00:00:07,030	All right. We’ll call the March 26th, 2026 Vision Fund Committee meeting to order. Um, uh, can I get a, um, a roll call, please? Member Peterson here. Schmidt’s here. Stoudemire here. Chair Freilich. Here. Uh, we’ll start the meeting off with the public comment period.

00:00:43,330	Um, anything on today’s agenda or last week’s agenda is free to comment on? Second call for a public comment. And. Third call. And I don’t see anybody here for that. So we will move on to the approval of the minutes meeting. Minutes. If anybody’s had a chance to look at the meeting minutes, all motion to approve. I’ll second. We have a motion and a second.

00:01:04,630	Any discussion on that? Hearing none. Um, all in favor, say aye for approval. I I I motion passes. Uh, will receive the Vision Fund financials. I believe Eric’s here to not that there’s a lot changed, but, um. Thank you. Um, as you noted, there’s not a lot changed.

00:01:27,630	Um, cash is up about $5,700 from last month, and that’s attributable to interest earnings. Um, with the city funds and a the first repayment from Cloverdale.

00:01:48,430	Um, if you notice on the notes receivable page, um, we did receive our first payment from Cloverdale, um, from Lewis and Clark of $2,229. Um, so they have, I believe, a five year repayment period. So this is the first payment of that. All right. Um, on the notes receivable page. Um, nothing else has changed. We’re still waiting on two approvals that have yet to request their buy down money. Um, for Simply Golden Properties and then all grant properties.

00:02:13,530	Do we have a count on how many days they have left to do that? Or are we running into any of those time crunches? Okay. It’s getting close. I know that. Yeah. So again, property, uh, chair Ogden Properties has until October, so they have 4 or 5 months.

00:02:36,570	Their time frame was this fall. They might need a short term extension, but that could be looked at later in the summer. Simply Golden has until May 13th if I remember it. And the Vision Fund meeting before that would be the April 23rd. I have it on that agenda. I’m meeting with the lender tomorrow.

00:02:56,170	Uh, we’re going to write up a quick one pager, um, explaining why and how long they need that would be submitted to the Vision Fund at that April meeting. You guys would decide if it was, uh, to be granted an extension, and then we would go from there. Were these both construction projects, I forget? Yeah. They were. Okay.

00:03:16,000	Hence why it wasn’t an immediate purchase. Uh, they had some construction time built into that. Okay. Any questions on that? Besides, we. If Eric wants to finish your report, sir. Um, I don’t know that I have anything else to add. Um, as far as the financial statements go. Does anybody have any questions? Thank you. You bet.

00:03:45,330	I’d move to accept the financial statements as presented. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the financial statements. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion passes. Um. The next item on the agenda. Planning discussion. Um, I attended a meeting on March 9th at the Chamber Development EDC. Um, with Noah. Um, Derek.

00:04:13,170	Chris, were there. Brent is here today. Um, from Lewis and Clark. Caitlyn. Caitlyn. Sorry. Um, Courtney and Andrew from, uh, Bank of North Dakota. Um, we got a little history about what some other cities do. Um, with their vision fund.

00:04:31,970	Um, maybe some ideas of what we could do with ours. And trying to get a vision for our vision fund. And so, um, I guess I would like to bring up Noah to start with, and he can recap a little bit about that meeting, and then we can bring up folks from the Bank of North Dakota,

00:04:44,900	Lewis and Clark, and we can talk about maybe some of the things we talked about on the March 9th meeting. So. All right. No. Chair and members of the committee, we did have that meeting on the ninth, and we, um, came away with some. Target changes that we wanted to present to y’all.

00:05:09,970	Um, for you guys to discuss, ask questions of the chamber, EDC, Bank of North Dakota, Lewis and Clark. Um, enable to kind of empower the Vision Fund to be a bit more, uh, agile and then also more specific in what projects it shows and the processes that it would use to speed up the

00:05:30,570	overall process for projects to actually access the funding. So a few of the bigger ones that we were discussing were an actual target industry that would be set annually. So whether that would be some sort of value added, eg, or if the city felt like we needed restaurants.

00:05:50,300	I don’t think we need restaurants, but if we were to set an industry that we wanted to target annually. Have the chamber EDC talked to lenders and kind of advertise. That’s what the city wanted for the year.

00:06:07,800	We would be able to pull companies that we wanted to see instead of just pulling everything. We can still pull everything, but we want to actually, target Sud and just some set industries annually. So that’d be like in October meeting every year. And then a couple of the other ones were financing. I’m having a set annual input from the city.

00:06:26,530	Um, how that would look would be up to you guys and up to the city. Um, we if we want to try and make this a great, a better program, we want to make sure that the lenders don’t come here in a few months and not have funding to do economic development.

00:06:47,430	So changes to funding, changes to, uh, how we actually do the matching for a flex paced deal. Um, there was some discussion with Bank of North Dakota on property taxes, offsets. Instead of using money from Vision Fund.

00:07:06,730	Um, Mike and Jason could probably talk a little bit more about that, but that way that it’s not always just Vision Fund dollars going in. And we could probably potentially do more projects. Um, from the Vision Fund level. Go ahead. Yeah, I think that’s kind of the big ones. Uh, might be missing a couple, but any questions? So I don’t know if anybody listening to the city Commission meeting on Tuesday. Yes. Okay.

00:07:35,530	So, you know, there’s some angst potentially amongst commissioners or some commissioners, particularly. And it may be industry specific, although I have a hard time with that. But, um, some of the comments are as are we.

00:07:57,300	Why are we funding those people who might have the ability to repay anyway on their own? My comment would be is I want somebody who’s going to be successful. So like that has to have repayment ability. But what maybe this is a better question for other communities or towards the other community questions.

00:08:16,570	What are restrictions or evaluation tools being used across the state when it comes to the viability of the business that is making the request? First and foremost? So that isn’t a pure grant. I mean, we don’t look at it as a peer grant, but, you know. If you don’t have a repayment, it’s a grant, basically. Yeah. Um.

00:08:34,400	So that’s a question I don’t know whether Bank of North Dakota can answer that or if you can answer that at all, or. I would probably. Lean on. I can take a stab at that. And thanks, guys, for letting us come visit with you.

00:08:51,300	I would say, um, from that perspective, when we did some homework, just so we didn’t come to you guys and say, this is how you should run your vision fund. We said, reach out to other communities. What works for you, what doesn’t work for you. So I would say communities across the state, there are none that stick out that have any restrictions on too much capital or access to capital.

00:09:03,530	That is not something they don’t necessarily hold it against. The ones that have more access to capital, as opposed to those that do. So I would say that’s not something that I would propose or see generally use in the industry. Um, to sway whether you should support the project or not. Okay. I’m glad it’s on record.

00:09:23,800	Would you like to, since you’re up here, Katelyn, would you like to speak to some of what the other cities are doing that we discussed that at the meeting on March 9th. Yeah, definitely. I can do that. So as we said, we wanted to reach out and gain feedback.

00:09:39,300	Of course, we see certain interactions, but wanted to make a true effort to give you guys some good feedback on what we what we, um, gathered worked really well. And I think one thing and I’ve said this for years, the Vision Fund needs a vision, right? A focus or a priority.

00:09:53,730	And as Noah mentioned, typically the communities, the these entities that provide the community match across the state do look at this on an annual or maybe every other year basis. We don’t typically see large swings from year to year of like, oh, we did this and now we’re dropping that and moving to the next.

00:10:07,100	Um, it usually seems like it’s a multi-year initiative. But however, their meeting every year and talking about it and saying this is where we want to focus our dollars. Um, so that’s generally consistent across the state, um, funding that varies in how the different community sources are funded, whether it’s, you know, portions of sales tax dollars, property tax dollars and things like that.

00:10:24,700	Most of them do have a revolving fund. So as some of those projects start to repay, it replenishes their fund. And those entities that have the authority to make the decision of what types of projects they’re going to fund. Typically aren’t the ones.

00:10:41,170	So in the case of City of Bismarck, you guys actually have the dollars, but you would grant the authority to the Vision Fund. Typically that’s how they’re structured. So then those separate entities have the authority to make those decisions on those dollars. So actually the city of Bismarck doesn’t directly grant it to the Vision Fund. The Vision Fund makes a recommendation to the city.

00:10:59,330	Yes. And I’m saying so like the Vision Fund in this case doesn’t have the authority to make the decision where typically the that type of entity in the other communities does have that authority. And so it’s just something that we talked about. It adds another step into the process.

00:11:15,970	However, it’s not a deal killer. I think as long as we know the timeline, it can that it is. That is what it is. Um, and just on that topic to most of the communities throughout the state, are these types of entities meet monthly with one board meeting approving the

00:11:29,400	application. So it’s a pretty streamlined process for most of these borrowers that are trying to access those types of dollars. Um, a couple of the other things that we gathered through this to, um, some of the communities really use this pace or flex pace contribution as a means to invest in their

00:11:46,070	community. So they’re promoting their investment in the community, and they use it as advertising and promotion that they’re investing in these different locally owned businesses.

00:12:03,970	And on that topic, to some of the communities do limit their, um, um, contribution to locally owned businesses, right? So they don’t necessarily incentivize outside investors. Um, in some communities, um, there are some communities who restrict the financial institutions who can access their funds if they’re a member or support that local entity to, um, that’s not something I would propose or recommend, but we’re on the topic of just sharing different information that we’ve gathered. Um.

00:12:28,230	Uh, most of the communities, too, just from your guys’s perspective, to make sure you’re structuring your financing, or contribution properly, most of them mirror the lead financial institutions documentation. So collateral lien positions and things like that. So there are ways to secure or maybe make your repayment more likely by following the bank’s terms.

00:12:48,870	There are some communities who do provide grants. Um, some communities provide grants or their contribution in the form of a grant, depending on what type of project it is.

00:13:06,700	So if they’re really focused on, um, maybe it’s manufacturing in their community, they could provide that flex piece contribution in the form of a grant if it’s something they’re really trying to push. And I think that, um, covers the bulk of what we talked about in earlier this month. Anybody have any questions? I got one. So when they’re when these other communities are like looking at these target industries that that that they’re looking for.

00:13:29,630	So you said how often they meet like once a year in like October to decide those industries or once every other year. Is that correct? Most of them on an annual basis, just to refine their strategy of what they’re trying to focus on.

00:13:48,100	Okay, so who’s all involved in those conversations? Is it just the the Vision Fund committee along with or is it all like, did they open it up to the public or how that. Normally I would say not the public, but I would say in the case of Bismarck and we didn’t specifically get into details of that, and we can definitely seek that information.

00:14:01,130	But I would hope the city Commission, in conjunction with the Vision Fund, would sit down together with the funding party as well as the party who’s trying to promote economic development would come together, make that strategy decision together. Thank you.

00:14:21,100	Noah, have you heard back from the entities we’ve given the Vision Fund dollars to that it’s very, very hard to work with. Or what’s the feedback that you’ve heard back? Or is there an evaluation you get? Nothing like an evaluation post project. That might be an idea for the future.

00:14:44,170	Um, looking at the future, what I have right now in the docket, I have five opportunity Fund projects that either just finished or in process of letter supports through the commission. And then I have two, uh, Vision Fund projects that might come up in April or May.

00:15:03,900	Uh, there does seem to be a notion that it’s faster to go through, um, just getting the letter of support in through the city Commission than going through vision funded ads about three weeks. Um, but for projects that want to go quickly, they tend to go that way. So I don’t think it’s hard to work. I think it is just that time frame. Thank you. Yeah. So is that the time gap, that vision funds taking longer? Is that due to our meeting schedule or what’s that due to.

00:15:25,300	Would you say. If the project were to come to me in the middle of the month and I could get them on, let’s say, the second meeting, second city commission in a month, that’d be a two week wait.

00:15:40,770	Um, but if it’s within that week before the Vision Fund meets, it’s going to be five more weeks until they can get on a Vision Fund meeting. Um, now that just is up to the Vision Fund. If they want to meet as is. Um, whenever there’s a project or every month at a set time. Um, I think we’ve found that every month at a set time works well. Um.

00:15:59,400	And it’s mostly just because the Vision Fund becomes the granting agency for the loan, versus if they go to the Opportunity Fund, they they just need a letter of support. Just need not always that easy to get.

00:16:16,070	Um, by going to the city commission, you’re just adding the monthly meeting of the Vision Fund. That’s just the time delay for that, because we’ve been approving projects in one meeting. Used to be to two meetings, sometimes more. That it could be two months, three months.

00:16:38,970	And then we’re meeting ad hoc, which I don’t like that it’s not a good cadence because it’s hard to plan for, but that’s the time delay. It’s just if they want money, that’s from the Vision Fund, which is carries a slightly lower interest rate than the North Dakota Opportunity Fund does, then they’re going to come to us probably regardless. I mean, most of these projects aren’t funding their dollars out that fast.

00:16:59,530	They’re not obviously, they’re not drawing even in nine months. Yeah, I feel like doing a lot of projects typically take a few months even figure out.

00:17:16,130	So I don’t know, why are we not communicating all of our dates to the potential, um, people who might want our funding or they just all of a sudden develop a project and I want the money tomorrow. I mean, it seems kind of quick. Yeah, there’s the construction loans and then there’s the the purchasing ones, the construction ones that we had earlier last year, um, had a bit more of a runway. And that’s why I feel like we had Elgin properties.

00:17:33,430	We had simply golden. And those were, uh, construction loans. And we had more time. We got them through Vision Fund. Um, new Freedom Family Center, uh, that we had back in January of this year. It was that was a faster one.

00:17:50,170	We still got it through Vision Fund, but that was just a purchase of a building. We did have a time frame on that one. Um, remember that in late December. So I think it does vary on the type of project. Do our bylaws allow for us to email vote if need be? If we needed to be a little bit more nimble? I guess I’m not 100% sure on that.

00:18:08,070	It’s a public meeting, so it has to be a public meeting. We could do like we could have. We could have special meetings and they could be by teams. But we have to open up to the public right? You are correct.

00:18:25,700	As far as I am aware, I have not seen any advisory board or authority board within this organization ever conduct an electronic email type vote. Uh, but to maybe elaborate a little bit more on the mayor’s comment, um, historically, the Vision Fund met only when an application was needed.

00:18:46,700	And what we found within the last couple of years is the challenge became getting enough people for a quorum to review an application in a timely process. So it was staff suggestion to find a day each month and set the meetings. So there is an established cadence, but then cancel the meeting if there wasn’t an application to review. Kaitlyn, would you like to come back up here? And yeah.

00:19:11,230	Yeah, I will just add in just to your comment about communicating the timeline. I don’t think it’s necessarily just the timeline. I would say it is probably more of the time invested, and they don’t know what the Vision Fund is looking for, what types of projects they’re willing to say yes or

00:19:24,370	no to. So then they invest this two three month period and then they get to the end and it could be no. And so I think that’s where they end up going, you know, to the opportunity fund or a different route because they feel more certainty on the end result.

00:19:35,670	And so I think that’s honestly the uncertainty of knowing what types of projects are far more an issue than the timeline, because we can communicate the timeline. That’s not a problem. So I would throw that back to them and say, we have like we have been looking for people to come and not said no unless it was.

00:19:55,870	We went in the streets. We didn’t approve anything. We approved the couple and then a whole bunch came in. But that’s because we hadn’t been doing anything. So we’re like, so, you know, I’m I have a hard time saying, we’re gonna look at just this.

00:20:11,370	If our if we have a vision, which I have no problem with what we’re going to look for, but it can’t be one industry. It can’t. Be. Agree. No, I think we should have an idea, but I think if we have maybe a vision or some ideas of what we like to see, maybe we don’t have so much ebb and flow and maybe we

00:20:26,300	have a little more consistency with people coming to us because they know what we’re maybe looking for. But I would like to look to personally, you know, okay, what is Fargo doing? What? You know, like, what are they kind of looking at? Grand Forks, you know, the more metropolitan

00:20:41,830	ones so that we we aren’t losing out potentially in some of them to people that will go there. Yeah. Uh. Would you like to speak on those? And I can talk on one of the ones you mentioned. They strictly focus on primary sector industry. So any value added right process or service type of thing.

00:21:01,300	So that’s going to be manufacturing which is what Bismarck in the past is what we kind of had shared with the banks from our perspective is that’s what the Vision Fund wanted to see. However, there’s not a lot of manufacturing type of activity occurring in Bismarck.

00:21:15,500	And so when we talk about a vision or a priority, it certainly doesn’t need to be industry specific. It could be, you know, quality of life benefit. It could be adding jobs, it could be adding efficiencies. So maybe it’s somewhere that we have a manufacturing company. They don’t want to grow, but they can’t hire people, which is probably more our issue.

00:21:32,870	So how do we incentivize them to invest in equipment that can replace that work and still continue to do it? So I think there’s a lot of other things you could look at as a focus or a priority other than an industry. So Fargo’s only looking at. Primary sector. , really. Um, and so if they do.

00:21:49,800	Something, they’ve, they’ve dropped buildings in and used their dollars. They will do like a payment in lieu of taxes or tax exemptions for some of some of their projects. So the city will provide the that route. So the in-kind contribution route. But for true projects they look at focus on primary sector.

00:22:06,900	I don’t really want to be that restrictive because I think we are not a primary sector, correct community. We have bobcat. Well, that’s where I look at like an infill program. It could be anything.

00:22:24,570	If you fill in some of our properties that are inside our spaces, that would be a really benefit to my idea of and keeping our tax base inside here and not having to build more curb and gutter and streets and everything to fund economic development. So I guess, do we want to open it up for discussion, or does anybody else want to speak to that in Lewis and Clark or anybody on that, or just have questions for anybody? All right, all right. Okay.

00:22:47,300	I’ll be an hour or less. Yeah. Don’t don’t put me in front of microphone. Brian Ekstrom, executive director, Lewis and Clark Development Group. Uh, just so I mean, we’ve worked with the Vision Fund. I’ve been doing this a long time. Right. Um, and so we’re obviously willing to work with you guys.

00:23:01,500	Obviously, if you guys are, are getting into more of that flex space, we can stretch our money farther. We have a finite amount of money like anybody else does. Right. And so we do ours as loans. It’s going to be a little higher than yours.

00:23:13,170	But if we can participate, that’s what we used to do when we did Cloverdale back in the day. Right. It was a third was Mandan Growth Fund, a third was Vision Fund and a third was Lewis and Clark. Right. That kind of stretches all of our money.

00:23:25,000	Uh, the other thing is, obviously we’re willing to, um, administer that loan for you. We do it for the growth fund. We do it now for the Vision Fund. So we’re the ones that are doing the collections, and we actually start paying you, right? We paid you Cloverdale.

00:23:37,700	So you’re good, right? And so, um, just so, I mean, so you’re aware we’re, um, the opportunity Fund again? Um, we do a lot in, uh, a lot of flex space in Fargo because they do not do primary, they only do primary sector. So anything coming in comes to us, right? Um, Mandan obviously is a little bit different. They’re right across the river. They do. Um, they, they’ll do other.

00:23:56,200	They’ll do primary and non primary sector. We’ve done a lot of flex space over there too. So um, but we’re certainly willing to, to work with you guys.

00:24:10,300	Um so whichever direction you go, um, we’re willing to, to help and to administer that stuff and help with the application process and things like that. So, um, if there’s something that we can we can participate on, I think it makes your money go farther. It makes our money go farther. Okay. Thanks. Thank you.

00:24:29,730	So I would like to have us at least consider, because we’re paying two organizations when I’m sitting here, I think the other one is, um, to actually bring to us a vision as to what would make or some ideas for us as to what we should be looking for based on what’s going on in Bismarck. Mandan, I mean, specifically Bismarck. But it’s Bismarck, Mandan.

00:24:49,030	And when we look at it, you know, whatever happens here is a positive to to Mandan and vice versa. Absolutely. Um, because I and that’s part of what they should be doing. And I know I’ve said that. Go ahead, go ahead. Noah. Yeah. And I know Brenda is well aware of this. Yes. Um, I can talk a bit to that.

00:25:06,700	Those October meetings, um, was were in the original 2020 bylaws, um, that we reviewed back in January, whereas an annual meeting where we discuss, um, kind of overall division fund, if we actually set like Target Industries, things we would look at for advertising. Um, the chamber EDC would be forefront and kind of leading that.

00:25:28,030	Like, what does Bismarck need? Having those discussions, kind of pulling that out and then presenting at that October meeting, um, our economic development team. And then we’d also work with you all before that, um, to get input before you guys would actually vote on things in October.

00:25:46,630	That would be helpful, because I think it’s very hard for the five of us sitting here or the city commission, because everybody is either got their own thing going on, but can’t get. That’s the whole reason there’s an economic development team. Yep. Any other questions on that.

00:26:04,470	So would we like to make a proposal then or talk about ideas where we could go. Or would we like to bring a proposal that we have the chamber come back as a group and bring us something of that? Our thoughts on that? I would make a motion that we in that we charge the chamber EDC to develop our first vision. Vision or target to industries group.

00:26:31,000	Have we had IT Target Industries in the past? Just in general? Your economic development group like for Bismarck over the last 20 years or. It is gone like this? I mean, way back when it started, we were going after any big, I would say big business, not necessarily only just industry.

00:26:49,700	So like Sykes or us or whatever. And Aetna now, um, and Unisys and building these big buildings. Yeah through Bismarck Industries and so forth. Um, and then it dried up like nothing was going on, which is why we two years ago basically started funding some office buildings. Yeah. Or like, like my fifth infill projects.

00:27:16,630	I like target neighborhoods. Like that could be part. Of it. Like what it. Um, yeah, I. Sure the city’s growing the right way. I know. So the infill project is going to be difficult unless it’s in an industrial type park, because I think that we’re going to get a lot of pushback.

00:27:32,430	And we were to say we want to do infill projects. I wouldn’t be a supportive of it to do residential type construction. I would not support that. We’re looking for more economic development projects and business projects. I would assume. That would fill I mean, there’s some infill that can happen on that. Certainly. Yeah.

00:27:51,030	And I just don’t know if there’s certain core areas the city is looking at. I. Uh, depends on I mean, residential. Yes. There’s a lot of infill to happen, but that’s probably not what this belongs. In my view. Um, I think there are some areas in the southern portion of Bismarck towards out towards the airport that.

00:28:12,500	Absolutely. And I know there’s new development going in northeast. Um, assuming the development is going to get done. But, um. Where would the scoring matrix come into play here, too? I’m starting to think about that.

00:28:38,130	Like if we’re going to have them design Target Industries or what kind of what we should look for, is that something that should be adjusted with that annually or every other year as well? It could be part of the scoring. I mean, we could have that be a a point value. There might be something to eliminate or we just increase the point value. I don’t think that hurts.

00:28:52,930	You know, I think that’s a great idea. But you have a section where does it meet our target thing? Three points, two points, one point, whatever. Um, could. We should just build that into that matrix to, um, if we do go with that route. So it’s a great idea.

00:29:07,930	And if I may, we would, we would change the square matrix a little bit with that question. Question six I think it was last time with that startup. Um, and amount of additional income, we’d probably split that or at least give you guys a couple options on how we’d redo that question.

00:29:23,400	Does give you some skewed results. When you’re a startup and you have zero to go from zero to whatever pie in the sky doesn’t get a number on the scoring matrix very well. So. We have a motion. Um, do we have a second for, um, charging the EDC to come up with a vision? I’ll second.

00:29:44,730	Do we have any discussion further. As long as it includes, like Joel said, the updated scoring matrix. Okay. Do we want to put that into the motion or do we want. To we can add that to the motion. I think that’s fine. I’ll include that in my motion.

00:30:02,870	All right. We have a motion to charge the chamber with coming up with a vision fund, changing the scoring matrix to reflect that, um, Noah, is that something that this can come back to next month, or is it. Okay, so we could have a discussion on this and possibly vote. That would. Okay. Well April.

00:30:25,330	Or sorry April. Yes I’m sorry April. Yeah. It’s still March. Um, any further discussion then I guess I would take a roll call. Vote Whitney. Member. Meyer. Yes. Share. Oh, she’s not here. Peterson. Yes. Schmitz. Yes. And Freilich. Yes. A motion passes.

00:30:55,200	Um, anything else you’d like to discuss? Noah on that? Were there any other things you wanted us to potentially take a look at? Um, the funding mechanisms? Uh, kind of like processes, type side. Um. Leave that for May. Maybe, but also be an. Option.

00:31:12,830	As far as the process goes, I don’t think we’re to or far it’s part I think it’s mostly timing of when the company comes. If they happen to come to that one week, you’re going to be five weeks out. Otherwise it’s pretty. But if it was an urgent item, I would just say we call it. We try to call a special meeting and we could do it by teams.

00:31:24,630	So it’s a little easier to get the quorum. We would, you know. And communicating the timing better, um, with the lenders but also help eliminate that. I know, I know somebody you brought up or somebody brought up the funding source. Okay. Or the dollars that are available.

00:31:44,930	And, I mean, we can work in our budgeting. We already made a shift two years ago. Now, where we started moving money out of the general fund into the Vision Fund to pay for the economic development contract, which wasn’t happening before. It was just eating away at the cash that was here.

00:32:10,030	We also did have probably two years ago or close, um, we put a request into the city commission to move $1 million from the Northern Plains Commerce Fund, which are still dollars there.

00:32:34,170	Um, those have been kind of held back in case we somehow find a industrial park that we maybe need to participate in as a city. But, I mean, we could certainly put a request in to the budget committee that there would be some money allocated. I’m going to tell you that I don’t know how it’s going to fly at the moment, but knowing what is there at Northern Plains three. Okay.

00:33:02,770	So so we have some there’s about 5 million that we could get access to. Um, but I would be okay if we had you know, if we put in a request, we might as well put it in. We don’t get it. If we don’t put it in.

00:33:14,770	Um, the question would be is, how much do you think we need on an annual basis for grants? Or do you start with a number? I mean, right now we don’t have a lot of projects coming in. So that number stuck the same. The financials have been the same for a while, but that could change very quickly too. So I. Mean, we have $600,000 ballpark available.

00:33:34,330	It’s all going to come down to what, you know, the bank’s perception is of the Vision Fund. You know, because the banks are the ones that are, you know, they’re driving a lot of these conversations with their customers, right? Like whether you’re using Opportunity Fund, Vision Fund,

00:33:48,930	and in that kind of stuff. So I mean, if the banks get behind it and we’re funding projects, you know, that, you know, we want to fund and that every, you know, everyone’s kosher with, I think, you know, we could, you know, use a substantial more, you know, more funding.

00:34:07,470	I don’t know if it’s $1 million or what that is, but we would definitely need more. Well, is that, uh, do we want to look at that as a request? This meeting or next meeting, would we want to see our vision fund first and then make a request before, do we want to

00:34:27,900	do this something before or is this a do we wait till we are closer to, um, as a committee? Have any thoughts on that? Um. The budget will be going through its processes in May. For the city.

00:34:53,370	So if there’s going to be a desire to make a request, which I think I’m just, you know, I think if we don’t make a request, it’s never going to happen. Right? If we make a request, it’s a coin flip. Be being honest. Um, but I would not go too big a number to start with.

00:35:10,470	I mean, this is like a half $1 million request for the year in April. Before we get to the May meeting on a out of whack or. I have no problem with the request in.

00:35:26,230	So I mean, the budget Committee can look at it, but, uh, do you know that there is, uh, you know, there’s a limit on property taxes that we can collect? Absolutely. And and that way back in the day, I think the first 1% sales tax that’s in the city, part of that was carved out to be used towards economic development, but that has been repurposed and is used for infrastructure type needs.

00:35:49,400	Yeah. So a half million dollar request would get us to a vote where we’d have money for ten projects, correct? Right. Yeah. On average, over about 103,000 or 107,000. If you use the maximum commitment for what we can do on our side, I think is what the number is. So. And we have. Yeah, 620,000 left.

00:36:12,430	So I mean yeah that would get you to like ten projects. Do you think that would be reasonable? I, I mean. I can’t I’m not on the budget committee. I’m on the city commission. I’m in belief of economic development because I think it will drive additional tax revenue for us.

00:36:32,330	But we have what we need to have as a plan. So I think a make the request is fine, but I think we need to have these targeted businesses to follow up with it. By the time it gets to the budget. Hearing or the preliminary budget in July. So I think it’s okay to put the request in.

00:36:50,800	Okay. Um, well, I mean, do I, I would maybe make a recommendation. We table that till April when we get the Vision Fund Committee meeting with the vision, and then let’s bring that back as a motion at that meeting and we’ll have a package that we can then send to the city commission for review.

00:37:08,470	I can tell you that I’m not all that inclined to look at the other way of doing the match is through some sort of in lieu of or. in-kind in-kind type. I’m I think that’s going to be a harder sell. Okay. Any other discussion? All right. No. You’ve got your tasks.

00:37:34,630	You have any questions? Nope. All right then I think we