This transcript is for the Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) Board of Directors meeting. Based on the context provided and the dialogue, I have identified the speakers, including board members, city staff, and guest presenters. [00:00] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Foreign, foreign. Good morning and welcome to the Board of Directors meeting for the Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau. Today's date is November 29, 2022, and the first item we'll have is a roll call and Jamie will help us with that. [00:15] **Jaime Mann:** Chairman Dennis? [00:16] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Here. [00:17] **Jaime Mann:** Vice Chair Olson? [00:18] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Here. [00:19] **Jaime Mann:** Director Gabe? Director Hansen? [00:20] **Director Hansen:** Here. [00:21] **Jaime Mann:** Director Larson? Director Levine? [00:22] **Director Levine:** Here. [00:23] **Jaime Mann:** Director Newt? [00:24] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Excellent. As we do have a quorum, we will go ahead and proceed with the meeting. Um, first item here is number three, which is adoption of the agenda. Do I have a motion to adopt? [00:35] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** So moved. [00:36] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Motion made by Vice Chair Olson. Do I have a second? [00:38] **Director Levine:** I’ll second. [00:39] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Second by Director Levine. All in favor say aye. [00:41] **Group:** Aye. [00:42] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Any opposed? Motion carries; in this case, it would be four to zero. Next is item 4.0, which is the approval of minutes. This is 4.1, the approval of the August 23rd, 2022 meeting minutes. Did we have any changes or things we wanted to note in there? Then I would seek a motion to approve the minutes. [01:05] **Director Levine:** [Motion made]. [01:06] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** A motion made by Director Levine. Do we have a second? [01:08] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** A second. [01:09] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Second by Vice Chair Olson. Any further discussion? Not seeing any. All in favor say aye. [01:13] **Group:** Aye. [01:14] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Any opposed? Motion carries four to zero. Item five is business items. The very first one up is 5.1, which is the update from Dodge Nature Center, Shepard Farm, and the Holiday Train. And we'll start out—Julie Pryor Miller will do some introductions and lead us in. Thank you very much. [01:35] **Julie Pryor Miller:** Thank you everyone for coming and being here today after a nice long holiday weekend. This morning we have Jason Sanders, the Executive Director from Dodge Nature Center, here to give us an update on Dodge and the future of Shepherd Farm. So I will leave him to present and I'm just going to pull up his presentation here. Jason, I'll have you come up here if that's okay. [01:55] **Jason Sanders:** Good morning. [01:56] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Welcome. [01:57] **Jason Sanders:** Oh boy. So yeah, I start the technology and I'm already... there we go. Thank you, appreciate it. Happy to be here on this beautiful wintry morning. Again, Jason Sanders, the Executive Director of Dodge Nature Center and Preschool, where we provide exceptional experiences in nature through environmental education. Kind of a little background about Dodge as we're still getting to know the Cottage Grove community and the Cottage Grove community getting to know us. So we were founded in 1967 and we were one of the first nature centers in Minnesota, actually now the longest-standing nature center in Minnesota serving the communities for many years of West St. Paul, Mendota Heights, and now proudly Cottage Grove. And our trails are open every day at no cost. So providing environmental and agricultural education is our heart of what we do. We have a nature-based preschool on site at our West Saint Paul campus, field trips, school groups coming to us as well as what we call outreach where we are taking our programming out into the community and we will take our chickens on the road, our reptiles and amphibians and those types of things. Public programs where it's more families, weekend, evening, where you can come to a program and learn a little bit about environmental education and of course our community events, which we recently hosted one here in Cottage Grove which I'll talk about in a minute. Shepherd Farm in Cottage Grove—70th and Jamaica there—kind of an old country farm where a family kind of used that as their space to pretend they were going up north to the cabin in that area and the country mansion and the farm area. And it was of high interest in our vision of bringing environmental education to a new community. So I want to share a little bit about that. [04:00] **[Narrator/Video Clip]:** Shepherd Farm, your nature center in Cottage Grove. Shepherd Farm offers people of all ages environmental and agricultural education in the heart of South Washington County. This 1920s era farm has been restored and reimagined for the 21st century by Dodge Nature Center, a non-profit organization founded in 1967. Shepherd Farm opens its trails in April 2022. Your family can grow vegetables, fruits, and flowers in the rich organic soil of the community gardens. Come feel the hum of activity among the honeybee hives and pastures of grazing animals. Week-long day camps will get your child outdoors on sunny summer days where they can stretch their legs and minds. In the long history of this land, there's now a new chapter brought to you by Dodge Nature Center. Bring your family and friends for nature programs in every season. Together you can learn, you can grow, and you can find your fun at Shepherd Farm in the beauty of the Big Woods, farm fields, and prairie grasses here in Cottage Grove. Come nourish your need for nature. [05:15] **Jason Sanders:** So one of the most familiar questions we get is, "What are you guys doing back there? What do we get to do? What happens at Dodge?" So kind of stepping back in the timeline wise, we acquired the property in 2013. And there are some that would say, "Wow, is there anything ever going to happen over there?" And it takes time. We did not want to financially hurt an organization that had been around and established for 50 years, and we wanted to take our time and also develop the infrastructure to be able to welcome the community. While we took on the property in 2013 from the Wilder Foundation—who they were gifted the property from the family—they no longer were in environmental education; their strategic plan was going a different way. So a board member of Dodge came to us, which happened to be a family member of the Shepherd family, and said, "Hey, would Dodge ever consider this?" and they were looking at a number of places that were higher education, but because there's an easement on the property, the parcel of land was staying as one parcel. And with the farm and the position in the community, it really interested us. So we took it on and then in 2014 through 2021, we piloted a number of programs out there. People would say not enough because we didn't see them, but we tried new things and tried just kind of to get our feet wet and understand what the community wanted. So we officially opened the trails finally on April 2nd in 2022 and we had over 500 people attend that opening day. Exciting for us because it is a new community, it's new ideas, it's new ways to do things, but also not wavering with the things that we're really good at. And then future wise, which I'll get into more, is the expansion in the new education center and expanded programs. So what we have done, and some of you will see that when you drive by on 70th, we have a paved driveway and a parking lot, we've created restrooms and a hand-washing station, new roofs on the barns, a new pole barn for the animals which is very visual from 70th. And that's just a new opportunity because you can't have animals the same way they did back in the 30s and we want to make sure we show that in a way of the historic lesson of how we're now caring for our animals and taking care of those around us. Renovated the chicken coop and now a new turkey pen made by the students from The Gap School. So volunteerism plays a huge part in what we do at the nature center and a number of businesses have stepped up already in Cottage Grove to help us in some of these areas. Early programs and events: the first thing we did was community gardens. It's something that we do on our West St. Paul campus and it made sense; it allowed the community to come in and get to know us right away. Beekeeping—for those that maybe have a significant other that does not want bees in their yard, you have an opportunity at Dodge to do that with us and have your hives there and learn with Farm Don as well. Summer camps—talked a little bit about summer camps this morning, we've tested the waters there the last couple years. The pandemic obviously put a freeze on some of that and last year we brought back some summer camps for a few weeks. So you want to make sure you're watching our website and sign up early for our summer camps. Farm to Table dinners—we've tried a few of those and I'll get into a little bit more of that. Had our annual benefit out there in 2021 and animals in the pasture. You know, that's kind of what we do, we like to teach hands-on. And right away at Dodge in this community you're going to see us bringing farming and agriculture, staying that historic Cottage Grove piece; you're going to see that with Dodge Nature Center. In 2022, we opened the trails, had our first adult class for keeping chickens in your backyard, volunteers on site monthly/weekly, new summer camps, new family programs, expanded outreach. And then on October 29th, we hosted our Halloween event at Shepherd Farm which was fantastic; 1300 people came out in an afternoon and hopefully we provided a safe space for families to come and enjoy and also learn a little bit. It was a fantastic day for us, one because it was different, it was away from our usual routine, we had to learn a little bit along the way, but we surely enjoyed it and had some great feedback moving forward. And in the future specifically out here in Cottage Grove: our education center will open in 2023. Continue removal of invasive species—it's conservation, preserving the land, we'll continue to do that. Look for more adult programs; we've heard that Dodge does a wonderful job with kids and "my kids have grown and now what's there to do for me? I want to get outside." So we'll do some adult programming specifically around the kitchen I'll talk about. And school field trips and classroom programs. Expanded outreach opportunities—we just hired a new outreach coordinator so we really want to also bring our talents to schools, to businesses, because there's nothing like being in a place where maybe you have a raptor on your fist and you're learning hands-on. And then ultimately having agricultural educational fellowship; we hope to have college graduates spend a year with us in learning hands-on for them to see what their future holds. We do some of that fellowship with naturalists at our main site in West Saint Paul and this would just be through an agriculture lens. And then of course partnerships—key to any success, especially for a non-profit. And then finally, what's big, what's new, what's coming, and that's our education center. So you saw in the video earlier the historic home, the country mansion in the back. We want to make sure the historic look of that stays the same and there's some challenges with that because it's an older home, but we have all the permits, we've now gutted the inside of it and are slowly starting the renovation process. So the lower level where it was family room and dining room will now be two classrooms. Excited to have a teaching kitchen—that's kind of the new piece for us. We want to be able to teach different types of cooking to adults, so maybe growing your tomatoes and peppers and making the salsa right there in the kitchen to help you take those skills that you learned here to home. I use the example of my mom used to make the best pickles and not a lot of people do pickle canning anymore and we want to teach you and bring that back. So it'll also have ADA compliant restrooms, a lift, a patio, and then the upper will be the new offices. We have to have people on site keeping an eye on things and also doing the programming, so workstations and a conference room in the upper level. Now as we end here, I want to take you on a little flight. So here's the outside of what the home looks like and we'll continue obviously to... ADA, we have to do some new compliant things outside of it, but the outside exterior will look similar to what it does except on this side where you'll see the addition of the cooking classroom, which is probably the biggest piece that I know staff are excited about to bring this—to do something new not just with children but also with adults and bringing a place where people can come and visit, get outside, and enjoy nature year-long. I know we all look outside and we laugh at the snow, joking and wondering what we're going to do outside, but there are plenty of individuals that love to get outside and nourish their need for nature, which is our tagline. And we look forward to being a part of the community, part of those that visit Cottage Grove, and hopefully a place that everybody kind of wants to get outside and check out. So if there's any questions I'll happily answer those, but we look forward to the next phase of Shepherd Farm here in Cottage Grove. [12:15] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** All right, well thank you Jason. Fantastic presentation. It's very exciting to see all the new opportunities and programs that you guys have coming online and I know I've been excited for years to see this finally come to fruition. So before I open this up here to the panel, I just want to make note for the record that we are having some snow outside, so a couple of our members were a little bit late, but Director Larson and Newt are both here with us now joining. So at this point I'll open it up. Are there any comments, questions? Vice Chair Olson. [12:48] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Thank you so much. You made me hungry with the pickles coming. I know that's something that the Chair enjoys as well, so thank you for bringing that up. I really was pleased to hear you talk a little bit about the history of Dodge Nature Center, which used to be Shepherd Farm. My comment today, first of all, is we actually have in the City of Cottage Grove a commission that is focused on historic preservation. For years and years and years and years we had the benefit of a local historian named Bev Gross, whose memory was like a steel trap; she never forgot anything. I don't know if you ever met her? [13:30] **Jason Sanders:** Absolutely. [13:31] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** But she used to regale us with stories about Shepherd Farm from when she was a little girl and, you know, she was friends with the family and they would ride to school together in the horse-drawn carriage and so on and so forth. And so, many of us in the room have heard a lot of those stories and are really pleased to see that the historic nature of the property is going to be maintained. My question is this—and maybe it's silly—but have you had any contact or are you currently working with the Washington County Historical Society and/or the Minnesota Historical Society relative to any old documents or plans and specs, or any information you might be able to uncover relative to the former workings of Shepherd Farm so that when people do come, they have some things that they can look at to step back into the past and maybe know a little bit more about how that farm operated and who was there and those sorts of things? [14:26] **Jason Sanders:** Absolutely. We have had those discussions and we'll even take it a step further. We still are having great conversations with Stan and Lucy Shepard who lived on the property. We're working with a Shepherd Farm Task Force and one of the things that we're talking about and discussing right now is self-led tours. And when people come, what's the experience like? We want to create an exceptional experience and part of that, I think, is telling the story. Yes, we're environmental education, you're going to see that while you're there, but you may have a lot of questions about the buildings. So we're trying to find a way to tell that story, that historic piece of it, of what the buildings were used for. As you walk into the milking shed and you're just like, "Oh my goodness, this is amazing." So we're slowly having volunteers bring that back in a way that it's safe to go in there; it won't be a usable space but we want to use it as comparison. So honoring that history and meeting with those that know a lot more about it than us, helping us bring that along, and definitely a focus of what we want to do. [15:25] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Thank you for that. You know, it's just kind of interesting, I guess, to note the history of the community and the fact that even today we are one of the very few suburban communities in the Twin Cities that has a rural element to it. And that rural past is something that I know a lot of people value; they hear about it, but you have a unique opportunity to actually educate. And so I'm glad to hear that you guys are working towards that with all the various stakeholders. [15:52] **Jason Sanders:** I smile only because you brought up the horses and you probably didn't see it on the video because it goes so fast, the flyby, but that horse stoop that's in the back is staying there because that's part of the story. It's where they stepped up to get out of the horse right? And it will be there. [16:11] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Thank you. [16:12] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** All right, thank you Vice Chair Olson. Anyone else have any comments? Director Levine. [16:18] **Director Levine:** So you brought up the West St. Paul campus has a preschool. Is there a plan to bring a preschool to the Cottage Grove location as well? [16:26] **Jason Sanders:** Um, there currently isn't a plan for that. There is a plan for preschool programming to kind of see what it's like. We haven't done enough, I say, studies in the area to see how many preschools are there. Ours is a little bit unique because ours is half day in West St. Paul and we get a lot of requests for full day, and that would be different for us; then you're talking food service and nap spaces. So we still have some work to do. Right now we want to create that space for people to come to and then we have to decide what's that next big feature. But it's definitely on the table. [17:05] **Director Levine:** Right, thank you. [17:06] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Any anyone else? All right, well Jason thank you again for the time and we appreciate it very much. And people can find you quite easily I'm sure just by doing a keyword search. [17:15] **Jason Sanders:** Okay, thank you. Thank you, appreciate it. [17:17] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Thank you again Jason and Dodge Nature Center. I know that speaking as one of the community garden plot owners myself at Dodge Nature Center, I could say it is a truly humbling experience. But next up I am going to introduce two representatives from the Holiday Train committee: Sonya Fox from Re Max and Randy Bachman from Merchants Bank. They are here to give us an update on the Holiday Train coming back to Cottage Grove. Thank you. [17:45] **Randy Bachman:** Well morning guys, how are you? [17:46] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Good morning. [17:47] **Randy Bachman:** Good morning. Very good. Nice to see you here today. Thanks for having us. [17:48] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Absolutely. [17:49] **Randy Bachman:** All right, well first off I'm Randy Bachman. I am the co-chair of the Cottage Grove Holiday Train location stop along with Chelsea Swaggart, who is the other co-chair; she could not be here today. [18:03] **Sonya Fox:** Yeah, and I'm Sonya Fox and I've been on the committee for a number of years with Randy and the rest of our committee. [18:09] **Randy Bachman:** Perfect. Well I'll just give a quick brief breakdown. All the information is on the slides as well, but the Holiday Train started in 1999, so CP started this 24 years ago. They travel across... two trains travel across the United States and Canada, one going through the U.S. and one going through Canada. Since the launch, they've raised more than 21 million and collected 5 million in food for community food banks across North America. Our food shelf, obviously, is one of those with Friends in Need in St. Paul Park. This is actually the 20th year for the Cottage Grove stop. We're one of 19 stops in Minnesota and we say we're one of the largest—and I think we're probably the largest in money raised and size of people showing up. We were actually lucky enough a few years ago to have Sheryl Crow do a show for us because they know how much Cottage Grove attends this event. To date, we've raised 1.6 million for the Friends in Need food shelf, which is an amazing feat for a community of this size. [19:15] **Sonya Fox:** I think it's neat to mention too that one of our community members, the founder of the Cottage Grove stop Mary Slusser, saw the Holiday Train at another city and thought, "How can we get this in Cottage Grove?" and she started working with Canadian Pacific and really has built this event up to what it is today. So it really was a member of our community seeing something cool and bringing this amazing event to our city, so we very much appreciate Mary's work. [19:40] **Randy Bachman:** Yeah, well there was... I was blessed, I had 15 years of growth before I jumped into the co-chair spot with the committee and Mary doing all the hard work, and then I get to just jump up and not derail the train as it were. And these are some pictures from the event if you haven't been to the Holiday Train. It comes in, it stops in Cottage Grove, and then the train opens and then there's a live performance and then they typically give us—Canadian Pacific typically gives us—a sizable donation to Friends in Need food shelf. So here's a picture of them giving us ten thousand dollars to Friends in Need food shelf. So very much appreciate their partnership over the years. [20:18] **Sonya Fox:** Yep, and then so our committee is pretty much all volunteers. We all take time out to help with this event and you know, it's such an amazing committee and we've got people from all walks of life and all areas of work. So, should I read them off or no? [20:33] **Randy Bachman:** I don't think we need to read them off, you can see those. But we've got just an amazing group of people and really the mission is to raise as much money as possible for Friends in Need food shelf while also creating an event for our community to come together for making memories. And I myself have two young kids and I've been bringing them there for years. Obviously the last two years with COVID we weren't able to, but they're asking "Are we going to be able to go to Holiday Train this year?" so very excited to have it back. [21:03] **Sonya Fox:** We thought we'd also mention some of the other events that we've created along the way to raise funds throughout the holiday season in the name of the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train. So over the years we've done things like Super Moms Holiday Bread sales—we would bag bread and sell them amongst the community and at various churches for five dollars a loaf; we no longer do that. And then we've done Cub Foods bagging—we've all bagged groceries together and raised funds that way. We've done spaghetti dinners at the Saint Paul Park VFW in partnership with the Lions. We've done Festival of Trees and Wreaths, which was led by the Cottage Grove Arts Commission (sorry that got cut off). So there's a picture of some wreaths; we had the community come together and decorate wreaths and trees and displayed all of those. We took a little bit simpler approach this year since we've been off for two years, we're just kind of getting things running again, so these are all things we consider bringing back in the future. We've brought food trucks in in recent years, that's a newer addition to the event, and then we've always done stage presentations that I mentioned before where Canadian Pacific comes and presents the check to us. Our Mayors have been invited on stage; they've also been invited to ride the train from Hastings to Cottage Grove and then accept the donations. And we've done silent auctions at the spaghetti dinner and then the last couple years we've done virtual silent auctions and those have gone really well for us. And then as Randy mentioned before, we've had a lot of live music every year and even Sheryl Crow came, so that was the coldest year. It always is a cold year. [22:45] **Sonya Fox:** This year, this is our kind of events that we have: we have the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train coming Monday, December 12th. We have the virtual silent auction happening right now, ending this Friday, December 2nd. And then we have the "Fill Up a Fire Truck" event on Saturday of this week at Hamlet Park where people can drive by, drop off their toilet paper donations and any cash donations, and then pick up their silent auction winnings. Um, so some of the additional things happening this year: we have Alan Doyle and Kelly Prescott giving us a live music concert from the train stage this year courtesy of Canadian Pacific. And then at our stop, we have Santa, we have cookies, cocoa, coffee, and glow sticks all for free for the community, and that is courtesy of a lot of great sponsors and business partners. We have wagon rides from the Park and Ride lot courtesy of the city and civics. We have the warming tent that we've done the last couple years—Re Max Professionals puts that on and that helps warm us up so we can get those little hands warm. We have the merchandise tent, so the Holiday Train also... our committee gets merchandise branded to the Holiday Train and then we sell those merchandise items for a profit to donate back to the Friends in Need food shelf. And then this year we have five food trucks, so we opened it up to all of the food trucks that are currently licensed with the City of Cottage Grove, thanks to some efforts that have happened in the past year. So we're happy to have five food trucks this year, so come hungry to our event. And then proceeds will go back to the Friends in Need food shelf from those sales as well. And then we do sponsor donation presentations; so we have an additional truck on site where we give presentations and our sponsors are able to present checks if they give a certain amount of money or more and present those to the food shelf. And finally, we collect a lot of toilet paper and personal care items and cash on site, all going back to the food shelf. So our goal this year is to raise over ninety thousand dollars again for the food shelf, and this fundraising—all of these efforts—make up about 25% of the overall fundraising goals for the food shelf each year. And then this all would not be possible without our many, many sponsors that put on events raising money for the food shelf and donating funds and donating kind items. So this is a screenshot of our ad from 2019 that we ran in the paper thanking all of the many organizations and individuals that have donated their support for the food shelf. So that concludes our presentation today, we open it up to any questions. [25:35] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** All right, well thank you. Um, this organization is all volunteer and that is probably the most unique and incredible thing about it—is that the people that come forward with their efforts and their intentions to make just a tremendous difference. And you know, when you talk about the percentage of money that's raised for the food shelf and what that equates to for their annual operations, it's even more than the value of those dollars because we know that the food shelf has buying power that basically for every one dollar they get, they can turn that into ten dollars' worth of product to be of assistance to people. So it's just amazing to see, and you know, it's great to see us come back after a few years off. And I do know that Cub Foods is now starting to allow baking again, so I think we'll dust off that tube that I still have and we'll come and hit that next year. So I'll be looking for some friends to join up with that. But it's just incredible and really there's no eloquent words that I can achieve here to demonstrate the appreciation of the community, of this board, and of the City Council of Cottage Grove for all that you guys do. It's just really incredible, so thank you. So I'll open up here. Are there any questions, comments, feedbacks? [27:00] **Director Levine:** My children are very excited that the train is coming back. I did tell them about it, like yeah, we're... they're very excited and we do appreciate you bringing it to the community and, you know, allowing us the opportunity to be able to enjoy that with our neighbors and connecting with the community. It's awesome. [27:18] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Thank you. Vice Chair Olson. [27:19] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Great having you here. Thank you for coming and making a presentation this morning. Glad that you started off giving recognition to Mary Slusser. She has done so many amazing things as a community member here in the City of Cottage Grove. You know, she was one of the founding members of Beyond the Yellow Ribbon, she brought the Holiday Train through her business Spartan Promotions, she's, you know, done a ton of good in terms of donating goods and services for various events etc. And as Chair Dennis mentioned, this is truly a community event. You listed all the various activities and things and I thought to myself, "Yep, I've done that. Yeah, I've done... selling bread at church, bagging groceries with the Chair and so many other people in the room at Cub Foods." You know, there's just almost no stone left unturned in terms of raising money. And what's interesting is the amount of money raised continues to get bigger and bigger and bigger. During COVID we didn't even have the train and it was an extremely successful time for fundraising. If you choose to share those numbers you can, but I know what they are and they're pretty awesome. One of the things that I want to mention is this year the train actually is coming to Cottage Grove as its first stop on that date. Typically it stops in Hastings and then it comes here, but Hastings has their event the night previous and so it's coming here. What I'd like to know from you is, you know, being that it's going to be here roughly five o'clock give or take, what time can people start showing up to, you know, get in line, get to the front so that they can see all the cool lights and all that kind of stuff? You know, parking is always a bit of a challenge but the Cottage Grove Police Department and various volunteers certainly help. What time would you recommend people get there? [29:05] **Randy Bachman:** So it's shutting down at three and then the event officially starts at 3:30. That would be an appropriate time to arrive. The cookies and cocoa will be set up, food trucks will be ready to start selling, wagons will be running at 3:30. So if you park at the Park and Ride, we have four wagons running that night, so there'll be plenty of opportunity to jump on a wagon if you don't want to walk that distance. [29:28] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** And we'll all keep our fingers crossed because we've been there when it's been 30 degrees and we've been there when it's been 30 below. So we'll hope for the former instead of the latter. How's that? [29:40] **Randy Bachman:** Absolutely perfect. [29:41] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Thank you again for all that you do. [29:43] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** All right, thank you. Anyone else? All good? All right, well thank you guys and we're looking forward to a great event. Thank you so much. [29:55] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** All right, moving on we will jump up to number 5.2, which is the 2023 Visitors Guide, and Julie will lead us through that. Thank you very much. [30:05] **Julie Pryor Miller:** Yeah, so I'm going to be just discussing a few points about the 2023 Visitors Guide. A bit of a refreshed look, I'll give you a sneak peek. We're going to talk about ad sales and then we will talk about our printing quotes that we have received for the 2023 Visitors Guide. So here you'll see just a sneak peek of the reimagined cover for 2023. I did want to change a couple of items from 2022. I don't want to change the cover every single year; I want it to be recognizable from year to year. But there were a few things, just in learning from the past year, that I thought were appropriate changes. I wanted to add the word "Minnesota," I wanted to get some of the highlights of what's inside on the cover, and then of course I wanted to get our website on there. We talked at our last meeting about reprinting the 2022 guide but with a refresh look—new photos, new ads, all of that. So this is just a preview of some fresh layouts that we have been working with. Of course the board will receive a final copy before we go to print for any last suggestions or changes. You'll see here that the photos included are just things that we've taken over the year that showcase other amenities in our community as opposed to what we already showcased in the 2022 Visitors Guide. We have more photos of a lot of our meeting and convention spaces, we have some additional photos of places around town that we are really active, like River Oaks, and then of course the Strawberry Fest—we were out in full force this year and you know what a year it was, but we have amazing photos from that as well. So we wanted to showcase some of those and showcasing some of our different meeting places and places where people can host their meetings. The ads for this year: most of our 2022 advertisers did return, some did not, and for those spaces that were freed up we have acquired new advertisers. So we are doing well there. We are just working with some of the advertisers to finalize their ads before we go to print for the guide. And the printing quotes this year: we reached out to two potential printing vendors. We gave them the same specs of the 2022 guide: full color, 36 pages, fold/trim/binding, and then that nice aqueous coating for the cover so it feels a little bit more tactile. We did ask them for four, five, and six thousand quantities for their quotes. We reached out to GDI and Ideal Printers and with that exact information they gave us our quotes. Just from the learning with a year under our belt and the understanding of where the guide will be used and when it will be used and the volume in which it is taken off of the shelves of where it is, staff does recommend that 5,000 of the 2023 visitor guides be printed. So with that, I have a recommendation in front of you and I will stand for any questions. [33:15] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Okay, thank you Julie. Any questions or comments feedback on this particular item? Yeah, Director Hansen. [33:23] **Director Hansen:** As far as the printing quotes go, you got two quotes. Are you... is it too late to open that up to more quotes or is that kind of finalized right now as to who you're going with and the specs are in? [33:36] **Julie Pryor Miller:** It is not finalized. [33:37] **Director Hansen:** Okay. Okay, because coming from the printing industry—not me myself, but I have a lot of people that I know that could probably get in that range, a little bit lower. So I was just... I was just wondering that. [33:50] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** So I would love to know and... Director Hansen. Okay. So what we have here is a recommendation by motion to approve the quote for the... well, if we're going to hold off and get more quotes then we probably should just table this particular item until a later time. So, Administrator Levitt. [34:10] **Jennifer Levitt:** Mr. Chair, members of the Commission, one thing that you might want to consider is you could award a quote up to the value of $6,957 and if a quote were to come in lower than that for the 5,000, then we would authorize it. So if you would be willing to entertain that, we could ensure that printing is secured because there's obviously some paper and lead time with that for our printer. So if the board is comfortable with that type of motion, eliminating the actual name of the company and authorizing the value, that would be fabulous. [34:45] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Okay, that's a good way to go. And if we can get some better value on this, we'd all appreciate that too. So, so here we'll change a motion to approve the quote for the printing of 5,000 2023 Visitors Guides for a grand total of up to $6,957 pending any additional outside quotes coming in. So that would be the motion. I'll look for someone to make it. [35:10] **Director Levine:** [Makes motion]. [35:11] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Motion is authorized by Director Levine. Do I have a second? [35:14] **Director Hansen:** I’ll second. [35:15] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Second by Director Hansen. Any further discussion? Vice Chair Olson. [35:19] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** As I mentioned last year, I'll mention again this year: when it comes to the photos, we really want to be cognizant of the mix of individuals who live in our community relative to, you know, various either diversity or equity or things of that nature to make sure that people have a really good grasp of the fact that the Cottage Grove community is a great place to live, work, and play, and we're also very inclusive. [35:45] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Thank you. Okay, so getting that feedback at this point, all in favor say aye. [35:50] **Group:** Aye. [35:51] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Any opposed? Motion will carry six to zero. And then what we'll do is we'll move on to item 5.3, which is the Explore Minnesota grant opportunity, and Julie will just keep you right up here with this. [36:03] **Julie Pryor Miller:** So 5.3, a grant opportunity with Explore Minnesota. Just a little bit of background: Explore Minnesota does routinely offer grant opportunities for tourism industries in Minnesota to boost economic impact for the travel industry for the entire state. This particular grant is a 2023 Tourism Marketing Grant. It will work in tandem with Explore Minnesota's strategic objectives that they have laid out for their marketing initiatives. It is a one-to-one matching grant. So some of the items that could be matched with this grant that we already have outlined in our 2023 budget include paid social media advertising, print advertising, production of photos and video assets, and then the registration and fees for some of the vendor spaces that we have attended in the past and have planned to attend for 2023 as well, such as the Strawberry Fest Marketplace booth and the Cottage Grove Community Night Saints game booth activation. Just to note again, this is a one-to-one matching grant; however, no additional monies that were not already budgeted and accounted for will be spent. Explore Minnesota requests a progress report in March, which we happily fill out, can send out to them, and then we reconcile everything before their due date in August. I have before you a recommendation and I would just like to note that $900 has already been approved by the board for the booth activation for the Saints Cottage Grove Community Night, and the staff recommendation before you is: should we apply for and receive the monies from the grant, that we increase our sponsorship level at the Cottage Grove Community Night Saints game. [37:55] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Okay, thank you Julie. So two motions in front. First off, any questions for Julie on this? I guess just a very quick question for me: when we look at the sponsorship level, if you could just for transparency's sake just identify the brief differences between the two levels. [38:12] **Julie Pryor Miller:** Yes. So what we have already approved through the board is our activation on the concourse at the Saints game. So we are allowed to bring in our booth and our tables and our swag and interact with everyone at the game that night and, you know, let them know about Strawberry Fest the following week and try and bring in visitors from that event. The increased sponsorship level here would allow us to do a couple of fun extra things with the Saints: we'd have promotion over the PA, we would have an on-field activity and photo, and I believe there is one other thing that I am missing, but it just allows us to kind of get more recognition at the Saints game with, you know, the printing of the tickets and how many tickets we receive that we are able to give out into our community as well. [39:05] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Okay, thank you. All right, so item number one would be to approve the submission of grant application materials from the CG CVB to Explore Minnesota for the opportunity to receive $14,000 through the 2023 Tourism Marketing Grant. [39:21] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** So moved. [39:22] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Motion made by Vice Chair Olson with a second by... [39:25] **Director Newt:** Second. [39:26] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Second by Director Newt. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. [39:30] **Group:** Aye. [39:31] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Any opposed? First motion passes six to zero. And then the second is: should the CG CVB receive the allotted amount for the grant, to approve the signing of a $1,600 contract with the Saint Paul Saints for the securing of the date for Cottage Grove Community Night on June 10th, 2023, with an increased sponsorship level package. Do I have a motion on that? [39:55] **Director Levine:** [Makes motion]. [39:56] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Motion made by Director Levine. Do I have a second? [39:58] **Director Newt:** Second. [39:59] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Second by Director Newt. Any further discussion? Not seeing any. All in favor say aye. [40:03] **Group:** Aye. [40:04] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Any opposed? [None]. That motion passes six to zero as well. So thank you Julie, appreciate the help. And next we'll move on to item 5.4, which is the 2022 quarter three lodging tax revenue report, and Jamie Mann will help us with that. Thank you. [40:20] **Jaime Mann:** Good morning. Thank you Chairman Dennis. We're going to take a quick look at the revenue we received for Quarter Three. This number does include lodging tax—we did have a ten thousand dollar grant that was from earlier this year; it was approved previously but the funds did hit our account in August of this year, so it is reported in Q3 as well. So for lodging tax in Quarter Three of 2022, we received $23,620. Again, you see there the ten thousand dollar grant revenue that we received as well, which brings our total revenue received to $33,620, which is 26 and a half percent over our projections for Quarter Three. And that brings our year-to-date total to 11.3% over our 2022 revenue projections. So we are doing well for this year; we're kind of right on track for where we want to be. Quarter Four tends to slow down just a little bit with travel, but we are right on track for hitting our year with what we projected. So, any questions? [41:35] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** All right, any questions from the board? Vice Chair Olson. [41:38] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Jamie, thank you so much for that information. Could you go back to the slide, please, that shows the revenue projections? Thank you. So as I look at this for our total revenue versus our budgeted revenue, the first question that pops into my mind is: what's in the bank right now? [41:55] **Jaime Mann:** That is a great question, Vice Chair Olson. I do have Finance putting together kind of where we're at because of previous years as well. I do not have that information as of yet; I know they're working on it. With a holiday week, I should have that before our next meeting for you, though. [42:10] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** And there's a purpose behind my asking that question. Thank you for the response. Earlier this year—and it sounds a little weird saying it as we're looking at snow coming down—but the Convention and Visitors Bureau sponsored a hole at the Public Safety golf tournament at River Oaks. And I had the opportunity to work the hole for the entire event and I had a lot of a lot of help from some good people, including people like you who helped get us set up etc. And then our commissioner and Economic Development Director Larson, who's here this morning, she worked the hole for a period of time, as did our Communications Director [Phil Jents]. And it was an extremely valuable experience in my view. I'll let Commissioner Larson speak for herself, but the thing that I noticed as we worked that hole was how many of the golfers who live in Cottage Grove—in fact, some of whom work for the City of Cottage Grove—had no idea who we were, didn't understand that we existed, which I think was part of the reason to sponsor the hole: is to gain some exposure and build that fan base and let people know who we were. As we discussed that during the course of our previous gathering, we were concerned we didn't have enough revenue in the bank to cover the hole sponsorship. And so the Chair at that time made a very generous statement that he would cover the cost of the hole sponsorship, which if I remember correctly was $250. And what I'd like to see happen once we know how much is in the bank is I'd like to see him get reimbursed for that because truly it was a Convention and Visitors Bureau sponsored event. And even though I know that the Chair is an extremely generous man and donates to many, many different things throughout the course of the year in the city, it just feels wrong to me that he had to reach in his own pocket to pay for that, especially if we have the revenue available. And again, the event itself—I mean, for River Oaks the event was successful, for the Public Safety board it was successful, and I would argue that for the Convention and Visitors Bureau, it was a very important place for us to be and it was very successful. But I would also ask my colleague and our Economic Development Director Larson to share her thoughts. [44:40] **Director Larson:** Thank you. Um, yes, I agree the golf tournament gave us the opportunity to talk about the CVB and it was surprising that folks did not know. But then again, as good as the city is about communicating, you there's still always going to be somebody who says they didn't know something. But it was a fun day and it gave us the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about the CVB. And I concur—we gave out a lot of visitors guides, we did a lot of pens and all kinds of other fun giveaways and a lot of candy too, but more than anything I think just the opportunity to share the information with each team as they came through about who we are, what we do, why we exist, being that we're still a relatively new organization. To me, that was priceless. So again, whenever you get the information if you could share that, be great, but that would be my hope is that we could reimburse the Chair. Thank you. [45:35] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Okay, well first off, Vice Chair Olson, I appreciate you recognizing that donation again. I made it with intentions of making a difference here and I'm happy to do that. So, very respectfully, that water is under the bridge. So the money was given and it went to a good cause and I'm just glad it made a difference for us. And you know, I know you and I both, as council members, there's times during the year that we make donations back to the organization here on behalf of the community. So I just appreciate it being left in that position. And the only thing I will say relative to our budget—and yes, the numbers look good and it's a nice thing when we can get grants, that's a beautiful thing—but grants are not necessarily something we can count on. There's full opportunities where we can apply and be turned down. So I just want to be mindful and I also want to get a dollar amount that we have of money in the bank. It looks good on paper, but if you took that grant out it doesn't look quite as good, if you know what I'm saying. So I think we have to continue to be mindful of how we're allocating funds and spending money on behalf of this process. One of the things I know that Vice Chair Olson and I have discussed previous was the cost that we pay for photographs. And so I think that's something we probably want to look a little bit closer at. If I'm correct, wasn't it like a thousand dollars for three pictures or something along those lines? [47:10] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Yeah, absolutely. And it was my understanding that we could get the benefit of our partnership with Sievers in that realm as well. So I'm not sure if they are on board with doing some of that work for us as part of the agreement we have with them, but you're right, we're paying an awful lot for that service right now. [47:30] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** And we also have a photo contest that's done every year on behalf of members of the community that can submit the photographs in, and when they do that, those become the intellectual owned property of the city itself. So I think that, you know, in certain instances if we can make use of those things to run a little bit tighter budget relative to how we're spending in that particular regard, that would be a good thing to do. So but, thank you so much for that update. And not seeing any other questions, we'll move on to item 5.5, which is the 2023 budget approval. [48:10] **Jaime Mann:** Thank you Chairman Dennis. Just to note, before you, you have a larger sheet too that has the detail. I'm going to kind of give you the overview, but if you'd like to break down to the detail, you have that larger sheet in front of you. So one thing to note is nothing has changed in this budget since our preliminary budget review with you. Lodging tax projections are still based on a 60% occupancy rate, coming in about five thousand five hundred dollars a month, giving us the same estimated revenue from lodging tax projections of sixty-six thousand three hundred and forty-eight dollars. At this point, we are projecting roughly the same amount of visitors guide ad sales which help offset the cost of printing the guide. So our total projected revenue for 2023 is $72,640. Now I know you just approved the grant—like Chairman Dennis just mentioned, that that is not approved yet—so we did not include that in our revenue projections until we have approval of those grant funds. As far as expenses go, we are basing expenses for 2023 roughly off expenses for 2022—what we've actually spent and what we've projected through the remainder of the year. So our expenses are broken down into three categories: we have marketing expenses, operating expenses, and other expenses. Marketing expenses, which is our biggest category, supports the mission of the CVB. It's for things like social media advertising, advertising in publications like the Hike and Bike Guide, hosting our website—those types of marketing activities. We have budgeted a total of $45,874 roughly for marketing expenses for 2023. The second category of operating expenses are kind of your day-to-day operational expenses—postage and office supplies are included in that. Also included in that are the payback to the city for running the CVB. So the largest expense in there, just over fifteen thousand dollars, actually comes back to the city for facilitating the running of the Visitors Bureau. That is based on either a ten thousand dollar payback or 25% of the lodging tax revenue, whichever is greater. Our total operating expenses are budgeted at just over twenty-two thousand dollars. And the "Other Expense" category is the initial startup payback to the City of Cottage Grove. So the city funded bringing in-house the CVB and we have two payments remaining to pay the city back for those startup costs. So after that, after the first two quarters of next year, we will be done with our startup cost payback. Twenty-seven hundred fifty dollars is budgeted for that, and then starting in '24, we'll be completely done with those payments. So our total revenue is just over 72,000, our total expense projection is almost 71,000, so we are projecting a profit of about one thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars. So before you as a recommendation, and I would be happy to stand for any questions. [51:15] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Okay. Any questions on this material? Not seeing any. Okay, we will have a motion. I do want to just mention very quickly, you know, many know me, I'm a guy that likes to, you know, clear our books of debt, right? So it's a very nice thing to see that we're going to have two more payments and then we've got that cleaned up on our startup costs, and that's progress to me. So I'm happy to see that. So we have a motion here to approve the 2023 Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau final budget. Is there someone who would like to authorize that motion? [51:48] **Director Levine:** So moved. [51:49] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Motion made by Director Levine. Do you have a second? [51:52] **Director Hansen:** Second. [51:53] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Second by Director Hansen. Any further discussion? Not seeing any. All in favor say aye. [51:57] **Group:** Aye. [51:58] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Any opposed? Motion carries six to zero. Thank you Jamie. [52:03] **Jaime Mann:** Thank you. [52:04] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** And we'll move on to item number six, which is "Other Business." 6.1 is CG CVB comments. Do we have any comments this morning we'd like to make? Not seeing any, we'll move on to 6.2, response to previous comments. We did not have any. Item number seven is workshop; we are clean on that today. Number eight is adjournment, and before I call for a motion to adjournment, I want to mention that our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 28, 2023, at 7:30 a.m. right here in the council chambers. And hopefully we'll be looking at spring coming closely behind that. So, so I'll look for a motion to adjourn. [52:50] **Vice Chair Justin Olsen:** Move to adjourn. [52:51] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Motion made by Vice Chair Olson. Do you have a second? [52:54] **Director Hansen:** Second. [52:55] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Second by Director Hansen. All in favor say aye. [52:58] **Group:** Aye. [52:59] **Chairman Steve Dennis:** Motion carries 6-0. Have a great day everyone and happy holidays.