Gorena also stated that he didn't like it but was voting for it because the money has already been spent and we should get our fair share.  Moved and Approved.

Item 7:   Ms. Rita Williams, resident, asked for discussion of item 7 and item 9.  Just so you know, citizens may ask for any item to be pulled from the consent agenda for discussion, I really like this idea and would love to see the ISD take it up if they don't already.  Ms. Williams wanted clarification of the types of 'facilities' that might be included in an upgrade of Mill Street.  Because Lewisville has a roughly $3.8M master plan for refurbishing Mill Street in place, but not approved.  We have access to a pool of State funds ($67 million).  Item 7 states that if we win some of this funding for Mill Street, the City will budget 20% ($770,000) of the project, which is required to access the funds.  Now we will be writing a grant request.  Thank goodness for planning!  I wonder if any of this money from TxDot came from the Recovery Act?  Moved and Approved.

Item 9:  Ms. Rita Williams also asked for clarification on the reduction in abatement for an existing business that had received a tax abatement in 2007 that they've not complied with 'due to the economy'.  I didn't have time to ask more detail but basically the City met the business halfway and only increased the business tax (or removed some of the abatement depending on which side of the ledger you look at this from) partially.  There is a stipulation that if the company shrinks below 29,700 square feet that the entire abatement will be removed.  I spoke with Councilman Tierney before the meeting and he felt that this was a good compromise to realize some penalty for not living up to their end of the bargain without also penalizing the City by potentially losing an employer.  Moved and Approved.

Item 10:  Looks like we have a good sized new business coming to ConVergence Park.  XYZ New Company, LLC  (the official name of the project company, looks like they're keeping a low profile since they're a startup) the city will receive a new corporation with 125,000 square feet of facilities that performs medical and genetic testing for medical centers and other facilities.  Lewisville seems to be bringing in quite a few medical specialty firms recently, which is great news.  It will bring 939 new jobs, $67M in payroll, $10M in facility upgrades, and community donations of $10,000 (chamber membership I presume).  In exchange, we're giving a 75% rebate for 5 years in their property tax, 25% rebate in years 6-10 (assuming they meet payroll, staffing and facility requirements), and 1% sales tax abatement on construction fees for the first 4 years.  I'm frankly surprised that Councilman Gorena voted for this since he's very clear about being against any abatements.  Moved and Approved.

Item 11:  A complete rewrite of City Ordinance Sec. 15-126.  Basically spelling out where cars are prohibited from stopping, parking, or standing.  This was done to allow our officers to ticket cars for stopping on the road.  Based on the supplemental material this was specifically done to prohibit stopping on the streets to pick up day labor and to improve safety.  I'm all for keeping people from tying up traffic and and keeping the roads clear.  This is the kind of activity I've been seeing from our Police for the past two years, actively working to make the city safer without adding additional work to our officers. Moved and Approved.

Item 12:  There will be a 30 day comment window (there will be a place to comment on the City website) regarding inspector qualifications for oil and gas facilities.  Councilman Thornhill has asked for review to ensure that our qualifications are stringent enough.  Moved and Approved.

There were a couple other bookkeeping items which can be found on the agenda, all in all an eventful, but quiet meeting.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Prosperous New Year.  My mother is in town and I'll be taking her on a tour while she's here.  I'll also be gearing up the blog for a lot of new material in the coming weeks.  Thank you for your interest and support!

Attachments:

File	Description	File size
Naming Rights Proposal		1610 Kb