Beautify Londonderry - Regular Meeting

So, I think we can get to um calls to order or meeting. Um just really quick, Beth, I'll appoint you as an official voting member tonight. Okay. Thank you. And that's it is just the four of us. Still, um we are still um Chris Kirsten did say she was going to put it out so that to make it known so that we could get more members in. So, hopefully um hopefully that will happen soon. Joey, do we have an answer on Laura? Laura has officially resigned. She is officially resigned. So, she's Yeah. Yeah. So, she's she's official. It is just the four of us. Okay. And just so you're aware, uh I know we changed the meetings till Tuesdays at 7:00.

Um I happened to speak to De Paul today about something else. Yeah. She can't make Tuesdays at seven either. We had the conflict because we were Monday. Tuesday she has to get her paper out. She got her on Tuesday night. So, so she sent her regrets. She wants to continue to get the minutes and everything. She's okay. Probably not going to make too many meetings. So, yeah, it's okay. I I talk with her frequently about green team and stuff. So, um Okay. Um so, our next um order on agenda is public comment. Um we do have three people from the public here. Um but they're for different points of the agenda. So, if there's anything you guys want to add right now, you can. But if not, we'll just wait. Um

maybe we could introduce this. Yes. I'm so sorry. Yes, I know everybody. Yeah, I'm really It's seven o'clock. I told you, you know, it's I know you're usually in bed in my pajamas. Yes. So, um absolutely. We would um we would like to welcome um Nate Fontaine here. Um do you want to just say a little bit about yourself and why you're here? So, my name is Nate Fontaine. I'm a local high school student in Londereerry. Um I'm here as part of an ELO to take over some of the yard um um welcome to Londere signs. Okay.

Kind of keep those maintained during the year. Um because I own a landscape company in Londereary and that would kind of be something that I can take care of and help out with. Okay. I think I've heard a lot about you with the American Legion. Yeah. And you're to be commended and we're glad that you're here.

Yeah. I appreciate it. Thanks. and I'm Kitty Sullivan. Um I am his director for ELLO's during high school and actually last semester he worked on his business leadership part of the his his um his lawn care you know reaching out learning about finances this and that and then second semester we thought it was great if he did a community service project and then somebody over here showed up at the region one night while I was there

and he was talking about beautify lending how you know we need more help and this and that. So, when we were talking about um different things to do, I asked Nate, I gave him like three or four things that I think would be great to give back to the town and he chose to do the signs and then we reached out to you and now we're here to see if we could take over two of them as part of his ELO and um you know, so he can graduate and have a good little ELO project and then see what the future can hold for him and his business and all that. But it started with your little speech at the Legion one night. Um, so that kind of motivated me to say, "Hey, I have some great kids doing some great stuff." And Kim Kim also

Exactly. So, and then he's um he's actually helped out a bunch of our veterans already in town by doing some free stuff for them. We heard that the other. Yeah. So, he's been um really good at helping our veterans in town as well. So, whether that was his community service project, but now helping out with the signs is just another great thing, too. And if there's the opportunity, as we'll talk about tonight, hi artist. Hi. How are you? Um that would be great as well because he's looking to just sum up his final semester of his senior year by giving back to the town. Just one question. What is ELO?

So ELO is from Linda High School is something we're growing at the high school and extended learning opportunities. So we're so we're looking for more opportunities for kids to uh do more stuff outside the classroom experience. Exactly. along with the academic. Exactly. Good. So Nate, who's a hands-on type of learner and thinker and doer and all that,

instead of taking a basic elective, he's like, Miss Sullivan, I need I need to do stuff. I I want to give back. I want to do stuff with my expertise. And the state luckily is moving more towards ELOs's for our kids. You know, all that bring back the trades, all that stuff. So, I'm lucky enough where that's going to be kind of a big position of mine uh this year and next year and the years to come to try to find these kids and create opportunities for them to get credit while doing stuff that they love. I know I did talk to Bob Slater and he was he was huge. He was talking about uh expanding this whole program and I think it I think it's fantastic. Yeah, he's true.

I do. and he is like literally a prime example of why we should have ELO high school cuz he has taken this and won and continues to give back without even doing it and I'm super impressed and everybody that he's worked with tooting his horn a lot but um everybody he has worked with has just raved about his for a 17 18year-old man who's you know building a a business they have raved about him so he did snow snow removal for some veterans that had no ability to do it Yeah. So, thank you so much. And John, they do snow removal for some guys that are too lazy.

I thought you were going to say all guys that too, John. Thank you. Thank you very much. Including myself. YEAH. YEAH. TONIGHT. SERIOUSLY. He does your snow removal. He does. Yeah. Right. Wow. Very cool. I do my own, but Oh, stop. I might be calling you. So, thank you for having us. I know we're on the agenda, but that's who we are. Awesome. I'm Larry Casey. I'm with the Londoner Arts Council, and um I'm here to um talk about fundraising with you guys. Cool. Cool. We're grateful for that. Yeah. Yeah.

Um okay. Next on the agenda, um approval of last meeting minutes. Did everybody get a chance to I have got these? By the way, this is the February minutes. Huh? February minutes. That's right. Because we need to do um we already approved those. Yeah, we already approved. We did. Did anybody not get the I didn't I didn't know if I read them. You know what? Don't ever say that to a guy. Well, you know, you say, "Oh, I read them, but it was they were so deep I couldn't I have to read them again." My my old brain isn't remembering that I read them. How about that? Very good. I like that one.

You have to put it under your pillow and go to sleep. Okay. If they're good, if you guys think they're good, can I get a motion for approval?

So moved. I make a motion that we accept the minutes as stated and as written. Second the motion. Favor. I All right. Thank you, Scribe. All right.

Um I don't I do not have the account update from last meeting. Um it would be the same with the exception of Beth's. Um, you have put your money in for reimbursement. I already got I got the check. Yep. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Um, so we are just shy of 14,000. Um, soon to be a lot lower with our um moving forward with our signs, which is great. Um, and which is next on the agenda, the welcome to London Derry signs. Um, I don't know, Nate, what's your what's your time frame. Do you want to stay? Um because I was going to let you speak and then and then you can go ahead and go, but do you want to hear a little bit more about like what's happening with signs too?

Sure. Okay. Okay. So, um John, you want to give us the update and then um by the way, the way she said it, that's a cue to me to be brief, concise, not to talk for too long. I don't know where she thinks that comes from, but um I have uh 99% good news on the welcome to 11 science. Okay, good. uh we had a full go from the town um to uh to get the work done. Uh we got we had that small impediment uh with regard to uh the Warren article that failed about a year ago.

Um because the deal the sign maker made uh was irresistible uh in terms of potential savings to the town. uh they've approved uh because well we're also using our own fundraising right our own uh funds here to to fund the sign uh restoration. So what's going to happen Nate is all the signs are going to be taken down uh by our friends at the DPW and then they will box back box back box them up and they have to get them up to Center Harbor. That's where the shop is. I think that's up by Winnipegasi. Yeah. And uh they'll get them up there. Dave was very uh grace gracious in terms of offering that.

Um he uh uh the uh uh brackets that hold the signs may or may not need to be painted. That will be our responsibility. Um they're just metal brackets. We can spray those with with a Rustoleum D product. um the uh uh he he won't know until he has the signs in hand how long the process will be, but it could be a couple three weeks anyways once he's got them up there. Um and then Dave's team will go up, recover them. Uh the only thing Dave asked was that they could uh wrap them so they wouldn't get damaged in his trucks and then they will reinstall them. Okay? Uh which is huge. That

they will they will remove them. They'll they'll take them down and they'll put them back up for us. That's huge. And drive them all the way up to Center Harbor, which is a a holiday. That's what Do we have to wait till the ground thaws or can they pull them up? No, the post taking them off the post. Oh, just a sign. Yeah, the post stay there. And we're responsible, we're responsible for the posts. So, some of the posts will need um a particular Bondo product to fill in a few of the cracks. And then we'll have to do a light sanding. And then probably two coats of the same paint

uh that the sign maker is going to use, he's going to supply us the paint. Okay. And then the very top, the decorative top is a gold sort of a a faux gold material. He'll supply us that paint also. Fantastic. And then all we'll need is, you know, somebody young who really is looking to do community uh effort to help us. You have anybody in mind? I don't know. I there there may be some young buck someplace who really wants to get involved with this committee. Okay. Um but but it shouldn't be too too bad, says a man who could never reach that high. Um there's five signs, by the way.

Yeah, there are five signs. Um so uh uh so that's all good. the the only uh so we're responsible to paint the posts if we if they need repairs and to paint the brackets and Dave's team will put them up and then the sign maker will do his his thing. Um, so great. I expect the only uh I said 99%. Um, I got a uh uh there was a request from uh Justin Campo who's the finance manager for the town.

Uh that we do this on five separate invoices. um uh not ideally not to exceed $2,000, but he said, which is right, that some of them might be a little bit less, but a couple of them might be a little bit more. That's why he likes just like when he buys computers, he likes to do them on separate invoices. Okay. So, uh the five invoice program was no problem with uh with this guy. He's he says he's very used to dealing with towns, but um but he asked today if we could do a 50% deposit. So I haven't got an answer from Justin yet on whether or not he'll the town does that. We'll find out.

Um I he just has to give me an answer. I have a feeling I can if if the town does not do that, we'll come up with something else and just get the work done. Okay. Um but maybe the town does. Sean, if you don't mind me interjecting, we sometimes when we book bands, we have to make deposits in advance and we do it. Good. He knows. So, good to know. Good. So, if they tell you no, say, uh uh uh I heard

no. Yeah. I I won't throw Larry otherwise unless I have to. Okay. But overall, that should move the project forward. And I I think then our objective on fundraising, which Larry will talk about a little later, but our objective on fundraising changes uh from strictly for the signs to a broader thing about fundraising for Beautify London Dairy to replenish the money that we'll lay out for the signs. So, um I don't think I left anything out. I think that's what Can I ask questions? What are they doing to the signs? Are they Is it wood rotted or is it painting or

Katie? You will be amazed. You can look at like the the sign on Rockingham Road up by the old Yard restaurant. Yep. Is is actually if you look at it um it's actually there's a section of it that's falling off. Okay. The front the one on Rockingham Road has a bullet hole. Okay. Wow. Okay. So it they they've been You do that? Do you know who did it? Colorado's bigger than kids, right? Yeah, that's what it was. Astros. But so, uh, so they they've been out there. It's a little hard to get the exact date, but it's like 2008, correct? Okay. And if you think about your house,

how many times would you have painted your house in that period of time? So, these have been out there for a while. the only only one actually the one that's in the worst shape up on the north end of town was the one that we had a truck drive off the road and just take the sign out. So that was replaced maybe 10 years ago or something like that. So um but that's uh that's the update on the sign. So we're all good if we I'll I'll keep everybody up to speed but uh until DPW takes them down I don't think we have any postp painting or anything like that. So, probably April, May time frame, we'll we'll get out there and figure out how we're going to paint the posts. And

um and you know, we'll certainly be there with our pom poms to cheer Nate on. Okay. I'm only kidding, Nate. Not really. Very happy to sign you up for that. All right. All right. That's it. Brief enough, boss. Yeah, that was that was brief. That was good. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so yes, Nate is here to talk about um his yellow. We we had a conversation um by phone on Thursday to um to talk and um so have a couple of ideas for um um for him to do. Do you want to just kind of take it and what you what you what we were thinking and do you feel comfortable with that or Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Go for it. Um, so from what I remember, we were talking about kind of just maintaining them. Um, I think we said like doing planting kind of mulch. Um, obviously edging around it to kind of clean it up. Um, and then just kind of upkeep it during the year and stuff like that. Um,

yeah. And there were two signs. So, you know, the ones that we've indicated that just have not been um, taken care of. Lyn Wilds is going to give me the contact information for all the signs. So, I'm gonna take over for him for contacting the, you know, the businesses who were taking care of it. And so, you know, we'll just say, "Hey, can you, you know, for those two signs that were um that were not really being maintained, just ask the companies, you know, we have a student who's interested in this, you know, it's okay if you take the take the year off. Um, you know, Nate's going to take over um as a project is a citizen project or student project. Um, and we also talked about um, uh, Nate can, you know, take a, um, talk with Shady Hill and really, you know, have conversations with them because they do such a fabulous job. So, kind of getting an idea of what the Do they do?

Does Shady Hill do two two signs or three? They do two. They do two. So, then Nate would have the other three. He would have two. No, he would. There's one other organization that does. There's another one. Yeah. The one by Wendy's, if you look at it, and I know it's hard to see, but but it's it's uh it it almost sits in the grass. So, the guy that maintains that lawn for Wendy's just kind of goes in. He doesn't do any to make no fl Well, you can't put much in there because it's he puts a little bit. I mean, it's nice. It's nice looking, but it's not extravagant. We're talking about the possibility of moving that uh is that no go.

We could talk about that because it's Dave tell Dave Wally telling me there is a lot involved. The plot of land that I was looking at is the one where you're coming off the highway. It's the perfect spot for it, but it's state property. So, we have to figure it out. So, and it's going to take a little basically you almost can't see it where it is now. Yeah, it's close. So, but we've got a couple ideas there, too. You know, there was a discussion about um maybe uh and and this would be maybe a next year thing, but uh maybe we could build up a burm underneath that sign and raise it up six or eight feet. And uh so Dave's team might be interested. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh we got to catch them at the right time of year. You know, this is not a this is in between snowstorm and all the road work they do. So, this isn't a terrible time to try to catch them to do something special like they're doing for us on this. So, I just have a clarification on that. Were the the two signs that were basically Shady Hill was doing the landscaping on uh is he going to take those over for this this year or are they going to

No, no. Shady Hill will still be doing Yes. But, you know, I I was just mentioning they are a company that's doing fabulous, you know, with their with their maintaining the signs. And so, you know, just for getting a little bit of experience, you could meet with um

you know, the the grounds, you know, who do who actually do those signs and get some ideas. Um, we did mention I did talk about how we do have a little bit of funding. So, um I don't know how we feel about, you know, granting a little bit of money towards this um for for this project for this year um as Nate's still a student. Um but so that's something that we could think about too or we could maybe go to um area businesses like Benson's or even Shady Hill and just ask for donations for um for some of the So, I would love Nate to try that first. Yeah.

And he's very willing to go and talk to his people that he knows and gets that, you know, business experience talking to other companies to say, "Hey, here's my company. Here's what I'm doing with London all that. I'm looking to work with people or donations and stuff like that to try to build." So, he will we will hold on those donations to see how we do as a young entrepreneur and and and work on that. My questions would be um he could still work once the signs are once the signs are um removed. Could he still like start working and like kind of know where the signs are going and start working and the post will still be there.

So even though the signs aren't there, he could start looking and looking at talking to Shady Hill and everybody else to see what they do, what what what lasts, what's good and all that stuff. Okay. Yeah. So clean up and all that stuff once the snow is gone. And um do you need to talk to your other companies that had those two before he starts kind of looking? Um yes. So I would say hold off a couple of weeks. Um you know I think in a couple of weeks is probably a good time to start anyway. So um in the meantime you can you know reach out to our business stuff. Y

you might want to look at them because those are two different sites. The one on Rockingham Road is kind of a pulloff off the road and it's a little rocky around there. So, you might you might want to look at what you're there. The one down near Chase is u sort of a corner and that one should be easier to work with and you probably be the most popular guy in that neighborhood because that one has There you go. And is there once he does go up and start doing it is are you okay with him promoting his business and for high school putting a sign there for ELO type of thing? I'm I I think it's great. I mean we do have signs. Um

not like cute, right? But just like a little loan sign type of thing. Well, do you have a company name? Yep. You do. Um is it that right there? Superior. Yeah. Yeah. superior. Okay. Um why don't we we see what we've done in the past is we have a sponsored poll there with with a sign that we put on the sponsor poll. Okay. And I don't know that we put all of our current companies on. I think they are on there. I thought they were too. I think they are on there. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we don't want to offend the guys that might have to come back. Although I think once Nate starts doing this, we'll own him forever. So, um, the Oh, I didn't say that a lot. My brain talks, but we'll get we'll get we'll get you a sign. As a matter of fact, if you get me I I haven't checked this out yet, but if you get me your artwork, we'll see if we can do that. Okay. And and it it'll be we've talked about it. We haven't finalized, but it'll be bigger than the signs that are there now because uh the signs now if you're driving 30 miles an hour, you won't be able they'll be a little bit bigger. It's sort of like a uh sort of like a London Derry street side, something along those lines. So, so we can do that.

Okay. It be your company name. Okay. We usually put a support supporters or supported by or something and then the next one and then we'll put your company name but uh if that works. Okay, great. That's great. And that won't that only cost you a couple three four hours worth of painting poles. Okay. Really painting poles. Um and then K, were you thinking of like an um a Londonerary ELO sign? Like that would be

um so if we like we're trying to promote the trades and the ELO projects and all that. So just for while he's doing it once he does it, you know, besides his company, um we could just do like we could make him even like a little yard sign just be like um you know Nate Fontaine ELO student at Linder High School or something just to promote the students. Yeah. You know it's his company that's providing it but he's also with students so it's like a double dip almost. Yeah, but we can talk about that stuff later. Just to say, hey, you know, we have good kids doing great stuff out there. And maybe another student driving by be like, damn, right, I want to do stuff like this. Get involved.

We we have a mutual interest here. We're interested in promoting Beautify London area and the welcome to Linder. Nate is interested in produc uh promoting his company. One of the things because this to me sounds like a Deb Paul story. Okay. All right. and and and this get a picture of Nate in front of our sign. Okay. Um with Chris Paul taking the pictures and all that kind of stuff. I think that's that's a natural promote your company and um put a couple of paragraphs under it. I I I think it's a win-win for everybody to be able to write up the ELO program. Exactly. So

yeah. So um I can help you with that. I know you know that too. you guys don't. So, we could suggest that. I'm sure they get out there. So, how's that sound? Sounds good. Okay. No extra charge. Well, maybe. I love that. Okay. And then maybe um what are we in a little bit of March? So, maybe like come back like in May just to give like an update to see where we're at or something. You can just shoot us an email to let us know when you want us to come back. In the meantime, he can go out to businesses for the month of March and April,

come up with an action plan and then kind of like midappril have the clean up and all that. And then so you know what you're planting according to sun, shade, drive by it a few times. You're always out on your truck. Kid drives beautiful truck more than most of us. He's doing very well. Very proud of him. But he can drive by to see, you know, shade, sun, talk to Shady Hill. We'll set up that meeting. We'll see what works. I don't I'm trying to think what what they did in the past, but they put annuals in there. Shady Hill. Um they do mostly annuals for for their plants. So, you're going to have to you're going to have to wait until mid May or late May anyway because of the danger,

you know, April will be probably cleaning up, getting it set, planning, and Yes. And then May planting. So, yeah. Yeah. So I will um I will get in touch with you probably next week just to you know have the official like go everything's all set and um and then yes these is these are our next meetings are April 21st and May 19th. So um if you want to come to both of them or just any May meeting you know whatever um whatever it's easiest but I think we'll just keep in touch and and see how it's questions. No good. Okay, great. We're very easy to work with. And fun.

Okay. And fun. Important. My last, do you mind if we take a group picture with Nate? Uh, we do a portfolio for our ELO kids and we like keep progress. So, we love just to take pictures and this is another step in his his project. If you don't mind, if anybody can I leave myself? Absolutely. Do you mind taking our picture, Larry? I love it. Anybody want to be in the picture? That's part of this council here. Where are we going to do it? Right here. Right here. This is just for us vlogging and us remembering everything he's done. And it's another good way to show and promote ELOs's. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody got their hair fixed, lipstick on it. I have to really work at my hair. Yeah.

That be good. All right, everybody. Have some fun. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Didn't hurt at all. Nope. All right, we're going to scoot up there. Yes. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Are you the one? Do you do the DPW updates on the website? You do those? Oh, I'm lo Don't let Don't let Dave fool you. Dave gets all the glory, but I do all his social media stuff.

He does all like the wording. I do all his pictures and all the fun stuff for him cuz every time he gets like all these likes, I always text him. I'm like, "Oh, AREN'T YOU THE GLORY?" AREN'T YOU AMAZING? HEY, KATIE, what do you do in your spare time? YEAH, EXACTLY. YEAH. Don't leave yet. Look out for an email from me once I get the on putting us on your electronic sign outside so we do our big clean up April 11th and I'll get it to you. Yep. Okay. And like and hopefully this is uh the beginning of a lot of different ELOs's. So, you know, we're really trying to push this and do a lot of good on that note, right?

Yeah. So, starting July 1st, like I'm an assistant principal right now, but starting July 1st, I'm stepping back a little bit from assist taking on an ELL coordinator's job and trying to get these kids really out there and doing a lot of stuff. So, the arts council would like to make some inroads with the young folks. So, we'll come to you next. Yeah. Give me a call. Send me an email. You got it. Thank you. Thank you. out. Hey, stay warm. Nate, you seriously the bless best. We've had a parade of plow guys. The best plow guy we've ever had. Really? Yep. Absolutely. That's great. Does he do Shelby?

Give him this opportunity. I don't I don't know if he goes outside the night with it. I don't know. I just was curious because I know somebody does Shelby's, but Yeah.

Um, okay. Next on our agenda, um, Larry, we are very grateful to have you here. Um, because, um, we will be sending down, um, a good portion of our, um, our account. Um, and the account um, we are not experts in any means whatsoever um, in fundraising. And the account has um before you know pre-COVID um uh in the past it has gotten um gotten donations um from people who are on here who I think had a little bit better idea of how to fundra than um at least I do that's for sure. Um and so you know all of our money has come from it's you know we don't receive any money from the town whatsoever. It is all from pir uh fundraising. Um we did get two very large donations last year which was wonderful um from the from the police association and from um American Legion which was absolutely wonderful. And so they each put $1,000 towards um you know towards our signs um replacement not replacement but but um repairing of these signs as it was going to cost so much. Um, so as we draw down those funds, we still want to a build back um so that we can get um a good nest egg um should anything happen to the signs again. Um b we want to um keep accumulating funds for supplies that we need to um we need to maintain for for beautify lender cleanup. Um and C, we'd really um like to start getting a little bit more robust um um granting of monies to people who um want to do plantings of um of um you know pollinators, perennials um and native plants around

the area. So those are the three main things that we're trying to um build back our funds for. Um, and we, um, I think we've talked, you know, a little bit about different, um, or we've talked a lot, um, about, um, different ideas that we've had, but, um, but John has kind of come the closest to a little bit larger campaign to to raise funds. And, um, we'd really um, we kind of I think John, you realize that we I need help, you know, I need help doing this. um we need help doing this. Um and we're really looking for something that we can be um maybe sustained kind of year after year and trying to

to fund raise. So that's where we're at with that. So thankful that you're here. All right. Um why why don't I approach it this way? Tell you a little bit about my background, what I you know what we've been doing with Concerts on the Common, and then just open it up for discussion. we can talk about the the recommendation I'm making here.

So, by way background, I spent my career in um in in Fortune 500 sales, either working for Fortune 500 companies or selling to Fortune 500 companies. And in the course of doing that, I worked with a lot of large marketing organizations because sales had the number. They had to make the sales, but they didn't have any budget to work with. Yeah.

And the marketing people always had the money. So, as I you know, the third phase of my career, I was doing a lot of consulting and working with um sales organizations, but I had to get the money out of the marketing department and we had to coordinate what we we were doing um in terms of going to market and that sort of thing. So, I got a lot of experience in that realm, businessto business marketing, business to to consumer. And along the way, um you know, I got pretty ingrained in it. I actually taught a direct marketing class um uh at a local college for many years and the only reason I stopped doing it is they moved um moved the program to downtown Boston

and I didn't feel like driving home. They said, "Can you be can you be in the financial district at 6 p.m. to do this class?" Thank you. So I don't do that anymore. But um so um that that's a little bit about my background. I've been involved I kidly say I've been involved with the arts council since before the turn of the century and I don't really remember when I got involved. Um I I spent many many years working um on a technology steering committee for the school district until I got

totally fed up with that and was looking for something that was more fun. So I got involved with the the arts council um and uh around 2011 2012 Steve and Julie Lee who are the heart and soul of concerts on the common wanted to get that to another level. And when that program started, I uh I kiddingly say that, you know, there was one guy on the stage with a stool and a six string guitar with only five strings and and and I'm not kidding you, it was very very basic at that point,

but they started building a little bit of momentum and they were, you know, scraping trying to scrape money together to pay for, you know, talent. And so I said, look, you know, let me step in and see if I can help. So, in 2013, I put together a direct mail campaign and we immediately moved the needle and we went from having like $1,500 $2,000 uh to work with for a whole season to over six and we've continued to build that program and I'll talk a little bit about the approach uh in a minute, but last year I think we u brought in I know it was over 20,000 maybe 22,000. Wow. from corporate sponsors.

Yeah. Um we also got a grant from the state that was bringing in six or seven thousand dollars a year. That's gone away. And then the town because of what we're doing took our our contribution up from $900 a year. Uh and in this latest budget cycle, we're going to be given 17,000 from the town to support the program. So it's all about building momentum. Yeah. Yeah. And the other key to that is it wasn't a one-off fundraising. So when I when I first started working with Stephen Wooly, I said, "Look, you know, this isn't we're not going to send mail out, get money in, and then stop. You have to,

you know, you have to build a relationship with the donors and perpetuate that success." And the other key to it is that you have to deliver value to the sponsor. I mean, a lot of people will give you money out of the goodness of their heart, but you need to have something to offer them in terms of um feeding their business success. And so, if you look at our our fundraising letter or program this year, and you can find it on the concert website, just look for sponsors. You'll see how we're approaching that program. Yeah, we're delivering a lot of value, but we're also balancing it with an investment level that's affordable for most businesses around here.

Okay. The top end sponsorship is $1,500 and we just raised it to that level from 12 uh from a,000 last year. Okay. Yeah. We're getting a little aggressive with that this year. But um the reason we're able to get that kind of um uh contribution flow is that we're putting over 6,000 people a year on that common and so the visibility that the local businesses are getting is phenomenal. Yeah. And they recognize that, right? And they're the type of businesses that want to be doing business with residents. Yeah. Yeah.

Um and I I haven't done the, you know, I should be smart enough to figure this out, but we did a survey a couple years ago and um on average, most people come to four or five concerts a year. So, if we're putting 6,000 people on the on the common, it's more eyeballs, right? You know, I don't know what it is, but it's expon exponentially more. Yeah. So, John and I have talked about this and I think some of the ideas I put together in the first document that I shared with you guys really talked about that value y proposition. Yeah.

And and that helps you, you know, with sustainability. And I'm, you know, I'm not going to, you know, jump into the weeds and talk about what's good and what's not good. But you need to be thinking about how do I deliver value to my sponsors? How do I show my appreciation for the sponsors? Yeah.

On a continuous basis. Let me interrupt. And I so taken from where we were to where we are um I think where we were was trying to um focus on raising money for the be of welcome to Londereerry signs. Uh now what we can do is we can raise money for beauty by Londereerry and perhaps use sponsorship of the welcome to Londereerry sign as a value ad to it in addition to Larry had some other ideas about um maybe our internet presence and making sure that we had customers that were identified sponsors could get identified there

and and also these guys do a great publication that they hand me every time I go to a concert. Yeah. That has all the sponsors on it. Right. Right. It's it's a different story we can tell now. So, so that's that's why that program has been success is successful. Um we touch our our sponsors multiple times during the year. Yeah. They get a fundraising letter. They all got a fundraising letter. Yeah. Um back in February. I'm about to send another followup post postcard out to them

uh to th those that haven't contributed yet and I'm going to talk about some other things that uh that I'm going to recommend you do. Um but I'm going to they'll getting thank you cards before the season starts. They'll be getting uh cards in the mail related to the schedule. Then when the season starts in uh early June, they get all the bennies. You know, they get recognition at the beginning of every concert. We call them out. They get signage on the concert on the U band stand. This year for the diamond sponsors, our new category, we're making up yard signs, individual yard signs for each one of those diamond sponsors. We're actually going to make two signs

and we're going to put them in the ground where the crosswalks come into the common. So, as people come across Mammoth Road, there's going to be a flight of diamond sponsorship signs as they walk onto the common. When they come over Pillsbury from the church, they're going to get the same treatment. Okay, that's awesome. I think that and it's short money. Yep. You know, to print a sign, right? Right. Um I always send um Thanksgiving cards to our our current and past sponsors. don't do anything around the Christmas holidays and right after the first of the year they get a New Year's card from from us. Wow.

Um can I ask you Sure. Um about how much time could could you estimate guesstimate about how much time um that it takes um for you to do this? Um and the I'm I'm asking because you know as we try and um we need to build up our committee. Um I think that's one of the key things that we also we need to do so that we have the people power to be able to you know do something that's a little bit more robust than what we're doing. Yeah. So um that's a fair question and I really honestly can't yeah answer. I mean

to me this is a labor of love and how to give back to the community. Um and um the platform that I I recommended in this proposal makes it easier for me to do that. Okay. Okay. I'll talk a little bit about that. Um but you know the other thing that that I'm really going to strongly recommend you do if you you're able to is and and this is uh something Kevin Smith recommended a couple of years ago. The town of Londereary is a member of the Greater Dair Londere Chamber of Commerce.

Okay. And Kevin pointed out that as a group or a chartered commission or board, we were eligible to have a sub membership which costs $99 a year. So, okay, the benefits that that that opens up for us and and okay, I don't you know, I don't kill myself with it, but yeah, I went to a chamber networking lunchon last week, made some connections, passed out some business cards. Yeah. Uh, and you know, I'll communicate with those folks. Um, I may go I'll probably go to a couple more before the concert season starts off. We'll see how the fundraising goes. Okay.

U, but that's that's a good way to plug into uh the community. But the other thing that they offer is they will do an email blast for like a $100. uh they will give you their membership list and they just topped 300 members last week. Uh and you can do a direct mail campaign to those 300 members. This is Dair and London Dairy combined. Yeah, they have it's a one one ch. It actually includes um Wind uh I think Windham is in it, but Chester Hamstead.

Oh wow. So, um, so you can you can rent their direct mail list. Okay. And send that out. In fact, that would probably be a really good easy way for you to start as long as you're Yeah. on board with them. They do uh a Monday newsletter. And what they do for us is I put a press release out uh every week during the season. Um, and they repost it on the chamber website for us. And I don't look at it as being a way to get people on the comic to listen to concerts. It's going in front of business leaders every week. Yeah. Yeah.

Um the other thing that they're doing and I was speaking with the new chamber president last week when I went to launch and they have these welcome bags that they put together. They're canvas tote bags and any of the members can put an insert in there, you know, a brochure, a pamphlet, whatever you want. Mhm. Um and those are distributed to the town halls here in London primarily. Okay. And every time somebody comes in to register a new vehicle or you know a new resident who's given one of those tags. So when I talked to the president her desk was here and she was surrounded by canvas stacks and I said how often are you putting those out and she said it was twice a year.

Okay. Um, but she said, "I think we're going to start doing it quarterly and we may have to do it monthly." Oh, wow. And I don't put that out because um, you know, from a standpoint of um, reaching residents. Yeah. But that could be a benefit that you offer sponsors saying that you're you're going to get recognition go in those tote bags and every new new resident that picks up a tote bag will have your marketing material. but also to uh get them interested in our activity. Yeah, it could be for volunteers. Could be a double. So, so what you're putting in is your handout that you use at the concert uncommons or basically with the sponsored names. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Cool. Um and they do other things. U they they will have ribbon cutting ceremonies. Um they had one there's a new where the Moonlight Metery was. There's a new um tap room over there. So they had an business after hours gathering. I think they had 50 people business people show up. Okay. Okay. So they do a lot of different sounds. So I would encourage you to at least look into it. Yeah. It's a good way to connect into the potential sponsors. That's great. Yeah. So, the proposal that I I gave to John

um uh is is really designed to give you a couple of options in terms of how I can help. Um, one of the things I have to be mindful of is because I'm the chairman of Londary Arts Council, I have to worry about conflict of interest. Yeah. Uh, and if there's any monetary transaction that goes on, it has to be done in, you know, consistent with the town purchasing policy. Yeah. And I don't know whe I still don't have a straight answer. I don't know whether it's 2,000 or $2,500. You know, if that you reach that threshold, it's got to go out to bid, right?

I don't I don't know. Larry, I watched I just happen we've been away, so I I just happen to watch the town council meeting on TV this Oh, yeah. Yeah. and they don't know what the purchasing policy is now. So I feel better. So still undecided. So so so the approach that that I took was um obviously I'm very busy with concerts on a common and other arts council activity. Yeah. But I'm happy to volunteer my time and expertise from a strategic standpoint. So there the first option is I'm happy to work with you guys to develop a strategy, you know, guide you in terms of how to put it together,

take whatever written material you guys want to put together, you know, in terms of how you want to approach sponsors and coach you. I'll grade your paper, you know, like Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. And and and just help you get get a campaign going. And my thinking is that before you get too deep into the weeds on this, I would recommend putting a pretty straightforward campaign together, direct mail campaign together, and generate some okay donations and then feed your ongoing marketing activity out of the receipts that you get from those donations. I'm not the last thing I would do is suggest you drop a lot of money.

Yeah. and hope and cross your fingers and hope because when we send these letters out we have no idea what we're going to get. I mean we have a pretty good idea but you know we were surprised during co believe it or not because people sent us money anyway. Yeah. Even though we weren't having live concerts right we did streaming concerts um which was a real bear to do but it was like putting a weekly television program together but you never know. Right. Right. And since you're just starting to do this, you got to test the waters a little bit. Yeah.

You know, you you mentioned about, you know, you call them the the top level. You were going to have signs and when people come in, they would be seeing those signs. When I first came on this committee, I don't know how the contact was made, but we did have some commercial people, okay, donating money. And what we did is we made signs, thank you signs with their names on it and put them out on mammoth road. Yeah. Okay. How that contact came about, I don't know.

Yeah. Uh maybe someone in the committee did it because when I when I was new I didn't get that information, but I do remember the signs. Yeah. Using those signs to thank the people as a way of saying yeah, we're grateful for what you've done and here's our way of saying thank you. That's that's a good thing to do. Yeah. So, do I understand that you don't like you've already mentioned that Shady Hill is helping you guys out? Yeah. Yeah. And we we call that an inkind. They they do they they do a beautiful job of decorating the band stand every week. Oh yeah.

We don't get we don't get any cash donations from that. We consider that an in and when we were doing a report for the state for the grant, we had to put a a dollar figure on that. Okay. Okay. You know, so that there's a little quid proquo. So they they get the privileges of top sponsorship. Yep. Okay. Because they're giving us that value that inind. So you've already got one sponsor. Yeah. Yeah. Working with you. Yeah. Do I understand you don't you don't have any record of people that have previously donated?

So um I do I think there's a there might be something on past like if we could look back at the past website. I don't know if we can I might have something somewhere deep within the bowels of my house. I have I might be able find something.

I do have paperwork that Gary gave me um a couple years ago and I will be honest, I have not looked through it yet. um he kind of he hadn't been on the committee for a very long time. And so he um had um but he found a few years ago um when we when we when sewer and solid waste kind of um dissolved um he had some stuff that was from way back from beautify lender. I could take a look at that and see. Um, well, if it isn't if it hasn't been in the last year or two, then Oh, no. This is this way way back. This was a long time ago. Yeah, you'll have to start.

Start over. Yeah. What's What is in terms of developing a target list, Larry? What What's our I I I made a note about Chamber of Commerce other sources for information for targets? Well, the the platform that I use, I license lists from um so I can I can set the the criteria for the types of businesses I want. Oh, okay. That sort of thing. So if you know that platform supports that. Okay. U the other thing I'll mention is as you as you build momentum with this

uh an option that I didn't put in here is that you can always go to one of the local um print vendors, Alpha Graphics. We we u had our literary and art journal um published printed by them last year. They're they're just moving their location to Derry. Okay. Uh Minute Man Press. Yep. Um I Alpha we got established as a uh a town vendor. I believe Minute Man Press is already a town vendor. Okay. Yeah. Uh Staples will do it for you and they they have list capabilities, John. So if you go in and say, "Look,

I want a list of all the medical practices in town." Gotcha. Oh, okay. You can get that. Okay. Or I want a list of all the plumbers, you know, you basically think about who your ideal donor is. Yep. Okay. And and keep in mind also that um I have I have a friend who um who's going to be a sponsor or have for the last couple years he's been a sponsor and he said look you need you know you need to get one big sponsor to pay for the whole season and we don't want to do that because there's safety in numbers I mean right

you know I did an analysis in January of our sponsorship and I went back we went back to 2013 Yeah And we looked at, you know, how recently they donated, how frequently they donated, and how much money they donated, and what the lifetime value of that relationship is. Yeah. And so Mark Oswald is our longest I don't know if you guys know Mark. I don't know. Thank you. Um Mark um was one of our first sponsors over 20 years ago when we were still, you know, nickel and diamond. Yeah. Uh he has not missed a year. He's donated money every year. Not a lot of money.

Yeah. But when you add it all Yeah. Can I interject something? Yeah. I have met Mark. In fact, Mark, we used Mark when my sister sister-in-law moved up here and she got a condominium in Lichfield. But I've known Mark cuz I've met him on the road picking up stuff. We have done that. So he knows about us. He knows that I'm part of London, Beautify London. So if he's a good good fellow, he may be a good fellow for us because he he picks up he has picked up in his neighborhood. That's excellent. Yeah. Okay. But

yeah, we don't do we have to be careful about Larry's Larry's Yeah. Don't cannibalize my list. Right. Yeah. But but I mean other than that, so uh uh because that was one of my first thoughts way back before I met Larry and realized what a nice guy he was. Uh that uh that we should work off of their list. But that doesn't make sense because every donor only has so much to contribute to these programs. This is something that has been dear to his heart. If he just knows about it, he could do both. John, John, let him find us. Okay. If that's the case, because otherwise we can't

that that I mean that has to be sort of an understanding,

right? Um, so anyway, the the second level that that I'm offering here is um and and I I used this this expression with John the other day when I spoke with him and I don't know where this comes from. I think it's got some religious connotations, but the notion is that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him the fish, you feed him for life. And so the second option here is really me investing time to help you guys get up to speed on a platform that you may if you want to use it, I'll help you get it set up. And it's the the platform I use is Mailbox Power.

Okay. Um and what I like about it is it's it's easy to use. It's intuitive. uh you can create uh postcards, greeting cards, you can send letters, you can do all kinds of things with it, but you can also automate it. So when I when I tell you that I send Thanksgiving cards, there's a contact database attached to this. Okay? And I go through it and say, "These are the people that I want the card sent to." And I click the button. Okay? And they do the fulfillment. Yeah. Okay. Um, and I can do sequential Yeah.

mailings as well. So, I'm I'm going to be setting something else up where it's going to be a multi-touch campaign. Okay. And I have, you know, different it's maybe a postcard or maybe a greeting card, right? And I just schedule it and it automatically delivers it. Okay. So, it's easy to use. Y then the list service that I told you about is baked into it. So when I get a list out of that database, it goes right into my contact database and automatically cues it up. Is there a monthly fee with with mailbox or Yeah, on the third page. Oh, okay.

Fourth page. Whoops. Okay. Okay. Um the there's there's three levels of um subscription that you can I have the top level subscription but uh the core uh subscription is $99 a or $100 a month and with that you get um 53 greeting cards and unlimited postcards 3x or the smaller 3x whatever whatever the dimension is. Um, and then you're just paying postage for that.

And then they have a light model that you won't find on the website. Uh, it's kind of a back back room offer for $29 a month and you just pay retail prices for the cards and that may be a good option to use. The alternative is, you know, you look at that and you say, you know, that's money out of pocket. But if you consider buying cards, licking labels, you know, your time. Yeah. I mean, that's the trade-off. You can certainly do it manually, right? In fact, the core letter that we send out uh I don't know when this is going to end, but the core letter that we send out

um is produced by uh the company that Julie used to work for as as their sponsorship service. Oh, right. with inind service. They print it, put it, you know, they put it in envelopes and they put the postage on it. Um, and I don't know whether the town would do that for you. It's certainly worth asking, right? Right. Depending on the size of the mail. Yeah, that's possible.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I just gave you sample prices. A list a record a list out of the a record out of the database is less than 10 cents a record. Postage is postage. Uh 61 cents for a postcard. Now, 78 cents for a first class. So the way this would work, Larry, is we would obtain a list of targets perhaps for Alpha or one of these organizations or I could help you with that. Okay. And then plug it into this and what into this

if if you the only way you get a list from Alpha or um um man presses if you're they're doing a bulk mailing for you. Okay. So you talk you go to Bob at um you know at Minute Man Press and say okay I want to target every medical practice in uh in every realtor in London area. Okay. They would pull the list for you. There are going to be minimums. Mhm. You could end up spending $75 for a small list just because of the minimum cost. And then they will do the production work for you. Okay. And I don't know what they would charge you for that but you get So that's one route. That's one route. Okay.

The other route is um if if you want I I would be happy to pull the list for you. I want to be compensated for that. Okay. Um and you can this comes it comes in a spreadsheet. Mhm. And then you guys can figure out how you're going to get the mail out. And it could be that you do a mail merge on your home PC. Yeah. Or you come to come to the town town time town time town time town time town time town time town time town time town time town time town time town manager and say look can you guys so this program then if you can query the businesses through this program here. Yeah. So you can you can do your your Google search through them for whatever refine it. Yeah. Do you recommend a letter as opposed to a postcard

uh for a solicitation letter? Yeah. Because you've got a lot to say to them and to start with how they're going to benefit. Okay? And in fact, I think I I didn't bring it with me tonight, but I think some of the one of the ideas I I shared with you guys was to go after the the new businesses moving into that have moved into town in recent years. And I think the message in there was, you know, welcome to Londereerry. Put a picture of your welcome to Londereerry sign on the letter. Yeah. And say you're already making you're already making an impact and to build on that and you know get ingrained in the community, show your, you know,

it's great sentiment, you know, we'd like we'd like you to help us. Yeah. Yeah. And so that could be that that I would just come to the town hall and figure out, you know, who's got the permits and, you know, who do who do we contact? Okay. Okay. That would be a micro campaign, but that's a customizable letter, right?

Tailored specifically for that. This mailbox power just to me sounds the most robust, the least hands-on in the least amount of time from a member as opposed to having to do where I don't I don't deal with minute man press or alpha graphics, but this seems more Yeah. And I would I would help you guys set that up. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I don't want to do it myself. Yeah. Right. No, because you have to somebody has to take it over to be able to

work it throughout the year. You're just you're just the instructor for the Yeah. I mean, you have to have some level of tech, you know, techsavviess. It's not It's not terribly hard to work with. I mean, it's very intuitive. It's a pretty nice platform. Uh, but you still have to know how to manage. Do they store like our mailing list? Do they store it or is it we have that database on one of our local machines? You want they they store it on the platform so that you can do that and the platform is on the cloud or whatever. Okay. But you can download download that right anytime you want. Oh no. Right. Right. Right. I just So in fact I would recommend you do that you know.

Right. So you always have a copy of it just in case just you always have. And not only that, but I you know I like like I said I sat down in January and I did a re a recency frequency monetary value analysis of all our past sponsors going back to 2013. Right. You want to maintain that kind of a spreadsheet so that you know who's in the well and how deep it is. Right. Right. No. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and the and the way that that would have to work is one of you would have to sign up for that account, give it you give them a credit card because you're going to get a monthly bill and then turn around

and turn around and just get reimbured for it. Yeah. Oh, this is really great information. Um, and I for for me I think I just want to digest it

some more and um and um you know think about it and um maybe at our next meeting we can we can talk about our thoughts um on the on the way to go. Um, but I really do like the idea of having something like you said that that's robust that, you know, we because I was really worried when you were saying about all of those mailings that my stress level was going higher. Um, but it sounds like with this type of platform, it it really is, you know, when they're when they handle it is, you know, you identify, like you said, we start with a direct letter and identify. Okay, here is how our message is being received. Here are the companies that um you know maybe we can really focus on. Um yeah, this this sounds pretty powerful.

I I just wonder if this is possible if you would be willing if if we could have like a a copy of the letter that you sent so we could see how he's kind of arranged it. I mean, we have to put all our own wording in, but we could see how how we started it and how we went through. Would that be something possible? I don't think he did that. Didn't you do up one for us or No, those were rough drafts, right? But I mean, it was shar that would give us, you know, a kind of a format, right? And these are things that he included and how do we relate that to our operation? I think would be helpful. Yeah.

Well, yeah, you can use that as a jumping off point, but I think I think the the key thing for you to consider and I would recommend you just do a brainstorming session. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I had asked I want to have a brainstorming session with the London area arts council team and I' I'd like it not to be a public meeting. I got to figure out how to do that. Yeah. Yeah. because I I just want to go in and you know start sticking post-it notes on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I would recommend you do that kind of a brainstorming session. Yeah. But the key elements you need to think about are

the targeting. It's not just getting a list. It's like what is the list? Now the chamber list to me for you guys would be a quick hit. There's 300 of them. You can get your hands on this for I think it's around $100. Okay. But those are very well targeted people. Now granted, they're not all in London, right? And and that's not a problem for us because we're pulling audience members in from Yeah. the whole neighborhood. Yeah. Um, well, you could probably if it's a spreadsheet, we could call it down to just a lot of dairy folks for in terms of Yeah, sure. Does Dairy have their own like a beautified dairy committee? Something similar. I don't know.

I'm just curious. Yeah, I don't know. You know, they have something. I've seen them out there with t-shirts picking up stuff. I don't know what they call themselves, but to answer your question, yeah, you could do that. Yeah. And I don't know what the split would be. Great. I mean, now can you get that from the Chamber of Commerce without being a member or do you have to be I don't think so. That's okay. Membership is $99.99. That's not That's not a large dollar. That's a one time annual annual. Okay. So, 100 bucks for a year become a subcommittee of Londereerry and then we have access to get this information. That is well worth

Well, you have you have access to that. You have you can promote through their platform. Right. Right. And you you can go to networking meetings. Yep. And meet people, make, you know, make connections and stuff. Yeah. And by the way, they're they're they're exhibiting. They're one of our cabletop exhibitors at concerts on the Oh, yeah. They're they're pretty good supporter for us. Do they have meetings at a specific place? Yeah, it's the Adams Memorial Building. Oh, okay. Yeah. Right down in D. And I meet I I think it's the first Tuesday of every month they have a network. You have to pre-register for it,

right? Um so that's one place to start. The other is if so think about who you want to target. And I I would help you with a list. Uh it's a single-use license. That's the way these things work. Okay? You pay for the list. you can use it once. If somebody responds to it, you you own that record. You can put that in your database. Okay.

Um but think about what what groups or what segments of the Londereerry business community you would want to plug into. And just off the top of my head, I would think landscaping companies would be have an affinity for what you're doing. um real estate real estate people, you know, just think about it and then you can draft a generic letter, but it may make s make sense to tweak it a little bit based on who you're targeting. Right. Right.

U and then the other thing is you got to really think about what's in it for them. So the real hard work for you guys is going to be right how can we build a worthwhile package of benefits that they're going to respond to. Right. And there I mean there's a lot to you know a lot of things we can leverage. There's that the that display monitor here in the lobby. You can you can tell them that, you know, if you're at this level of sponsorship, you know, you're you're going to get that kind of recognition as people walk into the town hall to register their vehicles and all that sort of thing.

The road signs that you mentioned, putting out those yard signs, I would think, you know, like real estate or any business, uh, I would think that they would appreciate having a clean town that we could Sure. Yeah. We might have to do it more than twice a year though. That's the only thing. When the snow melted, I was just like, "Yeah, I know. I know. Cans on the side of the trash is just is just terrible." And if we can clean it up in in in two weeks, you know, you wouldn't even know it. You know, it's going to be interesting on South Road. Oh. When people move into that development.

Oh jeez. Cuz that was like that's that stretch of road is ground zero for litter. Even with the signs out there and everything, nobody pays any attention to it. Well, it doesn't you're littering. You're littering and you don't care if there's a sign or not. No, they don't. No sign. Like I said, when the take the right on to south going towards Kilrest, I with all the snow gone, I was like, oh, all I could see was blue cans and I was like, you couldn't have thrown it a little bit further into the construction area. No, but yeah. Yeah. One of one of the guys we had, he was from the Allegian and he had never done this before. He went down to Gilrest. Yes. I remember

took a ride. He said he could not believe the trash down there. It's bad. So anyway, list who you're going to target. Yeah. How they're going to benefit. And then you then you write the letter. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. I'm happy to help with Yeah. Thank you. Larry, quick question. Have you uh had feedback from the town in terms of the uh uh avoiding a conflict on paid service? Nothing formal. I I'm not going to worry about

You're not going to worry about I'm not worried about it. I think it's fine. Um Okay, good. So my qu my question so can we make a motion that we I'm just asking I'm not making the motion like if we want to commit to doing the subcommittee with you know what what is our process for that to be able to become like do we want to vote on it for the next meeting? Could it be voted on today? I feel like if we're going to be serious about this we got to get going. So um sure. I mean, I think if we if we want to spend the money on this, then yes, we should

not for this, just even for the commerce. So, you're saying to join $99 a year to join the the Chamber of Commerce um as a subcommittee under the town of Londereerry um and use those services. Um yeah, we we I think we should That's a voting thing, right? That's a voting thing. We're spending money, so we should vote as a The other the other thing I would recommend is just um let Sean know that you're planning to do that. Yeah. Okay. I mean, okay. Yeah. I don't know whether Kevin Smith communicated with the chamber at all, but he was the one that recommended that. Okay. And we I just went in and said we're we're a committee. Okay.

But just as a matter of courtesy, I think it be Yeah. and your first, you know, your first mailing, whether it's a list that I give you or the chamber list or a combination of both. My my recommendation would be I will help you with drafting it and thinking about how to, you know, how to build your benefit package up. Uh, but you can probably produce, it's going to it be a little painful, but you can probably produce on your own or get the somebody in the town to print those. Yeah. Right. Go to Staples. Right. Right. And then stuff the letters. Okay. Okay. Cuz you can get you I've done that before.

Yeah. Those welcome letters. Like I said, you know, you want to walk before you you run, right? Yeah. But you want to get some cash coming in before you start making bigger investments. Yeah. Good idea. Because there's there's really no guarantee. Right. Right.

Um so so Beth, I like the idea. If you want to make the motion, I would say uh go ahead and make the motion. Um and I just want to I just want to like just speak back to um the main takeaways that I've heard here is that um we really need to you know the first things that we need to do to get our walking feet um is thinking about targeting and thinking about building that worthwhile package. And so that's the brainstorming that we need to do so that when we get that list from from chamber, we know who we can out of the list. Yeah. We craft our we craft our you know our letter um

and really make sure that we So that's a brainstorming that we need to do is making sure we build that worthwhile package for the businesses. Good. Okay. And I'll send um send you John the the letter we sent out. That'd be great. And I'll get it to everybody. Excellent. Okay. So then I'm going to make a motion that we um become a subcommittee with the Chamber of Commerce starting as soon as we can get that the approval from Shan and moving forward so that we're not waiting till next month to get another. So I make a motion that we join. I don't know how to word this, but

it's a I think it's um an affiliate membership. Okay. affiliate membership of the London Dairy Dairy Chamber of Commerce. Awesome. Second. Excellent. All in favor? I I That passes. Great. And then and then so I understand next step. We become a submember. We probably go to a meeting, do a little networking, get our first list, draft, walk first, draft some letters, maybe re a letter, review it ideally with you.

Uh that'll probably be a take it to Staples, print it, stuff the envelope, let's get some money flowing in, do it ourselves, and then look at look at which of these programs we're going to go to so we get a sustainable model going forward. That's what I recommend. Yep. and or if you want me to pull a list for you, you know, I just had to cost pass through on that, but sure, I can I can pull a list for you, but you need really to think about who who wants you you put it really well with realtors want this to be an attractive town when they bring people in. So, who else has a vested interest in why this is important to them? Right. Right. Right.

Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. I I I think the other thing we need to do is um separate from Larry because he would be uh grading the paper is is sit someplace off from my house if we want to do it at my house, someplace where we're not on TV, okay? And and talk about um hey, we want to target new businesses in town. Let's craft all the value that we can present to a new business and put it in a a one-page letter because you probably won't get anybody to read much more than that. Okay?

And and do that and then maybe if we have a couple of specific targets like real estate companies or something like that. So we have a couple of these that we can have you review for us and then we'll figure out where our we're going to pull our list from whether it's Chamber or Larry's Resources or Yeah. or whatever. But I think we have to kind of craft that. Yeah. Um agree and um and that that is basically sticking post-it notes on the wall to figure out what the values are that we could provide to these different outfits. So So let me let me uh run this by you. We we did a presentation at the Baldwin community about the arts council

and we we were over our quorum. So I asked Kirst you know what you know what do we do and she said you can public you can post a notice of a non-public meeting but if you if you're going to exceed the quorum you are technically over that threshold. Okay. But you can post a note a public notice that you're going to have a non voting meeting. Okay. Okay. So as long as it's posted publicly that gives notice. That's the part I didn't understand. Okay. Okay. So we had we had almost the whole team go over the Baldwin community a quorum. Okay. Okay. But she put up a notice website saying that we were beating

off site. No votes were no votes. Right. Okay. You know what and I've and Kirsten is probably the go-to person for all this anyways. But but I thought I've also heard reference to I'm not sure working sessions or something that um um where as long as you weren't making and there's some decisions certainly no financial decisions um that that you there was a possibility of doing some of those things and I um so I I think we need to go to Kirsten and just find out what the parameters are because I think

realistically we we we have to do that. Yeah. Um, and I'd really recommend this is a tough environment to do it in here, you know. It is. Yeah, it is. So, yeah. Um, people don't want to see us. Yeah, I do have a ton of Post-it notes in my bag, actually. Things I love the Post-it note. I'll make my Cincinnati chili to come to my house. Okay, that sounds great. Um, okay. Boy, and and I know we've talked and I I been while I was here for two hours in in the Irish place whose name I've just forgotten because I can't pronounce

Oes. Oes. Yeah. Well, it's O'Shea's cafe in Pay or however they say that thing. So, uh, for two hours one morning. So, he's put in tremendous amount of time trying to get us in the right direction. We appreciate it very very much. There was mutual ear bending going on. Yeah, it was all one way. Yeah, I'm happy to help, guys. Thank you. Oh, thank you. You know, from a bandwidth standpoint, I I don't want to do any heavy lifting, but it's I appreciate that. It's It's not hard for me to sit down and, you know, help guide you and that sort of thing. Great. That's That's excellent. Well, thank you very much. Well, thanks for thank you. Thanks for getting together with me.

Yeah. Yeah. See you around the hood. All right. I know. Oh, you guys are neighbors, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cool. We have the same lawn guy. We have the what? We have the same lawn guy. Yeah. Long guy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, oh, he's going to love this. What the town did. Not our town. It's the wind side. Yeah. It's all chewed up from the plows and Yeah. Beth lives on the corner of Windham and Lemonary. Yeah. Yeah. And the window side is I mean I walk the dog all well you walk up that way too and the window side I must had beginners or something cuz it's just

it's been that way clumps of dirt that wide in my yard from the edges that they and I'm like I'm not going to worry I'm not fixing I mean I'll flatten them but now I know. Yep. Thank you Larry. Larry thanks. Yeah. This has been excellent. Wonderful. Sorry I didn't recognize you from the other. Oh, not at all. Yeah, not at all. I'm I'm really thankful for, you know, everything that the arts council's been doing and I, you know, I think you said that the art is going to be in the new publication as well this year. Is that Yeah, that's really fabulous. Just such It was u It was terrific to see the kids.

Yeah. Yeah, it was great to see the the kids their their unique take on the theme and Yeah, I just love it. Yeah. Can I I'll let you guys get back to business, but my theory after I went home that day was uh Kit and Karen decide on the theme. And I was I was flabbergasted when I walked into the council chambers. It had the theme was art in space and there were all these stars and inflatable stars and planets two aliens aliens

and it occurred to me cuz Kit said, "Oh, I have these in my at my house." So that's how the theme got picked. She I think she said, "Oh, if we're going to have a reception, I got this alien I want to use." And so let's make the theme art space. It worked. The kids loved it. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

All right. Um, our cleanup is coming up um fast. Um, I just realized how soon it is. Um, so I need to get a letter to the editor out ASAP. Um, and being put into our um, so that will hopefully hopefully Deb will be able to get that into next week's um, paper and then I will have the um, around town, you know, just a little thing in there. Yeah, that needs to be in there probably every week.

Yep. Yep. Um so so um uh ordering updates I think John you had given us last time that we were pretty good and you were going to order the um gloves. Yeah. I I just um I was looking at the these are the kind of gloves we want. These are the one some of these have been out 10 12 15 times. Okay. Yeah. Uh these are the kind that I had ordered previously and these are falling apart. Okay. Okay. Um, unfortunately, and I don't know if you've seen these, the difference between the two. They do, but but um these are look like they're going to cost between a$1.75 to $2 a pair

a pair. Okay. Okay. They've just the price has gone through the roof. Yeah. Okay. I'll do a little bit more searching, but but that seems to be what they are. So, um what I would propose is I think I need about four dozen. Okay. Okay. Um I what I would suggest is I'll I'll try to locate them. I'll buy them out of pocket and do an expense if that's okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We'll move forward on those. Just not the problem is they rip at the seam. They have seams at the front. So I have

I have to actually go through all the ones I have and throw out the ones that are I like the the idea originally because there's no left right. So after I throw them in the washing machine, I don't have to spend an hour in front of the TV trying to match them up. But if they don't last, they don't last. And we tried the disposable ones last time, and I think the feedback was they're too sweaty if it's a warm day or if your hands are a little bit bigger than average, right? And uh uh they would be okay. And I'll have them with us when we do clean up if it's if it's wet. Yeah. Okay. It's not a bad idea if it's wet, but if it's hot or

anything's going on, they they they're okay for that. So, um the other note I have vest are we Okay. Okay. I've got something to share on that. Yeah. I've uh met with Larry Martin at Embroidery Creations. Um two couple things. The vests only come in two colors. Okay. The kind we have in orange. Okay. Okay. So, I would assume we want to continue what we had before. Yeah, I think that's I think that's good. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh he he gave me a price. I thought it was reasonable. I don't I he didn't write it down here. I thought he did, but he didn't. But we're talking about 20 vests all together, so I don't think we have to worry about it. Uh the t-shirts there there is an option on the t-shirt. I'm sorry. Do you know the ballpark on what the vests were? What the cost? I I Do you think it was like I'm not sure. I thought it was under $10, but I'm not sure. We want to bought get them anyway. We got them from him before.

Uh the t-shirts, that's a different situation. Um I asked, did you send him the new logo? No. The shirt I brought in. No, he has that. And I took a vest. No, I didn't. Okay. What you need to do is to send it. Oh, send him the digital copy. Send it to him. His attention. He says, "Make sure you put my name on it." Larry Martin, cuz he said, "I don't remember seeing it, but I I don't know." Yeah. See if I can get it here. Okay. So, I need to send Larry that

and put it his attention. Um, Do you do you have the uh email address? I have his email somewhere. We used him for Okay. running t-shirts. There was a question as to is there a break on the shirts by number? There is. Um, like he said, if we if we ordered the 30 shirts, there's a cost, but if we go up to 50, it goes down. One size is what we decided, right? Uh, it was the children.

What did I put? I put on t-shirts. Uh, large child 30. Yeah. And um, I'm sorry, the break is at 50. And so the break's at 50. breaks at 50. And let me let me just do 50. The question is, do you want the logo and color? The shirt that you brought in had color. It does have color. There's a difference in cost. Yeah. Okay. If you if you got 30 shirts with the three colors, they have to make a separate screen for each color. Okay. Yeah. It would be $14 a price a shirt. Okay. one color it will be 1250.

Okay. But if you go to 50 shirts with three colors it's 11 and one color it's 950. Not that much difference. Uh it's not that much difference. I would say let's go with the three colors. Yeah. Just one color is just boring. Yeah. And and probably go with a 50 just to have more hand. Yes. I think Yeah. John. Uh, no. No. I I I be honest with you, John. My first reaction was that seemed a little high for me for a t-shirt. Okay. Um, I wonder if we could just check that price someplace else one time.

No, I I would ra I'll tell you rather not because of who Larry is and his importance in this community. Um, and I will say like online if we if we even like if we went someplace like custom ink the prices are basically the same having just having experience you know we had some discussion on this he said you know all these ones like him they're all out of business. Yeah. Yeah. He's still here right? Yeah. Yeah. And he says, "I have people come and they say they've ordered them online and they screwed them up." Yeah. Can you fix it for me? Yeah.

Um I I I will say like the you know the prices are just very similar. Um I feel I would feel comfortable and you know this is because I know his business also. Um, but you know, also I do think that we should be um trying as much as we can to support small businesses that are in the community. Um, so I think I think 11 $11 a t-shirt is is pretty reasonable. Well, okay. So, let let's do so I'm not down. I don't know. So, I'll go with what you guys are saying. I mean, this is this is for the printing. Let's do some fast math, right? What was the price on 30

full color? $14. 14. So 30 * 14 is 300. Four * 30 is 120. That'd be 420 bucks. 50 bucks 50 times 11 would be 550. Okay. Let's keep in mind that after we pay $10,000 of the signs. I know we have $3,000 left in the bank. Okay. So we putting $500 into the t-shirt. Ideally, John, the 20 vests at at 10 bucks would be another 200. So, that would be that's 700 if we go 50 and and 20 vests. Um, did I do that math? I think that math is right. Okay.

Getting up there. Okay. And then I'm buying uh uh 48 $100 worth of gloves. Uh something like that. So, we've spent uh about 800 900 bucks. Everybody's okay. Fast. Okay, if we roll up and I'm not 100% sure on the vest on the price on those either. Well, I would double check that only because it just seems and maybe that's what I'm reacting to. I would think the vest would cost a lot more than the t-shirt. Should we um should we then think about holding off on the t-shirts? Um and and really just moving forward with the vest because we know we need the vests or

the vest is just block just black lettering on it, right? Yes. There's no logo or anything, so it's just a yellow vest. There is the there's the volunteer and there's up in the corner there's two black logos, right? They're not colored. Everything's either the color of the vest or black. Oh, so it's one color. Yes. Okay. Well, I I guess the other thing I would say to you is double check the price on the vest, John. But if the the vests are roughly the same price as the t-shirts, maybe we should get some extra vests.

Not as not 550 and and 20, but do like 30 vests and no t-shirts. I know what you Yeah. Or or I Well, I have a second question, but yeah, I would say do 30 30 vests and 30 t-shirts. I mean, I want to do the math on that to double check, but John still has to You have to verify the price of the vest. Well, we had asked for 20 vests. Yeah, but if we up it to 30, if we upped it to 30 at at that around $10 price again, you know, that could be that could be very wrong. But if you come back to us and say, "Oh, no. The vests are $25." Then we have to change the whole

We have to come up with different math. But let me ask you this. When we hand out the vest, like they bring them back. Yes. When they get a t-shirt, we don't get that. No. They get that, right? So, is it better to buy a few more vests because we get them back and we can reuse them. One of the issues, Beth, is the vests are inappropriate for little kids. Okay. So, it's that that's what I think we were thinking about with the uh the t-shirts. Okay. Yeah, but I think we could get by with again John has to verify the price on the vest, but we could get by with fewer t-shirts even though they would be maybe more expensive

um and more vests. That would be right. Okay. Um you know, we that we could spend our money that way. But again, you you'll have to communicate back to the chair job because of the rules. But so now let me ask you this. We're not going to have these before April 11. My next question. Okay. What I I gave him a date of April 3rd. Okay. Okay. And he says that's no problem. Good. So Okay. I told him we were going to have a meeting here tonight. Yeah. And we would be discussing these things. That's no problem. Okay. Yeah. So, we need to know what we want to do so I can get back to him.

Okay. Can I make a suggestion? Um, if this is appropriate, Joy, um, I would suggest that, uh, I think we've given some options here, but, uh, I would suggest we empower you through a motion, uh, to have a conversation with John once he gets the price on the vests. Okay. Okay. to speak to you on the phone and for you to approve either buy the vests and buy the t-shirts or change the mix or whatever so John can have his final answer and his guy can move forward. Okay.

Does that sound I agree with that. Um is there um I agree. Um, is there can we with that empowerment of myself, is there a price that we can ballpark price that we can kind of just say that we're going to Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we were we were working we were playing around. You know what? We really can't do that because we don't know what the best cost. Okay. So, we can get we probably give you an upper limit of let's say a thousand. Okay. Okay. Let's we'll stay way well. Yeah. Yeah, you you work it out. Well, you know, between you you getting the price and and consulting with the the chair here,

what I can do is try to meet with them tomorrow, okay? And find out what the what the best cost, okay? And then um I can get I can contact you, okay? And say, see, he he only works he works from one to three, right? Okay. So I could I could try to meet with them tomorrow and get this information and then let you know. Okay. Hopefully tomorrow night and then we can Okay. make a decision. All right. Okay. So I make a motion to empower Joy

uh in conjunction with John to move forward on vests and t-shirts as they deem appropriate uh not to exceed $1,000. I second the motion. All in favor? I Okay, passes. Okay. Okay. So, why don't Great. So, John, you'll just you'll talk with Larry tomorrow and then we'll talk over the phone. Okay.

So, what you'll end up with, John, is maybe we'll buy 30 t-shirts and 20 vests, or maybe we'll buy I'm sorry, or maybe we'll buy 50 t-shirts and 20 vests, or maybe we'll buy depending on the price of the vests, you know, you you'll kind of work out a mix and you guys have your So, depending on the price of of the vest makes the decision here. Yeah. Uh, so I I will contact Joy hopefully tomorrow night and and we can decide where we go. Sounds great. That sounds great. And then I can get him that order. I just just an FYI and I'm remembering now I have a concert at 7 o'clock tomorrow night there. So um

Thursday. So if Yeah, if you can call me before 6 then I then you know that would be okay. But I will be at the concert probably from summer. Where's the concert? Just at the high school. It's Yeah, it's a orchestra concert. So, yeah. Um, all right. Um, one thing that we have not talked about that we have not discussed that we haven't looked into and I keep forgetting to put on the agenda is volunteer thank yous.

Um, we have not talked about how we're going to thank volunteers this year. Um we had um Max last year um for the ice cream um and Sunny Crest the year before. Um, I'm okay going to Sunny Crest um and and asking if they might think about doing this um uh again um or do you feel that Max I mean Max was willing to just give them to us right last year? I think he'll do it again. You think he'd do it again? I thought that was what he said at the end of the year that it was like okay it seemed it seemed that they were very willing.

Yeah, I think they are. I I just I be honest with you, I would have gotten before this meeting, but I wanted to make sure that's what you guys all wanted to do. So, okay. Um I I actually I have it on my to-do list to go see Kyle and uh I'll I'll try to get that done. Okay. In the next few days. They may be looking for some some uh good publicity trying to figure out that restaurant. I know. Restaurant. Well, he's trying to put a farm to table restaurant behind that. Oh. Oh yeah. So if there's no issue, I'll I'll I'll I'll approach Kyle and see what he says. Okay. Um updates, John, anything new?

Um I I have a schedule on sponsor a road ad mix is scheduled for April the 22nd uh for a roadside cleanup. Wind waste, we'll do it the same day we do our towide, April the 11th. Uh Trend and Bosch, I've called them both. They haven't given anybody their dates yet. And the football team is scheduled for June the 14th. They sold them. Oh, wow. On voting day. So, okay. Um, so those those guys are scheduled. When when is voting? Voting was last Tuesday. Oh, it was? Yeah. You're on tape. We'll catch you next year, Beth. Oh, you good.

Do you know what the difference between a working girl and a retired guy is? I actually look forward to going to go going to vote. It's something to do. Okay. I'm sorry, but you know, I was on call that day. It was very very busy. Yeah, it more people than usual, so it's good. Um, on updates, I'm going to jump past. Uh, on the the uh town hall, the the display rack is actually in the next room. Yeah. and I will set that up depending on whether we get I may need the vests from that display for our cleanup if we haven't got our vests in hand yet.

Um but if if we have our vest in cl in hand I'll set this up like the first week in April. Okay. Uh unless somebody has an issue and I'm there's a temporary person that's in charge of the library now. Okay. Yeah. Um, and I will go introduce myself to her because I want to recover our our things. I think they're probably still in the building over there and wash them obviously with, you know, the mold issue and everything. And um maybe use those for the cleanup or see if they'll let me put them in the the temporary thing they've set up in the in the police station

because I don't think it's going to be so temporary. I think it's going to be six months before they get the library back. I was just going to ask you, do they have any kind of a tenative date of reopening? No. Well, but they're sort of open now. They they're using the community room in the police station. Yeah, it's it's decent size. It's not huge, but I don't know if that kind of stuff is over there. So, I I I will have to introduce myself and see what's going on. So, Okay. Um I'll I'll get that done. Okay, great. Excuse me. Uh any new business? No, I think we're good. I think we covered it with the with the ELO and um and fundraising. Anything else for

So um we're not going to be meeting again before we are not. So we're going to be there from 9 to 12 and it's going to be at uh Matthew Thornon, right? Y 9 to 12. Who's there that day? Uh I will be there. Okay. One I can be there. Two. I try to be there at least. Okay. I'm one armed right now. soap. Oh, okay. Okay. What does that mean? They think I have a crack in my elbow. Oh, okay. And uh I won't know. I'm getting a second set of X-rays in a day or two. But uh uh Did you fall?

I felt like such an old man. We were in Logan coming back from Florida and kid dropped his ski bag in front of me and I never saw it. Oh my word. and I went right over it and I landed on both knees, this elbow and far. My Betsy said I slid across the floor. Um, and uh, so the this healed uh, the knees are okay, but the elbow is still I I can't even touch my face. I can't get full extension or rotary. So, they don't want me lifting anything tremendous right now. So, we'll figure it out.

But, it seems to get be getting better and Betsy has had it. She said, you know, all men are babies and got it out. She said, I have four children, you know. So, what's that got to do with anything? And she's had her knees replaced. She's had she's had knees replaced. Yes. Get it back. Get it out. Get over it. Yeah. Suck it up, buttercup. Okay. Oh god. She saw she saw me taking a Tylenol. She said, "What the hell's wrong with you?" Wow. Okay. All right.

Hey, couple two quick round table things. Uh I don't know if anybody else saw uh I think it was last night or the night before the the uh New Hampshire Chronicle. I don't know if you ever watch that show. Do once in a while. Okay. Um it it was uh uh it focused on the Irish heritage of Londereerry. And they actually filmed a little bit in OS. Yeah. Which was nice. And uh u but they talked about how the line the the Irish um uh immigrants were welcome to Londereerry and they featured our welcome to Londereerry song. Oh, wonderful.

That's the good news. The bad news is of course I'm probably the only one. I'm looking at it. I go look at you can see the paint coming up. Yeah. So that was that it was kind of cool. And if you know Dave Ellis, Dave Ellis is a review for the thing. So that was that was very good. Maybe that was good if other people saw the paint coming off it. I wish they would show them with a bullet hole. That would be nice. Um and then just uh Joy, I think you're aware. I I'm speaking to the Rotary Club on the 1 of April. Yes, that would be wonderful. Yeah, that would be wonderful. Great. Uh all right. With that, I think um I'll take a motion to adjurnn.

I'll make a motion to adjurnn. Excellent. Second. All in favor? I Excellent. You're