Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

I'm David from Minibus.

Christina Costello, Legends by Kate. Monique Ossa, Ossa Skinworks.

Anne Lark.

Kate Leamy from Orca Books Cooperative.

Alden Davis from Underhill Plants. Timothy Zahn from Shaggy Prize.

Jenica Machado of the City.

I'm Michael Cade with the Economic Development Council. All right. Let's have an approval of today's agenda. I have a motion to approve.

All in favor of approving the agenda, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Abstained. Motion to approve the minutes of the June 3rd meeting.

Motion to approve. Second.

All in favor of approving June 3rd meeting minutes, say aye. Aye. Opposed? abstain. Motion passes. Do we have any public comment? No. Any announcements? No announcements. All right. Then this item 6A, board nomination discussion.

So we have four open seats in which over July, I can open up the elections for. I've received nominations for Anne, Monique. I haven't been able to get in touch with Sophie. And then I did not receive any nominations via the survey. And so for the fourth seat, if any of you have been in touch with someone who I could reach out to, I'd be happy to do so. But

Otherwise, the person that I sent you is going to will submit here. I had dinner with her last night. I gently nudged again. I think she will.

OK, so then who's that?

Alana Carr from Captain Little and Compass Rose.

Yeah, if I'm able to connect with her, I can get the elections out.

OK.

Hopefully soon. I'm out of office for a couple weeks. Okay.

There's four open seats and there's four people who want them. Is that correct? Pending a conversation with Sophie.

Oh, right. Okay. Possible backups. I can talk to my neighbor Tanner sometimes. That would be kind of a fun fit. And opened up a new capital tavern and is a tattoo artist at Exile.

Yeah, he owns Exile.

Yeah. So two businesses, both in downtown and a barbershop. But again, kind of also just expanding the range of businesses that we bring in. Just as backups.

Yeah, OK. Yeah, hopefully I can get in contact with Alana or anybody else who's interested soon so that we can have the election during July and voting new people in August.

All right.

Then we'll move on to item 6B, PBI phase two discussions.

So for this, we have Mike Page joining us again from the Economic Developmental Council. He came to the last month's meeting to kind of just do an introduction. We took a look at the scope of work and now moving into next steps. He's back again to chat with you all with some additional questions.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks again for the opportunity last month to kind of go through the scope of work. you know, I guess if I could vouch in a couple of ways, one is you were, what I was hearing is desirous of leadership groups. I want to talk about that, how we set that up, feedback loops, and then how we outreach to the business community, make sure that we do that in an appropriate, proactive fashion. And then I do want to talk about next steps. So those are really the main topics I want to talk to you about. So just kind of gauge your, kind of where you're at. Is there something else that you want to put on the table that you've been thinking about since our last meeting? If not, I'll just jump right into kind of moving forward. Okay, okay, good. Thank you very much. And again, thank you for your time. I know it was a couple of things just on my personal privilege. I had not been to a PBI board meeting before. So congratulations. boards throughout the county and the state. Pretty rare that you get a board that jumps into it as deeply as you did. And that's a good thing. So thank you for your engagement and service to the community and City of Olympia. It's always gratifying to see that as you build a community. So I really wanted to talk about the process. We have a scope of work that for contracting to ensure that, you know, within the week. I have communicated with the OEA, Desiree, to make sure that she's understanding with the scope of work and solicited her input. So we're kind of at a point where it's like, okay, let's do the work. Biggest thing in front of me right now is what happens between now and next month when you reconvene. And I do want to have the formations of an outreach to the business community. So two things, one is we need to have, I would love to have two individuals from this body sitting on that leadership group. I don't think that group, as we talked about, won't be meeting in tents, but there will be focused discussions between now and the end of the project, which is essentially the end of the calendar year, first quarter of 2027. So I'm thinking every month, if not for every month, we'll have to take the temperature. But I know you're all busy. I'm going to need to ask for more time. But if there's two individuals that you're thinking, I think we'd like to have Anne on this program, I'm willing to have that conversation and have kind of an open-ended process. I don't know if you need to take a motion from this group, but I'm really looking for that kind of this is what we need to have. Um, any more than that, it becomes a little bit of a camel building exercise, but I think we need to be focused and very, um, upfront with people that we have a product and a project that we need to accomplish. Um, and we want to make sure that you're receiving something in the backend that is valuable and useful. So a couple of things, one is who amongst this group would like to participate. And then as I work with, uh, Jenica and your guidance and Desiree, who might else be part of that leadership group. Again, leadership group is to help guide the product, do some testing, create the feedback loops, and making sure that the database that we're creating is useful. So.

I don't want to volunteer anybody, but I think, you know, maybe a couple of members who have been put on, or have been on the board for a bit, maybe been in downtown for, Jacob, I'm looking at your attention. somebody who's just seen a larger scope of everything that the PDA has gone through, I would possibly ask that maybe somebody like that would be on it. Somebody like you, not you.

Somebody like me.

Find that person and let me know who they are. They can help run the shop.

Yeah, I'd be willing. I'd be interested for sure. I also nominate all of them.

Okay.

We're good. That was pretty quick. I thought this might be an hour long discussion. So if that's good, we'll start with you two. And then you'll hear communications from me within the week on how we set the structure, timing, and what you can anticipate and your guidance. I really don't like to have committees where the staff, me and my team, dominates the output. We have an idea how we're going to do this, but really we need to hear from you. Left to my own devices. We need to hear from you. And then one of the things that maybe we can talk about now Well, first of all, I need to make sure I give your contact points at the end of today. One of the things I want to hear today is have other people, other thinkers that might be interested and that I can approach or you can approach for me or we build that process. Who else out there in the world within the geography could and should, might be interested

like in the broader business community?

I'm going to let you answer that question.

Well, I would suggest that it's people who would be paying into PBA. Yeah.

Yeah. Left to my own devices, you're going to have a bunch of bankers and accountants.

I mean, I do think that we should get somebody also from Olympia Federal on that. I think . local businesses in downtown with their, you know, condoms and things like that, as well as support for local business community.

And I have a long time historical working relationship with a lot of people at Holy Fet. They're an individual that I mean, I do have a representative from Holy Fet on my

I mean, there's a lot of nice people there.

I don't know. Casey. Oh, there you go. And then it was Aaron.

Aaron.

A-A-R-O-N-R-E-R-I-N. A-A-R-O-N. A-A-R-O-N. Thank you. Walk me around downtown and check me out. All right.

Good. Yeah.

Because I do want to have, I think it's sage of you to kind of look at the only fad is their finance piece. Because I do think it's important to get their kind of their particular skill sets involved in how we look and kind of invest in the community. Because they have a long time investment into investing, you know, downtown Olympia. They're a great partner for us.

Todd Monahan, maybe?

I do know Todd from a lot of different worlds.

He sits on the, that might be an interesting thing to bring to the table as well, he sits on the board that I just set project um concept so yeah he was also on the symphony board too so the arts it would be nice uh my mind goes i feel like our kind of um business not business but like non-rate payer people are a little bit easier like fully fed isn't a rate payer uh it would be nice to have maybe somebody like from Ember on there, Ember Coffee. They've got two places downtown with a generous handful of employees. Is that not a repair? I think they are. Are they?

Yeah, they would be.

Yeah, they're right there. We used to have an OnlyFed member on the board many, many years ago.

Yeah, I knew that. Oh, for some reason, actually, let me... Am I even allowed to talk? I'm not.

I know it's

Yeah.

Actually, you know what?

I'm just going to revert. I'm going to revert. You're just getting a little more diversity in the choices.

As a member of the public, I'll just say that, which is a challenge for me, as you all know. As a member of the public, I think that not just for optics reasons, but for buy-in reasons, that we should have a broad representative's that does not, that isn't just kind of big corporate, but really also we get some of those smaller, you know, mom and mom or mom and pop and pop shops or just people owning them. Do you want to do it? Well, we have to, and I don't know if I'm going to continue. I don't know what the voting is going to be for the board. But I have ideas of businesses that I think would be.

I was going to say there's photos. That's just Tasha and Radio. And they're like longtime Olympia people that have just, I don't even think they have employees. It's just them.

Which one?

Photosynthesis and Walrus and Kitten just opened next door to Orca also. It was just one person. Yeah, she's great. I've met her once, but I forget. She's a friend of mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're tiny and right there, too. I bet they might be willing to entertain.

I don't know. I just want to clarify real quick, like, what you're looking for from this, like, group?

Like, I mean, we're talking, like, a very narrow, specific, like...

and just kind of jump in and get the ground running.

And as much as I'm all about, like, all different types of businesses and everything in downtown, I'm just saying that, like, let's find some people who are willing to just work on a quick project who are going to be bought immediately as my only... Yeah.

I do think that the small businesses are the ones who I think are going to be most likely to be annoyed about having to pay a rate or whatever. So, like, having... some of them involved in the planning. 100% agree. Yeah. Just like, yeah. Yeah. But you're right. Yeah. I don't agree.

I don't really like to diversify. Todd, hold on. Yeah, I'm sorry. I overspoke.

I apologize.

No, it's OK.

I would also like to see us diversify a little bit away from a nice white organization. So I'm thinking about some of the restaurants that, you know, maybe like, what's his name from? It's Vietnamese-ish. It's right next to the flower shop on Capitol. And it is called Nom Nom.

Nom Nom is actually, and this is me telling tales out of school, but it looks like they're putting their business up for sale. So, yeah. My neighbor at Da Nang, probably way too busy to join. I would love to get Valentina, but she just opened up another restaurant. I'm down. I would love it to have Valentina.

She's the best. One of the gaps, if we're thinking about what are we wanting from this group and for them to advise on, includes residential. And so I would recommend... identifying somebody to represent that perspective.

Do you mean like renting to residential, like building owner? Or do you mean like a resident?

No, building owner.

I was going to recommend Melissa from Provo.

Why am I looking at her? didn't mean to cut anybody off. The guy from the Heal Oli project.

Daniel. Yeah, that's who that was. He's not a state developer.

He is been promoting insane amounts of downtown local businesses. But he is a resident in downtown, and we're talking about a residential voice for people renting in downtown, if we're talking about including residential into the ratepayer structure.

I think Jenica just said it has to be a business owner.

I think it should have to be. I think we are open to talk about who we would like to represent it as much as I think I'd be interested in the perspective of if we're going to be charging the residential business owner and then I would want to know how are you going to distribute this? What does that look like? And so I think that that would be a helpful perspective.

I think, I mean, Todd does partially cover that if he wants to do it. I do think Daniel would be really valuable. He also is like the chair or some position on the like downtown neighborhood.

Oh, planning commission.

Yeah. And his degree is relevant. It's like civic planning or whatever. And he's super committed to this type of thing. So I think he would be a really good option.

I will say Daniel's a friend of mine. and he probably would be great. But as somebody that went around and talked to dozens and dozens of businesses trying to get them to come to our annual meeting, I think it would behoove us to engage our rate payers. Those are, I remember going around it was the year that I got a bunch of people to go and we had to expand the space. Do you guys remember that year? The feedback that I got was a fair amount of rate payers that felt alienated, that other people were making decisions for them and that they didn't have a voice. So I will say, I think from looking at this coming to fruition with the most amount of buy-in that focusing on rate payers more than maybe influencers at this stage might be something to think about. I think it would be very helpful because right now we're at a place where there's a significant number of businesses that don't see the value in this.

Which is why I would advocate the opposite. If we want to include more businesses and ratepayers that are frustrated with the PPIA board, we should definitely look into bringing more people into the PPIA board before talking about a specific mission, a specific task, a small advisory to what we're talking about.

We need advocates I do believe that the voice of the rate payer is important, but at the same time, I think we need people that are going out advocating for what we're doing, who are not just frustrated.

I mean, there's enough people already on this board that are frustrated with what we're doing. I think we need to bring people in who are going to be a voice for what the change we're trying to bring is, even if you might call them an influencer, A civic-minded person who is advocating for all of downtown in many different capacities is a great person to gain support from ratepayers.

Maybe I don't understand what this is.

I'll pass the end up next. I know we have a limited number of people for this group. So I agree that it shouldn't be like primarily made up of non-rate pairs. I think it should probably be at least like eight rate pairs and no more than like one or two non-rate pairs. But I do think that my personal opinion is I think Daniel would be a good get for it because of all the reasons we already talked about.

I think Louise would be a good

pick because he's got connections to three different sectors of, or like types of business with tattoo, barbershop, and now a bar. And then somebody from like Olympia Coffee Company I think would be a good pick because they're a huge employer. Absolutely. in downtown, but still like, and they have, you know, Oliver always brought a lot of scope of like, because they also have locations in other places. It was interesting having that perspective.

Oliver's not part of it anymore.

I know, but somebody else from OCR with you.

A legacy business like Childhood Zen Gallery. I'm not saying we're doing all of these, but Jonathan I think somebody that has, yeah, that's been here a long time.

Sorry, I was just going to say, just to clarify your ask one more time for the group, specifically what you're looking for for this.

To provide the original feedback loop, how are we reaching out to individuals? This is the information that we're gathering. How do we understand the data? And how do we make sure that we're communicating to a larger group of what we're trying to accomplish?

And timeframe on this is probably what, max three months?

We'll have a contract deliverable back to you, the council, first quarter of 2027. So between January, February-ish of 2027.

maximum nine months so nine months maximum like basically let's just use a fun term like you know action group to solve a very specific like feedback for what what we're trying to do yeah okay i think an example i would want to i could provide a the type of feedback i think we would be interested in just one small example would be

If we're using score footage to determine the rate now, what does that mean? Does that include storage space? What does that mean to your business in terms of do you have a really historically large space? but you have a really small business. And if we don't make certain cutouts, it would be an equitable amount for you to pay. Like those are the types of questions that I think we can be asking that we couldn't know anything about unless it was hearing from a rate payer and how that would impact you.

I think one other thing that makes me think about that I think about in thinking about all this is that we're looking at restructuring the organization and people that don't have never had anything to do with the organization, don't know what it was, don't know what it is, and don't necessarily know where we wanted to go. So I don't know how much we get out of that. Your suggestion of Melissa, I thought was a really good one, because Melissa was on this board, knows what we were. And it brought to mind Ani from the Full Beans area as well. She used to be on the board. And these are people who have left the board for whatever reasons. Maybe they were frustrated. Maybe they just had other things in their lives. I'm not sure exactly. But they know what it was like, they know what the frustrations have been, and I think they would have a bit more of input into where it might need to go. Because they've been rate payers, they've been involved in the board process, they've seen it, I would suggest those types of people would have good value as well.

I agree. Okay. Somebody else who came to mind was Rick Lutterby, who's a farmer's insurance agent. His office is downtown, so he would be a rate payer. And he knows a lot about different businesses and a lot of different people. He's also on an ODA committee, but not on the board there.

It looks like a rainy day.

You should try. He lets us do little block parties in his parking lot all the time.

Oh, yeah. Maybe. I will. I have a pretty good relationship with him, and I've found him to be quite participatory with anything I've put forward.

With something that's slightly political, like this? Did he type in projects? I don't know. He did everything I do. He did the block party.

He was the block party guy. Yeah, he was sweet.

That's who I worked with for, and his people were great. They coordinated that whole area. I'm just also thinking Olifant could be here. Yeah. collective right yeah i know most of them i can't yeah yeah i i'm not saying i'm just putting forward names i know you're uh but these are the this is really good um i just think the kind of having uh that diversity is important for sure will be very helpful for next stage which to me is promoting and implementing and telling the story but

Is there 10, you said? How many are you?

Does the 10 include our two?

Two plus eight, yeah. I think if I had my strategic thoughts together before this meeting, I would have created, I'm sorry, to create a matrix of participation so you can kind of start seeing where the filter is and kind of gaps. We find that very helpful for us when we develop something like this so that we know where our strengths and our gaps are.

Mm-hmm.

So what I can take back from this, I can work with all of them in Jacob. I think what I'll do is I'll create that matrix and I'll run it by you if you're all comfortable with me taking that work product on. And then we can start going from there. I do want to work with the ODA to make sure that we start filling in backups. Again, left to my own devices, I only know what I know. So I'm really going to call upon you to help. But all the names said, I don't know everybody. I don't know all the names. Does that sound like a pathway forward for this? OK, good. That might put us back just a little bit of time, Jennica, but I think it's important that we set that first stage right. So if I can move on to the next question. The next question really is the timing of the outreach. I work Monday through Friday, Monday through Friday, 7 to 7. And I don't like it when somebody comes into my office unannounced. I don't like it at work. But I want to know, are there times of the week of the flow of business that we need to make sure that we're, because I need to organize my team and my interns, how we do this. Is this a Saturday activity or a Sunday activity or a Monday morning activity? morning activity or even, or a combination there above. We want to be comprehensive as possible. So we have to have some idea of your thoughts about how we physically reach out to folks, either electronically or in a physical presence. So I wanted to get a little bit of conversation from you so I can start organizing our work team around that. All of them? Depends.

I would avoid Monday, Tuesday for the most part. Monday through? Monday and Tuesday. Monday and Tuesday.

downtown businesses are closed those days i thought just the opposite because those are slower days that people might have more time because later in the week people are working that's just me like that's when i we have the most clients and um from the bar side of things i would say like definitely not

This time and day is really good for me, but not the first Wednesday, obviously, but Monday, Tuesday, any other days, especially if you're looking to make first contact with like owners, that's usually when you'll find our owners in their space and If you go in at 4 o'clock when a bar opens or at 4.30 on Monday when I open, I have nobody in there, and I will have time to chat with somebody for a few minutes to even set up a meeting. So this, when I was doing whiskey sales, is when I would go see bar managers. I would write as service opens, and you can catch a few minutes to talk with them before they get hit, and then immediately get out if you see their bar filled up. I'd say thank you for your time.

Are we talking about people boots on the ground walking around and trying to find people? OK. OK.

I thought. It'll be a combination of both. I think we have to have a strategy that includes. Candidly, I want people to see the face of this thing.

I do. I just did. I walked 15 blocks in this town and went in dozens and dozens and dozens of businesses. And early afternoon before things bump, it depends on the industry. Your food industry is very different than your retail industry. Earlier in the week tends to be slower for more businesses, has been my experience, so I can catch people.

Alden is correct that on Mondays and Tuesdays, a lot of businesses are open.

Yeah.

I'm one of them. He has all that are open seven days a week. And yeah, it is dead on Mondays. Yeah.

But people are often in there. I will say like, that's actually been a very good time for me to have an uninterrupted conversation because the rest of the time, if somebody is doing retail or food, that is, nobody has time for that.

After 5 o'clock on Sundays.

Any business that does lunch for restaurants come after the lunch rush. Honestly, a great time to go is if you see a business doing happy hour, that's a really good time to go because that's when they're actively trying to get people in for their slowest point of the day. Interesting.

And again, I want this to have a face. I don't want this. And I know when we come in and see people, sometimes they don't want to talk to me. So you have to have a face. We have to have a relationship with folks. You know, I get it.

I'm trying to understand. Are we just going to try to create this group of tens? No, no. This is afterwards. This is afterwards. Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think we're going to have to do a little bit of a staggered thing then because of the different kinds of businesses.

I just did this, so I'm happy to share because I think I went and talked to almost all of you or your neighbors repeatedly. I've spent the last week and a half doing this and trying to hit so many different kinds of businesses. So if you want to chat about what I found successful, I'm happy to share mine. Thank you. And I found, I think you're 100% right. I think people seeing me and understanding what we were doing is why we had the engagement that we had this year.

That's a question I didn't think about. Is this a team approach where you see a friendly face or does it matter? So maybe you and I or one of my team members goes with you. It's like,

For engagement, that year we did this, we had this annual meeting that they told us go and invite people, but tell them they don't even need to register because they can come even if they didn't register. And I took that very seriously and I went around and talked to people and we had so many people register. that we had to expand the space. And then the board was told they couldn't bring a second from their business. That is all boots on the ground. We're a face. This is what we're doing. We want you there. That's the best way for engagement in this town, I think.

I wonder if the guides could help with this. That's a great idea. Desiree can kind of include in their scope is like the kind, maybe also the crisis, yeah, the walking crisis response unit folks, or like the OPD walking patrol or whatever, the businesses that are more comfortable with them. It's just like, I'm thinking of people who like, already regularly stop into businesses and just come in and say, like, hey, do you guys do anything?

Yeah, the guides.

That's a great idea. The guides, especially since we're already contracting with the VA. We used to lean on the ambassadors for that kind of stuff all the time when it was the city program.

Is each one of your task force, the 10, going to be doing the outreach? So this average would be just you and your specific EDC team.

We're working on internships, a couple internships with Evergreen students. So we'll add that to the mix as well.

I don't know. I do wonder what the quality would be of your research if you are just having people who are kind of more random to downtown. You do need to have somebody with you because, you know, not a lot of people, I know you, but like not a lot of people are going to know everyone on your team at all. I mean, maybe they'll know some, like Aslan for sure knows a lot of people downtown, but like Evergreen students, I love them.

Daniel would actually be somebody. Yeah, Daniel would be really good.

Because you're gathering information, right? These are like, you're going into businesses, you're asking them questions about like, hey, we're doing this thing about rate paying.

Yeah. We did, we used to call walkabouts.

Yeah.

So we have five students from St. Martin's University and we'd start at one end of Yale and we would just, it would take us two days and we would just walk through downtown. And students, we have a very questionnaire very filled out we actually would fill out with the name of the business the name of the contact so it was like we did as much prep work and okay you're on this side there's this stack you're on this side okay here's this stack and they would go in teams of two um it was weird wild stuff going on there because people once they started talking and realize this is a real thing some of the information we got for yam and we got it back to the city look at their business, interact with them.

Do you think that was because they were young?

Maybe they didn't have an easier time getting information or students? I think it was because nobody's ever asked them before. Young's different. You know, it's just nobody's ever asked us, what does it mean to be a vibrant business? What are you talking about? Nobody's asked me the question.

Okay.

And then, you know, we have some questions designed around this will be different. But I think my experience, and we did that with, I know Rainier's not real big. There's like 12 businesses. Tonight I was a little bit bigger and then we did it at Grand Mount Rochester and Grand Mount. We just started talking and it's really cool because sometimes there's a little bit of camaraderie that is built there between the business and what I'm going to do with that information. We have to have that communication piece that the ODA will work on. How we communicate what we are intending to do is really critical. Because I don't want to walk into your shop and you'll say you don't know me and say, hi, Sophie, tell me about this.

And you're going, I'm not talking to you.

Yeah, yeah. So we have to build that trust so people will talk to us, so they know we're coming. There's an expectation of the types of questions and interactions that we will ask them. With Yelm, I did quite a bit of outreach to the Chamber of Commerce, the Nisqually Valley News, to do that work.

You did all that news work, like, we're going to come in, we're going to be here, and then you went in.

Here's my list, I'm ready to go.

I do think Daniel would be really good at getting that out. A lot of people follow him.

So that's kind of how I envisioned this happening. It's different than tonight now. Every community's different. We tried to do it in Lacey, and we tried to do it in Tumwater, and it just like, meh.

Why didn't it work?

I think in Tumwater, the business was too spread out. There wasn't a central core. You know, in Yelm, it's like right there where the two highways come together. And tonight, it was just that strip, the highway. And then Grand Mound, Rochester, there was a little bit of this, a little bit of that. But there was a sense of, yeah, it's still

Do you think that Olympia, this project, is the biggest? You've done it in them? The most amount of businesses by far, yeah.

Prior role, they did this in Everett, something similar to Everett.

Yeah.

That was a logistical nightmare. Because it was just two of us. It was me. I was relatively new to my job. I was like 28. Nothing wrong with a 28-year-old kid, but I didn't know what I was doing. I was asking a question. So I was meeting with these attorneys and shop owners and artists. They were like, I don't know how to synthesize this information. But if we do it right and we kind of set that expectation and let people know. So when I come in to talk to you, oh, this is what you're all about. or there's an expectation, hey, I heard something about that, so yeah, let's chat. And that's part of the ask of the task force, the leadership group, task force. It's called an action team. Part of the ask of the action team is how do we do this work? What's the best way to do it? I'd love to my own devices. I'll just start today, I'll go across to this guy.

I just had this thought that one approach that might be helpful is to have like a action team member and then if there isn't somebody that fits this criteria on the action team a community member or another I don't know whatever that whoever that could be but like having a restaurant person talking to restaurant people is very helpful. Having a retail person talking to a retail, having an art person talking to art. I think that would be a useful way of kind of, then it isn't, you don't have somebody walking in. Like I would think about, When we did the chalk art downtown, I actually went around to restaurants and coffee shops because I know they're busy. Like they don't have time to do chalk art in front of their building. So I went and did chalk art, like got it started for them. Like, I got you. You do your thing. And this is only because I have restaurant friends here and in the community now. But before I would have been like, oh, their restaurant people aren't into this. This isn't a value to them. And that's not true. They just... their model doesn't work where they can go. And so I think having somebody go in with a like kind of business would be. Kindred spirit. Streamline a lot of things.

It's funny you bring it up. I just haven't, I had forgotten the work that we did with, we created the creative vitality index in the early 2000s. I think we did it in 2006. So with the economics professors at St. Martin's, So we started surveying, walking around downtown Olympia, talking to the arts groups and organizations.

What a disaster that was.

Because we didn't... I think the only person we talked to was Debra Van Tenen. She was the first person, and she allowed, kind of put the word out, yeah, they're okay. But it wasn't it. I was just like...

economics of art. Economists and artists should talk more.

We do. So we have parking coming in a little bit for an update from parking. Is there, are there any other questions you'd like to make?

I'm good. I have a good direction. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Thank you very much. I don't know who was first.

I just want to make a comment or question. When we go into these business or whoever we is going in to talk to them about it, I think we should also be providing them with examples of what we have done and what we want to do or potentially could do. Rather than just saying we need your money.

Oh, yeah. I appreciate that comment, especially when we read the first evaluation report because sentiment around this is fairly negative. I think it's hard to talk about How do you want to participate in something you don't believe in if we haven't shared a vision?

So I appreciate that. Yeah, I think a packet. I mean, something that somebody can digest later and this is the context and here's the model and here's why your voice is important. A fly. Mainly visual fly.

I'm happy to volunteer help with boots on the ground outreach for this. If you need that support later, I cover the retailing.

Thank you.

Last question for me. How are you doing with this?

You okay?

I'm really excited.

Yeah, it feels like momentum.

I'm excited too. I'm really nervous. There's a lot of inputs that we have to understand. But one thing I'm really excited about is getting that pulse of what's we can do i think i want to give a tip of the cap to jennica when she first approached me on this topic was how do we make olympia better i think this might be a tool to do that i just thank you for your community leadership there so but okay thank you thank you thank you like that thanks for dropping us like everybody else yeah i'm here for the long run

But if you want to take two more minutes, I think it's about here.

Well, can we hear, are you doing something fun for your adventure?

I am. I'm going to hop over to Norway to do some hiking.

I've done a little bit of hiking in Norway. What are you going to do?

Oh, nice. There's just a few day hikes that I'm interested in. Yeah. trying to get my knees in shape. Thanks. Thank you.

Be prepared to eat lots of delicious bread and butter. I'm always prepared for that.

I prepare at some of your restaurants.

In a way, it's one of the many teams that I'm rooting for. But it doesn't mix any. I'm not even necessarily a sports person, but the energy and feeling Mexico yesterday, how fun was that? Yeah. So thanks for joining.

We have parking services here at Gustavo and Chelsea.

And so I had heard, The request to be able to have a chance to hear an update about some of the parking changes in downtown, and they've kindly offered their time to come provide some of those updates. And so we have, you know, the next chunk of the meeting. This is the last item. So I'm curious what questions you guys have.

Well, maybe you could just do a very brief of what your role is for parking services?

Yeah, so I'm the parking services program specialist. So I collect the data and print all the numbers. I help make plans for what we want to do in the future for parking. And Gustavo here's the supervisor.

Nice to meet you, everyone. And yeah, I supervise parking operations and work with the team that we have out there, of course, in parking.

And how many people do you have on your team?

We have four PSF Part 1s, which are the parking services field representative, and they're the ones focusing on the downtown area. We have one field crew lead, which is the one who deals with abandoned vehicles and liveaboring vehicles and complaints. And then we have PSF Part 2, parking services representative 2, which is the one who do maintenance, fix the meters, and clean them, and collect the coins, and Chelsea and I.

Everybody that I've interacted with on your team on the street level, especially in front of my establishment, has been just absolutely wonderful.

It's been very nice to meet you. I don't know where you're about to stand. A little great experience with us.

Thank you. It's definitely a hard job to give people bad news all day every day. So we try to pick folks who can do it in the friendliest, kindest way. So glad it's working.

Can you talk about the change that happened? I think, you know, within this last year, where you can't come to City Hall to do any parking related things anymore?

Yeah. So the entire city transitioned to using Thurston County District Court because our municipal court was located in the building over at the corner of Plum and 8th. And that building needed significant repair and upgrades. And they determined that it was going to be cheaper for the whole city to just dissolve the municipal court and move to the district court. So that was a decision that city council made.

Was there any kind of outreach to the downtown business community about how these changes were going to end up manifesting? I don't know. Do you know if there was any outreach?

No. Specifically around that decision of parking.

I will say our program was involved on that transition.

Yeah, that was a city council decision that parking services didn't have any part in helping with that decision. City council didn't ask you at all? They picked our brains a little bit. And they made their choice based on the budget. So it was a difficult decision for them. I know that we're working really closely with the district court. Gustavo actually was just emailing them, you know, not even 10 minutes ago, trying to figure out how we can make it run more smoothly and make it way more friendly for customers. Cause I know that right now that's, that's a huge sticking point.

Yeah. I have so many questions, but first, um, why can't we pay tickets online?

So, uh, Our parking ticketing software system does not communicate at all with the court system. The court is right now scheduled to update their system in I think 2027, because every court in Washington State is using the same software. And they did release an update recently that is a major overhaul of their software system. And they're updating courts kind of district by district. So our district is scheduled for that update for, I think, middle of next year. And once that update happens, then their new system should be able to communicate with our system and that will allow for online payments.

Yeah. What happens? So now on my street, I'm on Fifth Ave Southwest. And first they installed these new, things, hockey things. And then today I noticed they chopped them all off.

Yeah. So the parking meters. So we were doing kind of a little pilot run of something that was done in Omaha, Nebraska, where they kept the bottom portion of the actual physical meter behind for the purposes of bagging meters for like when folks preserve them for special events or for like construction projects. And we did find that that kind of confused customers. So we're working on pulling those out and just having the one kiosk on, you know, that block that folks can use for payments. And the kiosk will take. Yes, it accepts pins and accepts cards. So, yep. And we're looking at getting more kiosks out on the street that will also accept the tap to pay option. And those I think are in the works. We're hoping to get those within the next few months.

Does that cut back a lot of costs? Like, what is the percentage of these versus what the meters were?

The reason we're moving to the kiosks is that parking meter manufacturers are no longer making single space meters. Those are being phased out. The entire industry is going towards mobile payments and single kiosks that cover larger areas. So the cost per block ends up being about the same because the meters are cheaper, but you have to buy more of them per block. But you can't, you know, it's getting really difficult for us to even source replacement parts for them when they break down, which is why there's a lot out there that aren't working, but we're doing our best.

I will say the main reason is the cost of repairing them. Because those pay stations that we have right now, It goes around the same that caused us to have single space meter on the block. But then when we have to repair them, it's just one box that we have to repair instead of nine or eight. And it's been really challenging to keep all of the meter running for the last couple of years.

Yeah. What are the odds of bringing back the free 15 minutes? I think you'd make a lot of people really happy.

So that meter manufacturers are phasing out because they initially, you know, they used to provide that as an option back before meters could take card payments because they wanted to give folks a chance to change for a dollar or whatever. And as credit card meters are becoming more common as well as mobile payment options, they no longer provide that as an option anymore. But one of the things that we are looking into doing as kind of, you know, something analogous to that is we're looking into implementing a like parking validation program through pay by phone because it is a new option that they're starting to provide. So that will hopefully help folks, you know, pay for their parking that way.

What does that mean?

So the parking validation program works by, you know, your business, can have a business account. You put money into a little wallet, and then you can say, OK, if somebody comes in and they spend x number of dollars, we will give them y amount of money towards their parking session for that day. So folks will park within a certain distance of your business. And on the app, your business will be listed as someplace that provides a validation. So they can say, oh, if I get a cup of coffee from this place, it'll give me $0.50 towards my parking or whatever. So then the customer can go in, spend the money, and they can get that coupon and use it. So business would have paid for that 15 minutes.

Yeah. Can't we create a validation from each business that gives 15 minutes free? Yeah. People are so fed up with this situation. People are angry about it. It's expensive. And I think a little concession might being really helpful.

So with the pay-by-phone coupon or the validation, what the city is looking is to have some incentive for their business. So let's say you put $100 on your wallet, $500 is going to work more than $100. So in a way, you're going to be paying less for parking than a regular customer. something similar like we had before with the gold coins. I don't know if you have heard of the gold coins. So going back to the 15 minutes, what we're doing right now, I don't know if you noticed, we have some 15 minutes meter out there that you just fit with a 25 cents. We're going to get rid of those and now it's going to be a curbside pickup. So People won't have to pay to use those 15 minutes of space. And it's intended for, you know, delivery pickup, door dashers. So they just have to have their hazard lights on and they will have to pay for parking on those spaces. And right now we have around over 30 of those spaces out there.

In the historic district? Yeah, in downtown. Yep.

So every yellow meter is a 15-minute meter, and that's going to be replaced with a curbside pickup.

Will it say curbside pickup, or will they say a 15-minute load-on-load only?

It'll say 15-minute curbside pickup.

Well, that's great. That's a restaurant. That language, I think, is going to confuse a lot of people as to what curbside pickup means, because that's like a COVID term from back in the day, where you could only... You order from a business and they're running it out to you. Like, I think that is there any way you could maybe think, rethink that language? I worry about what that will mean for, for people. Cause just having a 15 minute zone, I think people are like, cool. I read the sign top to bottom. I can only park here for 15 minutes between this time and this time, just like in other cities. But that curbside pickup language is really going to confuse everybody.

especially the older specifically for like delivery drivers benefits like we don't want very specifically one sector of businesses um it's not helpful to any of the rest of us we're like a 15 minute so yeah just a 15 minute spot or a 30 minute spot yeah like in other cities i think those are understood like okay i'm only here to like

run in and do something or I'm picking somebody up. Load and unload is kind of a tough one because I think people think that's just for like official commercial people parking. Yeah. But 15 minutes only spots or 30 minute only spots. I mean, obviously you'd have to get on the towing.

To Alden's point, when it comes to language, like I run in two of my wife's spotted plants that needed to be If I saw like curbside pickups or like, especially anything that has any branding logo from any of the companies, I would just assume that I'm not allowed to park there, but that I liked the idea of what you guys are doing for like the drivers to be able to park somewhere, but also for just regular people to like include that language would, I think facilitate a lot of other businesses. are really only operating at two main times a day you know and to designate 30 parking spots that would only be for it wouldn't only be for yeah but I just in terms of which that's I think would it say you have to keep your hazards on like would that be clear on the sign yeah so he's got the the signage because also 15 minutes with your hazards on might kill your batteries yeah

It'll kill my battery. So the law says that for folks who are loading and unloading, which would include, you know, those 15-minute spots, they have to have their hazards on.

And you have to correct the sign. It's 15-minute parking, curbside loading zone.

And it's going to be separate from, like, the loading zone passes for the... Yeah, you won't be able to go to the loading zone.

They're not permanently required. And the way we're going to enforce it is the same way that we enforce loading zones. It's making sure that there is activity, there is a passenger in the car, or at least a flashlight showing us they're using it for the reason. I feel like

I'm not even necessarily attached to changing the name or the verbiage, but who makes that decision? Is that you guys that make the decision? Okay, so because I'm like, are we advocating for people? So partly what I'm hearing is that it would be helpful for us to communicate with people that engage with our business on how to use properly use those spaces. And so do you have a mechanism to communicate with businesses? I think that I will say is an overarching, um, I don't know if concern is quite the right, um, an overarching conversation. is that a lot of stuff happens around parking. I call it the historic district. In our historic district, that debt is not communicated to businesses and therefore we don't have a mechanism to communicate with our staff or our clients or customers. And so it's very nice that you have lovely people working for you because I think in general, this is an industry that garners a lot of strong feelings. Um, but I think one way that some of that could be mitigated is having a clear communication on what you're doing, why you're doing it and how we can communicate with both our staff and our, you know, people that come in and get services from us. What is the mechanism for that? Because in all the time that I've been in business, I have had zero messaging from parking And I'm on a board that has parking as part of our mandate. So does the city, is that a priority for the city? And what is the mechanism for the city to communicate with business owners around issues like that, if it's not us?

Yes. So we met recently with the ODA, because we've been looking for a channel to communicate everything we're doing out on the field. Yesterday, we also had a ride along with our new director of communication to show him what are we doing right now, what parking does beside enforcing the downtown, and also looking for ways to communicate all of these changes. For example, Chelsea right now is working on restricting all the meters, and we definitely want to have this information out there in what those sticker means. But yeah, this is definitely a high priority for us, finding ways to communicate. You know, there are 15 new pay stations coming pretty soon for us. We want to let the business know when is this going to happen.

So is this like a new thing? Because we have people that have been on the board and are members.

So I've been in this position for six months. And that's part of what I'm looking for this program, just to be as communicative as possible with all the changes that we're proposing.

And what's next? I want to go back to the concept of the business owners being able to pay something for their customers' coupons. And I want to put into like whatever record it is that I'm requesting you guys to consider allowing that to be a free 15 minutes that we can offer to our customers, because I think it would go a long way in making people way less pissed off about parking situations, because I've had people come in every single day, not having a clue how to pay, not, and worried about it and then the machine is busted and then they can't pay and now it's a whole new machine and unfortunately some of those words that are said are this is why I don't come downtown and that is really what we're all trying to fight against we're in competition and I don't think that offering a free 15 minute people historically are used to that I thought it was amazing yeah And I think that it should really be considered as something that we can offer our customers. All right, I just want to make sure that's heard. Yeah.

Yeah, we definitely look. As Chelsea said, when we were getting the new pay stations, we asked for the possibility of having that 15 minutes there, but there is none. And then with pay by phone, we also look for that or a way to be able to offer something similar. And, and again, the answer was, well, I think you're wrong on some numbers, right? Like we all still have to pay for transactions.

Yeah. So even if they're paying $0 for, you know, that 15 minutes or whatever, they still charge us a transaction fee. And we calculated that Those transaction fees for the 15 minute meters alone, only at the purple meters in the very core of downtown would cost us over $30,000 per year, which is not something that we unfortunately, we can do.

Is there a way to make it so that, sorry, I'll just real quick because it's on this, but is there a way to make it that let's say you are parking somewhere and you pay for an hour, that hour costs 85 cents or whatever. Could you get an hour 15 for the 85 cents?

I can look into that.

I think that's what we're looking at with the pay by phone coupon and that incentive that I mentioned for the business, you know, like let's say you're putting $80, but those $80 are going to work a hundred. And then you have customers, you know, going to your business and they're getting in a way an hour free because you're paying for that, you know, but, but you are the one getting that discount.

Right. But is there a way for the customer to get that directly, perhaps, rather than having to do the voucher-type system? Because I know there's some meters, actually, that are the two-hour, I think. And when you pay for two hours, they actually give you three hours on a lot of them. Is there a pay-by-follow? Three-hour meters, you pay for two and get three hours a lot of the I do anyway. I don't know if it's supposed to be that way or maybe I should shut up. It's probably on the other side. It's not out in front of my bar. Yeah. But that's what made me think of it, actually. Like, okay, I paid for this and I got it. But anyway, yeah.

Yeah. With the 15-minute thing, I can... I think... you guys are going to have to put in a lot of effort to communicate and distribute and try to make this like coupon thing happen. And I guarantee you, it's not going to be applies by like 99% of businesses. We don't have the money right now. We don't have the time to figure it out. It's going to be confusing for people. We have to then like teach all of our employees about it and teach new employees about it. And like, I'm just thinking of like, I have, you know, One employee, I teach them about it, they don't have anybody take them up on it for months. And then somebody comes in trying to take them up on it and they're like, I don't really know.

And would it be like 30 grand's worth of your labor and energy? Maybe there's a balance there on how much money it costs for education versus paying those fees.

If it's not going to be a bank account, it's going to be something we have to put on businesses to then do, I wouldn't spend the money on and the people hours on doing it. That's my personal opinion. I think Jacob's right on the money, but make it a user end thing where if they can, they spend a certain amount, then they get 15 minutes free or whatever. If there's genuinely not any other way to make it are kind of in between. But going back to the communication aspect, I hope that this is helpful and that you use the PBIA in the future as well, because we are just a group of business owners who meet regularly and want to give you feedback. you guys are on the front lines with parking. And I think we are there with you because we hear from almost every customer about parking. I hear it 90 times a day of like, I don't understand this. I don't understand that. Like, I just got a ticket. I'm pissed. I'm not coming in. I've gotten bad reviews before on my business because they got a parking ticket, which Or because it was confusing. Or because it was confusing. And we also, like, the PBI has a newsletter that we can distribute information as well. Downtown businesses, like, really need to know things like, hey, you can't pay parking tickets at City Hall anymore. Or, like, you know, the meters are changing in X, Y, Z way, or these loading zones are intended for you and your customers to use. And you need to do this, this, and this to be able to use them without getting a ticket. And, you know, newsletters are great. Like posting things wherever is great. Word of mouth is better. And, you know,

We can be your advocates. Yeah. The ODA also doesn't speak to everybody.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. And you guys having a newsletter, I think, is a great idea because if there's people out there looking to know about what's going on with parking, I'm pretty sure they're going to be looking for you. So yeah, if there's a way to keep you updated, with everything we're doing, we would love to do that. That's what we're looking for. That's what we're trying to do with the ODA. But I understand that the ODA is a slight, it's a little bit different. So they have a different audience.

Just to kind of understand the entirety of the narrative as we are going to tell it to people. So municipal court needed remodeling We voted as a city to turn over parking to this district.

That was completely out of your guys' hands and you were just informed of it. So it sounds like almost like kind of a perfect storm of just bad things happening to parking services because along with that, the old meters are

you are having to work with vendors and card processors that are going to charge like $30,000 for a transaction, even if it's $0. Okay. Has anybody from parking services talked to like Portland and checked in with like their like city run up parking kitty?

No, but I certainly can.

Cause that might be something where if the city of Olympia took on their own actual, I mean, my wife literally works in like banking compliance, like card regulations and all of that. Like you could get a much better deal by offering up your, or partnering with a financial transaction service and taking that piece on, then you're paying just a flat rate to just a servicer.

So that's not a flat rate. That would be what the total cost would be for each of those little transaction fees.

But if you negotiated and had your own app like Portland does, you could actually- Fill it in. Fill it in. You would be partnering with basically just

I can check with Portland, but I know that a lot of cities like Portland that have what appears to be their own specific app, it's actually an app created by one of the big parking manufacturers that has been branded to be specifically, you know, this is Parking Kitty, this is specific to this city. Because I know the city of Omaha has Park Omaha, and that is just a branded version of the passport parking system.

It's the Kirkland signature of parking apps.

Yeah, pretty much.

I would like to add that we're working with the district court to find ways to make it easier for us and obviously for the community members, because yes, it's been a huge challenge since the transition, especially for us. If people are, you know, if there is not as many payment options as before, There's not many people paying for those citations, so our revenue has been really impacted, but we're working closely with District Court to make, you know, to have more payment options at some point.

It's like those little things I think is where like we're like two steps forward, one step back in downtown as businesses.

And that is where I guess some of this is coming from.

I would have loved to have posted on our website before the change took place that we weren't going to be able to accept online payments. But that was one of the kind of like unfun surprises of this transition was we didn't figure out that that system wasn't working until a week into the transition. So that was as much of a surprise to us.

Do you have a relationship at all with private parking companies? Because my business has like a diamond lot and it's like half our parking, half their parking. And they also have like a pay by phone thing that I have no idea how it works. And then there's also street parking in front of the building and people never know what spots are what or who belongs to who or who I'm supposed to be talking to. Or is it the same machines? I don't know.

Definitely the same app.

Yeah. Different owners, so it is very separate. We don't usually have communication with Diamond Parking, unfortunately. They are their own private entity. But it's important for folks to enter the correct location number for the spot that they're parked in.

Maybe ours could be a different color.

People are so confused, and I don't

drive that much so i you know what i don't know this is truth maybe people should look into this but i have heard that if you get a ticket from a diamond lot you cannot pay it because they technically don't have your license plate information like cities do um even though it's in that app yeah and orca often calls and it's like that was a customer it's supposed to be free and then they're like okay

I want to be mindful of their time.

A question I have is, because the district court isn't fulfilling some of the payment options, is there some way to have a pay at City Hall option again?

So that's something that we've actually been looking into. So we'll keep you posted, I guess, if you've got something else to add on that.

We ask, it was a firm no, but we, again, we're working with them. Like, I ask again, you know, because we are back when the transition happened, and now we'll say we have numbers to show that this is something that is, again, impacting our program, but also impacting community perceptions.

We need any kind of like testimonials or from the community. Oh, we get those things. We want them written in a directed way. Thank you.

You can call your city council member and send them emails.

And I will say, I really appreciate when people come to those council meetings voices because I think that's when the city hears better.

That, I guess, is a parallel to what I wanted to ask. What is the best way for us to communicate our perceptions, ideas, feedback, whatever it is? How do we do that with you? What's the... totally heard your real but also humor like you you do I know you get a lot of feedback I actually am intentionally kind to parking people because I know people that do that don't always they're not the favorite people in the village oftentimes not personally but so how do we what's the best way for us to communicate you know what trends we're seeing or anything like that and in the non

mean way, like whose manager do we ask for?

I don't even mean that. I'm not talking about, I mean, yeah, I mean it more like you have a literal body that has parking as the first letter in their acronym that has never had a relationship with the parking program. So there's obviously a disconnect there, but we're also leaders in our community. That's what we're doing here. So we can give feedback, but we can also advocate. We play a dual role. The ODA, and I don't mean this in a bad way, they're a pay to play organization. So it does, it can pull a little bit of a different crowd, but we are not, we represent all businesses downtown. So how do we communicate with you in a way that is actually effective?

Well, I don't have enough business cards with me, but I'm definitely happy to receive, to give away my email. And I actually wanted to know how we can reach out to the PBAA, especially for the newsletter. I can work with Chelsea to, you know, start with all the

recent updates that we we we have talked about today so we can put that on an email for you guys and then um you can just reach out back to that um email you know so so yeah and i'm happy to send out if you are comfortable with that your email to uh to the group i think something that you're watching me consistently trying to walk a line of We are doing a restructure and part of the restructure is moving over to the ODA meeting. You know, one of the suggestions is meeting quarterly, ensuring that the role of the group is fund advisory, which does move it away from policy and like advisory role. And so I think it's a, it's a needed conversation though. I'm not at all trying to dismiss that. Like, so there's nothing to be done. Like, um, but I think it's, it's a conversation that, um, I need to be pursuing around how are we engaging local business and policy discussions, which is, uh, something that our assistant city manager has been doing and trying to look at how are we structuring, um, our advisory bodies. And so that's a whole body of work that's currently happening right now that they're looking at the existing advisory bodies. Should they be meeting like they do? Do we need new ones? Do we need to eliminate some of the ones they're currently looking at that? And so it has very much been part of the discussion. How are we engaging small business in that type of role? It's just, is PBIA going to be the mechanism for that moving forward? I don't think so. But that's not at all to say I'm happy to share information at all times because you are small business owners. It's just I don't know that PBIA would be the vehicle for that in the future. Yeah.

As far as I know, it's the only mail newsletter list or whatever that's I know the ODA has that as well, but it's not the same thing.

And also, when it comes to you through the ODA's email, it's a very different looking thing. And they use constant contact, which goes to a lot of spam.

But also, they don't contact every business, and not every email is the same.

Very much discussion with our new communications director of in general, how are we improving our communication with small businesses, not just parking, but across different policy areas. And so I totally agree that it's something that needs to be looked at and needs to happen. Just how that ends up looking.

I'd also add that historically, it hasn't just worked in that direction, not just like parking services giving information to downtown businesses, but when parking services has needed information from downtown businesses, we've put out surveys to every rate payer business member where parking services creates questions and says, we need this information from downtown businesses, how this is gonna affect people. So I think if we can, if we're still allowed to do that within the city's framework, lean on us when you need to.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, it's hard to advise.

to spend money if we don't know what's going on so i think that's like having spending money in policy go hand in hand and i think that this is exactly what phase two is going to be looking at is how are we building work plans what does the work plan look like how are you receiving information and um getting feedback from other rate payers because i mean it's 100 i agree with you But I think all of that is what we're building right now over the next few months. And so just for both of your awareness, we're going through a restructuring effort and we'll be bringing this to council early Q1, 2027. But some of the hurdles we're facing is that it would be requiring a change in rates. And so it's really not just restructuring the admin and governance of this, but also restructuring the rates, which will be some work to work with business owners about what that could look like and if there's buy-in on that.

If we're paying more money for rates and things like that, then we're going to have less money to do things like buy coupons for our customers and things like that.

Yeah. Feel free to share. I will say especially Chelsea's position.

It's more policy-based.

Yeah. And anytime that you need us to join this meeting, just let us know, Jenny, and we're happy to do it. Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate your feedback.

Thank you. I've always thought that we needed to work with the business community more. I'm really glad that we finally have a supervisor who's actually willing to do that.

Yeah.

I would like to let you have the best ice cream.

Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes business items. Do we have any reports today? No? Any other topics?

I have a question real quick.

Yeah.

this whole restructuring that we're doing. Within the restructuring, and I know we talked about how the ODA would take this role, this other, this bigger money role, basically. They would get a lot of this money. We would advise how that money is given, I guess. But would the ODA, or is the ODA even thinking about, I can ask this question later today, to them, how their dues will be affected? And if When we're thinking about rates, are we going to combine the rate that is paid? So it's one rate people are paying. It would be a separate. So because the city is collected, it would still be collected. Correct. So I guess my question to the amount that we decide, though, should that be some sort of amount that changes if you're already a member of the ODA or should the ODA maybe Because that's a big problem, right? Everyone's like, why are there these two payments, two payments? What are these for? That's going to be interesting. We need to think about that.

I think that'd be really different administratively because one, then you're asking the ODA to maintain their list and consistently communicate with the city and the city is changing who they're calling in half. I think that'd be administratively. It would still be two different things.

One's a BIA and one's still just a mainstream organization. It's totally different structures and rules and laws.

Right, but if people are paying into this BIA, we're going to have the same communication problem.

The BIA isn't mandatory. It's a self-assessed tax district. You have to pay into it if you're operating in that district. You don't have to pay ODA.

Right, so then people will have the same conflict internally, which is Why should I pay for the ODA?

That's their question, though. Yeah, right. Otherwise, you're talking state laws at this point, not just our organization, our structure, and what we're doing going forward.

That's way bigger. We're not Pepsi and Coke. We're federal taxes of Coke.

Yeah. It's just interesting.

Yeah.

I know what you're saying, though, but yeah. Yeah. So it should be better communicated.

i just have one last thing for next meeting in august just so we can all be very clear on the stakes we are sending out stuff hopefully to nominate people i need to send it up today okay and then we are going to physically vote on bringing members like we're voting and so we're going to need to have quorum in august as in nobody can skip the meeting So we can vote people in, right? We can vote people in. Okay. Like the membership. The membership votes. Yeah. Okay. Right. So we just seat them at the meeting.

Yeah, we seat them. Yeah.

Okay. So next meeting, though, is ballots go out, people get elected.

No, the ballots are going out now. Yeah, today I need to put the ballots out. Okay. So that it's open long enough for people.

the gen pop to vote but that means i so right now i have three or four so next meeting we need quorum to seat those people i believe so okay okay so you're saying we need to have everybody come yeah and then everybody come next month well just for except for you yeah unless you need if we still can't do hybrid okay no we didn't oh okay well if you need quorum you can call me i'll be

But Jenica won't be here. I'll be here August. I'm just not going to be here. If someone's like, oh, in three weeks or two weeks, I'll tell you someone's name, I'm not going to be able to get the survey out. So if I get one more name today, I can put that out. So you need one more name right now.

I mean, before.

I think I'm already at one of the three.

I got the text message out. I'm hoping to get the ring out.

You need another one on top of me. Yes. Like, as well as. Yeah. So it makes some assumptions.

Sofie. Plus one. Which I have someone I'm working on, and I'm waiting to get a response, hopefully.

Who is it?

Alana from Captain Little. I had dinner with her last night. She said yes, but she didn't. She didn't contact Jenica yet, but I also didn't know that it was a today deadline. So I didn't light the fire, but now I did. Okay.

That's all I wanted to know. If whether or not you should come.

I showed up on time today. The other topics. Oh.

Make sure your guys' POSs are all updated for the new tax rate that starts today. 10%. 10% sales tax starts today.

What?

Make sure your systems don't automatically do it. Make sure you're not hanging that money out of your pocket. It was 9.8.

It was 9.8.

It was 9.8. It goes up to 10% today.

Today. My system definitely will not have done that by itself.

I know. Mine didn't either this morning, and I've been already open for three hours, but I'm going to go on my computer soon.

Oh, it's today. Yeah, the business late. Midnight it happens or something like that.

All right. Seeing no other topics, I will adjourn the Wednesday, July 1st PBA Advisory Board meeting. It is 1.16. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.