Tourism Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

We have Seth on the studio today.

Hi, Seth.

How you doing?

Okay, well, welcome to everybody here for this July 15th meeting of the Person Advisory Committee. We're going to start with introductions. To my left, Christy. Chris Swenson.

So would that be Seth? Seth Morrissey. Keith Chandler. Dan Eamon.

Linda Weiss. Nancy Edwardson. All right, let's review the minutes and everybody got an opportunity to review them. And if you haven't, please, and then make a motion.

I second.

I second. Motion is by Linda, second by Ruth. All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

All opposed? Okay, thank you very much. Financial review.

Okay, there are some financials to review this month. I've given the defense a little schedule. However, they're all pretty old, so it feels a little new at this point, but I'm going to run through them real quick. Ken Heman, these are our STDA reimbursements for April. Little Bird is, this is our PR firm, but it also includes connected TV and YouTube digital video campaign that we run. That's Aspen Bus VR. Media America, this is our Travel Oregon annual guide. Travel organs are our most expensive placement of the year, but it is the most impactful. We get hundreds and hundreds of guide orders for travel organs. Organ Media is AAA via magazine. This was the May-June issue. So that was our actually last paid issue of the fiscal year. You may have noticed that we're in the current issues. That was a freebie. So we have a really great relationship with this. They even gave us our... placement. We don't really have a mandate to advertise in Sumner, but they let us give us this anyway, which was really nice. So they're free. Yes, that's about a $5,500 placement. So we'll take it. We also have an article in the Willamette Week summer guide. And again, we don't advertise in it because we don't typically have to have summer stuff, but they did an article about seaside here, a couple of pages. And I would say, I would call this like sort of a semi related to our advertising because we do advertise with them and it's kind of just to keep us even though they know we can't advertise in the summer. And even though it starts out with Embrace Kitschy Family Fun at the Coast, it actually is a really, really good article.

With that picture, how can it be bad?

Yeah, exactly. And they used some of our, like, regular photos, just beautiful photos, stuff like that. So these are out right now all across the metro. We have copies at the Visitor Center.

So does that roll out with the Willamette Weekly newspaper part?

They put them in. They put them in select areas, but it's just like the Willamette Week. They just stack them. Yeah, and people just take them and stuff like that. And I think they have a subscriber base, but it's nothing like the Speed Magnet had during the day, but it wasn't just travel. And then we do have one other freebie that I want to mention. I don't know why we're getting these right now, but Okva sent out a monthly email, and the monthly email for July includes a seaside text ad that they gave us for free because So yeah, we have some freebies here. Excellent financials here. Agency, that is our email platform and leads process for the month. Go is actually two months of paid search. It's April and May. Our finance system is combined. iHeart was Seattle Radio on KJ for April. KPTV was the April Weather Camp. Gareth J. W was still April weather cam a lot of other camps now media America is our Q2 webinars and oxy was one site development related to all the. Gareth J. Problems we were having with overseas attacks and stuff like that that was thankfully in the past and review how. These hardware supplies that Public Works bought to fix the planter under the Walton sign disassembled itself over time. So it's sticking back together again.

Is that planter number five?

Oh, I don't know. Disassemble. Yeah.

No disassembling. Number five. No disassembling. Just checking.

The Condo Association is a Worldmark parking agreement. US Bank is our copier. And Little Bird was our PR for, just the PR for, probably US Bank. If you look over at the expenditure side of things, everything's looking really good. This is the last month of the fiscal year. We're at 97% for personnel, 96% for materials and services. It's closer than it looks. I mean, we try to use the resources that are allotted to us and assign them to things that try to obtain the objectives that we set out for ourselves. But there's a lot of moving parts here, and we don't have full control over everything. So we have what's historically been called the TAC-5, which is advertising, printing, promo, and postage, and travel and meeting. And that's what we have full control over. But there's other stuff in here that can pop up like legal cough like that. And so it's kind of an art and a science to try to get the budget quite right. And so this year I highlighted two things here, visitor service maintenance. The reason I did that is because if you watch the city council meetings closely, you already know this, but basically when finance put together a budget for this year, they didn't account for our part-timers in the personnel. And so they had to ask in this lap, just at the end of the fiscal year to add $20,000, but personnel services line, and they took it from our building maintenance line. which was on span. And so I think it's going to be fine. But it's just, it's going to be like, even without that, I was already trying to spend our resources. So it's good. It's close, but it's, I think it's going to be okay. I'm working with Zach to monitor it. So if something does come up, we'll figure it out. But I think it's going to be perfect. Windows repairs was this year, was it? That was last summer. Yeah. Yeah. And so thankfully we had money in our building. budget from that and it carried over. Spend that on advertising too.

So this isn't the final. There's one more.

It's still open and it will remain open. There won't be an official report, but I'll keep updating this.

So is there one more in June that's not on here?

No. No, the pay is fully accounted for. Okay. What we'll continue to accumulate is the materials and services because there's a delay between when we spend it and when we get the invoice and when it goes to the books. So we'll leave it open for a few more months, probably.

The personnel, though, that's all done through June office.

Yep.

Okay. Even though this says 6-20, you don't have a period of time.

As of 6-20 means as of the end of the month. Okay. Yeah. Any questions about this or other financial thing?

Yeah, I just want to share that Beach Towel Tuesday is a hit and going strong. First few weeks was a little slow, but somehow word got out and we have people waiting outside. 20 minutes, half hour before we open. And this Tuesday, six different people were all there at once. So they went in order, and we actually gave a sixth towel out. We were supposed to do five, but because all of them were there at once, we went ahead and gave a sixth.

So that's been great. We're the homeless guys that used to leave. Yeah, exactly.

They're locals. Locals can't get in or something. I like to think it's the same. Like you did. But they're following the rules.

So it's really cool. Like they're knowing don't show up until we're open and then got to be the first ones there. And so that's been really cool to see. And then the response to everybody when it's like, oh, darn it, but you can go buy in the seaside. So they're excited. And I'm sure Don is selling through those pretty good. I just met a couple who moved away in 2010. They just moved back. They're living up in Warrington, but they love seeing all these new businesses around. They were really excited to find out that there's a new school up the hill. I said, go check out the view. So that was just fun because I was just talking to them before I left. For the 4th of July, just before the 4th of July, I went around to every hotel except Ruth's because I know you're on it. But I just wanted to see if properties were getting the word on the 4th of July toolkit. This was the messaging on the new fines and what was legal and not legal, which everything was. And it was great. The response I got from the hotels was they already, in many places, had the signage out on the front desk. Many of them were going to place them in every room. So that was just really cool. We don't know that people are necessarily interacting with the Thursday turnaround, but that was firsthand. Yes, they are. And so that was really cool to see. The one other thing, I passed some people the other day walking down the street. Because the spotlight dance is in town and somebody goes, oh my gosh, it's a gaggle of Karen's. And that was referenced to a whole bunch of dance moms that were walking down the street in their sparkly jean butts and all that. So anyways, somebody just goes, I just overheard that. It's a gaggle of Karen's. And Sundays are going well. Sundays are going really well. We've got Nate Burke, who used to work for us, is doing Sunday's. And I'm glad we're open because he's definitely getting people to come in, not a whole lot, but enough. And they're always from elsewhere. So definitely glad that they got to experience the visitor center. That's all I have. Thank you.

Okay. I'm looking for steps.

Looking for steps. Okay.

Visitor center foot traffic in June was uneven with lab 2025 and down 5% year to date. Phone volume was down a bit, but up year to date. Leads, our direct mail leads were up quite a bit for June and are up 33% year to date. The total distribution, so this is around town included, is down for June. And it's about even year-to-date. However, you might remember from a couple months ago, maybe last month, I can't remember, explaining that our mix is much better this year. And a lot of these are going to potential visitors that aren't just moving around town. And I expect that as the year progresses, this year will be stinking for the spell because it's continuing. How many leads do we have this week? We have an irony. They have their mail leads. So people are requesting that. So that's unusual for this lady. Yeah. And legit. Legit request.

Yeah.

Insultated.

Yeah.

You should get a bell we can ring every time.

Just play their anthem. Active web users were up a lot in June and are up 17, almost 18% year to date.

So looking to have a banner here for the website, which is great, building off the last year, which was the first year with the new site. Email slams were down for June 8%, but are up quite a bit year to date. Our visitor guide requests for June, this is through the website, were down 13% and down 22% year to date. But that's because we have a separate, we've taken some of it off the website and put it directly on the meta. site. So that's why you're seeing the change there. Use practice user are down for the month, up for the year. We have gotten bed tax since the last time we met. So Q3 for hotels has gone up. It's now sitting at 10% improvement over Q3 of 2025. No change to the VRD side of things. You should get bed tax. of the last fiscal year during about two or three weeks, at least initial values. Oh, 10%. That's amazing. Yeah, it is. It is.

That's the first quarter of this year.

Yeah, so that's January through March. There was a couple of properties that were frequently in there. That's why it took a while to go. Okay, so next up is a director's report. So Datify we use for mobile tracking as far as figuring out visitor volume. And we really use it a lot for local volume too, for big events and stuff like that. So that public works on everybody can understand how people are moving through town and where they're coming from. But we also use it for advertising. I think we have now two years. And so this is the end of the campaign that we ran for this advertising for September 2025 through May. And what's really remarkable and interesting and what I think we get a lot of value out of this advertising campaign is we can specifically tie results directly to it rather than indirectly. So I always think these stats are especially interesting to see. So for this year, the campaign generated an estimated 3,036 trips to seaside from visitors traveling 150 miles or more. The reason that list is, is because that's where we were targeting. So this is just people who saw that after being exposed to the campaign advertising. Those visitors spent an estimated 1.04 million locally during their stays, at least estimated through the data price processes. including approximately $747,000 in lobbying revenue alone, resulting in a $20.88 turnaround on every dollar we invested in the ad campaign. Overall, the campaign was 4.6 million ad impressions, 9,856 ad click-throughs. And because Datify sees people who are served our ads and who aren't served our ads, we can see that audience who were served our campaign ads were 3.23 times more likely to visit Seaside during the off season that we were tracking. And those who clicked an ad were four and a half times more likely to visit. So ad attributed visitor behavior also remained really encouraging. More than 60% stayed in local lodging for two or more nights and campaign audiences were more likely to visit lodging properties and local attractions than the controller who didn't see our ads. Michael Bresalier, Yeah, no Pascal Richland kind of which means to be a real top market for us whenever we do these ads they generated the highest number of added for beautiful grips for this campaign all by Seattle and Spokane produce the strongest logic relation about it just kind of trivia. Michael Bresalier, We also finished a full year of advertising with our media in Seattle and portland for radio. Combined campaigns in Seattle and Portland markets delivered nearly 13 million broadcast impressions to radio spots, seasonal promotions, some digital contests, and email marketing. The strategy kind of varied by the market. So for Seattle, we really ran kind of evergreen, always-on destination marketing spots to try to position CSUN as a location destination. In Portland, our spots were more relegated to key fall and spring planning windows and really focused on event support. That was our main thing. When there wasn't an event support, we moved the destination. But they kind of had different focuses. We also did four listener contests over that time. And the Blowing Cat campaigns generated more than 2,200 contest entries, which all got a visitor guide and went into our email marketing platform. And the Seattle campaigns generated 1,600, providing additional audience engagement, valuable first-party marketing opportunities.

And now you just remember this tomorrow morning.

Is it possible to...

Um, or maybe have a close partner with us. No, no, no. Show me down there to advertise to posters for a return. Can we, I mean, what do we have access to?

Like if datify could collect the data of the people who are here,

And then push out ads to them when they return to their original locations. If they lead it by a month, if they send something out a month after Hooded Cubs that just says, you know, come back to Seaside, make it a family trip this time or something to that effect. I mean, is that something that they have the ability to target like that? I think Datify is a...

is going to be trickier than it seems at first. And the laws that have gone into effect in Oregon as of January make it harder. They can only target now. It used to be we could target people down to a building. And now, thankfully, because we have grandfathered like five years of data, they're able to still provide some of that insight. But now I think the law is like, or something like that, so you can't target into. And so our frame has gotten a little fuzzier, just by definition. And then the other thing is, because there's all these privacy laws and stuff like that, I'm not sure that you could target just people that were a decos But you could target people who visited during a certain window, of which a large percentage would be. Right, yeah. So there might be something to be said for that, and I think family has to. I have a call from you in the morning.

Just kind of thinking because, you know, just how I think about Hooded Coast, which is we don't have to pay for those 40,000 people to experience seaside. And if we show them in time, they're more likely to come back to their families when they travel with their families rather than their running compadres. So trying to maximize our benefit of Hoodie Coast if we can.

We don't get any email lists or anything that we can use, do we? That we can. I think we can request that. If we could get any sort of contact information that we could kind of feed into our machine, that would really be nice. Because our whole thing is set up to try to get people to come back.

I think we'll probably get one twelfth of the, because we'll get the one person on the team that signed up.

That's registered. That's registered. Just have to make sure we have permissions. Yeah. I know.

And I forget what did the coast said last year, but I think they were willing to work with us on getting something, getting messaging sent out.

So I'll ask Dave by about tomorrow. France for three grand applications, winter waters for February, 2027 salt makers. the fall and then um kind of an oddball that um is a film that wants to be done on the oregon coast and so let's start with uh winter waters brown sea

Oh, nice.

No, I think you were out. I didn't feel like he wanted to ask.

I can message Casey. Yeah, something like that.

I mean, not in a hurry. Well, the ribbon. Okay, cool.

Oh, I read. Right after SDVN. It would be the three-minute presenter.

Oh, nice. That's awesome.

It turned out awesome, Sadie. Yeah.

It looks great, doesn't it?

Yes, it's amazing.

Okay, so you have 12,500 left for events as far as to give out for the rest of the cycle. Wicked Waters is asking for 5,000. Wicked Waters means ship clean tides? Yeah, that's

Oh, okay. This is your program, so I'm going to let you guys take it.

Good job.

On this one, I say no, because it's not all seaside. And I think that the request is pretty high for a one time event at Bellevue and it's all over the state. It's not a seaside focus.

That's a good point.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Just we've given to the. HAB-Masyn Moyer- They did an event twice. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Right last year, they did one at times. HAB-Masyn Moyer- In Europe, I remember when you discussed as a committee your feedback was that. HAB-Masyn Moyer- There were some visitors, but there weren't a lot of visitors, but it's a really good program and there are a lot of locals. Yeah, there's a lot of locals.

The problem this year is we have more requests than I think we've had before.

And it's still common. Yeah. I mean, it is a great event, and it just has a lot of potential to grow. And I do think the floor on it is pretty high as far as, because they have a whole sponsorship, DMO sponsorship, but they go to other destinations. I think 1,000 is kind of the floor for getting events. And so for our system, it's not a great match in that sense. I mean, you could consider a portion. You could consider a portion. And I think Alana has said that seaside is really important to her. around here, I think. And so she wants to make Seesaw happen. But I mean, just candidly, the way the scholarship or the sponsorship is set up, I'm not sure long-term anything less than $5,000 will result in having events in New York City. It's just one of those things where that is This is our system and seaside, because we have so many events other towns don't have all these events that they're trying to market, but this is great because it's in February, which was great I just think. it's too bad it's not a larger event yeah.

The cat how many people can tell the week. Yeah, it's a one-night event.

There's a one-night event. There's events, but there's also this ongoing menu development where you can order something special, you know, and they do stuff. They do stuff, but it's not from our grant standpoint.

Yeah, I was thinking about trying to attract

Visitors here, so it doesn't equate heads and that's right, especially in office, so I know what you're thinking about right program program.

Okay, so a proposal to not fund this year is in place. And second that. All in favor.

All opposed. May I. I think we could fund some, but that's fine. We don't have to meet now. I love the event and I love the time of the event, but 5,000 is a lot.

So this brings up an issue. So do you think I should consider a sponsorship from our advertising dollars or does that open up a bucket of worms because suddenly what's the stop? That's never been the process before, really, because...

But this is a unique, because it is advertising, not just into the other. So I would see there would be more of an advertising and less of a brand. I don't think the reach is big enough, personally.

Yeah, I don't think the reach is big enough. Not yet. And I know it's hard to grow. to put that kind of money towards it whether it be a grant or advertising funds i mean i think that you could help them by connecting them with the radio service with the tv station yeah yeah and maybe see if they you know like we can assist in that you know yeah we would do that with anything even if they didn't get a grant any of that i think it's i think it's just kind of baffling to them because it's like in other towns the dmo

some of the money, but that's because the other towns just don't have the systems we have in place by necessity, really. It is. There are always ways to think outside the box.

The mind advertising money did not just do one thing, like the food trail and things like that. And look how successful it's been. I mean, I think that we're almost hurting ourselves by not looking at it that way. I mean, the food trail, the beer trails, they've been successful and they haven't just been. Seaside, it's taken them a while to grow, but what's helped them grow is the combination of other places and not just Seaside.

But if we had more buy-in than one business or three businesses, I mean, that might be one thing. You know, the beer trail was more extensive than that. You know, there's more local buy-in for the beer trails than there was for this.

The trails are also annual.

Right.

But I mean, I understand it's annual, but this could grow to be something like that. And then this could be just like Sadie said, you've got to start somewhere.

How much did we give them?

We've gotten 5,000, I think, once. And then maybe 3,000 the first year. The first year.

But again, we've had that discussion too, like we've been giving them our maximum amount and they're still not growing. We're not seeing anything for our investment.

I think they are growing. They're not growing in seaside. That's it. It's not a big impact yet in seaside. I just hate to see us miss.

Well, it's less this year, right? It's only one location, so two. Wasn't it two or three the year before that? It was. But the year before that, I don't know. I think it was the same. Yeah.

Do you guys see that? I think it only mentioned Bellevue that I saw, but maybe on this or other location.

And their sponsorship document, at least for DMOs of 5,000 is the floor for one bank. Okay.

And also says with funding from Seaside Chamber?

Probably not.

Last time I saw one, she said, how are you doing with the Chamber? And I said, I think I'm pretty good. I don't work there.

I don't know. They're never open.

So it still sounds OK. It says, OK, they're going to go post casual funding at Bellbuey around seafood source and processing, followed by a meal at Osprey. But again, those are really small venues. We can't get that many people. $5,000 is a lot.

I don't know.

I'll reach out to them and talk about ways we can still help support them. But the thing is, I don't know if they'll be on the MNC side, in which case I don't know.

Because this contingent, them doing the Ed Bell Bowie and Prosperous contingent on our $5,000?

I would assume so. But Alona did say that if they get less than $5,000, she really wants to make it work. So she'll see what she can do. They have a whole structure set up. It's kind of like Ride the Dirtway, where that just didn't fully fit with what we . However, it's still a great event, and we want to support it.

That was the mountain biking?

Yeah. And we lost that, by the way. That went away. It moved to . But Quidgee Creek still exists as assets. Okay, so let me get your salt makers.

You got something? You have your string loaves? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I haven't seen that in a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am. Me too.

Okay.

Let's see if this is, how many days are they doing this? Is this two weekends?

It's only one.

That's beautiful.

September 12th and 13th. Yeah. Just the one weekend.

Yeah. So that's on Friday and then Saturday, Sunday.

And is that Doxon weekend?

It's Doxon weekend.

Yeah, Wilson Ways later. They moved Wilson Ways.

Wilson Ways to the beach. Is with the beach.

Oh.

So last year the TAC gave them $2,500 and then Marcy gave them wood. And then the year before that they got $3,000 and that was like that for a couple of years. $3,100 on 2021.

This is one of those events that doesn't make money. They don't charge anything for it.

Public Works is tracking the commercial report.

It's from Seaside Museum.

Thoughts on correcting them with anything? I mean, our tradition. Yes. Is this one of these events that we need to plan on annually to support, just like fireworks support we're supporting in the past? And is this something that we want to support with a plan annually? I mean, they'll still fill out the grant, but if we know that they're going to be asking for $3,000 every year, are we going to just plan on $3,000 to be granted because we want to see this continue as it has in the past?

It's a really cool part of our history, ran by our own museum, mostly volunteers.

Yeah, I don't know. So here's the thing. I think it equates heads and beds, even not for just this event, because people who come back, who go to it, who happen to fall upon it, then, oh, I'm going to bring my family back. And this is, because I know this is where it was and this is where it happened. Because I can definitely equate the bits for that. I've had many people who have come forward and said, well, we were here and we didn't even know Saltmakers was going on. And now we've come back again, but this time we brought our kids. And we brought our, or we bought our, you know, someone else for that. Because it is part of seaside history. I mean, we have, you know, at the turnaround, we got the... So we brag about it.

Yeah.

So I hate to see this go away for that. Do I feel it should be listed differently? Yes, I feel like it should have always been. like fireworks was, where it's a signature event. And it shouldn't have to be both of them. I agree with that, yeah. Because, I mean, you're going to brag about it and have a statue in the middle of the city, and they go, yeah, we don't need to enforce that.

And it's got a little special park, too. You know, where they... The salt parks. And we've invested in the salt parks, so it's kind of like... We want to invest in the teaching and education of what that was.

So are you arguing that if you move to contributions and donations out of the grant program. So it's just an annual thing. The museum already gets money in that process, so they would maybe add it to theirs.

Yeah.

But it would be a council without the grant.

Right.

But I do feel like it would be...

But for this year, we should fund it.

And maybe the... So my concern with doing that, then sometimes once you do that, then it gets absorbed into other things, and then Five years goes by, new people are in, and they're like, oh, let's apply for this grant. And you got new people here that don't remember you, might be gone, you know what I mean? So they're double dipping. So what we intended was for that to go to that allocation, and then all of a sudden it's absorbed by something else, and then they're back to asking for grants. So I don't know.

We're probably only there for the next 10 years at least, right? So we'll remember.

I have a shackle on my foot. I'm coming into my walk right now.

I'll see if there's a bus that could come. Absolutely, I'll run away right into the roof. Just like that.

I could be here in 10 years, but I already have CRS somewhere. I'm not going to remember anything. We'll vote on it every month. That won't help.

It's kind of hard to see only $300 of promotion and advertising because could this potentially be a self-sustaining event with more donations or sponsorships? Potentially. We're not looking at at any, I mean, it says other donations, 250 bucks. So, I mean, that's, seems like maybe sponsorships could be procured also with additional advertising, you know, whether they can make.

If they go out for sponsorships, they could probably do well, I would think.

I would anticipate.

I don't know if they have the staff to do that, but then they should.

I mean. But I mean, staff of two, we got enough sponsorships to fund the remainder of fireworks. So, I mean, I think that.

And I'm not saying that they couldn't do that or that they aren't trying to do that. I mean, we've seen a lot of changes at the museum with the teas and bringing back the 4th of July. So again, we can see the case that they bought. Seth, did you have something?

Oh, I just said the museum's posting on social media now.

Yeah.

Exciting.

But I still feel like this is a worthy cause for this year. And maybe that's something we do propose for the future, that they look at other funding.

Are you thinking the $3,000 or the $2,500 you've done in the past to cover the living historians? I would say the $2,500. Because in the budget breakdown, they do show what the mine's going to be. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I would say the $2,500.

Historians aren't part of the process. It is.

It is.

Sort of bringing actually a losing heart back. Yeah. Bill and Ted style.

Do you have some leather goat pants in your closet?

Go try to find a phone booth.

Yeah, they're all gone.

Okay, so the proposal is $2,500 for this year. That was the proposed. Any seconds or further discussions or changes?

I can't suppose that. I know. I would propose that we get $2,500. Okay. I second.

Motion is seconded. And all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Okay.

All right. The last one. Quite as bad as the last one.

Yeah.

We could have used your preparedness lesson.

Oh, there was a lot. I did look through them all. I got a little bummed about that one.

Oh, this is the movie?

I see it up there.

Fake film. Yeah. Far, far right.

I'll move it over for you. This is in a different program. So these guys did apply for the event side, but I told them it's not applicable to that. And so they applied this side. And I think that it... Oh, that's right. I think you could make an argument about it here. It kind of just depends what the committee wants this grant to be and if this fits it and all that sort of stuff. Totally up to you. But I did advise them that it's not a perfect fit for what we're trying to be. But I thought I'd be fair and let it hit the table at least.

What happened with the disc? I just kind of saw.

Oh, sorry, you weren't here.

I wasn't here. I saw. No, but it was incomplete.

It was incomplete, and he did find funding elsewhere for it. So he didn't need to get it from us. Okay. Okay.

And the other mural is not the one on the government building.

The other mural was someone from California who applied, like, literally the first day it went live and then never followed up with any of the other documents. It hasn't responded to my outreach.

It's probably AI.

It could have been. And then SPD hasn't reapplied for it? SPD hasn't reapplied for anything right now. They have a pending, incomplete... event grant for Halloween Happenings. It's not complete yet. And then there's also kind of the hanging question of what to do about the fun. But it's not up for discussion.

So we have half our grant. Well, now you have $9,600 for the arts grant. Oh, I meant the other one. We have the 3,000 or 2,500.

We have 10,000.

Yeah. We have 10,000 left. And we still have some out in Hank State, you know, because PBL is not in there yet.

I expect the jump rope piece to finish up in time. I expect PBL, but I've reached out to both these people. You've got to get it in. Halloween Happens will definitely come in and something will happen.

I kind of almost feel the same with how it happens that I do salt bakers. Like it's just one of those key events for us that it would be good and continue to fun.

Everybody likes candies.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, people call for it. Yeah. People call and go, I need to book on the weekend of that event. And come back when you move it.

Rain, storm, fall. Maybe two weekends in a row. We'll come back to that. Yeah, we do.

Okay. Well, back to the film. Yeah, I know we're in deep. so you feel it away i did a little more in deep searching of that that is good because the big thing is that we've done a film before that's what i didn't want to say but we've got a film before

Did this committee help fund that one? It turned out to be a horror film.

It should have been a horror film. It should have been a horror film. It had a future Oscar winner in it. Yeah, okay. That was the only thing. That was cool. It was a musical. West Side Story. Oh, okay. Yeah, I wish you'd remember. Yeah, it was for the Puerto Rican.

Your job should see. Oh, gosh. I'm just going to leave it there.

It was made in Seaside.

Yeah, it was. I never saw it. I never saw it.

That was part of it. That was my concern on this.

Yeah, a lot of it wasn't filmed in Seaside.

The wrong thing was Can Beach. They used the church for a wedding performance.

And they used the arcade.

Yeah.

That's the killer was from I wasn't involved.

Yeah, I remember it well.

I just remember the looks on the faces of everyone that saw the movie for the first time on the podcast.

Yeah, she was Maria. She was... Oh my gosh.

Yeah, and she was in Howl's Knee. Anyway.

So is Seaside going to become a cult classic?

A movie that is... I don't know. Or Seaside. I got to watch this movie. Yeah, that's what you said. That was the... Yeah, I shouldn't.

Just because that was like this doesn't mean this is going to be like that.

True, but your commercials had more of a C-side in it than that movie did.

Well, I mean, Goonies did not very much of that story yet. A lot of it. Yeah.

It turned out to be a classic. Thank you. He was saying that Goody sucked.

But he's an older guy, and he lives here, grew up here, and he just has hated it forever. I said something to him that I apologize for the next day. We're friends. The next day, I'm like, dude, you knew it was a little buzz, so please understand what I said. He's like, I get it. Maybe just watch it again. Yeah, I bet so.

Give it another chance.

So there's no limits on the ART side. Well, there's no limit on what you can ask for. We asked for 5,000 when it was in the events one.

They asked for something in the ART side. Well, what I think it is, is I think it's just fundraising for a film project. That's what it reads like. I think that's pretty clear when you look at it. Not my committee.

Yeah.

That's good on them. I don't have a great feeling.

It doesn't say how much it would be filmed in Seaside, and this is just for Seaside. We could have a mural, we could have, you know... And they've got quite a bit in the bank too.

It could be something we regret later if we pass on it.

Is it going to be with or without our $7,000 contribution? No. Yeah.

We just don't see how it really fits into our community arts and vitality. I mean, it was solely going to be filmed here, and they already...

But it's going to be featuring a lot of people. Well, and if it was filmed here, we know from times of the past, not going to mention Break Food on the Beach, but, you know, the content of the film, it could hurt us. Right. Or help us. But we don't have any control over that.

Because I assure you, when we approved the first one, we thought the content was going to help see something.

I mean, that's what was talked about at that time.

I did. And I hope it burned. No one ever saw it after it came out.

So you don't want serial killers from the arcade? No.

I've got to see this movie. It's supposed to be a weak kid sort of movie. Is that right? Yeah, it is.

It's supposed to be a rom-com.

Who's the director? It's not Dave Franco, is it? He keeps making movies in Gearheart.

They've done like three different movies on the coast.

But also, like, what's the reach? Is it independent film? Like, is it...

They're going to... They have a stun dance. Yeah. It's an independent film.

Right. It's not a major. It doesn't look big.

How do we... Much, much more. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. I guess when it first came across, I looked at it. I didn't think that there was the value, but that's kind of self-serving, too, because I have other projects that I want to work on, too. But I didn't see the value as much as something that was more tangible.

I agree, too. That was my first time reading through it as well.

So I'm assuming it dies for a lack of emotion.

I mean, I know she had, we don't. Emotion that we don't fund is also.

Yes. For $7,000 from that. Okay.

Linda seconds. All in favor. Aye. Okay. All opposed. All right. Thank you.

Is that the movie? What's it called?

It's called Seaside. The name of the movie is Seaside. Yes. It's on Amazon. Oh, it's on Amazon. Is it? That's what I was trying to find. For Halloween, maybe.

to open up the floor to hear what people thought about Fort Palatinate this year. It was an interesting year from the tourism perspective because we were tasked from city council to do an actual, you know, don't bring your fireworks here campaign. And so like everything we try to do, we try to do our best we could with it and like took it very seriously. So I'll run you through really quickly, like a deck that we, gave to council about what we worked on. But before that, I'm just curious to hear what you thought, how you thought it went as far as fireworks.

I mean, down on the beach, but it seemed like there were fewer people, well, there were fewer people last year than the year before on the beach. There were fewer people this year than there were last year on the beach. If I were to just look out of there and say how densely populated is the beach down there, I think this year was less populated than last year. The last three years? uh than the year before um for sure because i wasn't down on the beach the year before that but i heard that it was chaos down there and uh so densely packed so i can only really compare it to last year and i can say that it was it seemed significantly lighter than last year for people that were packing their tents and all that around the safety zone um it was far less dense um uh the safety zone was

further north this year. This is all the way past my intake for that before.

It was. Last year really gave me a hard time too because it seemed like it was bigger than ever before. This year we measured just like we did last year with a 600 foot line. So we made a center point and then, well,

It was almost all the way to the dunes in front of the place. I know it was, yeah. And so it has to be 600 feet from the outer fireworks.

So it was really 1,400 feet across, which... Yeah, it's a huge space for sure. But yeah, but the south part really, it was very notable for the lesser amount of people that were.

No, I would like to see the zone go all the way to 12th Avenue. I wasn't complaining. It just seemed like it was shifted further north for some reason.

So the fireworks, you know, I intended for actually the zone to be shifted to the south by 700 feet. But then the fire, like not in the 11th hour, but I mean, a couple months ahead of time, the fireworks guys vetoed that. Like the city said, okay, the whole goal was to get more people out on the sand rather than in the whatever. So have, and have the dune be the unusable space that it is. And so we would already be unusing it because it would be in the safety zone. But then the fireworks guys vetoed that. And I'm really glad that they did. because some of those last fireworks, I don't know if you guys were close enough to see, but they were trailing all the way down the sand. So, like, they were still burning when they hit the sand, and so that was their concern, and it was legitimate. We would have had problems in the dune if, I mean, I wouldn't have had a problem in front of my place, but still, you know, keep it burning.

I'd like to get rid of the dunes, but not that way.

Me neither.

As far as I remember, they burned the dunes down with just the grass. Yeah.

Yeah.

And only to the sand. You've got to burn it down about 20 feet. That's right. Yes.

So, yeah. But that being said, there were no major, that I heard, there are no major incidents down on the beach, which I'm grateful for. The fencing set certainly helps rather than the rope that everybody uses, a limbo line. People still... tested us on that and ducked under the fence. What? This is a fence? I didn't realize. What? This gap in between the porta potty that's nine inches of a gap between the porta potty? That's not a gate? I don't understand. Why can't 50 of us come through here into your zone? Anyway, so aside from that, though, that's expected human nature baloney. that, you know, that we just deal with. But other than that, there wasn't any issues. I did see the officers winding their way through the beach as I was doing my patrols. I did see them winding their way through the beach in pairs, which is good. And just making sure, you know, seeing if they can see people on fire. yeah so um so they were noticed that their presence was noticed um for sure and a lot of people talking about a four thousand dollar fine uh lots and lots and i think that from my neighborhood it seemed like a significant decrease this year for illegal fireworks ahead of time and afterwards i have heard there's a lot less after a lot less after

It didn't go nearly as long in weeks of fireworks. I feel that that was probably one of the better things.

Are there actually any citations issued?

As of yesterday, we don't have official numbers just because of the way that the fireworks calls get entered into the system. It could be anything from a confiscation, a fine and confiscation. Mark Benthien, ECA- Reckless day here, and so there were 39 on the fourth of July alone and that's midnight midnight, so there were three before the fourth of July, there were 39 on the day of there was one. a known number the day after as well, but not necessarily all 39 of those were fines. So I don't have a final number on it yet.

And from the committee, they were going to leave that up to the discretion of the officer. The officer didn't really want it. No one really wanted a $4,000 fine. But our thought was if there were a couple and we publicize it, we'll have less problems in the future. We knew we couldn't catch everybody, and it was impossible.

I didn't expect to see a difference this year, honestly. I was surprised. I've heard what you said basically is what I've heard.

And I feel like there was a difference, I mean, in a good way, because you probably worked for the next four weeks in a row or whatever. Sorry, three days leading up to it. Daytime fireworks. We've had a few the last few nights, but that's, I feel again, because of that new, because of that event doesn't count.

Yeah. I do hear that people did move north. I heard, yeah.

And I am every year because that's where my family always meets on set, right? And it was so cool. Yeah, but it's sunset, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were all the way down by Strawberry Knoll because it was so full the whole way. We ended up setting at almost pure iron. It was that full and all the illegal fireworks were down.

But you're usually there. Yeah. Every summer. An uptick into your heart, you feel. Oh, yeah.

I love that. And at that meeting, that's what we predicted. We're just going to push them north. Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, he said that they're not patrolling it. So, I mean, you know, but they don't really stop.

They just drive by.

They can't.

It's so, I mean, it's much families.

I don't know if it's true. But I also heard Long Beach was insane. Yeah.

Yeah. That's where they buy it. Are you?

are they allowed are they legally allowed along beach in washington uh i thought not every i mean not everywhere not every community like my mom lives in port townsend there are zero fireworks in our town well yeah yeah zero so i'm not a sparkler about just like canada beach that's where the reservations are right and they're yeah i mean i can't have fireworks but there's so i didn't rise the road there's a little spot

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that we're... Less explosions.

Less explosions, but less tourists. At least on the beach.

Well, yeah, because not everybody... The crowd on the beach. Yes. Yes.

Not everybody blowing up fireworks out there are tourists. Right.

True. We're sure. True. Right. But the, I mean, I guess that's the notable number. Like, I don't as much care about how many locals decide to not stick around for Fourth of July. I care about the tourists coming in to stick around for Fourth of July. So that was the overall worry, right, is that we're, by majorly tightening down, that we're going to see people fleeing north to... less restrictive regions.

So it makes sense for people who follow the law to come into seaside.

Yeah, but if it doesn't, if there's no backfill from those people who feel it's safer...

If those people are breaking the law to the side, they want to go somewhere else, there's more room for the people who obey the rules. And I'd rather have the people who obey the rules.

Yeah, I mean, I guess that will be a years-long... goal. I guess, so how long do we see? How long do we look? I mean, I guess it doesn't matter because the rules are what they are. And honestly, to be perfectly honest, I, as the person who put on the fireworks show, didn't realize you can't even have a sparkler on the beach. You're not even allowed to have a legal... No, you're not allowed to have a legal sparkler.

Oh, absolutely fine. I'm like, wait a second, I can't have a sparkler.

No, it's not city though. It's not anything. So I was going to hand out stuff at Cabana's, and then I was like, oh, yeah.

It's more than violent bombs.

Yeah.

They're not going to go arrest a four-year-old kid. I mean, no, that is $5,000. On a plus note, everything I heard about the Titanic was fantastic. Our house. We never even see the lower ones. Usually sometimes we can't see the lower ones. And I heard great things. Like some people, what's longer? And I think it was like two minutes more than last year.

It felt like it, though. But it was impressive.

My clock went 10 and boom. It was right on.

yeah 18 years a lot of good yeah all my guests were like it was the best date ever that's what i was hearing yeah so i don't think it was any detraction from us doing that 4 000 i mean because you can't live with me oh everything yeah so i mean my fourth of july was not as good at the mall as last year's fourth of july

I bet the whole year has just been a weird year.

My attendance has dropped since March 1st. Okay. That's taken has a lot to do with Iran.

And gas prices. It all has to do with Iran. So one of the other things I, because I have a tenant that has stores over in Bend and Sisters. Right. And they are like, we're busy over there, but we're not here. What's going on? But I think there's not fires, you know, so people are going over there and it's not gotten really hot in the valley either. So yeah there's a lot of meters because again a number of spending are down but hotel stays are up 10 percent longer stays that was the first quarter yeah i was way up in january and february oh really yeah i agree but the previous january we had like a big storm a three-day weekend i mean maybe some of the advertising campaigns shifting people

So can we shift to... For those that have been here before and said Saturday, what did you like? Don't get beat up walking down the prongs. It happened once, but it's still... Plus we lose a wee chin. But you had a couple too many here.

You said something about the goons.

Last year, the thought was that the numbers on the beach were lower because of the ice fears. That crowd wasn't coming down. That was the worry from last year. Oh, things are down because the attendance is down because of the ice fears. Possibly, but ice wasn't as active this year as they were last. It wasn't as forefront. What I don't want to see is a continued trend of of the beach getting lesser and lesser as, you know, as things continue.

But I also want to remind, whenever the Birch of Life falls on a weekend, it sets the difference down anyway. Because when it falls in the middle, we get people in the middle of the week, and we still collect on the weekend.

Yeah.

Which this one will not happen that way. It'll just be the weekend. Yeah. So it's almost like losing a weekend this year. But I don't really, and honestly, I don't feel like the Birch of Life... Didn't stop any of my people. They were all still packing their way in there going, oh, wow. And I feel like most people will still do that. But especially when you're a sign zone. I did put the signs out. I called her. I did put the signs out. But I offered to keep their illegal fireworks for myself. But I feel like people knew that and knew that they could just go a little further and still visit Seaside. They had to stay somewhere. So they drove out there and stayed somewhere.

I think we can consider it a successful campaign if anybody actually read the signs. You know, I mean, that in itself, right? Success.

I don't know how they can miss them. And I feel like people don't know.

I mean, people are screaming about them. Oh, they saw the signs. And a lot of people said they saw it on the news and stuff, too.

Well, you can't fix that machine, you know. I mean, in the town. Yes. I know. Impressive. Yeah. Yeah.

So I didn't see the ad that I heard about that you did with douse in the water. Yeah. That's why I didn't see it.

I'm not too worried about the people who were about the official fireworks numbers going down too much. And I'll tell you why. The overwhelming response online was that that was one of the best shows I've ever seen. Now, regardless of whether that was the longest or whatever, it works out. It's true. It's how people feel about it. That's how they feel about it. I've never seen that before. That's the first time I've ever, like, overwhelmed me. Most people I'm talking to, you saw the text, all the feedback I got online. I was at home with our dog. Our family's out of town, and of course I'm working, but I'm at home, and I was live-streaming Fox 12 did a special KPTV Facebook live stream from their streaming. And you know, COIN does that all the time, but Fox has never been very available with their stream. So that was a new thing. That was cool. Where's theirs?

Seashore.

Yeah, they filmed a Seashore there. So they live streamed. They did a special live stream with thousands of people watching it. I was watching this live stream and watching how story was at the same time. The seaside fireworks started before the Astoria ones. And when the Astoria ones were done, I looked down at the live stream and you hadn't even hit your finale yet. So they're definitely longer than the... average you know that's going on now today so yeah it was really it was cool but let me just run through this really quick since I added it so some of this is more specific to what the city council is asking us to do but basically our communications objective for the fireworks campaign was not to get people to not shoot off fireworks it was to ensure that they knew about it and had consistent fireworks information before they came to town when they were in town and then a little bit after the holiday through multiple points of contact So if we had two messages, one for visitors was do not bring illegal fireworks to Seaside and enjoy the official event included fireworks. Pretty strange to type that out in a strategy document and see it like, you know, within a month or something. Because they literally used our word perfectly. And then for residents, we also wanted them to know that the city council was taking action on the community concerns, but that the rules were going to apply to everybody. So reaching visitors before they came was a huge part of this. And we leaned into our own channels to do this, our email subscribers. It was a lead story on the June email blast. Our social media, I had a whole campaign. And of course, our website, which we get 49,000 active users typically in the summer, I think, for June. We had 61. So a lot of people. And then earned media, we had a lot of success getting this out on TV. KGW, KPTV, K2, sister stations, and radio picked it up. We had some friends. And then we did something new this year, this communications toolkit for lodging partners. We just thought, I just wanted to make it easy for people. And it was. Except for...

It was good. I mean, it was just, I mean...

I mean, literally having it already printed and made for you made it super easy just to... Yeah, it had the signs, but I mean, it also just kind of showed the key messages of what the city was trying to accomplish, acknowledging that this is a super busy time for all of our lodging properties, but it's also busy for Scott McAvoy- Police everybody we're trying to work on this together to find illegal fireworks for folks that's method cues some science. Scott McAvoy- Multiple points of contact was a huge theme with this, so on the planning side of things we're hitting them with emails websites media coverage social media, we had a highway one one science for me arrived with a hotel check in experience, hopefully, when they arrive and then around town we had. whole bunch of A-frames out. We had digital ads running on people's phones to some extent, and then signage at all the access points on the beach.

Do you know if any of those A-frames were stolen?

We were expecting them to be.

When I saw that, I thought, that's going to make an issue.

We bought a bunch of extra ones, but I think we expect those to be stolen. I don't think it's super important that we get into the whole timeline because this was for before July 4th when we were planning it. But here's some look at some of the assets. So we have these huge signs up everywhere. This is a video. Look at that one. It might be kind of loud, so Apollo music. We're quiet. Genesee. Let me see if it'll read it all. I want to start at the beginning. This was hilarious, man. We have this on YouTube. We have this on social media. And everyone's like, why did you put AI whales in here? I was providing photos from the same shoot. Like, no, this is real. And they were like, no way.

Yeah, well, it would come up and go.

Oh, wait a second. Yeah, it was pretty funny. And at least one other town copied us and did the same thing. Oh, really? I think Yachats did the exact same thing. That's, you know, imitation of the platform ladders. This was our website, the visitor website. And there's a lot of good tips in here on where to park and fire pit stuff. This was the city website. This was There were a ton of TV appearances. They're all duplicative of each other, so I didn't take a bunch of them. But they even came to town. And then it came again on the 3rd. And somebody came on the 3rd as well to do another story. We hooked them up with a fire department rep and got some on camera, talked to them. This was our lead story in the June email. my children watching the fireworks. This was just an example of a city social media post, the same example of a tourism social media post about fireworks. The news got in on social media covering that story. These were the ads that were running in markets. We really don't do this very often at all, but this was people just within seaside city limits within a certain inventory. I wasn't personally served these ads during that timeframe, but I did, you can see that people did see them and there were people clicking on them and that linked through to the city's site. We had ads in English and Spanish. And then this year was what really made me think that we did this right this year is that The AI overview for Google, if you typed in Seaside Oregon Fireworks, you could not write it better. I mean, all the sources were official. It was tourism pages. It was city pages. It had tips about where to park and beach fires. It had accurate information about fines. I mean, it was literally as good as you could get. So that's cool. It's awesome.

Yeah, thanks. Nice job.

And that's it. So I think we started free. Maybe you didn't.

Any comments? And public comment? No. All right. Well, then at 3.18, we will adjourn until next meeting, August 19th. We're actually good.

Yeah, I'm good.