University Place

Hello and welcome. I am very happy to introduce myself. I'm Amy Greil with the UW-Extension, the University of Wisconsin-Extension located here in Kenosha County, and I'm very pleased to offer a program tonight called Economic Development 101 in collaboration with the Wisconsin Economic Development Association. It's my great pleasure also to introduce you to our trainer tonight, Brian Doudna, who comes with 25 years in economic development.

He's had a range of experiences with downtown development, workforce development, and also worked in a county-wide capacity in economic development. Currently, he serves as the economic dev-- or the executive director of the Wisconsin Economic Development Association, and he's actually the first full-time executive director of the organization. So it's a pleasure to welcome him, and I thank you for working with us tonight. Thank you.

(audience applauds) Thank you. Thank you, Amy, and today is gonna be interesting so that we can get a good introduction of what economic development is. It's an ever-evolving field. And so what we wanna do is make sure that you truly understand the broad-base scope of economic development.

But first, about our association, we represent 400 members of economic development professionals across the state. Many of them are the local individuals that are making deals happen at your level in the communities, but also could be engineering groups or working with financial institutions to make projects move forward. We operate three educational programs on an annual basis. One is in the spring, focused in on financing.

Second one is in the fall, focused in on economic development tools, just to make sure that we always keep bringing best practices into the state. And the third is the Governor's Conference, and that's in February and where we bring in speakers from across the country to really talk about emerging trends in the field of economic development so that we truly make sure that our local officials, our local professionals are well-versed in what's happening in the local economy but also the global economy and how we relate that in the state of Wisconsin. We definitely work on legislative advocacy, making sure that our economic development professionals know the tools that are available to 'em but also have tools that are flexible so that we can make projects move forward in their local regions. We do provide direct services, and that's really to make sure that our professionals have the tools, resources to make their jobs easier so that they don't lose opportunities to grow the economy because they don't have access to something.

And then local official education, similar to what we're doing tonight, making sure that we're informing the public but also making sure that the local officials know how economic development works, and if they have questions, they have a resource to come to in the state association. So we are a non-profit organization. All right, economic development 101 for local leaders, that is a four-hour session where we do deep dives into each of the different sections of economic development. Today, you'll just hear excerpts of that that is condensed.

But what we wanna do is make sure that we take it to the local communities so that if you want to have this presentation and a deep dive done in your community, feel free to follow up with the economic development association. My background, as Amy mentioned, I have 20 years of experience but have run urban and rural economic development organizations, from Northern Wisconsin up in Rhinelander to Eau Claire to having worked in the La Crosse market to Central Wisconsin. So I'm familiar with agriculture too and the forestry industry, all the way to downtown development. One of my passions is always trying to maximize the opportunities, and I think most of the people in the field of economic development truly want to help people advance their community but also help advance dreams.

So from my perspective, my passion is about advancing early-stage opportunities, early-stage ideas. So in the last few years in the Eau Claire market, I was able to help people with product ideas and gain around 3.5 million in equity investment to launch their products to market. Economic development professionals are about advancing the economy, advancing dreams. But now the definition for the general public, what is economic development?

It means something different in every community, But it truly is sustained concerted actions of policymakers of a community that promote a standard of living and economic health of the specific area. Depending on if you're working with the schools, the local governments, or if you're in the private sector, economic development might mean a slightly different thing, but this is really the standard that we go as economic development professionals. But when would you ever call one of us? And that's, I think, the biggest challenge for the people in our field, is economic development is evolving and it's, in each community, it's got a different definition.

But for my purposes, and I think across the state, is if you're in the general public and have a product idea or you're thinking about launching a new product as a company, or if you're a business that is trying to look at a new division, that's when you would call an economic development professional, making sure that if you are trying to grow but you're land-locked, that's when you would call us. The reality for economic development organizations and professionals, it's a different day every single day. Your tasks are different. But after you have a few years of experience, you are experts.

Because for a business that expands once, maybe twice in their history, economic developers do that on an annual basis. So from a growth strategy, from a management of a project to helping advance a new product line or launch a new product line, economic development professionals are gaining that experience on every single project, and we wanna use those talents to advance yours. So as a general public, make sure that you reach out when you have questions about how you can maximize your personal opportunities. But economic development, on the slide here, you can see economic development and then community development.

There are many different aspects of this. I guess in Northern Wisconsin, when I was working up there, tourism, the forest industry was critical to that market. That was their definition. But as part of that, core activities of business expansion, business attraction were also part of it.

In today's world of people choosing where to live before they choose a career, community development and retention of talent is even more critical on a daily basis. So how we advance the housing, the cool places that people go that you enjoy, as in your community, how do we make more of those in your community so that you're successful in community development, which will translate to be more successful in economic development, whatever you define that as a community. And words that really define what's your best opportunities for growth, you really need to create a local economic development plan. And here are the four aspects that we really promote, but truly understand what your assets are.

So if you're in a Northern Wisconsin and you have the lakes and you have the timber, that's why the timber industry, wood products industry is critical up there. But if you're in a rural community, that you're a bedroom community potentially, what are the unique aspects that you have that will want housing development to occur there? So everyone has an opportunity for economic growth. It's really truly understanding your assets and then figuring out how to maximize them.

So leverage assets, value proposition, so why your community rather than the community 20 miles down the road? And if it says, if your answer is, "Because we have a better quality of life", define that. Everybody will say they have a great quality of life, but define it. Make it tangible.

Align resources, making sure that you have the capacity to... if you implement it, make sure it's sustainable and that you have the people, resources, capacity to make things happen and deploy 'em strategically. That's why the value proposition at the very beginning is what's your core values, how are you gonna advance it, and how are you going to employ resources? The worst thing that can happen in economic development is you get local officials and local people excited about an opportunity, but it doesn't have the right value proposition and it's not the right strategy.

So it's truly a process that strategic planning takes place, but community engagement takes place. Economic development is not done in a silo. It has to be something that you engage people and facilitate the process to make sure that initiatives are gonna occur in a timely and sustainable manner. And the final thing is measure what you're wanting to accomplish.

So if it's just having a physical location, community place to go, that's fine. But what's the... how many people do you want to... how many events do you wanna have happen there?

What's gonna make it vital part of your community? Economic development, community development is all one and the same. So how do we grow your community, your opportunities and make sure that it's a vital part of other... spurring other activities?

Tonight, we'll talk about economic development strategies. On the left-hand side, you'll see Business Retention & Expansion, Attraction. Of course, business attraction is what you always read in the headlines. But I wanna stress right now, that is a very small part of what we do in economic development, Entrepreneurship, Start-Ups, Workforce Development, Community Development as well.

You'll notice the Tactics and Tools and Issues available to 'em. So in Entrepreneurship, when you look at a Business Incubator, that is a model that has been around for many... three to four decades. Now you're starting to see something that's with Accelerators and Lean Start-Up models.

We'll talk about Lean Start-Up. But what we wanna show is you have tactics on how to advance that. And we'll go into depth if you have this as a ED-101 in your community. We'll go into depth on each of those on how you can make those things happen in your community.

The tools? Making sure that you know that you're not having to create everything to make it happen in your community, but then also the challenges or the issues of as you advance each of those initiatives. But most importantly, from my perspective, is we have a lot of organizations that are focused in on growing the economy, but many times, we don't work together. So collaboration and advancing strategic partnerships is critical for successful economic development.

Unifying delivery systems, you'll see that we have many partners, but unifying delivery systems to eliminate silos. So whether you're at the city level, county level, town level, you're all one economy. So how do you make sure you grow that economy? Embrace innovation development, engage private sector leadership.

Again, local officials, elected officials are critical to economic development and community development. But without the private sector investing in your strategies and being partner and having a voice in those, you will be less successful. Asset-based strategies, truly what's unique about your community, and then finally, strengthen the talent pool. Everybody will say they have available labor, or they are working with a tech college to customize that.

But make sure that you understand the talent pool that you're generating in your community, in your colleges so that you're aligning your companies and their workforce needs with the long-term capacity to grow those skill sets in the community. Our partners, economic development partners, public/private non-profits, there's many of 'em. From chambers of commerce, the public/private partner non-profits, they are the ones that are typically facilitating the deals, making sure they... that are implementation-oriented.

Local governments and regional planning commissions, some of the local governments are also implementation-oriented with dedicated staff. Regional planning commissions are typically planning commissions that have over-arching roles and responsibilities to make sure that if you're doing one activity in one community, that it matches up with a master plan for that region. Redevelopment corporations, that's in different communities where they actually are dedicated to redevelopment funding models and strategies, making contaminated sites or blighted sites be removed and repurposed. Educational institution, workforce development organizations, and small business development, all three are critical to being successful in economic development.

Without talent, workforce, human capital, you're not gonna be successful. Small business development centers, they are critical to making sure that, if you're working with early-stage companies, that they have the capacity, the plans in place, and financial projections in place to be successful in getting lending. Economic developers, one thing I wanna stress, are not gonna write a business plan for somebody. They will facilitate the process and making sure that you get the resources to make sure that you're gonna be prepared to go to a financial institution.

And there's many others that can help with economic development. The challenge for economic development at the local level, however, is many of those partners are funded by the same people and by the same organizations. So while we want to align activities, there is a common challenge of who gets credit for what project and all of that. In the big picture, it's a win in every community when a company expands and community development activities occur and are successful.

But behind the scenes, for the public's purpose, you need to realize that an economic development organization or a chamber of commerce or a local economic development office of a city are getting similar funding models in place. So taking some credit but aligning and working together is a challenge, but it's critical to be... for a long-term success of economic development in your community. So politics, unfortunately, is part of the field of economic development, but it's all about how we can grow the economy.

Measuring, we wanna make sure that there's a purpose, process, and output and outcomes. And there's various techniques to doing that, but for our purposes today, we're just gonna give you some sample measurements about payroll, tax base, and the measurements that you might choose in your community could also be workforce training, that you've helped receive workforce training dollars to help a company grow. For the State of Wisconsin, their interest just from a budgeting standpoint would be payroll taxes, income taxes. So having companies that grow and having more employees paying payroll taxes, that's good because that's bringing in revenues to the state.

As far as for local municipalities, from their measurements, they would like tax-base growth, or a commercial development, but if you're a county, you want that sales tax revenue coming into your location. So location of projects occur and matter, but what measurement is appropriate for your community, you have to realize what your partners are and how the deal is gonna be put together. But these are common measurements for consideration. But I think it's most critical that whatever measurements you develop, that you communicate to the community.

Economic development is about being accountable for the taxpayer dollar, but also transparent in how those dollars are being spent, and reporting out to make sure that the general public truly understands how the dollars are advancing their economy. So in the big picture here, this is an example from Washington County, but in the big picture here is how are you gonna measure that and communicate that in your marketplace? Because at the end of the day, you have to communicate results to the taxpayers and the general public on how the dollars were spent. Business retention and expansion, one of the core features, and I would say where most communities should spend the majority of their economic development time, organizational capacity.

We have companies that are operating in your community today that need to be your priority. Without them, your existing economy will see a downturn, so making them as strong as possible is critical. So let's start with them, and as they grow, hopefully there will be new opportunities to work with them in other capacities. So one of the things that we recommend is that you should be meeting with employers in your community.

And it probably depends on the size of your community, but I'll just say in the last county I was in, in Eau Claire, it was any employer over 20 was pretty much a face-to-face visit. But then we also had electronic surveys where we could touch base, and if there was any of these bullet points that came up as they're land-locked or there's an ownership change or their lease is expiring, that was a reason for a site visit. Okay? So in your community, depending on your capacity for economic development staff, you can also use the electronic tools to get to your businesses and make sure that you're touching base with them.

The one thing that I would say for local officials, it's you might not be an expert in economic development, but how you get to them and make sure you get feedback so there's open line of communication is critical for long-term success. But when you're seeing a relocation of top management or a change in suppliers or a new facility being expanded as state of the art equipment at a different location outside your local area, you should be trying to come up with strategies to address any concerns that they might have. So, core goals, baseline understanding of the business. So I know that's a lot of businesses in some markets, but you need to understand if it's family-owned, what's the interest in the next generation, or is there a next generation to pass that off to?

That is part of economic development. It's not that business's sole issue. It's critical for their long-term success, but it's critical for you in your community to make sure that you're aware of that situation and helping them come up with strategies to address it. So forge outcome-oriented service, so again, succession planning, if there isn't a plan of action in place or they don't have a strategy in place, you can't force someone to go through that process, but you need to have, as a community resident and having an interest in advancing the community, I think that's a fair question to say, "What's the next steps within your company "for the next generation?" if they're nearing retirement, if the ownership is nearing retirement.

So business visitation program's critical. That's gonna lead to new development. So if they have a supplier network, you never know when the suppliers need to be closer to them. So if you have a manufacturing operation or a retail supply company that many of their suppliers have to be close to 'em to service that client.

So making sure that you truly understand the dynamics of each of those businesses help you grow your economy. Now, entrepreneurship... definitely has changed over the last decade as far as ability to launch companies. With technology today, everybody can be an entrepreneur.

Even if you don't understand the technology entirely, talk to your friends, talk to your relatives, the younger generation. Help them allow you to convert your idea or thought process into an app or something of that nature. You don't have to be the technology person. It's critical, though, that you have a solid idea and have the ability to take it to market, okay?

Again, the key thing for an entrepreneur is knowing where they need strategic partnerships, and where they have young talent or eager talent willing to help advance that model. An idea is never a straight line to becoming a business. I used to run a program called The Idea Challenge, and I will tell this story just because it's one that I'm proud of, but first meeting, the gentleman comes in with a napkin from a local restaurant with a drawing and saying, "Here's my idea." I said, "So can you make it?" Of course, he was able to make it. He comes back a week later with the made product and actually has several examples of it.

And I could actually see value in that, and so we started scheduling appointments with consultants, with architects. It was in the construction materials. And after a few conversations with those individuals, there was refinement to that product. And then, we were saying, "You know what?

"We think we need to get some good prototypes." So we got some early-stage grant funding, which was unique to our community, which we, as an economic development strategy, we created that. Typically, there are not grants for those activities, but that's where your strategy of developing your assets, we decided that's how we wanted to spend dollars. So they received a grant to do some patent work, so we helped them get patent work. And within nine months, he was in the marketplace because we also found an equity investor that was able to be bankable.

So that company went from napkin from a local restaurant to being in the market, nine months. That is unique. But that's how dreams can become reality. Because his comment was, "I don't wanna be the...

"I wanna own 51% of the company, "but I don't wanna manage people "because I wanna be their friends. "I wanna be in charge of product production, "and I don't wanna be in the office "because I like working with my hands." So again, entrepreneurship can be for everyone. It doesn't have to be wearing a suit. It's truly valuable idea with good market potential and letting people help you along the way.

And that's really the role of economic development professionals and also small business development center, is to help you truly understand the opportunity and understanding how to advance it. A tool that has come out over the last decade, instead of forcing people to write a business plan and go to classes to write a business plan, which then made the person that was working in the garage or likes working with their hand having to write on a computer, that was frightening, for lack of a better term. And it really, many times, stopped the process right there. So what we're proposing and trying to help communicate across the state is something called the Lean Start Up Canvas.

And it really is a value proposition, customer segments... you can see the numbers here, but value proposition, customer segment channels, and revenue streams. Before you create a company, we wanna make sure that you have customer validation that they're gonna buy that widget. And what are the features they want on the widget?

Not all of the features you have in your mind. What's the lowest cost opportunity to get it to market to have it be a sellable product that will get the greatest return on investment? The next phase of your project 2.0 will show the next value proposition that you probably already have in mind, but again, let's get revenue flowing first and making sure that the business model works, and then you can get into the next features of your product, okay? But UW Extension very definitely helps with Lean Start Up Canvases.

This is a unique skill set, but I think the key thing for you to do is go into your local economic development office and make sure that you're having them help walk through the common questions on how to start a company and talk about the product, not how to start a company, but talk about your product and your idea. Make sure that if you think it's patentable, that you get a non-disclosure, and you get yourself protected. You can go through the patent process pretty rapidly, as far as just getting a provisional patent to protect your idea. And that would be one of the first things, after you're talking to the executive director or of the economic development group, is to make sure that you're protecting your idea.

That should be one of the first things they're asking about, is, "Is this patentable?" and "Have we done a patent search?" Business attraction... This always gets the headlines, and we spend a lot of time on this because it's always good to bring in new opportunities but truly... in the entire nation of the U.S., maybe between 250 to 450 expansion projects... in a year.

So your community is spending a lot of time and money and resources on business attraction. While it's important and it's great to get those wins, just truly realize the number of projects there are and the number of communities there are. So not every community is gonna win a project every single year. But you need to have your best foot forward and make sure that you're prepared for the opportunities once they present themselves.

Business attraction has a lot of different players in it. It could be developers, investors, architects and engineers, property managers and tenants. It's truly important to understand that not all property or projects that are for coming into a community... they don't necessarily want to own their building.

So having the economic development organization truly understand who the developers are that would do a lease-back, those are things that, as a business development strategy, business attraction strategy, you should have those conversations and make sure you're prepared to advance those opportunities if you get that opportunity coming across your desk or over your phone or via text or Twitter. That won't happen, but-- We wanna make sure you're well-prepared. So the process that we'll go through now is really making sure, for the general public, you understand how these processes happen and the amount of work that goes into 'em in a very short period of time with knowing that, again, at the end of the day, the opportunity for wins is... if you're getting contacted, hopefully you're down to the final five communities, because many times now, that with the electronics and database searches out there and data out there, companies are already narrowing it down to where they think they'll be able to operate successfully.

This is called a Site Selection Process. Typically, there are real estate brokers involved or national site consultants or international site consultants. They will reach out to the community, that would be the lead, and on day one, that's when that lead comes in. But very often, you need to respond to that lead within three to five days.

And any more, it could be less than three days. And that's with site location, all the information that you need for a labor force, all the utility information. So most of this prep work has to be done and packaged so that you're inserting it and customizing it for the customer. Critical here, you have to customize your information on every project.

Because what's the decision points and driving points, you need to try to interpret their RFP or their inquiry and truly understand what's gonna be the driving points for decision-making. So definition, we wanna define the product, project, and make sure that we truly know what's gonna drive site selection. The hurdles, there's always hurdles. That could be timing of zoning.

They need to be in the ground in 120 days, and they don't have their plans done yet. They need all this engineering. How would the community work with them on the approval process? Are they able to get everything they need done in that time-frame?

Hurdles could be financing. Do you have the infrastructure? Then you have the negotiation, closing... negotiation, I should probably cover that because that's a long process sometimes.

But that's where the community has to say, "What's the value of that opportunity "locating in our community?" Hopefully, you will have measurements on revenues coming into the community, things of that nature, and you'll actually be able to say, "We can make certain investments "to make this project work." Closing and closed is being that the project has already occurred. Many times, I would say that's 75 days, but also economic development projects start in... let's just give an example... starts in 2013.

You work the entire deal. You thought it was gonna happen. They table it. Amazingly, a year and half later, it comes back.

So economic development is tied to the global economy as well as local economy. So once you're working on a project with the company, reach out to 'em again because you never know when that project might come back, because there might have been something happening... if it's a large corporation, it might have had something happening overseas that they needed to have that investment made there and then in this next budget year, they're gonna be able to do the project here in your community. And on the left-hand side, when we talk about the Administrator, that administrator is typically the local official.

It could be the mayor or the city administrator, county executive, but also in partnership with the EDC, making sure that we're working with the community to make things appropriate and making good decisions using public dollars. It could also be the local city economic development professional as well. Committees? It could be going to many committees, going from planning and zoning to the finance, depending if there's anything related to finance, but ultimately, it goes to the city council, village board, town board for approval of the overall negotiated developers agreement.

I wanna stress that it is important, from my perspective, that all communities, when they have a project moving forward, that you have a developer's agreement stating expectations, truly outlining them from your community standpoint. If you're doing anything with... relying on tax base, making sure that you put a valuation in there, trying to at least anticipate what the revenues are and hopefully what the job creation payroll numbers might be. So, Real Estate Development, real quickly, phase one is really on the site selection process.

Phase two is when you're working with them, it's kind of the negotiations, saying, making sure that you, as a community, will have a financial return on this. Economic development is about growing the economy, but it's not to give away the farm. It's about making sure that you're making strategic investments to grow your economy, grow your community, and making sure that you're gonna have the talent pool to achieve the outcomes so that you get a win on the real estate taxes. But because of these other things, you're probably gonna get another win because housing development might occur, and there will be other activities occurring.

Phase three would be Site and Engineering Analysis. So before a company will actually sign on the dotted line, they're gonna wanna make sure that they have access to the property. How are they going to get trucks in and out? Are there hours of operation that they have to be concerned about because of the neighborhood that they might be locating in?

All of those types of things come out in phase three of the development process. Financing, the private sector is always the lead financing arm for economic development for private sector development. Government funding does come in, though, when we need to extend public infrastructure or if there is gap financing needed. So what we mean by gap financing is that the private sector with the banking industry are able to do so much because of lending limits at that financial institution that the company has a relationship with.

That might not be enough to do or buy all the equipment they need to help meet the demand of that new product line they're expanding to or adding on. So public financing, there's your revolving loan funds and other programs to help fill that gap to make sure that the company can grow the company, maximize their opportunity, create the jobs, while also investing in what they need to make the project go forward. Many times, there is not a need for public sector financing, but communities have to make sure that they have the capacity or capability of doing gap financing in case. Again, economic development is sometimes a process of elimination.

So if a company comes to your community and says, "Well, I need rail. "Oh, and I need a loan "to help buy equipment of X," you need to make sure that you have a rail spur or have access to it or figure out how to do it and that you have the ability to potentially have gap financing. Structuring of the Deal... I would just say, for the general public, there's a lot of programs out there, and all of them have the fine print of "Meant to be used, eligible uses, this way.

"But here's the caveats that you need to be aware of "that we won't participate in. That's where the economic development professional in your community earns their keep, because they have to try figure out how to make all of these programs work together so that the company and who's doing the project truly gets a seamless service. So from financing to getting the sewer and water extended, the company just wants to know... As I always phrase it, they're focused in on their bottom line in their business and growing jobs and growing the market share.

Economic development professionals and the communities have to deal with facilitating, getting all the deliverables, sewer, water, road, rail, whatever that might be... it could be T-1 lines, whatever it is that's critical to their business to their site. And we use the Sources and Use example here because we could get that from the State of Wisconsin. We could get that from a federal agency.

You could get that from a bank, in many cases. But is there a role for the county or the city to help fund different projects? The one thing that I'll mention, because we don't cover workforce development in the rest of the presentation, under training, there is a new program in the State of Wisconsin that, I think, is working very well called Wisconsin Fast Forward. And it's really customized labor training for the company when they have a project and are gonna be hiring people.

It's not, "Here's training dollars "and hope you hire people." It's "Training dollars, "okay, we'll give you that. "Tell me who you're hiring and what you're paying "and what their pay will be after the training." That's where you make strategic investments in labor training, and the state's making that, and you're seeing great outcomes because of it. The Public Sector Roles... Most of the time, if it's an existing property, the municipality, the economic developer is in a facilitation role, making sure that we're protecting the public from a regulatory standpoint, for hours of operation or whatever that might include, but also making sure infrastructure, streetscapes, all those other things are in place.

And gap financing, in many cases, is part of that package. Initiator Role, that is used less often, but can be for critically important sites. I would just say this could be a former manufacturing plant that has gone dark that is in the center of their community. How do you re-develop that?

So initiator role is the municipality could create a redevelopment authority or other authorities to assemble land, put an RFP out to try to get the right type of development. Because as part of the community engagement process, they know that they need more mixed-use developments where you have commercial and residential in one location, and they want a nice place-making spot where it's some place that people can gather. Those are the types of things that, as a community, you have a vision and you want to achieve that outcome. That's your measurable outcome.

So as an initiator of that process, a community can help set their destination. Tools to Secure a Deal... This is, for the general public, I'll just say, it's alphabet soup because you'll hear CBBG, you'll hear RLF, you'll hear T. The reality is that it's confusing for most people in the field, and it takes a while to learn the different programs.

But I'll just say there is a lot of programs out there. And you have to look at each project on a case-by-case basis to make sure you're leveraging the right resources for the right reasons and that you want to use the limited resources you have on that project. One of the best tools that economic development professionals have and communities have is something called Tax Incremental Financing. And this is something that, typically, there's gonna be real estate investment made, and it's something that a community gets together around saying this is the right appropriate use of public dollars.

So in that Tax Incremental Financing, you have the traditional... on the chart you'll see City Levy, County Levy, Technical College Levy, and School District Levy, and you'll see where the baseline is for that area. When a TIF district is created, the TIF-- The new taxes are actually put into helping pay for public improvements. And the next couple of slides will actually help you understand that.

So we have an under-utilized site. You'll notice on the left-hand side of the slide the $2,500 a year in taxes coming in, and those are... that's separated between the school district, the city, county, and technical college. So you can see the property assessed at 100,000.

So it's been viewed as a blighted or under-utilized area. So the community, in trying to spur growth, have made the following decisions to make investments. You see a new building there with several expansions, and you see a different footprint for roads, things of that nature. In the left-hand column, you'll see some of the expenses for those improvements.

On the right-hand side, you'll see the increased property values and what occurs. You'll notice year three, year seven, and year 15 where the revenue projections are. So long story short, in a TIF district, you're really making... in the developer's agreement, you're truly understanding what their revenue streams are gonna be, and you're projecting out the risk that you, as a community, might wanna take.

In many cases, in my communities, I would only do what the initial project is and making sure that we can and cash-flow that. And if we weren't able to do that, then the community would make a decision on whether we wanted to take any risk in the... in doing TIF districts. TIF districts can be amended and added to.

And you can very definitely use this as a way to spur activity in a designated market. Once the TIF district is closed out, so all the public infrastructure has been paid, those taxes go back to the jurisdiction, so the city, the school district, the county, the technical college. So it's a tool to make sure that we can pay for the public infrastructure while there is a need to cover those expenses. Because the private sector, the company moving in or doing the development won't pay for the city streets.

And with levy limits, it's very difficult for communities to actually extend streets without the use of Tax Incremental Financing. So in order to make deals happen, there's the But-For clause. "But for this development, "the TIF district would not go in, "and we would not use those public dollars," so a critical tool, and sometimes confusing on the community, and I think I'm making it a little bit more confusing today, but it's critical to help spur activity in your marketplace. At the end of the day, economic development is, again, truly about growing the economy, growing your community, and using the tools allowed by state and local policies and ordinances and laws to make sure that we're being accountable for the public dollar, and that we can help you grow your economy.

So with that, I just wanna say thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and hopefully giving you a better understanding of what economic development is today in Wisconsin. Thank you. (audience applauds)