Area Council - Regular Meeting

share doodles. Is this on?

All right. All right. Let's start this meeting at 6:36 this evening. Um, let's start off by first having a roll call. Okay. Jake Strickler here. Kathy McCarthy here. Myself. Chris Nettles, I'm here. Magdalene here. All right. Now, let's all stand for the pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. And I hope everybody was able to grab the agenda for tonight and last month's minutes and was able to look over those and if we can give an approval for the agenda from last or for this meeting. I'll make a motion. I'll second. All in favor? I. All opposed. All right. Eyes have then now can we get a approval for the minutes from last month? I motion to approve these beautiful minutes. I'll second. All in favor?

All opposed. All right, minutes are approved. Moving right along here. Does anybody have any short announcements for this evening? One, two. Hi, Robert Stark, Mountain Lions. I'd just like to report that uh the egg hunt, you couldn't ask for more. There was about 75 kids, 2,200 eggs. We are reconsidering the 8 to 11 year old category because they picked up 700 eggs in two minutes. And thank you to the Easter Bunny, Miss McCarthy, uh for entertaining the children. It was a wonderful time. It's a good thing. We're grateful to uh the facility, for giving us access to it again this year, and we hope to continue said egg hunt in the future. Uh we will be beginning uh bingo every Saturday night uh on Memorial Day and we will have a Memorial Day and a Labor Day pancake feed. So look for the signs and thank you to the community for their

just most excellent support. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Stark. I will also echo those comments with the egg hunt. We were able to attend and the bunny was fantabulous. It was uh my granddaughter is in love with the bunny now. So you accomplished. I'll be sure to tell the Easter Bunny that Easter Bunny was awesome job. I heard the Easter Bunny had a good time, too. All right, so any other short announcements? Okay, moving right along. public and board comment on non-aggenda items.

If you want to go ahead. Hello, I'm I'm Thomas Slate. I think most of you know that, but just a quick comment. It's more like a technicality. I think that I a comment in the minutes for the um forest health report and it says Tom that's me spoke on 25 years of his own data collection and observations on a changing climate and the only thing I would change maybe is my data collection and observations on just a lot of things. So I just would leave that out there. I have a lot. So anyway, thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for putting that in there.

Thank you, Tom. Any other comments on non All right, here we go.

Um, I just would like to make uh a brief comment about Pine Grove. Um, we have sold the Pine Grove Resort. Um, there will be new owners uh sometime next week, uh, Middletown Rancheria. And, uh, I'm not on social media, so I I don't know sort of what's swirling in the ethers, but I have uh heard remarks that of various rumors going around and um I would suggest that I know about as much as whoever is circulating the rumors which is I don't know very much. I know actually very little in terms of what's next and thinking and plans and all of that. Um, but I know for certain that they are people that uh greatly appreciate and love the land and uh to me that's important. Um, and I trust they will be good stewards and what their business model is and how that unfolds, I think may even be unclear to them at this point, which is the impression that I have, which is part of the reason I don't put any credence into any rumor, whatever it is. Uh, I think it's uninformed. Um, and uh, you know, we have um Yeah, I don't know what else I have to say about it. Um we have greatly appreciated being stewards of that land and uh

it has been uh very meaningful in our lives and uh we have a great affinity for this mountain and this community and um we intend to find a path to be able to stay and I personally will miss the intimate rel relationship relationship that I have with that particular property and the people that have enjoyed it and inhabited it. So that's what I have to say. Yeah. Thank you, Joe.

Appreciate that. I mean, this is the first kind of formal uh statement I've heard about who the known owners would be. And given the uh the significance of this property for the community in so many different ways, I wondered if we could uh extend an invitation from the council to come to the council and just share with us as much as they want and just to kind of talk with us and come into relationship with the rest of the community about the land. Um, so just I don't know if that's a formal, you know, it's just a suggestion that I'm making here, but how to do that.

I think that's a I think it's a great idea and um we will reach out and see if we can get them scheduled for one of the upcoming meetings. And I'll also say that that we obviously we we do have ongoing partnerships with Middletown Rancheria on many other fronts, you know, particularly the work I'll say a little bit more about it when I do my presentation, but you know, uh I think it's a there's there are opportunities. Let's put it that way.

I know it's not a discussion item, but I'll just say thank you Joe and Noah. Appreciate it so much. Any other comments on non-aggenda items? Okay, we get a supervisor's report this month from Supervisor Pisc.

Well, I'm going to continue the thanks to Joe. Um, I remember the first time I met you and I think it was my daughter's fourth birthday party at the pool and since that time you have cleaned and manicured and you've done so much work and I I'm just really appreciative because this this is a property that um that it's a stewardship relationship with both the land and the community. And I have also heard a lot of rumors and people asking me a lots of things. And all I can say is that the Middletown Rancheria, the tribe, has always been um a wonderful partner to the community. And I think everyone should just um kind of relax into that because there there I think great things are coming. I really do. And um and I look forward to having a new partner there. And I I will um extend when I see Chairman Simon next, which I think I'll see him next week. We'll absolutely extend an invitation. It's something I was thinking that would be a good idea, too. Um, so whenever it works for them, um, I'll put them in contact with you, Jake, and can set get them on the agenda because I think it's important and I'm really happy to see the continuity, um, changing hands and the res. It's going to go forward. Everything is going to move forward, but in different ways as it should. Okay. Um, so I I want to just remind everybody that general or the comments are open for the general plan and area plan right now. They're open through the end of April, I believe, almost the end of April, maybe another 10 days or so. So, if you haven't had a chance to go on to Lake County 2050 and reviewed um

elements and parts and the area plan, all of that, um, please do. And I want to thank our volunteers that are working on the local advisory committee who are are all hard at work as is community development staff who is also going to all the different areas and working on um the area plans with the different um committees that were set up. So this is a really big job. I want to say we're two years in. It's a three-year project. One more year to go wrap it up. Um, and this is really, you know, this is the community's document for how we move forward to 2050. So, take advantage of it now because public comment is still open.

Do you have the date of the next? Not in my brain. April 27th.

April 27th. That's the next lay meeting. It is on Lake County 2050. All the community meeting dates are there and um all the documents and ways to comment. Um the park, we're still waiting to hear if we're going to get that next round of funding. Should be soon. And although if we get that funding, it will delay construction because it will require NEPA review, it is enough funding to cover all the phases of development.

Yeah. So, we're still waiting. We were told it would be April. Um, and I I think I shared last time that the grants manager came out for a visit several months ago and really liked the project. So, we're still kind of standing by. Um, so I I I I think it'll be worth the wait because uh initially we when we only have funding to kind of do phase one which is the front part of the park with some trail development on the back part on the hill would be phase two. So I think it'll be worth the wait. We've all been very patient but this is how government projects work as they should. Make sure that every box is checked. Um, so one of the so it's legislation season in Sacramento and there are a lot of bills and some of the bills um affect Lake County. So really my update for this month has been um tracking bills and writing uh letters. And Tuesday on our agenda, we're going to have a few more letters. One is um an opposition letter that I just finished today. And this is um AB2494 and um this has to do with state demonstration forests and how they're managed. The bill is really written around Jackson State demonstration forest which is the largest and almost half of the acreage of all the combined forests. But the implications to bogs are very real and there are a lot of amendments being proposed right now. Um but if you're interested in that legislation, you can talk to me or look it up. But we will

have a letter of opposition as it's written now on Tuesday's meet agenda. Um because it's it's really important from my perspective to continue forest management based on science and the um the recommendations that have come out and will continue to come out of the governor's wildfire and resilience task force. The other bill is um AB 2216 and this one um has the potential to well it's written to expand the Delta Conservancy and currently in this bill Lake County is not added to it but um Assembly Member Aguar Curry is authoring the bill and her staff is very open to adding Lake County to this expanded conservancy, which is a really big deal because we're currently not in a conservy except in the very far north in the Menesino National Forest where the Eel River is, that's the ill river watershed. So that part of the county is in the coastal conservancy. So, if we can be part of the Delta Conservancy, which they'll rename because they're adding other areas, that will open up a lot of funding opportunities with Prop 4. And because we're the watershed, the Delta, this is a really good fit. And Assembly Member Ayur Curry's staff seems like it's a good fit. They seem receptive to it. So, we are also submitting a letter next Tuesday adding asking that we be added. Um, they're not going to add counties that don't want to be added, but they want an official ask from us. So, hopefully it's not a heavy lift.

Hopefully, it will all work out very well and we can be added and then and then that will give us a lot more resources. Um, so those are the two big bills in the state. We're still really struggling with um the impacts of HR1, which is the big beautiful bill that was passed last summer, and the cuts uh to the safety net programs, which in the governor's uh budget is he's passing them down to counties. So that's really going to impact um the people that are already using CalFresh and medical and it's going to put a lot of burden, financial burden and strain on the county. Um so there's a lot of advocacy happening right now in Sacramento to give counties more support. So, those are the big things that we're working on right now with our our state lobbyists and our state advocacy um associations. So, that's just taking a lot of our time right now, but it's that's the season that we're in. Um Paul, you're going to talk about chip the chipping program, right?

No. Okay. Well, I just want to remind everyone that South Lake Fire Safe Council has their chipping program uh open and so if you pay your annual dues, you can get your chipping done. So, if you sign up now, you can get a earlier date. Otherwise, you you might get a chipping date in July like I did last year because I waited too long. So, just something to think about when you when we're all doing our defensible space work, which now is definitely the time to do. And unfortunately, I missed last month's meeting because I was at the wildfire and forest resilience task force, which was in Jamestown. And that is a quarterly meeting that um there's two meetings a year in Sacramento and then two meetings a year in on in different regions. And so that was a two-day event. And um I unfortunately have to miss May's meeting because I'm going to be in Sacramento for another conference. So if you have any questions, always feel free to reach out to me. I should be here in June. That is my plan. Um so yeah, if there's any questions, happy to answer them.

All right. Thank you, Supervisor Pisca. Any questions? No. All right, let's move on to our fire and storm season update by Chief Duncan.

Sure. Uh, our fire season hiring has mostly completed. We have all of our 31 engines, six dozers, and six hand crews that are in the unit and staff. Um, our early season focus will be fuels projects. So, may see smoke up in bogs or around that property as they do some fuels work. Um and then throughout the county, uh one of our big projects will be Highway 29 in the Lakeport area. So, we're going to burn the shoulders again like we did last year. Uh very productive. Uh Calrans is very excited about that and they want to expand what we did last year. Um just that uh the roadside starts in that area significant and they threaten homes very rapidly. So by burning the sides of the highway, we do it in a controlled manner. Have crews out there, they go slow, make sure it's all mopped up and taken care of. But that what that prevents is a roadside start in the middle of August taking out houses, which a couple years ago we had

just right around Lake. So um helicopter is staffed. Uh we do have fixed wing assets that are scheduled to come on the first week of May. U the copter has been doing a lot of training. That's just kind of normal. But they have been doing more training over the lake. They have one of the brand new helicopters, the newest one of the fleet. So, uh, their direction has been to get it out there, suck water up, drop it, suck water up, drop it to try and make sure all the systems are functional on it. So, um, that's, uh, that's a normal process for a new helicopter. Uh, and then just uh as a reminder, with a really nice weather, uh, burn piles need to be uh, attended at all times uh, by an adult that's capable of suppressing the fire. So, no kids in attendance. Uh, the person there needs to be able to put it out uh, and have water and tools on site. Uh, a valid burn permit is required for those still. And, uh, open house for the South Lake County Fire Protection District is the 25th. That will be at the Middletown Station 211095 highway 175 and that'll be from 10 to 3. So you can find that on the South Lake website and uh the South Lake uh web Facebook page uh for any details on that. Welcome the public to come out and see that uh event. It's going to be a lot of fun. So I will take questions also. That's in my report. You put up the flyers for the open house. Very nice. Thank you.

Yeah, we'll have lots of events for the kids. They get to put a big fire out and get firetruck rides. Come down, Jake. I will. I'll bring mine. Perfect. Fire truck rides, too. You can even make woo woo sounds if you want. I can do that. You can You can do it now. It's fine. Um I don't know if it's worth just reminding that current season closes the 1 of May. Correct. That's Yes. Oh yeah. Yep. That's it is a calendar day now just not based on what the conditions of fuel are. So yes and it looks like a little rain this weekend. So it might be your last last go. But yeah we get rain when? This weekend potentially weekend. Okay.

We just had a and just inter five acre fire today in Geyserville. So, um, it's just not going to take much for these fuels to dry out. Sorry, where was it? Geyserville, like right on the side. Right over the hill. Um, and Senator Magguire had his wildfire town hall last night and Chief Speda was a participant. And so, if you want to go on Maguire's website, rewatch it. It's about an hour and a half. But it really gives a good local perspective with Chief Sepa's decades of experience. Four decades of experience. But it also talked about the outlook. They talked about the outlook.

It's going to be the outlook for the fire season. So, he talked about that at the forum on Meuire's uh website's recorded there. So, if you want to watch that, you can. But Chief Sepeda, who's the Lake County Fire Chief for Clear Lake, talked about that during his uh presentation. So, it'll so it'll be hot and we're going to have fires. So I I can give you that right now. So yes, we have a fuel model here in the county that burns. It is a Mediterranean climate. We get over 100 degrees. The fuel is brush and grass and it's very conducive to burning. So it doesn't take a lot to get it going. Um and it's yeah a very active area for fire. Do you have a question, Robert? Paul, thank you and thank you for what you did. And I just want to say from a consumer point of view that the doubling of the residential burn permit to $66 is quite annoying.

I will I will agree with you and I will defer that to the supervisor who I had no It might be annoying, but that's what it cost. And we did a No, we

because we did a whole fee study last summer. The fees had not been raised in I want to say since the 90s. Um there's been a long time. So, there were significant fee increases and there's going to be some more fee increases though, not quite as high, but um these are self-funded departments and we take fee studies really seriously. If the person purchasing the permit doesn't pay for it, then the taxpayers do because it's being subsidized by the taxpayers. So, just consider that when you complain about fees. Go ahead, Tom.

Oh, I'll just mention this has been brought up before, but I have approximately an acre. I'm never found out exactly if it is or not because it didn't matter because it's in two parcels and I have a lot of vegetation, but I can't run it because it's two parcels. Got to be one parcel unless you want to spend 400 bucks to merge the box. Do you get my point? What's it's that's like a technicality. Yeah, technicalities are what we operate on. Yes, I noticed. Thank you. Yep. That's it. So the both the lots have to be a uh separately they have to be an acre. I can tell you what they are. I look up the acreage for you if you want me to. Yep. I'll tell you what the acreage is.

End of report. All right. Thank you, Chief Duncan. Treasurer's report.

Hi. Thank you. Uh so this month we had um $3,426 worth of transactions. Um that included u rent for the storage unit um and payments for we were one payment behind to the Lions. I have your check up here by the way, Mountain Lions Club. So, um, and then we also made the second installment of the matching funds to SSC for the CWPP grant that they've got. We had, uh, CV council had pledged a total of $5,000. So, we gave them the second half of that, $2500, uh, which we had plenty of money left over after the Cobbler Festival to to do. So, uh, right now, um, we have, uh, $30, 304 and some change in our bank accounts. Uh, and if people are interested, I can break out the various accounts that we have uh that those cover, but it includes things like our general fund and Blackberry Cobbler Festival and the Cobb Alert Net and such. Uh, we also still have our uh $48,000 business loan fund uh sitting in the bank from the San Francisco home loan bank grant, which gives us a total asset. So, $78,387. That is my report. I'm uh happy to answer any questions. for the small business loan. Have we had any inquiries recently or

um we've had one inquiry uh and uh the um the business maybe I can deal with that in the um in the economic development committee um report because that's actually where that conversation kind of lives. Perfect. Thank you, Chris.

You bet. Okay, we're going to move on to committee reports. Um, one note I want to make is we're going to try our best to stick to the three minutes per individual unless we're hitting multiple pieces. Like I know the firewise communities, Magdalena, you're speaking on several firewise communities. Elliot has a lot going on with the wildfire protection plan and um but we are going to try to stick closer to what we have on the agenda here within within reason. But so let's uh let's start with firewise communities. So, um I'm happy to report that uh in the Seagler Springs Firewise community, we have already uh progressed halfway on the Lachlman fire brakes and this weekend the Pini uh work will be started. Um we've had a little bit of snafu with uh with PG&'s um procedures, but the uh that money will be there to pay the contractors. Um we were happy to observe that public works did a partial cleanup of the scotch broom along Lloman Road, which is that corridor connecting those two subdivisions. Um but they missed Shannondoa to ridge. So I'm going to have to not sure who Well, we've tried to talk to Lars, but um I understand that he's uh picking up his his duties as the full-time um director for that. Um the Americanore uh crews um are now uh educated and trained up in conducting home inspections. They can't do um their inspections don't hold as for insurance

purposes or for uh any other kind of enforcement purposes. They are educational, however, and um you can they do it for free. They've got their training and you can contact Jasmine Roer at J. Roer clerk jer lcgmail.com. And um I've I'm putting a plug in for them because uh you know, everyone needs to know how their house is doing. um and uh get it get educated about that. And I'm inviting the Firewise community. I just found out about this this morning. So um I'll be sending out a message to all the Fire Wise communities, putting it in our newsletter um that uh anyone can avail of their services. They they also do cleanup. So uh that's a really good thing to to get into. I mentioned um last time that um I was going to be speaking at the Firewise summit on April 24th and um it occurred to me that it might be useful if the council so desires. I'd like to offer my um presentation on grant preparation here as well. Um I find that the grant write I'm not going to be talking about grant writing. I'm going to be talking about what the community needs to give the grant writers. So the grant writer can put it into the format that is required by the government or the foundation whatever uh funer is being used. So um and that's all

okay any questions comments? Thank you Magdalena. All right. I think the next order of business is communications committee. I don't know if we have a report on that.

I have a report from Mel. Uh communications report for the meeting tonight is that we're still averaging about 25 check-ins per week. Uh they've been focusing on copy exercises. Everyone in the network is encouraged to keep a pencil and a paper by their radio. Uh we still have radios available for the upcoming firewise meetings and as always you can write to them at cobbalertnetgmail.com. That's the report. Perfect. Thank you.

All right. Um force health committee. Well, we're uh barreling ahead on the uh CWPP process. Uh this week we did our first test of a kind of field survey process. We had our GI GIS technician out as well as Jessica Lidle who's going to be running our ground truth volunteer program. And uh what one of the big takeaways from that was we really the whole point of this is we have all this data. We have this sat satellite data that's supposed to characterize the landscape and we went out and looked at what's actually there and it turns out that just about well every spot we went it was wrong and so it basically uh told us that we've got a long actually redoing the vegetation characterization uh of the Cobb Mountain area is really beyond the scope of this project but this will probably one of the first projects that we'll call out uh once we put the CWPP together. Uh but uh we one of the things that we will be going forward with is to field this uh ground what we're calling our ground truth volunteer team. We're looking to recruit a dozen folks. We've got two slots left. Uh and if people are interested, there'll be training uh on how to look at the landscape. Uh our GIS uh consultant Esther Mandino fantastic. I mean she she's u specific protocols and how we log data and we're also looking to see if there's ways in which we can uh cooperate uh with uh well let me back up a little bit. There is a lot of um you may have heard of LAR data lighter information that has been flown. There's some very basic raw data that that has been uh collected but it

requires a lot of analysis to change that raw LAR data into actual well okay we know there's cenotus here and there's you know dead dead standing trees there. It can be done but it takes a lot of analysis. So, we're looking to see where uh we know that there's a uh the counties to the south of us have have done it and we know that some folks at the Chico geographic information systems group there is doing some of this work. So, looking to see how we could connect uh some of the ground truthing data that work that we're doing with ongoing uh LAR processing issues. Um so, that's kind of a the we're actually got got our boots on the ground as of this week. Uh we also have fully uh um rostered up our formal working group which will be the formal group that will uh review each of the plans and approve them with representation from uh CalFire. Uh Chief uh Chris Aragon will be representing CalFire. We've also got representative from Bogs Mountain. Richie will do that. BLM RCD uh tribes as well as uh Jake will be on there for the CB area council. So that will be kind of the formal group that will review all the work on a quarterly basis. We also have our uh Cobb area council forest stewardship committee which will be meeting every other month uh on Fridays. Uh we the next meeting of that group will be uh Friday May 8th and that will be at the Lloman firehouse at four o'clock. I'll be sending out a an email invitation with an agenda to that group, you know, uh um in a timely manner. That's the next one of those that are coming up. I did mention the um uh u volunteer ground truth group. We're hoping to have that fully staffed and ready to to start

training uh in the second week in May, May 15th. Um and that's my update. I do have one kind of clarifying question. Yes. Um which I think I know the answer to, but you had mentioned the uh ground truthing project and finding um like the vegetation data is incorrect and that we may want to do a much larger job. I just want to make sure I understand or we understand um that'll go into the CWP and essentially be a shovel ready type of project that we can ask for additional funding for through other um funding streams. Right. Is that the intent?

Well, the intent is is This this is not kind of the kind of it can be a project un fundable as part of the CWPP but it wouldn't wouldn't be an actual fuels project or an actual rehab project. There's actually other projects like you know we need to we need to continue and frankly you know one of the things that became clear to us is that you know we up at this point we're looking two years out to do this work but this is something that we're going to want to do on an ongoing basis as the landscape begins continues to adapt. I mean the changes are really changes that were uh fire and postfire recovery and landscape changes that have happened and particularly with expected climate change. We expect to see the landscape changing and we're going to need to stay on top of that as we continually uh characterize where are the area priority areas that we need to pay attention to. And so for this round we're not going to be able to look at the entire Cobb area. We'll be using our, you know, the the really stellar understand. We have a lot of experience in the community about, you know, what's actually on the on there on the ground and where the danger danger spots are and where we want to go have a closer look. So, those will be the areas that we'll be targeting the ground truth team at. Okay. We let's go. We think that this is a problem area. Let's go see what's actually out there now. Got it. And so, that's where we're going to start.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Elliot. I just wanted to say that um I know Elliot Magdalina have been working on this CWP for a while and SSC and um they've done a ton of frontend work to get us to this point and as a community it's our turn to step up and be involved and even though there's two slots left I think it'd be good and I encourage everybody to reach out and get involved even if you're not on the formal team to learn your area be a part of it because this affects everybody in the whole community and It's can protect us. It can make Cobb um a better manicured place for future people moving in. Um you know, the presentation of Cobb itself could really be uh it could really help out the the area. So, I just encourage everybody to get involved and um you know, thank Magdalene and Elliot for everything they've done thus far and we're you know, very appreciative, but it's our turn to step up. Okay. Um, let's do economic development committee, please.

Okay, great. Thank you. Uh, so I'm going to go straight to uh the question that you asked uh about whether or not we've had any um inquiries about the um uh small business loan fund. Um, and the answer to that question is uh yes, in a couple of different ways. Um uh we uh uh have met a couple of times as a committee beginning to talk about how we might work with that money going forward. Um and um uh one of our Cobb community members uh I mean he was here and made a you know formal discussion opened a formal discussion with the board or with the Cob area council. Um Ben Hiddle uh submitted a proposal to the economic development committee about uh some off-grid power project that was circular economy and a rather large infrastructure project uh and wanted basically the entire amount that we have was requesting the entire amount that we have set aside in the bank to do this. and the uh economic development committee reviewed it and determined that this money was originally given to us by uh San Francisco Home Loan Bank to support small business um and very temporary needs uh in the $1 to5,000 range. And um since this is money that was a grant money, we want to continue to honor that until we have some other mechanism in place to deal with the money. So we sent a note to u Mr. Hiddle that uh this project was out of scope from what this particular grant money was able to support. Um since then we have gotten a second request from him. Uh and u the co uh the economic development committee has not had a chance to to um come together and review that particular proposal. Yeah, I was just I was curious earlier and um I think it's it's a great thing

to start up small businesses and I I think your model is is correct with the funds we have and um so well I I think there's still the economic development committee I think uh is trying to determine whether this would be better served as a revolving loan fund which was originally what it was set up to do but that requires some pretty active management

um and a committee that can review loan requests and stay on top of payments and um it's administratively intense. Um it may be better to um uh do small grants. Um but if we're going to do that, the discussion has been that we need to have some criteria. It can't look like we're um giving money to our favorite people. Uh right, it has to have some rigor around it and has to be consistent um with our vision. um for why the Cobb area needs this and I think we've got some documents that provide that vision like the uh Cobb uh area resilience and recovery plan that SSC was really important in helping to develop and also in the Lake County 2050 do uh planning that's beginning to happen. So we may be able to construct a vision for some of those things. Um and again it requires some uh folks to participate on the economic development committee um and uh and uh and do this work. Uh so and there's other work that the economic development committee really needs to take up that we just honestly don't have the bandwidth for right now. One of them is u the explore cobb ca website really needs to be updated. Um, and that's a content uh intense. Um, we got to figure out uh who wants to be on that uh site and who's gone and all those sorts of things. So, um that's what the economic development committee has been up to.

Perfect. Any I'm uh happy to answer any questions from uh the uh from the floor. Yes. Will you um uh so we get you on TechTV, please? Hi, Brian Gonzalez. You said that the website needed to be updated. Is that correct? That is correct. What kind of plans do we have for that?

Um, we don't have a solid I mean I I what the only thing that I have in place for that is a web developer that we've got a contract with uh that can do the work, but we need somebody to handle the content uh development. uh actually going finding out who which businesses are still um active that are featured on the website, which ones have gone away, which ones we need to replace them with. Uh I mean, you can go look at uh explore cobbca.com. I believe it's either.com or.org, but I'm pretty sure it

Yeah. And it's out of date. It's terribly out of date. Uh the only thing that we've been updating on that site uh is Blackberry Cobbler Festival uh when we do that annually. So if you know anybody that might be willing to help us with some of the content um creation and and curation and recreation um please get in contact with me. Okay. Thank you. Volunteer volunteer volunteer. Oh 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. And there seems to be an uptick in things going on on the mountain. Um I know Adam Springs is doing, you know, things quite often and we're getting into our our busy time. You know, we're we'll see an influx of people coming up to their summer homes and it's uh now now is a great time to start hitting that, letting people know. I think this has to do with economics. Um Is there anything going to be happening with the Roadhouse? Um because I had been seeing stuff on I don't know if it was Facebook or next door saying that they had Taco Tuesdays and and it seems closed.

I have no information about that at all other than what's in the regular press. Um, so, uh, and, uh, there was media reports of the owner of that company being in chapter or that of that property being in chapter 11. That's all I know. Thank you.

I could just add that Magdalene and I and I enjoyed a wonderful night of music there by the local talent of of Mr. Robert Stark. It was really quite an enjoyable evening. They're open days until Memorial Day when the Italians show up. when there's no more people.

Yeah. So, um you know, it sounds like things are picking up a bit and businesses are are doing some new things. So, support them as best we all can and spread the word and try to try to keep everybody going here. Okay. Uh Blackberry Cobblerfest.

All right. Uh we're still a go for August 29th. Uh we've decided to expand the hours from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. So we would have uh be able to take more advantage of the cooler morning hours and then that great afternoon shade. Um we're Mr. uh Belmont is still our point of contact for uh all things golf course and um talk about volunteers. Uh we are are looking to not put off maintenance of mowing until the very last minute. Uh we're looking to have a couple mowing sessions throughout the summer, sort of like in exchange for being able to use the property for the festival. Uh so maybe you're not a web developer, maybe maybe you don't like to read reports and give comments on them, but you love to ride your riding lawnmower. Uh this is I'm the one you need to talk to. Um, you can send me an email at bbcobblerfest volunteer atgmail.com. I'm going to double check that before we're done here. Um, I'll I'll say that address again in a minute. Um, while I'm looking that up, I also want to point out that shortly, very shortly, our uh applications for vendors will be opened up and sent out for people to apply. Um, on that note, if you see anybody online or on the side saying, "Hey, just send

me a private email and I'll get you in." You call that person out as a scammer. We are uh fully battling scammers and I don't have that email address in here. So, I'm pretty sure it's bb cobblerfest volunteergmail.com. And um back to the the vendor thing. We're we're doing something new this year. We're going to first open it up to just the food vendors, get those folks situated, and then there'll be a second round. Now we open it up to the artisan vendors and we get all those folks in place and then we'll open it up for the nonprofits uh to apply. And so there will be specific dates being advertised on the uh Facebook page and also I'm pretty sure we're sending out emails to the previous vendors.

Double check that. Yes, Jennifer is going to do emails to previous vendors. Yes. and only trust information from our official Blackberry Cobbler Festival page and Jennifer Gada at bottlercandlestudio.com. Anyone else is a scammer. Well, you're not a scammer. I'm not I'm not a scammer and neither am I.

But I would direct you to the page or to Jennifer Gada. So, you can trust me on that. August 29th, 10 to 6:00 pm. That means all vendors need to be set up and their vehicles removed from the festival grounds by 9:30 and the room was silent. Yeah. So, we're

Yeah, we've already been talking to bands. We got a lot of repeat uh folks from last year and um it's going to be great. It's going to be great. But again, let me know if you want to ride your lawn. Do you have is this a BLW? Do you have to bring your own board? BYOM and BYO PPE, your personal protective equipment.

All right. Thank you, Kathy. Um well I think um any other comments or anything like that? No. So the next meeting is scheduled for May 21st, 6:30 right here. Uh thank you to the Lions Club for allowing us to continue these meetings. We really appreciate it. And we are going to call this meeting at 7:28. Thank you very much.