Tourism Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. Are you ready? All right. I'm standing in for Satie today. So, welcome to start our meeting. I'm Linda Whis. You want to go around the tables? Henman, Christie, Keith Chandler, Josh Hammond. Thank you. Jennifer Lar. Thank you. And you guys are from the dog or super fans. Part of the nonprofit that puts it on.

Oh, they have super fans. I have six. Okay. And do we have a chance to review the minutes, everyone? Any changes or additions? You vote to I'll move to accept the minutes of March 18th. Second. All in favor? I financial.

Okay. So financial, we have an updated budget document and we have and expenditures. We do not have financial because they're getting the be just doing it on the second meeting of every month. So it'll be every other meeting that we'll have that it seems like. Um but the expenditures are updated. Everything's tracking well. We're looking at 76.8% for personnel services, 73.2% for materials and services. Looks like the chamber and the downtown development business license portions were paid out. So that's good. That helps us understand your budget a little better. Advertising sitting at 71%. And I'll just note that the maintenance contracts and the professional contractual sections are looking really good, which is great because this is the per that we've moved the worldmark fees dues from professional contractual into maintenance. So that um basically uh the fact that these are tracking well just shows that that was probably a good move because our professional contractual was a much more understandable 47.9% instead of like 80% or something would be just because we're paying some use for the world parking staff updating.

Uh, all I really want to add was um I did uh something I've been wanting to do for a while as community liaison and that was do a presentation on our visitor guide. Basically the highlights of things that I feel staff at places should know. Um I got to do my first one. I was invited by Brandon Craft to um come present at the Holiday Inn staff meeting uh there monthly and it was great. Everybody was very responsive, paid attention. I even got a call afterwards from a guy who was still thinking about it. So that made me feel good. Uh next one coming up at Catherine on Tuesday uh for the staff there. And then uh just Mark Hoffman just uh confirmed that I'll be one at Best Western. They have their pre-summer kickoff staff party. It's like six o'clock on a Thursday. They're in a bonfire and hot dogs and everything.

6 a.m. PM and I'll get to present. So, you know, uh it's it's pretty cool. I I really really wanted to do this and find ways to open this up to more staff anywhere. So, it doesn't just have to be hotel staff. If you've got staff that think they could benefit from or anybody that you know of they've got staff that could benefit from a little bit of education on what's in the guide and how to direct people, takes me 15, 20 minutes to go through it. But it was very fun and exactly what I was hoping to do. One of the things as community needs. Thank you.

Month of steps. Let's take a look. So for March 10 traffic was down 14%. Um down 14% for the years. Well volume was exactly equal to last year. Strangely,

Zigra Guide lead volume was up 67% and total distribution was up 20%. Now you'll notice that our so if we look at the snapshot for the whole quarter January, February, March for total visitor guide distribution, we're at 30,835 guides out the door. That's 3% down from last year which felt counterintuitive to me because of just our experience in the office. So I I look at this numbers and it's actually kind of interesting. What's down is that we rescended our um our we use certified to distribute guides around the region. You might not know that, but we do. Certified folder.

Certified folder. They did they pick up a huge pallet and they distribute them all and all these programs were part of including the Columbia River Gorge on the I5 in Washington southbound on the I5 in Oregon northbound. So it's this whole program and we had a program that was from Vancouver to Long and that one's been removed and then this visitor guide distribution around town is down. So that kind of distribution is down about 2,000 guides over the last year at this point. But our mail order program where we are sending guides to people who have ordered visitor guides through our advertising through our website is up a thousand this time. So that's a much higher quality lead. And so it's actually a really kind of a nice place to be in. Just again another example of why numbers don't always mean anything unless you understand the context around them. I'd say that the guides we've sent out the door this this year so far are higher quality general. Total web sessions are up. Same with active users. We are having some downtime with our website which has been really frustrating because we just got through this issue where um we had spam bots ordering uh visitor guide orders that we had to pull out of the actual leads every week and that was annoying. So we fixed that. Now, what we got going on is our CPU hits 100% limited because of a bunch of AI bots and search bots um hitting our event calendar and they make a million queries like, oh, this this this and it just crashes the computer and our whole site goes down and then it comes back in 15 minutes, but it's just really annoying. So, we're working on fixing that right now. Um, it's just always a moving target, you know, you just who who would have known two years ago that we'd be fighting a bunch of artificial intelligence bots on a daily basis, but that's what we're doing. But

our our um user, our active user, which is a metric that pulls out, there's no bots in that. That's an active person that's clicking on stuff. Maybe that is up 21% in March, up 14% for the quarter. Email signups continue to be really strong. This is thanks in part to our website and also thanks in part to the four um radio contests we did this year with in Seattle and Portland. So that just adds a lot of subscribers to our list. uh web visitor guide requests are down 27% but that's because um we have moved one chunk of our segment of our advertising segment that push people to the visitor guide order form. Instead of pushing people to the visitor guide order form, we've taken their information in meta. So basically, we're we're we're testing removing that step where they click on it, they go to our site, and then they fill out the form. They're already in Facebook, so we just have them click a button and whatever information they already have in Facebook gets populated, and then they have to fill in whatever is missing. And it's been super successful so far. And actually what's been great about it is that we were able to take the first like months worth of data and then take that information and feed it into the meta system and then have it build a lookalike audience who aren't our current audience but who behave and have many characteristics of our current audience and then serve ads to them instead. And when it turns out it's actually cheaper to serve. People end up getting new audience members added to our group. And this is also where some of our emails sign up. So it's been a it's been a great uh experiment.

It does mean that our web form seems like it's underperforming, but what's really happening is a segment of that traffic is now on meta. But we we keep track of it and and set it. So um I do want to say uh the you look at the bed tax quarter the bed tax for Q2 2025 that is the end of last year that's been updated since we last met. There's been late payments that have come in. So the quarter for hotel now is up up 6.6% 6% over the previous year. Vacation rentals are still down 2.9% but combined they're up 4.29% over the previous year. For full context, the previous year was down 10%. So it's even though it's up 4.2% over last year, it's still a little bit under. It's about $100,000 down over those at its peak two years ago. that combined number. Um the Q1 was up 1.6% and was up 2.3% the year before. So all in all looking pretty good on that side of thing that all things considered. Any questions about the department on director?

You missed all the good stuff. Sorry. All the numbers. He's our chair now. just doing a great job. We're just moving through this. Okay, so director's report, we have seen a clear trend in social media performance where video is really dominating our stats. Through the first quarter of 2026, 92.7% of our followers on visit seaside um properties have come directly from video contents, mostly reals on Facebook. And so it's really kind of grown into our most effective tool for reach, engagement, and growth on social media. So, in response, we've kind of begun focusing on video and we've revived our YouTube account.

Actually, I just went in there the other day poking around and it was like, "Happy, it's your birthday. It's your anniversary." Like, "Happy like 15 year birthdays." It's like I've just logged into this like last week for the first time, you know, like we do not use it heavily. So, but we have been using it heavily now. Um so um as our audience increasingly shifts towards video first discovery, YouTube provides both immediate visibility and long longevity through a mix of short form algorithm optimized videos sort of like reals and then longer evergreen content like videos that we posted on. Currently we're focusing on building a consistent organic presence aligned with our destination branding and connecting with others who love and visit seaside and share their experience online. We're commenting on other people's posts as the account sharing and liking it, things like that. Uh we've gotten maybe 60 followers in the last couple weeks and we've had thousands of of views of our videos. It's really re-energized it by um starting to post with the regular ca cadence. Um,

let's just show you the YouTube so you can see the video you have there of the well watching where you've circled the just get one of the circle. Is it spouting still? Maybe splash. I will tell you though, this this stupid whale thing is so annoying. Every day we deal with people that it's like that's not seaside. I can tell because I was there once and the waves are bigger. So,

you've gone back and forth with one guy like eight times now. Thankfully, we have other pictures from that same shoot that where you can see the Yeah, you can see the moby mat. You can see the what do you call it? a semaphore and stuff like that. But there's no point on game. No, there's some people that that

but so anyway, so you'll see that we have, you know, we have this is our main uh newest video. These 14,000 views um you know, for being posted two months ago, not not bad for a DMO. I mean, this is one thing I learned recently at at the uh conferences I've been attending in the last six months is this is lowhanging fruit for DMOs. A lot of us have videos. Almost no destination marketing organizations are active on YouTube and it has search relevance. So all this stuff ends up in, you know, Google owns YouTube. So when you're posting videos on here, it shows up in search results and all sorts of stuff. So um I'm pleased with that. Um the shorts I think are really fun and kind of a nice way to repurpose other stuff we have. I mean for for instance whale watching, but I mean even like the pumpkin drop. This is made for this kind of platform.

Maybe I don't have audio going yet. There's That one was from a few years ago. Yeah. But and there's audio you're not hearing because I just don't want to click anything because we're streaming and everything. But like these videos, you know, this all these are all

um doing pretty well really. I mean, we have 1.2,000 2,000 views for that one. This is a pull out of our sizzle reel and you can see that one didn't catch on quite as much. These are a bunch of videos we did where people are talking about why they like the seaside at the farmers market. This was a bunch of people that said why they like seaside at the volleyball tournament. You can see 1.5,000. These are all posted within the last few weeks. So, it's really quite good. On the video side of things, we're posting the videos we've done with Atoria and Canon Beach together, and they're they're they're picking up some real views, and I think over time this will continue to go. And then we have some shorts in here that are just super short. Um, and that's because we these were part of an ad campaign that we ran that I'll talk about in just a second. They're only six seconds long, but they've racked up quite a few views, too. So, this is actually from our North Coast Food Trail video, and it's only, of course, you got to watch. I got a team to get an ad to watch the six second video. But you know this is and it just has a voice over from the guy who does our video saying seaside has a sandy beaches in Oregon a hotel room with your name on and it goes to this and and so like you know as a nice little quick ad touch point and we're using it in ads but people are also just watching it. So this YouTube will become like Facebook and Instagram for us. It'll become another social media platform. So, whose dog is that? June,

I actually don't remember, but when we posted that in the group asking whose dog it was, someone had actually spoke up and said, "Oh, it's my dog." Like, well, your dog is famous now. Yeah, it's a great shot.

Okay, so um another trend we're noticing is a surprising renaissance of energy and activity on Facebook relative to Instagram. Has anyone else noticed that in their properties? Is that just a tourism thing? Yeah, it's strange. So, we largely post the same content on Facebook as we do on Instagram. And with that same content, we've had we gained a 1,128 followers this quarter on Facebook to 75,000. And actually, since I wrote this report, we're now at 75,400, almost 75,500. And Instagram had less than 200 in that same time. And so it's interesting because that dynamic would have been completely flipped just even a couple years ago where we were seeing all the activity on Instagram and Facebook was very quiet, but it's completely gone the other way now. Some of that might be because Facebook owns Instagram and is kind of de prioritizing it and wants to bring that back to Facebook. I really don't know.

We just had four different TV stations contact us about the whale and I was assuming that Tiffany put out a media alert. She did. She just put it on Facebook and so the TV channels are contacting us. They wanted us to do Zoom interviews and all that stuff. But they all got it from Facebook. They didn't get it from a media post. I was surprised.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do think something something's reshifted back towards Facebook recently. And then so speaking of video, we also recently completed a campaign that extended across YouTube and connected TV placements the Pacific Northwest. This was a digital pass at a broadcast audience. So you might remember back in the fall we ran broadcast like TV uh commercials the Pacific Northwest targeted to certain folks. This is a digital pass at that same audience. So from February 12th through March 20th, we ran two regional. The two videos that we ran are a story and seaside together. There's no Canon beach, but it's a story seaside. And then the 60-cond seaside video that you saw on the top of our YouTube page there on connected TVs in Seattle, Yakama, Spokane, Tri Cities, and parts of the Portland DMA that are further than 150 miles from side, which is quite a bit. And then uh that portion of the campaign reached 294,000 unique households. And then at the same time we were running on YouTube those four seaside shorts I just showed you and our 60-second video that was at the top of that page. And they earned 2.2 million impressions. It's quite a bit cheaper than YouTube than it is on CTV. And to 48.5 hours watch time in about two months. So good. May 2nd is the first Saturday art walk. We have a whiskey and winewalk weekend on May 15 16th. We are pitching whiskey and winewalk to TV stations through a PR person. May 30th is point of the coast and um we've had a success with that one. On May 14th, they will be on uh or brewers or organizers or somebody will be on coin May 14th talking about that plan. And then May 30th, I don't have it on here, but that's the junior parade in Portland this year. It's going to be on

a Saturday this year, not a week, not a week day. Rose made some changes this year.

No, it's the weekends early this year. I think the weekend is 24 laid in 207. Yeah. So, it'll be interesting to see what that event is like on a Saturday because it's typically what like on a Wednesday or Thursday again. Yeah. Yeah. So, we are a sponsor of the decoration station again and uh our media monitoring u system has picked up a couple things where they've started talking about the junior parade and stuff and they've been name checking seasides and good but be interesting to see what it's like on weekend.

Business. Yes, old business. So for the tourism grants, the only update is as you remember we were here last month and we talked to um the mechanic from wershed council and I followed up with uh finance department about that and it turns out that you know at this point they wanted to reapply a grant instead of taking the money last minute and trying to spend it really quick. That's there makes sense to me. So I shared that feedback with them and hopefully they'll reapply. But that's the only that's the only outstanding part of the grant process. So that's the only update to that. Any questions about tourism grants from the previous year?

Do you guys have any questions since you received one? Um I don't really have any questions. We're just waiting for it to open up because as far as I know it hasn't opened for this year. Yep, you're correct. We got we got to talk about it.

We just keep checking. Yeah. So, we'll get into that in just a minute. But before we get into that north 101 sign, I wanted to give you an update. The budget committee is meeting here in 40 minutes. Um they this is the second budget meeting of the cycle is here. I think there's three scheduled. They at the first one uh the pack request to um improve accessibility at the north sign was in the recommended do pass section. So saying it's it's up it's ultimately up to the council and the budget committee but it's um marked as they plead like we think this should pass which is good for us. So that should be is a good sign. Um, I did want to we talked Brett about how um the public works and everybody wants to move the sign rather than move rather than make a long pathway. Um, there's this fun little mockup of of not exactly what it's going to look like, but just an idea of visually what that would be like as far as close to the sign. And one thing I want to point out is if this happens, we went out and toured the site and looked at it. There's a little grove of trees here right now, like scrub trees, and they would be removed and the sign would be put in there. There's a little bit of a of a little um high elevation point here. And from this point, then this welcome sign would be the first spot on the highway that headed south that you could see the ocean. So there might be some opportunities to kind of build in some signage or rec re recognition of that fact too as like this. This could truly then be the gateway to the Oregon coast or something. I don't know. But it's it's a it's it's a it's a kind of a I don't know. It's kind of worked out in a kind of a cool way.

Yeah. Yeah. There is a tree right here and the public works director said he'd be happy to remove that. I don't know what kind of what little that would take like I don't know if these are I know it's like a art but I mean they're kind of dying anyways. Yeah, the trees there the one. But even down on the water here because this I think this view this viewpoint could be opened up a little bit more because there's really not a huge view space here. I put this here simply because it it highlighted this view. So you're talking about removing one of the trees close to the water. Yeah, exactly.

Um is that there's property that's it's urban or seaside seaside. Yeah. Oh, there you go. Hail but it's looking good. It's it's it's it's trapping. It was pretty funny. I don't know if you guys have watched the budget committee meeting, but one of the things that was on the budget as a do not we do not recommend you pass was the Russ Vandenberg archway. That's literally what it said. I was like that's a joke. You're not supposed to put that on. Laker. So,

um, any word on the Y sign?

Um, I don't think it's going to get dedicated funding for this, uh, year. Not because it w it was also not recommended, but that wasn't because they don't want to do it. It was because they want to let's focus on one thing at a time. As far as budget wise, we can still um do visualizations of designs and stuff, we can still move forward on that without getting to the the point where we need a huge chunk of budget to make it work. We can budget money to like do designs and move that project forward. We just can't install it without extra budget, you know? Does that make sense? like we can still move forward with it, but they don't want to appro I don't know what the budget committee will do, but the recommended pathway from staff was not to allocate another $50,000 for that project as well this year. My only push back on that with them, not that I have I haven't showed up to any of those, is that right now the money that we have can be used for tourism projects like this where it's not being shifted to the 50/50 model. And so holding off,

you're talking about all the reserves. Holding off benefits the city's finances if they don't do projects. Does that sort of make sense? It makes sense, but it's not as much money as you think. Honestly, it really is. No, I know. Compared to what is there? Well, we Yeah, I had a meeting yesterday with like the some of the Oregon legislative aids and some coastal DMOs and stuff. And one thing that's interesting about the coastal money is like you always talk about that reserve, you know, has all the millions of dollars, whatever. That is the 70 that is that is the 70 portion of the 7030 split that's already been allocated,

right? So you you don't, as far as I understand it, you can you don't go in and just split that and it goes 50/50 to the city 50. It's already a 7050. So at most you could take an extra point, right? Yeah. And so I don't think a $50,000 would like make a difference really in that situation, but I mean it would be an extra 20% of that 50, right? Sure.

Yeah. So I just I understand that uh logistically if we're saying it has to be spent and if public works can't move that fast, that's one thing. But if they're holding off because they don't want to spend that money in this fiscal year, that's where I feel like they need to re-evaluate that because it is then saying we want to hold off because we want that additional funds for our own projects, not tourism projects. Well, I think that is u their official position is that they want more money for general fund,

right? But then how can they justify saying no to a project that actually is tourism draw based? Yeah. I just I feel like what there's what and I don't know, but I would say that they would say that our priority is this one. We'll work on this one and that is just too much extra. Yeah. All it works is other stuff.

Yeah. But like I said, we still can move forward on that as far as uh we could have a visualization options drawn up that what we could put there and then we could vote on the T would vote on a recommended direction for that. It's just we wouldn't be able to start building it till next July, not this July. Right. Is there anything that could be done to improve the sign on the southside? The the way that the Were you on there last meeting? You were right. I just don't remember.

Yeah. Our the way that So, I had to make a presentation to the budget committee about the tax three recommendations. The north sign accessibility. Well, actually it was accessibility at both signs. That's what the presentation was.

The chevron sign and the archway. And at that presentation, the budget committee indicated that they would like to prioritize the north sign, deprioritize the south sign because there's a lot less options there, and instead focus on doing something at the chevron that could then serve really as our south wall. I guess my my question is on the sign on the south, do we have the same amount of people stopping to get their pictures taken at it as we do on the north side? Well, so because people can park in the relief pictures parking lot. Yeah. They're not trekking across uneven. But are they are they doing are they stopping and getting their photos?

Oh, 100%. Almost every time I see every time I drive by, there's somebody on I don't drive by that side. Yeah. So, I don't know if they're even stopping there. I know they stopped at the other one so it's very noticeable. Yeah. I don't know if the one on Southside is noticeable just so they are. We also just don't have as much land there to do anything with. So it just becomes a that was just kind of how it developed. So or if they're doing it then they're seeing the sign.

Well, and there's access like they can walk right up to it without without again like trekking over lumps of grass and you know stuff like that. I mean it is landscapedish right up to the base rather than the one north side which is a little wild. Yeah. New business.

Okay. So we do need to launch this grant program pretty soon. I've wanted to quickly just share that I updated this page to more clearly hopefully state because I'm be honest with you this page was like kind of a we've had this grant for many years and this page was kind of like okay well we need a page to talk about it but to me ever since we added a second grant it wasn't always clear when you landed on it that there are two programs and so I've tried to be more clear that there are two programs here. One, there's two. Okay, so that's been updated and hopefully that will help people understand at a glance what's going on here. I've brought updated guidelines for both programs and we and the advisory committee basically needs to review these and come to some agreement about how we want to run the guidelines for the next one. So this is the events grant. Can you check on it?

So for the events grant mostly the dates have just been updated in this but I've highlighted here there's two things that my recollection and feel free to bring up more if you had them or you recall something differently but during the last cycle two things came up. One is the timing. As a history lesson, it used to be that you could get grants, tourism grants all year long, but you're limited in the summer. You can only get up to $3,000 in the summer, but you can get them all year long. We have since changed it so you cannot apply for them in the summer, but you can get them the rest of the year.

There has been some That was the reverse. Yeah. I don't think we were ever issuing them in the summer. No, we were when I started. You could. Yeah. Yes, you could. Huh? Not for summer use, but still like issuing the money. No, you could. It was what it said. It said is um events in the summer are limited to 3,000 and they're not prioritized. I thought that was a new thing. I thought it was just the just the shoulder and off seasonason events would be granted that for like a long while and then we changed it because we weren't seeing the number of grant applications for those dates. So we changed it so they could be used but it would be limited.

That could be true. That could be true. From my perspective when I came into this program that's what it was. It was that you could apply in the summer but it was limited. So maybe before that that was the case. I I don't actually know how many years. seven. Yeah, it definitely could have been eight years ago. It could have been. Yeah, but I think we've we've I don't remember last month. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah,

we've walked back towards, you know, trying to prioritize the the off seasons. And so, some of the feedback that I've heard about these grants and that we've discussed here is that a whole bunch of our amazing events happen in September and right on the right on the cusp of the season we want to do. So that's a question mark that you guys should discuss and figure out what you want to do. Do you want to continue? You have a few options. Continue how we're doing it now. And as we did it last year, you could in you could institute some kind of limit limit on funds around the early parts of the off season or some other kind of limit. Or you could have a stricter window on when people can apply. I think that it would be uh a bigger carrot to dangle for new events that were held in the off season, not shoulder seat. So, new events held between October and uh March 31st or something like that. um that's a new event would be able to be granted a larger fund. If it if it's a brand new event, you know, if you're starting it from a dead stop, it takes a lot of money to get an event going. So, I would be um would just like to shoot that out there that I think that it'd be better to offer up to $10,000 for an event that was going to be held between between October 1st and April 1st

when we only had 25. I mean, if other events if other events that were in the shoulder season applied, what it would mean is well, I mean, we and we also only grant as much as we as we have, right? So, I mean, if we had shoulder season events, we had 10 shoulder season events that were asking for 3,000 a piece, then we might not have that 10 grand for that that one new um event that happens in the offseason when we actually need people. But it's still available to the folks that are not new or or are not in the off season. It's just less.

Keep the keep a $3,000 limit for shoulder. And I don't think there is a $3,000 limit for shoulder right now. Oh. Oh. Is there any limits? uh $5,000 for most somebody who get and it's all to be used outside of the summers from May.

And what's what is September 6th? Is that is a spec is that a specific date? Yeah, it was. Oh, I I can't I was looking this up. I tried to make it match what we had last year. Probably Labor Day. Is that something Memorial Day through Labor Day?

Yeah. This gives no money to anything that's happening in the summer. Correct. Right. Yeah. Well,

yeah. I don't I don't just don't recall that pretty your wasn't written down there. Everything between Memorial Day and Labor Day was was excluded from class. Do you guys think that there should be an incentive for new uh an additional incentive for new events versus existing? Well, the um the original idea was to to offer grants for like three years until the program get got going, but then there's ex exceptions for programs that don't make any money

like Yeah.

Yeah. I still believe we shouldn't do any any fund anything at the summer. We should be there.

But do you think there should be additional incentive for off season instead of shoulders after after October first? Yeah, there could be. But I I think your initial proposal was clients he said for new events. Yeah. So here we defense from this last year. So we had September 5th through 7th, September 11th through 14th, September 6th through 7th. You see what I'm saying? Like there's definitely a they all came before the rains. That's

Yeah. No, I understand that. I get why that is. But if your intent is to grow events that are bringing people outside season but these don't quite serve it even though you know so and in the year before I recall we had a very similar sort of thing. So I think that well there are a lot of ways for it like an extra incentive for summer but or I mean for sorry for deep winter and stuff like that and spring but problem with that is that it's a rolling grant program so you're still going to get those first applications no matter what. They're not I know I know Sandfest asked for a lot of money, but they're not asking for a ton either. I There is a chance you could limit grants within the first month or last month something of the shoulder

on September events. Yeah, I mean you can you can do anything you want. I mean, I just I just recall this was something that we we we earmarked to discuss because they all came within a couple weeks. This is our chance to change it. You know, once we launch it, we can't change it. But did we actually turn anyone away because we ran out of money? Well, remember cuz this was the first year that we did the rolling. Uhhuh. So we did at the end not have enough money but that was only because people waited for last minute to apply but was certainly a lot of opportunity for people to watch.

I mean I know why event organizers organize in September. Yeah. No I get it. I mean it's it's Yeah. There's a darn good reason for it for sure. But um you know ultimately if we have fair weather days in September, it's just as busy as any summer day. And um so with our with our businesses um we really need to support them in those where where we have fewer of those fair weather days. It's hard to bring people start winter. It's raining and that's I mean you can do something like a bigger you know

well it doesn't have to be an outdoor event. It be indoor too. Yeah. Okay. Anything that has the potential to generate overnight burns.

Yeah. And I think that not all of those did bring very many overnights. Uh not all of them did. I think some some of them that we awarded were kind of like it's good for seaside but it's not it didn't bring in a tremendous amount of nights salt salt makers like major waters probably didn't bring in very many folks I know that some people came for beach books but I don't know if it was $5,000 worth of folks coming for that event that was kind of focused towards one business rather than seaside on whole

I'm not specific specifically sure if Winter Waters did specifically because their events in Seaside weren't super huge attended events, although the ones at Times Theater, but um but their grant followup is really good about how Seaside got promoted through it. So, it wasn't not necessarily tied to our primary goal of overnight states. say, "Man, I wish every grant came had that kind of followup." And I'll share that, I guess, when we get into our probably our next start applying, but the Winter Waters one really, they did a lot of good work on showing how seaside was promoted through that space. Yeah, that's great. And I'm not saying that it wasn't good for it, it's just as far as as far as this work.

Good timing. Very newer one just starting, right? So, couple years. Yeah. Is that all? Yeah. Can you scroll down? The down is you get into the event stuff. So, this one here is the end of the year and then down here it's is the community art stuff every year. Well, how many applications do you get? It varies every year. you try to fill all of them or is there some that were turned away just because we didn't have enough money to make our end but well we just we have decided

it varies it's different every year again this format that we did this last year is is was the first year that we've ever done the road so this was the first but there have been years where we don't get enough bids for the there's been other years where we get too I need

the nice thing about the rolling is that not everybody can meet that deadline for their plan purposes and so having gave extra time I think gave extra time for folks to you know discover the grant number one and then pull the paperwork out and and that there was still money left you know nearing the end was is nice for that aspect well if that's in question I think carrying on with that

model I that I mean I think those are all great events at the beginning there. So I'm not necessarily saying you have to do something. I'm just saying that was something that you should discuss and either actively decide yes, we want to continue um at least considering all these September clusters or putting some kind of limit on what a September or even May or whatever like a late one could be.

You don't recall after seeing the reports is the $3,000 making the difference between them being profitable event or a losing event? Are you talking about sand? Uh, not specifically that, but as one of them. Yes.

I mean, is the $3,000 going to make the difference between them deciding to do it again and not doing it again? I really don't know because some of them are fully I mean some of them like do you think Halloween happenings would happen though like some of like we built the grant guidelines around supporting events that can't support themselves they would happen yeah it would

it would happen it probably wouldn't be as big and they couldn't get as much it's a big candy giveaway for a lot of the the local a lot of locals go to easy. So that's um the lot of expenses that is the pump into the pump actually costs us um at least half of our grand pumpkin done and everything. So um yeah, just might make up less. That's all.

And have to replace the pool every year. Yeah. Well, I mean, we could we might get a 100 pound pumpkin, you know. So, you have to get a smaller pool. Just get a bunch of them.

Anyway, questions like that make me for me trying to evaluate something based on whether it's profitable or not. It's hard to say because some of them definitely aren't probably more about the experience versus Halloween happened and we don't charge anybody to get hand. It's all it's all free. It's all free sandfest. They charge stuff like that. We have no way to generate money for it other than sponsorship, right?

I guess the thing is is do we want to lose those events? And the answer is no. Is is the $3,000 going to make them say, "Man, we just can't do it. We just cannot, you know, having that extra $3,000 to raise to to be to break even or or whatever. Sorry, but sorry, but we can't make it happen here." Like, we don't want that to happen for sure. Um I mean, the the pumpkin drop kind of grew out of the start out with a pumpkin way off. Yeah. Have you seen like the layoffs they do up in the valley? We did those here. SDA did those here for like two or three years and we were losing money on it so it had to go away.

Yeah. No, I get that. We're not actually talking about the October event. We're talking but I'm saying if like she said if you if you work your butt off and you end up breaking even or losing money, you're not going to do that. Got to find a way to to make something of it.

Right. If somebody is has had a grant for the last four or five years and they're bringing in 15 to $20,000 and they're profitable with the event, they're going to continue to have it because it's bringing in that $15$20,000 net, then maybe we should back away on the grants. If they're breaking even or barely making it, and the $3,000 is going to make the difference between them doing the event or not doing the event at Seaside, we want to continue to support them at that level. Um but also how long. So if Jazzfest for an example, you know, we didn't see the numbers, we didn't see the numbers, we didn't see the numbers, we're continuing to support this this event that we really want to succeed. We we're putting our money towards it. We want them to succeed, but they're just not seeing the numbers at that point. It's maybe not worth putting that money towards that event because we're not seeing those numbers. But if we're continuing I mean Halloween happenings just the pumpkin drop alone say there was nothing else that that that $3,000 went to pumpkin drop alone is bringing people here I know because of the chamber who doesn't hold the event at all get we get tons of phone calls asking about it ahead of time well ahead of time months and months ahead of time who plans that much for the bump and drop but people do so you know absolutely

we start whale drop and see if that whale drop Yeah. So, is is is it is it fair then to say that you want to keep the guidelines as they are and evaluate each grant on its own merits? Like you just want to look at Well, I I wouldn't mind seeing like a $3,000 limit on the the tight shoulder season, then maybe five for the for the rest of the year. That might be a a good way to if somebody wanted more money to put on a van in October rather than September, there'd be more incentive to move it a couple weeks. Yeah.

Yeah. I like that model. Yeah. And how do you feel about uh events that have gone five years with grants? Can I add on that? cuz I thought one of the things that I recall is the idea of the grant was to kickstart an event. It was and then they had their success and it's on them now. Yeah. So you're I think that's already in there that okay I mean you can continue funding it but like you've stated okay now we've given you a few chances two three years in and

but it's not in the grant application they need to show us the P&L to see how they did the years before so we know if they're making it or not right and basically that happened years ago when um the PBLO would come to this committee for money and we'd fund And we started looking at the numbers. They were making all kinds of money and sending kids to camp in in the Bahamas. And I'm like, "Wait a minute. You guys are lying. You don't need us anymore." And I take flack for that. Well, but yeah. And that was good because PBL's great. Yeah. So, but they didn't need this money anymore, right?

Yeah. So, do we I mean, it's hard because I don't want to set a limit. SDA I think deserves the money year over year to support that because they're they're not running it as a profit event. And so, you know, we addressed this already. That's what the current grants say. It used to be you were right. It was seed money. Yeah. But we adjusted it specifically a few years ago for that. Yeah. Those types. It's still in here. It says generally grant funds are intended as seed money with an upper limit of 5,000 per project and a 5-year limit on receiving funds. Projects that consistently generate overnight stays and offer exceptional vendor experiences may be considered for extended funding beyond five years at the discretion.

Yeah. So that that's what that came out of. Mhm. So that's all but but what we might do is limit 3,000 on and so that would be uh what through September the end of September beginning of June. Yeah. These are all for September 14th. But well, I mean, do we have anywhere a definition of what the shoulder season is? Well, I wish I could remember now, but September is one of our busiest months of the year.

The entire month. So, if you wanted to just do a clean break and have September, that would be uh it's our six or six month be supported by September is your sixth business. Really? I can see that would be my March and April are bigger than September. Oh, god. Oh, spring break. Oh, spring breaks. Yeah. So is number six and June is probably seven.

So um so you're saying April, March, April busy enough you don't have to worry about that add-on? Absolutely. Okay. You know I Well, late April. Yeah. where we march at. There's about six weeks in the middle there where the town's full. So, I don't know. They're not how particular you want to get about when you do. So, January, February is still PBL. If we're talking weekend events, the the hotels are full anyway. Yeah. So, then we don't worry about January, February events. November and December are the slowest.

November and December slowest for sure. Yep. We haven't had a problem though with the launching in those months yet that like I don't think it's a problem as far as grants go in in January in spring break and so we just don't get a lot of people do a fast you need to right now. Well, they used to that's when we used to have the shadow fest March spring. No, it was during spring. It's March. It's like, you know, it just doesn't bother me to have events when we don't need them. But it's I don't know how particular you want to get on dictating that.

Well, the reason that I don't think the b the bunching not happen happening has an impact on you because you can still evaluate that get a grant. for you that you tune to have to happen right you know it's the busiest weekend of spring break already you can have that feedback on that at that time but I think it would do a lot of work upfront if you settled in on September just because every year now we have a huge a huge amount of grants coming in including multiple sandfest applications

I mean organizers organizing events have to do their research to find out that hotels are full or the prices are higher because it's spring break or PBL or whatever. They would be less likely to be organizing something that would fill a tremendous amount of hotel rooms in those dates because they do it. We wouldn't have volleyball in Hood to Coast then because those No, that's true. We're going to be full if those events aren't there. True. Yeah. organizers don't really check the one tower. They just heard that. That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

So then the proposal right now is 5,000 for for offseason, 3,000 for shoulder season. What where to put that? October 1st. September September 15th. I think October 1st. I think October 1st. But then you're saying maybe end it in February. Well, I mean the big 5,000. Mhm.

You can as you pour it into December PBL struct, slowest months. Those are the slowest months. They really want people get in most I'm just Yeah,

I don't know. January and February, but still I don't know if people we used to have a really big event in February here that this thing fun at the same time. Yeah. and and PBL. I don't think all of the weekends hotels are sold out because some aren't big. Yeah. The biggest event is I think just before spring break.

Well, we're not seeing summer limits too with our 1300 hotel rooms over probably enough to accommodate some of them each. But so I think I mean I think you could push that up to Yeah. Hey, I don't know if I know. I say avoid spring break. Yeah. You know, have it be March 1st and or March 15th. March 15th. Yeah. And avoid any of the spring break times.

And just have those levels be 5,000. and then anything. An event in June would be good, too. So, I mean, but we're not saying that they can't get money. They It just can't be the 5,000. It's just had to be the additional $2,000. So, the events happening September 6th through through uh September 30th and and the March 1st. No, no, March 31st. March 15th. March 15th. Sorry. March 16th through June uh through May 25th, they can apply for 3,000.

3,000. Okay. And 5,000. Yeah. That was March through what? May May 25th. May Oh, just March through May for the 3000. No, no, that that'll be the second one. So September uh September 6th through September 30th. Okay. and March 16th 16th through May 25th everything else in between everything in between and then May 25th through the March September 6

you like to vote on that u is there a motion yes you want to read back Oh, David. Uh, yeah. If you want me to take more time, you got another half an hour. Do you have Do you have all the numbers written down there, Ken? Uh, September or March 16th through May 25th. Yes. and September 6th through Sep September 30th would be a $3,000

be a $3,000 limit on grants. Yes. And then um October 1st through March 15th would be a $5,000 limit for grants. That didn't sound as if it did. May I have a motion to uh approve that? So move. All in favor? Wait, I'll second. Sorry. Second. Thank you, Linda. All in favor? I. All opposed. Thank you. Okay. And then there's a whole another thing we need to talk about this established.

Yeah. New events versus established events. And again, this came out of um the bridge tournament applying for funding. And I remember the general consensus was this doesn't really work for the intent of this grant. But how do we capture that a guideline and why did it work? Well, they've been coming for many many years and now suddenly to underwrite it with tourism money

Yeah. And also well to be fair though then we also you all looked at all the documents and stuff and realized that it was wasn't it to like maintain a high level of quality or something that that they had funding problems or something. They were trying to keep it at a very high level and so you didn't it just wasn't it didn't fit. It seemed like it fit the parameter. I think that's the beauty of evaluating each of them too. It's, you know, like it's it's a little bit based on the evaluation of the value that the event each event individual is going to bring to Casside. And I think that we all kind of look at it in that that way each of the grants that we look at. Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah. Yeah. They can apply, but you know, we need to see how much they made and all that stuff. So if it's a if it's an event in the offseason we've had a long time but it's just going to go away and we don't want it to go away. We should be able to help. Yeah. And we can't just say nothing that's at the convention center because like jazz festival without the fund it. So if something new came up like that we might do it. But well I mean if we get these things in in January February they're probably going to be at the Capache Center. Yeah. After the beach. Yeah. So, it shouldn't be. Okay. So, you just want to evaluate that on an individual basis.

Well, I think you know, you vetted out uh that the events that have been going for longer can be evaluated on an individual basis. Uh and I think that that seems reasonable. Um, I just think if we're I think that there for a new event, man, there's a lot of expenses, like a lot of a lot of expenses. And without any knowledge of whether you're going to bring profit, have profit uh at all. Um, you know, man, those newer events, we still want them to try. Um, and maybe they need a little bit more. Maybe $10,000 is the right answer, but maybe they need a little bit more than the established events who know what their profit is expected to be because of previous turnout, especially advertising. If we're talking about advertising a brand new event, it requires so much more because you don't have the contacts. Well, that's that's where the visitors bureau could come in in kind could pull up the sign.

I mean, that be I think is great at promoting events. Totally. Yeah. But it's not, but with a new event too, it's, you know, they they have to establish a lot of even just the even just the vibe of the advertising for the event, you know, to have somebody design that, it takes money. Um, and so

yeah, there there is a point there like the advertising that we do for an event is really not going to make or break it because it's really couched in at the destination level of it's always through the lens of sees this is a destination. Here's what's going on. It's never like you must come to this event. This event is what it's about. It's always about something else with a little bit of the vent kind of folded in as a kind of a carrot. So, we do help with radio, email promotion. Our website is a good place, but you certainly wouldn't want to rely on us to get people in your door. We're an additional on top of advertising you should be doing.

And the aim isn't to lead somebody to a website to buy tickets or buy registrations. Not most of advertising, right? No, it's too all the cool stuff going on seaside.

Yeah. I don't know. I I my proposal would be to add another $2,000 to whatever season that was falling under. If it's a brand new event, we can grant up to $5,000 for the shoulder season and up to $7,000 for the off season for brand new events. We have no go that far. Well, it all exists. Well, it depends on what your is depends on the help other people other Right. Up to,

right? That's what I'm saying is that they can they can apply. It doesn't mean we're gonna award $7,000, but they can't apply up. So, if some if some new killer event was proposed and we're like, "Yeah, we want to see this for Seaside. We're going to we think it's going to succeed in bringing people here. It's a brand new event and we want to make sure that we're backing this because we think that this is the first of many years to come of this event. Yeah, we want to back it for sure and they really need the seed money to get started. We have the money that may have a guy that would be a prescription of the committee. Oh, the whole thing. Yeah, for sure. I mean, so you're you're proposing to put in an option for that. Yes. If

an extra $2,000 for a new event. Yep. Rather than saying, "Oh, we're limited 5,000 or three." anybody want to make brute I would move for that but it has to be you know it has to be a bet that the committee would agree that they think we'll make it and bring it

for sure yeah I mean we we aren't we take our we take the $25,000 pretty seriously we evaluate I feel like we evaluate our events pretty extensively to decide that that we feel like it's the right pony to back and um nothing's going to change in that matter. If we're talking $7,000, we're going to spend extra extra time on trying to evaluate whether that's going to be worth our money. So, um you're saying for a a new event or the first time an event comes to us be a new event,

a new event, one time only like they come back next year. We're not correct. Yeah. Yeah. The old Yes. Yeah. I I move. Okay. A motion. Second. All in favor? I All opposed. Yeah. Uh Keith was the first one. Yes. The first that was that was that was an extra 2,000. Yes. Or no events. Yeah. And it, you know, whether they were in shoulder or offseason, we would bump that an extra 2,000 potentially. Right. Right.

9,000. Offseason 7,000. Yeah. Anything else to consider for that grant? Move on to the next one. Move on to the last one. Okay. So the event one uh handse

oh

so I added under the very first bullet under requirements receiving funds I added funded projects must remain in said for at least 5 years from completion based on what we talked about previous requirements for receiving funds on the second page. That's that didn't exist the one we just ran last year or this year I guess. Other than that, it's pretty much the same. The difference is this was a late edition last year, if you recall, because of we had to wait for city council to build on money and all that stuff because this is a brand new grant. This will be the second year we've done this grant. So, question on how you want to run this. Last year, it wasn't a roll in deadline. It was a deadline and then all the projects were considered at one time. So, because this one could potentially be launched at the same time as the event one, how would you like to handle this? Do you want to open it in May? Do you want to with funding then being available in July or do you want to um open it and run it at some other time? Do you want to have it be open on a rolling basis like the other one and have evaluate things as they come in? It's up to you.

I actually think that we should go to rolling. I do too. I just think that you never know when projects will come up and give a better opportunity and it gives the funds available for longer too, right? Open it at the same time as the other grant funds like locks them both at the same time. It does. So the funding would become available in July. Um to start, right? Yeah. Just be avail just just for us to process a check. Oh yeah. Yeah. But

and then it would be and then sorry and then the last the last opportunity to get money for that would be then June. the last opportunity to get money for this then well it'd be it depend on how we set it up. I would advocate that you set it up in the same way as the event one. So the last deadline's in December. So you'd be open from May through December and it would be a rolling deadline until then. So same as this one or the funds are gone. Yeah. And is that because you have to start the budgeting process in December for the next next year's $25,000? Like is there a reason we couldn't keep it open from May to June? You could keep it open

May. You could keep it open, but um for this one specifically, it makes less sense because the money has to fund a project that should be substantially big by June. You know what I mean? By the end of June. The reason that December came up and I thought it worked really well was we because we ex our existing grant program that we had the event one we extended it to December and did the rolling so this one just matched it but I thought I actually think that timeline works out well because it's half the fiscal year

and so sorry remind Again, it has to be the funds you said have to be used by June. Awarded in May or potentially awarded in May the previous year to then have to be used by June the following year. So they have right a year and a month. They could be awarded in May, but they wouldn't get the money till July. That's the first get the money. Then they have a year to spend every month. Yeah. A year to spend to to erect their art. Yeah. Okay. And have it up and down.

And if there's a delay, they try to come back. Is that lied out in there? If for some reason there's a late because of various things out of their control, they have to return the money. The closest thing we have here is that on the occasion that a project is completed but awarded funds are not documented to be used in full the unused funding must be returned to the city just that say project is completed or not it's not completed or yeah we continued something there about not completing a project and getting the money back

come back to the committee ship out and request an extension. I mean, if if I had all my ducks in a row and one of my ducks broke and I can't get it done, I don't want to give all the money back if I'm going to get it done and three weeks later. So, I think there's some precedent we've done that with the some way to apply for an extension. Yeah, I think that would work. The money's already been sent out. Yeah, if it's like the mural with the mechanic and watershed council where we had to give the money out, finance department was very clear they don't at that point don't give the money out just wait until the next cycle because I think if we've already given it out something comes up and they're not able to spend it. Yeah, they should probably ask for

so does something need to be in writing that would allow for that. Yeah. I mean, I think there was wordage in here, too, that it needed to be uh shovel ready, right? Yeah, it's in the It's just in the introduction. That's Let's say it's

that's kind of a that's kind of jargon for the grant. So, it just means that you and what what the intent of that word in this document is that it's something that you can get done pretty quickly. Like, you don't need to buy land and do all this. You know what I mean? like you have it. If you get permissions, you can get to work on something. I guess I would say I propose that we um have it rolling with the same deadlines as the events programming grant for ease of managing the grants but have on a loan basis. Anybody like to motion or amend?

I move. So move. Second. All in favor? All opposed. All right. um committee comment. I just wanted to find out what's what the program is on the committee uh structure thing that we

that feedback on that obligations I think. Yes. Um, and as much as I like doing a bunch of work for it to not go anywhere, uh, I just wanted to see if there was any forward movement on that because initially we started out by saying that we wanted additional folks on the board too. Um, and we hadn't heard that like that didn't really come into factor for that grid that we filled out. Um, so anyway, just want to see if you'd heard anything at all. I think I already know the answer, but I want to keep bringing it up. our feedback was received like there was an email response saying it's

but I mean ultimately um it's a council project and they have to take it up and I realize that when he says it's a Spencer project but council's a boss they're the ones that it's their bigger fish right at the moment

well I know whale there's a lot for elect, you know, there's all sorts of stuff going on, but um I do know that um Christine specifically really wants to move forward on that and get it going. So, there's at least one voice really pushing to move it along. And um they're still talking about it in work sessions, but as far as what next step, like when can we expect to see changes or see them discuss it at a meeting or something? I don't know. I haven't seen it on agenda yet. We But you're right. We've fulfilled our obligation. They're not waiting for anything else for us, right?

I just I mean like are they going to disband these you know like that? It'd be kind of nice to know whatever I mean it'll just be what it is whenever it is. But yeah, it' be nice to know what their plan is ultimately if they're evaluating the value of the committees, whether they're planning on disbanding these committees or whatever. So I'm not seeing a lot of disbandment motions going but the the thought of adding more members not city council it came from us I didn't object to it started there

no it started here and and also like trying to make sure that all kind of sectors of business were represented of the community whatever Yeah, because didn't it originally start with Seth saying you wanted more cit more citizens on this? Yeah, it did. Yes, that's where the thing started, but then it kind of morphed through this process into adding business people and another atlar.

I think more like Seth's bringing it up was more like what do you want your committee to look like? I I feel like that was like the generic question and we were like well it'd be nice to have people from different you know sectors of the community and then he's like no that's not what I was talking about now here's this grid to fill out this is what I'm talking about I misunderstood that Spencer well Spencer ultimately in the end I think gave us that but I think Seth was trying to put across to us like what do we how do we want to see this Seth's original original observations on it were in council meetings specifically about

wanting to grow forward representation for the TAC. Um it was I think it started didn't it started around um people renewing their accounts and and making sure we got new people on this board from time to time. So his his comments weren't in this meeting. It was in city council meetings.

Okay. Um, you've heard about the whale. Have you been getting you guys? What about the whale? So, in case anyone's interested, we're going to be doing a meat crops on Friday. Um, so I don't know. There'll probably be a lot of people. I'm surprised you haven't had people calling the visitors bureau. Um I sent I took a picture yesterday morning went down got a picture of it and uh it's just gray and there's you can see that there's the head in the background of proven seaside. We got to do that. Tell the whale head. I thought you meant the whale down.

Uh and it's not like the greatest shot, but you can tell there's a big whale and Okay, whatever. So Sandy posted it on the Clatip community bulletin uh page and it's already up to like 1300 likes and 80 something shares and like hundreds of comments. You know when we had we had your aquarium video is the one that I've heard more people have seen when we had the one right by Peter Peter Aridell a few years ago. There are thousands. Yeah. I've never seen. There was a guy today, he's local. Uh he said his son's a marine biologist or something like this and said, "Hey, there's a whale." So he was wondering where it was so he could go look. So I did direct him out. So you're you're probably going to be get So yeah, just

looked in closer the weekend. Get more of that, especially if the news picks it up like you did. It's probably going to go big time on the news tonight. Yeah. So the other one washed up in where's the other one? There's been more news. three up in Washington. Do you think that could be why it's not getting picked up so quickly because there's so many other going on? An old story. We heard it happened. Um, yeah, Kent got pictures and I made sure he got some that he had and I expected to get news inquiries all day yesterday. I didn't get one. Now, our media monitoring thing did pick up that the story is being told, but they're not inquiring about it.

Just kind of running pictures. Okay. Well, just wanted you to be prepared. Your video's good. What time are you doing it after video? Um, the crew is supposed to meet at the aquarium like at 7:30. So, they'll be out there 8 8:30 starting all the measurements. Actually, they're going to try to do measurements the night before. So, they can have more time to cut, but by the weekend, it's not going to look as nice as it does. Not that it looks nice now. Are we gonna get Greg down there while you're It's internal pictures. I mean, we for months we had people asking about the finan Yeah. and wanted to go see it and calling to see it. That's still a blob, right? Is it still there?

You know, I didn't notice it last time. Yeah. It's finally gone. Yeah. Stunk all summer. Oh, did you drive down there and everything was parked except for half a mile. He could not recognize it. Going to be excited. So, it was it was like a decade ago that you guys like buried one in the dune area, right? Yeah. And and I've already talked to the city and the state parks. Um it's more of an issue to bury things now than it used to be because regulations are getting more detailed from everybody.

Sure. But I think if Seaside wants to bury this one, state parks will help pro make that process because of where it is. Like I said, it's it's a toss up with me whether it's an attraction to get people to town or, you know, this mess or a detraction to keep people from town. No, no, I don't think it's a traction. I mean, if it was right in front of the turnaround, I'd say, "Yeah, let's move that thing at least." But it's far enough off that it's probably not going to be that bad. When are you gonna uh plant the TNT charges?

Um, Sunday or Sunday. Is it going to still be there on Fourth of July? Probably not. It It doesn't smell any worse than the Voella did. Yeah. But they go away faster than whale. They dry up fly, you know, blow away. Yeah. The whale the whale's not going to blow away. Yeah. Unless you'll blow away. It just scatters, but anything public.

I just had a question. I know you guys talked about um radio and news coming out for events. Whenever I've talked to anybody from a radio station, they say because our events on a weekend, they can't have anybody come out and do anything on it. Is there any help we can get on that or any advice? Um, I mean, our local station 949 the bridge is usually pretty good about being a part of things. Contact them. Um, Ola is the current person to speak to. I have her card if you want to pop back over after that be. But you want to try to promote as you get people. Do you want to try to get more participants?

We're seem to be growing pretty good on that aspect. Just getting, you know, the word out more. Um I've been all over town this morning handing out flyers. We have members throughout all of Oregon and Washington that we made um magnets for people to put on their cards. They're the QR codes. Okay. that are kind of like a smaller version of the posters I'm handing out that you know you you're standing at stoplight you can scan the code really quick and it'll take you right to the event. So we have a lot of people doing that. So are I mean are you trying are you is your is your goal to make the event event larger? Oh always because every time I see someone with a doc I tell them well there's one day we might want to try to break the world record.

Yeah. Okay. Every time I go in someplace, every like every time I see a doc, I tell everybody and I'm like, "Well, here's a supplier. Here's a QR code." So, didn't you guys have a thing on one of the local TV shows last year? Last year, we did a radio station or not radio station, the TV station in Portland. In Portland. Yes. Yes. Yeah. But like I said, you know, getting someone to actually come out and film the event and, you know, do like little snippets. Yes. The the problem is the weekend during the weekact they they do reward you know like the big local stations you know they're like well we it's kind of a far place to go for a weekend and I'm like I get it a lot of them like the our local stations I think it's I can't remember what what's local in Eugene Easy

yeah they always let me send them in snippets and then they do a story you know but it's always after after the event so that's that's a problem we ran into with the car shows here too. Yeah, they don't come out on the weekends. Yep. So, I didn't know if there was It sounds like, you know, maybe I'll can follow up with the connection he's going to give me with. I mean, if you have any content from years prior, you might be able to send them content for them to then promote. I mean that that may be an angle where if you already have the content because what you're hoping for is for them to come and get content, but if they can't do that, right, and they won't do it, you know, ahead of time because they you're not going to be there, right?

So if you have content from last year, they might be able to promote the event. a couple like our second year in Seaside I did that where we the local station in Eugene promoted it prior to and said and gave us you know on this date you know here's last year's stuff and so we kind of did that but I was you know like to actually get someone out here to really see what we're doing and you know so you don't mind if it gets three times as big as it is you have enough staff to handle that we always get people asking for if they want to volunteer here. So, perfect. And we always do a volunteer call in the in our event page. You know, anybody who wants to volunteer, you know, let us know. So,

we're glad you're doing events here. Do you have problem finding lodging that will take the dogs? Um, no. So far, the only hotel I've talked to that said that they don't want to deal with the dogs is the ones right across from your aquarium. The blue building. I can't remember the name of the ocean front. Yes, I was better. I work with Jen's great there. Yeah, but yeah, but they they just take him in a suitcase because they're so small. Yeah. When I called, they do have that are like the same. Yeah. When I when I called and talked to them, they're like, "We're oceanfront property. We don't allow dogs." I'm like, "Okay, that's fine." So

there's a lot of other ocean properties that do it doesn't happen here on the ocean but yeah so currently I work with e tide high tide seashore in and of course you know hillrest and then um river tide was working with us last year but we never got anybody that wanted to come in town that little bit. They all thought that was too far from the beach. So they like to be close so they can they like to be closer. Best Western

Best Western didn't want to work with us at all, but I might try again and see, you know, because I was like, you know, is there any because I asked you, I was like, is there a discount I can get to push people your direction? And they're like, we don't do that. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, then let me think about you. I still push people that way when they say, "Hey, I in October, November, they might everybody tell everybody knocking on my door. There would be an extra Well, I guess not. I was going to say there's an extra $2,000 for you an established event. I don't even know

that we go from three to five because I have a hospitality property, too. And you know, we make 90% of our money three months out of the year and that includes September, right? You know, even July is a little scant, but you know, September is where we make our money. So, anything during that time, it's really difficult to discount because you're saying goodbye to your profits that you have to have to feed yourself the rest of the year, right? Yeah. A lot of the hotels are like just waving like the pet fees, which is even huge if you have multiple pets,

you know. And then the ones that we work with are waving like, you know, most time they only allow two. they're waving the number we can have or like Mai this year um is doing something different with us where the first two pets you have they're waving the pet fee and then for every pet after that then there's a pet fee and so that was like a new thing that we made out with Epide this year. Well, it's nice there were Yeah, most of the hotels have been really nice and great working with us and people loved it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. All the hotels that I went into because I went into a few of the hotels and did flyers this morning with them. The only one I haven't went to so far yet is High Tide that I need to go down and talk to the other one. I always mispronounce her name. I want to say it's Shel. See, I can't I have so many different people's names in my head. So, I got to go talk to her and give her a flyer because I haven't walked down that far towards the beach. But I went up and down Broadway this morning and handed out flyers to everybody. And it's a perfect event name. It's just perfect. I know when we first did it, everyone's like, "You're misspelling dots." I'm like, "No, it's a play on words. We know it's it's spelled the way you want it spelled."

So, do you do you have there are ways for you to fund raise at the event, too? Yeah, we do raffle baskets and we have a silent auction. You don't do like a hot dog rope. Well, we tried that, but we got in trouble. Yeah, we we tried to do the But it wasn't a fundraising. Yeah, we do the we used to do the weenie roast on Friday nights on our bonfire and apparently we got in trouble. In trouble from who? The health department. The health department. The sand man call. It's funny how they hear about free hot dogs and they just show up. So they shut down weird.

Me as the next coordinator, I can't purchase hot dogs and let everybody here enjoy them. But you can purchase hot dogs and let everybody enjoy them. So, um, which I thought was really odd. I I had looked into the the Wii mobile, right? And they they do events and that's one of the things if you use their hot dogs. I don't know if they that's something we might look at because that would be I mean I I just love that idea. You brought this up, but but you directed me to apply for it and I did and they never wrote back. But we did ask them to come to the last event and I never you know

well I mean if if if the event organizers approach might work. It's just a matter of where we would park it right because I'm pretty sure that doesn't just go cruising down the beach the bottom of the ramp the big you know pad at the bottom of the ramp. I mean it would it would really improve attendance. So, so there's the Russian mobile has been here three times. Has it really? They It'll It'll happen if you can find out a way to make it work. But I think it has to be tied in with hot dogs. Yeah.

Yeah. We make Halloweeners wear hot dog costumes. Half of them probably do. They're already in costume. You just squeeze it once you're over the top. It's fine. We have a couple that do dress up as hot dogs every year in the costume contest. Okay. If there is nothing else, then this meeting will be adjourned. Next meeting is May 20th, uh, 2