PCD 2021-05-03 Item 1C - Budget - Economic Development Plan

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INFORMATIONAL MEMO Page 2 relationship management system (CRM) and would track a company's interactions with their customers. In addition to purchasing software, we would hire a firm to fill in the gaps and expand upon our current business license database by contacting businesses directly. Estimated start-up cost $50,000. There would be an ongoing maintenance cost but we do not yet have an estimate for that. The third component, the business contacts database, is the least critical component to developing an economic development plan and we can develop a plan without it. Currently, we download business license data from the State and save it into Excel. This method is easy to use but there are some challenges. The State's data is incomplete and may be missing email addresses, phone numbers, size of business, etc. If a business has multiple locations, the contact information may not be for the Tukwila location. The contact information may only be for the company's accounting staff who processes the business license. We would benefit from having contact information for functions such as management, marketing, human resources, emergency response, etc. We do not have information on which language the local business management prefers and that may be very beneficial to promote equity. The benefits of an improved business contacts database can support economic development by enabling staff to easily contact businesses when we learn of resources, want to invite them to participate in programs or events, are seeking their input, reinforce their connection to our city, etc. As an example, during the pandemic one of the ways we have been trying to help our businesses, especially small businesses, is to email them with information on financial and other resources. It is likely there are businesses in Tukwila who are not in our database. Also, it is likely we have some small businesses who are not taking advantage of available resources such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) because of language barriers. If we knew which businesses preferred a language other than English, we could translate important emails into their language or facilitate language -based webinars. The benefits of an improved business contacts database may be able to serve the City in other ways. For instance, it could be a good tool to quickly contact businesses in times of emergency. In the past there have been times where the City has needed to contact business and property owners in a particular neighborhood due to a specific emergency. If we start to work on this component, we would engage with other city departments to see if they would like to share this database and if it's feasible to develop it jointly. It is important to note that if we improve the business contacts database, it would need to be updated at least annually to continue to be useful. At this time we don't have an estimate for the ongoing cost but we know it would be something. If we are not able to maintain the database, it is not worth the up -front cost to make the initial improvements. FINANCIAL IMPACT This particular item is not seeking a budget allocation at this time but this request may be included as the Council considers restoring other city services. If approved in its current scope, this request would be for $150,000. RECOM MENDATION Staff seeks Committee discussion and feedback. ATTACH MENTS None 38