Special Events Committee - Regular Meeting

States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

We're going to move on to agenda item number three, public comments and announcements. Do we have any public comments?

No, it's not anything to do with that.

OK. Kyra Hudson, shallow sport boats, et cetera, et cetera. And I threw this together in like 10 minutes, 30 minutes ago before hauling over here. So let's hope it makes some sense. All right. So as someone who is on the board of four of the 16 annual, oh, you guys have that little spreadsheet. I just saw it myself. That's like colorful. So I'm on the board of four of those events, and I'm also a volunteer sponsor and regular participant of six others of the events on that sheet. I feel like I could speak with some authority on the subject matter of special events funding and application process. I have had the opportunity to review some of the proposed new regulations for special event funding on South Pottery Island moving forward. We all know what a monumental task this has been, especially with revolving leadership and such variety between events. It is difficult to grade an off-site one-day fun run and a three-day fishing tournament with the same rubric. This is why I'm cautiously optimistic about the secondary scorecard proposal. It seems like it may be a good way to capture some of the intangibles left out by the currently available measuring tools at our disposal. which include, in my opinion, somewhat flawed 0.25 room nights per registration metric and an unbelievable self-reported stats like 98% of a local fishing tournament participants being from outside of 75 miles. Based off of the current data collection, if you do plan to use the judging criteria of the tiered numbers first, and I don't know what y'all call it, categories maybe, If you do plan to use this judging criteria of the categories first and then the secondary scorecard to determine marketing partnership amounts, I would propose that you might consider lowering the upper threshold of the tiered numbers because being very well aware of all of the events on that list, if some of these bigger events can't hit it using the measurements that y'all currently have, then it probably should be lowered. There are many intangibles to consider a one-day outdoor race like jailbreak or you know one of the marathons May have thousands of participants But an event like ours, Shallow Sport, where we are limiting the number of registered participants due to the size constraints of the convention center, the number you see may just be who walked through the convention center door, but it doesn't show you who came with them and who went to the beach or who went to the weigh-in and the takeoff at Louie's or who was at the easel grant for the fireworks on Wednesday or the VIP party or our annual national pro team event. None of these numbers are taken into consideration. Another concern I have is the appearance that we might be taking a step backwards in supporting tourism through our event funding. Based on the 16 events on that page, the total funding was $210,000 for last year. Putting them into the new grading rubric would reduce the total spend by around $60,000, making the total outside event funding less than 2% of the current marketing budget. And I was kind of hopeful that we were going to be increasing our special events marketing budget. And I really do think that these events do bring a lot of people to the island, and we should be pushing for more, not fewer. There are events that you guys know you're getting a good ROI on, regardless of what a number on a page might indicate. These are events that produce quality marketing and advertising that reach into target markets and hit target demographics. Events that have consistently shown up with top quality production value year over year, sometimes for 25 plus years. And events that are synonymous with South Padre Island. These are events that I believe should be in a separate category. And ones to consider would be ones like Shallowsport, Tift, Sandcastle Days, Hoover, maybe a few others. And I believe that that's actually going to be addressed. So that's just my two cents.

Thank you. Anybody else have public comments?

I wanted to share that today we got a notification that we have hired a young man named Alex Thomas to be our chief tourism official. So starting probably in October, you will have a brand new director staff member that's working with you. This is somebody who comes with experience in developing the Mississippi Blues Trail. He worked with the Houston Rodeo. and then I worked with him for five years in Galveston as he stood up the Juneteenth activities. Super excited about being able to recruit this particular person. I think that when you meet him at your next meeting, you also will be enthusiastic, and with the changes that we're making, I have every confidence that we'll be able to kick up the activities that we're sponsoring and undertaking under your guidance. Happy to share. Alex Thomas, please go stalk him on LinkedIn.

Perfect. Any other public comments? Having none, we move to agenda item number four, approve consent agenda. Do we have a motion to approve consent agenda?

I make a motion to approve the agenda.

I have a motion to approve. Do I have a second?

Second.

I have a second.

I'm still reading, sorry.

I'm still reading, sorry. Having a motion and a second, I'm gonna submit it to a vote. All in favor?

Aye.

Motion carries. Going to move on to agenda item number five, presentation regarding the updated special events policy to be recommended to city council. Mr. Rios and Mr. Shawn.

Good afternoon. Luis Rios, events manager. So today we are going to be presenting updates to the current special events policy for city council for approval. So we'll go ahead and get started. So the purpose for these updates is to provide uniform guidelines for event organizers, channel marketing support for special events, and ensure the events align with the island's brand. The first change that we want to make is the meeting schedule. As of right now, the current policy applications can be submitted 90 days prior. We have a meeting pretty much every month if we have any funding applications. So there's 12 meetings a year. The issue with that, so once you go through the whole process, once you get your first initial check, kind of leaves very little room for marketing purposes to be used. So with the proposed policy, applications will be reviewed every other month and must be submitted 120 days prior to the event. So that means there's six meetings a year. And with the 180 days prior to the event, this allows the approval process and funds to be dispersed with the amount of time to promote. And so the way it's going to work The last meeting, we kind of showed what months we would have meetings. So if you want to be on the November meeting, that means your events in March, you would want to submit your application on the 1st of November to give us time to review. And we'll still probably keep the same every third Tuesday of the month for the application and the meeting process. The second change we want to implement is framework. As of right now, there's no framework for special events. With the proposed policy, it'll establish clear framework for everybody to apply. So the solution would create ranges based on pre-established criteria supported with additional funds for additional criteria. The next slide is the primary scoring card. So right here, this is going to be the main framework of the special events policy that we want to implement. So basically, if you want to request $5,000 or less, that would be a sponsorship packet. You don't have to meet any requirements, such as room nights, total participants, or out of town participants. If you want to go into the next range, These are going to be the criteria that you would have to meet. So for $5,000 to $7,000, you would have to get up to 250 rooms, 375 out-of-town participants, which is 60 miles or more outside of South Padre Island radius, or 437 total participants, which would be based off your registration for the event. And then it will go so on and so on for each category.

This isn't an and, this is an or. So it would be either 250 rooms or 375 or 437? Correct. OK. And so the under 5,000, the sponsorship category, that's also 120 days in advance.

That's gonna be a separate policy that we'll be bringing back over here, yeah, so.

And that one we have nothing to do, that's the money that we had set aside for.

Correct, and then we'll be creating a policy for that that we'll show here as well.

Quick question on this, you said you put up to 250, what's the minimum to apply? Are we going to set minimums? Because I know, for example, let's say from jumping one to the other up to 250 and then up to 500. So is it going to be 0 to 250, 250 to 500, 500 to 1,000? Or?

Yes. Yes? 250 to 499. Once you hit 500, then you can go into the next bracket.

On the first one, so it's going to be like zero. Like you can apply... That's why that's the hardest one because that's the one that we don't have any info for. Okay, sorry, continue.

So does anybody have any questions?

The other thing I think you should qualify is what happens if you score in different categories according to the different ranking? What are you going to do? You get to pick the highest. Oh, correct.

Yeah, so if you want to base your event off of total participants and you're on the higher amount there and you don't meet the requirement for out-of-town participants, you can go off of the total participants to get the higher amount.

That's why it's an or.

Yes, yeah. You can pick.

That's interesting.

Mm-hmm. can meet either one of these three.

Any of these three can qualify for a tier. It doesn't have to be all three. It has to be one of them, and that's the tier that you're going to be at.

So this is where it benefits those events that we have that are mostly local participants, because they're going to have a higher number of participants than they're going to have out-of-towners or room nights. So they're still going to have a qualifying factor that's going to get them the money that they need.

I think that the issue that was brought to your attention, if I can, Luis, I'm sorry to jump in on top of you, is maybe this graph that you've got on your desk, which indicates that several of our larger events are not meeting those requirements. Let me say a couple of things. First, these numbers are self-reported, and of course that's been one of the things that we've been grappling with. Luis does a great job of looking at everything that people provide. We do now have the placer. If you have a room block and you can provide a contract, then we'll go on that. If you're not able to provide anything that we can stick a pin in and validate, then we're gonna go to the placer. which picks up a lot of that information as you'll see in a moment. But currently we've set higher thresholds than folks, everyone except Sandcastle. Sandcastle is way over what it needs to generate in order to get money. So he's gonna go over two options with you. One of the reasons we set this high, two reasons that I'll give you the logic and then you can decide if that logic is motivating to you or not. One is, is a conversation that we've heard you all have sometimes. How much are we buying down? If we give them $12,500 and they're generating this number of participants, how much did each one of those participants cost us? And the range pretty much goes from 12 to $28. depending on where you are in the matrix that you've got in front of you. If we lower the threshold, then of course those numbers are going to go higher, which is not here and there. I did want to share that the sales department also has incentives that it gives for room night blocks. There's a written policy. If you block so many rooms, then you get a 5% discount. a 5% discount's like $2,000. So for 500 rooms, we're giving $2,000. For 1,000 rooms, we're probably giving $5,000. So the contribution that we're giving in sales is significantly less than what we're giving in special events, and I'm not saying that they're apples to apples. I'm just trying to give you a benchmark for another activity that we do in the institution that helps to stimulate business on the island. unless you all have questions about the matrix as it is, then he can go over some options to make it easier to digest.

I have a question. So how will this work with new events if they want to request more than $5,000? How would we?

So they should have, I guess, an estimate on their attendance that they think their event will bring. So basically, they can check off a box thinking, oh, I'm going to meet this 437. If they don't, we can reduce the amount to the lower end of the funding request.

and then when they came back for the other 50% that we would pay them out, then we would have done what we've always done, look to make sure the numbers are there, and if they're not, then make that transparent and lower the amount.

Oh, okay. I wasn't sure. So, okay, so... With this current scoring card, we scored it against 16 events. I don't have that paper in front of me, but about five stayed the same. It was about average for some. The events on the higher end, thank you, the events on the higher end did get reduced, and it does look like some of the events that received the lower amounts did get increased. So we do have a couple options to kind of minimize too many changes. Option one, which you all do have the papers in front of you, Option one would be a transition period. So we would like to propose a three-year transition period for the following events that would be drastically impacted, which would include shallow sport, run hoover, indoor kite fest, tiff, ,, and dance. The additional financial impact of this transition period does total about $37,000. Historically, the City of South Padre Island has awarded special events funding to an informal rule of thumb against room nights. This newly proposed framework would affect the above-mentioned five events financially, reducing their awards by the amount indicated besides the name. Two of these events are legacy events. One way to minimize impact would be to create a short-term transition period for these five organizations, which would be entitled to their historic amounts, which would be three years or until 2030.

Here, I just want to make a comment, like, We need to get a little bit more work done, I think, on the legacy designation. One, what is it going to take for an event to be a legacy event? Have a very, very clear proposal on this is what's going to qualify an event as legacy. And I think we've discussed it. I don't know if that's the way we went or not. But I think legacy events should be handled separately. not once and done, but more like once a year or once every two years, or just keep track. Like we designate the amount we're comfortable with, because there's, like I said, there's going to be legacy events. I've said it many times that are not going to qualify with our normal metrics, but it's brands that are aligned with what we want. So we're going to need some support on those, on those legacy events. And I'm talking about in general, So not to say that the rules are not gonna apply, but there's this different set of rules and we just like meet, get that done and keep up every year or something, but a different designation or a different process, I think. I think the framework, I mean, I'm all for the scorecard. Like we've been saying, we need to polish it, obviously, whatever. But that is one part of the scorecard that we have to get very clear what's going to be designated as a legacy and what rules are going to apply to legacy events or how we're going to grade them or determine the amount. I don't know if that's something that we can make a suggestion, then city council approve it, or have a CVA, whoever, but there needs to be a process for those. I think that's gonna be a little bit separate than our primary scorecard, secondary scorecard, whatever we can do with that. That's just my opinion.

I have a question too. So if, like let's just say we go for option one, option two, whatever, and one of these five events, they come back and they show that they have higher participants, let's say we voted for this and this is what they get, are they able to opt back in and re, you know, or is this a set in stone? Is this what they get for three years if they?

Correct. If they do meet the requirements to go to the next threshold, we can honor that. We can adjust that. And so with Christian's question, yes, we are currently working on policies for sponsorships, 5,000 and under, arts and culture, special events, and legacy as well.

Can I add to that some of the events that are in here may not qualify as legacy events, and so I think even if we do end up considering some on the list as a legacy event, I'd like you all to discuss whether you want to give any runway or any transition period for any of these organizations as we move into this new framework.

Agreed, it's gonna be like for any others that don't qualify or are just moving forward, right?

Yeah, and you know, I've said it already, I think a couple of these organizations have built their annual fundraisers around this, they're doing good community work, they count on this, they bring in other money from other places, and so to make this adjustment is healthy, but I think it's also healthy to validate the contributions that were made previously. and to give them a space and a time to be able to ramp up with the work that we're all gonna be doing together.

So option one was the transition period. If you flip it over, option two, we can recalibrate the special events awards matrix. So basically, a second option would be to recalibrate the primary funding matrix based on historical event awards. Awarding levels represented maximum eligible awards subject to the applicant's eligible request, available funding, secondary scoring card, prior performance, and where applicable. and approval authority. So this does not alleviate the potential loss of historical funding amounts, but reduces the impact on those previously identified.

I have a quick question. So on option two, up to $5,000, is this separate and independent of the sponsorship category?

That one we will cross out.

Okay, so sponsorship.

It'll be starting off on 5,000.

Sponsorship no longer exists under option two, or is sponsorship separate? It's separate. Okay.

Yeah.

Under 5,000 is sponsorship directly, over 5,000 starts the... What's this up to right here? No, no, no, I know, I know, I know, but... Okay.

You need to correct that, Jenny, thank you. I was confused.

We were the point of your confusion, yes.

I usually am so good.

When you're blonde, it's always good to know that it's someone else, not you.

Was there any questions on some of the options.

OK. So just in plainer words on option one we're basically giving out a little bit extra money for it like a transition period for them to either catch up or not. We would keep this rubric here that we're dishing out more money or option to recalibrate the matrix to be a little bit less demanding.

So like for the indoor kite fest, that's at $6,000, right? So we would just lower them to $5,000 but still give them?

So last year, they received $21,000. Based off their numbers, they would fall within the $10,000 to $15,000. So it's about a $6,000 difference.

That number is the difference between what we gave them and what they would qualify for. Oh, I see what you're saying. So what Luis was trying to show you is that if you wanted to make a runway for them, it would cost us about $40,000 a year to do that.

OK. A runway for all of them.

For the five that are listed there. What Luis did was he took the ones that are year over year events. If it was a new event, like the pickleball, He didn't put that in there, am I right? Okay, but those events that have been with us for a long time and didn't meet the mark, he highlighted those and said, look, these are gonna be an issue for us, because these are long-term events, they're driving visitation. Duly noted that we're counting the people at the, At the catch, we're not necessarily counting the people as they're moving around and stuff, and so is it worthwhile to smooth over the transition by giving them some space and some time to see if we can work those things back up, and then they know potentially in three years if they don't get to the thresholds that we're asking, then that becomes the time that everybody pulls back into the categories that they're allowed. The other thing I want to say, Kira, you can come up to the mic.

Just something that I noticed while talking here.

On the mic.

Sorry, something that I noticed while y'all were speaking. On this spreadsheet, it does not account for hotel nights. It just accounts for total participants. So in my event, where we have 3.4 average nights per participant, you've only got the total number of participants. So you may have 6,000 people kind of unverified because it's not like you have tickets to Sandcastle days, but you may have 6,000 people at Sandcastle.

Which spreadsheet are you talking about?

The colorful one that the rubric's based off of.

There's not a category for room nights. You're absolutely right. Yes.

So like, yeah, say I have 500 room nights times three nights. That's 1,500 room nights. And you've got a one-day event that has 6,000 people times the 0.25 metric of your registered people. That's the same. Your 6,000 people counts the same as 1,500 room nights. So that's an important consideration to make that might... be something that the longer events are bringing you the value that's not being shown on this piece of paper.

But isn't that, okay, so.

But that's what's great about this, where you can meet room nights or out of town participation or total participants. So that really levels the playing field here. It's not shown here or here or here. But on this, like for instance, I can get 1,500 room nights. But to be able to show you over 2,600 participants might not happen. Or you may have a one-day event like a jailbreak or something that's bringing in a ton of people. Half of them may stay on the island for a night, but you've got an event my size or TIFF's size, TIFF has five days. We have three days. Hoover has two days. So you've got 2,000 times two. You've got 2,000 times three. You've got 1,000 times five. So that's something that's important to consider if you have traditionally been trying to fund this based off of the hot tax, which is paid for by rooms.

We are considering the room nights.

Yeah, it's simply that in our analysis, what she's pointing out is in the analysis that we made, we didn't include room nights. Are you reporting room nights?

I'm pretty sure. Yeah, there is a problem with, like obviously I'm not booking 500 room nights in one hotel on the island, and like I do, oh, that's another thing I wanted to put here. I did put here. I didn't know that the convention center had to pay for discounts on hotel booking. I've always traditionally handled it myself with all of my hotel partners, and I actually still continue to do so, but this last year I did take a couple of the convention centers that sent me, oh, you know, we can do this rate, blah, blah, blah. I was like, that's great. Normally, I would have always handled it myself, and I think most people can if that's something that can save you all money. Just FYI.

Please explain why you didn't put room nights on your analysis. So...

Earlier, the last meeting, we had a couple definitions. One of them was going to be room nights or room blocks. So that is going to be total number of booked room nights. So if you can bring us a contract or something from vacation rentals showing a booked room night for the event, those would be qualified. So basically surveys or anything else.

So you're saying it was just too hard to nail down the rubric. Yeah, OK.

The actual hard numbers.

Yeah. Right.

So basically the metrics are going to be, if you can prove the amount of room nights, if you can prove the amount of participants or the amount of out-of-town participants.

Correct.

Those are the three metrics. It wasn't on the spreadsheet, but I mean it's something that they can consider or they can show in case, let's say for an event that's their strong point, then they can focus on that and show it to be on a bigger tier.

Correct. Yeah.

It should be kind of linked though. Do what?

It should be kind of linked. If you've got 1,000 participants for one day versus 1,000 participants.

What we have is a place or an ability to see over a period. And we'll show the one that we're doing, I think, for the holiday. We only did one day, but we did Clayton's for the Sandcastle day. We can show visitation over all four days. And what it counts is unique visitors. If you're a visitor, it doesn't count you all four days. It counts you once, right? So we've got it. Do you want him to go through the rest of the presentation, or do you want to make some discussion? What we're gonna need is a vote to recommend how you want to proceed on all four policies, and then if you want to amend the second policy about the scoring, then what amendments you want to make to that. He can go through the whole thing first, or he can take it in pieces.

Before we do that, I screwed up my iPad.

She needs help to go connect it, please.

Okay, to move along with this. I mean, I've never been a fan handing out money just like, okay, you know what, we're gonna do a transition period like this or that because it's not something that's gonna help the events grow. I think it's just putting a bandaid over it. I think it's better if we analyze, and this is my personal opinion, obviously, if we analyze the recalibration, I don't see, we don't have money problems right now, meaning our budget is pretty well, pretty well set, and I think Our problem right now, it is important obviously to calibrate the scorecards and everything and make it to where we can help a little bit more since we have a budget to award and ultimately our goal is to bring visitors to the island. I think if we can find a way to calibrate it to where, more or less where we're at, probably be more strict in some senses with the room nights and everything. And the participants, I think that would be more of a fix than just like a Band-Aid if we just hand out a transition period money because that's not gonna help anybody get to where they need to be. I think if we standardize something to make it fair to the event and make it something that's accessible to them, it's a better long-term fix. And I think just having a scorecard is a big step, a right step in that direction.

So what you're saying is that there shouldn't be no grace period, and we should make the say, and this is the date that this is going to start being like this? Like set an exact date?

Recalibrate the matrix to fit more of the events.

In my opinion, I think we need to recalibrate, I think, One of our main issues, and I think this has been discussed in the workshops as well, is we need to have not stricter but very set policies on the before even application process. I think our award matrix, yes, it needs some fine tuning, but we need to be like, this is what you're going to need in order to apply, and this is where you're going to be at. Kind of deal and that that specific part of the process is where I think. A lot of the people, or a lot of events fall through the cracks some. Benefit to them some benefit to nobody and I think. On the initial period is where we are lacking, like, when somebody goes up to you guys and says, hey, I want money, but you know what it's my 1st year and I need 50,000. there because then we as a committee get stuck with a 50,000 and this is just in general since we're discussing I mean it's not related to this then we get to have somebody come up and tell us hey I need 50,000 for this and it's like completely not adhering to any of the rules or any of the guidelines that we set so we're basically wasting their time and wasting our time and a lot of those happen I mean throughout the year So that is one point where I think we need to be a little bit like have everything set fairly and obviously friendly because we want to welcome events to the island. But just give them, one, realistic expectations, two, a very clear process that they can follow that

Okay, so say this is a first-time event, but they want $50,000 because it's going to be this massive festival concert, like a big old Lollapalooza. But they want $50,000, right? So because we don't have any way to judge anything they've done down here, It seems that it would have to be an established event that they've done another place and want to bring here so that at least they have a little history behind what they're doing and they're not just pulling it out of their hat.

Yeah, and if anybody does want to request that amount, that large amount, we will be doing background checks and asking for letters of recommendation from previous employees.

And then the half before, half after type thing as well. And then, so like those type events, I would think that there'd be tickets involved, there'd be a way to really track it as it's going towards the date, right? Mm-hmm. So, okay.

And Christian, I'd like to respond. What we haven't put in front of you is the administrative processes. We'd like you all to recommend policy and then we back it up with processes. Luis has created an application form here that's much reduced and he's working on reducing it a little bit more. It lays out these levels and then also says next to it exactly what you have to have. So in that case that you just said, it says you have to have a marketing plan, a budget for the event, a schedule of events, a registration process, receipts, surveys, background checks, and letters of recommendation. I would say in the internal scoring before you all got there, if it doesn't have pieces of it, just like other applications, then we send it back and we say, look, it's I'm sorry, in order to apply for this amount of money, these are the things that you have, and if you don't have it, then I can't grade you.

Well, we can't put you on the agenda until you cover those grounds. That way we don't waste time on it.

Right. But we need to be more strict on it, because that's not happening all the time.

Yeah, well, the problem is there was nothing in place, so we're basically starting to build something

And I think that part of the problem was the actual application when people were filling it out and they were just leaving stuff blank and they were going, no, they don't have anything for that yet.

But it still wind up on the agenda.

Yeah. Maybe because they had to.

So we should get to that point to where it shouldn't be even on the agenda until that application is fully filled out.

And that we've actually put a score against it. So when you're looking at it, it's got a score. And he's going to get to this, but the primary scoring is the three pieces that we're talking about. Room nights are golden, out of town if you're out of 60 miles, and then any participants in the area. Those are the three things that you're primarily scoring on it, and it gets you into a range. If you come in at 7,500, but the range goes up to 12,000, there's a second set of scoring that then these intangibles begin to fit in. Have you done it before? Is it in the off season? Is it a good time for us? Are you on a holiday weekend, which is not necessarily a good time? And then that's a secondary scoring that gets you between that 7,500 to the 12,000. So then you have an ability, you at the, the events committee have an ability then to gauge some of those things and influence it. But the primary decision maker is how much impact it's having in the community.

I have a question for you, Ms. Kelly. So let's say we go for option two, recalibrate the matrix. Is there a way you guys can do, like, let's say option A, B, and C of the recalibration, this level, this level, this level, What I think would be interesting, and I think it's more like a visual guide, if we would put the events under this option, most of our events or our important events would fall into this. Under this, it would fall into this. Under this, it would fall into this. That way you can put... See what you're managing. Cross references and say, okay, well, you know what? I think the recalibration, this one is way too lenient or this one is way too strict. More like putting a name to the number. You know what I mean? For me, it's easier to visualize, let's say, you know what? This event, in my head, when I come here, I already more or less know the room nights or what we're talking about, what we're generating, et cetera. So if I see a... an option with a amount next to it, it makes it easier for me to say, okay, well, this is being a little too much. There's been a little bit too extra. That's something, I don't know if it's possible. Like, let's say obviously we right now we can take a vote on what option to take and everything, but let's say if it was optional too, is it something that you can send to the committee members and get feedback later? Let's say, give Luis a couple of days to just set it up more or less with the options, and then we can send you a recommendation CIML before the meeting, because I know you have to present this later on.

Well, a couple of things. First off, this is a really important milestone that we're hitting right now, right? And it would be nice to be ready for October 1st, but if we're not, then we're not. And so if this requires a little bit more dialogue by you all, because you're the ones that manage it more closely than anybody else, then we can pause for a moment, do it at the next meeting, and bring it back. we're still going to have to roll out a workshop for all of our stakeholders that are engaged with us, and I'm not gonna wanna do that until my new guy is on. So I don't feel a tremendous amount to move forward today. If you say to us, you know, we like the format that you all have come up with, we think that the processes, we're good with the six meetings a year and the 120 days, But this piece, this very important piece, which is the evaluation piece, we'd like to see some more options on that and see how that impacts our stakeholders. I would agree with that because based on what you've been saying, Christian, I would rather have a strong system that we don't have any exceptions to than a system that we've got exceptions to because that seems to be part of the issue that got us here.

I think the problem is we just aren't fully prepared to know what would be an exception. they seem to come up all the time, so having a little more information, a little more detail, so that we are prepared for those random, you know, events. Yeah, would be an exception.

Does anybody have any other comments or discussion on this?

So basically... Can he finish the rest of it? Of course. Yeah, a couple other things and you all can make a decision at the end of the presentation. Great discussion. Thank you.

So after the primary scoring card, they would be coming to the meeting and we will be presenting the committee with the secondary scoring card. And during the presentation of the promoter, this is where the grading comes into play. So with our current policy, there's no secondary scoring card. The proposed policy awards additional funds based on important secondary data. So this creates an award system based on supplemental criteria input. We did create 10 categories to grade the event on. The personally like would be changed to a total budget. So let's say they're requesting a certain amount and it's, let's say, half of their budget for the event. You can kind of base it off of that as well. So it's 10 categories worth 10 points each, totaling 100 points. So that will determine if they fall on the lower end or the higher end of the range as well. Questions?

Not here.

And the fourth change would be required post-event documentation. So the current policy, the same documentation is required for all events. The proposed policy will structure post-event documentation for the various levels. For sponsorships, we'd like confirmation or receipt of the funds and a little thank you after the event. The $5,000 to $25,000, you would be required to turn in total participant registration, ticket sales, receipts, ad copies, and run times for the event. And above $25,000 to $50,000, total participant registration, receipts, ad copies, run times, and surveys as well. And then some of the backup that we want to introduce for the post events is Placer. With Placer, we can identify total amount of visitors, unique visitors. We can set the range for anyone outside of 60 miles. We can adjust it to any distance. The origins of the visitors, length of stay at an event, visitor journey, hour and daily visits. And we did do an example of last year's Winter Wonderland. So with that, visitors was 1.9K. So that's unique visitors. Since it was a one-day event, the total visits is 1.9K because they stayed there for a few hours and then just left right afterwards. Shows the average dwell time, which is 74 minutes. And then it also has the year-over-year increases as well. It's cool. The next slide is actually the visitor origin, and we can adjust it by zip codes, DMO market.

What was this? Winter Wonderland. Where's the rubric on this? How many miles did you do this for? Like how many miles out? So these are just screenshots.

I don't see it on there. It's not the actual report.

If you go to the... That shot right there, radius.

Oh, for this one? This one does not have the radius of 60 miles. On your post events that were on consent agenda for Ron Hoover, those did show 60 mile radius. But for this one it wasn't, since it's a lot of local visitors as well.

Okay, so the 60 mile radius, anybody that visits within the 60 mile radius doesn't count?

Outside the 60 mile radius.

Okay, so everything outside of that, that's what we want to really...

Within the tourism world, we call a tourist, anybody that's come in from over a 60 mile radius, because you expect then that they're gonna, it's just a designation that we decided. He didn't run it on that one. We're still getting, we've only had the software, what, two weeks now, and we're still playing with it. But we thought we'd show you, and it does show the percentage of where people are coming from. That is cool, though. He only captured the top 10, but he can sort that and look at it.

So it has the visitor origin here. And then the next slide does show the hourly duration. The Winter Wonderland takes place from 5 to 9. So it does show 4 PM, few people here. 5 PM, it shows about 1,500. And then during the peak time of the boat parade, we're looking at about 1.6, 7,000 people during 6 PM and 7 PM.

Oh and what he doesn't have is the trip journey. There's another thing that'll show you where else they went. So when they were here and they went to go see the lighting of the tree or the parade, did they also go to FMB or did they go down to the upper deck and it'll tell us the other places on the island that they visited. That's good to know. Yeah, well, actually, why don't we do a full presentation just on Placer for the next one, and we'll pick up a couple events that you all want to look at. And the other thing we can do is we can go to other destinations, throw a loop around what they have, and see how they're doing.

I love that.

We get to spy.

That was my next question. So we already have the placer in place, mind the redundancy. Correct. Do we have the placer already, the contract? Because we discussed it last time. That's already a done deal? Yes, okay.

passwords we anxiously got on the software and then discovered we needed a tutorial and we did our own event because we just didn't want to use somebody but what I would like to show them is the sandcastle that was amazing I have a question though I'm a little bit concerned because just because I own a hotel right so I know that I do have overnight stays that are coming from Brownsville and that's within the 60 mile radius. I mean I have lots of them. So that's a little disconcerting for me only because I already have that data.

We get a lot of business and we hear from everybody all the time we can't discount the valley.

If I'm not mistaken because of the presentation on the placer thing you can put let's say if that number is from Brownsville or close by but they stayed more than a certain amount of hours then it can consider it as part of the numbers right?

Yeah, or we can do two separate, you know, one out of 60 mile radius or one including everybody.

And see like the amount of time. And that's for overnight. You could put the time.

But for option two, that's, you know, it's still an or thing. So you either have the verified room nights or you have the out of town participants or a total.

Out of town is, so the point of out of town participants is that they're staying the night. That's why we call it out of town, right? So if they're coming from Brownsville and it doesn't fall within the 60, but they are staying the night, then it's a loophole that's. It wouldn't count them.

But then that would go under room nights. Verified room nights.

You have to figure out the best way to document to reach the highest number. Well, the thing, I get Jamie's point.

I mean, I don't care if he's coming from San Benito or if he's coming from Port Isabel. If he spends the night. If he pays the night on the island, that's what we care about.

Why don't you come across and let's look at it together and use pride as one of the.

I was going to say, what it really means is, I'm paying the HOT tax. That's what it really boils down to. The entities that are paying into the HOT tax should be getting credit for that. I mean, the event should be getting credit for that, regardless of whether it's Brownsville or not Brownsville. But I still absolutely recognize the difficulty in documenting that. That's been the problem all along.

Mm-hmm.

But to backtrack, I do see that having the verified room nights or the out-of-town guests, unless there's some huge disparity, in which case I think we'd have to investigate further, but we have a tool to do that with.

Mm-hmm.

City coordinated events like Winter Wonderland and everything, are those gonna fall in a different category? How are we gonna handle those under new guidelines?

That is a amenity that we'll put together on behalf of the city to provide some holiday festivities, but it is not a special event that will come.

It's not gonna come, like we're not gonna deal with Winter Wonderland anymore?

No, no, no. And we're working on some big sponsorships right now.

Just heads up, I would like And it's not that we don't trust, but literally we don't trust anybody. I would want either SEC or CBB or somebody to do a little checkup on those events and just make sure that we have all the... Would they still have to do like a post-event report?

We would be happy to provide a post-event to you all. This is your elf right here.

I'm already reaching out for quotes and I can keep everything organized.

I wouldn't even...

What did we spend on it?

I would say it's always good practice if you go to either one of the boards. I'm not saying it has to be with us. It can be with CBB or it can be with City Council. I really don't care, but one of the boards. And be like, okay, for this year, this is how much we're planning on spending, da-da-da-da-da. Have them say, okay, go ahead, and then do a post-event report. It's just better practice, in my opinion.

AGREED. TRANSPARENCY. AND CARLA HAS IT IN A NOTE TO BRING IT BACK.

I MEAN, LIKE I SAID, ANY OF THE BOARDS, IT'S BETTER PRACTICE AND IT KEEPS EVERYBODY IN CHECK.

ALL RIGHT. I THINK THAT WAS OUR PRESENTATION FOR YOU. SO WE'RE EITHER LOOKING FOR AN APPROVAL OR RECOMMENDATION TO BRING BACK WITH MORE INFORMATION.

I totally agree. I don't know. Do we... We're either recommending option one or option two, correct? Anything else that we need to... Recommend there was some other.

We've presented four policy changes to you that we would like you all to consider. The first policy change being that 120 days ahead of time. The second policy change being the scorecard which you may or may not decide to amend. The third policy change being the documentation and the structuring of the documentation. Luis, are there four changes we're asking for or three?

So it was going to be the primary scoring card, the secondary scoring card.

The secondary scoring card then is part of the policy as well.

And the meeting schedule.

And the what?

Meeting schedule.

Meeting schedule, score card, secondary card, and then document structuring. Correct. For the post-events. Which option one and option two fall into which one?

Primary scoring card.

Not the framework?

Yes. So the framework is the primary scoring card.

Primary scoring card? Mm-hmm.

If we go back in this presentation, if you go back in the slides and we just start with like one change meeting schedule, we could just touch on that. Yeah, because I don't have a third in here.

Oh my God, I already screwed this up.

I have a first, a second. Do you have to just keep, you want me to fix it? I learned how.

Hopefully you figure that, there we go.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Christian, I misspoke. You don't need to vote. We are looking for all of your feedback, though, and encapsulate it into a recommendation.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- I would say probably it would be what we can do is, OK, as a recommendation, it's not technically a vote, because there is no action. But as a recommendation, I'm going to suggest a vote, like, let's say, on the 120 days policies. I agree. 120 days before and at six meetings a year, I'm all for that. You? No, there's no second. Do you agree? So you have everybody's support or we think it's a good idea on that one. Since there's no action, I mean, we can only...

No, that's perfect. That's exactly what we want to hear back.

On the primary and secondary scorecard, we're not going into the option yet, but primary and secondary, I agree that having those two is a good idea. Me.

I agree. I like the primary.

I like the secondary. Yes, we needed structure. I agree.

Okay.

On the options, I personally like option number two. And I would like to see three options from you guys. Lean, mid, strict, with, like I said, the examples of the events that we currently have, the recurring events, so we can see how it would affect each one of them. I like that option with that add-on.

I would feel more comfortable with more information, yes. Right. On the third option.

I like option number two. With the caveat of us deciding our legacy events and keeping them separate.

Great.

Jenny?

I like option two. I also feel like we need to have examples of Where the exemptions might, yes, where to recalibrate, and where the exemptions that we haven't thoroughly thought through might end up. Great.

And what other?

The last one was the documentation is structured according to the amount of money that you've received.

I could not agree more. Brandi?

Yep, I like this. I agree.

Jeannie?

I agree. So in recap,

I think we all pretty much are on the same page. Yes, on the 120 days. Yes, on the six meetings a year. The scorecards, we do like the concept. The recalibration obviously is the way that we all think it's the way we should go. We would like to see the examples or given several options more visually about what recalibration we're gonna do. Then we can suggest which one we think it's the better option. And on the document structuring, by all means.

Yeah. Excellent. Great. Major milestone, people. Well done.

We did it.

We're not there yet, but we've gotten through the threshold.

This work got good dialogue going. I really like that.

With that being said, I'm going to close 5-1. Do we have 5-2, or was that part, was it all mixed up?

Nope, you have 5-2 now.

Okay, 5-2, update regarding miscellaneous sponsorship, accounting, events, marketing, budget for fiscal year. Toldetto and Deshaun.

Have we introduced Jose Toledo to you yet?

No, and they will spell their name.

Jose Toledo is a recent recruitment to the CVB. He has his master's from UTRGB and is an accountant and a finance person. We are so delighted to have him. He has taken over looking at all of the money. Any questions that you ever have, you can just let us know and he'll be able to answer them. Super excited to put them in front of you today to talk about the upcoming budget.

No, no, super excited to meet everybody. I'm thrilled for the opportunity, and hopefully, you know, this is first of many conversations we could have, right? So we could start, you know, planning something good, right? And your name is, sorry? Jose Toledo.

Toledo.

Yeah. There you go. And I made a little report for how we wanted to show the budget. How we actually first saw the fiscal year 2027 is we decided to show it showing the personal services, the goods and supplies, the repair and maintenance, the miscellaneous services that we're doing. And also, the newly renamed, the ACE budget, the Arts, Culture, and Events, that's where we want to put our focus in. And you could show it also in the distribution between the budget that it's 70% of our budget is going, especially in that area. Then we can see a small forecast in the lower table. That's where we have, with Luis's help, we made a historical expenses of the previous budget against how much we actually spend it. And we also put the ending balance and the utilization rates of all the accounts. And one of the interesting key sets we saw is that we use more than 76% of our budget in all of them, and I think that that's something that we're trying to get better at. We did see an overspend in one year, but besides that, we constantly stuck between what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it.

Let me put that in some simpler words. This is a table of everything that you've awarded for special events over that period. So you were budgeted in one what we utilized and what was the ending balance. So as we've continued to say, and I think as Kira said today, the idea is to spend the money, not to hold it.

Correct.

Great, keep going.

With the 76%, we would like to fine tune those numbers.

We want to be coming back for more money.

Exactly, and do a little better. And we did also look at the average, look at our spending averages, and... And mostly, it's just so you could have a visual way of understanding the information that would seem, to my interest, I think it's easier to digest if the information's right in front of you and it's not so convoluted. And finally, for the ACE, the Arts, Culture, and Events budget allocation, in the second page, That's how we distribute it for the miscellaneous. We did put 90 in fireworks and 20 in entrance sign, 220 for spring break. We are, with the care of upkeeping, the historical museum, because it is an important part of the heritage and our history, and we think it's important to... To take care of it right, and especially when moving forward with other events, we don't want to forget, like you said, the lineage events, right? All the historic ones. And after that one right for the miss sponsorships, that's also where another one of the policies right that we were looking for was. where the 5K ones are gonna start entering. And hopefully that's like one of the brunts of this, of the ACE budget is gonna be the sponsorships, right? And trying to just get all of them through. Other important parts, the ecotourism sponsorship, that one's new for this year too. We think it's gonna be important to diversify what we were doing with the previous budget and how we decided to specialize this part more, the events marketing, we have decided to specialize it with the events arts and culture. So hopefully we could see a lot of better ideas with the ecotourism sponsorship just being allocated for that. And for the Texas Film Commission, we have allocated some resources to it, $7.50, and for Classic Friendly Texas Commission, the program, that it's also a group of people that would be helping with the tourism, with the events, with attracting more people. For the international... I'm sorry, what was the name?

Festivals Events Association.

Yeah, International Festival Events and Associations. That one's gonna play a big role in this year, too. I know Luis is gonna assist with it. He's gonna continue to get certification in it, so all the different activities and ideas and networking he could do there, he could bring back here, right? And we could start using that, too, and search for new things. And finally, we left the 80K for advertising, and that's gonna include the graphic design, it's gonna include marketing, it's gonna include advertising, it's gonna include signage, so it's a pretty big deal.

And let me underscore there, this is a brand new line item in your budget. We've never put in marketing money in the budget before. This is marketing money that we're gonna put behind the events that are coming to us.

Yeah, just.

Is it just on the island, or is this gonna go?

No, no, we started something with Make-A-Wish, a billboard up in San Antonio, and so we're gonna keep a billboard year-round and periodically put a vinyl up there on some of the bigger events. We've got billboards in the Valley. We've talked about social media. We're gonna start laying advertising down in the magazines that are in the Valley. I know people don't read a lot of them, but the Coastal Currents, for example, just the month and what's going on on the island for the month. Just really kind of having a marketing program that speaks specifically to supporting the marketing or the special events. Yeah, this is our forte, marketing. We can help them with some money, but we can really lean in with the assets that we have because we buy radio, we buy TV, we buy billboards.

How does that get decided on?

Everybody's going to have an ability to do it. It's going to depend on how big a draw we think we can get. And so Louise will be in charge of that with the new director and they would sit down with each of our partners and say, okay, where are you laying money? What are you doing? How can we supplement that? What ads do you have? Let's lift those up on our social media.

I mean, isn't that, the theory then becomes that if we're doing that, then they don't need as much money from us because we've helped them get more participants or attendees to begin with.

Except that I think for some of these niche things, you're going to be in publications and in channels that we're not, maybe, because it's niche, right? And so the runners are going to be on the runner's channel, and the fishermen, we hope, are on some other things. And this will take it. Let me say Make-A-Wish. This is a good example. They have a great network because they're Make-A-Wish. They've got people that support them. But we've got a network on our following, and so we took their ads and we put it on our Facebook, even though they're putting it on their Facebook.

Right, but that's my point, because it Pride, for example, yes, we definitely have a niche. But where we would advertise in some of the gay publications, you might not, but we can't afford to do that and the mainstream publications. Right, so you do your niche and I'll pick you up and I'll support you and compliment you in the mainstream. Exactly, and I think that will actually promote things.

Work together. This will be new for us.

Gonna be new for everyone.

That's exactly right. The miscellaneous sponsorships is what he detailed on the front page. We wanted to put this out for you because a lot of folks are gonna say, we had $750,000 before, and we did. But you also didn't have marketing, you didn't have some ecotourism, some focus on some things that we wanna do, the ecotourism, the museums, for example. And if we get to a point where we have more requests for funding, we can move it. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

No, I like the idea of the advertising. I just feel like, do we vote on that? Or how does that, I mean, how do we pick which event gets what back? No, no, no, no.

We'll do that. Okay. Yeah, we'll do that. And if they start coming to you and complaining, then you can get involved, but. Wanna get involved. Hopefully we'll make everybody happy and they'll come here and say how great it is.

I mean, back to your comment that we, the money is here to spend, but yes, spend it wisely. How I see it and my vision, if we're getting a bigger budget, it's not that we're gonna give out more money to the same people. My expectations from you guys, and I see you guys are building a good team and you guys are, like getting ready for battle, which is a good thing, is that extra money that we're not spending, spending on new events. Bring new stuff to the island, bring other stuff to complement the

On that same note.

The great events that we already have, but that's where we need to work because it gets, sorry, but I've been in this committee for a long time and it gets boring, these same events every year.

Well, and also in that same vein, what I, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but I still think that we should expand our marketing into the northern marketing because they, do come down here. We get a lot of visitors from up north that if we expanded our marketing up there and really tried to focus on it more, we would have more influx down here and especially during the cold months when it's really crappy weather for six months up there, we would get more visitors. And we're not just, and I'm not talking Winter Texas, the one that gets to stay. I'm talking about people that actually will put their vacation specifically because for the island and they're stuck up in the frozen tundra.

We agree with you Meg. We're looking to buy some billboards in Minneapolis and Chicago as well. We have direct flights in the winter from both of those destinations. The only kind of variation I would make on that is I do think the winter Texans are the beginning of that conversation. because grandma and grandpa could pay for the family to come down and see the largest indoor kite festival during January, or maybe in October when we do the Sandcastle, or maybe if the, it's not cheeseburgers, it's...

They just changed it? The Island Life.

What is it called? The Island Life. Island Life, yeah, there was proprietary concerns around cheeseburgers in Paradise. Makes sense, right. So yeah, I agree with you that during that weather, during those times we can pull people down and the special event is the impetus on top of the good weather to actually pull the trigger and to come.

Yeah.

All right, so we'll be doing that.

Because we have a lot of dinks that come down at this time of year. Double income, no kids? Sorry.

Just so you know, that's also a pickleball term.

Oh, well, anyway, it's a double income, no kids. And we get a lot of girls weekends. I mean, so it's a variation. And unfortunately, people that are coming from up north, mostly it's word of mouth, and it's mostly from... The grandparents. And a lot of grandparents don't want their kids to know where the heck they're going.

Great, stay tuned, you'll see more of that then. Unless you all have some questions on the upcoming budget, this was for edification purposes. Thank you, Jose, you're welcome.

And yes, like I said, let's get new stuff going.

Yeah, and since we've got Jose up at the podium, you could ask him next month to see what we did this year. So if you'd like just to look back and encapsulate the year, we're happy to prepare a report and say who we funded this year. and how many people we thought.

Please do that for the next meeting.

I could have it. Great.

One last question. Since we recommended the 120 days, the six meetings a year, when would this take effect? Is it something city council needs to pass and then you will notify us when it would start? Yes. Is it going to be a pretty new fiscal year? Yes.

It's going to be as soon as city council approves the policy change and then we'll set a calendar for the year.

Perfect.

So until then, we meet every month. We're going to move quickly, though.

If we've got stuff to talk about.

OK, well, there's no action or anything on this one.

No, thank you for your time.

Thank you. Mr. Toledo, next time tell them to spell your name correctly. I was like, Toledo, and I'm like, that seems weird. Anyway, with that being said, welcome and meeting adjourned.

Meeting adjourned. Well done, people.