Okay.

Okay.

All right.

So we'll get the uh work session between the museum and the council kicked off here.

I think before we really dig in, let's just go around the table just to make sure everybody knows each other's names, and we'll just start with Nate over in the corner.

Uh Nate Daval, City Manager, Lester Green, City Council.

Choy waiting, City Council.

Martha Barberio, Economic Development Director, and President of the Board.

Joe Lally, City Council.

Austin Love, City Council.

April Vasher Dean, Executive Director of the Museum.

Dan Gilson, Museum Board.

Jim Cheryl, Museum Board.

Karen Mitchell, Museum.

Linda Guthrie, Museum Board.

Great.

And I think online, Jimmy and Olivia, can you hear us?

Hi, Olivia Foster, Council.

Did you hear me?

Yeah, yes.

Thanks.

Thanks a lot.

Jimmy, can you hear us there?

Sorry, I was muted.

Yes, I can hear you just fine.

Jimmy Devons.

Okay, great.

Well, um, thanks for being here.

I'm looking forward to the work session and getting it going.

Um, just going over the summary statement here, uh, the bullet points of what we're supposed to talk about here tonight.

I think uh number one is look for city council input and guidance on preferred directions and priorities.

Uh number two is to ensure alignment between the VMHA strategic planning and city council goals and priorities.

Uh number three is review this current state and limitations of existing museum facilities.

Uh four is discuss long-term needs for collections, programming, and visitor experience.

And then the fifth one is evaluate potential facility options at a high level.

I think that was all the things we're supposed to be focused on tonight.

Um and I did see that you know you guys shared your report regarding your recent strategic planning, um, and I saw your goals there.

So I figured we'd probably start there if you guys wanted to kind of summarize you know that strategic planning session and what your kind of top three goals were that you identified and maybe flushed those things out a little bit.

Did you want to take the lead, Gary?

Or I just I wanted to say something before before we kind of got started here.

I've been kind of the instigator of this meeting, and uh one one of the things uh that we've kind of struggled with in the past has been that uh the museum media museum board goes off and kind of does the own thing to keep the museum functioning and and you know proceeding on target, hopefully, and and uh within our budget, and but it's always been a little bit of a guess as to you know what the council wants at the end of the year when we present budget and things like that.

And part of the the problem is is not a full understanding, I don't think there was between the relationship between the museum corporation members, which is what you guys are.

You're not really like in this meeting, you're not city council, you're you're museum uh members of the corporation.

Well, same thing as owners, yeah.

The you represent the the uh the city is the owner of the essentially the owner of the museum.

You you resent that as a as a corporation member.

Uh and uh what we what I would have watched over the years is the difficulty in making sure we're all together uh at the end of the year, and we're uh we got everybody's best interest in mind.

Since you're a equivalent of if anybody was worked in Aliaska, you have owners and then you have the nonprofit corporation that runs and operates the pipeline.

Uh Ross and that matter it was always important that uh once or twice a year we'd have owner meetings so that we could get in alignment with the owner get so that when it came time to present budgets and things, there was no surprises.

So we knew what to expect, and and the owners knew what to expect.

And I kind of like to see the same thing here because it'll make it easier for us knowing where we're going.

We can make better plans, and then you won't have any surprises at the end of the year when we present budgets and things like that because you'd have a better idea uh you know what our plan is and how we're getting there and so on.

So that's kind of the purpose of developing this work session is so we can all get on the same page, collaborate together, and uh in the best interest of the museum as a whole.

So everybody can understand what the goals were.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Jim spent quite a bit of time for the in preparation, and I think when we settled all this and rolled it out, our president, um Martha, is in essence gonna kind of roll us all through this.

So I'm putting you on the spot there.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

So we had a strategic work session with the board middle February.