City Council - Regular Meeting

Let's say about 1 minute. We'll get started here. So, if anybody wants to settle down, make sure you use the restroom ahead of time. This, that, and the other thing. And we'll get started in a second. Okay. Monday, May 4th, we got city council workshop starting up here. It's 11:46. Couple minutes late. A minute late. Um, we're going to go through roll call. Seth, you want the floor? Well, here we'll do roll call first.

Oh, okay. Seth is here. Uh, Victoria here. Eric here. Joel here. Indra here. Rick here. Kathleen here. And Rob here. And myself is here. And it looks like we've got a full house. So, first up on the agenda is Main Street performance metrics. Yes, sir. Sir, Seth.

Yeah. I'm going to be recusing myself from pretty much the entire meeting. Uh, I do want to clarify though to both the council and the public um that my recent no vote on the reconsideration was strictly due due to process. Um, the council had already unanimously approved that and I was not at that meeting. So anyways, all right. Thank you, Seth. All right, first up on the agenda again is Main Street performance metrics and I will hand the microphone over to Dana. Start us out.

Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Good afternoon, council. Again, I'm Dana Pierce, economic development division here. Um, and we're going to take a look at uh main street metrics, the subject and summary. We're going to review those metrics today and take a close look at the contract details and dates and then also just discuss some next steps. It relates to the council goal of economic growth by encouraging economic vitality, growth and diversification and ensuring downtown is a vibrant neighborhood and attractive destination. So, some important dates to note. On October 15th, there was a resolution that passed that awarded $50,000 in funding for one year to Main Street Grants Pass. And then in December on the 17th, a resolution authorized the city manager to enter into one-year agreement. On January 23rd of this year, the contract was executed. And on March 2nd, the executive director, Dan Ma, who's here today, uh, was hired. On April 13th, Dan Small came um before the council at a workshop and did a presentation on in a progress report. Just a bit more about the contract details. This is just lists the scope of work that's in the contract. Um, this is the expectation that we have of Main Street Grants Pass to provide merchant engagement and coordination promotion and activations that will lead to more foot traffic downtown. Um, help with some design assistance related to lighting, facade, windows, that sort of thing. Um, also um capacity and sustainability. So, so to maintain a membership program, find other ways to raise funds like basic grants and sponsorships. Um and then reporting also is a part of their um scope of work, quarterly reports and then also staying engaged with the city liaison which happens to be me. Administration and communication.

The key performance metrics that we're looking at today that are listed in the contract are these three to establish membership of at least 30 members. to establish four active pillars that are staffed by volunteers from local businesses, property owners, and members at large and then to coordinate at least three events. It does show some examples here. The progress report that was presented on the 13th um showed us that their members are at 35. We have uh the four pillars subcommittees. They all met in April and they have regularly scheduled monthly meetings. And then uh for coordinating at least three events, they did coordinate the first Friday events for February, March and April. But here's also a list of other events that they um are intending to um coordinate throughout the year. So, the next steps at this point um according to the contract, we'll continue to have monthly communications um and receive our quarterly reports that's coming up soon. Um and then as far as the contract, review the program performance and funding availability following the receiver of court. So, at this point, I'm leaving it open to questions and discussion.

Thank you, Dana. [clears throat] Uh any questions from counselors? Victoria. No, that I was just adjusting my glasses actually. Got any questions, Eric? Nope. Joel,

um ju just an observation and a and a question and we talked about this before I think with Brad. Um this isn't the only uh grant that we have for economic development. We got several others and that that kind of progress report is really good feedback for the council. And some of them are good and some of them are bad and some of them are ugly, but that's life. But uh so I I think this is a step in the right direction for internally with staff and council and how they look at these things and we don't just give money away and then wonder what happened. So thank you. Thank you.

Andrew, do you have any questions? Rick, do you have any questions? Thank you. So Dana, in the future, do you anticipate that they would be providing information as to the type of membership um as well as the number and other and more details on their programs? Um that's not currently part of the contract that we have. It doesn't have a breakdown of members. It just says um a total number of members. Um we do have Dan here. If you wish to ask him directly, you can speak to that, I guess. Okay. Thank you, Kim.

Dan, would you like to respond to that breakdown of the membership in general terms? Yeah, thanks for the question and uh nice to see you all again. Um, so in terms of membership count, like like Dana mentioned, the types of memberships that are currently listed under the key performance metrics for the contract are not defined, but I'm happy to provide those metrics if the council deems it, you know, valuable information to have. I think it would give us a better insight of your your operation.

Understood. Yeah, for sure. And I mean again I'm happy to engage in those conversations especially as we look forward into subsequent years um for you know this contract that we have for this current year. Um 30 members is what we were tasked with with getting. We're happy to continue to grow that throughout the rest of the year. Um but if it aids in some really productive conversation, I'm happy to do it. Okay. Thank you. You bet. Kathleen, you have any questions? Yeah, and it's probably for Dan as well. Um, so I'm noticing that your events that you want to host um are brand new,

like stuff that's never been done before. And I see that a lot of you are moving in that direction. But I'm wondering when you first when we first were talking with Seth and about Main Street and how this was going, they were talking about taking other some of the other events that are annual events. Do you see that coming forward or

is that not on your scope anymore? No, happy to have those conversations. And actually, uh, Dana and I have had conversations about Main Street taking over the Christmas tree lighting as one of those events. Um, and then there's also in other city events with, uh, Art Along the Rogue and those types of things. And we'll continue to have those conversations, I think, probably as we look into year two taking on more ownership of those things. But we're happy to be, you know, strong partners and collaborate as much as we can to make sure that they're successful in the meantime. M is it a little bit that they're more expensive than some of the other ones that you're forecasting or why would you put them second?

Um I don't think that there's uh a strong reason to say that there would be second. In fact, I mean if there's there's already a current owner of that. Um I will acknowledge that I've been in this role for about a month and a half, two months. And so as we're continuing on to uh broaden our scope and be able to uh sustain, I think that bandwidth more than anything else uh is probably the biggest reason why those conversations haven't been that yes, we'll fully take them over as opposed to we're happy to be a support role in this current time. Does that answer your question? Okay. Sure. Thank you. [clears throat] Robbie, you got any questions?

Um just two two quick questions, I guess. Um, following up on on uh Rick's um question or request, I guess. Yeah. Um, I just wanted to add a little clarity. U, I know I sent an email to Dan and Mayor Council, and I'm not sure if everyone's read that, but thank you for that, by the way. I I know you read it because you responded this morning. Yeah.

Um, and thank you for that. So, um yeah, with regards to uh the membership, um you know, as Dana was saying earlier, um I think that anyone on your member list or anyone on your sponsor list has all got a common common goal of wanting a more vibrant and attractive downtown. There's no there's no maybe about it. I mean, that's that's consistent. Um for me um the people to uh and members who are basically don't have we'll say brick and mortar walk-in businesses downtown. Um [clears throat] they could know secondhand uh how well that's going and and for them they you know they might want to eat downtown, they might recreate downtown. They might want the downtown to be great because it's great for the town in general. Sure. But as far as knowing um whether or not on a day-to-day basis uh Main Street is helping businesses downtown do better business uh bringing more foot traffic and just in general being of value. Um only the people that have walk-in downtown brick-and-mortar businesses can give you can give council firsthand feedback on that. the other businesses, ones that do business online or have um uh businessto business um uh models rather than business to customer models. Uh the only way for them to know is for them to talk to people who have brick and mortars downtown. That's the only way the council could know how valuable Main Street is. And those those to me are the ones that uh I I I value the opinion of those people more from a council perspective and from a perspective of how having to allocate resources. Um I want to know from the people who actually are being affected on a daily basis. Um the others that's kind of secondhand stuff that I can observe myself secondhand but I actually also observe it firsthand because I happen to be downtown. But to me, getting back to Rick's point, uh, a

profile of your membership and who actually are, uh, brickandmortar walk-in walk-in businesses downtown for me is critical.

Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I would say too, I mean, the one of the key performance metrics is establishing the four pillars, and that's made up of business owners, property owners, and members at large. And I think that there's a really wonderful opportunity for um, a cross-pollination of ideas, and for a lot of collaboration and education. to your point, they don't necessarily live that firsthand, but they do have a stake in the way that our downtown district should be moving, right? I mean, as a community community member at large, they should have uh some ownership stake. And so, I can understand uh your point of view and your perspective. And I also would challenge that in saying that there is a lot of value with having community members and property owners uh included in that member count. So, I'm happy to diversify the account. Um, if that makes your guys' life easier and it makes our conversations moving forward a lot easier, I think that that's really valuable conversation, but I would just speak to, you know, the other types of memberships that Main Street acknowledges um and considers extremely valuable to the conversation.

Sure. Thank Thank you. And then I have a a a quick question also on um uh it says design assistance. um says quick consults for lighting, facade, signage, windows, uh maintain uh a pipeline list. Um I'm just wondering and as everybody knows um the uh pretty much well not the whole CBD but mostly downtown is historic district and I'm just wondering if you're going to give uh even though it says quick consults with lighting facade signage or maybe Dana can answer this. How would uh is there anybody that has um historic expertise that is involved in any of your um any of your groups and would be helping to give those kinds of

the head the chair of the HPSC sits on our design committee. Yes. So he sits on the design committee. Yes sir. And he those are the types of projects that that committee will be responsible for. Okay. So he will be one of the chief consults and making sure that anything that we move forward uh or recommend uh would meet any sort of city code. So awesome. Okay. Thank you. You bet. Perfect. Further [clears throat] questions. Uh, Victoria,

so I thought maybe you could just give us a quick rundown, maybe a minute or less about um successes that you are that you want to tell us about or um any any quotes from the businesses downtown that especially with First Friday happening, things like that, just to uh tell us about how you guys are doing from your perspective or theirs that might not be in in the presentation.

Sure. Thanks for asking the question. I think that there's um if anybody had the opportunity to be downtown last Friday, uh the energy was very high. Um I was as I was walking around going business to business, we had several openings that day. There was a ribbon cutting ceremony for uh the Laughing Clam who had their 30th year anniversary. So that was headed up by the Chamber of Commerce. And I'm just so proud to um be able to even be affiliated with the chamber as a as a partner here in Grants Pass and um be able to be at those types of events. There's a lot of really amazing growth happening. U McKenna Lair opened a new store as well as uh Jen Michaels opened a new store on Friday. We had a concert at the hive and it was buzzing. I don't know if you all had an opportunity to be there. Uh but the energy was high. We had a lot of folks down there. Um I've been working really closely with some members of our board, John Glam in particular, who's been um the the one who's headed up First Friday and kind of taking a lot of ownership of that um prior to me being hired. Um, and we've been working on a couple different ideas uh to continue to elevate that experience from um a curation of the types of vendors and placement of those vendors to be able to encourage foot traffic farther down. Um, historically we've had, you know, First Friday kind of stops at H Street or I Street, you know, but we would love to be able to include, you know, the entire downtown district and incorporate more of Seventh Street as well, you know. So, um, looking for more opportunities to include merchants on that side. Um, we have a couple ideas for First Fridays coming up in July that I think will be really great. Um, in terms of an online application where actually people will be able to engage in that scavenger hunt similar to what we did in March. Um, if anybody remembers from my previous presentation a couple of weeks ago, uh, we did a scavenger hunt in March and folks went around looking for leprechauns and they scanned a QR code. Um, and the one who we randomly selected a winner from the folks who participated um, and she received a gift basket of $750. She wrote us a super kind letter saying that she hadn't been downtown in

years. Um that these types of things are uh what I mean keep her in Grant's past and that she's excited for more of it. Um we had a really nice interaction with her. Um I think that that's a major win. I think that that's the thing that's probably top of mind. Um and folks are excited and the people that we're representing um you know sat with Mr. PEL in a really exciting meeting um last week where we're talking about you know opportunities for advocacy you know and to uh speaking specifically with the food and beverage merchants on 8th Street um and helping them kind of uh put together you know some thoughts that to write a letter to make sure that their voices are heard in things that are going to be happening in their back door. So um those types of things are wins. I asked them at the end of the meeting if they felt like it was a productive use of their time. They said yes absolutely and we're excited for the followup that later this week. So, thanks for the opportunity. Yeah,

thank you. Further questions, I got Indra. Hi, nice to see you. You too. Um, I'm I'm not so much concerned with membership and sponsorship because the goal is to bring in revenue. So, I'm concerned about the revenue bringing in because I know we only gave you uh half of what you Main Street

Sure. wanted at the beginning to see what you're going to do and it looks like you're picking up and doing things and that's that's really great. I think for me as far as going forward with funding though, I just want to make sure I would like to see revenue forecasts and projections and that what you're doing. The excitement's good, you know, and that's good to hear. Is it really helping businesses um profit margins go up and and helping the downtown? So um just future looking forward if you're going to come back to ask for money. Yeah.

Um that's kind of what I'd like to see the business plan projections going forward what you have planned and then because is it a a one-time funding thing? I know that's been talked about or I know some Main Streets get continual funding from the city. So, that's something the council is going to have to consider and look at. Is is Main Street something we want to continually fund or is it something you are going to eventually be able to go off on your own? So, those are the things I'm looking forward. Thank you.

Yeah, excited to have those conversations, too. And we will be sure to bring some of that to those future conversations. Thanks. Uh further questions I got Rob.

Yeah, to follow up on uh what Indra was referring to, I think um it was uh a month or two ago and I I don't even remember I don't know if it's it's still um up online, but there was uh some representation that uh the cruise was going to be funded by uh a $50,000 uh um uh sponsorship uh funds coming in. And I have no idea if that was just aspirational or if that had already happened. So I'm just wondering, can you speak at all to uh how um you're planning on funding the expenses having to do with if you know now uh um

we have a lot of partners that have that have come in on several different levels for sponsorship. Um right now we're sitting at about $75,000 for our budget for that event. Okay. So that's that's your budget. That's what you've already that's what we we have currently raised. Yeah. or have commitments from our sponsors to raise those funds. Yes. Great. Thank you. Y perfect. Any last questions? All right. Uh thank you very much for your participation and I'm understanding this was more of an educational and an update seminar. So we don't have any action going forward. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. Thanks. Next on the agenda, we have uh destin destination marketing organization contract. Well, good afternoon, mayor, council. Thank you for the time today. And let me get my audio visual up and running here. Hold on just a minute, Doug. Um, so, um, I'm going to go ahead and, um, do a quick introduction if that's okay and then, um, we'll get you up there and go and done. Okay, I just have a few quick slides. Again, I'm Dana um, and we're looking at the DMO contract. Um just a few introductory slides just noting the subject and summary. We're looking at the contract for the city's destination marketing organization. It does relate to the council goals of economic growth. We're going to go over just basics of what's a DMO. I'm going to go ahead and have Doug provide that background and then when it comes back to me, we'll look at the contract renewal changes and then leave it open for questions. So here we are. Oh, I guess I'll tell you really quick what a DMO is before I introduce Doug. But um it is a destination marketing organization and here in Grants Pass, we have Josephine County Visitors Association who is doing business as visit Grants Pass. So you probably have heard those names interchangeably. The city contributes 28% of the net lodging tax to fund marketing efforts to promote tourism here. And um those funds go to visit grantspass to do that promotion. Under the Oregon revised statute and the grants pass municipal code, promotion funds are restricted and um they really have to be focused on

attracting people from more than 50 miles away or leading to overnight stays. All of that said, I'd like to introduce you to Doug Bradley. He is the chair of our tourism advisory committee. He's also on the board of Josephine County Visitors Association and a hotel year here in town and he has a brief presentation that I'm going to pull up and um he can take you through it. Can I get a little bit more clarification before I pass it on to Doug? Um can you give a little bit of a scenario synopsis, a little history and how Grants Pass actually got to a DMO? That's what I'm have Doug do right now.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Sorry if I'm taking away your thunder. I just really want that point to be stressed today. Uh that is actually my whole purpose for being here today. Awesome. Thank you very much, sir. To come in and share with you where did Viz Pass come from? Why are we here? And what did we have? Can you check your microphone? Is that better? Oh, thank you very much, sir. Um so just a little history on Visit Grand Pass. Why are we here? How do we end up here? Where did we come from? And why does Visit Grants pass make sense? Well, I do my own PowerPoints. I didn't mean for that to happen. So the [laughter]

So, where to begin? In 2010, our DMO was being operated uh out of the Chamber of Commerce. Um I'm not sure too much about what was going on back then. I do know that kind of when I came in that ended and that's when um the chamber contract or it came to John Bowen um and he operated the DMO uh as I believe a city employee. He did that until about 2020 uh from 2019 uh to 2020. In 2020, the city formed a PAVE committee to audit the work of the DMO. PAVE led to the DMO pros report, which is the template used to form the Joseph County Visitors Association today. In 2020, the city of Grants Pass appointed a starter board to begin forming JCVA. We had our first meeting in January of 2021. Our first JVCA board meeting was held uh in May 20 uh 21. 2011 to 2020, we had a $300,000 annual budget. This is with John Bowen, responsible for downtown events. TLT dollars financing local events. Zero dollars were being spent outside for outside marketing or advertising or promotion. The PAVE audit began in 2020 and DMO pros hired was hired to provide city of grants pass tourism downtown service analysis and recommendations. And this is where the starter board for JCVA was formed. This is the original agenda, I think, for the PAVE committee that I just thought I'd throw up there. It gives you a few of the members that were on that committee. Um, the city tourism program was run for a short time by a city employee. While we were forming visit Grants Pass, um, Steven Sable had stepped in for a short time and then the 2020 uh, starter board formed. The first meeting was held December 10th in 2020. Attorney Carrick Larson, attorney Eric Larson hired uh to

file our articles of incorporation and we were incorporated in February 2 of 2021. Hired attorney Jennifer Nichols who filed our 501c6 and we be began working on what is the JCDA contract we are operating from today. Uh began forming what is the permanent board of directors today. This is the original starter board letter where the city had appointed us uh to kind of follow the lead of the DMO pros contract and bring that to reality. And then uh the board is formed. Uh May 21, 2021, the inaugural board meeting held, objectives of JCVA were discussed and shared, officer roles and requirements discussed, officers assigned, and roles filled. hiring committee was formed to search for an executive director and we hired Searchwide Global uh as an executive recruitment company. Here's the inaugural board member uh board meeting agenda. Here's the original contract for Searchwide Global. And Tori Middlesat was hired and her first meeting as executive director of Visit Grants Pass was held on October 15, 2021. And here's um her first board meeting. And the top priorities of Vizigrants pass one form a nonprofit to serve as the destination marketing organization for the city and county offering greater transparency. Uh city should allocate 30% of TLT uh funds to the organization and progressively increase the percentage over the next five years. form a board of directors from stakeholders to oversee and operate visit grants pass daily operations are at the discretion of the board and you know one thing as I'm standing here it is not lost on us uh how important our relationship is with the council and the city and we've enjoyed a lot of support um but in the

past it feels like we kind of treat tourism as we're giving us an allowance um this is a huge investment in the e economic IC development of this community and I would implore the council to begin looking at it as more of an investment and what can you do to help us. Uh we have numbers to show, we have a lot of information. I can't imagine uh moving forward um that we wouldn't want to consistently go down the road of supporting uh Joseph County Visitors Association and Visit Grants Pass. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have anything else to add, Dana? Yeah, I'll go ahead and continue on with my presentation. Thank you for providing that background. Doug,

can I ask one quick question? Dana, yes. Can I ask one quick Doug? You just said um you used it uh two different entities. You said Josephine County Visitor Association and Visit Grant uh visit uh Grants Pass. What's the distinction between those two? Uh, Joseph County Visitors Association is the nonprofit. We do business as visit grants pass. Okay. I I just thought maybe I was missing something. So, it's basically the same thing. Mhm. Right. They're the same. Okay. Yeah. We have a question, mayor. Is it We're not in question period yet, but go ahead.

It concerns the history. So, I'm wondering historically, um, how did usually and and maybe Dana can answer too when we contract with organizations, we do RFPs. So, I'm wondering historically, was there an RFP done and how did Visit Grants pass or John Bowen get in that? Was it uh an RFP with applications and council chose one? How did that occur? Historically

there there was one with John and an RFP did go on. Several entities had applied for that position. Um as far as visit grants pass DMO pros was essentially hired to lay out what the plan was and that's what the city and the council had opted to follow at that point.

DMO pros. So the city [clears throat] council at the time of the formation looked at opportunities uh to comply with OS and the usage of those dollars and we looked at a number of alternatives doing an RFP seeing what's out there etc. And after we did a DMO pros was an independent consultant who came in and and helped provide recommendations uh to council on what actions would be best. council at the time chose the opportunity to create a destination marketing organization. So, an RFP process wasn't necessarily used because they decided it was in the best interest to create an independent board who would then operate and manage the the the DMO process. So the DMO has its own its own board and that's what the city utilized some of its resources to to help create that framework, get that legal entity going and then contract with that legal entity for those services.

Thank you. I just wanted to understand that. Perfect.

Great. So um now I'm just going to go through a quick timeline of some important dates related to the contract. So, this contract was as executed on June 2nd, 2021. It does expire on June 2nd of this year. It's a 5-year contract for tourism promotion services. In July or from July to December of last year, 2025, there were conversations between staff and visit grants passed regarding the transitioning of the downtown welcome center operations to their entity in September to December. in that time frame and we had um internal department review so with community development finance public works. We looked at the cost of the downtown welcome center and also evaluated a potential use agreement with visit grants past on February 9th. There was a council memo that went out um regarding the changes to the downtown welcome center operations and it did include a draft contract for renewal. On March 18th um the contract went on the council consent agenda. It was pulled at that time though because of the the passage of the HB 4148 that just happened and so our city attorney wanted to take another look at it before we sent it through on April 1st. It was again on the consent agenda and the contract was approved on April 13th. Um the DMO did come before council in that um partners workshop and provide an annual report and um on progress and then on April 15th a motion to reconsider the contract came before the council. Just a quick rundown of the contract changes. Now the majority of it was um updates to um just some basic language but the big one is the addition of the downtown welcome center services. Some of the benefits and the reasons why we were moving forward with this were the cost savings of $45,000 in temp staff. Also to have more oversight and training of specialized staff that could really

um work towards promoting downtown promoting Grants Pass as a whole um and providing that direct customer service for tourists. Um the hope is really to amplify that visitor experience and to provide that connection so that when um our marketing goes out that messaging is linked back to their experience that they have right there at the welcome center. It also um could support some of the branding efforts that um visit grants past and even the city have tried to to explore in the past like merchandise sales for example and then um services also would be based on visitor data. So in the long run, we are trying to be more efficient in that way. So that's all I really have. I'm leaving it up to questions. I know a lot of questions did go out um between council um and staff and there have been a lot of answers to those um even with our um partner here, Visit Grants Pass. So I um are there ones that have not been answered that we can help give you the answers to?

Thank you, Dana. Um further questions? Um, uh, Victoria, not not right now. Eric, do you have any further questions? No. Joel, do you have any further questions? Yeah, and I should know the answer to this, Dana, but if you can provide it for me quickly. The annual budget uh under the old contract versus the proposed annual budget under the new contract. Um, that's not something I have on the top of my head. Do you know that? So part of the contract is is based on percent 28 the 28% of lodging taxes come in. So it's we don't have a for sure amount every year where we're budgeting like well there's going to be a 3% increase this year there's going to be or whatever it is. So that percentage was the same before and it's the same now.

Correct. Correct. And but there's added responsibility now. Yes. Yes. With the same amount of money. Correct. Or same percentage. not necessarily the same amount of money because the taxes collected. Okay, thank you. Further questions? Uh, Victor or I mean, sorry, Indra, apologize. Yes, there have been so many of these agreements going around. Is this one dropped here today, the newest? And has it changed from the past ones we've received? There has been no change since the one that was on the consent agenda on April 1st. Thank you.

Further questions? Uh Rick? So when we talk about the income coming in to fund the program and percentages and so forth, doesn't that change every year based on what the income of the TLT is? It does. Yes. The the and that's one of the metrics that can be used to demonstrate success is they're bringing more dollars are coming in for the TLT. So budgets go up because we're getting more influx from those tourism dollars. So if they're not doing their job, the funding stream slows. So if the organization is asking for additional money, that may be automatic, especially if the income is coming in. Would that be

I wouldn't say it's automatic. They get, according to the contract, they get 28%. So that 28% is if they're doing a great job and bringing in a ton of tourists, um they get a larger amount. If they're need if their work needs a little improvement and they're coming in below what's anticipated, then they get less money to do it with. So it's a straight 28% and we'll have a discussion if there's any reason to ask for more. I think that would be a a good time to address why what they're getting is not sufficient. Okay. I I appreciate that clarity. Thank you. Further questions? Uh, Kathleen?

Yeah, I my question is about how we sort out these uh hotel visits. Um, I'm hearing that there I don't know is that out of the scope of what we're talking about right now, the TLT dollars basically because I'm hearing from ready ride drivers to nonprofits that there's so many people being put up in hotels now that taxpayer dollars are being used for that. And uh it's it's kind of skewing the numbers as far as how many visitors we're actually getting from how many are being housed in our hotels. I I think where you start tracking numbers is what how much are we receiving from those TLT dollars. That 12% that's on most visits, most stays in hotels.

We know what those numbers are. Everything outside of that is difficult to track and it might not be is probably not as relevant as those regular stays that generate the TLT dollars. And there there may be stays outside of that, but we don't really have a lot of control over those. Well, would it be possible to have some kind of mechanism to track um nonprofits and how many like there's just certain ones that are doing it like Asante and UK and you know, would it be possible to pull those numbers through these agencies? Probably not. They would have to voluntarily give us information like that. Further questions? Uh Rob.

Yeah. Um going back I think to what uh Rick was getting at or not getting at but just to follow up and expand on that. So um total TLDT dollars is um 28% of total TLT is what has been going to the DMO. Um can um uh JC or um or maybe Doug just uh say the last three years tell us what uh the total amount of TLT dollars that have come in the last three years. Yeah. I I I know that you've given this to us before, but if you could Yeah, slightly over uh $700,000. No, the the total total amount, not the total amount, not the 28%.

Oh, the total amount. It's going to be a little bit over $2.5 million. So, $2.5 million which year each of the last three. So, it's been dead even. Uh, it's actually declined the last two years and then this year we're going to probably see just a little bit of a an uptick by a couple percentage.

Okay. So, $2.5 million of TLT has come in for the last three years roughly. And so, the 28% of that has been pretty much exactly the same. Right. Okay. Um, thank you. And um and getting back I guess to uh following up uh or expand on Kathleen's um question or comment um you know I too had similar um similar questions about that because the two it seems like and and maybe maybe there's other metrics because I know we've talked about some other metrics or I shouldn't say we've talked but I think Dan Buck presented other metrics um I think but the two metrics that seem like the ones that are always presented to us are uh TLT dollars and occupancy percentage of hotel stays. And then getting back to what Kathleen's saying, you know, how do we know whether or not if we had a say an increase in occupancy percentage, how would we know if that's attributable to the good work of the DMO or more welfare stays? because if that's if that's going to be one of the two main main uh metrics that they're going to present, like we need to know with some certainty whether that's more welfare or that's more visitors that are coming in and spending money.

So, there was a memo or an email that went out that actually explained um how that TLT dollars are actually taken from a hotel stay. And there's some kind of metrics that I saw in that memo or email that said if they were to a certain amount of days then they um lodging tax wouldn't be applied to that stay shortterm. Mhm. Okay.

So basically when you tick about the metrics your metric is going to be more heavily weighed on the TLT actual revenue that comes in because that's going to be the actual tax for that actual room. if the room is an over is a is an extended stay which wouldn't wouldn't qualify for a TLT tax then you wouldn't see that revenue. So I think the hotel stays is not necessarily in my personal opinion as reflective of a metric as the TLT actual revenue that comes in.

Okay, thank you very much. I did read that memo and um I also added to that on the is there a possible way to um segregate out the occupancy percentage with regards to whether or not it's actual tourists or whether or not it's a welfare stay. I understand that the TLT dollars can be used by us either way. So that's a that's a real positive. But I'm just asking the question, is it possible to segregate that so we know whether or not the occupancy percentage if it goes up is attributable to the good work of the of the DMO or is it attributable more to welfare?

No, I exactly understand exactly where you're getting from. I think Stephanie will probably weigh in on this. I I would assume that's why I asked Stephanie. If you have a nonprofit um organization that's handing out v vouchers, there's going to be a privacy policy that's going to be in place. And I can say that I do not know the answer, but maybe someone here can answer that question because they're the ones that are tracking that data. So the city that's not data that we have access to. I'm I'm asking anybody in the room.

Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Weigh in. Weigh in on this, Terry. Please. I want to be careful because it's not a wholesale answer but like when we talk about in co when people were being placed when we're when you say welfare that's a broad scope but generally speaking government contracted you know if you're placing somebody into it as temporary housing those folks don't pay TLT so it's not hitting the reports it's not falsely inflating them and at the expense of maybe out of school by naming a few spots on sixth and Evelyn you've got cherries in that used to be bua They used to be a traditional lodging facility. You would look them up. You could book your stay there. They've contracted to do a lot of placements of unhoused or people for certain reasons. In those situations, a lot of times they're not paying TLT. Now, I will admit there's an exception to the rule. If if you got there through your church or a private nonprofit or somebody that just went in there and booked that room for you and the hotel, you're like, Doug doesn't know the answer. Yeah, there's a little bit of that. But across the street from the um my place, you know, I've got the travel lodge. There's no travelers in that lodge. Um and and so in two situations on those government contracted stays most of the time, there's no lodging tax dollar collected. And furthermore, if they stay more than 28 days, it becomes a landlord tenant situation and they are also exempt from lodging tax. So to both your and Kathleen's point, a little bit of an overgeneralization, but our lodging stays, daily rates, occupancy percentages are not being falsely inflated by people being placed in temporary housing.

So I I don't understand I understand about the TLT part of it. Um on the occupancy percentage, how how would that be a straightforward um uh how how would we straight uh be able to understand that from a straightforward perspective? because whoever's placing them there would increase the occupacy percentage, would it not?

Yeah. And I think that that would be a question for how and I don't know if it's JC's department on the reports that they receive, but for example, I would I'm going to guess and admittedly this is a guess that Buenosera is not reporting right now. They're [clears throat] not uh [sighs] a lodging property and and so JC I I don't know on your back end. I know that the reports that Dan and I look look at are simply based on those rooms that are used for lodging. And you're going to notice regularly. I mean, every single month that we receive that report, the number of rooms available changes. And we haven't built new hotels. We haven't taken I mean, knocked any down, but the number of rooms reported changes every single month. primarily for that reason. A little bit of that has to do with like Airbnb, VBO, and people that maybe just came and stayed back in their house instead of renting it out, but those are reflected um they're taken out. That making sense?

Yeah. Yeah, it does. And and you just happen to mention uh Airbnb also. I have no idea how many Airbnb rooms are available in Grass Pass. May maybe you do. Is that at all is that at all considered in the occupancy percentage or or no?

It certainly is. Yeah. And again, that's why it that's why it matters. I mean, if you had an Airbnb and you only rent it out January through March, th that room is online. You come back and live in it in the summer. It comes offline. So, by the simple math, I mean, you have one less room, but you have no occupancy there. So those numbers change all the time, you know, and Rob, I think you've been around long enough and Aaron can attest that in the very beginning getting tracking from third party uh platforms like VBO, Airbnb was very difficult. I mean, City Legal spent lots and lots of time on this and still it's it's a bit of a challenge. Like when Doug sends in his report, it's exactly how many rooms, you know, how much per night. Airbnb and the third parties just kind of give you a lump sum report and say here you go and they take them on and offline. It's not as detailed of a report but I can tell you because I'm very concerned about this and consider myself a watchdog that the city city staff and legal have spent years working on collections of third-party short-term rentals and it changes all the time. I mean it's next next day it's hip camp or somebody parking their trailer in my driveway. It's not just big platforms. Um, but the city uh I ask a lot of questions in that category has uh spent a lot of time making sure that we're collecting from those and the reporting gets better and better all the time.

Okay. So, you're saying when like Airbnb goes offline then that um then the um it's not considered an available room anymore. So, that's correct. Okay. Or and now I guess the and maybe you answered it. I'm not sure because you you gave us a lot of answers which were good. Um you're saying that when um and again I'm going to use the term u um u welfare clientele at a uh at a motel is that motel still considered as part of the overall pool for occupancy percentage purposes or it's removed

they would take it offline if there's somebody staying there more than 28 days or you know again it's a monthly report so for that one day I don't know how they would work it but you know let's talk about the bunny motel or you know some of these that have converted to um living situations, those are taken offline if they're not paying TLC. You're certain of that? Yes. Okay, great.

When when I say that at at 28 days, again, there might be exceptions to rule. I don't know, for example, when women's crisis support team has to place somebody that's been in a violent and physical situation, if it's a three-day stay, I Doug, do you know if those are exempted? I mean, a lot of government contracts exempt um lodging taxes, but there are some if you went through your church or a nonprofit, they're probably paying

um nonprofits are typically not exempt, but federal government travel typically is. So, that's the discernment that I can make for you on that. Um nonprofits aren't exclusively uh don't get t don't get taxed. So that is federal government and anybody that stayed over 28 days. Okay. Hey, thank you. Go ahead, JC.

Yeah. Uh so this is on the city's website. This is the actual form or the information that we received from uh our lodging tax entities. And so it's not necessarily purely on this data focused on u maybe the number of rooms, but more of the amounts. And so you can see there is uh a gross rent uh that they're supposed to put in and then they have some deductible areas that we're talking about. So they can deduct uh people who are renting more than 27 days as well as any online travel companies because we recoup the costs directly from the online travel companies. And then like you just mentioned the federal government exemption. Um, and then as you go down, there's a little bit more information as well that we collect. So, I guess this is kind of a statement and a question everybody. So, realistically, in the grand scheme of things, you feel confident because of the reporting and the way the reporting is done that really we don't have that discrepancy in in um unutilized rooms versus the TLT dollars that are coming in. I don't know if I can answer that question directly. Uh, I think you're getting into a hotelier or stair of

do I care that they're charging lodging tax on Well, yeah, but I think the council is trying to get to the point is is there a huge hole somewhere where we're not actually being able to collect those TLT dollars or are reflectively seeing the available rooms because we have organizations that are utilizing them government facility blah blah blah because we live in such a depressed area. I guess that's where the question is. We're trying to make sure. Is that correct? Like you're just trying to make sure there's no big glaring hole there.

I I couldn't answer the question uh anecdotally uh because of the water treatment plant. I know somebody uh personally who uh set up at an RV park for longer than 27 days because they were doing the electrical work on the new water treatment plant. So there are other situations out there that aren't necessarily just welfare where potentially people are staying in the in these uh entities that are uh potentially longer than the 27 days.

Yeah, I know for a fact that majority of the RV parks offer monthtomonth and long-term stays specifically. So uh sorry Rick, do you have I just wanted JC because he was adding to that conversation, but go ahead. I just like to elaborate further what Rob [snorts] is discussing and I'm wondering if there's additional yard stick that can be used because um there are so many I want to say holes in this to evaluate whether tourism is successful or not and if we start really inquiring of the hotels is somebody here because they have a friend in the hospital is somebody here because they're attending a funeral is somebody here because their house lost hour or the firemen I realize that come in for wildfires probably because they're on extended stay fall in a different category too. So I'm just saying there's all um the matrix that used on this is not pure and always reliable and I'm just putting the question out there is is there another matrix we can use in addition to this that's in the evaluation of the TLT.

I don't think I can answer the question. The only way I can answer the question is uh we um actually pay for about four entities to be audited every year and we rotate those and most of the time we don't find any issues with what the lodging facility is reporting back to us um as far as the auditors coming through their their records. Thank you. All right. Any further questions? Indra.

Yes. Let me get my thoughts together. Um, so this might be for JC or visitors association. So JC, you mentioned it's been declining the last two years. Is that what you said, the TLT dollars? See if I can find I can't probably see that far. [laughter] So yeah, I'm just going to try and get everybody on the same page here. Hopefully.

I thought you said a draw. Yeah. So in your packet there is the third quarter uh operating report and this is online as well. And if you go to the lodging tax section you can kind of see the previous history and you can kind of see it's pretty flat. There was some decline here from 23 24 and 25 but then you can see 26 we seem to be uh on pace with about where we were in 2023. Okay. So what's the we give monies quarterly to the DMO. What's the lag time on that?

So we receive money quarterly from the entities. So anybody who is charged between January 1st and March 31st, for example, they have until April 30th to pay us. And so typically for the DMO uh we take what's budgeted, cut that in four, and they just get a flat dollar amount the first three quarters and then the fourth quarter we try and true that up to the actual revenues. It just made it easier because of potential seasonal swings um in the lodging tax that the the first three quarters we try and keep flat to help with their own operational needs. Uh that way their money is not as cyclical. So, it's kind of like business taxes quarter 1 and then they get paid in by April 15th or whatever and then quarter two and they get paid on the 1st or 2nd I think you said. But you give them just a steady amount for the first three quarters and then the fourth you you give the remainder.

Yep. We tr it up to the true 18 uh 28%. Okay. And then does so do we have PLL PNLS or balance sheets for years 23 and 24 from the visitors association or uh anything that shows the financials for those years that we could look at? I don't those records, right? I'm asking does the visitors association or visit grants pass? I know Dan wasn't involved then, but does the entity retain those records?

Question. Maybe you should just come up to the podium and answer. [clears throat]

That was a long long yes is the answer. Can we get those? I provided them to the city last week. Yeah. Oh, did we get those? We've gotten so much. I've probably missed some things. There's a print out on the DAS. We got P&Ls and balance sheets from your 324. Mhm. You've got the complete audits for the last three years. Okay. That shows those. And and Aaron, you sent those to us. That was just today. Today? Yeah. That there's a there's additional information. You have additional piece of paper on your desk there. Um Okay.

Yeah. That's different though. You have the entire uh you got that that's the most current as of today uh Dean Renan report and then uh last week uh to the economic development team we did send 23 24 and 25 full audits and in those audits it has the PNL PNLs and balance sheets.

There are no more numbers. Those are all the numbers. Yeah. Like every single conceivable number. Okay. Because Okay. So, we should get those or have them. I'll look. Okay. And then I have some other questions. And again, I apologize if I miss things because there's so much and I know questions have gone out and you've sent things in. It's kind of peace meal and we're trying to collect things. So, I just want to ask um what we have and what we don't have so I know what to look for or not. And I know some of these did did come in. So, did we get quarterly written progress reports?

You did not. And I acknowledge that in an email to the council. Um and so I just ask for a little uh grace in this transition year as I come online. I have no experience with city government and uh I mistakenly understood that that would be on a council agenda. My responsibility 100% and I'm happy to provide any reports at any time.

Okay. And thank you for what you do. This isn't a reflection of you personally. Um do do we have staff uh quarterly written reports from previous years? No, we don't have the quarterly written reports. We do get the quarterly TLT reports. That's what we typically get. Okay. And I think we did get an annual audit from 2025. Yes, we have that. Do we have annual audits from 23 and 24? Yes, you do.

Did they came with them? Uh Dana has them. Did they go to us? Yes, we have those. Did they come to us? That I don't know. I I I don't think so. Okay. Can we get those? Yes. Thank you. Um bylaws. Do we have bylaws? I don't know if you have them. We do. I mean, we have bylaws. I don't know if you have our bylaws. Well, it's in the agreement that we would have bylaws. Dana, do you have the bylaws? Um, you know, I could look back. I I mean, um, they this contract happened before I came into my position, too. So, I'm sure we probably have it in a file. I would have to look for it, though.

Okay. I would like to see the bylaws and and I I would imagine they came up in 2021 when the first agreement was signed. So, I would like to see those and then any amended ones after that. Um, you gave you gave a a great presentation and marketing plan that seemed more state level than of what was done. Do we have a marketing plan forecast going forward for this year? A plan or a forecast, right? A plan. A marketing plan of what you're going to do for 2026.

Yeah. And we did touch on that in a broad way. That was a lot of slides, a lot of information in 10 minutes to try to cram in. But we have several buckets that we will work on perennially and that's going to be around the main drivers of tourism as we understand it which would be again food, historical districts, music, outdoor wreck certainly in this area with some highle um attention uh to the specifics that we have here from cycling to the river to the valleys to the caves to dark skies. Yeah, keep going. I know you spread out all of all over. So that's good. So the marketing plan is what you presented.

Yeah. Okay. Um business plan. Do we have a business plan? Um you would find it in the P&L. Um that is the rough broad categories. And in my uh response to council, you'll you'll see that uh assuming that the funding remains even, we have no uh anticipated changes to that. Okay. And then revenue forecast going forward and and I understand it's estimated. We don't know what's coming in, but we can always still give an estimated forecast of the dollars we're going to get and how we're going to spend them. Do we have a a forecast revenue forecast and expend?

The best we can do is on past performance and try to forecast that. Uh, as JC mentioned, it's roughly $175,000 a quarter and it is our desire to spend it down to zero and use all of those dollars for marketing in the most effective way we can. I know there were some questions about why that's a negative number. Um, I did address that in the email to council. Um, and when those dollars hit the P&L, it hits as a negative number for services due, not services rendered. So, there's a balance on the balance sheet, and I shared that with council as well. I I don't Okay, thank you. So, we we'll get a proposed forecast going.

Yeah. And it's going to be $175,000 times four. That's the forecast. Okay. And then I'm I I get that you wrote to council about that, but I'm not understanding and it's probably just me. I I met with the group and so after I left I thought about it. I don't understand. I get you're explaining why there's a net operating revenue, but I'm assuming this is you write checks. I mean, this is your checkbook. Mhm. So, how are you writing checks with a negative revenue?

Sure. You'll find that in your email. It's I included the balance sheet. So, you'll be able to see the exact balance that we're carrying in a separate account that sits on the balance sheet, not on the P&L. So, are you writing checks from a different account as well? We move money from one account to the other account because we achieve greater yield in a money market account than a checking account. and we're trying to be very wise uh with the the dollars that we do have. So, we're trying to squeeze every penny out of it. So, we keep the bulk of it in a money market account that allows us to achieve some yield,

right? But before you can spend money in this account, it has to be there. So, you should be are you I I understand you have your second account. That's not a problem. It seems like you need to move money over first so that you can then spend it.

So what you that negative number that you see as a liability is not a reflection of what's in the account. Again, you'll see that on the email that I provided to council. Um and you'll see that there is a positive balance in all of the accounts. What we do is monthly move money over to the checking account to spend on the fly as needed so that we can squeeze extra yield out of the dollars that we do have in the money market account. How are you writing a check? So, I'm still not understand. Maybe someone else can explain to me if you're you're negative in your checking account or we're not negative in the checking account. Negative.

Well, why isn't it reflected on here? You're not looking at the checking account, you're looking at liabilities. So again, so this isn't a P&L. It is the P&L. It's the statement of activity for a nonprofit. Okay. I'm going to I'll end there. Um did did any of the other council members receive that email that has the um account balances? City staff. I I did. You didn't.

I did. You did get it. Okay, good. I just want to make sure someone got it. So, yeah, please reference that and you'll see that not only are we uh contra contractually sound, we're above and beyond healthy. Um, looks like Victoria got it. Uh, so we're actually sitting on more cash than we're required to because we're trying again to actually squeeze a couple bucks out of a money market account that'll allow us to do more marketing, be better stewards of the the money that we do have. Okay, I will study that more. Okay. Because I'm obviously and I'm happy of course to sit down. We can go we can go through it oneon one anytime.

Okay. Um are we I'll yield my time. I have some more about the welcome center, but maybe we're not there yet. So we have other questions. Victoria.

Um yeah, maybe this is along the lines of uh the last question that I asked, but and this could be for Dana, it could be for JC. It it could be for Dan. It could actually even be for Terry. Um I just want to make sure we're not um you know so to speak straining a uh and uh if you could give me a 30,000 ft any of you who I mentioned uh view because I know I've had this discussion with you before about um you know what the city puts in as and what the city gets out.

Mhm. And it seemed to me then that our investment uh like uh Doug was saying earlier uh far I mean what we get out of it you know far our for our investment far exceeds what we put in. So maybe if you could and just give me a few examples of that so that we just so that everybody can kind of get a picture on a grand scale of what you see as your contribution to the city and your give back to the city for what the city puts into.

Um I mean philosophically 30,000 foot view we just want to be an excellent partner with the city and with the community and give back. I personally and I know that everybody that works with me has a great love and affection for the community and wants to see it prosper. Uh very specifically um I would say that uh we are single-handedly responsible for bringing BMX nationals for example to town. Uh we are responsible for bringing Cycle Oregon to town. Uh we are supporting the marketing events for uh countless small events. There's not um an event or an organization that is doing any kind of work locally that we aren't doing an inkind contribution to. Um just extol the virtues of Griffin Storm back there who uh has done work for I would think every single one of these people in here uh right now including the city um when anything needs to be done. So [snorts] there's a lot of things that happen a little bit under the sea the sea line there. Um, and I would point to the Dean Runion report right in front of you. There was some questions about why we didn't have the last quarter in our previous report. It just came today to us. Um, and I'm happy to report that we're up in virtually every single metric, which is unique uh to the state. We're one of only a few m municipalities that are actually up. Um, the rest are either flat or down this year. So, I'm excited about that. And uh given this is our first year really in full operational mode with the new team um I'm excited about what the the future can look like. Did I answer your question?

Yeah, I think so. Maybe just add like uh two or or whatever you want to big from just off the top of your head some of the big things that you have been very excited about and how it translates into benefit for the city.

Sure. I'm super excited about two things actually. Dollar Mountain is going to be massive. Now, that's a few years of development. Um, but uh, mountain biking is a billiondoll travel industry with a lot of discretionary income to to float around and we have the perfect environment to take advantage of that. Between Dollar Mountain and Cathedral Hills and our adjacent friends in in the valley, we're going to bring a lot of people here for that. Um, I'm excited about dark skies, one of only two designations, I think, in the entire state in the Illinois Valley. We have a lot of opportunity there, a lot of uh I'll go beyond too. Um we have a new opportunity with the caves. There's new energy going on out there and I think there's been a real neglect frankly and this I know this is a city meeting but you know we're also responsible for the the valley and I think there's a lot of opportunity there especially as we consider the 199 shutdown that is probably going to happen anytime this month and we'll have to work around that and I like to be optimistic there. there are ways to capture that traffic. So rather than uh focusing on how that could be a net negative, I think we're going to be creative about how we're going to make that work for Grants Pass.

Thank you. Thank you. Further questions, Joel? Um yes. Could you explain to me the relationship between visit Grants Pass, Visit Southern Oregon, Yeah. and visit Oregon?

So yes, at the state level, the big state organization is Travel Oregon. They do top level marketing pushes and they issue grants and whatnot and then organize the rest of us. At the regional level, you have travel southern Oregon and that captures up seven regional DMOs including us. Um Clamoth Falls, Ashlin, Jacksonville, and so on and Medford. And then there's the locals. That's us. And so we work together. Um, and I'm really happy to report that we have a great relationship not only with uh Travel Southern Oregon, our regional DMO, but also with our friends in Medford, Ashlin, Jacksonville, Climate Falls, and beyond. We meet regularly uh to discuss Rogue Valleywide marketing strategy. [cough and clears throat]

So, where do those other organizations get their money from? From the same process. same process like southern Oregon then uh gets travel southern Oregon gets their money from travel Oregon travel but all of the local DMOs receive it from their municipalities travel Oregon then has a legislative uh Mhm. 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% excuse me okay thank you okay any further questions Joel well I had some questions on the visitor center but I think did two before me raised your hand go for it I have a question before that

okay go ahead go ahead I apologize um the so the 374,000 in the marketing campaign that um I asked for and we received a breakdown of the the people you contract with. I I also asked for because I I don't know what some of those are and kind of a little detailed of what they do for each vendor. Can can I get that?

Yeah, it'll take me a little while. There's a lot of vendors on there. But what I can do I I'm happy to provide that for you. I'd say broadly there are um print publications, distribution, um PR, um content creation, fam tours, list goes on, but I can just something little like I can go through that for you. Okay. And then um I know we talked about that, but I I would like to see a breakdown too of approximately the the monies we give to each. If I could get that.

Thank you. Okay. Joel. Um, you know, the first thought that came to my mind was u looking online u Hellgate uh Jetboats uh promoted very well. We're doing a I'm really excited about what we're doing. They're one of our best partners. Um a lot of business in Grants Pass and yeah and so we have a campaign going right now specific to Hellgate. We're going to bring in I think we're anticipating roughly a hundred media folks, journalists, influencers for a media night. They're going to come in. We're going to do a full day and then try to keep them in town for a couple of days to experience the rest of Grants Pass. It's going to be pretty cool. It's a great example. Um so on the visitor center, I'm making a transition.

Okay. And uh you know, with all the emails, uh maybe I missed it. Um and this is actually for Dana. Um not for you. Um though you could What? What the heck? Uh [laughter] operating hours uh under city, you know, what we did last year versus what is proposed in the contract. What's the difference and why? What's the rationale if there is a difference and and then the rationale if there is a difference? I would say there isn't really a difference. I think um we're open 36 hours and I think the requirement of the contract says a minimum of 35 hours. So um I can address this. I know.

Oh, okay. Go ahead. Um, so in the proposal um that you guys read, you saw that there was a proposed reduction in hours in the off season. Um, I did address this in an email uh to everyone because I wanted to make abundantly clear that we are not married to that at all. Um, it did propose 15 hours um at minimum. Didn't mean that that was going to be the amount. And here was the rationale. working with Travel Southern Oregon and some of my colleagues who are responsible for visitor centers, it's common practice to uh to reduce those hours to be uh efficient and effective with the dollars that they receive since traffic tends to go down. Uh so we just put that out there to follow the lead of uh like the Ashland Visitor Center for example on I5. Um and I confirmed this with Bob at Travel to Southern Oregon last week. So, uh, that said, again, our desire is to create a thriving, dynamic downtown hub that the community is proud of, that travelers want to visit, and to keep our marketing promises. So, if the council decides that, you know, it would be way better if we just always were open 40 hours a week or whatever that number is, great. Uh, we're happy to do that. The other part of it was, hey, for every dollar that we spend on personnel, and as you saw from what Dana was sharing, that's about a $45,000 staffing hit. That's $45,000 less that we get to spend on actual marketing and and promotion. So, there's a real trade-off there. And we thought, well, maybe we could shore up a few dollars by having the discretion to look at the data and say, hey, maybe we don't need to be open a full 8 hours today on this Tuesday in January. Um, and maybe we could look at the numbers and say maybe only 5 hours

on this Tuesday in January is appropriate. That's all. Further questions, Rick? So, Dan, on the five hours in January that you're talking about not being open, um, physically, are you in that building at that point?

It is 100% my hope that I'm going to, and I'll be really transparent, so please like hit me with all the questions. It is 100% my goal to have Visit Grants Pass and Main Street Grass collocated in that building to make it the best it could possibly be. right now it there's really wonderful ladies working in there and they crave direction and they they want to contribute and do some great stuff. There's just not bandwidth or expertise elsewhere or at least that I'm aware of anyone that's stepped up to do it. Um so our thinking was hey why don't we volunteer essentially to take over those operations and make something really cool. So my question is sort of a tease. Then on January 5th during the year when nobody is coming to the place and there's no I want to say nobody in town that's a tourist. I'm teasing you now. You're going to lock the doors so nobody can come in and ask any questions.

That's that see that's the great thing. Um there would be someone there every single day. So there is an easy conceivable answer that maybe it's just not with paid staff or temps as they are today. It's me sitting there at the desk or it's Griffin. Sorry, brother. Uh sitting at the desk making sure that that people were served or or even Dan. So, there's always going to be people there. It's not going to be less than what it is today. Um it will be more. Okay. Thank you. You clarified that. Very good. Thank you.

All right. Further questions. I got uh Rob and then Rob. Well, it's good to hear that. Um, it's not going to be less than it is today because the way the contract read, you know, as it was presented on the consent calendar a month ago or whatever, um, the contract read, it was going to be less than it is today. And that was very concerning to me and many of the other counselors. Um, but it's good to hear that from you today. It's not going to be less. Thank Thank you. Big big concern off my head. Um, now do you are you familiar I would imagine Doug Bradley remembers and maybe some of the staff remembers. Are you familiar with the um uh study that was done by Texas A&M um University regarding the value of downtown welcome centers? I am not aware of that. Okay.

This was in the original report that when the the um the city uh you know while we were working with Doug and the others around that time in 21 or whatever and out of that report I'm just going to read it just again to help um reinforce the fact that what you said today is a good idea. Um it says the value of downtown welcome centers uh Texas&M University study found generally outperform v um interstate or outlying visitor centers and a big part of this can be attributed to visitors being within walking distance of the attraction or shopping of the visitor center. Um, 46.9% of those who stopped at a downtown welcome center visited additional attractions. 30.6% of those who visited who stopped by a downtown welcome center changed their itinerary based on the visit as opposed to only 11% who stopped at an outlying visitor center. And in the end, 35.6% 6% of those who stopped by a downtown welcome center spent more money than originally anticipated. That's compared to uh 10% less from the outlying welcome centers. And it says that being within walking distance of the attractions is that powerful. So, this that report again that I'm sure that Doug has seen before and the staff has seen before, at least some of the staff, um it makes it really clear of the value of downtown welcome centers because they are close to

Yeah, they are close to the action and that makes a distinction between outlying ones. So, I I hope that you uh that that reinforces your decision. Yeah, your point makes total sense. it resonates with me right now. And I think we agree that there's just a massive opportunity there and with a little elbow grease and a little attention, it could be what it was always intended to be. And I hope to be part of that. And when you said today, you know, it it could be you or it could be uh the other Dan or it could be Griffin or whoever. I mean, that's that was my perception of how it probably would work in the winter if you didn't want to have to deal with payroll. Um, you know,

we'll definitely need that. There's often times where obviously we're indisposed doing other work. Um, but these ladies are awesome. They're wonderful and I have every intention of making sure that they just have more support moving forward so that they can serve those people even better. Sure. And when you talk about any anything that you spend on payroll is a reduction in what you can Well, you know, that's true, but you also have, you know, your rent from last year would be offset. That was about $15,000. So there's other expenses that you'll have less of. Um with regards to Well, I'm glad that we uh actually that's the only other um question that I had for you or the comment that I had that I'm glad to hear that you're not planning on a reduction in the winter services. Thank you.

Uh further questions I had Indra and then Kathleen. Indra. So kind of back to the hours and and I I think it's a great fit uh for your organization to go in the visitor center. I mean it meshes and that's what we do. So I think the opportunity there is is tremendous and exciting, right? Um with so we were all surprised with the hours. Did you work with the city? Who did you work with the city on determining those hours or how did that come about?

That was my calculation. I've been working with the city for a long time just on the broad discussions of what it might look like for us to to do this work with the welcome center. But that's my calculation and no one else's. Okay. And I'm asking because later in the contract it talks about the the city will reimburse for staffing costs outside of normal operating hours. So even though it says 15, it doesn't even say what those hours are. Is that Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Is it two hours a day? And so I think in the contract um we would need to de to see what those operating normal hours are.

What that's referring to is if the city were to have a special event um outside of their normal business hours where they had to then keep additional staff outside of what they would do in response to us having an event there. That's the only time that we would agree to cover additional staffing to make sure that our event was able to take place. It's nothing else beyond that. It's only if we are using it outside of their normal work. But if we What are the normal business hours? Whatever they would establish. I believe there's a provision in there where they're supposed to keep us updated on what those normal business hours are. Okay. So, that's something you're going to work on of what those hours are. Mhm. And it's important to know that so we can agree on that, right?

Yeah. 100%. And it's again important to know that we work really closely with the city and I'm really hopeful to work really closely with the council to use the mind hive and come up with the best answers for the community. Um I don't want to be doing this alone or in a vacuum um but rather with uh great city partners and that's how we've been starting. Further questions Kathleen?

Yeah. So, uh, you've been hearing us talk about this jump track, uh, dilemma that, uh, people in the community want and and you have a good overview of what's out there in the other communities. And I'm hearing there's going to be one built in Central Point and one in Ashland.

There's one in Crescent City. What is your determination if we're a good uh, stopping point for that or if there's going to be overkill on jump tracks in the area? Um there I don't believe there's any overkill in pump tracks. Um right now that is one of the fastest growing behind pickle ball. Uh one of the fastest growing recreational family activities. Uh I can speak anecdotally about my visit to Hood River where they have a pump track and people drive the gorge to get to it. Um they will travel from Portland to go to the pump track and it's something that's really awesome for whole families to do. So, I know there's been a lot of discussion and some debate about should we have one and if we do, where should it be? And it depends on the goal of the city and the community. What do what do they want? If they want it downtown, it's less of an attractive tourism draw. If they want it to be strictly about tourists, maybe it is best to be up at the five. That's not for me to decide. Um, but I will take full advantage of whatever resources I have.

Yeah. I just wanted your overview on is there going to be too many? There's no today. There's no uh such thing as oversaturation, especially in Grand Pass, especially with respect to cycling in all of its forms. Between mountain biking, Cycle Oregon, BMX, potential pump tracks, we have an opportunity to use that as an easy branding element for our town. Come to town, bring your bikes, whatever kind of bikes they may be, stay the weekend, buy some food, stay in a hotel, get on the river, and and everyone wins. So, I'm excited about pump track regardless of where it goes. I just would like to have it. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you very much for that information, Dan. But I'm going to remind counselors we are on topic of the DML contract only. I don't really think that's that's part of the contract. It was great having that conversation, but if we can keep the questions back to the center of the topic, which is the DML contract. Uh for the questions, I have Indra and then Victoria. Indra.

Yes. So I as you know I have two other concerns and and I want to know if you will uh consider and address it. So the intellectual property giving it to you is a real concern. I look at this contract is extremely contractor friendly. Like I'm surprised the city would even agree to it honestly. So you can walk away. Public funds are paying for it. I get it's out of state lodging tax, but we have family that come here and stay. Public funds are paying for it and yet the nonprofit or the contractor, you can walk away um with the brand. And I I do understand that that the city can continue to use branding uh the logos and strategic plans and operating uh for tourism purposes only. But it really sticks us if for some reason uh we go to another contractor or it ends alto together. To me that's not a good deal for the city at all. So I would like uh to see a reconsideration of that and that flipped around that the city has the rights to the IP and and that you um can use whatever you know uh for your own uh business. And then the other so so I can pause one sec andra

ask if you can pause one sec because you you you that's that's if you're going to go I want don't want you to go into another topic until we can address this IP issue because I believe that Stephanie wants to have a comment here.

I do. Um and that is I saw the emails and I we heard your inquiries at the last meeting and did look into that. Um the the reason why it's written the way it is has to do with the nature of the DMO as an independent contractor. In independent contractor relationships, the typical is to have the contractor retains ownership of intellectual property. All we have the ability to do with an independent contractor is tell them what results we want. Um what the result that we want is tourists to come to our community so that they spend more money here and enhance our community. We don't have the ability with an independent contractor to tell them what to do, how to do it, when to do it. So, what our contract is, and the purpose for this contract is to hire them to bring tourists in and to staff the welcome center. It's not to have them create content for the city to use. It all has to do with the purpose of the contract. Um, they are creating their marketing materials for not just the city itself, but for other entities and for around the valley. It's not that we are asking them to create specific materials like a work for hire contract would be. Um that's a totally different relationship. Um we're not saying we want you to generate brochures for the city of Grants Pass. We would own the intellectual property on a work for hire where we're asking them to provide that. All we're asking them to do is bring tourists in. And how they do that is up to them. So if you if you look it up in an independent contractor relationship it's unusual for the entity to own the intellectual property rights to anything generated. That's the typical thing that you find in a work for hire agreement which is not what we're looking at here. Uh when you say we are city because I have looked it up somewhat not thoroughly and I'm not an attorney but there are some DNOS that don't it's not like that. So what's the difference?

It depends on the nature of the contract. There's a lot of different types of agreements that you could have with an entity. What we have is and what we've had for the last 5 years is an independent contractor relationship. And if you look up the definition of that um through the IRS, it's all we can control is the results. They have to have all the day-to-day control on how things happen, uh why things happen, when things happen, and how they achieve those results. if we do too much of the management of the day-to-day operations or if we have content control because once we start talking intellectual property rights then we're going to want to have content control. When we go down that path then we're starting to talk more about an employment relationship as opposed to an independent contractor which triggers labor laws and benefits and other things. And that's a path that we don't want to go down. What we want to do is say, "Bring us more tourists and staff the welcome center and let them do their job and bring us those things back however they choose to do it." But that means that they're going to own the rights to whatever they're producing, but they're going to let us use it in order to also help enhance that tourism goal.

So, you said it's a contract that that we've gone into, but other cities may have different contracts. They may have another setup, but our particular system has them as an independent contractor. So, we could do that setup, but we have chosen not to for those reasons you expressed, but we could. Okay. Thank you. So, with that being said, I have a feeling that a lot of our line of questioning is actually overstepping the bounds of this contract agreement.

Right. We want an indep we want an independent contractor that gives us the results without the day-to-day ma uh management. Okay. Uh further question sorry I had to take that one in a second. Um further questions I have uh Rob and then Indra again. Rob. So Victoria too. The same uh actually I think Victoria was before me. Oh I thank thank you very much for yield. You are correct. Victoria did you want to weigh in first? Okay. She yields to you Rob. Thank you.

So, the same uh on the same paragraph and it's um I guess it's page six of the contract or 524 of the packet. It's um 6 C. I think that's the same paragraph that Andrew was just referring to. Um if we get down to the fifth line there, there's there's actually a I wouldn't say there's two lines that are in conflict, but there is a little bit of confusion. So, when we get down to the fifth line, when it says um the contractor, the fourth line, the contractor grants the city a perpetual royalty-free non-exclusive license to use any intellectual property created with city funds for tourism promotion purposes. Um, okay. So, the key that I'm I'm what I'm pointing out here is that created with city funds. Then on the last um the last line it says the city's license shall remain in effect for materials created during the agreement term. Well to me those could be two slightly different to me. Both of those lines should say for materials created during the agreement term. The one above it says created uh funds with with city funds. The one on the bottom says if it was done during the term. Those both both of those lines should be for materials created during during the agreement. Don't you agree, Stephanie? Why why would there be a distinction between those two? Because it adds a confusion that's unnecessary, a bone of contention that would have to be solved legally later.

If you can give me just a moment to digest those quickly. So, and maybe it's not clear, maybe some clarification would need to be in place. This says upon termination of this agreement, contractor may continue to use all intellectual property. So, they get to also continue using it. This basically says that they can continue using it without it impacting our rights um to that, but our we only have rights for anything created during the term. So if they continue without city funding going forward, there's no change for them, but we can only use their materials that were created during the agreement.

Okay. That doesn't address at all what I what I thought I just said, right? And that that's why I'm trying to make sure that it's a those are two different provisions. No, I I understand and I'm not I'm not debate I understand your explanation to Indra about the first part. I'm talking about now the city's rights to use what was created during the term. That also you're saying is very clear. We we retain the rights to do it during the term. I'm just saying why add the confusing line four lines up for property that was created with city funds. It should just say again in that spot for that were for materials that were created during the agreement term. Why would we add something else that would have to be adjudicated later on

about the use of city funds? Because they may have funding streams that are outside of the city funding. For instance, one of the provisions in here allows for merchandising. That is a funding stream that is outside of city funds. So if they use that to create products beyond the cities, we have no rights to those products. Well, then there's a complete con conflict with the last line. That's my point. The two lines are in conflict because the last line says for materials created during the agreement of the term. So you're saying two different things.

Our license remains in effect for the materials created. Our license is only for those things that were created during the city during city funds. So they they work together. It's we would have an ongoing uh right to use anything created using city funds during the term. If they create something during the term not using city funds, we don't have a license for that. So that second sentence wouldn't apply it ju just because it was during the term. Okay. So I understand what you just said as thank you.

Okay. So what I understand what you just said is if visit grants pass does a online promotional campaign all the intellectual rights in there can be shared by us and them if they sell a t-shirt out of the visitors center as merchandising. We don't necessarily have the rights to that. Nope. And the merchandising is a separate provision. They have the rights to all of that if they choose to do merchandising. Um, but if they use the funds from the merchandising to do something different than what they're doing with the city funds, we don't have any rights to whatever they choose to do with that money. Yeah, I was trying to promote [laughter]

Thank you. U, further questions? I had uh Indra and then Rick. Indra. Yes, that that did bring me to the merchandise. So, so any uh branding or logos they use for us, I I just I think it's a bad deal for the city. Like take you make a lo take a new route and there's some other stuff and you put GP on it and and according to the statement of activity, you have very few funds coming in that aren't public funds. That's great.

Right. So, they're mostly public funds. How do we know even Stephanie what you're saying that what's created with public funds or not? And so now the DMO uses public funds to create take a new route grants pass and then they can go off and do take a new route. And I'm not saying you would. I'm just giving in general central point, you know, and Grants Pass doesn't own any of that. And yet it was paid for with public funds that we provided. Um, and then the merchandise I see if they're contracted and we have no I don't want to be involved in the dayto-day activities. I agree with that. But um if we we get no money back from that um and then they can take it and do what they want, it's really uh we're we're using our public money to help them generate what could be a very significant revenue stream, which is fine except now we're giving them and or not just them. It could be anyone, whoever's in there, a a downtown spot for free to sell their merchandise. I bet there's a ton of businesses that would love to be in there creating uh things for Grants Pass and selling it right downtown. So, that's really iffy for me and I don't know that you can answer, but Stephanie, I'm sure has something to say. Usually, uh we do I mean, one of the provisions I haven't talked to them about it is we could put a provision in there that just says public funds cannot be used um to create merchandise. That they're on their own as far as the merchandising goes. they choose to do merchandising, it can't be publicly funded and that would be a fairly straightforward fix for that. Also, we could include that um if that part about um the city funded that we put the burden on then to demonstrate any funds that were not received from the city.

Those would be two fairly straightforward.

I'd like the opportunity to uh also reframe that just a bit. Um, it is not the intention and probably there needs to be language to protect everyone. It's not the intention of his grand pass to create a merchandising empire. Um, those are promotional items meant to create walking billboards and advocates for the city and uh have a novelty, a chachki, a reminder of their great time here. we turn around and take any funds received and we can almost self-fund continuing to create merchandise and other marketing opportunities. So, if we don't think of it as a forprofit endeavor, but rather just another way to market, um it changes the complexion of that a little bit and that would be the intention for sure. And you would see that again on any reporting that we would do. So, it'll already be there.

Further questions? I got Rick and I'm going to remind you you guys got about 15 minutes left. So Stephanie, I think one of the issues here is on intellectual property and 5 years down the road if the current organization decides to move on. Can't we have a provision in that contract that says we have the option of negotiating purchasing the intellectual property we want? For instance, if they produce a stellar t-shirt we just love and we don't want them to walk off without offering us the city the opportunity to own that to continue to use that. That would be something we could discuss with them if they were interested in having a provision along those lines.

I'm sorry I couldn't. Yeah, we we could discuss that as an option um if they're interested in including such a clause. But I wonder the concern has been raised on intellectual property if that would be one one way to address it. You know, it could be just a dollar exchange. It could be $10,000 depending on what the value is and we may say no, we don't want to buy it because the price a first right of refusal clause in there.

Okay. Thank you. Further questions? I got uh Vic and I'm sorry. Uh Victoria and then Rob. So really what I'm most interested in is what I talked about before, the 30,000 foot view. And uh we made this contract. It was about 5 years ago. So I think there's there are counselors up here who were involved with that. And um the idea was to bring tourism in and uh we have a contract to do that. and it seems to me like it's been done. So, um I like that. I think that's really good and I think that's the purpose and the important thing to remember for people here. And uh some of the details can be important and you can always improve a a contract. And so, um, so we don't continue to, uh, and I'll go back to my idea of of straining a nat and to swallow a camel. Um, I don't think it's a good idea to take people we have contracted to and to just look at the the micro um, if they're delivering the macro. So, uh, maybe in the contract we could have some kind of reporting because I' I've seen it. I kind of alluded to it before. Um, that there are cities in our state that aren't getting tourism. Grants Pass is. And I think anecdotally anyway, we could say it's because of the money we have invested into visit Grants Pass and and Main Street and and and uh Chamber and and others. So, um, would there be, and maybe this is a question for Stephanie,

maybe it's for Jaci, uh, would it be easy to add that into a quarterly or yearly, um, report? [clears throat] So, it would just be very easy for council to see, um, we put this amount of dollars into this. We invested it and this was our return. It's not going to obviously it's not going to be um one for one down to the dollar probably because there are a lot of variables that we probably couldn't track but maybe that would be something that we could do uh to improve it so that when visit grants pass comes back they could say we did these things and it in our tourism and crew at 12% is something a number that I remember from speaking with visit grants pass in the past. So um and other places have not received that 12%. That is huge to me. So I guess I would like to maybe focus on the positives of what we are gaining from this organization and uh and maybe not micromanage so much and maybe we do need to. There is we can always improve a contract but um improving it would be to my way of thinking um just make it easy for our contract to come back to us and tell us th this is what you asked us to do this is how we did it. So, and I don't know if that goes into the contract or just reporting, Stephanie. Um, and would it be easy to manage? Maybe working uh on some metrics. Maybe that's something the council would like some input on. But, um, I guess my overall point is I think

it's a valuable contract. I think that they can prove very easily that it's a valuable contract for the city. And uh I'd like to give them a better opportunity to prove that and for us maybe to step back a little and let them do that.

And I think they did a good job um a couple weeks ago showing some of the impacts that have been had. I know you presented a lot of data on those slides and I think that to some extent is answering your question. Um that did bring some things to mind. There is a provision in um it's on page three I believe at the very top about the considering the business plan during a council meeting in the month of February. Council has essentially moved that around. So I'd like to take out the reference to February. Um and we'll we'll talk about that on Wednesday night um about minor tweaks like that. But right now it says February and we can make it a little bit more general as assigned. Um, but I do think as part of that annual report, which they did in April, that um, they provided a lot of those metrics and if you have additional questions about that, you can always answer or ask them.

Thank you. Uh, real real quick, if I could jump in, I don't know if this is out of order, but uh, my friend Terry just provided uh, some uh, 27 uh, projected allocations for uh, lodging tax and uh, he highlighted a couple versions here. public safety uh $579,000 um from N27 parks 383 economic development 153 downtown development 153 and he thought that was important to share. Thank you.

Thank you. Further questions I got Rob. Oh. Um, Stephanie, just briefly on going back to that other point with regards to um when uh intellectual property was created with city funds and you're saying well could be uh it could be created with other funds. So currently um their other net revenue is literally 170th of of the money that we're giving them, right? we're giving them. So, um, uh, I I still actually think that it should be during the term of the agreement. They're getting virtually no funding at all other than what we give them.

So, anything that's created during the term is is to me the way that should be uh, written. Otherwise, it leaves us open for potential um, questions down the road that only people like you, lawyers, will be able to figure out. But I'm not looking to create work for lawyers down the I'm looking to try to create this be uh more straightforward. Now, the fact that they have almost no other revenue coming in makes that a moot point. It should just be during the term.

And I I think that would be a question for them. And the question would be, should we um you know, are they intending to seek other revenue sources over the next 5 years? And if so, we want to leave that in there, but maybe put in a provision that if they use city funding for the gener for creation of merchandise that or if they use outside sources for creation of merchandise, they have to document that funding source so that it's clear and documented that it's not city funding that was used. So that would be my suggestion there. Alternatively, we can take that out, but then we'd be asking them not to find additional funding because everything's going to be city funded. Okay. So, that brings up actually the the my next point um when you're talking about asking them to document certain things. So, in uh page seven of the contract or 525 of our packet um number eight and I guess maybe I'm looking to JC to add some clarity here. The first um first sentence says that uh annual review and audit the and by the way um I'm a little bit disturbed that the city has gotten the audits but not given it to council. You guys should have emailed us those audits because that did come up in questioning last week and we should have those right now. I don't know why the staff didn't give us that. Um but annual review and audit the financial books of the contractor will be audited or reviewed annually by an independent certified public accountant. So that sentence has a bunch of questions from AJC and maybe you can help add a little clarity. How would you legally define what the word reviewed means that the book shall be reviewed by someone? What does that mean? So in [clears throat] so in an auditing sense it is more or less a third party uh entity auditor goes through and make sure that there are no material findings on their

reporting. So so the word so are you making a distinction between the word audit and review because it says audited or reviewed and I'm asking you legally what does review mean? There is a report normally and okay I believe Aaron just sent out their financial statements. There's a report that they give with their independent accountants review report which is a letter in the beginning part of their audit and their financial statements. So the audit's different than a review. I view them one and the same. Okay. So why do we even use the word review? Why don't we just say audit? Uh English language is complicated and we get to use multiple words for the same thing. Well, Stephanie, why don't we just use the word audit?

We can we can do that. This I was this was based on the original language from the original contract. And then the other question I have there is how do we define what is actually an independent public accountant? What does independent mean? Is that someone that the city chooses to chooses an outside third party the city chooses to for them or do they just use their buddy who's an accountant? How how does independent what does the word independent mean there? Maybe Stephanie can or or JC can answer that question. So my viewpoint of our own auditor contract is it it is a third party. It's external from the city. Um typically you either go out for bid or an RFP process uh to acquire those services and make it a competitive offering.

Okay. So independent in this case then would be not someone that the contractor chooses. It would be an outside party. Someone it's not it's not someone that the contractor would choose. It's someone that someone else would choose. It would be it would they would be the ones just like we choose who our independent certified public accountant is for our audit. We have a process that we have to follow due to public contracting rules. They would choose who their independent certified public accountant is and they would follow standard best practices for um doing that audit. Okay. Okay. And we have it's just it's basically a third party. So independent meaning meaning third-party cont uh CPA.

Okay. Thank you. And then we get to number nine which is below it. That's a separate deal, right? That's that's if there was a problem or the city suspected a problem, the city could then demand that there's an audit, right? And and if there wasn't a big discrepancy, the city would have to pay for Right. And in that case, um I can't remember if we put in um that we agree on it or the city would be able to choose who audits. I'm I'm sorry. Say that again. I don't remember if we we have to agree on who audits or if the city would choose the auditor in that particular I believe it says the city would I believe it says city. Yeah. Okay. But that's only if there's a problem. Yeah. If we have a reason to believe that there's a problem, we can do an additional audit.

Okay. Okay. So, we're going to take out the word reviewed and just leave audit in that first line. Yes, I can do that throughout that whole paragraph 8. I believe there's four instances. Right. Exactly. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Any final questions, Indra? There's one other point there too.

Um, let me get my thoughts. I get Are we in discussion? Can I discuss something? I I would I guess I'd just like to say I'm I'm sorry that we're here today pushing up against the timing of your contract coming up. The the a and yes, what we get may far out exceed um what we get out of it than what we put in. But we have to we don't know unless there's some accountability. And we have evidently not had much accountability with the DMO before. So it's nothing. It just is happening to come up now. Um and I would respectfully disagree. It's not micromanaging to ask for financials because financial records and business plans show the health of your organization. We're we're looking at a lot of money, 6 to $800,000 uh plus a year as we grow and get more tourists, a million 2 million hopefully going forward. So, it's quite it it's a lot of money and we have a responsibility um of oversight, right, of public funds. So, it's nothing specific against you and and um we can believe that your organization, you are going to do the best you can, but what happens if you're gone? We have to look at the process and the long term of whoever is in there, right, to do that. Um, so I'm I'm concerned I would like to see a lot more accountability. I'm I'm concerned right now about just to be honest um awarding a five-year contract for, you know, $4 million or whatever. So, that's my concern. I just want you to know um I

would I would be willing to do a year and then get that accountability and see, but but it it's not completely your fault. But you said you guys meet with the city often and so in your meetings I don't get how we miss you know miss getting all this information and the reports and then when you're supposed to um to in the contract two weeks before the first meeting in January is when the presentation should be and that's when we should have been having this discussion and then we're not sitting here at the last minute and it's an emergency and everyone's stressed, Right. So, we don't want that. We could have hammered these things out in January or February and be done with it and move on. So, I apologize for that. Um, but we obviously have a lot of questions. I'm glad. Thank you for being willing to work um with the city on them. And um I hope you're here for a long time. I would love to get some things done to be working extra closely with each one of you. Um I think we're greater together uh when we're working together and um I would like to feel that uh we're all setting vision vision casting for our community and driving toward a common goal. And I understand that there are, you know, skeptics that run around in the community and and they work over time, it seems, to try to um so Discord, but there's so many people working together to build cool things. Um and it would just be awesome to have wonderful relationship with not only the city, which we already do, everyone's been wonderful, but with each one of you as well, so that we can eliminate um a lot of the questions that you have. And I will give you a report every day if you like. not every day. But I also want to acknowledge and thank all the people

who have worked so hard on this, Ashley and Doug and Griffin and Dan and Terry. So I know you put a lot of time of your own time volunteering um to help the city and it's very much appreciated. Thank you.

Um further questions I got Rob and then Victoria. So, um I'm I'm going to be real quick. Uh first, I just uh I guess following up on what Andrew is saying to to me, I think this was productive and this was it's very clear that this discussion or this process was not appropriate for the consent calendar a month ago. There was things to discuss. So, I'm glad that we finally we did get to discuss it and I'm glad we had a reconsideration. Um also, Dan, I want to say that um I'm happy to hear that the last quarter Dean Ren u was consistent with the other quarters. Yeah. Um, it looked a little incomplete last time, but that's that's a good thing. Um, and also I just wanted to say that, you know, while the guys are sitting or the guys and women I guess were sitting in that part over there, you guys essentially, and I'm not trying to put you in a box, you kind of have one job, you know, is to do this for the city. And I just want to, you know, make it clear to you guys, we have two jobs. We want to support that while we also have to be uh um accountable for taxpayer dollars to the taxpayers. So, we have two jobs and you guys have one job and great you focusing on it and we have to focus on two and that's what we're doing today.

I understand 100% and I appreciate the opportunity to talk it through. I think it's your responsibility to make sure that all those people that are watching on that camera right now get all of the answers that you that they deserve. It's their community and u I would love nothing more for them to be able to hear all of your questions and have the opportunity to answer them. Uh further questions that got Victoria, you got two minutes on a hard stop.

Okay. Okay. Um so just crystallizing getting down to uh the reason for the contract it is to increase tourism. I believe that you have increased tourism. Is there a just very simple way to um report that back? Do you think an easier way maybe uh so that people can see the people who like you said very good who are behind the camera can see we are delivering to you what you asked us to deliver.

It's it's really one metric and one metric only and that those are the TLT dollars and so those either go up or they go down and as they go up the entire community wins. All that stuff that I just shared from Terry all of that goes up. we bring more people and uh we increase uh economic prosperity for everyone that works so hard in our community. So I would say that's the number. If you really want to know whether things are going well or going poorly, we need to look at those seasonally. Probably a rolling annual quarterly report. Um contextually, what's the rest of the industry look like? What does it look like statewide? What does the rest of the Rogue Valley look like? Um and we can provide all of that. Um Dean Renan is kind of the uh you know the the flag bearer, the standard bearer for for some of these and those come out annually. So we don't always have the benefit of other aggregated uh metrics, but you've got TLT dollars. Those come in and we can look at those and if we have an off season, you can go, hey, what the heck's going on? And together we can come up with solutions to actually do a better job. Yeah, that seems to me like it would the that's the most important thing so that we can make sure this keeps continuing forward and that tourism continues to grow and so the people can see, hey, city uh put into this contract and this is what they're getting back. It would be something that we could if it could be shown on a city website that would be really wonderful. Maybe even in our in the reports that uh Aaron puts out uh that are so helpful to me. I know. And to the public, maybe that could be included and so that the public would see those things. Thank you.

Thank you, Victoria. And I'm going to call a hard stop on that cuz I put a 2-hour limit on these workshops and so I do know that we have some a little bit more business to attend to. So, I'm going to give a little bit of 15-minute bandwidth on this. Thank you very much your participation. Stephanie, do you have a handle on changes that would been requested? I I have those the couple that we talked about. Um we'll we can do any last minute finetuning on Wednesday night when we're actually discussing about approval of the contract.

Perfect. Thank you very much. Um with that, we're going to end this uh try to keep with about another 15 minutes maximum. Uh is there anything that any counselor has questions in regards to uh Wednesday night's meeting, Wednesday night's agenda? Joel um on page three um Roman numeral two to I I at the top talks about uh oh I'm sorry it's a three the second one down city council shall approve the business plan unless it determines in writing justification the council enter to a 30-year and that's supposed to be in February of each year. Um

yeah hold on Joel. Yeah, we're we're beyond past that and that was addressed by Stephanie that she's going to reiterate that timeline. Well, have we seen the business plan? So, that that was essentially what you heard um a couple weeks ago in April. Um, and so what my proposal for additional language would be have it read meeting in the month of February each year or as scheduled by council because what happened the history behind it is it used to be in February and then the mayor bumped it out into April and kind of consolidated it with all the other um tourism related entities. So we just want to make sure that it's flexible to meet council's needs. It wasn't this mayor. Okay. So we probably need to change it. So you're saying we've already seen the business plan for the first year, correct?

Okay. Thank you. Cool. Okay. At this moment in time we are discussing agenda review which is regards to our Wednesday night meeting. Uh Rob,

so um during the u agenda process um uh uh the city manager um the mayor and um councelor Riker myself, we had talked about um the possibility of a lot of these um the um the fees for these different organizations to use Riverside Park. And I think that in that room we all had agreed that if we were going to wave fees, which seems to be uh almost like a common practice now that we um would agree that we would not be waving the refundable damage deposit, that that would be something that would be etched in stone. So, and we had talked about bringing it up um prior to Wednesday's meeting. So, do we want to have any disc discussion on that? But the concept was is that um while very often council sees legitimate value in um waving a lot of the fees to use the park, it didn't seem u uh responsible or really smart to wave the damage repos deposit because to me if damage deposit is in place, I think that the organizer of the event is just going to be slightly more careful. And uh so anyway, that that's what we talked about. So, I'm hoping that we can can have that as a policy moving forward into Wednesday night.

So, Rob brought up a great point is regards to uh Wednesday night when when um we're talking about park events that that should be kind of on your forefront is one reason I think it's very acceptable to continue to ask for um security deposit, which is goes directly back to parks for cleanup and and um and or damage repair. if the event goes off without a hitch, their security deposit gets given back. So, I think it's a very viable thing. Any other um questions, concerns about Wednesday night's meeting? Indra,

I have a question about you putting Wednesday night meeting on here because so if we just have an you just want to know if we have a question on Wednesday night meeting, what if we have a question on what's just on the agenda because we used to be able to talk about that. Should I wait till Wednesday's meeting to talk about on the city work city council workshop agenda? It says agenda review. We're going to discuss the business meeting first and then we will discuss calendar events which means go forward agenda.

So I'm asking about the the the coming up night council meeting first to see if anybody's has any questions and concerns with that. We'll finish out the meeting by asking if anybody has any agenda items for the future and or calendar. Thank you.

Anybody about the Wednesday night meeting? Last call. Okay, your packets have been out for a while and they are very, very heavy. I know it mimics the war and peace, but please make sure that you pick them up in a timely manner so you can digest and have your questions prepared ahead of time. At this point, we will open it up for agenda review or calendar items going forward. Kathleen and then Andra. Kathleen.

So, I was wondering if we can uh or have we thought about doing something for the 250th anniversary celebration of our nation. uh somehow incorporating that into um our festivities this summer, Fourth of July or I think we should acknowledge that as a city. You want to discuss that?

We have our normal Fourth of July celebration coming up. If you want us to try to look at something, I'm open to suggestions on what you if you have any ideas or concepts. And we did have a meeting with um county commissioners and that was actually brought up from county commissioners as an idea for a collaboration, but they didn't have actually any ideas. Uh I have uh Indra and then Joel.

Yes. So on here is it June the municipal court where I'm sorry where did I see that? Are we talking are we going to talk about the exclusion zone before that is or is that part of the municipal court discussion because that's been on the agenda for a long time. We're going to start with the

So, we started with the exclusion zone with the council memo that was provided to you, I think about two weeks ago. They gave you just the general background of of an exclusion zone. Uh they they don't necessarily have to coincide uh with a municipal court in place. You may be able to do more with an exclusion zone, but exclusion zones can be had with or without a municipal court. So,

I'd like to see that on the agenda as soon as possible. Okay. So, the exclusion zones went out in a memo for uh first bit of education in regards to uh areas that are close to us. If you want to bring that forward, um I would go back to that memo email and then respond accordingly and see if we can get every and we can try to put that on a agenda going forward. So it used to be on the back of the agenda and so who how did things get taken off that way was it it?

Yeah, it was under memo and so we sent it out under memo. So basically if you want to have a further discussion from the memo I think the end of the memo asked if council wants to have this further and request a workshop then go ahead. So, this might be your time if you wanting to request request that and there's uh three or more council members that would also like to have that on the agenda. The mayor will look at trying to schedule that in an upcoming workshop along with staff and our our ability to get that in front of you. So, okay. I think with the um camp the site closing and maybe a bit of turmoil coming in the near future, I really think we should get that on the agenda and I would like to see it as as soon as we can. If I could get support that'd be great.

Sure. Go ahead, Rob.

So going back a ways, it was kind of I guess agreed upon that it seemed like there was three pieces to that. There was an exclusion zone, a potential municipal court, and then where would someone who was found guilty or whatever be sent and why wouldn't they be released from the county jail? the three don't if the three don't work together I personally don't know how well any one of those were going to work separately and they were looked at and and at one point they were on the back of the agenda as three items together so to me that if we're going to have that discussion and have it be productive and not just have be have it be more paper or more laws on the books we wanted to actually be able to solve a problem for us so that that's the way I was looking at this is that it would be a comprehensive discussion of the three pieces that are necessary to work together rather than just something that we can point to that say was an accomplishment doesn't really do very much. So I I'm I'm all for having the comprehensive discussion of the three pieces, but to look at one or the other I think is to to my way of thinking, at least for me, is a waste of time. But if we want to have the whole discussion, and that could involve bringing the sheriff in to describe to us what's happening at the jail, what we can expect from him, uh it could be more about the municipal court, decide what possibly more teeth that might give us in an exclusion zone, but to just have paper on the books. Because when when Stephanie uh sent that email out about the exclusion zone, I asked a question back, I think everybody saw it. Maybe not. Maybe it was just to her. But um I I I pointed out something that was in the Daily Cur just that very day of a guy that got arrested 27 times. I said, "So, what is an exclusion zone going to do to prevent that guy from getting arrested a 28th time? We're going to be wasting police resources and funding to have the cops go and arrest this guy again." So, uh you know, for an exclusion zone violation and then he's going to go be a bad guy outside the exclusion zone. So to me that's I look at that as kind of a waste of time and money. But if we can put the three

together, I'm all for having that discussion. Even if it's an all day workshop, I'm all for having that discussion because the whole community wants it, you know. Yeah, that's one reason why I I echo uh Rob's uh sentiment and his explanation is that's one reason we sent out information in regards to exclusion zone in a memo so you guys could start to digest that. that will be an included topic when we start going forward with our multiple session of topics um revolving around municipal court because it is not just a simple little thing. It is a very big giant animal and it's got a lot of pieces and moving parts. So, we're going to have to spend a lot of time on that uh further. Okay, go ahead.

So, uh maybe chief wants to weigh in on this and does that have a lot to do with SB48? I mean, can we change is it get is anything gonna be changed unless that thing's changed?

We will get into Senate Bill 48 pretty in-depth with what's coming with the municipal court discussion. I've had conversations with the sheriff. I've done research. I've talked to other entities about how that's operating and what the ins and outs are. You'll get a pretty comprehensive look at what what those rules will be. I I [snorts] think when it comes to the exclusion zone ju like councelor Pel was mentioning there's it's multiaceted just with the exclusion zone and I think first you really should have the discussion about the municipal court we sort of determine where we go from there and that'll help set the stage for an exclusion zone area and what that might look like also based on your decision with a municipal court also. So, I I think that would probably be the most efficient and effective way to go about your your ex your exclusion zone um discussion.

Chief Hensman, would you weigh in on that? Do you think an exclusion zone by itself is not worthwhile? Well, I'm a glass half full kind of person. And if there were more laws on the books to help our department, that's not a bad thing. But I certainly do not agree with anything I heard from councelor Pel to the city manager to the city attorney. I think it will give us um I think having a municipal court would be u fantastic for the city of Grandpass for a lot of reasons.

Assuming the municipal court won't even be up till next year. I mean, do you see an exclusion zone being helpful in the meantime or no? You asked me a point blank question, my answer would be yes. I do see an exclusion zone being helpful even without a municipal court. With that being said, I would like to reconsider with council about moving forward since it's an easier thing to maybe do and get done faster. Okay. Yep. It's on the back of the agenda. Rob or Joel, you got a few seconds left. What you need?

Well, I have I have the item from the budget committee with the um uh water treatment wastewater treatment plant and the urban renewal dollars. I know the city manager wants to put it towards uh capital investment, just capital. And then there was some discussion of maybe having it uh offset some of the bill for folks. But anyway, there's several different options there, but we need to put that on the agenda of that motion that was passed uh and the budget committee. And then the other thing I had was I saw an email and correct me if I'm wrong, but it talked about the um legalities of the u uh tourist lodging tax. Uh allowed us to put a few more dollars towards public safety. And it would be nice to uh have a presentation on what that would mean and and how that goes and if we do that as part of a TLT total tax presentation or on its own. Um I'm okay either way.

I'm going to ask Aaron to um acknowledge your request and weigh in on that because I think there's a simple quick answer. There is there there is mayor a potential to adjust approximately $47,000. Uh it's going to be it's not going to come out of nowhere. You're going to have to prioritize. Uh but if you want to have that discussion council, then it would need to be an item we put on the back to have a discussion about TLT allocations.

Is that what you're looking for, Joel? All right. Um Victoria,

um I'll try to make it really quick. Uh yesterday was the March for Life and for two years now the March for Life has asked for the city to acknowledge um the March for Life. It's a 56 years. It's a very large important community event and uh so I would like to see put on the agenda and I don't know if there are other counselors who would like to uh see this as well. Uh it could be it's an eitheror. Um I apparently we would need to change the city charter in or in order for the mayor to do some sort of a proclamation and so uh looking into doing that. This would involve probably Stephanie looking into that and just bringing back to us if that would be a a net positive or a net negative and along with that the creation of a council proclamation because I think that would be different. So, um, rather than a mayoral proclamation, there could be a council proclamation. And so, that would just be a majority of counselors who would like to acknowledge something happening in the community. And so I again I don't know that's why I'm asking now if there are other counselors who would be interested in pursuing either a change to the city charter and or the creation of a council proclamation for events such as the March for Life. Um of course it wouldn't be just exclusive to that.

Go ahead. So yeah, if this is something that you that council ultimately wants to explore currently right now, there wouldn't be the ability to do that type of a proclamation, uh we would need to have a discussion on your your current uh policies associated with proclamations and and we can have that discussion. It would be an item that we could put on the back of the agenda if council so desires. So you already have a a resolution in regards to the definition and the issuing of proclamation. So the council would have to have um the appetite to revisit that and um redo that resolution.

So it Yeah. So it look I think I saw two other heads nodding possibly. So maybe there is interest in that. I don't know. Okay. We can put it on the back of the agenda. So what I would do is can you issue a memo in regards to that um resolution? distribute that resolution to counselors and then we can weigh in on uh how many counselors desire to revisit that resolution. So my understanding is I'll just address it with a memo first and see if it gets any traction afterwards. Absolutely. Please. Thank you. Thank you.

Um last call anybody? Okay, cool. Um, very quickly, uh, I will try to address this on, uh, Wednesday night as well, but, um, our lobbyist actually sent out, uh, a report as well. Um, but me being personally involved and me being personally having boots on the ground in Washington DC, I believe it was a fabulous trip for us, we I did my hardest to get uh, our little town acknowledged in the federal level. Uh it was kind of amazing when I went into Cliff Ben's office and he has a big giant uh picture poster of our uh arch bridge sitting on his wall right next to his desk and I pointed it out numerous times. Um, the best result that I can tell you that we got coming out of that is I got uh two Democratic and one Republican federal leaders to come together on a joint letter of support for the city of Grants Pass and renewing our brick grant, but they did adamantly say they wouldn't go into a press conference. But to get um two different parties to work together and in joint support for us, that's basically the best that we could hope for. and our FEMA representative that we met with uh from one of the staff members and one of the legislators was stated that they were going back through the 2022 applications first which was that was where our original application was. So very successful and awesome and thank you very much. Anybody else? If not, I'm going to end this. And I absolutely appreciate you guys being effective and efficient today. And I'm sorry, but I think that we should try to keep this to a 2-hour limit and make sure that we are effective and efficient. Um, so some of us can get back to our jobs. Thank you.