Arts Commission - Bylaws Subcommittee - Regular Meeting

Okay, it is 5.02 on Wednesday, June 17, 2006, and we are going to begin our City of Georgia Arts Commission meeting. We're going to start out with roll call.

Commissioner Filato? Present. Commissioner Franks-Tapley will be absent. Commissioner Marano? Romero? Here. Ron?

Here.

Commissioner Rosati is not here. Commissioner Simpson? Here. Commissioner Voling is not here. And Chairperson Grotowski?

Here. So Is it now when I would address the situation we just talked about? Or should I save that for later on?

We can address that now.

Okay. I figured after roll call, because we only have four commissioners here, and my thoughts on this was that we don't have a quorum But Deborah Valling hasn't been here, and I think in the bylaws it states three misses, you're off. So there's going to be a note made that she's off, Donna Summers is off, Peg Stoiber's off, and probably Julia Rosati is going to be off. So that leaves us with one, two, three, four, five commissioners. So we have four of the five right now. Is Donna off?

No, she's just absent.

She's just absent. Donna Summers?

She's not on. She's still, she's vice president, right? No, that's.

Donna, yes, Donna Tapp.

Deb Summers.

Yeah.

She's here, but okay.

She's off, though. I think her term was up.

Donna?

No, Deborah. Deborah, yes. Deborah Summers. so we only have five right now so they're gonna make a note the city's gonna make a note in the for next meeting that we're gonna approve that these people weren't here so that we did have enough to have a meeting because we only have five commissioners as of right now and four of them are here so if that's okay uh with the president commissioners i guess we would need a motion and a second and an okay i'd make a motion to accept as presented second all in favor aye aye aye do you have to go around or is that good roll call no You can make a verbal you know or I can do roll call if you prefer I think it's fine right now okay approval of meeting minutes did everyone get to read the minutes from last meeting Move to be approved as written Seconded Do you want to do roll call on that or okay

I will do roll call on that. Commissioner Filato?

Yes.

Commissioner Rahn?

Yes.

Commissioner Simpson? Yes. And Chairperson Grotowski?

Yes. Okay, on to our next thing, citizens be heard and agenda items. We have no one here, which will go right into the agenda, which is the communications update. Is there a screen we're going to look at here?

Yes, just hold on one second. Do you guys see it? All right, just to start off, this is the Arts Commission kind of staff report, but it's going to go over the items on the agenda items listed there. Just to start off, I mentioned it last time, but just continuing to recruit new commissioners to it as part of the communication portion of it. There's the access point. I sent an email to each of the commissioners regarding the webpage to be located on City of Joliet website I met with Sydney Thompson the director of communications and she gave us the indication that it was not recommended for social media so she already they already manage you know the social media website for city of Joliet as well as I believe one or two more so it wasn't recommended for that but she did recommend that they could do she could create a dedicated Arts Commission web page that then we can utilize that link to send to artists as well so it's a dedicated area for it So the items that she put on there, these are completely changeable. This is up to the commission to kind of talk about it if they want a different order to it, want different information on there. But this was suggested. Sydney Thompson she actually has a lot of experience she actually did the Arts Commission page for the village of Shanahan so this is kind of what they did in that in her role for that so it's it's kind of our baseline that we can kind of adjust you know and make it our own in a sense The one thing that I added, it hasn't been created yet, but the one thing I would like is having an artist registry, so it'd be a link, like a form that they can go on and fill it out, and then they can go on our list for artist registry, so if we have you know, a grant opportunity of some sort or an inquiry about a mural, as we saw for the District 86. We have a method and a means to then transfer that information to, you know, the designated party for it. But then it's also a link online that makes it easy so any of our commissioners can share with artists that they see whenever they're out and about, essentially. So I don't know if the commissioners had a chance to take a look at that to get some ideas.

Questions about that? Sure. All right. Can you elaborate a little bit on how that discussion went with Sidney? It seems to me that it... can happen if they want to but they don't want to put the work into it do they want to just keep us on a leash

It's not necessarily not putting the work on it. I just don't think they have the bandwidth and staff time to be able to even manage that, if that makes sense.

Well, I hear that. I mean, they can, but they don't want to. Is that sort of what that means?

I'm going to – Ann has a little follow-up to it.

Yeah, no. It seems like other cities –

They do. So part of the conversation with Sydney that I've had as well separately is there is one communications person, we call it one and a half, not that Jenny Garcia is a half, but she only does part-time for social media. I do know that Sydney is evaluating potential staffing in the future to see if we can accommodate it, but currently the communications team doesn't have the capacity to manage multiple different social media and things along those lines. So I think that the concept of it, and it sounded like it was a good conversation, is there. It's just that at this time, the focus is on the ones that we have. So it's not, and we talked to Ron about this as well, it's not that it's done and we can't talk about it in the future. It's just at this time, it's nothing to do with putting anyone on a leash. It's just there isn't the capacity to do it.

I have a couple of suggestions. One is we know every town around us and throughout the Illinois has their own page to do stuff and disseminate that information. One thing that we could possibly do is if there is gonna be a dedicated page on the website, if we register a specific URL for that portion of the website that would take you to that address, In other words, joliet.gov arts, period. Make it simple. And then that could be posted on social media to say here's upcoming dates, here's things like that, so they still have control. They don't have to worry about doing social medias. We could share that stuff out from there. And I do want to mention that I'm doing some research this week that the Illinois Arts Commission, what I did was doing research on other towns. And when I said, give me a list of cities with arts commission, it took me to the Illinois Arts Council. And there was an Illinois map and pinpoints where all the commissions are. There's Joliet. I click on it. It's an enormously long, ridiculous URL that it takes you to. And then when you get there, it says it's a defunct link. So there is something out there, but it's dead. So one, if we can get a short URL, joliet.gov forward slash arts, then we could share that out and direct them to that and make it a little easier to do that. So the URL and just to include that.

Yep. good point now is this website you're talking about is it active right now uh no so so we so this is the uh this is the bare bones of it it hasn't been built yet um you know i was looking for feedback if you guys have any feedback of adjusting or if you guys are okay i can just move forward with uh how this how this looks right now the meetings and then you know if it

we need to add subject lines or move around subject lines we can do that as well but this was just the you know the the start of it you know like a rough draft I guess you could say I guess I look at this and my concern is that we still haven't and it's not even been on an agenda is the arts policy that was worked on years ago And how long is this going to take because we've never got the public arts taken care of yet?

Great question. Later in my staff report here, I'm going to touch on the arts policy and guidelines. Just a plan of how I'd want to move forward with it.

What strikes me on this, if we're going to go with this type of page, is I would rearrange it and have events and news and updates at the top. I mean, anybody who's looking for something to do is not going to care when the regular meetings are or who's on the commission. I mean, if somebody has an issue or wants to come to a meeting, they're going to go down farther. But if we're going to hit people, we really need to hit them with our events and news and updates first. Right. The attention span is short as far as looking for things to do.

And who has access for posting events and stuff? How is that process going to work?

So what we'll do is we'll have Sydney Thompson or one of her staff do it. But if there's an event or anything like that, you know, if you guys see one, you know, that is, well, from our department, for sure, I'm going to send it to her and get them on there. But if there's one that you think would feel good on there, you can send it to me, and then I'll just send it to her to get it on there.

Does she have time to do it? Does it sound like... She doesn't have a lot of time.

Facebook is a different animal than a web page.

I get that.

But yes.

What's the concern? It's just the negative comments? I'm just curious how the discussion went. We don't have time? Is that pretty much it?

We did talk about the people making comments in there. On the Facebook page, you can set it up so that comments can't be made, and it could be just used for disseminating information. Put it out there that here's our grants, here's our things that we're looking for, no comments, and it kills it. So there's no need for moderation. So you cut that part out. Just a suggestion.

I guess one question that I have, because it was just so recent, was we had those banners in the square from the fallen soldiers. Does anybody know what attendance was for that? Because that had to be posted somewhere I would think on the city website. But I thought I saw it somewhere on social media also. But when I was there, because a friend of mine was on that, There wasn't very many people, and they had that band playing that night, and it was nice. But I'm just wondering about how was the attendance tallied, or was it tallied? And if we do stuff on the website, how is that going to be tallied? looked at attendance-wise for an art show or an art festival or whatever it is. I mean, how are we going to do something like that? Because I think it's really important to know how many people went to go see those banners. It was pretty magnificent and, you know, a lot of goosebumps on your arm when you walk through all of those banners. yeah i knew nothing about it until i saw after the fact yeah what what really was the attendance and how do we how do we know that we're making progress and if it's going to be with the arts rather than just the banners that i'm talking about like i said that's just brand new I know Katie got in touch with me about the same friend. They're from Waukena. But I think that's going to be an important thing and what this website's going to do. And I like Deb saying, you know, the events and news and updates should be at the top. That's what everybody's going to go to look for. They don't want to know when the meetings are necessarily because we never, ever have anybody, citizens.

I get the feed from Ann's, I assume it's Ann's city events, and it would be nice to see the same effort and popularity, if that's the right term, for the art stuff. It seems like I see that every day almost, that something's coming up this week or this month or whatever. And it'd be nice if we can get to that point with the arts. Is it just art?

Can I have an opportunity to answer Tom for a second? Is that OK? Sorry, I was waiting. Tom, first of all, and I apologize, John, before it gets too far. First of all, thank you for coming to that Remembering Our Fallen. It was really important to me to bring it here. Part of the challenge was we had to postpone the opening for a day. And so I actually had media from Chicago on the way on Thursday and had to tell them to go back home because they were going to cover it. And then with the tornadoes hitting, we lost our stories. I will say that I was fairly disappointed that no local writers wrote about the exhibit.

I agree.

I you know, there was promotion there. I went on Scott's locum He talked about it, but I was surprised that there wasn't an article about it That would have brought more people there, you know I will say that I talked to the gentleman who brought it here Dave who if you met is absolutely wonderful and He was pleased. He said there was a constant flow which I I mean, I was obviously hoping for a lot, a lot of people, especially bringing in people regionally. But he was very pleased with the amount of people that came. And I'm hoping also that post it and post the actual exhibit, being able to show that Joliet is doing things like this, I'm hoping will attract other things. So you guys know that I've got other ideas and things like that of things like that that hopefully will bring it. And I think as more people come down to City Square and start talking about it, then we can get more there. And that event is on our website. So on the special events website for City Square, there's an entire calendar. I think we've shown it to you guys before. So, and I think that's a step in the right direction and something that Jenny's created to be able to do it. Um, and of course we'll include anything that is, is taking place, especially if the city is sponsoring it. So did I, I mean, I, I wanted to kind of address that, I think personally, cause I wanted to as well, but, um, you know, we, we do try our best to get things out there. Um, we need people to pick them up and talk about them, you know, that are positive and

And I guess the reason I'm talking about what a head count was, creating an event like we created in New Orleans North, the first year we pushed and pushed and pushed and we had a couple thousand people came to it. But it took us saying we had a couple thousand people came to this event, come to it again next year because we had tallies, we had numbers, and we were able to push that and let people know this isn't just something that's in passing. It's something that's important. And those deceased veterans were important to a lot of people. And even on some of my personal posts about it, I had some people that one lady asked if her grandfather was in there because he was in World War I, but I didn't know how to answer her. And I was working and it got by me anyway. But I think that people like to know that it's a big event and people coming to it. And the more people know about that, the better it is. So we have no way of like tallying something like that because you can just come and walk through it.

We're working on it. I mean, we are working on tracking attendance. We've actually got clickers that we're now going to be using. The remembering our fallen was tricky because it was there for so long. Yeah. I'll go back. I did kind of talk to Dave about it. I'll go back with him and see if he can help me gauge how many people were actually there. But we do have an attendance tracking sheet for the events that are going on at City Square and Bicentennial Park.

Yeah, that's good, and I think that that's information the public should know. We had 2,000 people come to a concert, let's say, and let people know that there's all these people coming downtown Joliet now. Don't be afraid to come down. It's beautiful.

And I'd say that there's been, to your point, I mean, it's better than it's been in a lot of ways. You and whoever else is... I don't know all the players behind the scene that are starting to put stuff out. And since it's gaining momentum, you want to just get on that momentum bus with whatever we're doing, because it's starting to happen. So this is not necessarily a bitch session. It's just like, can we get on? You know, the lead car, so to speak, and do the stuff. And then, you know, as far as just the Arts Commission, to me, arts is more, you know, a lot of it's art per se, but there's, you know, it could be, you know, poetry, it could be music, it could be, you know, a handful of other things.

The forgotten arts, the culinary arts.

you know the more the better for for the Commission and the city and reflects well on everybody so I mean that's the point I'm trying to it's not necessarily complaining it's just like how do we get get there you know so you're hearing it I guess

And by all means, I'm not complaining at all. I'm looking for ways to improve it even more. And that's why I say if we can put out numbers somehow to let people know, hey, I missed this. Like the band we saw last week, they were awesome. They drew a great crowd. But what was there, 150 people maybe came to it?

Probably more than that. But it is significantly better than, say, six months ago or whenever before you started. So it's getting there, but... When you start to see it happening, you get excited about it yourself.

Maybe not a question for you, Ann, or for you, Luke, but how does this information get out? Are we doing any press wire to get it out to multiple sources?

Yeah, there's press releases that are going out regarding things in media alerts. Sydney, our communications person, does have that list. Ironically, Luke and I were talking right before I came in here to say, because we've got a couple of upcoming press releases, because we've got the opening celebration weekend, third and fourth, the 250th anniversary. i said we need to make sure that we actually send them to the arts commission as well because you know i think we think that people see the same stuff as us and that's not the case um and you know luke and i have talked a lot about making sure that we oversee you when you complain remember but we will be sending you more a lot more emails from me yes yes we'll tell you when to Yeah, but I mean a lot of it was and I think you guys heard this from me You know, I was putting everything together and now that we have it. It's like, okay. It's all coming out So it is but we will make sure to send those press announcements to you And I noticed that you know, you guys are reposting things that we do and hopefully you're noticing like Ron I repost, you know cars and guitars like I'm reposting or asking Jenny to repost stuff to That other people do. Yeah. Yeah, so I We're getting there slowly but surely, but please, you guys all know, keep the ideas coming so we can continue.

anything else unless you guys if you that's pretty much it for the communications portion if you guys come up with any other ideas for the website rearranging I did write down the the idea of putting events and news up towards the top I think that's a great idea but if you come up with anything else is it reasonable to put some kind of a timeline when this might happen by this time next month think that's reasonable um so i mean um i'm gonna get back to sydney and make sure that i don't wanna you know oversell her you know i don't know her schedule per se um but what i can do is i can schedule a meeting with her next week um and get the ball rolling on this um uh i'm gonna shoot for a goal of by next uh arts uh commission meeting that we have something up as long as everything aligns.

That'd be great, because we'll be here every month trying to ask, like, where's this at? That's right.

Yeah, and I just kind of would like to have you go over the overview of our mission and goals, because I think we're not 100% sure.

Yeah, we're not really doing much. I mean, we should all be proud of our sculpture that we got put in place. I think that's very important. That's something that came, you know, through the arts commission. We got to meet all the artists and approve what we have set in place right now, but we haven't done much else and we don't have money to do much else.

So goals is a little loose.

Yeah. So it is kind of hard to know, like, what can we do? Like we've got a beautiful art project going on at the museum right now. with the old windows that are 100 years old. It all has to do with music, and it's local artists that are doing this stuff. How do we get that on our website as an event to come see the art exhibits at the Rock and Roll Museum? You know, I mean, just important stuff. Or any place, yeah.

what's that she was asking when the windows would be done when it just depends on who brings them back a lot of people took them but they haven't done one question or one statement that I'd like to make is I think we need to be maybe now that with Sydney's here this might help is we need to be more proactive with positive news Rather than, sometimes it's reactive and sometimes there's no action. And I think we need to be proactive. To Tom's point, when the Arts Council voted to support the fallen officer's sculpture that's now sitting in front of the police station, We weren't even invited to the party. We invited ourselves to come out and say, hey, listen, we helped with this. We need some positive. And I think that would probably kind of start the synergy that we need here is positive posts, positive more proactive than reactive posts. I think the last time we got called on was to defend our decision on the art sculpture downtown, and that really wasn't fair to us. That's what we're going to be known for now. So just a request that if we can find some positive spins on some of this stuff and that we are trying to do something good for the community.

I was just going to give an example of that. I worked with the YMCA in building two of their buildings, the YMCA, which is now Shorewood. But after Shorewood was built, and I don't feel like I put a whole lot of time into it, but I was there every week, at least once, sometimes twice. When it was all done, Richard Snyder sent me a picture and said, hey, look, I put your name on the plaque on the wall. I didn't expect that and I didn't do it for that at all. I did it because I like the YMCA and it still keeps me in construction. But I'll tell you what I did the first thing after he sent it to me was I sent that picture to my son and my family because I was proud of that. You know, because I got acknowledged for something that I didn't even expect would be acknowledged, and that's gonna be at the YMCA in Shorewood forever. So when we as an arts commission do things that we don't get invited to, like what Ron said about John Walsh's statue out there, or sculpture, what are we doing it for? Because we haven't done anything else. We've tried to, we've worked towards it, but we haven't really done anything. And without any money, it's really hard to. But the city now, Like we have Bill's new art gallery, which some people haven't been into, but he's got some beautiful art in there. Deb, you've been in it. You've seen the stuff that's going on. John's been there. Ron's been there. But when they do art shows or art openings, is that something that the city of Joliet should really be supporting and saying, hey, let's get these people down here? And should that be with the events? and the news and let people know that these are big important things to the arts and we have to take these small steps with these places that are stepping forward to make sure that we have new people coming. A couple years back, and I think you were at that one that Deanna and I put on over at Juliet's, we had 120 people who came and most of them weren't from Juliet that came to that. So there are things that happen but We did that on our own, and I had to promote that by myself, and not a lot of people from Joliet came to it. So, we have to figure out when we do have people that are putting an extra effort in to bring the arts in, how we're gonna support them also, and let them know that they're important to what we're trying to do here. Us, as volunteers, once again, I keep saying this, with no money to do anything with, BUT SUPPORT, YOU KNOW, GIVE US TIME, TALENT, OR TREASURE. WE DON'T HAVE ANY TREASURE ON THIS ARTS COMMISSION. WE DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY TO DO ANYTHING.

BUILDING UP WHAT YOU'RE SAYING ABOUT US TRYING TO BE OUT THERE AND STUFF, THIS COMMUNICATIONS PAGE, Is there going to be the ability to put photographs on there of recent events, things that we might have attended or been at, to get some action to the page, or is this just a pipe page as is?

Yeah, it shouldn't necessarily be just an agenda like,

Right. I think it would be nice to put some action to this. So if we take pictures of the park opening, I mean, the dedication, and we have commissioners there, and there's pictures of what's going on that go on this page that kind of shows that there is activity. There might not be a budget, but there's some activity and people and faces. And it doesn't have to be just ours, but just...

And I agree because this picture on here is still a rendition drawing. Yeah. You know, it's not anything that's happened. There's no pictures of things that have gone on. It's probably a placeholder, but still to have those change periodically, I think. I think that's important.

Well, and one of the reasons the commission was created in the first place was economic development. And to your point, you brought 150 people from a different city to see what we're doing here. So I think this is important to do that. And I also think it's important to engage the local community to get them involved in the art projects and have pride and ownership in their own city here.

off track a little bit but yeah but I need to be said communications there right right right and I think that's why we have to have these discussions I think we beat that horse to death what's up John no I was going to say pretty much all right we got that point all right anything else from you Luke on this I added your note to speak with Sydney to see if we can add like past events and pictures and stuff on there just to

you know, gain some traction and gain some, you know, like what Ron was saying, like that goodwill portion of seeing like, oh, hey, wow, they're having a lot of fun down there. Maybe I want to be a part of that.

Right. Even if they weren't changed, you know, every other month or something, they could just keep it fresh.

And to reiterate, if we can ask for that short URL to take them directly to the page so they're not muddling through the whole city website to find something that's a deep dive. That's not there. That's not there. Yeah.

I mean, that's the bottom line to it.

And if you can add to that for somebody to get a hold of Illinois Arts Council and update that link.

Yep, I have.

I got that on my list. Yeah, just to update that so it's not a dead link.

okay is this yours next to luke this comprehensive plan update yes okay

So I spoke with Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, sorry. I almost said Jan. Jane, planning director, City of Joliet. She gave me the comprehensive plan. She mentioned that nothing is really updated yet, but she's actually supposed to get an updated version of it here soon. She said middle of June a while ago, so I'm not sure if they have it yet. But this is the comprehensive plan update that has been out. And what I did was I kind of thumbed through it just to give you guys a little bit of a kind of a summary of what is in there regarding the arts and culture. So what I saw from it, the community engagement, the feedback that was received regarding arts and culture, residents want more public art, live music, festivals, cultural programming. There were suggestions of reusing historical buildings for community and cultural space. There was a very supported beautifying public areas with murals, landscaping, and cultural expressive design. This was all in the update and this was a feedback that was received. The culture and identity seen as tools for shaping Joliet's perception and civic pride. The next idea was the character areas with cultural components. Historic and cultural areas includes areas with concentration of historically or cultural significant structures, Some of the cited examples that was provided was, for example, the old Joliet Prison was cited as an example in it. These areas offer opportunities for preservation, adaptive reuse, and tourism centered on cultural heritage. What's next? Downtown. cultural destination as one of the goals for the economic development section strengthen downtown's Juliet as a cultural hub highlights include promote downtown as a regional destination for cultural culture arts dining sports and civic life invest in public gathering spaces plazas and place-based amenities to support cultural activity prime example is City Square support experiential retail environment entertainment restaurants art orientated businesses encourage adaptive reuse of historical buildings for housing or cultural identity Activate vacant lots and placemaking. Examples were temporary art, pop-up events, more cultural programming. Continue organizing public events that promote cultural tourism. A lot of this is repeating, so I'm just going to kind of thumb over some of it. Land use and neighborhood identity. As I mentioned, the cultural preservation and placemaking in the historical buildings. Some of the key objectives that came from that is add public art and branding at major entry points. So that's like entry into Joliet. Creating pedestrian-friendly routes that strengthen connections to cultural spaces. Support neighborhood-based initiatives. And then activate historic corridors and public spaces with cultural programming and events. Let's see. The big section that was a really good one for arts and culture specifically is people places and belongings arts and culture focus So there were some recommendations that came from that and Some of those recommendations, as you can see there, was preserve and adaptably reuse the historic buildings and cultural spaces, as I mentioned. Expand opportunities for artists, cultural groups, and creative entrepreneurs. You know, we're trying to start that with our arts registry stuff, so we're getting the ball rolling on some of these items that are mentioned in the comprehensive plan. integrate the public art and storytelling in corridors, gateways, everyday spaces, and to continue to support cultural events, festivals, creative programming, and then strengthen partnerships with schools, museums, and non-profits in the area, and then continue to promote regional tourism through cultural trails. All in all, the summary, it's pretty much everything I mentioned. But the plan repeatedly prioritized those ideas. It's a good document. It's about 50 or so pages long. But I tried to pull out all of the art-focused items from it and stuff that would affect Arts Commission and kind of the arts and cultural programming that we're trying to do within our department. So definitely prioritize public art investment, cultural programming, and citywide arts and culture plans. So it's cool to see that the public and the comprehensive plan has a lot of the ideas that we have put into a program like that. That's essentially it.

Go ahead. Are you done? Yep, I'm done. All right. So this sounds like the four of us. Were you guys at the public as saying all of this? Okay. It's determined what the public wants, what this commission wants. you know uh i guess the question is is do you wanna uh i say you not personally you but does the city uh wanna support what what they're hearing through this and i think it would it be unreasonable to get a monthly report on what you're doing, about what you're hearing here. So, you know, we can support and work on stuff. You know, this sounds like what we're all, you know, what we want, what the public wants. Kind of common sense. And I guess the question is, is that, you know, will it be a priority, you know, for the city? And tell us, like, we're giving you X amount of dollars or we want to do this and that. You could address each one of these every month as far as I'm concerned and be accountable Like are we gonna you know, how do we make progress on this? We spent a lot of money on this and other dozens of other stuff with the comprehensive plan, but and everything has every thing every one of those things have different priorities, but it's clear and you know, whatever's a reasonable timeframe to, you know, whether it's next year's budget, whether, whatever, you know, you know, how can we attack? And I think the right word is attack. How do we attack some of these? And we want to be partners in the attack.

I'd like to add to that, too. You were very diplomatic about saying it that way. I wanted to ask, how much do you pay for this comprehensive plan that says we have to use empty buildings and empty lots and put more artwork out there? I'll never get used to the speed of how government works. It's sometimes very long to take care of and do these things appropriately, I suppose. But I kind of refer to this as analysis paralysis. It's like, are we going to do something? How do we mobilize this now?

So this is one of the updates of the comprehensive plan and has not been adopted by council yet. So there is going to be more updates to it. But obviously, you know.

That's probably not the answer we were looking for is now it has to go to somebody else to approve. How do we get it to move is what we're looking for.

At least when they approve it, can it come back to us and say, hey, take this and run with it. Do something with it. We'll give you one more. of something to accomplish.

You need approval here to... To approve this? I mean, not that it's approved, but we're seeing what this plan says, and can it be put on record that we support this? I mean, is that somehow...

So I actually go to the comprehensive plan meetings, and I can let them know. We like what we hear. You can voice for us. Yes, I can voice for you guys. We could have written this for you.

Actually, I think we have.

Many times over. I would feel good as well. Can I hear from you, Ann? What your thoughts are? I mean, you're close to the.

I love Ron's comment. You're getting used to the speed of government.

To be correct, I didn't say I'm getting used to it. You can't get used to it.

And I actually, I feel like all of you in some way have actually been in some part of the comprehensive plan, whether attending a meeting or something like that. and it is a plan and it does take time um i also appreciate the fact that what's being pulled from it is saying that we do need to do things like that that helps me when i try to get a budget to do things for that to say hey you need to implement that now so You know, I think I need to have a little bit better understanding about the timing of it. Sorry, Ron. To figure out, you know, if there's going to be money put towards comprehensive plan implementation. But it does help to support me when I am looking for budget. And it is budget season.

And would it help? I mean. We could use a council liaison that would, you know, that supports this and supports what we do so that somehow behind the scenes when they all talk and they can talk more than two at a time, can't they? I don't know.

You know, forgive me. We actually did have that internal discussions, and I do have someone that has said they will do that, but let... My point is that you're doing it, and that's good. Yeah, no, we have a plan for that, actually.

We have somebody also advocating...

Yes. I'll finalize with Luke and Katie what the protocol is to make sure that that gets implemented by the next meeting.

That'd be nice.

For sure. Because we talked about that last meeting. Yeah. One thing like with this comprehensive plan, which I don't know, I guess people get tired of hearing it as a comprehensive plan all the time and don't see any action, but Just for instance, tomorrow night, Morning Star Mission, a local nonprofit, to get involved, they're having their caravan go into different restaurants here in Joliet. Is anybody from the city going to attend this comprehensive plan thing when Morning Star is actually doing it? and we get no response from the city of Joliet for anybody going on this caravan for the food and going to the local restaurants. You know, it would be nice if somebody could spend whatever it is, $50 or $100 to go on the caravan and see what a non-profit's doing to try to help the city out we serve 300 people a day there free food you know that that doesn't come from taxpayers money per se it comes from donations for the most part and in return they're trying to get people known to like they're going to the mexican restaurant in the train station they're going to stone city post they got four three or four different restaurants that they're that they're supporting Right here in our community, a nonprofit stepping out of bounds and saying, hey, we're going to try to show what we're doing. So that's one point that I saw in this because I did see the nonprofit part of it. The other is bringing people downtown. And what was the verbiage to be a cultural whatever it was, but what is that exactly? A cultural destination, I think is what it was called. What is a cultural destination?

Districts and trails, maybe? Cultural districts and trails?

No, it was on the previous page, I think. But what exactly is that? What is that in the comprehensive plan? I read that and I say, well, what are we really looking for in this culture or whatever it was? Can you go back one page? It might be two, but go back one more. So downtown is a cultural destination.

What is that meant?

I mean, what is the actual meaning of that? I know we have City Square and we're pushing that, and I think all of us push that because we've been to the fairs, we've been to the concerts, we've been to the different things that are happening. but what is what is that downtown is a cultural destination a comprehensive plan and this this might be just for me because i don't understand what that means well i think each one of us will interpret that differently and the city may interpret it completely differently than we do so i think in tourism uh a destination uh is more than just coming to one location when you're there you're there for an experience

So you can take something like Utica as an example that's near Starved Rock. And now they have outside dining. There's an experience to go there. They have a winery. They have restaurants. You're doing a lot of different things there. So now it becomes a destination that you're going to.

The summation of all of this.

Yeah. That's what I've heard in tourism, but I don't know if that applies in this case.

Well, that's what I'm saying. From the city, what is that? What are you looking to do as a cultural destination? What kind of culture? We have four restaurants within the district right now, and there's no other room. I guess there is one or two places that could be. but that's about all there's room for in restaurants that I see right now in the real estate market within that city square area. What is that cultural destination? Do we wanna expand that in the future to take on that downtown Joliet isn't just Chicago Street from Jefferson to Cass, but it actually goes from Ottawa to Scott all the way down to Ruby Street. You know, is that part of this cultural destination?

In the document, it's a 54-page document. I just did it as a summary. But in there, there is more detail, I think, on that cultural destination portion. They even have it listed as goals underneath that of how they're defining it and how they reach it. So I could send you the link if you'd like, and then you could go on there and view it yourself. I think we'd all like to see that link.

I think it's kind of important because there's so much on this comprehensive plan. I know I saw everybody here at one of the meetings at least, or the comprehensive plan, right? Yeah. Traveled around to different rooms in here. So we're putting our heart and soul into what this Arts Commission is about, but we also have to have answers and we have to have dollars and know what kind of dollars we have, and I know there's not any in the budget right now.

The budget's coming up, though.

I know. That's why I looked at Ann when I said that. I believe in you, Ann. All right.

I do want to make a comment about that cultural destination, though. There was a post recently on Facebook from the Historic Route 66 group of somebody who's traveling through. The museum itself gets people from all over the world that come in. There's a particular group of people that came from New Orleans, and when they walked in our museum, they were pretty upset that the other museum was closed. It's not an uncommon thing for people to come into our museum and say, what's up with the train station? Today, somebody said, we went into the museum at the train station, it was closed, and then the other museum was closed. So they came in, but their post was a review, and it read, don't go to Joliet, don't waste your time, there's nothing there, the photos are exaggerated, that there's nothing there. The nice compliment for our museum was that the Rock and Roll Museum was open, although it's small in building, it was very nice to be able to go there. But I think that to the point of cultural destinations, I think one thing we all need to do is learn to play together and create the synergy here amongst the restaurants and everything. Going back to my point of using Utica, of giving people a place to go to to do many things, and knowing that we could put heads in beds. Hey, we're gonna start our trip on Route 66 in Joliet, so we land in O'Hare, we're driving down to Joliet, which does happen, They stay in the hotels. They kick off their tour at the Rock and Roll Museum or the Joliet Area Historical Museum. And then they're off. They're going to the next destination. But if we can keep them here for a day or two, then we're also creating economic engine and money happening here in the city. So I think that's one of the things we need to think of. And the importance in trying to convince our council, the importance of how art plays a part of that, because the second part of that review was we left Joliet, went to Pontiac. It was much nicer. They had more museums. They had more artwork, more murals. And I'd be happy to send that to everybody if you want to see that, that they put that. But I want people to understand the importance of what the art means here. And when you see degraded art that's coming off the walls and things like that, we look like we're falling apart. And again, we've said it before, fourth largest city and so far behind on everything. So how do we get caught up? The plan is interesting. It's good. But going back to this, how do we mobilize this and make this happen? How do we move forward?

And I read that same thing, Ron, that was one of the saddest things I read about Joliet right now, as we're trying to make it better, and as the city's trying to make it better, and the downtown with the new park, that was very sad to read. It was very disheartening, and you could feel the passion in the woman's writing. about Joliet like that. One review like that can wipe out 10 great ones, because people have a tendency to focus on the negativity, which we don't want to do at all.

But yeah, and the flip side to that is that I do notice all of the Entryways to Joliet have great greatly improved and I know the bridge is a mess right now But that's being repaired all these things should have been done the city the city square should have been done years ago I'm glad it's being done now because that ugly parking lot is now a beautiful park there But now we have to change perception not only for people who are coming through But for the people who live here, because I still get people that say, I've never been down to your museum, and they live four blocks away because they're afraid to come downtown. So we have to find a way to change perception.

I look at I brought in books prior to and on Paducah Kentucky because whenever Bob and I travel we go through every little town and I look at every piece of art they have every museum every place they they teach classes public art I look at their average income in the towns and we are getting our butt kicked by people who have an average income of $30,000 per person and in these towns. I look at Paducah, Kentucky, old river town, old buildings, could be quite comparable to us. Fort Myers, Florida, the same. Back in the 80s, 90s, you wouldn't go downtown. They have used the arts to turn it around completely. They have art co-ops. They have museums. They have vendors on the street. They have festivals. They have murals along their waterfront. They have a lot of things going on for a town that doesn't have a lot of money. They're giving artists... grants to come into these dilapidated buildings and then they're giving artists can apply for grants to help them build it out when the last time I was there because I've been there probably five times they were doing what was called a passport so you bought a passport to like $25, whatever it was. And you went through all the places in this designated area. So if you wanted to shop here, you might get 10% off. You might get a free drink there. The art museum, you might get to see this artist working on something. But they had all these passport destinations. And the amount of people doing it was incredible.

Nashville is the same way. I was just going to say that back when I wrote the business plan for the museum in 2016, one of the things we talked about was finding ways to work off each other's synergy to work with other places. We should be having a city pass. Nashville's is called their backstage pass. You buy a pass and you get to go to several museums. You get discounts for merchandise. You get discounts for lunches. How do we then become this cohesive city with the restaurants, the attractions? How do we... how do we make this a destination for people to come to? I think we need to put some focus on that. And artwork is something that pulls it all together. And that lady who traveled through with her family who left a negative remark, that was the first thing she noticed when she got to Pontiac was the murals down there.

All right, let's keep moving on.

That's all I have for the comprehensive update. When I asked before, you were going to touch base very quickly on the public arts policy that was written that hasn't been on the agenda. Or were you talking about this comprehensive plan?

If you want to move to staff comments, I can give you some staff comments. There's some follow-ups. That'd be great. So I did have a chance to meet with Becky, our grant coordinator. She mentioned that we... In the spring, we did apply for the IACA grant that we got in the past, so we're hoping to get confirmation for that sometime in August or September. The received amount, she told me, and for that depends on how many people apply for it, but it could be anywhere from $2,500 to $25,000. think last last cycle there was a lot of people applying for it which is good but then it thins it out a little bit that's why we were I think we only received 2,500 for it so we're hoping to you know have some good news from that when it comes I also invited Becky to come to the July 15th meeting to give a you know a presentation and stuff about how she looks for grants for you know the arts and different things to the city One of the grants that she mentioned to me was through the Illinois Arts Council. It's a creative projects grant. This is something the city can apply for or individual artists, which I think is a really cool opportunity for that. But that's just a quick grant update for that one. Hoping we got some good news coming soon. but I thought it would be beneficial to have her come on and you know do a presentation to you guys because you guys are Looking for grants or if you guys have grant ideas and you see it She's a she's a great resource She even was coming up with ideas. I never even thought of so she'll be a good presentation for for the next meeting and then The next thing was utilizing committees to help develop recommendations. Two committees that I had the idea for subcommittees would be just to go through the Public Art and Policy Committee, utilizing two members from the Arts Commission to meet with me, and maybe Anne to kind of go over the public art guidelines. You know, I haven't had a chance to really dive into it, but I think getting me up to speed would be great, especially from, you know, Ron, the one who helped write it. And I kind of put together a timeline too for it. Once we get the committee together, I would like to have like a biweekly meeting standing where we can kind of get the ball rolling on that and make it move quicker. So I know we have a lot of the stuff already built, so hopefully we'll move quick from that point. so that's one of them and then the other one would be the artist like a community engagement committee something that helps with the web page that we're talking about you know some ideas of what should we put on there how can we keep it fresh how do we keep it active and helping and having arts commissioners you know help kind of spearhead some of those ideas would be the idea for that for that subcommittee as well

We're free.

We're down to four commissioners. Five commissioners. Two and two.

So those are thoughts. I can, you know, if you want to email me separately and, you know, we can kind of figure that out or, you know, figure out how we can get that ball rolling on those committees.

Well, I would work on the arts and community engagement committee if anybody wants to. I've been working with you on the artist registry already, sending you who I know of.

Yes.

I've done a little bit of research on the public arts policy. A little? So I'd be willing to take that one on.

So with the public arts policy, it was written, it was researched and written well. How long will it take you, Luke, to be able to look at that yourself? I know you're new. You're getting hit in all directions. What kind of timeline can we expect from you to look at the one that's already written and see how far we have to go with it?

So on my guideline plan, that would be phase one. And I would like to have, once we get the committee started and we get a meeting date set, I'll review it in depth at that point. I've read it. I've seen it. But actually going through and identifying different sections in it. The first meeting would be a orientation and draft review. So when we do get to the first meeting, the idea would be to review the draft and essentially get me up to speed because there's maybe I can look at a policy, but what's the background of how we got to some of those conclusions? I would love to hear from Ron especially with some of those ideas. And then phase two would be, you know, refinement. Is there any refining that we can do? You know, I don't know when was the last time we, you know, was actually looked at, but is there any way that we can refine it and, you know, maybe we saw something recently that we can improve or make it better, right? So that would be refining and content completion on that. So my goal would be three to six weeks, so that would be the, you know, second meeting that we would have as a subcommittee. And then phase three would be on the city side. So internal and city department review I'm trying to rope in all of the different Departments into the review just to make sure they have a chance to look at it and get a view on it and then hopefully after the city review and and that plan would be Just getting the final revisions down and then bringing a final You know policy to review as as a commission what do you anticipate three to six weeks for you what do you anticipate for the people above you no comment it depends on schedules of everybody so it's hard to it's hard to you know it's hard to answer that question

So you wrote this, what, three years ago, Ron? Uh-huh. Can we expect with these updates and reviews by the end of the year that this could be put into policy, into practice, or not?

I mean, you don't I know you said no comment, but I mean does that seem like it was originally presented as Kind of a living breathing document that it had enough substance to it to approve it Which we did as a commission for to go to the next level which would have been the City Council which it never got to so and then the thought after that was we know we're going to as we Being so new at this, we know we're going to learn more as we go along, that we're going to have to add other parts to that policy moving forward. We did as much research as we could by looking at Elgin and St. Charles and places outside of Illinois at their city policies, at their art policies. But it was presented as something that could be altered in the future to say that, hey, we just stumbled across this. So we need to add another policy within the policy or something.

Now that I'm here, I'm into it. I'm into my third month now. I just finished two months. A lot has been thrown on me. I'm getting up to speed on a lot of stuff, which is great. Getting up to speed on a lot of that stuff, it helps make it go smoother. So now that we're on the, the ball is rolling on that, you know, I'm hoping to get this, you know, the ball rolling a lot quicker on the arts commission stuff. So, you know, I'm definitely excited about all this stuff moving forward and, and ready to just start attacking some of these, you know, lofty goals and lofty dreams. So hopefully we can keep moving on it, but. If you guys, I got Ron on the public art policy, and then Deb, I have you on the engagement committee. Could I have maybe Tom or John?

I'll work with Ron.

You want to work? And then Tom, would you be interested in being in engagement?

I should probably work with Ron on that. Maybe Donna could work with Deb.

Yeah, if Donna's in. If she's an artist.

If she's an artist, she'd be good. Yeah, she'd probably be good at that, right?

Mm-hmm. That's who I thought of first of all.

Yeah. So if you're not here and you get appointed, you have to do it. Not here to defend herself. All untold.

She's cheering it, by the way. I make a motion? Yeah, yeah. Even better. Yeah.

She works during the day. Well, maybe this summer.

You know, it's convenient for me, like, after 3.30 because I'm downtown every day now. So it's kind of nice, but I have to work until 3.30. So I can attend meetings after that, like, 4 o'clock or whatever. John's retired. He doesn't do nothing. Any other member comments?

I do. Where do we stand with, what do we have, three commissioners spots open?

Well, no. We've got four.

Four.

Four, only five of us.

Okay. Has there been any applications? Do we know of?

No.

Can that obviously try to, it's probably going to rely on some of us, but can we try to make that a priority so that we can maybe have more than five of us at the next meeting, so to speak, are up for approval, even if we don't have all the spots. But it'd be nice to add a couple. That's all I mean.

I think Tom or one of you guys mentioned earlier that we really need a liaison from the city council. As I entered here, Cesar Cardenas said that he had some interest in that. Maybe there's others. I don't know. But I think we need to get somebody to help to define what we're doing here. Let's take a look at those bylaws again. I have my reservations about inviting anybody into a mess right now until we know what we're doing, until we know where we stand. And I don't think we stand anywhere unless we get city buy-in to what we're doing, and I think that might have to come through city council.

And if you go back and look at last month's agenda – The approval of minutes, those comments were in there from last month still.

Maybe a suggestion would be to hold a special meeting to go through the bylaws and talk about having a liaison from the city to approach the city to ask if we can get somebody on this as ex officio.

Ann, maybe you would know this. So on Friday night when I was down at the city square concert, I happened to be talking to the mayor and he said something about trying to do some artwork on the back of the parking garage and I thought he said he had North Point some money from them and maybe trying to put up a big screen

We're exploring options right now for what can be done with that parking deck and hope to have some type of artistic element to it. All right. Yeah. As soon as we know, you'll know. But hopefully he's, as you could probably tell, he's very passionate about it. So I think there's hopefully some good energy there and momentum to get that.

you know we could we could use you know something cool that we're a part of we both could all of us yeah your side our side so I just heard about it I just wonder if there was any updates but okay sounds like still being worked on all right that's

I have one last question for me, anyway, about the last year's Illinois Arts Council grant. Have we expended all of that money? Because that's coming up, the reporting on that's coming up in August, and we only have, what, one meeting before that? I know we talked about using part of it for the poet laureate. Does that expend all of the Arts Council grant money? It wasn't much. I think you're right. It was $2,500. But I think we talked about using $1,500 or so to pay him.

Leaves us with another $1,000. His term expires, right? Yeah.

And we talked about, do we extend that, too? Or what do we do from there? But my question is, even if it's only $2,500, I don't want to end up in the same thing that was happening before, which is on August 1st, we say, we've got to spend the money. Let's give it to, and then we just give it to Bicentennial. Yeah, somewhere. Yeah. Like this money should be going to artists or something really. We have no operating expenses. We're not paid. We don't have an office. So the operating expenses could be the cost of whatever, you know, for artists.

I know that at one point we were talking about that banner program and Ray was going to buy material for it. Yep. And I don't know if he ever did. We never heard on that, but that's what part of that money was supposed to go towards, and the rest of it was supposed to pay for Uxmar. So I just don't know where that money went to. For the paints and stuff. Yeah, for paints and things.

And one of the reasons I bring this up is because Val from Joliet Library contacted me and said that they're doing a – They're doing an artist and residents at the library and asked if there was any funds from the Arts Commission That we could help with a stipend Anything she said if it's a hundred dollars five hundred dollars a thousand dollars if there's anything where you could use that would help an artist that's that's gonna have a you know artists and residents program downtown in the Ottawa Street branch yeah that would that would be great so if somebody could find out if we have any of that money before before it runs out yeah that that uh i don't know off the top of my head but i could find out for you the the grant cycle i think ends in uh august if i'm not mistaken for that arts illinois arts council

Well, and where does the poet laureate, are we giving up on that, or are we going to do another two-year for somebody else? We can put it out for applicants, and do we have money to fund it?

So I think we did a pretty good job of answering most questions. I do have to defer that one to the next. I just don't have, um, all the information. What we did do was we asked to smart for kind of a report of everything that he had done that Luke and I just got. So I was kind of waiting on that a little bit to be able to move forward with, you know, what do we do with the poet laureate? So I don't have that one done this time, although I really wanted to, but we will, um, we will look towards, um, figuring out how to extend that program.

We'll see him tomorrow, though, at the dedication.

And I just think it was really, really, you know, from where we were, we didn't have one, and to what he did in two years, you know, I'd like to keep it moving forward, obviously, as opposed to...

and that program actually started before the two of you came on and there was some expectations he had to show up at six different city events and he has to do six presentations and and I can tell you he's way beyond that he's we got our money's worth out of him tenfold so any other comments

no public comments motion to adjourn make a motion so moved second second aye is that it all in favor all in favor we can do that any opposed yeah let's stick around for a while