Couldn't get it out very well, but it's going, Tim.

A lot better than that.

Now that I'm here.

Um what is today's date?

Obviously.

Good evening.

Welcome to the October sixteenth, twenty twenty-five meeting of the Lafayette Downtown Development Authority.

Executive Director Keating, may we have a roll call vote?

Director Barnes.

Here, good evening.

Chair Hagan.

Here.

Director Harding.

Here.

Director Hubbard.

Director Lako.

Director Mudding.

Here.

Vice Chair Rogers.

Here.

Okay.

First on the agenda is public input.

If any member of the public wishes to speak, please state your name and you'll have five minutes to speak.

Hi, Adam Judola, three eleven North Cherrywood Drive.

Um I recently had the opportunity to drive down South Boulder Road in the evening.

Now that the construction is complete, uh, I saw some very nice street lighting that was dark skies friendly.

And in driving down public road, I noticed that the street lighting is not even close to dark skies friendly.

So I just want to get on your radar that it would be really cool to think about changing out the lights at some point in the future to be more dark skies friendly.

I think a lot of the community would you know really appreciate that.

So that's all.

Thank you.

Seeing no other members wish to speak, I'll close public input.

We'll now move on to approval of the September calendar is not there.

September 8th, September 8th meeting minutes.

Are there any corrections?

Someone like to make a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve the September 8, 2025 meetings meeting minutes as written.

Is there a second?

All those in favor.

Any opposed?

Okay, that passes.

All right, moving on to regular business.

Uh the first agenda item is introduction to the draft downtown improvement grant program.

Turn it over to executive director Key.

Yeah, I like it.

We dig downtown.

Okay, so the possibilities.

All right, so thank you, Draena.

I'm gonna introduce this new grant program that we're proposing.

Uh talk about the intent, the guidelines, eligible projects, ineligible projects, timeline requirements, and then next steps for direction and discussion.

So you'll see this a lot when we are doing projects or kicking off grant programs or things like that.

That I want to reflect back to our action plan about how it aligns to that guiding document and why we're moving forward with certain things.

So this program aligns with our small business support and retention goals as well as some of our land use and character goals.

So wanted to just highlight, you know, in our action plan, it talks about providing tailored support for existing small businesses, but also being able to promote and attract locally owned and operated businesses into Old Town, revitalize and fill vacant storefronts, and then encourage investments for those key sites within Old Town for adapted reuse.

So within our work plan, we had two items.

One was to launch a small business grant program to support capital business, sorry, capital improvements and other business needs, and then also support the redevelopment for filling key vacant sites.

So the Urban Renewal Authority had a similar grant program that launched in 2022.

Laura did a lot of work, but it wasn't until probably towards the end of Laura that we actually put together formal grant programs that people could apply to.

And these are helpful just to be able to give something to the downtown business community and say, are you doing this project?

This is how you do it, and this is how you ask for assistance.

So this program was just geared towards facade improvements for um, and so that included windows, doors, lighting, signage.

Um, and the idea was that by making these exterior improvements, you're um revitalizing the area and attracting customers to shop dine and do business downtown.

So that program was for both residential and commercial properties in the URA, and it was a 50-50 mash up to 25,000.

Um, the impact, you know, this is a small, this is this is just for this grant program, not all of what Laura's done, but we awarded you know over 260,000 and over cross 23 projects.

So it was good to like look back at those metrics to see how many products do we did, how many applications did we get every single year?

Were they big, were they small?

And it was kind of a mix of everything.

Um, and overall, I would say that this has been a really successful program with urban renewal.

So looking at what the DDA wants to do, um, I put together a program that I think builds off of the work that the Urban Renewal Authority did, but expands it to so much more that urban renewal didn't touch.

So the downtown improvement grant program is a matching grant uh program for up to 25,000 for interior and exterior capital improvements, and so this is really supporting those um property owners but also business owners and making capital improvements that will enhance the downtown's appearance, accessibility, and long-term vitality.

Um, you know, the the mission.

This is we want to invest in physical improvements that strengthen our creative, eclectic, and diverse character of Old Town.

That's something that we've heard a lot within our uh action plan.

We want to encourage that private investment, reduce long-term vacancies, attract new um visitors to our downtown, and just support our small business community.

So the eligible projects are vast, and that's really intentional.

Um, with a facade improvement program, you might be doing the facade, but then also something inside.

Um, especially with a lot of our older buildings, we're realizing that there you kind of need everything on the table to be able to like mix and match.

Um, there are other downtown development authorities and URAs that have very specific grant programs, like they have a fire suppression program, they have a facade improve program, they have a mural program.

And I wanted to see if we could put as much as we can into one.

So when someone's undertaking a project, they know that this is a streamlined way to ask for funds.

So the eligible projects include building facades, so everything similar to the Laura grant.

Accessibility upgrades.

This is really for if you need to create a new ADA path into a building or an 88 bathroom, or there's a weird step in the flooring and need to make that level.

Environmental remediation includes the testing and remediation of lead paint, asbestos, um, if there was an oil spill, we still have a couple of gas stations or one left, right?

Um energy efficiency upgrades.

This is for roofing, windows, anything that is you know, bringing this into more sustainable compliance.

Um streetscape activation.

This was something that um wasn't part of that lower facade program, but patios, right?

If there's bike racks, patios, something that's a capital improvement kind of fixed into the building.

Um infrastructure upgrades for use for code compliance.

Imagining that um, you know, this happens a lot when you take something that was an office space and now you're gonna turn it into a restaurant.

Now you need fire suppression.

Now you need um a larger tap size, you know, you might need to upgrade your your infrastructure with electrical, mechanical, HVAC.

Um interior capital improvements.

You know, I have in here that it needs to support long-term business operations, so permanent kitchen build-outs fixed in place, you know, flooring, those interior tenant improvements that are gonna stay within the building.

And then this was something that we we talked a couple times about about wanting to make sure that we also include professional services, and so um have in here that it's related to the design engineering survey serving of eligible capital improvements, um, that includes architectural fees, engineering fees, starting fees, technical, etc.

Um, this one's also really um important and kind of like the back, like the behind the scenes improvements.

When a business, there's a couple of just flats and um lots in our downtown that haven't been platted or don't have the right surveying.

So when you end up doing a larger project, you need to provide the that information as part of your package to the city, and it can end up being thousands of dollars to put that together, and you might have bought the building or a business and you didn't realize that this cost was gonna be part of it.

So this gives the flexibility of being able to support those costs as well.

The ineligible projects are really anything that is temporary, not a capital improvement.

Um, so routine maintenance, seasonal landscaping, something that can pick up and leave.

Um, so your POS system, your display cases, any sort of fixtures and furniture, um, cosmetic and temporary improvements, non-capital expenses, um, not tied to that improvement, regular business or operating expenses, permit fees, and then work started before you applied or work that's been completed.

And this is pretty standard in just these types of grant programs.

So the funding, um, I'm proposing that this would be a reimbursement grant up to uh 50% of eligible cost, and the maximum ward mount would be 25,000 per project.

Um we would this is a reimbursement grant program, and so once you're complete, you're gonna put together a package that has the receipts, um, your paid invoices, we'll have an inspection, and then a reimbursement happens after that.

Um, it's good to have some some selection criteria.

We found with the Laura, the Laura grant that well, if you're making a facade improvement in our downtown, like you're it you're gonna be eligible, but it's good to have that reflection criteria to reflect on.

And so um making sure that there's alignment with the DDA's mission and action plan, it's there's visibility or there's an impact with you know the public, um, contribution to long-term economic vitality and readiness to proceed budget timeline permitting.

And this is a grant program that I'm suggesting be on a rolling basis, just because everyone's in their different timeline as far as wanting to do a project, and it's harder to plan when it's like you can only apply for two months out of the year.

That just doesn't work.

Um, so being able to have it on a rolling basis when they come in, review it, it doesn't meet the criteria, is it eligible and then awarding that?

I think especially oh, sorry, yeah.

Especially with um requiring the product projects haven't yet begun.

Yeah, it if that's really difficult if you keep it on a calendar.

Yeah, totally, yeah.

So don't get asked question here.

Yeah, you can ask a question whenever you want.

Anyone jump in and jump in.

Um, so contribution to long-term economic vitality.

Are there criteria around that or is it too squishy to try to spushy?

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm good with that.

Yeah.

You know, we want this to be like uh an easy thing to apply for.

You know, we don't want people to have to be like, show me your business model and what you think your projected sales will be.

Like this is supposed to be a let's make an impact while you're doing your project.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well I'm going to comment about the reimbursement model.

Yeah.

And that is that um that uh can have the impact of um people not being able to afford to do it in the first place because they have to come up with money up front.

Yeah, that's what we found through our work in bullet county and pace is that some of our programs that are targeted at equity priority or small business.

Um we have figured out a way to do it that doesn't require above payment reimbursement, yeah, but that we pay directly or advanced funds or something so that um you know that the businesses who may be the most have access to that money sooner.

Yeah, don't have to don't have to put the whole bill before they get reimbursed.

Yeah, and that's a great point.

Um, you know, tonight I'm introducing this, and so comments like that is perfect as far as should we like this might be something that we want to add in, and so um I'll be collecting all of that.

And so if we want to add something like on a case by case basis, if uh small business needs an advance, you know, the board will be open to that.

So that's a great point.

I have some questions kind of in that similar realm, but should we wait till the end?

I don't want to throw you off your track because I can wait.

I have like four more slides.

Yeah, okay, cool.

Um, so the process would be um you submitted an application.

Um, I would review it for a completeness, making sure that all the pieces are there.

Um, one thing that we did with urban renewal is we had a subcommittee of two board members that were able to meet whenever, right?

To be able to give you an answer rather than having applicants wait until the next month for a board meeting, and then we would just report out at the board meeting what the subcommittee has done.

So I would recommend something similar to this.

So the subcommittee assembles, they review, they give the thumbs up and approve it, and then um we would administer a grant award letter.

Um within that, we are relying on the applicants to make sure that um they need to receive all the necessary city approvals, building permits, if there's any planning permits, um, fire, that and putting that on them that yes, you're eligible for this, you need to get all your permits.

Um, and then we it's helpful to have a time limit for this, so it actually entices people to do the project of six months, but we can always have an agreed upon timeline.

I think a good example is um Laura worked with Nancy West on the new facade where eats and suices, and she hit some bad weather and said, Can I just wait till the spring to do this?

And we agreed, yeah, let's wait.

So things like that where um we want it to happen sooner, but we can always come up with a better timeline if it works for the project, and then um they would submit that reimbursement package, um, and then we would issue a check within you know, typically like two to three weeks.

So some additional um grant requirements.

Uh you need to comply with all city codes, building codes, and being good staying with the city.

Um, this is an important one.

We it's not great to issue grant money if someone hasn't paid taxes, for instance, right?

Um, that's just a hypothetical example, but we just want to make sure that if there is an issue, this is an opportunity to make sure that we can help that small business get back in good standing.

Um, obtain all required permits before starting work, um, code violations found after the award uh will disqualify you for funding.

I think that that's an important thing.

It also just make sure that get the right contractor, right?

Make sure that you get the right inspections done.

Make sure you can say the do it.

Does it be okay?

Okay.

Um and then dig funds cannot be combined with edit other city grants for the same project scope.

Um cannot be cannot be.

Okay.

And so we have thank you.

We're all double checking.

Words are hard.

Um this is intentional because we have a small business capital grant program, which is through the city and it's for any business within Lafayette.

And this is just for our downtown businesses.

And so I we want you to be able to stack those grants, but we want you to stack it for a different scope of work.

Apply for the small business capital grant, maybe for your facade work, and then apply for us for things that maybe doesn't qualify for that program.

So, in a way, it's just stretching those dollars more.

We we don't want you to use the the Lafayette funding as your contribution for your match.

Yeah, okay.

And then um, one application per address per year.

Um, and so I'm gonna have a question for you guys in a second.

I have a couple questions that I need direction on is um you know, how do we want that to be you know, a calendar year or just 365 days?

Um but this a lot this I've seen work really successful when there's larger projects and it entices property owners to get involved by saying your property owner can apply for the scope to improve the site, and then the business is gonna apply for the scope, and so you're just stretching more investment in it.

Um so I've seen that work pretty well.

So next steps, um, I have some questions I need some direction on, but would also love to just have some back and forth and get some ideas.

I'm gonna receive feedback from the board, and then I will present a final package for approval at our next meeting.

So incorporate everything, make all those edits, and then once you approve that, um, we'll fully design this in both English and in Spanish, and we'll create a whole package for it.

So we'll have print material, we'll have a web PDF, um, we'll post it online.

I've you know, let's do that's I think a postcard would be great just to put it put it out to everyone in the district, and then bring in promotion and outreach.

So I have some questions here that I need some direction on.

We can go through these, but also happy to just answer some questions in general.

What are you what does everyone feel in?

Um I had some I would have some similar like thoughts to what you were talking about with the just the barrier to entry for some of our smaller businesses, yeah.

Um and I would love to just hear what other people's thoughts are about it, but not only with the um the funds coming after you've spent the money, which I know can be hard for some people, but also the fact that it's a matching grant, um, which I think is nice, like I totally get why it's a matching grant.

And I think when there's a new project, there are either people already investing in Lafayette, and so it makes sense to match.

But when I think about some of our smaller businesses, like if they have something that comes up for them and they just need like a smaller grant, you know, of three thousand dollars or something, and they don't necessarily have the money to match it.

Is there a way to meet that need?

Does anybody do you guys know kind of what I'm talking about?

Yeah, and I'm also curious for to know like how you guys when you did your um grant program and you didn't require them to pay first, you gave them the advanced money.

How you sort of like ensure that the money was properly spent on the project.

There's two different things.

Yeah, I think um one thing that that reminds me of is Laura did work where we paid for just the full scope of 88 bathrooms.

Yeah, like we didn't ask for matching grants, and there were certain things that were prohibiting a business from opening because they weren't ADA compliant.

That um if it was under a certain dollar amount, Laura would just pay for it up front.

So there could be things like that that depending on doing what the scope is and what the dollar amount is that maybe that we have a less matching or um don't require a match.

Is that something you're this amount?

Probably want to create criteria for, or would it be more of a case-by-case basis?

I think it's helpful to well, Jenny, did you have something?

Oh, I was just gonna say, like, I uh I agree with what you're saying, and I'm wondering if there is like a threshold if it's like you're saying under a certain amount, they could just be a grant um instead of a matching grant, but I do think that we would definitely need to establish criteria so that there's no perception of like picking businesses or favorites or projects that we we think are good.

Um, like good, obviously we want it to be good, but like of our preference.

So I would be also in favor of trying to figure out like if there are smaller projects.

I do know that a lot of times there's like a barrier where it's like, well, we want to do this thing, but we don't have the three thousand dollars.

But if we just had the three thousand, we don't need six, we just need three.

Um, it would like people would do it.

Um, so I would be in favor of creating like criteria for that, and then also having this like larger criteria for a matching grant that businesses would obviously be showing like more of an investment in, and like I would assume a lot of that would be longer time frames or bigger improvements that they would be doing.

Yeah, we could brainstorm how to handle that threshold.

Um maybe it's uh maybe it's projects above five thousand dollars, you know, require match for the amount above five thousand dollars.

So the first five thousand or three thousand, whatever it is, is just a grant, and everything above that is a 50% match.

Yeah, something like that.

Is as long as it meets the criteria, it doesn't have to be a certain type of project within this type of granting situation.

Is um when you're describing a match, is it a describing a direct match?

Is it a direct cash match?

So compared to like in the nonprofit world, it's very common that the business's match is in staff time or in other expenses that you might anyway incur, but because those people are going to be devoted to their time working on the project, and that supports a lot of smaller nonprofits who aren't gonna have that same cash to put up front, but I just don't know how it works in the business world or the public development world.

Yeah, we've done that before with Laura, where um there have been uh individuals that did the own their own build-out, right?

And so what we asked them to do was um price out what you what it would like and and and some of these, you know, we asked for multiple bids, figure out how much it would cost for labor to do this project and include that as part of your match.

Yeah, and so this is meant to be a little flexible in those situations where we want to work with you if you don't meet everything, like uh within the the box or the guidelines, yeah.

I'm also wondering if this idea of kind of tiering it so that there are direct grants, but then there's a matching like for over a certain amount could address some of those situations where you know some business owners might not have the money to put up front and wait for that.

If it is a direct grant and it is under a certain amount, the project's been approved, maybe the money can be dispersed, and then the larger projects that's yeah, you have to wait on that.

So it might kind of deal with some of that as well.

Yeah, and I think with this idea of you know, if you're doing X project up to whatever you can apply for a grant, you know, um, I think it would be helpful to figure out like what what are those projects that we want to support?

Is it signage, maybe, or is it like those ADA rates where like that that's something that is prohibiting you from opening, or is it utility or you know, it'd be good to figure out like what is in that category of direct grant funding?

So like limiting it to only certain a certain scope.

I would argue that we don't limit it, that it's if it meets the program criteria that we've already defined, the broader criteria shouldn't have a subset that qualifies for once you hit dollars on me, it's and then once you hit X dollars, then matching kicks in.

So you're that's an idea, yeah.

I mean, it is interesting, like you know, just working with different businesses in town, like for some people having just like three thousand dollars is gonna be like a make it or break it thing for them, and for some people they're coming in with a big amount of money that they're already investing, so it's really easy to be like, yeah, I'll spend it up front and I'll do the matching because I'm already investing, you know, fifty thousand dollars in this project.

So it is like I feel like having something that's more open-ended really does allow us to help a broader a broader range of people.

Now, this program is for um property owners and businesses.

Do we want to provide the same sort of benefit to either one?

Can you property owners of businesses so like this program would be open to commercial property owners or s or businesses?

And so would we want to provide you know three thousand dollars to a property owner?

So just to clarify like so the lafayette floor is like the old building is owned by Tebow, yes.

So like are you asking like if he all of a sudden is like I want to make this improvement, yes.

Is that I I feel not this is nothing twice, yeah.

Him, I'm using that as an example, right?

But I do feel like it uh there should be different qualifications for like small business owners versus property owners, not knowing who owns all of the property in our district.

You could do um a tenant or an owner occupied, yeah, because like you're a unique example where you're the property owner and you're the tenant, right?

So you could always apply as a business owner.

Particularly particularly unique because it's two different entities, one rents from the other.

So under this, like I could apply twice for different scopes of the same project, you know.

But I'm not suggesting I would, but it is a unique situation.

Yeah.

What do you think when you ask that question?

I'm like, oh, yeah.

You could have a different thing I want to add.

I was just curious what your thoughts on it, where well, you know, um it improves the property value for these property owners, right?

Um, and it would be it would be good to see like what it's harder to entice property owners to have skin in the game with some of these things, and so it would be great to not saying that all property owners are like that, but we found sometimes when a small business wants to make an improvement, we say, Will you property owner be part of it?

And so just want to think about like the the consequences of are we opening this to everyone?

And I think that's a great example of you know, someone who um not to do anything with Steven Tebow, but like it's an example of like a real estate investment, you know, company.

Do we do they want to have the same sort of benefit if we're our goal is to try to help small businesses that are are struggling with some of these improvements?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

So commenting on that, I mean, it wouldn't you could have a maximum ceiling of capacity, financial capacity being a property owner, right?

Say like well.

Yes, but then also we don't want to be able to be like, I need to see your books, right?

Like we for this dollar amount of 25,000, we don't want to necessarily be like, I need to see financial statements, and that that is something that we might end up doing later on if we're doing big public-private partnerships where we get the financial consultant to come in, where we do the performance, where we have the open book negotiation.

This is more meant to be you're doing this project, you bring this to the table, we're gonna bring this to the table and we're gonna help you out.

So uh yeah.

Uh I have a different thing to add.

I don't know if you wanted to conclude on that.

I was just gonna say it sounds like you all are interested in maybe some set of like a micro grant program where there isn't a match for certain scope and probably to small businesses or owner-occupied businesses.

So let me think of that and maybe come back at our November 10th meeting with some options if that works.

Yeah.

I wonder too if there's a way to have some way that people could say, like, I would need the money up front to be able to complete this, and we could have we could review that and potentially have an exception for people.

Yeah, that's I feel like that would be better.

I think we can say, you know, this is a reimbursement grant.

Um we uh special approval for advancements may be considered doing case by case basis.

Yeah, okay.

No, yeah.

Okay.

Uh so I don't know how this is gonna land, but watching at the farmers market, people exchanging food.

I would like to propose that we consider an in kind of offer to make the match.

So if you can offer something that in kind you can assign a value to it, how much food did I donate to this restaurant, or how much uh supply art supplies that I donate to this company?

I don't know what it looks like, but I I would like some idea of whether an in-kind option to make the match is something that we could offer because I think that brings people in who maybe they have services that they could offer to another part of the DDA as we get people crossing over with uh interaction.

That's a very interesting idea.

Was can you explain who the like I'm a this feels like kind of like a trade or like a barter?

So who would be the recipient of like if a business came and said I have services that I could donate, like who would that then go to?

To another member of the DDA area, like within another business or something, okay.

Right to boost vitality, um provide sustainability if there's a building, if like if we in a circular economy situation, if you have something that you're gonna throw away all the time, you use that as um collateral, an in-kind offer to say, like, we'll get this compost to the florist.

Um we'll make sure that we process it.

Extra food waste goes to I'm just thinking of the farmers market because there's a lot, there's food that could go to another place, and there's a real need for kitchens, like in uh industrial or yeah, industrial.

I don't know what it's called, but a kitchen that a restaurant could use, like an offer to provide their kitchen space to you know, other small startup companies that need it that could be uh in the DDA.

That's the kind of idea.

I love the idea concept of it uh wholeheartedly.

Um I think the oversight of something like that is really challenging.

Like if we're thinking about what does it mean for like us as the DDA board to oversee like what kind of what that would look like, um, you know, it's much different from like approving a grant and receiving receipts.

Um so I think that's a I think that would be a very good aspirational goal for like what we're doing, but I do wonder like if the goal is to have this like started soon, maybe that's like this is phase one, and there's an aspiration to like figure out how we can incorporate things like that.

Um, because I do wonder like just that oversight piece, like is the part that feels a little challenging.

But I think we could create an environment in which businesses were engaging in that regularly in Lafayette and it could be really successful.

I agree.

I really like the idea.

I don't know about tying it into this grant.

I think it would be at least some the first phase.

But I do I really like we've got good enough for me.

Yeah, and I to also to remind you all like this is just one of many things we're gonna do, right?

And so if it doesn't fit naturally into this, there's always another mechanism or vehicle for us to create something.

Yeah, creating some like platform in which businesses could sort of connect and share in a way could be really cool.

Yeah, I really like that you've included the server the professional services piece.

Um I'm wondering if it's gonna require a little more thought because that's probably like a phase one of a project that uh you know, phase two of the project budget and scope itself, you know, what's gonna cost or what exactly you're gonna do, and tying those all into one grant that's available one time a year might not work.

So maybe there's maybe there's a way to pull that piece out as a as a leader or uh phase one or a phase zero part of the grant, and if you get through that part, then you can apply for the phase two part of it.

Yeah, that's a that's a great point, you know.

Um, maybe something that we can do is your businesses are eligible to apply, you know, up that to that 25,000 per calendar year, and so if they need to do two smaller projects and meet that threshold, then maybe that covers you where like I'm gonna spend five thousand on the architectural, this works out, all right.

Now in six months I'm gonna apply for my facade project.

Yes, okay.

That'd be a great way to help.

Yeah, okay, cool.

Um would murals count, or is that cosmetic?

You know, I think murals should definitely count.

Okay.

We have this we have the creativity and culture microgrant program where we cover murals.

Um, but we can include it in this.

I mean, we've we've done facade improvements where we've included murals for Lura.

An example would be um the greetings from Lafayette, Laura helped with that.

Um Jordan's project on ventry this side, there's a mural there, and so I think it definitely helps with our identity and economic vitality.

Cool.

And often fit in with exterior restoration too.

Like I it nicely tied together.

I just wasn't sure if like it can because it could be painted over, is it cosmetic or permanent?

Yeah, we've I agree, yeah.

Explicitly said paint painting is not included.

But yeah, I think that distinction is important.

Yeah, I think with a painting with not included, my thought was like if you just are like patching painting, so that's a great point that being clear about what would be included as far as pain goes.

Yeah, so that's a great catch.

And all for having like lava be a mini rhino.

So I mean, and that could be you know, some like the mic the the microgrant program that we're gonna talk about next, like that is in the matching grant.

That is just you know, you apply for, and so maybe we need to think about like what is the subset of micro grant things that we just want to like invest in for projects within the the capital side this is great.

Yeah, so I have I have a couple of of questions.

Um so right now, you know, Laura did it where you can one application per address per year per calendar year, and you can have separate applications for owners and businesses for distinct projects that has worked out well.

Um or this is a little different.

I was thinking about this.

Do we want to allow for owners and businesses to apply after one year for additional projects?

So another way of saying this is like I could apply for project December of this year and then apply for just January of the next year for two different pieces of scopes, and so just as kind of like you're putting a lot of money into one project when something that we should think about is how do we equitably distribute funds across the district instead of you know if someone is like I'm ready to go, I'm gonna apply for 25 in December and then come the new year I'm apply again, or do we want to space it out where you need to wait 365 days a year?

Um, like once you hit that 25,000 dollar cap, you need to wait for a whole year before you can apply again.

Yeah.

I think that makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah, I would vote option two.

Is that manageable?

Yes on our end.

Yeah, it's really easy to track these things.

Okay.

Yeah.

What why does that keep it from if you have to wait a year?

How does that distribute funds over a larger area?

Because you can still apply.

I mean, we still it just would free up that calendar year's worth of funding for other projects rather than someone who's like, I'm ready to go and I'm gonna spend a lot of money on my on my property, right?

It it just will we we wanna try to do as many projects as possible, so like that's why it's not like we're looking for just one project to spend the funds, we're looking for many different projects.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think the language is a little confusing.

Yeah.

I think it would be better to specify like reapply after one year of application date or approval.

Yeah.

Because then that specifies like I know it's implicit, but it wasn't obvious to me when I saw that.

I was like, wait a minute.

Yeah.

So I think specifying that language.

That'd be great feedback.

Yeah.

Um the other thing is, so um, do we want to consider providing this is this is a great vehicle to get the conversation going with the with the project, right?

It's like there's grant funding.

Now sometimes there are projects that are just like they're cost prohibited because they they start to roll everything back, the foundation's not working, I need to upgrade my tab, and it turns into a bigger project.

Um that project could be catalytic, right?

Do we want to welcome projects above 25,000?

Let's say it's towards the end of the year and someone has a bigger project.

Um, but instead of having that be reviewed by the subcommittee, we would just bring that to the full board to make that decision.

That's something that we we had with the Laura facade too.

I think so.

I mean, it's just 25,000, while incredibly meaningful depending on the size of your budget, becomes less and less money as time marches on too.

And so um just having that it seems to me the way you've described it there, they won't dominate over smaller projects because that's only that's like an only if, and then we're putting in additional um guardrails with it.

What's the only if piece of it?

Well, um it ha if funding allows, so right, so it can't be we're not it would well, it's it would be rolling anyway, right?

But in account in our budget year, yes, right.

So we're gonna dedicate a certain amount of funds, and if we're realizing that come one year we're gonna like spend all the funds by March, right?

But then another year we not we it might be the fall and we have extra funds and someone approaches us.

Would we wanna open you know, if we have that funding and it's a catalytic project, do we want to be open to it in a sense?

Yeah, and that's still a a dig grant.

Yeah.

Even if it came, even if it had to come to the floor.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm curious.

Is there an is there at this point any other mechanism like with Laura, we had much larger projects that we were working on that were outside of the scope of the facade improvement grants?

Is there any other mechanism right now for people to come to us with larger projects outside of this, or would this sort of be the only way in?

I think this is the the vehicle in, but projects can always come to us.

Um the good thing about dedicating a certain bucket of funds is it just you're able to, it's easier for businesses and property owners to understand how to do work with the DDA.

Um, what Faith is talking about is when we did these larger economic development agreements and Laura did it where we actually had TIFF fund balance where we invested in projects.

Um what we'll probably have to do, and it's something that at a future meeting I want to have one of our peer DDA executive directors come to talk about TIFF reimbursement agreements, and that is essentially like a property tax for a sales tax rebate over a certain period of time up to a cap.

So that is that is something that we also have to create um separate from this for those bigger projects.

It seems like it makes sense to at least consider larger projects if this is the only you know avenue that we have in for now and we could always adjust it in the future.

Yeah, yeah, we'll probably, you know, at some point next year we'll probably talk about do we want to create a catalytic project like incentive fund, right?

Where we have um, you know, this is something that we talked about with those other peer DDAs where they have criteria and a scoring as far as like what sort of investment do you need to have, what sort of investment will we see back, and do we want to rebate a portion of your sales tax back because of it?

And that just helps these larger projects get up and going.

Sorry, these classes terrible.

Um catalytic, what uh in the in this world, what does that mean?

Catalytic in what way?

It is totally subjective, right?

It is what do we think is catalytic for us for our priorities at that time?

An example for us would be um that the black make it bacon motel, right?

That'd be catalytic if that got activated.

I think we'll figure it's it's it's kind of what do we think is catalytic just based on what our goals are about here, right?

Like the post festival plaza is a catalytic project.

What's that festival plaza is a catalog?

Okay, yeah.

The post was a catalyst.

The post, yeah, that's what I was thinking.

You know, yes.

Yeah, I'm something that really shifts.

Yeah.

Do you Bridget anticipate a similar pace or rate of applications to this compared to what Laura was seeing in this equivalent program?

And what what was that?

We would probably get like through the facade program about like six a year.

And they really range, you know, they were small things like we provided assistance for cherry's cheesecakes to get a new sign, right?

Um, but then there was large there's larger ones where like we helped with the apothecary, um, do some facade work.

Um, we've done helped with Jordan with Ventry.

Um, they're kind of all up and down, and it kind of it just kind of depends on is it a new building opening and they need to get new windows or a different door, right?

It just there's no like signs to it, it just is kind of every year's a little bit different.

But we saw that you know it it's probably around like that suite, six, seven, eight projects, and they really range from like a couple thousand to twenty-five thousand.

Yeah, I really hope that through our kind of marketing efforts and our intention to create sort of this like welcome kit for businesses that we can reach more people, you know, people who have no idea even that Laura was doing it because we did get some like repeat customers, yeah, you know, yeah.

It's like it'd be nice to really like see all the businesses downtown benefit from something like this.

So hopefully our outreach efforts could be improved.

Yeah.

Can you just highlight how this program will be different from the city's capital program?

What are the key differences here?

And why would why would a DDA business apply for one and not the other?

Um they choose to apply for ours or theirs.

So the small business capital grant was started with the city as a way to also be super flexible and try to like just get dollars invested.

Um, it's up to 7500, and so this is a much larger dollar amount.

Um, it does not include um environmental remediation, it doesn't include streetscape activation.

Um but it includes a lot of similar ones, but the real big thing with this is the larger dollar amount, and that's for every business throughout the city, and so we do run out of funds every year.

If that's a hundred thousand dollar pot rolling basis, this allows us to not only leverage that but then also stack this.

And can you tell me again why they can't combine why you can't apply for both?

I don't want the cities.

Sorry, I shouldn't say I don't want it.

It's not normal to provide city funding as your match for it, and so um, we just want to keep it separate.

Okay, so they can everyone can apply for both, but they cannot be used for the same scope.

Yes, yeah, for the same project.

I think that makes sense.

Okay.

So then I just I'm sorry.

Well, no, just because especially like the given the differences you just mentioned, like businesses are if they're you know, if they come to us and say, I'm gonna do this, we can say that's not in the scope of this.

You can apply here, and then they can come to us for other projects.

And you know, often when um we're working with small businesses, we're saying, have you talked to Pace about this part?

You know, have you applied for the historic preservation for this part?

I mean, it's good to stack all these things for different scopes, and also gear people towards if you only can apply for this specific scope for this thing, apply it for here, even if there's some old like if if you have to pick and choose, let's let's try to get some of those things into the DDA to pay for.

Um, I just have two other questions.

This has been super helpful and great discussion.

Um right now we have 150,000 in 2026 for downtown development.

Um, we have two options.

We can do 100,000 and you know, think about adding an additional 50 if we run out of funds, or we can just you know open it up and say we have we're we're only gonna have this, you know, 150 for this program.

Um if we do 100,000, we have 50,000 just for if something pops up for something else.

I think we always have the option of adding that 50.

So this is just deciding for this for 2026.

Yeah, right.

So maybe that makes sense.

I think it makes sense to build in flexibility, knowing that we don't have to, but there may be something really amazing that pops up, and it would be a shame if we limited ourselves and didn't have the option.

Yep.

Just could theoretically sort of four or six businesses of the maximum.

Okay, great.

And then the last thing, and this kind of goes into our marketing discussion, so we can we don't need to answer this now.

Um, but I'm imagining, you know, when we're thinking about the DDA and where does all of our information live?

Um, I've been doing a lot of research about where what other DDAs do.

And I think that there is a benefit to have the DDA's grant programs on our old town Lafayette website.

Um we can have it on the city's website.

Um we could create our own website, but thinking about like we don't need to answer this now, and maybe it's something that we all think about, and I can even send you guys examples of what different DDs websites look like, and but it might be make sense for us to have a lot of our information on our downtown website, just so your business and within the DA in our downtown, this is where you can go to find business resources.

So something to think about, and I can send out examples, and maybe we can make that decision at our next meeting when we're wrapping everything up.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Great.

Sorry about my computer froze that I don't have a printed script.

Please you're gonna move us into the next item.

Okay, and I'm gonna just go to there.

Yeah, the next item, which is the introduction to the draft, creativity and culture microgrant.

Um CCM.

This doesn't necessarily have us something that comes to it.

Yeah, um, so I'm gonna go through a very similar presentation, but for our um our next grant program, which is focused on just our artistic downtown and our our our the culture that we have.

Um, and so looking in our action plan, um, there's a number of goals that we have in here within the creativity and culture and then marketing activation that aligns with creating a creativity and culture microgrant program to support events, arts and cultural programming.

And so, you know, it talks about partnering with arts and cultural resources to support these initiatives, collaborate with local artists, cultural groups to expand and enhance multicultural and arts programming and venues, um, celebrate our identity as this creativity and culture, and then support events that welcome all residents and visitors to Lafayette with a focus of creative accessible inclusive programming.

Um, you know, the last one I talked about, what other grant program was out there that was successful.

Um, our arts and cultural resources department does a lot of great work citywide in this realm.

Um they have three programs, uh, public art grants, arts and education grants, and arts and community grants.

And these have us just each of these have a distinct period where you apply within these couple months and then you get awarded.

These are not reimbursements and they are just grants that are awarded up front.

So for public art grants, this looks to support visual art uh projects installed in outdoor locations that are visible and accessible to the public.

Our arts and education grants are funds, arts-related projects led by teachers that directly benefit students in Lafayette's K through 12, and then arts and community, sports arts and cultural projects that provide a clear community or organizational benefit in Lafayette.

So they have this really great graph on their website.

Um, and I met with them and reviewed this grant program with them prior to putting together this draft.

Um, and so you can see that public art does visual dance, film, uh, literary, literary music, theater, multidisciplinary, indoor mural, and there's a lot related to the arts and education, and then arts and community grants does outdoor mural, outdoor installation, pop-up exhibition, and temporary sculpture.

What we're thinking of is having a grant program that complements these two programs, but have it be specific to our downtown.

Um, you might be thinking, well, there's already a grant program for this.

Why are we creating another one?

Um, I sat down with arts and cultural resources and I said, you know, we're interested in funding these types of programs.

Do you want us to create our own program, or do you want us to just give you funding?

You know, an ex an option would be give you funding and you select these.

And they said, we want you to be separate because your goals for the downtown might be different than our overall community goals, and we have more applications than we have funding for, and so this allows the deck the DDA to prioritize funding and culture and creativity in our downtown.

And it also will allow us the opportunity.

Um, you'll see later on.

Um you'll see later on, you can you can stack these grants, so you can apply for one of these grants or one of our grants to kind of stretch those dollars more.

So a little different than the DIG program.

So the CCM Creativity and Culture Microgrant is a competitive microgrant initiative ranging from 500 to 2500 that activates downtown spaces through art, culture, and community experiences.

Argus, organizations, businesses, community groups, individuals, creating experiences that bring people together, highlight diverse voices and activate public spaces.

The intent is really to celebrate and showcase our unique cultural and creative identity.

That really is one of the reasons why people love coming to our downtown.

It looks to activate downtown spaces through creative and cultural experiences, highlight and amplify diverse voices, traditions, and perspectives, foster community connection, and then contribute to our overall dynamic and thriving downtown.

Did you mean to help CCM in that first understood?

Thank you.

So for the CCM eligible projects, so this includes public art installations and murals, performances, festivals, workshop, cultural events, community-based creative projects and programs, and projects that celebrate Lafayette's cultural and diversity and creative identity.

In Laura, we couldn't really fund any of these, and we were asked a lot to help with certain things like this, and it didn't align with the mission.

With our DDA, it aligns with this in a different way.

And so this provides a mechanism for how we can engage with these different community groups in these projects.

So ineligible projects would be projects outside of our boundary, routine organizational operating costs or salaries, projects primarily for private benefit or projects completed prior to the grant approval.

So the maximum amount would be 2500.

There's no matching grant required, but always encouraged.

And this would be distributed up front.

You know, typically with these projects, what I've learned through talking to Arch and Cultural Resources is they don't have the funding to do this and then wait for the reimbursement afterwards.

Some of these smaller things they need that the cash up front.

So with the selection criteria, which we can always modify, but the initial first pass is alignment with our mission and action plan, creativity and innovation of the proposed project, contribution to cultural vibrancy and community engagement, visibility and accessibility in our downtown district, feasibility, budget, and readiness to proceed.

So you would submit an application.

We would have a subcommittee of two members to review and provide that approval.

We would execute that grant letter, and then the funding would be processed, and the project would need to be completed within 12 months of approval or within that calendar year.

We can talk about that.

And then applicants must submit a final impact report within 60 days of the project being completed to be eligible for future funding.

So that impact report, which has yet to be fully flushed out, but the idea is something similar to what arts and cultural resources asked for, where it talks about the summary, participation data, event access, post-event impact and feedback, budget overall, including grant sources, revenue and expenses.

They must be in uh good standing with the city, comply with all city codes.

Um, it may be combined with other existing grant programs, including the city of Lafayette or Boulder County or outside.

And if a project does not occur, then the applicant must return funds to the DDA or they're not be eligible for future funding.

I asked Arts and Cultural Resources, has that ever happened where a project didn't come through?

And they said yes, and they return the funds.

But with these microgrants, it's just a risk that you have.

Um, so there is some vetting as far as just um credibility within the community and understanding that you know they they might have been doing a lot of work, and so you feel comfortable awarding that.

So uh similar next steps here, so I won't go through all of that, but um this is one this is a grant program that um Laura did not do, right?

They didn't have anything similar to this.

Um, but the intent is really what is a mechanism to help these projects that align with our action plan and give them that that vehicle for doing that.

Um so happy to answer any questions, and I have just a couple of questions on here also.

I have a quick question.

Yeah, um and now I'm just going back to the other one that we were discussing murals.

Like, doesn't that feel like should we now?

And I apologize I didn't remember that they were in this, but like, should we be including murals in the other grant program?

Because it is in this one specifically, so it's can be held as like an individual project.

So we can have it in both, or we can have it in one or the other.

And the reason why I say both is because I've learned through my time working in Old Town that murals can be very expensive.

There are some that are over 50,000, and so being able to apply for dig for a larger amount having that matching grant might be helpful.

Um it's also sometimes might be helpful if like I'm doing a project that's 50,000 and has a bunch of different scope items, like there's mural, there's a new sign, there's new flooring, like kind of cobbling that all together to meet that larger dollar amount.

Yeah, makes sense.

Yeah.

Well, just say about stacking that they could you can stack these.

Could you potentially stack the arts and cultural resources with this one?

Yes.

Could you stack the arts and cultural resources with the capital?

I think so, yeah.

I mean, you wouldn't want to have this is just like cash, right?

Right.

Um, but you can apply for both.

Yeah.

I I wondered too whether we should consider, and I suppose this gets more into um when that subcommittee is formed and and uh I assume a rubric created, but um a direction that a number of the larger arts governing um awarding institutions are going, like SCFD, is that um additional this kind of gets to your your remark earlier, uh Tim is additional sort of bonus points are given if yours is a collaboration with another arts organization or business or whatever in the district, and I think that's this is an area where we can encourage that.

Um and it doesn't mean you don't you know you may have an individual idea or project or or whatever, but but that's a way that we really can encourage that collaboration, especially when it's celebrating um culture and diversity and all of that.

So that could be a point we're looking for in these totally.

If I may add on to that, I somehow was lucky enough to be the liaison to um the arts and not the not the department, but the commission, whatever it was, uh which is now a board, the arts board.

Um and they needed people to make to help with the selection process.

So I volunteered for that uh for the arts and education and arts and community, and then the uh I've had a conversation with the chair of the public art committee, and there's a there's a there's a challenge with the arts because arts are distributed or they're done or uh accomplished through different channels, different ways, and I noticed bias in the selection process.

So I don't when I saw that we would be the subcommittee.

I think it might be important to look at us being the subcommittee, especially if culture is a piece of this, and I I know someone who applied for and uh you know for the uh arts and community grant, and just understanding the process was challenging, and then the report back was another piece that wasn't clear.

Um because this process is not something that artists typically do.

It might be, hey, we're doing this project.

Can you do the teeth in the face?

Because you do teeth really well on the mural, and what should I charge you?

But you know, what do you want to charge me for that?

So there's there's some there's some things I don't I'm not sure that we're going to understand in the criteria for making the selection.

I totally think we should do this, but I'm not sure that we want to use the same process that arts and cultural resources department is using to make the selection.

I think it adds depth to like if somebody does stack them.

Um if they qualify for both, great.

If they don't, I think that also provides us with the opportunity to expand our reach to populations that don't necessarily meet the city's um qualifications.

I don't know if I said that gentlemen, but are you saying that we should be the ones reviewing?

No, like the for this particular grant, somebody applies for the grant.

Who do you think should be that's uh people who would be better at judging the significance of the grant?

And I'm not I don't know who that is, but I'm not sure it's us.

So one of the thoughts that I have for the subcommittee um would that it be um myself, two board members, and then potentially two or three people from arts and cultural resources that administrate their grants because they have a public art coordinator, right?

That's an expert in murals and sculpture.

We have someone that you know puts on events through the city.

We have someone, we have these like great partners, and so my initial thought was having them come in to help advise us if we aren't the experts in some of these certain areas.

Um that seems like that's something that maybe you're not comfortable with.

Correct.

And uh there's a picture in this slide deck that I won't point out that um it just so happened that the community where it was going to be put was never initially asked, you know how you feel about this bit and piece.

Uh so I guess that's what I'm saying is yes, someone from ACRD would be great, but I don't think that should be.

I think there needs to be one more person who is not connected to us or the city who has like we don't have a resident on the DDA right now.

Like we have business owners and me.

Oh, like within the district, right?

And then on the DDo I'm just saying, for example, we don't have someone who is just our resident in the DDA boundary in the on the DDA.

And that's I'm not saying that that if we did have a residence, that that one person would be the perfect one.

But I I think to in order to maintain our inclusivity or idea of inclusivity and our understanding of the arts and culture to say, like, hey, we don't know everything, and we can't, and that's been part of the challenge over time.

So I would I would like to see someone else.

I've worked in other governments where even when you select a like consultant contract, you have someone from a review committee that's outside the city to be on that.

There's different models where we if we want to have someone separate than the DDA in the city and a community member that is in the artist community sit on that subcommittee, that's totally something that we can consider.

Yeah.

It does sound to me I'm a little uh unclear.

It sounds like we're talking about making some kind of subjective judgment about what kind of part we want to fund or what kind of part we don't.

We're gonna get a bunch of applications, and we're gonna have a scoring criteria, and we're gonna decide which ones we're funding and why, and we'll have to create a criteria.

Are we and it could change every single year?

Like one year we could be really interested in getting bonus points for projects that activate vacant storefronts, right?

Um, there could be other projects that we're really wanting to do more, you know, cultural events.

I you know, I don't know what those are, but being able to have a scoring rubric to see these five projects scored the highest, these scored the media, and we scored the lowest.

We have this amount of funding, how do we want to break it up?

It's and what I've learned from seeing some of my colleagues do these grants that are more geared towards arts and community.

If there's it's it's a science and an art, right?

Like there's some subjective things once you have that rubric about why you're making those decisions, but you want to have a rubric to get you to the basis for this is how we're gonna equitably try to equally distribute the funds.

And I I guess what I was saying is there is there it's in there's inherent bias, you know, all the time, and it might be subjective.

And what I'm suggesting is to reduce the uh reduce the bias and reduce the subjectivity, the our biases, I guess, in the process by including someone who could be part of the process to have a voice.

Um access is a big piece of inclusion.

So I guess that's what I would argue for.

No, I think that's great because um, like I'm certainly not an expert in this, right?

Um and so being able to have a different perspective, you know, our purview is so much different, like we all have different purviews, right?

And experiences and things will resonate with all of us differently.

And so being able to just have another voice and seat at the table, I think would be helpful, especially for these that can be really meaningful for our community.

Yeah.

Um so I just had this has been a super helpful conversation because this is the first time putting together a grant program like this within um you know a special district, and so some um it sounds like we're all comfortable with that second question of providing those funds up front.

Um do we want to increase the maximum grant award to 5,000, or does the range that I propose of 500 to 2500 seem appropriate?

I think it makes sense to increase it, but you know, doesn't mean that that's always gonna be the case, but you know, like you were saying, some of these projects do cost you know a lot.

Um so I think it makes sense.

What is our total budget for this?

Uh 15,000.

Oh I would yeah, I I was gonna go the opposite direction of not increasing mostly I guess for two reasons.

Like one, this is our first time doing this, so getting a lay of the landscape like how many applications are we get gonna get, like what kinds of projects can we fund, and then also wanting to maximize the amount like of smaller things that can be done, and then maybe in a second year, like focus, like expanding it, and then being like we're gonna fund smaller number of projects, but they'll be more impactful because they're bigger.

But I do wonder if if we have a lower if there's if we have a lower threshold, we might get be able to fund more people, and that will generate interest and return people to return for bigger projects in the future.

Yeah, I guess we could always increase it as we have more funds.

Yeah, and you know, when I was putting together our budget, um it's it was based off of this is how much I think we're gonna get in TIFF, right?

We could like knock it out of the park and be like, we have all this more money for the third year, you know.

Like, do we want to change this into a $30,000 grant program?

Um so it's a I that's a great point as far as like why don't we just see what happens and yeah.

It seems like with projects and events like this, people do apply for multiple sources of funding because one, you know, like the the arts and cultural grants are quite small and don't usually fund the whole project, so people tend to kind of stack grants together.

So it's cool that we could just sort of be like one piece in that larger yeah, funding.

Um I was gonna say that kind of the exact same thing is to if we do make them smaller, they can stack and potentially a a art, a an event or an action could have different pieces that are connected with one another, like you know, there's an alley, something that happens in this alley, and then it's precedes something that happens in another alley, and they've got two grants from us, one for each alley, but they're associated with one another.

It's I I wouldn't want to limit what this could provide because we don't really have an under, we don't know what's gonna happen.

Yeah, but making them smaller, I think.

The last question I had is should organizations and individuals be allowed to submit multiple applications per cycle, um per cycle meaning a year, yeah.

So, like I'm gonna submit three applications for three different ideas that I have to do in the downtown.

That doesn't really feel like it would be fair.

Doesn't mean you have to award all of them, right?

But I do want to welcome all the ideas like I have an idea, I want to pan and roll over here, I want to do a performance in this vacant storefront.

Like I got big ideas.

Do you want to hear all of them?

Or do we just want to get my best one?

I would say they can apply for different ideas, but they can only be awarded once.

That makes sense.

Could we put parameters where they can submit multiple applications per cycle, but it's limited to certain periods of the cycle, like once per quarter, or I think we're gonna have one like what one period where they apply for the calendar year.

Okay, yeah.

Because I was just thinking, like, if there was someone who had a really successful like bill in in an alley, and then six months later they were like, I didn't have this idea until now.

This is so great.

But I I do see there could be some potential challenges with people who flood, like, here's 15 applications.

Um yeah, if there is only one cycle, I don't I don't know.

I'm kind of on the fence, but this is not rolling.

No, no.

What did you say?

It's not rolling, like the other one.

It's just like you apply one time.

I think we should start by limiting it, and therefore, and then again see the number we get, see the partly for that equity reason of um comfort with applying and knowledge, and you know, we have such a wonderfully robust artistic community, and so I think there are some people who will jump all over this, and so just in the interest of fairness, at least in our first cycle, trying to trying to get as many different applications as opposed to fielding many from a couple, um, which would will be a marketing project then and a communication challenge.

I I literally just came from a another art project where I work, uh, working with artists to bring into a space that's a science space.

So we had to hire someone who understood art to fit in the space.

And there's always this, there's always a uh a conversation that I think maybe uh ACRD could help us with is like questions about how do we uh deal with things that we not we're not expecting.

So I know I know there are partners with us, and that it would just expect to have some assistance along the way when we if we did get somebody to put in 15 applications and none of them can we understand uh that would be one of those things like okay, how do we how do we address this in a way that we can work with without it getting labor intensive, I guess.

Yeah, I do agree with Joanna in the first year in the same spirit of like keeping the amount low, seeing what we're dealing with, like maybe next year it's not limited to the applications, but I agree.

Sweet.

We may might decide this later, but would there be any reason to whether we're not anonymize the applications project committee?

So that you know, oh my buddy.

Like not that we would do that, we'd hope we wouldn't totally right.

Yeah, maybe that would be worthwhile.

It's a great idea.

Um the other thing that um I just want to mention is we've talked about creating two subcommittees.

Um I'm I already have some ideas about some other things that might be good to break off into two um directors to help with certain things, but there's a lot of opportunities to get involved, right?

Um, so what I might do is I might send out a survey just about different subcommittees that we might be assembling and seeing who's interested in what, and then bringing that to a public in our next meeting for you all to decide, you know, Tom is interested in all these five things, Ian's only interested in one, like let's give Ian this preference on the one that he wants to do, sort of thing, and we'll we'll vote on that.

Thanks for doing all of this.

Okay, so I'm gonna think you're involved here.

Hypothetically, yeah.

Okay, cool.

Okay, moving on to old town lafayette marketing discussion.

Okay.

So we've been building a lot to this.

Yeah.

And the only way to do it, there's nothing to it but to do it.

Um so uh tonight we're gonna discuss the old town marketing project with tension, staffing, and consulting options.

Um I sent out a survey just to kind of understand what everyone was feeling.

I have those survey results as a starting point.

I will say that not everyone filled out the survey.

I've talked to some in person, but it all kind of like felt the same.

So this is not a statistical, statistically accurate survey.

Some people I spoke to, but I think it's just a a place to react and get you guys talking.

So this is an opportunity for you all to really air everything that you've been thinking about these past couple months.

So I'm gonna talk about those initial surveys.

I have a table about the different approaches that we can do and the pros and cons after that.

I have a potential option based on what I've been kind of hearing, but we don't have to do that option.

It's just I just wanted something that if we could have something to react to, right?

Um, and then next steps.

Sound good?

Okay.

Um so we had Cone come in, um, and they did a great presentation.

Um, and so I asked uh after hearing from Cone, how effective do you feel the old town marketing campaign has been so far?

And the sentiment I got was very effective and somewhat effective, and wanted to kind of open it up to see if anyone felt differently or if that kind of felt like the sentiment, or if we're leaning really towards somewhat effective.

Yeah, I'd say mine's like it's hard to say like I feel in one of these categories because like I feel like when they started, it was very effective, and now I feel like it's like pretty much on the flat scale.

Yeah, um, that's fair.

But yeah, I think however you want to take that.

Yeah, I concur with that.

I felt like, yeah, yeah, sorry.

What I didn't hear.

I just said I concur.

I felt like what they showed us indicated that it looked like it was pretty effective one of the data, I just might cut feeling as it's not that effective.

But that is that's my gut feeling doesn't.

Classic agency uh presentation, yeah.

It's all good.

Everybody has a job.

It's good.

I think they did a really good job of like setting things up and creating those like foundational things.

The website social media channels, right?

Like getting it rolling was something we really needed.

Yeah, we don't have any of those.

Right, yeah, like that's all really great.

Um, and I think that's where it is.

Like it started out, you know, strong, and then now it's not really doing, I think, fulfilling the needs that we currently have.

Yeah, it needs change different needs for a different time.

I think, yeah.

I think to an extent it is still fulfilling the needs that we have, but at what cost, you know, like I think obviously the needs are gonna change and they are changing.

Um but I guess I'm kind of just preaching the choir here, but I think it's still fulfilling the goal, just I think it's kind of plateaued, and you're paying you know, an exorbitant cost for results that they're not really growing anymore.

But I still think it's effective if we were excuse me.

If we were to stay with them, I still think that the plan and where it's going makes sense.

That's helpful.

Tim, did you want to add anything or we go to the next one?

Uh you know, I'm not an expert in this area, so I'm going to defer to the city.

You're gonna use your time.

Yeah, I'm just yielded to cheer.

So then I asked, what if anything surprised you most about the cone presentation, something you didn't know before?

These were just some of the comments, breadth of services, power of a marketing team in general, and depths of development for the individual campaign thread.

I mean, uh I shared with Bridget that and so maybe mine was breath of services or something, but but I probably went into their presentation with that similar, you know, 50-50 split, and then it was very strong presentation, just you know, knew what they were doing, and then also thought to myself, oh wait, they're still doing this, they're still doing this, and then as a small business in old town, thought, wait, should I have been doing this?

Should I like I sort of did a lot of self-blame, and then and then reached out because we had an event that was not selling well and thought, well, if this is still the service, I'm gonna reach out, and so actually did have quite a lot of interactions with them in the in the weeks that followed.

Um which on the one hand was great, and I've continued have people say, Oh, how did your event go?

And I realized that was that was from Cohn's marketing, not from WOWs, because it's people who aren't members or who aren't.

But I am bothered that I didn't know that those were all options for me, you know, and so I was lucky enough to you know sit on the committee, hear a presentation, be reminded of what the resources are, push and ask what was an option, and then get quite a bit.

But that doesn't feel like a regular part of and and if it is if that is a regular part of life for all old town businesses, then there's a disconnect in in how we're understanding that.

Yeah, it's hard when Cone is sitting behind community computers in Denver or wherever when it's harder to walk into a business and say, Hey, how's it going?

Oh, you're doing this collaboration?

Oh, can I do a thing about it?

Like, this is our plan.

Like, it's it's a little different, right?

Yeah, I had like similar impression on that was that you know, and I saw the presentation and some of the neat things they'd done to feature different businesses, I was like, Oh, I don't want to like being a nice area of us, they probably really helped those businesses, and that was great.

But I did go back to my office and talk to Kira, who I work with with clicking.

I'm like, were were we ever engaged on any of this, or did we know any of this was happening, or did we miss something and just you know drop the ball and not get ourselves involved in this?

And she didn't know anything about it, and I hadn't heard anything about it.

So then I thought, well, I guess you kind of had to know somebody to be part of this.

That is just it is funny that that two members of the board are saying, like, we're like, is it us?

Yeah, you know, we don't want businesses and we're more connected and involved.

You don't want local small businesses to be blaming themselves or think, oh, that doesn't, that's not me, you know.

Yeah, and I mean I I think that completely makes sense, right?

Like we hired Cone to create these foundational things, and they create social media calendars, and they they've done a lot of they've tried and done a lot of interaction just based on online presence, and it sounds like we've outgrown that model is not working for us anymore, right?

What it's not working I can't so I think let's keep going.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, um so we I felt like we all know what isn't working well, right?

Um but I wanted to, I didn't want it to all just to be like a dump, right?

So, what aspects of the campaign have worked well, and I think that this is important to reflect on like what do we want to continue, right?

So uh website and social media engagement based on industry standards, Cone has built uh and grown a robust online presence and relatively good following for our town, um, building the website and social media channels, and I feel like the local personality develop development worked well.

Oh my developing it the developing personality of Lafayette.

Okay, I was like, what does this mean?

Okay.

Um I think we're all on the same page.

It was great, it plateaued.

Yeah.

So future goals and priorities, which of the following goals should the marketing campaign focus on the most, like three, not again, not statistically valid, but these were some of initial thoughts that you guys had.

Um, the the bottom one of driving more foot traffic to old town businesses, um, supporting arts, culture and events that's in purple, promoting collaboration between businesses and green, and then bringing people throughout the district.

Um I think that all of these could be like pretty important goals, though.

Like telling more stories of our businesses, I think really resonates with people, especially so many opportunities for collaboration and telling that.

Um, and then one of them also was amplifying voices of old town Lafayette visitors from other positive experiences.

So I don't think that we need to select one, but it was just interesting to kind of see what really rose to the top.

And then uh what factors are most important when considering a staffing model.

Um local knowledge and community connection and expertise in marketing and branding were two that really resonated.

Um does this feel right?

Is cost efficiency or flexibility to scale up and down something that needs to rise higher thanks maybe I don't I don't necessarily think cost efficiency is in a bad spot, but I think it's it would be important to consider you know what we're paying for cone and what it would cost, like if the goal is to bring in somebody, what that's gonna cost, and if it's gonna be comparable, it you know, we need to make sure that the benefit we're getting is way more because it's gonna be a lot of work to do this transfer from an agency that's been running it for a long time to somebody in-house or somebody else, like it's gonna be a large lift, and there's probably gonna be a period to actually get up and running with that.

So I think it should be it should definitely be a consideration, I think maybe a little more of a consideration.

Um if we're talking about making the switch.

I interpreted cost efficiency, like I feel like we might have a different interpretation of what that means, like how important is being cost efficient as a priority for our marketing efforts versus like the other priorities, like expertise.

I don't know if maybe I'm interpreting that wrong because I agree with you, like it needs to the payoff, like it needs to make sense with the goals that we have and the priorities.

I was just thinking of it, it's like I would rather prioritize you know, if we have this amount allotted for Cone, where we're putting that, how we're gonna allocate that.

Like, I don't necessarily want to be like, no, we should save you know $30,000 this year and not prioritize the money for it.

Is that is that how this was supposed to be?

I was presenting a as I mean more cost, like does is cost a big deal for us.

Maybe it's not it's like let's do the the best option for us, right?

Like we want a full-time person, a full-time like uh consultant, we cost doesn't matter to us, like this is a really big priority, or like you know, like we have a lot of other things going on, like cost is something that we won't be cognizant of, we want it to feel like appropriately to like the budget allocated to yes, that's probably a better way, yeah.

Okay, um, looking ahead, what approach are you most interested in seeing?

And um kind of all over the place, but there's definitely this I there's people are interested in hiring a dedicated staff person in-house with benefits, but people are also interested in hiring a dedicated staff person with a contract position, no benefits, and uh an example of that is um if they were to be you know through the city of Lafayette helping for that staffing position and provide benefits, um Lafayette provides excellent benefits, they pay 100% health care, and so that's a big dollar amount, which means that you might be hiring someone that's 70,000 and providing 30,000 worth of benefits, so it ends up being a hundred thousand dollars.

So it ends up being a hundred thousand dollars.

So that's one thing to think about is like what level of staff person are you getting when their base salary is lower, or hiring a contract position where you're just providing a hundred thousand dollars and not providing benefits.

Um then contract with an outside firm, no one voted for that.

Um then the hybrid the hybrid model of um you know that's some in-house with some outside support, and then other um was hire a consultant to help us create a thoughtful strategy before making a decision to contract or hire.

So essentially we're kind of like we just know that green's not working, yeah.

Um so if it's through the city, just because I I don't know exactly how this works.

We would be paying their salary, they would get benefits from the city.

Would we be then reimbursing the city for the benefits that they're paying?

Yes.

And then is the person only working for the DDA, or do they also have a role within the city?

So uh they would only be working with the DDA.

Now, if if there was a need for our communications team to hire a part-time person, but they didn't need a full-time person.

We could if there was that situation, we could both go halfsies on someone.

Um, but unfortunately, that's not a situation.

I inquired about that as well.

Doesn't mean that it couldn't be in the future, you know.

Yeah.

So either way, it's a hundred thousand, like we would take the money that we're allocating to Cone and allocate it to a staff person.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I put together this table.

There's stars involved.

Um so I looked at four different models.

The so the first one is in-house staff person, full-time with benefits.

You have this higher range of 70 to 80 benefits, it ends up being 100 to 11.

Flexibility is, and I say medium because they don't have that full suite of a fur, like a marketing firm.

Integrating downtown, high, that's great.

Experience with that range, you might be getting someone who has just like a couple years underneath their belt.

Um doesn't mean that we can't get a unicorn, but just we'll hold that.

Um, so pros, deep knowledge, uh deep local knowledge, consistent presence, long-term continue, um, strong relationships, cons, limited specialized skills, risk of burnout, lower pay.

You might get someone who's like really good at half of it, but not good at all of it.

Um contract person, 100,000, flexibility, moderate integration to downtown, moderate expertise, but you know, honestly, that could be even like a little higher.

Um flexibility to adjust, that's that's good.

Um, they could bring in other people within their contract.

Uh cons, less integrated potential turnover, limited benefits, and buy-in.

Outside firm, they're very expensive, they can range up to 150 or even more, but you're getting that that full suite, low integration, high experience.

I think we know the pros and cons because we've just experienced it.

And then there's this hybrid model of um you're hiring someone, but then you're getting some outside support.

There's medium high flexibility, high integration, high expertise, kind of the best of both world worlds: local coordination, professional execution, scalable.

I'm imagining that maybe we hire someone who's really good at 75% of the scope but needs 25% help, or we have a specialty project where they want to tap into more design, they we can hire someone else.

Um, so the the cons with that is it requires clear roles at a coordination and it's the most expensive.

So we don't know what we're going to get unless until we try one of these models, right?

We could go off trying to do one and realize like we didn't get the applications we wanted, um, but we need a try.

So want to open it up and Timothy looks like you want to.

I just have a point of clarification.

I was doing this.

I think in there there was also a question about do we want to bring in more traffic from outside the DDA, or do we want to DDA or Lafayette?

Yeah.

Downtown.

Yeah.

Downtown.

So yeah.

Or are we focusing locally?

Like, I guess I don't know.

Like, what's gonna benefit the businesses?

Are we looking to bring more people into Lafayette?

Are we trying to bring more Lafayette people into when we first started this?

The I the idea was we don't want to be a tourist traction, right?

We want to be able to get our residents back into our downtown after COVID.

We want to be open for business.

So this whole campaign was really marketed on this is for our Lafayette community to understand what's going on in our downtown, feel engaged and feel part of it.

Um I've heard so much more though, as far as like there are people who live in Erie on the border of Lafayette that come to Lafayette as their downtown, or they're in Anthem and they they view Lafayette as their downtown.

And so I think it's grown into yeah, we're not trying to bring people from like Oklahoma to Lafayette, but we want to bring we want this to be a downtown for everyone, and so if they resonate with you, we want to make sure that we're marketing towards them as well.

From a business perspective, I rely like heavily on outside.

I mean, I love my Lafayette customers, right?

And that's a huge piece of it, but like Broomfield, Westminster, Erie, that's like a huge piece of being able to make a retail business work for sure.

I don't know if it's true for Ditto.

Yeah.

So does anyone I haven't yeah, go ahead.

No, no, no.

I'm waiting for you guys to stop.

You can command her.

Exactly.

I direct you to see that thing, you know.

Um so I think the last model, there is like one more that could be, and that's hybrid model that's not in-house staff, but it's like maybe there's you bring in a consultant that does have this expertise, and then another or consultant, contractor, and then another.

I think those can be tiered.

Um, don't know if that's just a but just so like, and and this is literally my world, like this is what I do.

So I'm actually the expert that the hybrid models bring in to like I am the consultant that people bring in to then oversee like everything that other people are doing are doing and like provide strategic direction.

Um so I'm obviously a huge fan of that.

I think it provides a lot of structure to like someone who is really good at their job to come in and work with us to identify like what are your goals?

Okay, I'm gonna translate those into a communications and marketing goal, and then I'm going to work with someone who is not as expensive but can execute these tactics.

Um, so I'm a huge fan.

It is expensive, like it does mean bringing in multiple people, so I think that's a question of like, do we want so much of our budget to be going towards that?

Um so I think that's like that is I that's the ideal in my world, especially if you get someone who you really trust and you can work well with.

Um, preference, I think, outside of that ideal world would be the contract's no benefits, um, because I think a lot there's a lot of people in the marketing communication.

I would put that at three stars, not two, because I think there's a lot of people with who are growing in experience who are eager to work in this field and they would love to be a part of a project like this, it would be more affordable.

I think it would require more oversight from the DDA and more time in terms of like directing like what do we want that to look like?

And I think we have to figure out what is our priority because we won't find someone who's who's I mean, we might find a unicorn, but like most likely we won't find someone who has all of the skills.

So is it we really want to focus on video and social media, or is it we want to focus on website and blogs and targeted advertising?

Like, I think we have to identify that, and then we could find a contract person who could do that at a more uh cost effective than having multiple people.

Um, but those are my like initial thoughts in thinking through this.

I'm just gonna add those are that reminded me that I was gonna mention in counselor comments that director comes from wherever, right?

Uh that but the city is focusing on uh how do we how do we make this experience sustainable for the future and resilience?

I don't know if any of heard of resilience hubs, but that concept makes the whole Lafayette experience more resilient, and that's focused on environmental challenges, and the DDA like us to think about how do we maintain a more resilient DDA?

And I really love that idea because if that person is really focused on getting us exactly what we need, then if something's not working, then we can say that and then they can adjust because there's so many unknowns that are coming up, and there's a lot of influence from outside the the city, like when we if depending on there are some things that could influence the DDA area significantly, yeah.

Yeah.

And we'd want to be able to shift our marketing plan to adapt to like no one can get in that way anymore.

Or you know, cars are not allowed.

So I think, and I apologize, I know I'm talking a lot, so sorry, but super helpful.

I think like another benefit of if we were to go with a contract person who we identified, like here's our three key, like this is these are the expertise we want them to have, and it it aligns with our goals, like what we want to see in our marketing communications, and we save some of that money that instead of hiring like a strategic, like we we do have we can we need a plan, but I feel like we what we're hearing is that a lot of businesses need the execution, you know.

Like it's we don't need someone to come in here and tell us like you should you should build a marketing plan.

It's like, yeah, we know that um so like I think if we save some of that money and we are working with someone who like hopefully is great and has this like very serious like specific sets of skills and they can execute on that, it gives us the flexibility to have a pot of money to then potentially you like if we're like you know what the storytelling thing made me think of this, like the Lafayette Farmers Market, like they have allocated a lot of money to work with someone who does professional video editing and they're interviewing you know these farmers and bakers and everything to tell those stories that costs a lot of money to do to hire someone who's good at it, and that gives us like okay, do we want to save this $50,000 and do a whole profile feature on small-town businesses, or like what is the priority we have for this?

And so I think if we limit the budget in terms of like we're not gonna spend 150,000 on cone anymore, we have a hundred thousand dollars to spend on someone who has expertise, that gives us more money to put into like another priority for communications and marketing that maybe we can allocate at a later date.

In your experience, then when you're describing that contract staff person, and and then we would hone in on you know a couple key strength areas, assuming that most people, yes, there could be the unicorn, but likely people are gonna have strengths in something.

Are the other aspects beyond the sort of specialized campaign like you're describing that they're that there might be um funding for, but are the if if they're at a website and um email and print communication experts, and we know we still want robust social media?

Are is it that that everyone should be able to do some level of social media?

Like that person would still be responsible for the social media, we're just not turning to them as experts in it, or does it actually need someone that's someone else's responsibilities?

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I think that it can vary.

Um, we may have to make some decisions about like what are what is the priority.

For example, like you talking about where do we want these grants to live?

Do we want to have our own website versus it goes on the old town?

Like, there's things that maybe or it goes on the city websites, like that's a sacrifice because maybe we can't find someone who's gonna build us a whole new website and do these other things, so we sacrifice that in this like initial period of like new communications.

Um, or there is a like okay, a part of this contract is maintaining the website.

That doesn't mean doing a big overhaul, it doesn't mean updating anything other than you're publishing, you know, one blog a month or once every quarter.

Like, I think you can structure that in a way.

Um, and most comms people, well, that's a very general a lot of a lot of communications marketing professionals will have be able to like touch on a lot of these things, but I think finding someone who it's like what is the priority, and that's what we're really focusing on is better.

Um, because it's hard to say, do everything.

Um, you might have a touch point on something, but it's like okay, maybe that's not the thing that the energy is going into.

It's you do uh you know once a quarter update on something.

I'm just gonna back up, Janae, and say this all sounds really good.

I mean, I guess I don't really know like why contract versus in-house with benefits, like do you just get a higher level of expertise because it's a higher pay.

Yeah, so I think like with an in-house person, the pay range is gonna be really limited, so your experience and expertise is gonna be limited.

Um, so like in that what Ian, you were saying, like, there might be a lot of work, it's like, oh yeah, this is gonna be maybe like a more entry-level person coming in, and so there is a lot of learning curve with this.

Like you can go and see, like, okay, here's the the work that we see that we really like, and you can bring someone in with more expertise because they can work with other clients as well, or work with other vendors, so they're not limited, like maybe our budget is 50,000 or 100,000.

It's like that's we're not their full-time job.

Like, they can't, they're legally allowed to work with other clients, and so it in tight, like they can have an expertise, and maybe they even have their own team, like a person that works with them, and that's totally okay.

Like, I there's a big difference for me from like a firm, which has like these whole full service marketing things where you have you're pay basically paying seven people to work on your project or your portfolio to like one person who's like, oh, I might bring in one person here because we want to do this video project, so I'm gonna, you know, this is a part of my contract, and they're subbing out that work, and I think that's totally acceptable.

Um, so I think you just get like a higher level of expertise because people aren't limited to being like, okay, now this is my second job out of college and I can afford to live on 70k or whatever.

Okay.

So it sounds like we could always start there and then potentially in the future morph into more of a hybrid model as funds became available.

Is that kind of what you're saying?

Totally.

Yeah.

I I think so.

That makes sense.

Any other thoughts?

I agree with that.

I I definitely don't think we know it's a full-time job for one staff person that we want to make a commitment to that we give benefits.

It's that doesn't feel right to me.

But I like what you're saying about the flexibility, maybe right sizing the outsource model, so it's not a school service agency, but maybe something that we're boutique.

Yeah, I agree.

I think since a lot of the stuff is already set up, 40 hours a week is a lot of time to dedicate to just DDA marketing.

I I feel like I mean you could probably accomplish more than enough with half that time and save half you know the money potentially.

Um depending on how efficient somebody is.

I was just looking back at the budget.

Did we approve is it a hundred K total budget for marketing?

So that'll be the time plus anything we want to spend on ads or yeah, and I think another benefit of like going with this contract person or like model is that we can send we can put out a request for proposals so people can send in like we can say, here's the scope of work we're looking for.

People send in their proposals, and it's not we're this is this is what we're offering you.

Like, here's a hundred thousand.

It's like we want I I think there's value in like paying people for the work that they're doing, and people who are good at it, it's worth paying the amount.

But it's great because someone who's amazing at this and might be a part of our community or like is already doing this work in other spaces, you know, they might send in a proposal that's like five thousand dollars a month or six thousand, and then it's like it gives us more flexibility with that budget, um, where you can see like what a contractor is gonna charge versus advertising a job for 10k.

That definitely makes sense to the agreed.

Okay.

On the fly, adding adding this.

Um sounds like we want to move to this contract position to get there.

What we could do is work with Cone while we try to get this contract position, so continue to work with comb, but try to fix some these things that we're seeing issues with in the meantime.

So minor refresh of the strategy of making sure that we're hitting the right audiences, you know, those outside of Lafayette, continue storytelling.

Um, you know, this was reflected in the survey, which I think is really important to call out.

Like we have a strong Latino population in our downtown and some amazing businesses and making sure that we are continuing storytelling with through their lenses.

Um one of the things that I thought about is you know, while we're bringing on someone doing outreach within our business community here, like what they have think has been effective in their issues as well, and what sort of things they want to see, so we can make sure that we just grab better information about what the district would like to see.

Um so listening sessions, interview story and telling workshops, um, think about who can we can involve for some future campaigns, just grab some better feedback, and then try early next year or even starting this year, right?

Is try to hire that staff member contract um with the potential of a hybrid model if we need to go that route, but it really sounds like Janae like is the expert in this, and we're it's all resonating, right?

That hire a dedicated staff person contract position focused on these things they can bring out outside people or more open to a more hybrid model as needed.

Is that how you're describing it?

I'm not hearing dedicated staff person.

Yeah, I'm not quite sure what and maybe this is just the semantics of how like Lafayette operates.

I don't know what a dedicated staff person is who's contracted.

Is that just that you're contracting them for 40 hours of like what is that mean?

I think it like in what I think of a contract position is like you're not a full-time at-will employee, right?

Right, you're contracted for this job and this scope of work, and there is a time limit and there's an agreed amount, and we don't provide benefits.

That's how I'm doing this, but maybe that's not the right term for it.

Yeah, I think the staff person is throwing because I would just say that's a contractor, like you're just hiring a contractor for this position, but again, I think it's just semantics.

But anytime I see staff person, I think of someone who's like under the purview of the city and like or the entity that's hiring them.

Do we feel like this contractor will be can be the boots on the ground?

I I I would say that we should include that in the scope of work.

Okay, that part of it is networking and outreaching with local business owners or other entities that are putting on events, or that that's just a part of their work.

Because that does feel like a really important missing piece right now is like somebody where we can like sit in the room with them and or they can reach out to small businesses directly, or they know people by name, you know, like yeah, and we can say I need you to talk to these businesses and put together your social media calendar and write these blogs, and yeah, exactly.

That feels like something we can get from a contract person based on your experience, you may I would say so.

Yeah, so I just want to make sure that uh yeah, to make to so they understand what this person is, yes, they they would be contracted to the DDA, and but they still are obliged, they they will they need to comply with city like standards of conduct.

Is that something I'm gonna understand?

Yeah, I mean, when we have a contract with them, we're gonna write in these things, right?

Yeah, that you're because behave, I mean, there's they're not completely separate from the city in that there's there's expectations as a contractor to the city that's oh yeah, I just more meant of like it's not an in-house, like it's the the term of uh how money is being exchanged for services, that they're not an in-house at the city under city.

Like uh salaried employee, like every two weeks.

This is more of like a contractor where we have a contract and agreed upon scope and how they get billed, and these concerns are wrapped into that as well.

Okay, but in terms of like abiding by ethical considerations or like all of that can be written into the contract, and yes, I would expect that.

I think the reason why I was originally had the word staff member through a contract, is because there's been how even saying like I'm contracted with Laura to do this, or like who's cone, right?

And so changing this into like this is Sally, she's a m she's part of the DDA and she does marketing.

That I think perception is like I think helpful for like understanding that this is our the downtown marketing person.

Yeah, I'm just not sure we want to, and I'm not sure we're making this distinction, but I'm not sure we want to rule out like a pretty small boutique agency.

Oh, I agree with that, right?

So I want to make sure we're boutique is small, is that yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

So it might not be Sally, it might be yeah, yeah.

So I guess just to like and we should probably stop because it's almost eight, but how do we then not just end up in the same place that we're at currently?

Like I don't have ton of experience with this, but like how do we like when we say boutique agency, I'm like, well, isn't that kind of the same thing that we currently have?

Yeah, I think I think that is like up to us in like looking through these like proposals that come to us and say, you know, it's I mean, for me, anyways, it's easy to see like the difference between like a boutique agency if they're marketing themselves as that.

I probably would be like, you're probably not the right person.

But if it's like someone who is like, yeah, I'm working, I have a team of people we do, we really excel at like social media.

There's three of us, or like we have a video person, we have a social person, and we have you know, X or whatever.

That's different to me than like we're a boutique agency that is gonna make your brand so great.

Um so I think like part of it's up to us, and if we want to limit ourselves and say, like we can put out, we're put looking for a contractor or small marketing firm.

Um, but it's also easy to then see like how many people are they staffing, what how much money are they asking for, like an agency, like, yeah, you're gonna pay them 15, 10, 15k a month because they gotta pay to seven people that's each doing one job on your files.

So I think it's easy to see like when people send in the the like proposals, like to kind of weed those out.

That's been my experience anyways.

Okay.

And I've worked with a lot of large age, like very large agencies and individual contractors.

Okay.

Cool.

All right.

This is great.

Um, I know that we've been talking about this for months now as far as what to do, and there's been some back and forth, but I feel like that we're all on uh the similar page as far as what our next steps are.

Um, so as far as what um I'm gonna be doing is I think that this would definitely benefit two members helping craft that um RP or whatever it is.

Um so I'm volunteering Janae already.

But if there's someone else, so when I send out that like survey as far as what you're interested in working in, that would be one of the things.

Um, and then ultimately we'll have the full board look at that before we send it out, but at least we can start um working on that off meeting dates.

Does that sound good?

Yeah, we've been about to continue with comb for probably longer those six months.

We should really use our like really limit that to what we really need because I think we could blow a lot of money just doing more than it's not telling value.

They're on a retainer, so they get it's not like hourly, it's just and so that to add to that, it's like let's figure out how we how it's effective, right?

Yeah, I was gonna say I because knowing they're on a retainer, like let's maximize the benefits that we have knowing that we've not been getting is probably as many billable hours as we probably could have been getting for the last little while.

But also, I think we should in this process identify like what are the things that we know the person we're bringing in probably won't be able to do, and like let's prioritize those get those done.

Like let's think about what that looks like that Cone can handle because they do offer a full service like scope of work.

I was thinking that too, like on the website.

I guess they might not want to set up the application for their own replacement on the website, but like getting the like grant, like if we're gonna do it through the old town laptop website, which I really don't think we should do it through the city website.

Yeah, I think that we can have Cone create all these DDA pages.

Yeah, yeah.

Like before our contract with them is up, we should like do all that stuff.

That would be a great win, something that's there they have the expertise to do.

Yeah, and I just want to state like for the record, too.

I think like I know you will be this way when you talk to Cone, but like express our gratitude, and like I really they did a really amazing job, and it's good to stay in a good relationship with them because there may be a time when we do need to bring in just on a like project to project basis, and they do know us and we do trust them, they have delivered, yeah.

So I think that's totally something and like I've been fully transparent with them as far as like we they've done an incredible job creating these channels from scratch, right?

And we've just grown into needing boots on the ground, and they understand that and they said we're never gonna be able to provide that breach.

So, like, we're here to try to figure out like what sort of model you might need, and if there's a spot for us, great.

If not, we understand.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, cool.

Um, we just have a couple moving on to items news um meetings and staff updates.

Great.

Um so next meeting is in November, and it's our last meeting of the year because we don't have meetings in December.

Um, so it's it's exciting that we're gonna wrap up our first year.

Um, and we're also gonna be definitely having some sort of holiday celebration, happy hour, so be on the lookout for that.

Um, but in November, um, things that will likely be on the agenda is um accepting the Laura parking lot program.

Um, with that though, we're gonna probably we're going to be executing new templates for these parking lots.

We're gonna audit all of them to see are there ones that we want to keep or want ones that we want to change.

And so this is more just the formal thing of like, yes, we will accept this.

Now we're gonna start doing all these other things.

Um we have to do an annual report every single year through state statute.

So I'm gonna give you the draft report, and we'll probably formally approve it in January once we wrap up the whole year.

Um, we'll wrap up those two uh assist grant assistance programs, and so make those final touches, make those final decisions, and then um I'll be working towards launching those and designing them.

Um I want I want to hopefully be able to do uh the 701 park it pocket park design presentation.

This is the pocket park that's going on on Kim Park in public.

It's super great.

Um, and there could be an opportunity for us to um partner on that project for different elements, and so want to talk through what that could look like and if we're interested or not.

And then um we talked about this last time.

This concept of doing a second Fridays inside um with our small of our small businesses.

Joanna, Faith, and I met with um Lynn and Suzanne who um are interested in this concept, and so we we talked to them a little bit about it, and they're gonna be coming um at our next meeting to see if there's a partnership that can happen.

Um I will caveat with you know, when we saw Peter come from the farmers market, that was after a year of doing something asking for a partnership.

This is gonna feel a little bit different where it's just the idea and not fully baked, and so it's gonna be a different level of presentation and communication.

Um, and with that, I think that those are all my staff updates.

Uh moving on to new business and directors' reports.

Do any directors have updates they wish to share?

Uh yeah, so I just want to make sure that uh if there are any questions that are related to the city council's positions, uh please do bring those up.

Contact me, let me know.

That's my job is to make sure the communication is open.

And we've just recently worked with all the boards, committees, and commissions to improve the communication plan with all those boards and commissions because over time it hasn't been apparent how to do that to liaise with city council.

So that's my job, and there are multiple ways to do that.

The DDA is one of the um boards under uh the council um comments, and obviously, because our budget has to go to council for approval.

Um of the things we've also tried to do is have each one of the boards and commissions be more aware of the other boards and commissions and what they're doing, and uh I may bring up bits and pieces that are relevant to other boards and commissions, just so you know that they're they're like the artist uh board obviously is really directive of one of the things we're doing, and the sustainability resilience advisory board just to provide a really good summary of how council should look at changes to our environment, our ecosystem.

What should we look at in our climate action plan?

And I did not ask the person who did public comment to come and talk about lights, but I already talked to our executive director about lights in the downtown uh area, not from the dark skies point of view, but from what I think we're can we'd be considering is how's the aesthetic of downtown?

How does it show up?

And I I love what the lights the the idea, but the impact I don't think is great.

I don't think it provides the lighting that we need, and there are ways to address that.

So I'm just gonna I just wanted to let you know that I'll be bringing up things that I think that we should be aware of, especially when you look at resilience, it's a it's a difficult thing to understand and understanding how we fit into that and the decisions that we make.

I think it's gonna be important moving forward, and I'm gonna see if I can get somebody from S where have to come and talk about that concept and things that we might keep uh in mind moving forward.

Great, thank you.

Yeah, I think that's great.

I think we can easily feel like we're in a vacuum.

So those that communication and updates from and opportunities to interact with other boards and and councils, great.

I will also add that Laura um had has done workshops before during workshops with other boards and commissions.

You know, it's important to remember that we're an authority, and so we're a little separate than the boards and commissions, but at the same time, we are such a partner with them, and so we can be a little bit we can call, we can ask for other boards and commissions to do workshops with us.

Um, and so if there's a priority in the future where it's like, you know, it'd be good if we could ask the city's board or commission that's an expert on this to workshop this concept, or we want to partner on our grant program, we can totally get those orders.

So something to think about in the future of like we have all these different resources that we can always collaborate on.

Any other directors have reports or your business?

Not to mention the script.

Um thank you everyone.

The time's now eight oh five and we are adjourned.

Yay,