Lodgers' Tax Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Alright. So we do very excitingly, if that's a word, have a new member to our board. So I will call us to order, but I will also go through and do introductions so that she can put a name with a face. So, Sonya, you met me, of course.

I'm Jennifer Olson. I work at the Bradbury Science Museum, and I am the chair for the board. I'm going to speak for Connor Tharp, who is our vice chair, because she just I ran into her, and she was running to pick her daughter up from daycare because she's sick, so she won't make it. Okay. I'm Doctor. Shana Sasser. I am the economic development administrator for the county. So Yeah.

Okay. Well, hi. I'm Sonya, and I just recently took over the Wingate by Wyndham right across the Ashley Park. So I'm the new GM there. And I'm very excited to be here.

Welcome, Sonya. I'm Kevin Holsapple. I'm the citizen at large representative. I spent many years working in visitor and tourism programs in the community. Wrote the first market study and marketing plan, tourism marketing plan for the county in the early 2000s. So I got interested in getting back involved and seeing if we can make the most of our tourism activities.

Hi, Sonya. You know me because I was begging every week, but glad to see you're here. You're doing a great job over there and thanks for joining our committee. We appreciate you.

I guess that leaves it to me. I'm Ellen Felton. I am the marketing specialist at Los Alamos County under the economic development division. And with that, I am the staff liaison to Lodger Stacks.

Alright. And Joni Griffin is online. You can see her up there. She does our marketing work and has a contract with us for that. And you'll meet everyone else as we go through. Okay. So I hope everybody's had a chance to look over today's agenda. If it all looks okay, I will take

I have a few agenda questions.

Sure.

There's over the past few months, we've we've had the discussion of putting things on the agenda at meetings for the next meeting. And I've noted that those don't show up. And I've re actually requested some agenda items, and they don't show. But then I but I never really hear any explanation of that. So I'm curious about that, why that would be in in I can understand there might be reasons that not everything can be on the agenda. But shouldn't there be some kind of explanation if if we're not going to do something that's either been requested or was agreed to?

So I will let you know the email that you sent me. They have to have the agenda packet up by a certain number of days beforehand. And so by the time the agenda packet was published, that second email that you sent me from February 28 that, quite honestly, had fallen off my list, but that you resent on Monday, May 5, that was out from when we could do the publishing because I was I don't think I got to this item in my email until Tuesday or Wednesday and didn't forward it until Thursday or Friday. And Ellen was out of I think she had training or something.

That wasn't the item, actually, I had in mind. Although, all I was asking for there is not an agenda item, but just suggesting that information be available to help with an agenda item.

Right. But we didn't even be able to I mean, I passed that email on to Ellen until the end of last week. So I don't know that staff will have anything there. What item were you were wondering on the agenda item?

A couple examples I can remember was we actually decided at at the I think it was the last meeting that although the survey had been answered already to NMDOT, that we would get a briefing about what was said in the answers to that survey and that that would be put on the next next meeting's agenda item. I think that was agreed to as a group in our meeting. Another one that I've spoken to you and requested is the formation of a working group. And, you know, and that one, again, I don't know.

Yeah. I just thought was I can speak as to why that one isn't on the agenda. I felt that we would be spending quite a bit of time on the RFP discussion today, so that is on the docket for the next meeting.

Okay.

And as far as the other one, I think Joni's online, but the way that the process works, it's still in the middle of it. So we won't know for sure what we're receiving or anything like that with the grant until I think it's the end of this month. Is that right, Joni? Correct.

The question wasn't the grant. It was what was said in the response to the the pre survey that would have gone in, which delineates what are the goals, what are our target markets, why wouldn't that be something that makes a lot of sense to share with the group. I was actually surprised we weren't actually part of formulating the answers to that, frankly. But those are just a couple examples. I don't want to go back.

I think the more general question for the agenda is, if there's a suggested agenda item or we've said that there's going to be an agenda item at one of our meetings, if there isn't gonna happen, there should be some explanation and some communication about that to say, okay. I know we talked about this, but here's what's going on. You know? So that's that's the main point that I really want to, want to raise with regard to agenda. I'm not quite sure how the agenda gets formulated, but it's, but it's it's it's a concern of mine.

Okay.

And I think the other thing that I want to say about agenda is that as we go forward, given the work plan, I would expect the staff to routinely solicit input from LT or put on our agenda anything that they're planning on discussing with counsel or discussing in other forums so that we have an opportunity both to know about those things and to provide input on those things.

So noted, we can certainly talk about that at a future meeting. I think that's something that has to be brought up and voted on if I'm not incorrect.

Voted on To bring stuff I I don't know

I think I voted on yes to bring stuff to agenda.

This is for

discussion Well, that's not what you were saying. You said you want, as part of the agenda, for staff to tell us what they're working on and what they're going to bring to future council meetings.

No. What I said was it should be a routine matter to put on our agenda items that are going to be taken to council for discussion.

Right. But some of those are out of our purview. I mean, I think you have to keep looking at staff has items that they work on outside of our purview. I certainly think staff can talk to us about the items within their purview that deal with the lodgers tax that they're gonna bring to the to the council. But those items that are outside of our purview aren't something that we should be discussing here. They have a whole another part of their job, and that's not up for us to decide whether they should or comment on what should go to council at that point.

I'm only talking about things within our purview, which is clearly, as I understand the work plan that's been adopted, the tourism strategic plan. So anything that has a barrier

to visitation You were clear in that. And so I just wanna make sure we're we stay in our lane.

And and so I'm not thinking it's a thing for a future meeting to discuss. It seems like just a simple request that seems quite would seem quite normal that if there's something that's going to be brought to counsel for discussion or for their to look at that it would have been on our agenda leading into that.

Right. If

it deals with LTIP.

Yeah. If it's within our purview. Don't know why you would think I'm talking about anything else.

Well, I'm just trying to be clear and make sure we have that all in the minutes and the notes as we move forward.

Thanks for your input, Mr. Hassepel. I would like to make a motion to approve the minutes, please.

Sounds great. Do I have a second?

Second.

All right. All in favor?

Aye.

And all opposed? There are no oppositions. All right. I do want to

confirm Connor is online just so everyone is aware.

Awesome. Hi, sorry everyone.

It's okay. I talked for you Connor. Sorry.

No, that's great. I appreciate it.

All right. Hope your baby feels better Connor. Thank you.

Okay, so now we are open for public comment for the items that are not on the agenda. Is there any public comment for items not on the agenda? All right. No one said they needed it and I assume there's no one else online except for Connor and Joni?

There are a couple there's one other person online but yeah, doesn't appear they've raised their hand. All right. Awesome.

So our next presentation or discussion is the whole sample inquiries report that she just did that.

Hoping to approve the minutes.

All right. So let's move to the approval of minutes. Dana brought it up. I need a second for that.

Have one question on that.

Is the

work plan in the minutes the same? See there's a of

Kevin, can you turn your microphone on? I can't hear you.

I'm sorry. Is the work plan in the minutes the same that end up getting approved by the council or sent to the council? Or

So yeah. So it is not the version that was approved in the, section today where we have the any other announcements. My announcement is essentially going to be that this has been approved once we get there. And then next next time we have a meeting, I can put that in. I think you had requested to have that at in some sort of capacity to be in the official minute somewhere. So I can do that for the next meeting just so we have it on record even though it is on council record as approved.

Appreciate that. As somebody who is trying to look up old minutes, trying to figure out what's going on, it's very helpful to have things that were actually the things that got done. One other request I'd ask, it ought to be put on our LTAP web page, the work plan. Or I I went to the county website and just searched for approved work plans because I thought they had gotten approved, I didn't find anything. So

Yeah. All of them are in Legistar. I I don't believe any specific boards or commissions have posted those to their pages, but I can definitely add ours if you feel that would be beneficial.

I think it'd be great for public info and transparency. Yes. So with that, after that discussion, I'll second the motion.

All right. So we have a motion and a second to approve the February meeting minutes. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Alright. It has passed. So now we're on to the whole sample inquiries report. It is attached, and it's also in our packet. Know. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Alright.

I would like to offer maybe just a couple of comments on it.

Okay. Go right ahead.

Again, this went back to finding a way to share information. I was trying to find out about the data sources, data, and analysis that should be available to ELPTAP for us to use in making good decisions or better decisions and recommendations. I started this in December to ask questions. And it's this and and it seemed to me there didn't seem to be any good way to communicate to the other board members what I was trying to find out. And and I felt like there could be other board members who might be interested in knowing about these things.

Maybe not, so that's Okay if not. So I wrote this to share this. Since this time, I actually summarized down into a matrix, which I provided to Ellen after her last update, that just points out what are the remaining And things that are think it may also be useful. So maybe after this meeting, I'll send that out to the group. And maybe it could also be just like this report was made part of the minutes so that the public so it's available to the public.

But that would be my comments. And I'm glad to answer any questions about the things that are said in the report or found out or

anyone else have any other questions as hopefully, you've all had a chance to read this before today.

Is communicating through email part covered under the sunshine law? It could be different in Florida, but I know that we were not anything that was, like, just between the board, we could not do. It had to be, in open.

So it is considered rolling quorum. I think that's what your question is because you're in a different state. Larissa, do you wanna cover on that more? I know we covered it a few meetings back, but we do have a new board member.

Sure. Yeah.

So I want to make

sure I have the layers of your question accurate. So when I think of Sunshine Law, I think of, like, the transparency laws in New Mexico, particularly with respect to IPRO, which requires any government agency to release public records at the appropriate request by, citizen members. And, to the extent that there are communications, within a border commission and that the person who is requesting that specifically uses language that they want the communications between any board commission or employee members as related to this issue, then provided that there is not an exception under IPRA that allows us to withhold them, then yes, we would have to provide those. Now whether or not you can engage in those conversations as board members, you know, we we hear the term rolling forum. And, basically, what we're trying to protect against is, you know, we may not intend to look like we're having a discussion of sorts between members.

To us, it may seem like technical details may be related to clarifying points or logistics. But to somebody who requests that and who is has a motivation to look at it with an eye towards, oh, there was a rolling forum. I want to undermine this decision. Like, there are people who will characterize that as such even if that wasn't the intention. So it's not so much that we don't trust or that we think that any communication is inclined to become a rolling quorum, but particularly in email.

We know that a lot of times, you know, it's not just impropriety, but it's the appearance of impropriety. And if we want to have validity in our discussions and we want to have our discussions and decisions and the things that we say hold water, then it's it's not so much that we don't trust you so much as we wanna protect the sync sanctity and integrity of that decision. So if you hear us kind of harping on the rolling quorum part, it's just more that particularly with email, we know that people will request that because of our sunshine laws. And they don't even need to be able to indicate that an impropriety has occurred so much as there is the appearance of it. And so we just know that, you know, having seen these decisions over and over again with different commissions talking about different things, you know, we just want you to be able to say that your discussions have always been above board and compliant with the law and those sunshine laws.

So I don't know if that answers your question. I kind of roamed around on some different topics. But if anybody's got follow-up questions or need me to zero in on that, that's kind of how I'm understanding the discussion as it's kind of unfolding, if that makes sense.

Do you feel like that was answered for you, Dana? Well, I managed boards in Florida. And so we they were not allowed to communicate. You know, you can't be more than two people anywhere and discuss anything, and, they weren't allowed to communicate by email. It had to go through the minutes. So I was just curious. I just wanted to make sure we're staying within what you all need us to do here.

Yeah. And and I think yes. We we describe ruling forum the same way. And a lot of that is because the Roberts Rules of Order, which prescribe a lot of this procedure that we adhere to and the rules that we all just, like, assumed to know. It's it's a national document.

It's not confined to New Mexico. So I think that it's actually probably the prevailing standard for all for most states as far as how they, you know, maintain public order. Now with respect to limiting conversations to email, that sounds like it was probably a Florida specific or maybe counters county specific. It might even just be a policy thing, not even a a ordinance. But here, as far as as I'm know it to be, and I have not seen any limitation that says that you are restricted from communicating through email. Just be mindful of the rolling forum.

That is good to know. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. So back to Kevin's because we haven't moved on, don't feel like from, the whole sample inquiries report. Are there any other comments or anything else anyone wants to discuss or highlight? I would like to request that matrix since it's I have I don't see it in

my inbox at this point. So if you could resend that, that would be great.

I'll do it. Thanks. Or I'll do it. Thanks.

So the one question I had is I mean, Kevin says in this study, did receive demos of VisitWidget and GuideGeek. My understanding is the county is looking into different app type products. Is that not right?

Yeah. I can speak to the status of that. So we did kind of get put on a bit of a pause because there was something else they were looking into regarding ADA accessibility and the historical walking tour downtown. And some of the programs they were looking at kind of overlapped what we were potentially looking at, so it is on pause. I I would need to double check with Leslie to see where that status is.

I know we were waiting to determine what budget approval looked like, and I don't think they've fully determined what that product is yet. Per county policy, they have to go get at least three different quotes. So now that budget season is officially over and things are starting to I say officially over, but we know that the true budget does not get approved until September. Let me just make that make that a statement right now. But I will be speaking with her now that things have slowed down a little bit in our offices to check with her how that landed being that the budget was approved and what their plan is moving forward so we can work together and not duplicative programs or efforts regarding that.

Great. And I do know that as part of this board in the past, we

did have VisitWidget give us a demo, and we also talked with the visitor bureau in Santa Fe, the visitor Santa Fe same thing as Melanie does. I know. My brain's Tourism Santa Fe? Yeah. Tourism Santa Fe about using visit widget and their experience with that.

So that was probably two years ago, but anyone interested in looking at what we saw in those meetings could always go back and look at that. If I remember correctly, Santa Fe wasn't fully appreciative of everything that goes along with VisitWidget for the price of it, but that's me trying to remember what was said two years ago. So, yeah, you can always go back and look at those meetings that we had as part of LTAP for part of that. Is there anything else anyone wants to comment on with this part? Kevin also had a part in here about the GRT increment, and I didn't know if that's part of what I haven't looked at what the counselors are looking at for this year as far as that goes, but just to highlight that part of this as well.

Sure. Sure, counselor Hand. Yeah.

Thank you.

Regarding

the GRT, what was approved in our budget hearings was a half cent GRT. A quarter cent basically would be just so that we can continue to move on with all the capital projects that, you know, we currently wanted to do. And, you know, we we just don't have as much GRT money available, this year as as we did in past years. So quarter cent is going to, you know, try to keep us, in the black. And then the another quarter cent, was proposed for housing, and, it originally started as a proposal for low income or not low income.

We called it affordable housing, but, that was possibly a little too restrictive. So we're just calling it housing, and, we should have a presentation in the future before we actually approve the budget so that we know really what that quarter cent GRT is going to be used for, how it would be allocated, you know, the just all the details of a a new program like that.

Great. Thanks Counselor Hand. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Is there any other comment anyone wants to make on this part of our agenda? Alright. Then I think we'll move on to the next part. And this is our tourism marketing services contract discussion. Again, that is part Ellen's brought it up.

I think this is where we thought we'd be spending most of our time today. I hope everyone's had a chance to read it. Does anyone have, any comments as far as that goes?

I have some, but I'll wait for others in case they're

Oh, you won't say that. Go ahead. Too much. No. Go ahead, Kevin.

You know, one of the things that the reason I had requested back in February this additional information that is in preparation for this is I think it's an important question to know how the deliverables get met in the current contract to try to understand how useful those deliverables seem to be. Would those be valuable deliverables in a future contract? Those kinds of things. When I really started reviewing the contract, looking at the deliverables, I recognized that I saw or could find very few of those anywhere. And that's why I requested that information.

And I would I think that's kind of an important question that if you have a contract and it's going to have deliverables, we can learn a lot from history by understanding the, what those kind of deliverables look like and how useful they've been, how helpful they've been to the process. Second question I have is there's a significant amount of funding in the current contract pertaining to keeping the website up to date. So I'm kinda curious about the current tourism marketing services contractors role in that. Like, What do they do to keep the website up to date versus what is the staff's role in this? It's unclear to me how that website is maintained or who does what to try to keep it Mhmm.

Up to date.

Yeah. So I can speak to that. Part of the reason that was in the last contract was because we were updating the website to Granicus, which is where it is currently housed. So they helped quite a bit with those efforts to move that from one platform to the other and move all the content that came with it. So that that's where a majority of all that funding went, as well as sometimes depending on what campaigns and things like that that we're running, it's connected to parts of our website. So they help with that process as well.

But wasn't there funding specifically for the transition and then separate funding on the new site. So those are separate line items in the contract. So there's funding for the data migration and the initiation changeover. And then there's 15,000 a year in there afterwards once the new site is up for website maintenance. So I'm just curious of what their role is in that maintenance. I I was a little surprised because I kind of was under the impression that that was not being done internally, the updates to the websites and such. But but it would be very helpful to understand how that works and who does what.

Joni, would you like to speak to that a bit more?

Yeah. So it's in fact, it's a suggestion that I have going forward if we can I'm calling them buckets, Kevin, kind of the way we have the the various charges siloed. Marketing is a little bit different than other types of contracts, and I would prefer if we could have a blanket item for advertising because we don't always know at the start of the fiscal year what we're gonna be advertising. Things pop up as we go. So, originally, when the contract was done four years ago, we weren't clear who the vendor was gonna be, and so they created those buckets with the 15,000 a year going forward.

We don't do a whole lot of the website back end maintenance at this point. So that line item is being used for digital ads that take people to the website.

So so it really isn't being used for website maintenance? It

it is not.

It somehow has gotten informally transferred to other uses?

For advertising. Yes. And, you know, I think as we look at the contract, whether or not it's Sunny five zero five or a different vendor, it needs to be more general because it's impossible to look out four years and say how you're exactly gonna spend the money because we don't know what we're gonna be advertising. And, unfortunately, the way these buckets are, everything has to be built in these exact buckets, and it just doesn't always play out that way.

Yeah. That seems a little problematic, and it kinda puts you in a bind, it seems like,

to me. It totally does. And, like, I can't tell you let's just pretend the contract was gonna renew today. I can't tell you when I'm gonna be marketing in 2029. You know? We don't know.

You know, the

So

Maybe you could comment on the deliverables as well because my guess is that's somewhat similar.

Exactly.

It's an it's a really overwhelming list of deliverables. You know, it's kinda it's almost shocking that you're signed up to that. But, you know, but but because it's a lot of stuff. But it would all be really good stuff if we had it, and it was good, and and they were good. So let let me actually just read through some of those deliverables.

Okay. There

was the things I'd requested was it says there's an annual marketing plan update. So I asked to see the two most recent ones. The month let's see. We know the monthly

Yeah.

Things that you provide along with usually in conjunction with this meeting. But since there were no meetings last year, there was there was a lot of gap in that. There was a performance report and presentation, a a social media

spread a second, Kevin, because she wanted to respond to the first comment you made.

Yeah. I think it's gonna be general to a lot of these, but go ahead.

Hang on. Hang on. We provide the reports every month to Ellen whether or not the LTAP meets. So we have a whole year's worth of reports, just so you know.

Yeah.

Okay? Go ahead.

So, like, the social media strategy and plan Yep. The public relations strategy and plan. You know, there We're all done. There's a lot of things. And, again, I realize it's a it's like a it seems like a very tough list, frankly, to me, just given, my understanding of of how much work there would be in all these things. But on the other hand, there are things that are called for in the contract. So

All those have been done. Everything that is in the contract, we do every month.

Mhmm. So so that's what so you know other members. That's what I had requested that Ellen tried to get available to us because I think those would be very helpful to us Yeah. To see what is our PR strategy and plan? What is our social media strategy and plan? All of these all of these things that and that would also help inform us as we look at a future contract. Well, that one was good at was good thought about in that direction, but these other things are more important, so on and so forth. And it would help us sort out and maybe try to get to a reasonable set of deliverables for what for Sunny five zero five or a future contractor if there were one.

Yeah. So I can speak speak on behalf of the fact that I was out Friday and I was out Monday, so I did not get this until in between meetings this morning when I finally got to it in my inbox. But as she mentioned, a lot of these are listed in their recaps, for the year that they do as well as those monthly reports. I know I I there's quite a list here that you've you've asked for. I can tell you that event support that they helped us with in 2024 was Balloon Fiesta as well as

State Fair.

The State Fair, yes, for New Mexico True Day. And and so that's that one.

And what is the nature of the support? That's what I was looking for, saying the

support Physical physical physically being there, because it is long days or early morning shifts helping set up the booth, having that material there, and then speaking on behalf of Los Alamos County to help, attract more tourism from the people locally and from the people out of state.

So it's kinda like staff augmentation kind of

a thing. Yes.

K.

Yep. Mhmm.

I didn't know if you were doing graphics special graphics for that or you know, all there's seems to be a lot of different ways that you could contribute to that.

Yeah. There there's a lot of different moving parts, and it does depend on capacity. I know one of the other things you asked for was a summary of graphic design and production work. It does depend on capacity. I can speak on behalf that, most of the ads, I usually get one or two copy proofs and thoughts, suggestions, opinions, and I respond back to the agency of Sunny five zero five and say, here's my thoughts.

Here's what I think we should change or tweak, that sort of thing. And, usually, there's a process that we kinda go through of, we have an ad coming up in this. What do you want to highlight, you know, between these different things? And that's kind of the approach we take, but there are some things that are created internally here. Like, for example, the new adventure guide, when we did the coupon books that we ran this past fall to see if that was gonna help stir up any tourism for our businesses here locally, that was something that I did internally just because I did have the bandwidth at that time to do so.

So it is very much a case by case basis how some of that goes. And then, obviously, aside from the support that Sunny five zero five offers, we also have, aside from myself, the entire communications and public relations department up in the county manager's office that also helps create a lot of the things you see, like the stickers and things like that, if if that helps at all as far as, you know, how how does some of that get split, and how does that work out?

It it helps some. It would be great to have a have this the the you know, kind of fully understand these things. The, for instance, like, on the graphic design support, as as I looked at what's going on with NMDOT and their current process, it looks like they give you kind of a formula Yeah.

You get a box.

Give them. You don't really get to do what you'd probably like to do if you if they let you, you know, or something like that. It's so it seems very limited and formulaic Mhmm. What's even allowed in terms of graphic design and and in in those things and design of ads and things like

And to comment on that, if I can, for just a moment, I know that Ellen and Joni have worked a lot with the state because for a very long time, they didn't want us to highlight anything science wise or anything of the work that we do up here, it all was meant to just be outdoor Bandolier National Park, that kind of recreation. That was all that the tourism department wanted from us. Is that not am I right along that line?

That's correct. Yeah.

So there was a lot of time spent by them to try to reeducate the state a little bit about, no, we really need to align some of our tourism plans with the fact that, yes, we we had Oppenheimer up here, and we need to highlight that, of course, for to bring people up from the movie and to do some of that work. And there was quite a lot of effort put in that arena so that we could finally start bringing ads forward that highlighted our science side and the fact that we're proud of those things.

Mhmm. Yeah. And a lot of that was the fact that, you know, New Mexico true harps that their history seeped in culture, and for us, our culture is that science aspect. And I think in 2024, I mean, was a lot of efforts, and I feel like we had success with it. And the fact that in our photo campaign, we were able to highlight some of that this year, and we'll be using that in ads in the next couple of years here. And and I really do appreciate the work and the calls that Sunny five zero five made to acting secretary Lansing Adams and in those efforts and those calls that we had with him to speak about the importance of that where we live.

Yeah. Thank you, Ellen.

Mhmm. So I guess I guess the other question I I think I had one more question, which is what evidence is there that having a market tourism marketing service contract results in maintaining or proving improving benefits to local businesses and the local economy. Like, do we have anything to hang our hat on that says that we've improved economic benefits to local businesses, the local economy, which are really key elements of the tourism strategic plan. And it seems like that, in any future contract, that should be a key goal that is embedded in that contract in some way to evaluate it should be part of any future contract.

I guess what I wonder then is what is the way to evaluate it?

Well, by getting data on spending. What are people spending when they come here? And is that changing over time? Are they spending more than they used to, less than they used to, same as they used to? I mean, that's very typical in this work world.

It is typical. But also, I know through my own work and part of the issues we've been having is it's not just money. It's it's how do you make a more robust I'm trying to think because because we're doing this too in the work I'm doing in at the Bradbury right now is what people spend can be based on so many different things that you can't just qualify if spending's increased or decreased decreased can't as the one qualifying thing as a marketing guideline. Because what they're spending, they may be coming and they still may be spending less, but that's due to external pressures as far as, you know, what the economy is doing, what people feel like they have in their pockets at the moment, whether taxes are going so many different things. And so it it it's not just based on whether or not this plan is working as to whether or not more money is being spent at those businesses because and I guess that's what I'm looking at even in my own work, like I was saying at the Bradbury, is that as different market forces and different things come into people's lives, they may still make the trip up here, but, yeah, they may pack their lunch.

And they may go and do more of the outdoor stuff, and you're not gonna see that necessarily in the fact that they're not gonna come into the museum and come into our store and spend, you know, $80 on a jacket. Instead, they're gonna buy a $5 sticker but still come up here and use our resources, and we're banking on the fact that somewhere down the line when different things ease, they'll bring more of the disposable income up there. And how do we capture that part of things. Because if you're just looking at in the moment and how that compared to last year and next year, it doesn't take into account the whole picture. And so when we're looking at these metrics and what we need to put up against any sort of contract and deliverables, I think you have to take in, especially in the current climate, all those items because families and couples and even individuals who are who are doing things may be doing things a little bit closer to home and spending less money in the long run right now because they feel those pressures in their own life.

Yeah.

Agree. It's not an asset test. But as far as I can tell and I've asked, we're not even paying any attention to that. So, I mean, we have we have no measurement of it. We have no nothing that even really looks at what's going on with spending. So it's not the it's not the acid test.

Right.

It's part of that big picture. You just very did a nice job of of kinda describing it.

Yeah. So we have two people online who would like to speak. Yeah. Go. We'll let Joni go first, and then, Connor, you can follow-up.

So I would just say we represent 14 small communities throughout the state, and every one of them this is the lodgers tax advisory board, so I think the measure that we should be looking at is lodgers tax. We, you know, we cannot control our job is to attract visitors to Los Alamos. Once they get here, you know, it's up to the local businesses, the chambers, other things to make sure that they're spending their money out there. None of the communities that we work with track beyond the lodgers tax. I'm not saying that that isn't something we could do, but it is expensive.

The state spends about a quarter of $1,000,000 a year to track those kinds of numbers, and I don't know that in our small budget, we have the resources to go into the actual credit card data spending. So I I just look at I've been working with Los Alamos since 1999, so twenty six years. And to me, the best measure of is the tourism marketing working is is we are we seeing an increase in visitors coming to town that are not associated with lab being a lab contractor? So we wanna separate the business traveler from the true tourist traveler.

Connor? Joni,

you took the words out of my mouth.

I was gonna

just say it'd be a really hard thing to track and really meticulous, really expensive, and I think the the time and effort could be better spent elsewhere. The public health side of me and, like, the epidemiology side of me says that surveying people is really, really difficult and trying to determine where people are spending their funds is gonna take a whole team. It's not a one and done really quick endeavor. So just wanted to put that out there.

And I I will note that, one of the other variables we do look at, regarding the contract that we're discussing right now is how is our tourism doing as a whole. And I can tell you right now in 2025, every other month every month thus far, we don't have our numbers for April yet, has exceeded numbers from 2022. So that means we're clearly doing something right.

Know, what what I would say about that is numbers of tourists is is part of the picture, and it's something you wanna understand. But if those numbers come, leave, don't do anything here, why would we want to put resources resources in into bringing more and more of them here? We don't know that, though. We don't know. And so why wouldn't we wanna know?

This this old saw of, oh, it's too expensive. Does anyone really know the facts? What I have in the very thing that I shared with you earlier, Joni said that Datify, if you spend 8,000 more, I think it was, than we're spending now, they have some version that gives you spending information. I don't know if it's the best or the most cost effective way to get that. I've done some looking into other companies that do this. It is not about surveying. It's very hard data. The the the it's amazing. In fact, what's happened since I was involved in this more than a decade ago, there are there is very, solid data, reliable data. It doesn't come free, for sure.

And there are multiple companies out there that actually do this. So it seems to me, why wouldn't we wanna know what we could get and what it would cost before just saying, oh, it's too hard. Can't get that. Now the other thing I would say is just relying on numbers of visitors, I don't think is at all what we it's at all what it tells. And in particular, we're a very unusual place in that we have these national parks.

So a visitor that comes from their hotel in Santa Fe, and we spend money to get them here from their hotel in Santa Fe, and they go back to Santa Fe and never spent a cent here. There are ways to try to understand that better and understand how to market to those people and how to help our businesses understand what they couldn't what are any opportunities in those. So I totally reject the idea that it's, oh, it's just totally in the businesses' hands. They gotta figure it out for themselves if we get people here. Don't agree with that at all.

I think that is not the right track. I think what we need to be doing is looking at understanding what's going on with visitors who are coming here and try to go after visitors who are hotel, more likely to to do any local spending. And I think that from a marketing standpoint, there certainly are ways to do this. We're not a mass tourism. You know, sounds like what I just heard is get as many people to come here and hope and pray that something sticks kind of a thing, which I I don't think is that good of a strategy.

Conner, you had a you raised your hand.

I decided I shouldn't say, but thank you.

Oh, okay. Sorry, Conner. Joni?

Yeah. So I did not say that. So I just wanna clarify for the record. I did not say get as many tourists here and hope it sticks. So we're very targeted in our in our marketing, and the goal is to get the lodgers to get the visitors here to spend time in our lodging establishments. That's where we put all of our energy. Mhmm. Yes. We know there are day trippers that come up from Santa Fe oftentimes because we're totally sold out and they can't find a hotel room here. But I do think it's up to the local community once they're here to do the marketing, to get them to spend money in the restaurants, in the bars, at the various attractions.

Again, it's a very small marketing budget. It's a 132,500. Right now, we're spending 7,500 a year on DataFi. Kevin, I don't think I said it's $8,000. I we've never gotten the price. I do know that Santa Fe County is spending $25,000 for their Datify subscription. So I think we can certainly look at it and see if it makes sense. But getting the data is gonna eat a big chunk of the budget, and we've gotta look at do we wanna spend the money analyzing, or do we wanna have that same money go into actually putting a a head in a bed?

Thank you for clarifying, Joni. Yep.

I think that also brings up another thing. The this idea that somehow people who are visiting for business purposes aren't a very important category of our visitors, I would submit that they're probably the biggest portion of people staying in heads and beds and also the biggest portion of people who are spending money at restaurants and other things because they're here and need stuff, even though they're not here as permanent residents. So that's a a real important segment of our tourism is understanding that and understanding how to, again, maximize the benefit of having those heads in those beds and having those visitors in our community.

Joni, you had something you wanted to add?

I do. I'm sorry.

You do. This is what this Certainly is

not discounting the lab contractors. And we know they are a very, very important component of tourism coming to town. We don't focus on that as one of our results because it has nothing to do with the tourism marketing that we do. That is 100% due to what the lab is doing. We love them. We want them here. We want them spending their money, but it's not a metric that we can, with any sort of integrity, monitor because it has nothing to do with the marketing that we're doing.

Yeah. It's driven completely separate from anything that would have to do with tourism. They don't have to be mark I mean, we take care of them, and we, have them going throughout our county, but we don't have to market to them because it is a given it's a done deal.

So those people are impervious to marketing messages?

That's not what I said.

Didn't say that's what you said. Asked

a That's come what you're saying. Here because they're here for the lab many of these people that are staying at the hotels. So we don't reach out. They do look at our scores and our things like that, but as far as reaching out to them, they are coming here. They are scheduled to come here. So they do utilize our advertising, but to go and say, Hey, if you're coming to the lab, come stay here, that's already a given.

And just to add to the conversation, there are some new tools that are going to come out with Datafy later in the summer that Ellen and I have already signed up to see what they are. So there may be some opportunities for us to get more data and get some deeper dives into research, But we won't know until they roll all that out at the end of summer.

On the subject, again, of cost of being able to begin to understand these things, what Ellen's response to me and I don't and I apologize if it didn't come from you, Joni, but it's what Ellen wrote me. A higher level package from Datify would show expenditures. LA County is currently on the Silver Insight package, which includes up to 50 POIs clusters. Basic spending is an additional 450 a month and shows percentage of market spend, which I don't know what that means. Advanced spending is eight k add on, which I'm not sure what that means. But

Yeah. All that came directly from our Datafy representative.

Understanding what that would look like, and would that be useful, helpful, I I I think would be pretty important. And, you know, to me to spend 8 k to actually be able to measure something about what our strategic plan says were is a key thing to be trying to accomplish would be very helpful.

Is it okay if I make a comment again from the hotel?

Yeah, of course it is.

So yes, the traffic that is here for Lantel is driven by Lantel. But the traffic that comes up here for tourism, we do need to make that reach. We do need to reach out to those people because they're the ones that may not even realize that we're up here and that you know, what we have around us. And so for us to focus tourism is an important part of this because, again, the other traffic is driven. But there's a lot of people that just stay in Santa Fe feeling like Santa Fe is, you know, bigger, whatever.

Yes. They've got more restaurants. They've got more things to do. But when we have people come up here that say, oh, I was gonna stay in Santa Fe. And just the other day, a guy came up, said, I was gonna stay in Santa Fe, but there were too many people, and I don't like people. And he said I came up here and my gosh, I had no idea how beautiful it was here. So for us to get that out and get those travelers that are spending their hard earned money to go on vacation, I think it is important. And I think that what y'all are doing is probably the right thing, and I appreciate that very much. So that's just from the hotel side of things.

I'm gonna try and make a comment on this too, okay? I'm a bit nervous, but I guess I'm just understanding that the Llano people or the everybody that comes to work to Llano are gonna stay here regardless. Right? So, basically, we're trying to get other kind of you know, either how could I put it? Well, yeah, just other people.

Right? Because that's what this one this is for, right, for the tourist. So I'm thinking, Llano people are gonna be here no matter what, and, you know, they're just gonna come in. It it it doesn't matter what we do or what we wanna do. But I think that this marketing is important for other types of people because we do have people that come up here just for the view, not even just like the big science part of Los Alamos.

Los Alamos is a beautiful place that, you know, people wanna see. So we need to target those people and find those people. And another thing about spending money, I don't know if I understood that really well, but I'll get better at this. And but why why is it so important to know where they spend their money? We're a community, and as long as they spend it here.

And that's what we don't know. What are they spending here, and what's happening over time to that? That's exactly my point. We don't know that. So again, one thing I'd say, it sounds like in your mind it was coming across as some kind of eitheror. It's not an eitheror. We need to be marketing to visitors and tourists. And that's what our tourism strategic plan tells us to do. We should be enacting that. And it's not an either or.

Hey, stop marketing to bring anyone here who might be a tourist and only try to get Lantel business visitors to spend more. It's a both kind of scenario. We need to be and I think we can be good enough to really be looking at market segments. And those are two big market segments that are complementary to each other in many ways. But we're it looks like to me, historically, we've kind of ignored one of those segments.

There are a significant number of those business people who are not heads in your beds. And could there be more of them, of a clamor for them to be heads in your beds? I don't know. But I don't think I think they respond to marketing just like everyone else. And from the standpoint of the overall purpose of the tourism strategic plan in helping our local economy and providing opportunity for local businesses, from my standpoint, that's kind of the key thing I'm interested in trying to see how can we do better than what's been done historically.

Okay. So let me just see if I can sort of wrap this up a little bit. I think what I'm getting from you, Kevin, is that you would like to see us in the next contract maybe ask for increased Datify spending and increasing our package there and using LTAP money to pay for a larger Datify package that includes what is spent in Los Alamos County so that we would have better data there. And then you would also like to see an increase in our spending on analysis of those Datafy items that are coming out. And in order to do that, we would decrease our spending in somewhere else in the budget to cover those costs.

Well, I'd say kind of. Doesn't to me, I don't know that Datafy is necessarily the future answer, maybe. But there are other people out there, and we need to evaluate them. People like Zartico or Tourism Economics do these things as well. They do them in a little different way and in a way that may add more value for us.

I don't think I'm talking about necessarily taking away anything to do this. I'm thinking that the way you do this, it could come from spending less for some other function. But it could be like when I look at 15,000 a month for website updates or something, and it sounds like that got absorbed into something else that we don't even know, that's a that pretty good hunk of year. The the other thing we could do is we can definitely make a recommendation to counsel to fund things that help get things done. And it we don't have to look at it as as a zero sum.

This idea again, I thought we got over that in February that we are somehow confined to the lodgers tax. We are not.

We are not confined to We not confined to the lodgers I agree with you there. We are confined to we can recommend different items, but we're specifically here to recommend how that lodger tax money is spent. And then if we think there should be more money put forth by the county and somewhere else, we can certainly make that recommendation. But that's not just what we're looking at here. I mean, we're the lodgers tax board, so we're here to specifically talk about this contract, how we would like to see this contract move forward today.

That's what this discussion is about. And recommend in that area, and we can certainly put an addendum on there that says, yes, we're going to be looking at we would like these things addressed too by the county. At the same time, our largest tax is not going up in this county. The amount of money we get in that budget is pretty flat every year because we only have a certain number of properties. And the council takes into account their whole budgeting plan as a different process that we're not totally involved in?

Well, we're involved we should be involved with I don't know why we weren't in making recommendations to them for the for the budget. But let me read you two point one point three in our work plan. Review the current tourism strategic plan to determine what items have been addressed and in what capacity and which ones we still need to address and how to do so. In doing this review, we will consider the county's abilities, capabilities, and resources. In addition, we will make suggestions about how to move forward.

That's precisely what I'm suggesting we do is our job under our work plan. Our work plan doesn't say that we're in some way limited to how we're making recommendations of how to spend the lodgers tax funds.

Right. And I hear that, and I understand that. And we can certainly make that recommendation. I agree. At the same time, if we're looking at a a a contract or a budget that is gonna be paid for with larger tax funds, which is what this is done in part I don't think we pay for it all, do we?

For lodgers tax, you're talking about the tourism, like marketing services? Yeah, this That is fully now funded by lodgers tax at this time, yes.

All right. So we the discussion we're having right now is over how do we craft something moving forward as far as what we wanna see in the next marketing request for Proposal. Proposal. Thank you. I couldn't come up with that word for some reason.

And then we can make all those recommendations to counsel. At the same time, the request for proposal is where I feel like we're focusing on right now, and that's why I went back to what in this request for proposal, this is what we have money allocated and how we have it in the current request. If we're looking at the fact that in the next request, we want the group coming in, whether it's Sunny five zero five or someone else doing different types of reporting or having a different something other than Datify or more analytical capabilities there or those sorts of things, that's what we're looking at recommending to counsel in this go around for that request for proposal. And it would also mean that given our current budget, if we're gonna spend more money in those areas, we would have to decrease money spent in other areas as far as those metrics are concerned.

It it could be that. That's that's a little bit of a tough question because I look at it and go, why do why do we even channel Datafy through this contract? Why wouldn't you know? And maybe there's there's answers. I don't know what those are. They're but it's kind of like it's a contract with a company to get data. What does it have? You know? I don't know why we need it to be through a marketing services contractor.

I think we did it through this marketing services contract. This was a little bit before I came in to LTAP, but I think they did it through here so that they would be able to say, this isn't something. This is something that's put into this contract and into this budget so that we make sure that if we have shortfalls other places, the council isn't required as they're balancing their budget to take money away from here. This way, we are guaranteed that Datafy is paid for every single year as long as we have this contract because that's the marketing contract we made with whoever. And in this case, it's Sunny five zero five.

Mhmm. So so the choices are, like, back to your what you were asking, it could be to reallocate within the contract. It could be to reallocate reallocate from some other part of the lodgers tax budget, or it could be from seeking funding to supplement what's in lodgers tax. Any of those three, those are more like mechanical answers, but they're all possibilities that that could be explored for how do you how would you fund getting Right. Data that so what guess what I'm suggesting is that if we're gonna keep getting if we need a marketing services contract to get this data and, like, you and do what you just explained of, hold the make sure that it doesn't get cut or something like you were just explaining, then that's an important thing, in my view, to be in there is to get the data that helps us know how well we are addressing the strategic plan.

And so the and from what Ellen found out in answers to the questions that we talked about earlier, it doesn't seem like some huge amount. But we haven't seen well

Well, it's double I mean, right now, for Datafy, we pay 7,500. If we go up to it's an additional 8,000 if we go to the Plus

the $4.50 a month. Yeah. So you'd have to calculate that to determine. And, again, like you said, the way that the previous contract was written, actually, if you read it, they actually listed a different provider, which from my understanding that was changed at some point. Joni probably has insight on that because they talk about Sojourn as one of those data sources that exist. And and in my opinion, you know,

if you go back to

the whole of what we're looking at here of making bigger suggestions for what you guys think you wanna see in this request for proposal because it is lodgers tax funds. When you look at it from the big picture, I might suggest that that RFP does not list a specific program Because if you have multiple people applying for an RFP, they might all have a different one that they're used to working with or they like to use, and you need to be mindful of that instead of kind of putting it in a box because there might be a recommendation in there for a company that, you know, might have different services at a better price or something like that. That's all considerations when you get to the point where there's actually people voting on a panel regarding it. Right? Right.

I think that's smart.

Yeah.

You know, the Yeah. The other thing that brings to mind is I actually had some conversation with the data unit at NMDOT, and they have contracts in place with some of these sources. And it raised the question, which may or may not lead anywhere, can we do something? Would they work with us to do something adjunct to one of their contracts that would make it a less expensive add on than it would for us to go directly to get data or information.

Okay. So circling back,

when is the RFP going up? So the plan is by the end of this week to submit it to our office upstairs, hopefully, if not next week. The reason for that is we are on a quick timeline because it is, I wanna say, August or excuse me, September bear with me. I'm trying to read through the contract as fast as I can on the top my head. It's okay. Help me. It it's the September, I believe, that this one expires. I'm still trying to skim really fast.

I'm sorry.

Through the September.

Yeah. So I believe our plan internally is that the new one would start October 1 just so it's easier for billing purposes and it's not at a weird time frame. And and I'm not sure how familiar with request for proposals everyone is, but sometimes it can be a longer, multi month extensive process. You wanna give them at least a couple weeks to respond to the request once you finally put it out. And then you have a review committee, which it really depends how how quickly they come to an agreement on who they feel is the best provider, and sometimes that involves multiple conversations and discussions.

And then on top of that, you have to deal with, you know, making that official agreement, going through legal, all those avenues, etcetera. And so that's that's why we're looking at a a quicker time periods. We were kinda holding off starting the process internally in our office till we heard feedback from you today so we could have a meeting later today to discuss further, you know, what your thoughts and opinions were and kind of review where we had kind of started our draft at to see where that might land. Okay. So what I've gotten so far from what I've heard everybody talk about today

is that moving forward, one thing people would like to see is maybe let's have an expanded a bigger emphasis on expanded data retrieval and data analysis of the people coming to town because that's what I think I heard Kevin talking about.

Particularly relative to understanding spending. Because, again, it goes back to the tourism strategic plan. That's what we're supposed to be one of the things we're supposed to be concentrating on.

Right. So I see that I think in the request for proposal that there is a desire to have more of that data reporting bit, and I think you have to add in the data analysis bit because data analysis can be costly

Mhmm.

Can be super costly, and you'd have to know how much that's gonna cost

moving forward. Typically so you know whether it's Datafy, Zartech, that's a package. You get you get data and you get analysis, and the analysis is in the form of a bunch of standard reports that analyze that data that you that you receive.

Right. I've done the same thing with Qualtrics. Mhmm. They don't always give you the data you want.

Yeah. You may wanna

have a special as a previous Qualtrics user.

You may want a special report sometime that gets Which

costs more. Yeah. Exactly. And so that's what I'm saying is we wanna see and I agree it's often a package and that sort of thing. It's just in my experience, often the data I really wanna dig down to is not always the data that is supplied or the analysis that is always supplied. So I think what we'd like to recommend when this RFP goes out is that when it comes to the dating reporting and analysis, we would like a bigger emphasis put in that area than what is currently in that area so that all of the county, including lodgers tax and other users, whether it's council or businesses within the county, would have a little bit better idea of what's going on there.

Yeah. Go ahead, Anna. Go right up. Yeah. We'll give you two minutes to speak.

Hi. I apologize for sort of interrupting in the process. I have another meeting about tourism I need to get to. So my name is Anna Delaine. Some of you know me. Some of you don't. I own Boomerang Consignment and Gaia gifts. Three years ago, we started selling souvenirs and gift items. So I am new to the world of tourism, how it affects my business, although 30 to 50% of my business is tourism anyway just for the consignment side. I'm also a member of the Los Alamos Local Business Coalition.

And as a member of that group, I am extremely interested in tourism dollars being spent, and the largest tax is a big focus of that. I didn't have time to look through the entire packet of information that you guys have had, I hope, a long time with because it was extensive, but I wanted to share a few thoughts. One of the things we're looking at as a local business coalition is how do we increase the amount of attention given to local businesses in everything the tourism people are doing, all tourism dollars spent. And so one of the things you're talking about is money spent in local businesses, and it's great to know from the hotels. Right?

You guys know exactly who's coming in and why they're coming in. For me, I haven't heard a lot of mention except from mister Holsapple about local businesses and where that dollar is getting spent. And it's the difference for me between surviving and not surviving. So in looking at how that money is spent, it's extremely important to me as a local business owner. I've been in business twenty two years, ten of them in Los Alamos.

So I'm not gonna be out of business next year, most likely. Knock on wood. So as you're talking about this, I'm really pleased to hear mister kind of keeping at this question of how is his money spent and how what are we finding out? The other thing is as a business person for twenty two years, I'm pretty frugal. And $519,000 a year for Sunny five zero five, I don't understand the intricacies of it. I I wonder if anyone does. Honestly, it's a mass massive contract. However, if I first of all, that $15,000 for the website, that indicates to me that this contract is current and needs to be addressed from a standpoint of what needs to be done. Right? What what tasks do we need done?

Not they've previously done this because $15,000 is a lot of money to just push to a different place. So if I take $519,000 and I divide it by twelve months, that's $43,000 a month. If I divide that by four point two weeks, that's $10,297 a week. If I divide that by $25 an hour for man hours spent for this contract, it's four hundred and eleven hours. Are they doing 411 hours worth of work? Should we maybe just hire people in house to do this? This is a massive amount of money. It's more than the lodgers tax. If we say $30 an hour, it's three hundred and forty three hours a week. It's a massive amount of money.

So I encourage you all to really look at this from how else could that money get spent to support local business, local economic vitality, especially especially with the upcoming and current downturn we are experiencing. Thank you all for your time.

Great. And I think that 519 is for four years. That is correct.

Every year, if you look at the contract, it it varies year by year, but it's about a 132,000 ish depending on the year Crazy. What those amounts are.

Thank you for that.

Yeah. No. But, Anna, thanks for getting up and talking, and thanks for coming today. We appreciate it. We really do.

And I would love to tell you that when we have people coming in, my entire team is trained, and we're gonna do the ambassador training as well. But they all know that if someone comes in and they're looking around, that we go and we show them all of our brochures, we show them everything to get them to where they're going and they are spending local with our restaurants, with our stores. We utilize those brochures on a daily basis. You can ask Melanie, we're always empty.

So we do work

to support you guys. Yes, ma'am.

Donna, did you have something you wanted to add?

Okay, so what I heard is that I think what and and I we haven't voted on this yet, but what I I feel like the point that Kevin's making is we wanna look at more of that analysis and data piece and maybe be spending maybe recommend that in the contract, we go towards spending more money in that area. We want to make sure that when you go forward, I think I heard this too in that RFP, is that we aren't and I and Joni brought this up too, is that we do not want to make those buckets too constrictive because, as pointed out, the website maintenance right now goes towards digital advertising to point back to the website to try to be people in. And so that can be misleading when you're looking at this budget. And in other ways, we don't want those buckets to be too restrictive because as Joni pointed out, we're in 2025. How we're gonna be advertising things in 2028 or 2029 are definitely gonna be different than how we're advertising things now.

Yeah. So we wanna make sure whatever marketing firm comes in to help with those things

Mhmm.

We're not doing too constrictive constrictive a bucket for them that our money isn't being used in a way that's gonna help our our bottom line for our businesses in town.

Yeah. Is there any other feedback from anybody regarding this topic aside from those two main points? I know we've heard quite a bit from mister Holsapple. Does anybody else have additional feedback aside?

So Connor wanted to speak. Connor, can you unmute?

I did? Hi.

You just said you're you're here, and you couldn't unmute fast enough.

Sorry. Somebody somebody asked if I asked if I had anything, and I couldn't get to my screen quick enough. Gotcha. Everything's good. Sorry.

Alright.

I I have one more area Yeah.

Go ahead, Eric. Kevin.

One of the things is that I had mentioned that I think is we we should have some kind of way to evaluate the effectiveness of the contract that points back to the goals in our strategic plan. It's like maintaining, improving benefits to local businesses and local economy. So there's so right now, it's more activity based. Did they turn in a report? Did they do this?

But I would really try to encourage thinking about metrics that really can be tied back to more directly to our key goals. Another area that I don't have a particular opinion

on

it yet because we've gotten so little information, which is the NMDOT co op. I think it's like assumed that because they do this match that it's a fantastic deal and so on and so forth because we get these many dollars for every dollar we spend. But as I looked at the results that have been shown to us over a couple of over the months that I've been here, the it looks like a mixed bag. Some of those things look to be effective. Some of those don't look to be that effective.

And when you look at the markets that are available for us to target, they don't necessarily align, as I recollect, with our strongest markets. So I think that whole NMDOT thing, we should be looking at real hard, whether it be the mix between things. The other thing that's a real that's a little funky to me too is the lack of control of the messaging we have. And we talked about that earlier, like the things you mentioned, Jen, and things that others mentioned about. We only have so much latitude in what they present about us if we buy into that program.

You know, just not to say that it's a proven idea or anything, but something that just struck me intuitively is a way better idea of just looking at the things as getting some billboards in Albuquerque or something like that because that's our strongest market. But it's not one of the ones that gets that well addressed by the NMDOT program. So if we could work with NMDOT to say, could you offer some things that really better aligned with our market? They as I read their process, it allows for having those kind of discussions.

They they do allow that with their flex grant, but it is not a two to one match. I will say that.

So so we might have a lot more effectiveness. I don't know. But but right now, it's hard to say much about all of that because we have very little info and have not really had any chance chance to understand that very well, how well that works for us. And it's also not the major part, but a significant part of what's in this contract.

Well, and I guess there's no way to know or there's no metric you could put in place in any case. I mean, right now we do New Mexico two cooperative advertising of $15,000 and with a two for one match that gives us $30,000 of marketing. And we have no way to know the difference between what $15,000 of our own marketing would do versus what $30,000 of New Mexico True marketing does. And I don't know how to come up with a metric that would allow you to compare the two. Yeah.

Well and I I will note, yeah, while there is only 15,000 in that contract, the county is paying additional monies out of our funds to increase that amount, which is why it was about 6 I think it was about 66,000, last year. That was the total amount, and the rest of that was paid for by the county. Okay.

And that's important for us to know, Ellen, if we're if if two point one point three is really part of our purity. So but we have zero visibility on these things.

But what I'm hearing is that as part of this, metrics need needs to be looked at and evaluated because I don't agree with Mr. Holsapple's total idea that metrics are just how much is spent in the in the county or that sort of thing. Yeah. I do think that you have to look at investment long term. And sometimes having people come in and visit now where they don't spend a lot of money brings back a visitor two years, three years, four years from now where they do spend, they do a family vacation, or they do some thing along those lines, and there's not currently I mean, there's no way to measure that in metrics either moving forward.

And so looking at metrics could be part of what we ask for as part of this RFP if we want those metrics to change, because I think I'm trying to think through how to say thismetrics do matter, but having the right metrics is what matters. If you have metrics that just aren't encompassing enough or are too encompassing, it doesn't give you the data you want either.

And I would agree. And I think what I said wasn't just dollars and cents. What I said was John. Is what are we maintaining and improving benefits to local businesses and local economy? And that's a much broader hunting ground. And spending is absolutely a part of it, but I've never meant to suggest that there's some narrow one answer to the equation.

No. I think there I I think the whole of what I'm hearing is there are definitely multiple variables that matter, and there are multiple return on investments that you can look at. And that's Right. My personal opinion. I think it sounds like many people here agree with that, that it's not just one number tells all in the story of tourism in Los Alamos County. And I think a big part of this conversation is us recognizing that part.

Yeah. Joni, go ahead.

It's so I just wanted to clarify a couple things. We get very detailed reports from the New Mexico tourism department. So to say that we don't is not accurate. When when you look at marketing effectiveness, there's two things we're gonna look at. So sometimes when you run an ad, somebody sees it, they click, they book, they come immediately. For other people, that's a longer process. So the metrics that we always look at with our advertising that we do get from New Mexico True as well as from everything Sunny five zero five does is we look at the number of impressions, so how many people were served up the ad in whatever format. And then if it's a digital platform, we we can track their journey. How far did they go into the website? Did they go to the website? Did they look at different pages, etcetera.

And then Because you also I'm not trying to interrupt, Joni. I just from your previous stuff, you've talked about how long somebody spends on a website is something that you track the bounce rate.

Exactly. So and then, ultimately, we wanna look at, you know, when somebody does get to town, what are they doing? Where are they going? What are they spending their money on? So it's kind of two different metrics that you're gonna be looking at along the traveler's journey.

Mhmm. Thank you for clarifying that, Joni. I do think the point that Joni just made. I mean, the fact that she knows we're talking about bounce rates. We're looking at impressions.

We're looking at journey. I think, definitely, when you're looking at the RFP, we wanna make sure that whoever applies, you know, to to to pick up this contract is someone who is very familiar with Digital marketing. Yeah. And also though, to a certain extent, Los Alamos digital marketing because through my own work, I know that we our digital marketing and the way we work is we're very much a a Facebook based community, which is not true across

all counties or all community, which is unreal compared to the last three places I've lived. Yeah. It's an anomaly.

So it's definitely an anomaly, and if you bring someone in who's not familiar with that dynamic and that cultural aspect either, they're not going to be as effective in their marketing when they first start. But we do have to get through to what we're gonna vote on as to what we want to make sure that's reflected in this RFP, and we're running starting to run short on time. So I want to make sure that we're all on the same board and and that Ellen has this down. We have been talking about the fact that we want, like I said earlier, our data subscription and the analysis there may be more emphasis placed in that. Someone who is not a new company, but a company that has some background and experience in dealing with the online platforms, in dealing with a county or a culture that's a little bit different than other places because we are unique, we feel, in the way we are.

And I thought there was one other one I had. Oh, metrics. Yep. And the return on investment. So looking at those metrics and looking at our return on investment and then also looking to make sure we do not make those buckets too tight so that any company coming in does not feel like they I mean, don't even rush this up. Yeah. They're just hogtied. I don't know a better word. Sorry. Restricted. I'm like, there's got to be a better word. I don't have a better word. So as the board comes, does everyone I don't know. Do we vote one by one or this was a discussion based,

so you actually don't need to vote at all. If you guys are all in agreement and on the same page, if you just wanna ask everyone, yes, you can. But I will note it is 01:37, Dana, because I

know

you're on

the Yeah. Time

And so what I wanna do is just make sure that we've captured our discussion here today and that we go ahead and make those recommendations moving forward, and those are all in our notes. And everybody's happy with what has happened, and they don't wanna add anything else. All right. I'm getting a lot of shaking hands. Joni, do you have any I got a shaking head there. Connor, I can't see, but give me a thumbs up, Connor.

Good here.

Okay. Awesome. So knowing that Dana needs to leave, we do have our monthly reports oh, wait. Wait.

I

have more before that.

F y twenty six budget for Lodgers tax.

Mhmm. So let's get to that first. I'm scrolling. I'm scrolling.

Yeah. No. I I almost skipped it entirely.

This might be easier. There we go. Alright. So I just wanted to give you an update on the f y twenty six budget. As I mentioned before, this process isn't cut and dried.

It's it's definitely lengthy, and there are multiple parts involved. So the lodgers tax advisory board was approved by county council on April 23. The next steps in this process, the budget is then submitted to the New Mexico Department of Finance on June 1. And then on July 31, the final budget along with the fourth quarter report for Los Alamos County will be sent to DFA, which is that Department of Finance administration again. And then the final budget is usually approved the September by DFA.

So that is the process for what the next steps are with this. As previously mentioned, this was approved by our council. I can tell you that this year, we're pretty much in line with what our projections were. We we have no concern about that. We were I'm trying to look at these as a whole and try to tell your story a bit better here.

We did anticipate that there were a few different things that we werewe were originally seeing a decline when we submitted our budget in terms of tourism, so we anticipated potentially fewer people lodging. Therefore, we anticipated the budget to be a bit less, I think. Revenues revenues, it looks like we're anticipating pretty flat as a whole, but one of the things they did ask us was visitation, and I can tell you that we anticipated a bit of a dip. But again, in 2025 thus far, we are actually seeing the opposite, which is which is good news so far, which means we're on target for what we anticipated. I don't really have anything else to add to it other than it's in the process right now, and it's just gonna keep moving through that process and doing its thing at this point.

Does anybody have any other questions? I'll try to answer best I can.

Is materials and supplies the visitor building?

Yeah. So materials and supplies is that funding for the adventure guides, other print materials, things like that that we offer. So all of the brochures, that's where your brochures are coming from that we have in the community and things we put off the hill. Obviously, the adventure guides are the big push, and and they're not because they're a bigger item, they do cost more. And then things like including shipping so we can ship them to other visitor centers, things like that, that's part of that materials and supplies funding.

When we added the kiosks to both visitor centers, that came from the materials and supplies and that's how Mel gets some of her data and analysis for where people are coming from, what they came for, that sort of thing. And and so that's really what that part is for. And then administration is just for essentially auditing purposes, and that's what that funds for.

Last year, there was $55,000 line item for printing. So are we printing way less or to then fit it within that smaller number? Or what's the underlying underlying basis basis on on that? That?

So something to note is that I believe we can carry over lodgers tax monies. So any money that was not spent that was planned for will get rolled over when we get to that part of the process in our budget year. So even though that number looks lower, I can tell you it probably won't be just because of extra monies that we had kind of sitting in the account already. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So there's money that didn't get spent last year that's gonna be available to supplement?

Yeah, for the new adventure guides, yeah. And in addition to that, yeah, anything with the print material. We are analyzing, you know, how much money we are spending in print in a world of digital, but things are still moving in this community and people are still picking those items up when they arrive here, and we're working to get better metrics from Mel who's refilling the kiosks so we know exactly, you know, how much that amount is and how how how much people are frequenting certain locations, if that makes sense.

That's an area where I think it bears looking at what is what are the things that we print and what we should be printing. And that's one of the areas where $8,000, for instance

Right. It makes a

in terms of of of what we were talking about earlier. What something that's been drummed into us meeting after meeting is our statutory requirement is to advise the council on the budget for the lodgers taxman. How did we end up not having any input on the budget?

Larissa speak on that one.

So while the largest tax advisory board, in addition to our other boards and commissions, serves as an advisory board to counsel, unless counsel specifically calls upon you or one of the departments calls upon you to provide a recommendation, usually, you would have to indicate in a formal written document that you have a desire to weigh in on that. But, also, more specifically, these budget conversations, relate a lot more to, I think, the operational side of things based on staff requests, staffing needs, and things like that. And perhaps don't go into the territory as much of, I suppose, policy considerations or legislative considerations just because those are a little bit more amorphous than being able to determine the day to day needs of the people in this building. So I think if there was an item that you felt particularly strongly about, you would have to make counsel aware that you want to provide a recommendation. They would have to accept that.

Or otherwise, they would have to specifically call for your recommendation, and at that time, you would be, permitted to, address them. However, presumptively, that is not within your purview to provide, input as to budget discussions considering how much that is related to operations and not necessarily the activities of the boards and commissions. Although the budget, as it relates to each department, certainly has to do with, you know, the logistics that are required to make boards and commissions, you know, happen, availability of staff to be able to stay after hours when, we need people to meet or the board to meet, being able to have our I'm members be present and make sure that we have we compensate them fairly for their time here. So in some ways, they do consider, boards and commissions to the extent it is a function of a department, to facilitate those. However, if we invoked every board or commission to weigh in on budget conversations, I don't think we'd ever get a budget finalized at any point.

We went through three trainings about how this is our statutory job.

Just a quick comment. Thanks, y'all. I'm sorry I've got to go to a Zoom meeting. But I will tell you that the beginning of this year, we are seeing a reduction like you were talking about. We're seeing a reduction a little bit in our occupancy with the government travel. We're also seeing a reduction in our ADR. So if that continues, it is good for us to be on that more cautious side. But my one question would be, so when you have rollover money or when you have the money we don't spend, where does that sit the in the financial?

It goes directly into whatever bucket it's currently in.

I gotcha.

Does that make sense? Yep. So I couldn't move my extra material supplies into contractual stuff so we could have more data fied. That's just not how it it would operate. Does that make sense?

It's not a budget revision.

Yeah. Alright, y'all. Thank you so much. Sorry.

Thanks, Dana. Thanks for coming today. Yes, ma'am. Appreciate it.

Another question I had is, are there any capital projects budgeted that relate to visitation or tourism?

Any capital projects?

I don't believe so. It's my understanding that phase two is not in the plan this coming year for the White Rock Visitor Center. That's the part with the food truck pads.

There's not anything out there in the future projection for, like, a visitor center or anything like that? No. Not that I because I know that part is like it's there's a ten year forecast or something on it. Okay?

Counselor, do you wanna chime in on that?

Do you

have any hindsight on that? Thank you.

Thank you.

I guess the most general way that I can answer the questions about the budget is that all that should be public information that you should be able to find all the details of the budget and, anything related to, any board or commission that is coordinated with the department, that should roll up into the department's recommendations, that are vetted and prioritized by county management before it is sent over to county council for review and approval. So, you know, regarding capital projects, I didn't bring my my huge budget book with me. There's a long list of different projects. I don't recall anything like that on our capital project list. I know that, with all the vetting and prioritization that went on this year, you know, we really had it cut down compared to, prior requests because of the fact that, you know, we're just not seeing the amount of, money flowing through GRT that we had in the past.

So, you know, we're we're just basically trying to, you know, get, some of the projects that are ongoing or or that are considered a high priority like broadband, you know, try to continue those types of projects. But, you know, I think all the departments, you know, they were asked to really, you know, think hard about what they really needed before any kind of request went to counsel for, review and approval. So we we didn't see many items that were, you know, an additional ask to the standard budget. It was it was very, very, small compared to previous budgets that I've seen. Does that does that help, or are you looking for more assistance?

No. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you, counselor. Alright. I think, we are running really short on time. The rest of the reports are in our agenda packet. Sorry, Melanie. Sorry.

I don't have anything exciting to report anything.

Okay. And sorry, Joni.

It's okay. Okay.

Certainly look over those reports. And if you have any questions, get those questions to Ellen, and we can certainly ask both Sunny five zero five and Melanie to report on those in our next meeting, which is June 17. All sound good? No one's typing away. And if we are done, then I think I can just adjourn the meeting. Alright. Thanks, everyone.