Visit Broken Arrow Board Meeting – September 8, 2026
Visit Broken Arrow Board Meeting – September 8, 2026
The Visit Broken Arrow board met on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, at 3:30 PM in the City Hall Council Chamber. Key items included an update on the inaugural Broken Arrow Film Festival, approval of a sponsorship for the Performing Arts Center's Spotlight Series, and a report from the Tourism Director.
Consent Calendar
- Meeting Minutes (26-1440): The board unanimously approved the minutes from the August 11, 2026 meeting.
- American Junior Golf Association Hotel Rebate (26-1427): The board voted to table this item pending verification of information. (Motion carried unanimously.)
- Spotlight Series Sponsorship (26-1335): The board approved a $20,000 sponsorship ($4,000 per show) for the 2026/27 Spotlight Series at the Broken Arrow Performing Arts Center. The motion included discussion of enhanced benefits such as a two-page spread in the playbill, a Visit BA table in the lobby, and promotional opportunities. (Motion carried unanimously.)
Presentations
- Broken Arrow Film Festival Update (26-1428): Festival director Brad Heath presented the final schedule for the inaugural event on October 2–3, 2026. He reported 30 states represented, multiple university student entries, and approximately 24 local business sponsors. The two-day festival will feature panels, a VIP event on Friday night at Regal, and picture cars (including a Ghostbusters car used in a featured film). The Muscogee Creek Nation signed on as title sponsor. Marketing efforts include hotel room blocks, restaurant guides, and social media outreach. The laurel for official selections will include "Broken Arrow" to promote the city. Board members expressed strong support, noting the festival's potential to showcase Broken Arrow to filmmakers nationwide.
Board Member Comments
- Airbnb Tax Discussion: Board members raised the issue of collecting hotel taxes from short-term rentals (Airbnb, etc.). Tourism Director Michaela noted this is a priority and will revisit with legal counsel to determine if a council vote is needed. Members emphasized the potential revenue, citing occupancy rates of approximately 60% in Broken Arrow and noting that the uncollected tax could be equivalent to adding a large hotel.
- Sports Tourism: The Tourism Director reported meetings with sports groups to gather economic impact data, especially after the bond failure. Discussions with Indian Springs revealed interest in tennis tournaments and a need for a southside hotel; the golf pro Lance reported roughly 2,500 hotel room-night demands annually from golf tournaments alone. The board noted that many sports events are self-sufficient but data collection is important for future initiatives.
- Uber Program Changes: The Tourism Director announced changes to the free Uber ride program to prevent abuse: users will be limited to four trips per month, and codes will become unique per user rather than generic. This aims to ensure the program is used as intended (attracting visitors) rather than as free transportation for frequent local users.
Tourism Director Report (26-1430)
- Fiscal Year 26 Expenditures: The department ended the year with over $140,000 added back to reserves, partly due to savings on magazine ads and unspent hotel rebates ($33,000 left in the incentive program). The Tourism Director noted careful management of funds.
- August Spending: $1,500 on Uber, initial payment to Sparkloft (marketing agency), and a $12,500 rebate to the Christian Interpreters Conference.
- Conferences: The board attended the Esto conference in Philadelphia, where they were finalists for an innovation award (category: innovation in film). The competition included organizations with much larger budgets and staff. They also participated in the One Voice legislative agenda for tourism, engaging on state and federal film legislation.
- Upcoming Events: Film booth at Oklahoma City Fair; board appointments/reappointments on September 15; an experience lab for creating visitor experiences; and final preparations for the film festival.
- July Occupancy Numbers: Provided but not detailed in the summary.
Key Outcomes
- Approved: Meeting minutes (unanimous).
- Tabled: AJGA hotel rebate request.
- Approved: $20,000 sponsorship for Spotlight Series (unanimous).
- Directives: Tourism Director to work with legal on Airbnb tax; to continue sports data collection; to implement Uber program changes; to explore enhanced partnership with the Performing Arts Center (including potential Visit BA table, promotional materials, and ticket confirmation links).
- Next Steps: Film festival on Oct 2–3; focus on data gathering for sports tourism; ongoing collaboration with Sparkloft; and preparation for the November 3 Straight No Chaser show.
Meeting Transcript
Order for visit BA Tuesday, September 8th, 2026. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's not a cold beer. All right. Action item A under presentation 26-1428. Update uh from the director of the Broken Arrow Film Festival. So this is the last meeting before the film festival, so I thought I would just have Brad Heath come in and talk about how it's going and what to expect. Good afternoon, everyone. Hello. What you have in front of you is our official block schedule for the inaugural Broken Arrow Film Festival. We're very excited about it. The two-day event is set. We're ready to go. We're putting the final touches on all the preparations and announcements that we have yet to make. If you look at the schedule, you'll see both days on there. The first day is Friday, October 2nd, and the second sheet will show you Saturday, October 3rd. We have 30 states represented in the film festival. We have multiple universities in the student category, which was great. From the East Coast to the West Coast, from the University of Texas in Dallas to the big schools here in Oklahoma. It's a pretty good sized list with the student category. We're excited about that. We've got a team coming in from Arkansas. They did a Ghostbusters tribute film, which is really fun. They shot some of it here in Tulsa. So it's got a it's got a Tulsa element to it. But they're bringing in their cast, they're bringing in their director, the composer. Quite a few people are gonna show up for that one. We've got a couple of documentaries that have people bring uh bringing people into town. Some function is coming in from Illinois. It's a military documentary about soldiers who came back from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq as amputees. It's a really good documentary. And uh one called The Long Walk from the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. They're bringing in a group uh to show their film, and it's it's gonna be wonderful to have them as well. We're looking forward to hosting them and showing them broken arrow. Um we have several panels set up, and if you notice in panel number three on Saturday, we've got uh Michaela uh is gonna sit on that one. Hopefully we can talk Aaron into sitting on it as well. Surprise. Um but it's about filming in Broken Arrow and filming in Tulsa. So Meg Gould from uh Tulsa F Mac is gonna sit on on that one and hopefully give filmmakers an opportunity to learn more about broken arrow and what BA has to offer to filmmakers. Um yeah, it's going it's going absolutely wonderful. We do have some event posters that I will pass out to you as well. Um we were able to uh get approximately 24 local businesses to to sign up and be sponsors with us, which is great. Um they're what we call an award sponsor, so as the festival goes, there'll be ad shuffles between the blocks of films with their advertising on it. We've shot some commercials for them as well that have posted on social media and we've got more coming. And they'll have an opportunity to present the award if they wish. Uh but we've got some really cool presenters besides the two on the poster. We've got some local talent and some people who have done a lot of cool things. So uh names you probably won't recognize, but you you might know the face.
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