Lodging Tax Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

in other areas. We demonstrate the ability to market activities and promote tourism in Puyallup. Demonstrate the city's commitment to being a safe, inclusive, and welcoming place. Demonstrate financial stability, not dependent on LTAC funding entirely and indefinitely. Has projects shown it attracts overnight visitors? Does the project offer a creative or unique approach? Impacts that project have on city and the community? Some of that we just kind of term as the Puyallup vibe. Things that contribute to who we are and our personality. Is the project clearly defined? Does the project propose an efficient use of grant funding and a medium match may be required? So with that background, I'd like to ask the city clerk to call the roll.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Renee McLean? Rene, did you hear us? I seem to have you say present for the record.

Present.

Thank you. Tony Castro?

Present.

Jason Jesus?

Present.

Present. Scott Dellinger?

Present.

Dean Burke? Present. Kim Field?

Present.

Mayor Wedding?

Present.

Thank you.

Public comments will be taken at this time. Will the clerk please provide the instructions for public comments?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. This portion of the meeting is the opportunity for the public to make comments as it relates to the LTAC committee only. Individuals will be provided three minutes. At the conclusion of your three minutes, the clerk will notify you that your time is up. You will also be provided a 30-second notice. Please note that per state law, this portion of the agenda is only for public comments. Individuals are prohibited from speaking in support of or in opposition to an individual ballot issue or candidacy, and no such comments will be allowed.

Thank you. We have our agenda items before us. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda?

Motion to approve.

Second? Second. Motion moved and approved. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. OK. So one logistical thing that I just want to mention, because I may fumble a little bit during the course of the meeting, when somebody, Marshall, could you hit your button? The button over here. So Marshall now appears to be Deputy Mayor Johnson. That is a little confusing for me. So I may fumble a little bit. But and for for those of you that are up here on the dais. You see the four buttons in front of you. The top one is the one to turn on your button, and the second one is the one to turn it off. So Marshall, you get to practice. Everybody can practice for a moment. OK, with those caveats, let's go ahead and get started. The first thing on our agenda is the Puyallup Gateway Additional Service. And public affairs officer will present his present to answer questions.

Okay, thank you, Mayor Whitting. This is Eric Johnson, Public Affairs Officer. So what I have before you is a ad service scope and fee for the Gateways project. So as you all know, the Puyallup Gateways project was a project that was approved by Council to construct two gateway arches along Meridian, the first location being along North Meridian near the Fifth Avenue intersection, and then the second one down over by the Blue Gate. So we are currently in final design. for those gateways. And in the process of that, we identified some utilities that need to be relocated where the gateways are going to be cited. And so that is some additional design work that our consultant is going to be needing to do as part of this current phase. So what you have before you is an additional cost estimate to do that additional design work to relocate. There's a water main and a sewer line that needs to be relocated. So that way they're not close to the posts that are going to be cited. Additionally, I just wanted to bring up the cost estimate changed a little bit. So what you have before you is $58,756 that recently changed. We just got a geotechnical report back. Oh, excuse me.

Pause me. I'm struggling to find... the items you're talking about. Do I have the right document in front of me?

So the document that you have before you is basically the same, but the cost estimate has changed a little bit. We got a last minute addition from our consultant based on the geotechnical report that we got. Essentially what happened was the geotech went down And they discovered that because of the liquefaction in the soils where the gateway posts are going to be placed, they actually need to do some additional design work on the posts in order to make them go deeper. So the new cost estimate is now $72,581. And because we weren't able to meet the deadline for the agenda being published, I have that before you now. So it's a little bit extra funding that needs to go towards the design. So the new number, again, is 72,581.

Again, am I looking at the right sheet of paper?

No, I believe that's the... That's the other document there. You should have a copy of the scope and fee.

So, Mr. Mayor, the request that Mr. Johnson is speaking to is not on the document that you hold there, the application for 2027 awards. This was already awarded as part of a prior council approval, and it was previously discussed by this committee at our March.

I understand that, but I'm looking for the document that

Eric is referring to that it was attached to the digital agenda that was sent out last week.

Okay, sorry. I missed that. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, so I'm still struggling, but okay, proceed.

Yeah, so this is for additional design work for our consultant in order to complete this phase of the project, the gateway arches. So essentially, we're looking for comment from the LTAC Commission on the additional design scope and fee.

Okay, so do any of my colleagues up here have any comments on that? I'll just speak. It sounds like it needs to be done. And, uh, I'm not going to question the amount of the 72,000. So, so as far as I'm, I'm concerned, I, I think that's something we need to do. I'm seeing no further comment. I think we're done.

Okay.

All right. So are you going to address the, the, uh,

City and the other yes you can if that's okay yeah so the city initiated um LTAC requests so we have um three that I've submitted so uh the first one is to continue the uh always in season uh Puyallup tourism campaign uh for next year so as you know we've our consultant rotator creative uh is uh currently managing the campaign for us. Puyallup always in season. You see the light pole banners and all of the campaign that's out and about. So that is for additional funding next year to continue the advertising campaign. And then the second LTAC request is to continue the new downtown street furnishings, so new benches, garbage receptacles, and planters. That's to continue implementing that this next year. As you may have noticed, we've already started slowly implementing those along Meridian, and we'd like to continue that along the side streets downtown. And then the third LTAC request is for fabrication of the wayfinding signage project, which we're hoping to get started next year.

And are those projects, the Puyallup Always in Season tourism campaign, are we going to expect to spend $150,000 annually?

So originally, we're actually bumping that up a little bit. I think last year it was $100,000, but this year Rotator came up with some new creative ideas that they would like to do for additional advertising, and so that's why we bumped it up additional $50,000.

Okay, but will we be spending an additional $100,000 to $150,000 in 2028?

Yeah, we typically spend between $100,000 and $150,000 is kind of the average that we do each year. Okay.

Any questions on these? These are the council-approved parts of the LTAC spending, so we can comment on it, but it's already council-approved. Any comments? Okay. So moving along to our portion of the LTAC spending, lodging tax funding available for allocation by this committee is a total of $853,690. That comes from the total of $1,897,100 as our total hotel tax revenue reduced by our 55% reserve for city initiatives, leaving the $853,690 for allocation by this committee. So moving forward, each organization will have a three-minute time to give brief presentation remarks, and then we will be open for questions. And the city clerk will let you know when the three minutes is up so we can move along briskly. We've got a full agenda today. And I would anticipate calling a recess at about 10.30 for a little break. So break up the time at that time. So we'll start off with Kim Fields from All Things Fun Sports.

Actually, I am not participating in this. This is my organization, so I recuse myself.

Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I am speaking on behalf of All Things Fun Sports. My name is Amy Wertz. For all things fun sports, running a race is never just been about putting people on the starting line. It's about community. It's about creating traditions. And it's about giving people a reason to come to Puyallup, excuse me, experience our city, support our local businesses, and more importantly, come back. We are a small community-focused race organization, and we are intentional about creating events that have a connection to Puyallup and the Puyallup community. One of our most exciting projects is the Puyallup Valley Half Marathon in 10K. For the past six years, this event has been showcasing the Puyallup Valley and connecting runners with the trails, parks, and beautiful spaces that make our community special. Hosting a half marathon also gives us an opportunity to reach runners from 50 miles or more away, visitors who are more likely to stay overnight, eat locally, shop locally, and make Puyallup a part of their weekend. Our chocolate and coffee lovers 5K and 10K continues to experience significant growth. What started as a fun winter race is becoming a destination event and gives us an opportunity to bring visitors to Puyallup during the time of year when tourism can use an extra boost. Not to mention, it is the only race of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. The Daffodil Classic 5k and 8k connects directly to the history and identity of the Puyallup community. The daffodil tradition has been part of this community for generations, and our event gives us another way to celebrate that history while introducing visitors to what makes Puyallup special and unique. Thanksgiving brings the Gobble Gobble 5K and 10K, which has become a family tradition. Families return year after year, bringing their children, grandparents, friends, and extended families. We want to continue growing that tradition, and the Puyallup Gobble Gobble has been branded as the home of the fork run. Participants get an actual full-size dinner fork that they can eat their Thanksgiving dinner with. This is a fun and memorable Thanksgiving tradition that people associate with the Puyallup community. And then there is our ugly sweater 5K. What began as a local Christmas Eve race has grown into a regional holiday tradition and was nominated this past year by the Seattle Times as one of the best annual events in the Pacific Northwest. That recognition doesn't just belong.

Mr. Mayor, the three minutes are up.

That award, that nomination belongs to all of us in Puyallup. Thank you.

Thank you. And just let me pause a second. I didn't really express my appreciation for everybody that's here today. Everybody that's here today contributes to our community in Puyallup. one way or another or potentially many ways. And I just appreciate all of you so much and the vitality you bring to our city. We're a community and that community is built by the community of people in this room to some extent. So again, I want to express my appreciation. So do we have any questions for Amy? I do. You had requested $20,000 last year, and we only awarded $8,000. And I went back to the award sheet for last year, and there was a number of events listed there. Pardon me while I shuffle some papers. And so did you do all of those projects that you had listed last year, despite our drop in funding?

Yes.

Good for you. Thank you.

Yes, we are committed to all of these events and they will happen. We just won't be able, if we don't receive funding, we just won't be able to have as good of an experience for the participants as we would like.

So the funding may help with the forks? Yes. Good. Okay. And I understand. And the, the appreciate you. appreciate those runs because i think i think you're you all things fun sports really does bring people in from out of town and probably has a clear image of a better way of tracking those those things and then most of the organization so i i think there's a pretty clear uh If we gave you all the funding you requested, would you be thinking about adding additional events in the city?

We're kind of limited sometimes on how many we can do because of where we're able to run. We're not able to close streets downtown, so that limits us. We don't want to overuse the parks. We use as many of the parks as we can. And that's one of the beauties of our community is we have so many parks, um, but we're limited on how big we can have events at certain parks, just because the trails aren't huge. Uh, we don't want to overuse those. We want to have a good experience for everybody. So if you're running 500 people on Clark's Creek South, that's not a very good experience for folks. So, uh, Janet Callahan- To answer your question, we would love to do more. We're just kind of limited by geography and space available.

And they call a path marathon. Is that mostly in the city limits?

Yes. We start on the Riverwalk Trail down behind Fred Meyer and run the Riverwalk Trail and then head out to Van Lierups and part of that Foothills Park Trail.

Great. I personally would like to see a full marathon that that encompass some of our adjoining communities, maybe up through Sumner along their trail system a little bit, love to see.

Yeah, safety is a major issue. And if we can't close streets, it makes it real difficult.

Yeah, understood. And I've had those conversations with our PPD. So any other questions? Okay, thank you, Amy. Thank you. Moving on, our next presenter is Arts Downtown.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes.

Ms. McLean has her hand raised.

Sorry, Renee. Go ahead.

Yeah, I just had a question as far as how are the entry fees determined?

Entry fees? How are the participant registration fees? Is that what you're asking?

Right.

Yes, we try to keep those as low as possible because we know we're discretionary fund spending for folks. People have a lot of options. So the lodging tax funding, what we get helps us to keep those fees as low as we can while still being able to provide a good experience for folks. So they're determined on really basically how many people we can put on a trail or in a park, what we can offer those folks. We've gone to doing an a la carte system where if people want a t-shirt, they can buy that In addition, so that's not included in their fees, so we keep those fees as affordable as we can. And with lodging tax, that really helps us to be able to minimize the cost to the participants, yet still bringing them to the community where they can use those extra funds to support the local businesses by shopping, restaurants, possibly staying overnight, put heads in beds.

So what's the range of fees?

Early bird will start out anywhere from probably, depending on the length of the run, anywhere from $30 to $45 and then increase it periodically so that we encourage people to sign up early to get the reduced fee.

And so how much would the half marathon go for?

Half marathon, I think those, we start those at 40.

The current price for the half marathon, and we are three weeks away, is $70, and that includes a shirt, a medal, but there's fees, there's multiple organizations that are involved, so we have multiple permitting, and insurances are higher for half marathons.

Thank you for that. Renee, your hand's still up. Do you have further questions? Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

You'll need to lower, there you go. You took care of that, Dan. Thank you. Okay, so next up is Arch Downtown. Good morning.

Good morning.

Take it over.

We ready?

We are ready.

Okay. Good morning, Mayor.

Actually, I have a note here on my agenda. It says, note that any recommended funding for the installation, maintenance, or repair of artwork is limited to city-owned pieces. And so that's an item that came forward from our city attorney. And there's some regulations about what we can use if we are funding maintenance.

The city owns all the art, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Super. Thank you.

Yep.

Good morning, Mayor Wittig, members of the committee. My name is Nicole Martineau, and I am the current serving president of Arts Downtown. We are an all-volunteer nonprofit organization working in collaboration with local businesses, private citizens, as well as the city of Puyallup. Over the past 30 years, we have worked diligently to create one of the largest outdoor fine art galleries in Washington State. We have a 56-piece permanent collection as well as five rotating pieces on a biannual basis. We also coordinate with the city to display in two indoor galleries. We pride ourselves in being a contributing factor for a travel destination. Our mission is to enhance visual literacy and appreciation for the arts. We strive to encourage cultural tourism, thereby contributing to the economy and the quality of life within the community. All arts for all people. We curate the collections, selecting, installing, and maintaining the artwork. We also provide live and electronic tours. An individual can go to a piece of artwork, scan the QR code, and get information on the artwork and about the artists, and it comes in both audio and text formats. Live tours are also by appointment. The grant funding we are seeking today will be used for upkeep and repair of the permanent gallery, artist stipends, and installation costs for the 2027 rotating gallery. Advertising across different forms of media. Some past examples and most recently include USA Today's 2026 World Cup Preview Special Edition, which was distributed across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Washington State Visitor's Guide, which has 80% of their distribution reach 50 plus miles outside of the city. South Sound Magazine, KNKX Radio, Northwest Travel and Life, to name a few. We advertise and link on our website where to stay to include Best Western Plus Puyallup Hotel, Fairfield by Marriott, Hampton Inn & Suites, Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites. We work hard to be a good community partner with Main Street, The Chamber, All Along the Riverwalk, All Things Fun Sports, Northwest Sinfonietta, and many local businesses. I just want to say thank you for taking the time to look at our application and consider us for funding. It is a big part of running the nonprofit, and I'd be happy to take any questions, although I can't promise I'd be able to answer them. Time will tell.

Okay, so again, just in terms of protocol, if you have questions, go ahead and hit that button. I'm going to not ask for Or if you have questions, I'll just look for the thing. So the button, if you want to speak, the top button of the four. I don't see you yet. There. There you go. Council Member Smolko. Dan Fields. Morning, Nicole.

Hey, I just, it's not really a question. I just want to say how we incorporate and work together. And I'm really grateful for the art installations. And one of the biggest questions with this funding I have is there's any chance of getting new art coming in to the city?

Absolutely, we are currently in talks with the city about providing and paying for a piece of our general fund to incorporate to the viewing area for the new flagpole that will be going in also expanding our art to a new location. And we just purchased a piece recently and donated it to the city from our rotating gallery before the rotation was even up. We had a private donation from John Hopkins specifically in hopes of purchasing a piece, which we did, and it's beautiful. And now we have 56 permanent pieces.

Thank you.

And we have donated over a million dollars of fine art to the city of Puyallup.

Thank you. One thing that was on your list of projects in past years was a fall arts festival. Is that no longer contemplated?

It's coming up on November 14th, and tickets are available on our website right now if you'd like to join us.

Perfect. Thank you. Let me write that down, November 14th.

We would love for the city to have a table. In fact, they were award winner in our last one two years ago.

Perfect. Okay. Any further questions? Yes, sir. Oh, Marshall. Oh, me.

We'll figure it out. Incorrectly. Just an inside baseball question. You said the city owns all of the art, correct?

We donate the art to the city once it's been purchased, yes.

And I'm just trying to understand the relationship between the nonprofit.

It's very unique.

Yeah. And so are you contracted by the city as a nonprofit to run it? Nope. But you give the art to the city?

Yes, we do. Okay. All right.

Talk about that later. It's interesting.

It is. It's a very unique relationship that we've had for 30 years.

Okay. Seeing no further comments. Thank you, Nicole. Appreciate your presentation. Thank you. Next, we'll have Daffodil Festival. Take it away, Marshall.

Oh, I had a surprise. My name is Bob Sutter. I'm co-president of the Daffodil Festival. And I'll have to admit right off the bat that we're a little bit older than three years. As a matter of fact, it's three years plus 90. If you take a look at your symbol there with the daffodils on it, always in season, Puyallup daffodils, you know that we've been around for quite a while. First thing I'd like to thank you all, or I'd like to tell you is thank you. Thank you very much for the support that you have given the festival. A significant part of our budget goes to marketing, goes to promotion. And just to give you an idea how we've spent some of that money in the past, up to $25,000 for live streaming every year. print material, promotion material, banners, signage, another $5,000. Awards and trophies, another $1,000. Additional advertising through media platforms, radio spots, Spotify campaigns, $15,000. The Daffodil Festival is... We have more than 100,000 people watching the festival every year. The epicenter of the Daffodil Festival is right here in Puyallup. We have a high-speed, low-drag parade director. As a matter of fact, I think he's a step up from our previous parade director. I was the previous parade director. And we're growing the organization. We're using our marketing and funds and so forth. It's going to cost us a little bit more. Things are getting more expensive, but we're going to be adding some money or some events for the parade, which is... Perhaps the Seattle Cossacks, you know, the Dragon Unit from Seattle, that sort of thing. It costs money to do all of this. And as far as people coming into Puyallup to see the festival, as a grandparent, I can tell you people will come from a long ways away to see their kid march by, you know, in a parade. I know that each and every year when our granddaughter was involved in the Lilac Festival, we were there. It's only 300 miles away. What's the big deal? Now, a little bit about, we are really embedded in the community and it's not just this organization that supports the festival. Although the biggest support that we have are the four cities that we march through every year is right here in Puyallup. Our sponsors include the Puyallup Tribe, the Puyallup Main Street Organization, Puyallup Kiwanis Foundation, Quorum Kids Foundation, Knutson Farms, Daffodil Scholarship Foundation, Washington State Fair. And of course, the city of Puyallup provides us thousands of in-kind services. One more thing, you know, I'd like to emphasize here is that we are... Mr. Mayor, three minutes have expired. I'm sorry, three minutes have expired.

Three minutes is up. You can wind it up.

I can wind it up. I just want you to know that we are a 501c3 organization. We are all volunteer volunteers. We don't spend money on exotic or expensive trips or per diem. Every single dollar goes back into the community. We have 30 plus volunteers now. We've grown quite a bit in the past three or four years that support this festival in a variety of ways. And again, finally, and thank you very much for your support, for your continued support of the Daffodil Festival. Questions, please?

Thank you. We do have a question. And Kim.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I just have one kind of rando question, if you could, please. So I know last year you guys struggled with the date change.

Yes.

And I know some of the entries were down because of that.

Yes.

Do you foresee the same issue or do you see those people coming back this year?

Absolutely not. We've had, that's the first time that that happened to us. And, you know, a conflict with the Easter Sunday and so forth. And so if you go to our website, you know, you will see the dates projected out several years. And so we don't ever expect that that will happen again. Yes, that did affect us in a negative way at some and it certainly took us by surprise, but we still had more than 100 entries. We still had an upgrade in the amount of entries we had, and I'd also, you know, like to say, too, that as far as the community is concerned, I think most of you know that we have 24 Daffodil Princesses from the area high schools. Now, they benefit from a royalty leadership organization. There's really very few programs like it. They are official ambassadors of Pierce County. They attend a You'll find them reading at libraries. You'll find them senior citizen centers. You will find them, you know, doing a lot of community charitable type work and supporting fundraising events and so forth, our princesses. And so really the festival is a true support of community. And again, Puyallup here is, well, you're the epicenter. We really love your support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kim. Okay. Thank you, Bob. You bet. Thank you, sir.

Next, we'll hear from the First Pursuit DBA generous influencers, Patty Hoganson.

I'm going to try and do this in three minutes. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Patty Hoganson. I am the executive director for Generous Influencers First Pursuit, and we put on the Puyallup Night Market. Generous Influencers believe that when small businesses thrive, families thrive, and communities become stronger. The goal was never to organize another vendor market. We wanted to create an experience that supports local entrepreneurs while giving residents and visitors opportunities Another reason to gather, connect, and spend time in Puyallup. When you create something meaningful, the community doesn't just show up, but they come back. The Puyallup Night Market brings that vision to life. On Thursday evenings, Pioneer Park and the Pavilion become alive with local small businesses, artisans, food trucks, live music, and community experiences. But we also see an opportunity to use the night market as a gateway to Puyallup. Visitors arriving Thursday for a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday event now have a reason to come early. Explore downtown, dine, shop, experience Puyallup before their weekend activities even begin. I'm here to request $35,000 in lodging tax funding for 2027 with a very specific goal to turn a successful local event into a stronger regional tourism destination for Puyallup. We have already demonstrated that people will come. Conservatively, we have approximately 1,000 to 1,500 people per regular event, and that bumps up to 18 to 24 people. during our special events. Last year, it's just really hard to come up with a number, but over 20,000 people and that's without tracking. With this investment, our goal is to expand our reach beyond our immediate community and attract at least 500 visitors traveling more than 50 miles to Puyallup. Using marketing and promotional strategies outlined in our application to reach people within a 100-mile drive market who are already looking for unique experiences. And we'll measure the results through our QR code engagement, giveaway registration, zip code data, We'll track where visitors are coming from and measure growth in our out of area audience. We also connect visitors with local accommodations and track overnight stay interest. The night market doesn't operate in isolation. We have created partnerships that allow us to create an event that is not only welcoming and well managed, but connected to the larger Puyallup community. Our request really is specifically to expand the tourism-focused marketing and promotional efforts. We believe Puyallup has something special and worth traveling for. The Puyallup Night Market gives visitors a reason to come downtown, but more importantly, it gives them a reason to discover Puyallup, spend money, stay longer, and come back. So thank you for your consideration, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Kim. I feel like I'm the only one asking questions. And actually, I have a number of questions for this one. Okay. You said just now that you had roughly 20,000 people without tracking. So how do you know that?

Well, I rely a lot on our vendors who are very experienced in the events that they, you know, all the markets that they travel to. And they have little... I don't know how they do it, but I've polled them. I've asked them after several of our markets, what do you think? I'm just averaging that out. So I really do rely on that. They're very experienced. We've tried clickers and different things to count the number of people coming in and out, but we can only really rely right now on that. Going forward, that's why we'd like to be able to use technology and other technologies. avenues for registrations or drawings and things like that to be able to track those numbers.

Is your market cashless? Do you only take credit cards? No. But could you track your credit cards from your vendors by your zip codes?

We could, if we don't, there's a unique thing about our market is that we do not ask our vendors for their sales or anything like that because our purpose is to support them in a non, some of them get very touchy. And it's hard for those small businesses when they feel like they're failing, number one, when you ask. Number two, why are you asking? We don't ask for a percentage. We're just there to support them. So it's something that we have thought about and talked about because we thought we could do surveys afterwards. But I also believe that if we can improve the tracking through promotional items and ideas, then... Hopefully we'll come up with a better number. The other hard part is that when we have concerts in the park, we're dealing with thousands.

Okay, because that's going to be one of my questions. So let's go to the concerts in the park. So are you counting those people as your members? Okay. Yeah. No. What about other events that are happening around the city, like Red, White, and Kaboom? Do you have a night market with that? Or are you using the numbers that are coming to that?

Yeah, we precede that. We are always a Thursday night, so it's always usually the night before Red, White, Kaboom and other activities happening, which is why we would like to be able to focus on bringing people in early, allowing them to use our accommodations in Puyallup and experience something new before they start into their next activities for the weekend.

Okay, I just have two more questions. Do you receive any in-kind sponsorship, discounted rental rates, or other reduced costs from the City of Puyallup for use of the pavilion?

We do. We have an RFP with the City of Puyallup, which allows us to be where we are located at. They sponsor us in really reducing the cost of the pavilion and some of the other service costs.

Okay, so going back to the concerts in the parks and all that, how do you distinguish who's there for the night market and who's there for concerts in the park if you don't track?

Right, so very good question. And it's foot traffic and it is, again, those patrons that are purchasing items from our vendors, food trucks. It is a huge bump. It is a huge bump for our vendors, most particularly food truck alley. People come down, they grab their food, If they're not buying from local businesses, they're coming through the pavilion. Right now, it's just a really difficult way. It's a very difficult thing to do, to track that number of people with multiple entrances.

Do you provide food truck alley, or is that a city?

That's part of the market.

Okay, so you encourage all the people to come down for the food trucks? Yes. Okay. Okay.

We have a great collaboration with Parks and Rec for concerts in the park in promoting each other. And we are providing a service for the people coming down to be able to grab something to eat, to do a little shopping. You guys know that those chairs go up at one and two o'clock in the afternoon and people are in those seats early in the afternoon before the concert. And so it's just providing another opportunity for them to shop and experience Puyallup.

All right. Thank you.

You're welcome.

How much is the fees for the food trucks and so forth?

So we have a little bit of a scale. Our vendors right now are $75. Those are for inside, outside pop-up vendors. Food trucks, if they're in an actual truck, is $50. If they're in a pop-up, it's $75. That is probably one of the... As far as the goals for our organization in supporting small businesses, that is probably the biggest benefit of having a partnership with the city of Puyallup in that we can keep costs lower. We provide an exceptional location and vendors know that, but it's also difficult for them in the costs that they face to be able to sometimes make back that fee. And so our goal on the other end of what we do is to help continue to lower those costs. We did lower them from the previous year because people were having a difficult time in the economy. And so we were able to, to, you know, keep that cost down a little bit more goals, bring it down even more.

I'd just like to comment that the partnership between the synergy between the Thursday night market and the concerts in the park again brings additional vitality to the city and we appreciate the work you do there.

Thank you. I appreciate that. We appreciate the support from the city.

Okay. Seeing no further comments, let's move along. Thank you, Patty. And we'll move on to Foothills Rails to Trails and former mayor John Hopkins.

Thank you. Thanks for the introduction. You know what we do. We have an art event along the Riverwalk. It is for emerging artists, so we're encouraging the art community, and it creates a point of interest. The main idea here, the vision here, is to bring life to the Riverwalk. It's underutilized. What my vision is, what all of our vision is, is to get it to the point where it's like Wenatchee. People go to Wenatchee for the Riverwalk. First, I do want to point out a couple of things. In the application, it's not going to be the 3rd of July, it's the 31st of July. The other thing is, after our last event, we think that we probably overestimated the number of people who we expect to attend, but We used an organization called City Bits to figure out what the attendance was for over 50 miles. And it has been an incredible collaboration, you might say, because we've Their analytics come up with 34%, which at first I didn't believe. But then I realized, wait a minute, this is Kitsap Bazaar who's doing the event. And so they are pushing people from the over 50 miles. And these are registrations that they're using. So based upon that, you know, I have grossly underestimated the number of heads in beds that you'll get. the other thing i really want to say is that as we evolve our strategies are changing uh we work not just with arts downtown but uh with where did eric go with the arts commission fred oldfield organization and our strategy is is bigger these days we're going to put artwork at the new skate park we'll put it at the link to Tacoma. That'll be huge. And we will put artwork, hopefully, at the entrance to where we have the flag viewing area. So if we can continue to make interesting points along the Riverwalk, Plus, we now are creating these links to Tacoma and the interurban. And of course, we've already had, you know, the East Meeker Trailhead, all of these things working together. And with this collaboration, Mr. Mayor, the speaker's three minutes have expired. You know, I see nothing but good for the Riverwalk. Anyway, I'm sure you got some questions. Come on, Kim. Mr. Burke.

I beat you.

I'm going to let Dean go first on that.

You mentioned that you had grossly underestimated your room count based on your data. And so I'm just curious, is that reflected in the app or do you have an update that you can...

The app was based upon my best guess at the time. I was figuring... a lower percentage of people from traveling from over 50 miles. I overestimated the number. I was thinking we were going to get 3,500 because we keep growing. But I would say a more realistic estimate of people attending is probably 2,000 to 2,500. And if you take 34% of that, Well, you can see the number of people who have coming from over 50 miles. So the number of that I had for the heads in beds is going to be at least double that.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Kim. Only because you called me out, John. So I know weather played a big part of it, and I know you have been really set on doing it around Pierce County Trails Day, but because Pierce County Trails Day is no longer, are you still seeking to do it at that time frame and tie in the coalition of, hey, it's Trails Day, or are you looking at doing something else? Yes.

Oh, we're less about Trails Day than we were. It was one of those great ideas that didn't particularly work because the volunteers for Trails Day, you know, were volunteering for other things. And so we lost quite a few volunteers. So we're thinking the 31st, we're thinking about shortening the footprint. This is based upon food, you know, on feedback. And we're thinking about changing the hours from... to starting a little later, running quite a bit longer. That's the feedback that we're getting. You know, we're trying to be a whole lot more analytical about this thing, and we're trying to get more feedback from our vendors. By the way, we had more vendors this year than we've ever had. Well, it didn't help us, but we got more vendors. I think our organization is doing a really good job, and I think that we're really growing things into an overall strategy by working with the city, Arts Downtown, Fred Oldfield Organization, you name it. Thank you, John.

Thank you. I will now move on to the Master Gardeners with Jan Lewis and Caitlin Mayne.

Good morning. I am Jan Lewis. I am president of the Master Gardener Foundation of Pierce County. Caitlin is standing by to help us answer questions if we need be. So first, let me thank the city of Puyallup for their support of this transition of the Pierce County Master Gardener Program's annual plant sale from the WSU Extension Campus to the Puyallup Fairgrounds. We felt it was a very successful first year in the venue. Several reasons stand out. Space. The venue is a great fit for our event. The configuration of the Agriplex and Tractor Supply Arena provided the right balance for flexibility and staging. It is more accessible for both clients and volunteers, meeting a long-time goal. The central location, conveniently off of several major transportation routes, also adds to the accessibility. With so much more space for display, clients are able to move through with ease and perhaps purchase a little bit more. Educational outreach is another reason. As Master Gardeners, our major focus is educational outreach. In the previous location, we were never really able to go much beyond the conversations between clients and Master Gardeners about purchasing decisions. At this venue, we were able to highlight several Master Gardeners speakers include partners, for example, the Pierce County Conservation District and local experts, an example is the Dahlia Society, essentially refocusing our educational mission as a pillar of the plant sale. We were also able to display more prominently a curated book resource collection focused on best gardening practices. Parking is another one so much better. That's all I'm going to say. By Sunday afternoon, our inventory was essentially sold out. Partner vendors were happy with their results as well. Our overall revenue met previous totals exceeding in several categories. We estimate our attendance to be around 6,000. Our zip code data tells us that we had attendees spanning the I-5 corridor from Everett to Olympia. Anecdotal evidence indicates that many attendees made a day of it, enjoying meals and shopping in the Puyallup area. We are planning for strategic marketing that will continue to focus on the I-5 corridor as well as populations east and west of Puyallup. While we are confident of maintaining the success of the 2026 event, We feel an additional year of the city support will allow us to establish a sustainable foundation for the ongoing use of the Puyallup Fairgrounds. We want to be assured that we can fully cover costs with annual revenue not dipping into our reserves. We are committed to this partnership with the city and the fairgrounds and we thank you for your support. So happy to take questions.

Dean. Good morning. Thank you. I was just looking back at some notes from a year ago when we first were listening to this. And I think I misunderstood and I kind of felt like the committee echoed the same at the time that the big narrative of this event um i i think if i think what it is and correct me if i'm wrong this is where the question is i think is it's a lot of people coming in to buy plants like on site and i i felt like when we were understanding it in the beginning that it was a broader horticulture thing that, that actually was a destination driver was, was in a bigger way, like more overnights, people coming in from farther to, to be part of a education and programs, um, which I think is different than coming in to buy plants. I think if you're throwing a plant in the back of the car, you're probably going to take it home. You're not staying. So, um, and I don't, um, I'm not throwing rocks at it. I'm not, I'm just making sure I'm understanding the difference between the two. I definitely indexed on the, bigger event side versus just one day plant sale type side. What do you?

As I mentioned in here, the educational outreach component is something that we are now able to incorporate into this venue. And last year was our first year. And so we had each day we had two speakers and And then we were also able to include more of our partners who have an educational component. So I think a goal in the future, and again, this is, we're a volunteer organization and you have to round up the volunteers to do these kinds of things. But the goal would be to incorporate more of the educational part so that it was a balance of, oh, come learn about. So something a very small version of the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, where you go for the classes over time, but you also go do a variety of things. So we'd be a mini, mini of that.

Thank you for the explanation. Thank you.

Kim? So I have a few questions. I went back last year because I'm new to the committee and re-watched the whole lodging tax meeting. And about 45 minutes into the YouTube video, you stated last year that this was just to help you move over there and you just needed the help. What has changed that you need the help now this year?

The rationale, we had a long discussion about

amongst ourselves about how to approach this.

And the consensus was, and my background tells me this too, one more year would assure us that this wasn't an anomaly, that we would be able to sustain without dipping into our not great, our reserves to keep paying for this. So I think it's one more year to ensure that we've got the resources we need and that it really is going to be as successful every year.

Looking at your application, I saw that there was some, like, I was kind of confused. Do you get a reduced cost for the eggplant? Because the majority of the ask is for the actual location.

Correct. To my knowledge, no, but I don't think we do.

Okay. Do you charge parking? Do participants pay to get in there?

We do not.

Okay. How are you tracking the participants?

Through the credit card transactions.

Thank you.

Yes.

I appreciate that. All right. That's my biggest two questions. Thank you.

Just a couple of comments. First off, my creeping time is doing great. The experience at the fairgrounds was so much better than I can remember being out at the P-REC in the rain with cars all finding parking places wherever. So the the transition has been wonderful. It's, it's a much better venue. And, and again, I, I caught the vision of what you're trying to do here last year. And I, I believe a hundred percent in the vision to, to, with the, with the P rec out there to, to anchor the, the, the program and, and draw on some of their resources in terms of, of development and, and, uh, You know, really has the opportunity to pull in people from from distances. So I, I'm, I'm really committed to that vision. But, but there was a sunset on it last year.

So understandable.

So I'm, I'm, I'm still supportive, but We'll hold you accountable next year. Thank you. Renee.

Hello, yeah, yeah. I was one of the supporters of this last year, partly because, you know, if we look at like the Sewing and Stitchery show that started at the fair, also through the P-REC originally, you know, those shows start out on a small scale and then grow over time. I think Master Gardeners has that same ability to do that, to start small and grow. And I think the support of that is important, not just for a P-REC, Master Gardeners, which actually started in Puyallup, Master Gardeners itself, but looking at what it can be going forward and how it can grow.

Thank you. Appreciate your work. My garden, Thanks you as well. Thank you for your support. My credit card is local. We'll now hear from Karen Chu of Northwest Sinfonetta.

Good morning. Thanks for this opportunity and thank you for the support of this funding, which is so important to us. My name is Karen Chu. I'm executive director of Northwest Sinfonietta. We are a nonprofit professional chamber orchestra and we bring world-class chamber orchestra concerts to Puyallup. We're the only organization um doing something on this scale and and like it in this in this location um we give a five performance series and the pioneer park pavilion um it all happens in your in your shoulder um of october through early may um these are very unique performances it turns out in the pavilion we have people seated at tables, they can enjoy a glass of wine and a picnic, and they enjoy orchestral music with a view of the park. It's almost like an outdoor concert, which is kind of amazing and an experience that people really enjoy and are willing to travel for. Our concerts are a mix of traditional programming that people know and love already, and the works of living composers are very passionate about that. And we bring in very well-known guest artists and artistic partners who conduct us. Right now we're working with three world-class conductors, Mayan Chen, Yeni Vitar, and Jeffrey Meyer. And just as an example, this season we are doing some very well-known pieces like The Planets. Telemann's Topple Music, Transfigured Night, Mozart's Requiem with chorus and actors. We're going to bring in the original story, Mozart and Salieri that inspired the Amadeus movie. And we have a wonderful violinist coming in, Curtis Stewart, who will be performing a world premiere here in Puyallup. We know that this brings in people from around outside the area. We bring people from obviously Pierce and King County, Thurston, Mason, Kittitas, Yakima, Spokane, Whatcom, Clackamas, people from out of state, Oregon, California, New York, Illinois, Indiana, and others. And we also are pretty integrated into Puyallup. We work with Meeker Mansion, Arts Downtown, Puyallup Main Street, Good Samaritan Hospital, the Library of the Schools, JBLM, Pierce College, Kiwanis, Quorum for Kids. We're a big part of what makes Puyallup, Puyallup. Thanks again and happy to answer questions.

Mr. Burke, how many cities across the county do you play in?

In Tacoma and Puyallup. And then this year we are giving a performance in Seattle.

Don't you do Lakewood also in Sumner? Yeah. I thought I'd seen your name there. Okay.

I mean, maybe we have lots of education events, so maybe it was one of those.

I knew you were abroad. I was just curious. That's great. Thanks.

Okay, doesn't look like we have any more questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Shelly Schumpf of the Puyallup Historical Society at Meeker Mansion.

Mouthful. It's almost worse than Shelley Schlumpf. Renee, I cannot believe you are on a Zoom meeting even the day before the fair starts. And nice paint job, by the way, on the fairgrounds. And Scott, is your real name or is that a marshal? And I've been calling you the wrong name or is that a title like you are a marshal?

No, my dad and I have the same name.

Seriously?

Yeah, we're both in the military together.

Okay, it's really great to see all of you up there. I know most of you, I know it's, I appreciate the time I've served on the LTAC committee before, and I know it's a difficult decision to decide how to distribute those funds, so appreciate you all being here. I'm here as the president of the Puyallup Historical Society, and I first want to mention that The mansion is one of four sites on the National Register of Historic Places, if some of you don't know that. There's only four in Puyallup. Meeker Mansion. The gentleman who built was one of the builders on the house, the Lotz House, which is down on the west side of Puyallup High School. It's like a little mini Meeker Mansion. He built it like ours. Episcopal Church, who is celebrating their 100th year, their anniversary this year. We're helping them do that. And that's the church across from John Valentine Meeker's house or where Young Life was or where, if you don't know any of those, where the heart is on the pole. It's the little church that's across the street and then the fish hatchery. Those are the four sites in Puyallup that are listed on the National Register. Meeker Mansion is not owned by the city. I hope everybody up there knows that. We own that. $2 million asset, and we are proud to own and operate that asset. But with an asset that valuable and that is 136 years old, I'm sure you can all imagine the cost of maintaining it and owning and operating that. So admissions for tours and our memberships do not cover that cost. It increases every year. So we host 15 events annually and we have a volunteer corps of about 75 people. We are now growing a portion of that to grow our living history portion of casting and things like that, which is ending up being a hoot. And it makes it very fun to come. Instead of getting a lecture about history, you come in and it's an interactive, hopefully fun experience. So we are growing that. But the LTAC funding that we receive is so critical to the operations of the mansion and growing it and making it relevant for the community. more sophisticated society that we have today. So technology investments are probably the number one expense that we use this year. We have a new mobile-friendly website that I might push publish on today. We're checking links and things, but it's 80% comes off the phone for people coming through our place, okay? So whether you're looking for tours, whether you're looking for what events do we have going on, you want to book something, you want to pre-sale whatever, that phone is so important. So everything we're doing is focused on that. We've also introduced a lot of videos for our advertising. Hopefully some of you have seen those. And AI integration, which is a plus and a minus. I don't have time to go into that. We get a lot of positives, but some people don't like AI. I know I'm going to shock all of you up there. So we really have to stress the fact that we don't just go out to AI and say, hey, come on down. We've got AIs put something together for us in here. All of our exhibits and the information that we utilize comes from something in our archives or something we've researched. And speaking of research.

Mr. Mayor, the speaker's three minutes have expired.

Oh, my goodness. There we go. So I don't know if we have any questions. I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Shelly. I'm not seeing any questions. Could you just give us a rundown of those 15 events you mentioned? Oh my goodness, yes. This is a test.

It is a test. Let's see how Shelley does. We do four spiritualist fairs a year. So we do them each season. There's one. We have Meeker Days. We started a new event this year called Museum Day to focus on the things that are going on, that we have that kind of culture here in Puyallup. So it was a partnership with the Fair for the History Museum, JACL for the Japanese American Remembrance Gallery at the fairgrounds, Karshner. And Meeker Mansion. And if you went through all of them, stamped your passport, you got free beer tastings and non-alcoholic tastings and yada, yada. We have an Eliza Jane Meeker Day. We have a Cellar to Attic Tour, which we blew the doors off this year. We increased sales by like 33%. Not sure, other than advertising, why that happened. So thank you, LTAC committee. Let's see. We have... Coming up, fall is always busy for us. We have the Cider Squeeze coming up this month on the 19th. We have All Hallows Eve, our haunted house, which is growing leaps and bounds. That's two days in October. Number one question when they come through our doors is, is the place haunted? And after how many years of saying no, we thought, well, we'll join them. And so, yep, it's haunted on these two days. And so we hope you give us $20 to come in and find out. So another fundraiser. And then Christmas is always we do a kickoff on the Saturday, small business Saturday after Thanksgiving. And then that runs through the whole month. But that's a hay rides and Christmas caroling and all that kind of stuff. So. Great, thank you.

You gave us a good taste of it, and that was the objective, because I don't think a lot of Puyallup residents really realize the number of events and the variety of events that you host down there. So thank you for that. And seeing no questions, let's move on to the Puyallup Main Street Association. Former Mayor John Palmer, and we've got former Mayor Mayor Julie Dorr waiting in the wings.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor and LTAC committee. Good to see you this morning. John Palmer, the president of Mainstream Association. I'm here with Julie Dorr, our new executive director. So I'll be short today. Our application is with our main programs that we run at the market, Maker Days, SIP, the Santa Parade and Holiday Market, and we're adding the Nashville Knights, which I'll speak to in just a second. So, you know, our suite of programs have been operating for a long time now. And just to kind of the big picture numbers, this year we spent a little bit more time looking at our zip codes and analyzing our numbers a little bit in our application. And overall, across all these programs, we're bringing in about a quarter million participants. And a little shy of 10,000 people coming from outside of 50 miles across all these events. And roughly 600, 700 hotel stays. But hotel stays is a little harder to get at than the zip code data for outside 50 miles. So that's kind of the big picture. Another big picture aspect you see in the application is LTAC is really important for us to run these events, and it represents about 20 to 25%, depending on which event of operating the event. We use other revenue means for the rest of the seventy five percent. But that's an anchor point. Number of these events like the market maker and Santa parade are partnerships with the city with the Rfp process. So that's very important. so the one event that we are adding is the nashville nights and we've run that now two years just got done with our second event second year doing this and basically if you're not familiar with it we turned downtown pialup into downtown nashville and we had i think 16 venues operating this year and we we basically fund the bands to put the music in the restaurants and the bars. And it functions very much like Nashville if you've been there. And it's been hugely popular. We've had about 2,000 people running around downtown just enjoying the festivities. And we're bringing... are having records at all of our establishments in terms of sales. So it's been a great event, and many people come from outside for that, and we wanted to add that to our L. Tech portfolio, because we thought it was appropriate. It really is a tourism event. So i'll just close by saying Main Street. You know everybody we support. Everybody's in this room. All of us contribute to the vitality of Puyallup. We're partners with almost all the organizations here today. And we really value those partnerships and we support them. And we love that partnership. So open to questions.

I'm asking everybody, what's the cost of your booth rental for farmer's market?

For vendors? Yeah. Can you give me a range.

Okay.

We can give you that. I'm not sure. I have no idea. I mean, I have $100 or something like that. And then plus we get a cut of the sales as well. So those are the funding for the market for Main Street.

Okay. Mr. Burt.

Look at the transcript to transpose the name. Awesome. Quick question. Let's see here. Two questions. How many wine walks are there?

Two.

And when are those?

I think in May and in September, October, early October.

How's that trending? Very good. Is it?

Yeah, we're selling. And that's an event that we actually sell tickets to. And we're maxing out. We're reaching our quota. So we're doing very well. And it's nice because we can track who's coming from where in that particular event because we're selling the tickets directly. But it's doing very well.

Good, good. Nashville Knights. This one excites me. I look at a lot of events and I'm always trying to look through kind of the core of these things and what their big potential might be. I know it's in the application. Remind me when that event is.

Uh, it's the end toward the end of October, August. We just had it like a couple of weeks ago.

Okay. Yeah. It, that, that feels to me like that's got a pretty high ceiling on it, uh, in the future. Um, And it also seems like an amazing opportunity for a bigger collaborative partnership with the fair. Those two seem to me to go hand in hand in theme and reason and connectivity between the core downtown here and the gates there. So yeah, if I can ever sit in the room on that and contribute ideas on that, I'd I think, I think you, I think, I think that one's going to do something bigger for you than you probably realize. So, yeah.

And we did, you know, we appreciate the partnership with Renee at the fair. We had a nice little kiosk. So we definitely want to do that in tandem.

Cool. Thank you.

John Potter, Anything else seeing no further comments. Thank you john will move on to stephanie SRAM from the job Sumner Chamber of Commerce.

Morning, afternoon. Thanks for having us. I'm Stephanie Schram, Madcap Marketing. I will be incoming president at the Chamber Board here in January, and I help run the major events that we're talking about today. So for 2027, the Chamber is requesting lodging tax to help fund three major impacts, our Visitor Center, our Red, White, and Kaboom on July 3rd, and the Brualip. What I really want to emphasize today is that these are not isolated programs. Together, they are part of a broader strategy to position Puyallup as a year-round destination. Our Visitor Information Center is the foundation of that work and kind of the cornerstone. It serves as the front door to community connecting visitors with hotels, restaurants, shops, and all the activities that these wonderful people in the community put together. We have become much more than, we've become much more intentional about collaboration around the Visitor Center this year. We launched a tourism partnership roundtable, bringing together businesses, tourism organizations, and other partners that depend on visitor spending. And instead of everyone marketing Puyallup independently, we're trying to come together, work together, and coordinate events stronger and cross-promote the assets that we have. The second component of this request today is Red, White, and Kaboom. I'm sure all of you are familiar. All Things Fun Sports is a huge component of that, as is the fair. And Main Street saved my hiney in that event this year also. And then finally, we have Brewallup, which is a very unique event to the South Sound industry. And it goes back to the Puyallup roots of hops. Ezra Meeker actually was the first one to plant hops back in 1867. And so celebrating our agriculture and all of the breweries locally now that keep that tradition alive. In 2026, we welcomed approximately 5,000 attendees in Red, White, and Kaboom, which was on July 3rd. And we need to talk about that growth and the capacity. We need to give the runners a safer course. We need to increase our Puyallup PD presence for traffic flow and our EMS services. We had no major events this year, but we want to keep it that way. So our marketing that is currently reaching our campaign was about 450,000 impressions through the cross street banner that went up, a paid email marketing campaign with a 46% click through open rate, over 22,000 event webpage click throughs, and over two million eyeballs on billboards that got placed outside of the Puyallup region for that 50 mile reach. Producing an event this size has become considerably more expensive. Alone, our fireworks cost went from $10,000 in 2024 to $20,000 in 2026. And as you increase people, you need to increase security. So we had more security, more PPD, more EMS. We also need to increase facilities, just like bathrooms. And we need to give Kim's runners a little bit more room for running, which is going to- Mayor, speaker, three minutes have expired. Oh, thank you. Questions?

Ms. Fields.

Good morning, Stephanie.

How are you? Good.

I just have a couple questions on the visitor center. Is that all right?

Yeah, absolutely. I'll try my best.

Okay. What are the hours of operations?

Nine to four.

What days of the week?

Monday through Friday. Unless there's a major event or something going on, then Saturday and Sunday are open for discussion.

Okay. Is it manned or is it just regular?

Always manned. Always manned.

How are you tracking the verified numbers that you've permitted put in your application?

Yeah, so there's one, two, three, four, five, six different ways we track that. Livability Magazine is a partner where we help promote the visitor center and they give us a dashboard and stats on how many click through to our visitor center's pages and or how many have called that specific line for the visitor center's promotions. That's one way. And then we have a visitors tab on our website with special analytics and a tracking code set up behind that. So that's another way. And then we can actually track walk-ins through kind of like an attendance sign-in situation. We also track, so all of our hoteliers, I say that wrong, or the restaurants give us, or like Red White can boom stuff. When that walks out, when the information stuff walks out, we take inventory of what was taken every month. a hundred of Washington state fair brochures and we end up with four, we know how many people walked in and took what.

Okay. I was just curious on those questions. I'm a big supporter, as you know, of red, white and boom. And I believe in a lot of the things that the chamber does. I think they're vital. When you talk about your advertising markets, do you, and you, are you doing mass email through like constant contact, Google ads,

So we do three different ways. So we use the event portal Ticket Spice because it's a paid event. So Ticket Spice actually gives us email information for past attendees. So that's one way we do. We email to past attendees. The second way that we do is through the Chamber's CRM. We capture a lot of emails throughout the year through the CRM. So that's a second way, which is constant contact. And then the third way is we actually do paid email marketing. where we will go out and buy data from the 50 mile radius that might have interest, whether it's families or community events or races or whatever it might be. We'll buy that and then we'll send a drip campaign out that way. So that's part of the paid media.

I believe you as an incoming president is going to have a lot of impact for the fact that Madcap is a marketing firm. And I do believe that's going to have a larger reach with Red, White and Kaboom this year. Did you see a growth?

We did. We saw a huge growth and we were a little surprised by that. I'm not going to lie because we were up against FIFA and the 250th and there was just a lot going on, but we did have a significant growth, almost 30% growth this year. It was a little surprising. We sold out the gold parking lot and the overflow parking was a little out of hand. And if you were at red, white and kaboom walking through the festival grass area was difficult. So huge growth.

Yeah, I want to give you guys a really good shout out on that. You did a very good job. I really liked how you set it up this year. You really knocked it out of the park. Congratulations.

Thank you for your partnership. And Renee, thank you for your partnership on that event. It's a beast.

Thank you.

OK, thank you, Stephanie. You're welcome, Ned. Thank you, guys. Move on. Tacoma Regional Convention and Visitor Bureau. Either way.

All right, am I on? This is one of the nuances, strange nuances of LTAC, by the way, for the RCW is that applicants are on the board and are applying. So recognize that, that's how it's built. So we don't want to avoid it. Okay, I'm Dean Burke, President and CEO of Visit Tacoma Pierce County. We are the destination marketing organization and sports commission serving all of Pierce County. We're 36, 37 years into that now. We're based in downtown Tacoma. and we work with and serve all of the lodging zones very specifically throughout the county. We work through three main pillars of business, two group business sectors, which is conventions and meetings, also sports and leisure tourism as well. We are extremely data-driven, very Salesforce-driven as well. Making generating trackable overnight hotel stays is our number one metric among many, but that is our first one. We currently sell about 200,000 rooms annually throughout the county, about 35,000 of those of which are specific to Puyallup. both through products that are happening in Puyallup and adjacent. So I will remind everybody, as we typically do, don't underestimate how many hotel room nights things like the Tacoma Dome or the Convention Center in Tacoma put into Puyallup. It's thousands. So we have a tremendous relationship with this group and with the city as well through all of our efforts and with the fair. Very thankful for the last few years in transition as we've worked with Renee and her team It's been refreshing for an organization that is that old. It's been a large transition for us. So we've been helping them strategically as well and placing more meaningful events on that campus that also benefit Puyallup, as well as we work with everybody that is listed in these applications and beyond to support everything we can to drive straight to the heart of attracting and bringing people in from outside of 50 miles or further to stay the night, spend a lot of money, have a great experience here through whatever modality, and then carry on. So I'll come in under my three minutes, let you have some questions now.

I'll just express my appreciation for all the work you do. It really contributes to our local life. It's kind of invisible to us, but the effects are undeniable. So thank you for your work. And I'll turn some time over to Renee McLean.

Hi, I just wanted to say, I also appreciate working with Dean and their organization. And Dean, I'm just curious, is there a way that you directly work with the Sumner and, you know, their visitor center and their marketing creates, you know, kind of a collaborative effort?

Absolutely. Yeah. I'm also on their LTAC committee. Their city is also on our board and we are down there, gosh, probably every other week. So, yeah. We work with them through everything. We've helped them with the development they've done on Hops Alley over the last few years and bringing that to light. A lot of capital work with them for the last few years. Yeah.

Okay. Seeing no more questions, you can resume your turn your hat around again and Again, just by clarification there, the LTAC committee is made up of one representative of the city council. That would be me. We have representatives of three hoteliers on our committee and three recipients of LTAC money on our committee. So it seems a little bit incestuous at times in that regard, but that's the way it's set up. And having that influence there is is uh a good thing i think okay so we'll wrap that'll be great

I'm over here at the peanut gallery. We're in the has-been section. So... I'm getting heckled. So Julie Dorapial at Main Street, I just wanted to address the question on the booth fees. The booth fees vary from $23 to $40, and that depends on whether they're prepaid or not and the vendor type. Main Street gets a commission, and the commission ranges from 5% to 10%, again, depending on which type of vendor. And that is it.

Thank you, appreciate that input. That was former Mayor Dorr for the record. So we'll wrap up with the Fred Oldfield Art Center.

I appreciate that. We didn't get notice of this meeting until just two days ago when a reminder was sent out. So I am not prepared with a prepared speech, but I am here to say thank you to all of you for the support that you've given us over the years. Our mission is different than many of you, and yet we all seem to have the same goals in mind, the same goals. love of the community. Fred Oldfield, as you know, was a very prominent Western painter, and we have been able to continue his legacy with our Heritage Center. We are now in a transition period where we have left the fairgrounds and we are in the process, I guess you would say, of trying to find a new location within the constraints of Puyallup. We kind of feel like we're a family here. and we don't really want to go outside of the city. We are coming back to LTAC again this year because we are able to now go forward with our art events as we have in the past. We've never skipped a day of having our classes. We were able to make the transition from the fair to the Episcopal Church building across the street and our classes stopped on Friday at the fair and we're running again on Tuesday. We have over 100 children that come every week and we've had that for we've built that over the last 22 years. That was Fred's legacy that's what we hope to continue. Our big event is, we have two major events we have several through the year but our biggest one is our Western Art Show in the fall. And this year we're back to it slowed during COVID because we weren't able to congregate as we had in the past. So this year we're again excited because we're having a two-day show which brings our artists in from Washington, Oregon, Idaho. We have one from Wyoming. We have one from Colorado coming into town. So again, we're bringing amazing art and artists from across the country. That also brings the patrons in from most of our patrons are over 50 miles away. Many of them are from out of state that come. One of you talked about grandchildren, and we have the same. When we have a student art show, we have grandparents that come up from California, which is always astounding to us. But they're coming into town. They're supporting their children, which is always thrilling. We continue to want to have the arts be there for the children because it continues to teach them to thrive. An enormous percentage of our students now are special needs, and the growth that we see within that community has been astounding. I could tell stories that would bring you all to tears with joy, but we don't have time for that, so I won't. um i would like to just say that we love being a part of puyallup we are still looking for a large facility where we can bring our museum back to life and continue to have our art classes we've been able to speakers three minutes have expired sorry i'm open for questions those were very well done impromptu remarks there thank you thank you very much i got in here today and i went oh my word uh

I don't see any questions. We do appreciate Fred Oldfield and I love his art and it's wonderful that you're keeping his legacy alive and I'm excited to, I'm glad you're keeping the education programs going. That's, I think, one of the key things

benefits from from your program and a cute saying he used to say honey not everybody wants to come see some old cowboy but every child deserves to learn to love the arts so that was his goal thank you all very much for your support thank you okay it's we're a little past 10 30 so let's take a little bit of a break and before we come back and decide what we're going to do

I'd like to call the meeting back into order. And we're to the stage where we are considering and making decisions about funding. So in terms of how we go forward with this, just positioning ourselves, last year we had $713,000 to allocate. This year we've got $853,000. And our hotel revenues are up considerably. We've got a new hotel in town that's having its impact. So we appreciate that new hotel. And it gives us the opportunity to be a little more generous this year as opposed to prior years. But understand that we've got $75,000 that we need to take out. And so we're Now is the hard part. We've got to decide which of these admirable entities should get a little haircut over what their requested amounts are. So in terms of moving forward with this, it's going to be hard to kind of assess what the smaller requests are until we've of where we stand with the bigger ones. So I'm going to suggest that we start off with our larger requests. So I'm going to ask for us to consider the Puyallup-Sumner Chamber of Commerce first, since they're the top of our request list. So anybody have any thoughts about what's a reasonable amount within that amount? And just in terms of background, that $140,000 increase is about a 20% increase in the amount of funding that we have available. The return of generous influences, they were out of the mix last year. So bringing them back in that they had been in the previous year. So bringing them back into the mix takes about $35,000 out of that $140,000. So that brings our increase exclusive of them to about a 15% increase in available funding. So with that kind of a preface, comments about suggestions about what appropriate amount of funding for the Puyallup-Sumner Chamber of Commerce? Any recommendations? Ms. Fields.

I recommend that the Chamber receives full funding. They do do a lot of work in the community. And with Madcap Marketing coming in as their marketing or their president, their marketing will go digitally more, which kind of will have a bigger outreach. I believe they should be funded.

Okay. Any other comments on that?

Mr. Mayor, Ms. McLean has her hand raised.

Sorry, Renee, I missed your hand here. Proceed. It's okay.

I think that we probably have to look at multiple organizations taking a reduction. I do think the request this year for the chamber is up 260,000. And so, you know, looking at something of maybe a five to seven, 10 reduction, reduction, reduction, still put them with more funding than they received in prior year. Just don't think we're going to get there without looking at all, most of the organizations.

Agreed. I, I, putting them in at 100% leaves off a big chunk of our total spending. So it would make it very difficult to make up that $75,000 elsewhere. So, Scott.

I wasn't a part of the board last year. I was on the other side of the table last year. But I remember the discussion, there was a similar scenario where there was a shortfall that we had to make up and it ended up it seemed like a fair and reasonable Proposal across the board was And I'm not sure how you calculated it out, but it ended up just being a percentage That would make it Equitable across each organization that has requested funds that they would be it would be, that difference would be spread equally across all of the applicants as a percentage. And I believe that's how they did it last year. And that seemed to be fair to spread it across everybody instead of saying, well, we're going to take a certain amount from somebody and a different amount from somebody else. So just a proposal there.

Mr. Burt, I'm not going to answer specifically on what, how much I think is there isn't an accurate amount to take out of the chamber on this at this moment, because what this really, I want to continue the momentum and the work on this committee that that was started this past year and that we are yet again at the voting table with no rubric, no scoring system, no, no strategic outcome for what the one of the LTAC. So we're left to, emotion and whimsy on the voting process, which I think is wildly unfair. And so we're going to have to go through that pain again today, which I understand that's just where we're at. But I want to build on the work that we did this year, as you read at the beginning of the meeting, some kind of narrative about where the LTAC should be going. And that's a good first step. We knew this would take multiple years to get to. But I just want to reflect on this moment that this is the outcome of not having any type of scoring system on this to help drive it forward. So with that, I hope we can keep that momentum in this next season as ALTAC continues to grow and get stronger in thinking about a strategic vision. And then I'll Second, what Scott said, I think this is ultimately going to have to come down to some kind of equitable percent across the board. We're not looking, what are we, 75,000 in trim across? You know, we've overcome worse as a group.

So, yeah.

His idea of continuing to work.

So, basically, I kind of drove the... process here. And we started off trying to design a metric to score our systems. And I have participated in a number of scoring matrices in my role on various committees that I serve on. And I found that you put together a metric and then it gives you results that you didn't expect and didn't want. So I became a little bit skeptical of that approach. And I think the discussions and the meetings we had were good because they helped us flesh out what we're looking for from our city and give us the perspective to exercise good judgment in how we how we allocate these funds. And just as I don't think a metric necessarily drives the funds where we want them to go, neither does simply doing a percentage. I think that's a default approach. We used it last year, and I didn't like it last year. And I'm going to throw my weight behind not doing that again today. it does make it a little hard. You're all sitting here in the room and everybody's got a skin in the game here. So we're going to tell some people that we're maybe going to make some winners here and some losers. And that's the nature of the beast. And I think that's what but we've got responsibility to do. And in serving on this committee, that's the expectation is we exercise that responsibility in the best way we can. And I think we do have the perspective now to be able to do that. So that's where I'm coming from. So I will jump in here and propose that we give the Puyallup-Sumner Chamber of Commerce $235,000 for the upcoming year. That's an additional $30,000 more than they had last year. It will be $25,000 less than their request. Any thoughts? So that makes up $25,000, if we go with that, of the $75,000 needed. The next biggest player, and I'm not hearing much comment, so this isn't a Mayor Whitting decision. It's a group decision. So and as we make as we decide appropriate amounts of funding for the various organizations, we can we won't come out exactly where we need to be. So so these are only suggestions. And and when we see where we are and where we can make up the money, then then we can come back and adjust at the tail end. But so I'm twenty five thousand out of the out of the chamber at this point in time. Puyallup Main Street Association. Any suggestions for an appropriate amount for the Main Street?

Ms. McLean. Yeah, I'm right in there with Dean and what he is saying. But without having some more parameters. I think we've got to look at some method that makes sense. And I'm kind of looking at it from the percent of the increases listed and trying to go from that perspective. So I would think that they would be relatively similar if we're not looking at specific programming and what we think should be funded. Okay, any other comments? Both the Chamber had 27% and Main Street has 30% increased requests from prior year funding.

Correct. What's the, what was your message there? Those are both.

I'm just saying if we're not looking at what we're funding, And we're just trying to do some kind of a decrease to get to the number. Probably need to come up with some mechanism for that.

I'm sorry, you're cutting out a little bit. I didn't understand what you said. Could you repeat that? What you said, your audio.

Yeah, I have a lot of feedback because I think Dan has to pin me. But I just feel like we don't have any reason for selecting one thing or another. And both the chamber and Main Street had 27% to 30% increase in funding from prior year. So we would just be looking at similar reduction.

OK, so you're suggesting a comparable reduction to the Main Street Association that's kind of proportionate to what the chamber took.

Only because we seem to have no other method.

And we had some extensive discussions about what we were looking for. And I think we have the ability as committee members to exercise that judgment at this point in time. So I don't think because we don't have a scoring mechanism that we forgot all of our discussions. So I'm, again, I'm looking for some judgment in terms of the relative benefits of the individual entities. Okay, so my suggestions don't seem to be taking. People are looking for some guidance and leadership here, so let me take some leadership. I think that all things fun sports has been requesting some large amounts of funding over the years. And we've been giving them relatively little because we've been very tapped. But they've got very good statistics about the contribution they make to our city. And I would suggest that we fully fund their $22,000 request. Arts Downtown. They've taken a cut from their 2025 to 2026. They're asking for a modest increase. I think that $70,000 is appropriate for them. The Daffodil Festival had $44,000 donated in 2025. That shrank to 41,000. They're asking for 50. i'm going to suggest that we make that 46 000 so a 5 000 increase there first pursuits general influencers they were off the off the screen last year and in preceding time they were allocated 34 000. my thinking rationale for them is that the city is giving them a lot of uh You know, they benefit from a lot from the city in terms of the reduced rental on the pavilion as well as the synergy with the concerts in the park. I would suggest that we allocate them $25,000. Foothills Rails to Trails is requesting $25,000. I suggest that we fully fund that. Fred Oldfield Center is asking for a $1,000 increase. I suggest we fully fund that. Northwest Sinfonetta is at 23,000. They're requesting 30. I'm going to suggest that we fully fund that. Puyallup Historical Society, Meeker Mansion. They are at 49 last year. They're asking for 68. I think we need something halfway in between there. So I'm going to suggest $57,000 for Meeker Mansion. And Puyallup Main Street Association, my recommendation is they were at 180 last year. Dave Kuntz, The requesting 236 i'm suggesting that we allocate $208,000 there so so a $28,000 increase for them. Dave Kuntz, And to Tacoma regional Convention and visitors bureau I suggest we fully fund that that organization So those are my suggestions they they. Dave Kuntz, bring us in about where we need to be i'm happy to. Dave Kuntz, entertain discussions about that proposal.

Dave Kuntz, Did I miss hearing you say the gardener.

Dave Kuntz, Oh yes, I must have missed the master gardeners. Dave Kuntz, The. Dave Kuntz, Let me just find them and there they are I didn't have anything written down, but they they're requesting the same as last year, I suggest we fully fund them for another year. Mr. Burke?

Dan, check my math. And also, Mayor, I show we've got to get to 75.5. I show we're at 78.950.

So we've got 3,000 more to allocate. I figured there's probably going to be some adjustments suggested.

Mr. Mayor? What you suggested as I put it in my spreadsheet, assuming that I didn't do a typo, adds up to $850,256. So there's still $34,34 left on the table to actually allocate, not unallocate.

Granted, understood that there is a little more funding. So let's have folks weigh in and if they think that's a reasonable allocation or if there are suggested changes and I'm hoping that the consensus isn't that we go back to a percentage allocation approach.

30, 34. Let me get back down to the bottom here. 3,434. Mr. Mayor?

Repeat the funding for arts downtown, please. I missed that one.

Arts downtown fully funded at 70,000. Ms. Fields.

So if I'm understanding this right, everybody, I mean, Main Street and Chamber got the biggest hits, correct? And it sounds like the Chamber, am I correct on that? They're taking the biggest reduction just so I make sure I'm okay with understanding that.

They will take the biggest reductions in their requests that they have in terms of how much allocated to them that they also have the biggest increase in the amount of funds they receive.

Thank you.

So of the 3,400, do we want to divide and split that and put half of that back into both of those two?

If you want to make that proposal, then we can certainly do that.

So whatever that math is, $1,600 to $1,700 each? So then I'll just make the proposal to do that, take the 3,400, divide it in two, and put that equitably between both Chamber and Main Street Association.

So basically, we've got in round numbers Dave Kuntz, 209,700 for main street and and 236 seven for for the Chamber of Commerce. Dave Kuntz, So. Dave Kuntz, Any comments about the. Dave Kuntz, Any of my recommendations. Obviously there's some organizations that have requested modest amounts and it's easy to to kind of leave them give them the requests i've suggested a rather large increase the largest percentage increase by a factor of 10 probably for for all things fun sports i don't think i haven't recommended a reduction for anybody So does that seem fair and equitable? So hearing no comments, are we, do I have a motion to approve?

Motion to approve as presented. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Did you have another comment? Your button popped up there a second there, Dean. Okay. Then I think we've done our duty. Meeting adjourned.