[00:00:00] **Justin Olsen**: Good morning. Welcome to the Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau meeting scheduled for June 4th, 2024. I am Chairman Justin Olsen calling this meeting to order. Unfortunately, we do not have a quorum present this morning for the meeting, so we will not be voting on any items that are on today's agenda. Luckily, we don't have a very heavy agenda in terms of voting, but we will still take information from staff. So before we get started, I would appreciate it if all in the chambers would stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. [00:00:30] **Justin Olsen**: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And Alexa, I assume you've already taken roll. You know who's here; it's not a lot to count. Okay, good. Um, because we do not have a quorum, we will not be approving the minutes; those will move to our next agenda. But we will transition to today's presentation on the local option sales tax, which we will receive from Zac Dockter. [00:01:00] **Zac Dockter**: Good morning. So the Preserve Play Prosper plan is a program that's developed to enhance our park system and give the opportunity to the residents to vote on making those enhancements to our Parks and Recreation system. The goals for me today are to explain the referendum so that you are in the know and that you can respond to residents or visitors that come in and ask questions of you, and then explain that this is an opportunity for the community to vote on these recreational improvements and that we're here to educate them on what those options are—but the choice is theirs when it's time to vote. [00:01:45] **Zac Dockter**: Survey after survey shows that Cottage Grove Parks and Recreation is a point of pride for community members. We do a lot, but we're a growing community, and we take care of what we have, but we find ourselves struggling to fund new growth opportunities and capital improvements to existing systems. Our forefathers had the intuition back in 1974 and 1984 to do a couple of referendums that built things like Hamlet Park and Hearthside Park, Woodridge Park, the Ice Arena, and the taxpayers voted on that and got those parks in place. We haven't had a referendum since 1984 that has passed. So we're asking again this year if the residents want to approve this measure to improve three particular parks—make improvements to three particular Parks and Recreation facilities. [00:02:30] **Zac Dockter**: Importantly, I want to make sure that everyone knows this wasn't a knee-jerk reaction, that we're not just throwing these questions out there kind of off the cuff. There was in 2022 we did a "Reimagine Recreation" survey, which took a lot of information—anything from middle school sixth-grade projects to online surveys, Facebook surveys. We were out in the community shaking the trees trying to get people to tell us what they want from our Parks and Recreation system. So out of that, we developed this long laundry list of things that we thought the community wanted. It was a very long list, lots of pages, and then we tried to take those and we tried to narrow them down into, okay, well we can do these things at Hamlet Park, we can do these things at Mississippi Dunes Park, we can do these things at River Oaks Park. As a matter of fact, there was originally five projects, but we narrowed it down to three. And then some of those other improvements that didn't make it in there are in future planned parks where some of those facilities that people asked for will be built out at another date. [00:03:30] **Zac Dockter**: So what we found out what residents want are new improved recreation opportunities for people of all ages, preservation of natural habitat, and enhanced connections to parks and nature. So obviously that's kind of a high-level view of what people wanted in their park system. Introducing the Preserve Play Prosper plan: based on the community feedback, we're proposing to invest $36 million to renovate and revitalize our parks, recreational offerings, and outdoor spaces. And as I said, the plan focuses on three projects which I'll review individually. [00:04:15] **Zac Dockter**: The upgrading and enhancement of Hamlet Park—just a reminder, Hamlet Park is our oldest and largest park in Cottage Grove. It's received many updates over the years; we've been chipping away at things and trying to do, you know, little improvements like adding the ball fields, replacing or adding a shelter, replacing the playground. But it hasn't received a significant infusion of cash to really revitalize that park since 1984. So this would be the largest project of the three at $17 million, and that includes escalation and other things to make sure that we have the funds available when we need them to build out. So things like upgrading the play equipment, expanding that footprint of the playground, building a new four-season building—so removing the existing building, I call it the "Pizza Hut building," kind of looks like a Pizza Hut there. It served its time and it's done great, but it's time to replace that. Install a small splash pad, create a new skateboard park—we got a lot of questions on the skateboard park. We would actually get a group of users together, skateboard park users, and they would be our brains behind how we design and develop that, because the trends in skateboarding in the world are changing all the time. The concrete skateboard parks now, they're saying those are born because everybody's got a concrete skate park, so we would get a peer group of folks to help us design that skateboard park. Building an amphitheater, creating an art sculpture garden with benches and informational kiosks, adding a synthetic turf sports field where the existing main football/soccer field is, finishing the south baseball complex by finishing those last two baseball fields. So a rendering of what that might look like... just real quickly, the image on the right is actually the entrance off of Hadley and 80th. There's three entrances into the park: there's the north which is a trail entry, the central area which is probably what most people think of when they think of Hamlet Park, the main entry, and then there's actually a south entry to where the four-field ball complex is called Cracker Fields. [00:06:00] **Zac Dockter**: And then Mississippi Dunes Park would be the second project. So we have this unique opportunity for this 33.3-acre nature-themed public park along the Mississippi. I'm sure you've seen some information on that, but it's definitely a unique opportunity—our first significant access to the Mississippi River, which we've all been waiting for for a really long time. So we want to make sure we can get residents and visitors down there to use it. The $13 million plan for this one would be to restore and preserve natural habitat along the river, build up the shoreline along the river, provide recreational river access for canoes, kayaks, small boats, and fishing. So there's a picture of what a launch might look like that can do all those things. It wouldn't be a large launch; it would be a smaller launch for smaller vessels. Construct new and enhance existing walks and hiking trails, create a nature-based playground (which is that 3D image on the right), provide space for outdoor classrooms, build an interpretive learning center (which we're in the concept design phase for right now), and then adding facilities for nature activities and picnicking. And again, just another layout of what that might look like, but we are redoing the master plan. It's going to be very similar to what you see here, but we'll have some new updated renderings of those within the next couple of weeks, and Council's actually reviewing the concept building design and that concept master plan at their workshop tomorrow. So we're moving forward in that process, probably about 70-75% along the way for that. [00:07:30] **Zac Dockter**: And then the third project is to transform the River Oaks Golf Course and Event Center into a multi-purpose recreation destination for families and peoples of all ages and all year round. So I want to make sure the first thing I'm going to say is this is not just about improving the golf course; as a matter of fact, golf is the smallest part of the project. The $6 million plan for this is to install multi-sport simulators (there's an image of that on the top right corner where you can play golf, hockey, soccer, zombie shooting games, or something like that). So there's all sorts of things you can do with these simulators which allows us to use that facility year-round; it would be over on the Pro Shop side. Adding a pickleball event court setup kind of where the wedding venue is now, so a multi-purpose court area. Creating a new winter mountain biking course and biking course—those fat tire bikes—so the course can be used more in the winter. We currently do cross-country skiing; we could also use that for 5K runs as well. Upgrading the building, connecting the two buildings—right now we have the Clubhouse and the Pro Shop; we would connect those together to make that a more seamless approach so things like adding the simulators on the Pro Shop side can now be served by the food or by the Eagles Bar and Grill as well. Obviously, the patio is definitely a selling point for our community and a point of pride, so we want to enhance the patio area, grow that, and just make it more of a dynamic setting. And then last, build a nine-hole Himalayan putting green course designed for all skill levels. There's kind of a picture on the right—that's overselling it a little bit—but it's just got all these undulations and makes it a little more fun. And a reminder that our putting course is free to the public, so it doesn't come with a charge. There's a lot of things you can do at River Oaks whether it's bocce ball or the putting green, or the mountain biking, the cross-country skiing—things people can do for free. And images of what those might look like: again, the building, the multi-purpose court with the bocce ball courts next to it, and then the Himalayan green with the connection of the Clubhouse. And you can see on the court, obviously connecting those courts would be kind of championship-style pickleball, but you could hold a small concert there, you could hold a party there, you could hold a small wedding there or whatever it might be. [00:10:00] **Zac Dockter**: So the Preserve Play Prosper plan is designed to invest in the Parks and Recreation to deliver the activities and offerings that our residents want while trying to be responsible with the tax dollars. So Cottage Grove residents are asked to consider a half-percent sales tax in the general election which will be November 5th. And if approved, that'll generate the $36 million over a 25-year period that will pay for these improvements that we talked about. So why the local option sales tax? If this was a standard referendum, that gets assessed to property owners only—so it's based on your property taxes. The local sales tax shares the cost of that across the community. So whether you live in—people that are in apartments will help pay for the improvements, people that are visiting Cottage Grove. That's the important one: over 31% of the taxes would be generated by non-residents. So people that are visiting town would help pay for these improvements. The sales tax works the same way as any other sales tax. The following items are not taxed: groceries, clothing, prescription over-the-counter medications, and baby products. Anyone who purchases qualifying items has to pay that half-percent sales tax. It's the equivalent of one penny for every $2 spent. We figure on average it's going to be about $23 per year for a resident, and these are based on—the University of Minnesota did a study for us, they do a whole bunch of comparables and data analysis to get us to this information. So it should be pretty solid: about $2 a month. [00:11:30] **Zac Dockter**: The ballot questions is where it gets interesting. The state has to authorize local option sales taxes, so I want to make sure that this is clear. The key diagram is on the bottom right: there's going to be three questions, but there's only one tax. So residents will have to vote on Hamlet Park by itself—that has to stand alone. If they vote "Yes" on Hamlet Park, there's a half-cent sales tax. If they vote "Yes" on Mississippi Dunes, it's still just a half-percent sales tax. If they vote "Yes" on all three, it's a half a percent sales tax. If they vote on just one of those three projects and the other two don't go, it's still a half a percent sales tax. What would happen would be that obviously the cash infusion would be prioritized towards one project, which would allow us to develop that project probably a little bit faster and reprioritize. Because right now the way we have it planned is these park projects would be built over phases throughout those 20-some years depending on how the revenue comes in. As you can imagine, the town is growing, the business district is growing, so we anticipate revenues to rise. Based on how those revenues come in is how we would prioritize how those projects get completed, and we do have a phased approach plan in place. [00:12:45] **Zac Dockter**: And I should mention back on that, too, that it's important to know we're working on a communication piece right now that talks about where you're already paying for those local option sales taxes. This isn't just a Cottage Grove thing. If you go to Woodbury, if you go to Bloomington, if you go to many of the places around here, you're already incurring local option sales tax. St. Paul and Minneapolis for sure have much higher sales tax additions on their local taxes. So important to know, and we're going to create a map that kind of shows people that when they're traveling they're already paying a lot of these taxes in other communities. It's not just Cottage Grove on its own little planet coming up with this. And I believe there's 18 cities that got state approval last year, so those are all their residents will be voting on a project too. So lots of information! I did share with you the postcards we've been handing out at shows and festivals; we'll be handing those out at Strawberry Fest and everywhere we go, and then there's these flyers as well. We're working really hard on communications again, trying to make sure people have the information they need to make an educated vote. Obviously, how they vote is up to them and we'll respect that, but we want to make sure that people have all the information they need and that hopefully you guys can help share that information and get them in the right direction. I will say it is a very well-done website, so when in doubt, get people to the website; there's a ton of information on there. With that, I will stand for questions. [00:14:15] **Justin Olsen**: Thank you, Zac. Nice presentation, very informative. I will turn to my left and see if Board Member Hansen or Board Member Grula have any questions. [00:14:30] **Board Member Grula**: I just have one question, and maybe it's not an issue, but with the improvements of all the parks—the River Oaks—and the plan is to draw a lot more people into them, has there been an issue with parking, or is that something that's going to be addressed? Because I know I've been to River Oaks a few times and it gets pretty heavy there in the parking lot. [00:14:45] **Zac Dockter**: So we don't have a current plan to expand the parking. We have talked about it. I mean, the hard part with parking is always 5% of the time is when the parking is the worst, right? It's the other 95% of the time it functions right. But we have talked about potentially creating an overflow area in the future, but right now there's no concrete plans to do that yet. But we understand, and there are times where we wish we had access to another overflow lot. Good question. [00:15:15] **Board Member Hansen**: Any others? I have a couple on the topic of parking. Do you know if the golf course has ever spoken to Pine Harbor about just paying them a fee for overflow parking? My children used to attend school there and it's right there next to it. [00:15:30] **Zac Dockter**: We did in the past, but that's a good comment and I think we should probably have that conversation again. [00:15:45] **Board Member Hansen**: And then just two others. This one I might have missed, but why would we be separating out the three park locations for the voting instead of just lumping them all together? [00:15:55] **Zac Dockter**: That is a good question and that is a state law: each project needs to stand on its own merit. [00:16:00] **Board Member Hansen**: That makes sense. Final question: I liked your illustrations on the parks. If you did have those fat tire bike trails, would there be bike rentals to go with that? [00:16:10] **Zac Dockter**: That is a good question. We haven't got that far yet, but I think it's a great idea. We have—so right now we have snowshoe rentals that we've talked about putting out there, but I like the idea. Thank you. [00:16:30] **Justin Olsen**: Yeah, I like that idea too, that would be in keeping with our practices around snowshoes, and then we also rent kayaks down at Hazen P. Mooers, so something to definitely look into. A couple things I'd like to add to this, and Zac, please feel free to chime in or Jennifer if you'd like. You mentioned that the city has not passed a referendum of this nature since 1984, and I can vouch for that—I've been here, so I'm fully aware. One of the things that we hear as city council members pretty consistently, at least in my tenure on the city council, is we need more things for young people to do. And one of the things that we take great pride in is our park and trail system. I can't give you the exact number, but since I started on the city council to today, I believe we've added somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen or more parks and many, many miles of trails for families and residents of the community to enjoy. [00:17:30] **Justin Olsen**: The idea behind the local option sales tax, which is different as you mentioned, Zac, than a straight referendum, is that we share the burden with those who visit the community as well as those who live in the community and shop in the community. And it's very popular across the country, frankly, but especially in the state of Minnesota, it works very well for many other communities. One of the things that we benefit from here is we already have a lot of visitation in the summertime for different tournaments and things for softball, baseball. We have hockey tournaments galore that come to our Ice Arena, and of course then we also have, you know, various tournaments and fundraisers and things at the golf course. [00:18:15] **Justin Olsen**: Additionally, we have a very healthy Business Park, and it's my understanding—and again please correct me if I'm wrong—but those who purchase goods or services from the companies that are based in the Business Park will also be participating in this local option sales tax. So for example, if I'm a home builder in, you know, pick your place outside of the state of Minnesota, and I purchase a whole bunch of windows for my development from Renewal by Andersen, I pay the local option sales tax because Renewal by Andersen is based here in Cottage Grove. So I think the mechanics behind this really work well. But again, as we've always said as a City Council, when we have wants, we go to the voters; when we have needs, then that's a different conversation and we have to accept the responsibility for funding those needs however we need to through our budget process. These things are wants, but they're wants that we've heard about for a really long time. And when and if we improve Hamlet Park, all that's going to do is provide us with additional opportunity to bring non-residents into the community for different tournaments that are bigger than what we can handle right now because we don't have the field space. And so there again, they will be paying for that local option sales tax as non-residents if they stay in our hotels, if they eat in our restaurants, so on and so forth. [00:19:30] **Justin Olsen**: With respect to the golf course, which is profitable, city-owned and operated just like the Ice Arena, we get a lot of people who use the golf course for contracted purposes. For example, the school district contracts for some of their high school teams to practice and play at the golf course. We have weddings, we have all kinds of events, whether it's a charity golf tournament or a fundraiser. We have the various end-of-year sports teams who come in and they have their award ceremonies and things of that nature. All of that is a community benefit, and the golf course is an asset—it's a community asset—but we want to make that asset even better for people and we want residents to be able to enjoy the very best experience they can get at the golf course, which is why that was one of the projects chosen here. [00:20:15] **Justin Olsen**: And then of course last, but certainly not least, the new park down along the Mississippi, which—if I had a nickel for everybody who's come up to me and talked to me about how excited they are about that park, I could probably retire. People who live in this town have been waiting for so many years ever since we were kids, Zac, to get access to the river. We have the most river frontage of any community in the Metro, but we don't have access to it. So getting that part done and getting it done quickly and getting it done right and ensuring that all the various amenities exist, you know, that is something that will not only benefit residents, but it will be of regional significance. At the end of the day, though, if the voters choose not to vote for this, we will still proceed forward with what we can do when we can do it on these projects and others, but it will take significantly longer to get where we would like to go. And we certainly hope that we can educate residents as to the benefit of this sort of a plan versus, you know, your straight "let's just do a referendum and see if people will vote for that." It's a very different animal with different mechanics, not the least of which is when the projects are done, the tax goes away—it sunsets, it expires. So the faster we can get the project done, the faster the tax will sunset and I think at the end of the day, everybody's going to be very happy with the outcome should we be able to pass this as a community. [00:21:45] **Justin Olsen**: There's going to be a lot of education to be done. Never forget there are people out there who seem to really enjoy putting out information—you know, any opportunity they can find to bash the city and the way the city does things. And so you have to compete against that in the arena. But I'm very confident that Zac and his team and the rest of the staff and the communications team will put forth maximum effort to give as many residents as possible the information they're looking for. And Zac, if people have questions, you mentioned they can go to the website, right? Certainly, I want them to know they can reach out to any of our council members—whether it's Mayor Bailey, myself, Councilmember Olsen, Councilmember Garza, Councilmember Thiede—we would love to talk to you about it. I know City staff is very well-versed on this, so please let your friends and neighbors know that if they have questions or they bring it up that "Oh, I heard the city's doing something," we would love to have that conversation. I had a text message just the other day from a resident who said, "Is the city doing another referendum for something or another?" and I said, "Yes." "Well, is it for bonding?" and I said, "No, it's local option sales tax." And so that generated some really good dialogue and that person turned out it was somebody who was in favor of it but wanted to have the nuts and bolts so that he could speak to his friends if and when it should come up over the bonfire, you know, at a graduation party or something. So I think the team is prepared to get the word out, but it's going to take more than the team; it's going to take those of us sitting up here, it's going to take the residents of the community, members of the CVB who will clearly benefit from this—there's a lot of different stakeholders. So again, please make sure that the right information is being disseminated to the public. And the last thing I want to ask on this, Zac, is: you mentioned that we sort of have a communications plan, right? We are going to be at the Saints game this weekend—do you know if there'll be any information available to those attending from Cottage Grove who might need to learn more about this at the Saints game? [00:24:00] **Zac Dockter**: I don't think we were going to, just because we're trying to reach out to people from outside the community—fair enough inside—so we're going to keep it to our festivals like Strawberry Fest, food truck festival, those kinds of things. [00:24:15] **Justin Olsen**: Perfect. Well, thanks again. Did you have anything you wanted to add, Jennifer? Anyone else? [00:24:20] **Jennifer Levitt**: Just one more, that don't hesitate to send people to me because there's no secrets. I'm happy to share information and get people the right spot. So if you get yourself into a spot where you think someone needs to talk to me, send them my way—I'm happy to respond. [00:24:35] **Justin Olsen**: Perfect. And I assume you're doing the same presentation to all the various city commissions, etc.? [00:24:40] **Zac Dockter**: Yep. [00:24:45] **Justin Olsen**: Wonderful. Thanks again, good information. Transitioning away from local option sales tax into some of the business items that were on today's agenda—and again, we're not voting because we do not have a quorum present to be able to do that—I'd like Jaime Mann to present the 2023 annual report. [00:25:00] **Jaime Mann**: Thank you, Chairman, members of the board. Now before you and included in your packet that was sent out Friday is an actual copy of the annual report that has a lot of detail. Basically, it's a recap of what we did last year. I'm going to be touching on some of the highlights as we go through the presentation today. To start with, we did our second publication of the Discover Cottage Grove visitors guide last year. We printed 5,000 copies that were either distributed by mail... we have them at the Mall of America last year, we had them at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. We also had them at Explore Minnesota welcome centers throughout the state, so they'll email us and tell me we need more guides, so we'll mail them out to them. So if you stop as you're coming into Minnesota, you should be able to see our visitors guide throughout welcome centers. We also had them here at City Hall, at the Ice Arena, the golf course had them for a while, the chamber office had them as well, as having a digital version online on our website. And then people could request a printed copy, so we would mail them out on demand as people requested them. Last year we had 10 advertisers in the guide that accounted for just under $5,100 in revenue for our budget. [00:26:15] **Jaime Mann**: We also had our website—this is kind of one of the biggest drivers, places where we drive visitors to. It has an events calendar on it which we update with every event that we are aware of that's happening in Cottage Grove, so you can find information on our website. We also have a monthly e-newsletter called The Insider that we send out at the beginning of the month that includes things happening during the month. So we just sent out the June e-newsletter that talked about Strawberry Fest and the Saints game and the events coming up; that really drives them to our website as well. Photo and video production is a huge part as we're still building our library of photo and videos. We did spend quite a bit of money last year on photography and SWCTC did seven videos for us. We're looking to keep that going this year; while we have a great database of photos, there's always new events happening in Cottage Grove, so we continually look to build our photo library. [00:27:15] **Jaime Mann**: Social media is probably our biggest avenue to reach people and tell people about all the great things happening in Cottage Grove. Before you there's a bunch of statistics; I'm not going to read through them all, they're also included in your annual report. Facebook is probably our biggest touchpoint for people—it's where we have our largest audience—followed by Instagram, but then we have YouTube, people watching us on YouTube as well. A little bit more about social media: our top-performing campaign last year was our food truck festival, which obviously was the large event that we hosted for the first time last year, and then our highest-watched video is the information on Cottage Grove Bike Park. We also always want to nurture our partnerships that we have in place. So again, we have the Saints game this year, so we'll be partnering with them for Cottage Grove Community Night. We love working with Strawberry Fest to help promote the largest event that we host here in Cottage Grove. The Cottage Grove Area Chamber is a great partner for us, and then Explore Minnesota is a fantastic partner—they're a great resource for us and then they also help us with some grant funding throughout the year, which included last year we got a $14,000 grant through them which we matched for another 14,000 so we could pay to promote Cottage Grove even more. [00:28:30] **Jaime Mann**: Community engagement is another big piece of the CVB. So we attended large and small events last year; these are kind of the highlights of outside events that we participated in. We were at the Saints game, we had a booth in the Strawberry Fest marketplace, and we were at both the Memorial Day and the Labor Day One Family Fest, which is a big youth sports tournament at Kingston Park that they do over Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend. We also hosted our inaugural food truck festival. We estimate between 6,000 and 7,000 attendees joined us at the event last year. We had 23 food trucks, four sponsors, we had live music, the Lions were there serving alcohol for us, we had a booth there, we partnered with Sashco Cares who sold wristbands as well for the beer tent. Lots of great food, lots of people, happy faces, people dancing—it was a great time last year. [00:29:15] **Jaime Mann**: Here you can see an overview of the budget. Now know that these numbers do not include the salary and benefits of our two communication specialists because those have been previously 100% covered by ARPA funds through our budget. One thing to note for next year, we will be showing those to you on the budget because the ARPA funds are done now, so those will fall under our CVB budget. Looking ahead to 2024—I know it's kind of interesting to talk about planning for 2024 in June—but a few things that we've talked about internally for our strategic plan for this year is looking at revamping our website, maybe looking at who is hosting our website to update that a little bit more, looking at putting together a welcome video with SWCTC. We always want to continue to nurture and grow our partnerships, so looking for other areas where we can partner to increase our exposure of Cottage Grove. We would look at putting together a "tour of the town" passport kind of things to do and see in Cottage Grove; right now we're looking at kind of a free option for people to use, maybe our parks or small businesses. We always want to look at including DEI in our imagery and our videos, anything we put out—including people of all ages, races, and abilities—and then potentially looking at costs associated with a billboard. With that, I would be happy to stand for any questions. [00:30:30] **Justin Olsen**: Thank you very much, Jaime. That's a lot of information in a pretty short, compact little presentation, but really good stuff. Any questions from any of the attendees today? Go ahead. [00:30:45] **Board Member Grula**: I have one question. I know that you mentioned that we've been beefing up the budget for photography. Have we ever worked with any of like the Park High School students to see if they could help us out for free for class credit for some young people's photographs? [00:30:55] **Jaime Mann**: Thank you, Chairman, members of the board. We have actually not looked at that. I don't know if anybody's ever kind of thrown that idea out there before; it's something we could explore, absolutely. [00:31:05] **Justin Olsen**: Thank you. Other questions at all? No. Jaime, very good information there, thanks a lot. I like the idea about working with our students. When I was part of the Cable Commission board, one of the things we recommended for SWCTC is a program through which some of the high school kids who are interested in audio and visual and may work on some of the one-act plays and those kinds of things could potentially do a summer internship and learn a little bit more about the nuts and bolts. And perhaps this is an opportunity for us as well—something really kind of fun to think about. So thanks for the recommendation. Let's transition to our 2024 Quarter 1 lodging tax and revenue collection, and Jaime will take us through this as well. [00:31:45] **Jaime Mann**: Thank you, Chairman, members of the board. I will kind of put this disclaimer on: we are missing one month—we are missing a January lodging tax payment from one of our lodging facilities, so this number is slightly lower than it will be probably next time when I present the budget to you. So for Quarter 1, we had just over $14,000 in lodging tax collected. The "other revenue" listed there is from our visitors guide ad sales; we had almost $4,500 in ad sales for our visitors guide that basically helps offset the cost of printing our guide. So we came in just about 19% under budget for 2024 Quarter 1. I will tell you Quarter 1 is typically our lowest lodging tax revenue received, but when we do our lodging tax budget, we just average the lodging tax out over the course of the year. One thing we had talked about as we're looking at putting together our 2025 preliminary budget, which will be presented in August, is maybe fluctuating the lodging tax numbers so the quarters make sense to what we're actually receiving. So that's why it looks a little skewed; we typically come back in Quarter 2, but when we're looking at next year's budget, we will look at fluctuating those numbers a little bit. So with that, I would be happy to stand for any questions. [00:33:00] **Justin Olsen**: Thank you, Jaime. Any questions on the revenue collection for Q1? Okay, good to know that we're still chasing that payment from January. I'm eager to find out when we actually collect that. Moving on to item 7.3 under business items, which is the visitors bureau events update; Jaime's going to take us through this as well. [00:33:15] **Jaime Mann**: Thank you, Chairman, members of the board. So I get to talk about some of the upcoming events that we have throughout the summer that Discover Cottage Grove will be at. We'd love to invite you to attend with us. First, this weekend on Saturday, we will be at the Saints game for Cottage Grove Community Night at the St. Paul Saints. The game starts at 6:07 p.m., doors open at 4:30. I do have a ticket for each of you if you'd like to attend with us. If you'd like additional tickets, they are general admission, so you can just go on the Saints website and buy additional tickets if you'd like to bring family members with you. We will be giving away information on Strawberry Fest, we'll be giving away visitors guides. The chamber—we had partnered with them to kind of swap brochures, so we included a brochure in their Community Showcase bag and they gave us a brochure to include in our bags as a giveaway at the Saints game as well. [00:34:00] **Jaime Mann**: Also in front of you, you have examples of the swag that we ordered for this year. So we have a backpack that will include—we have some glow-in-the-dark Discover Cottage Grove cups, there's kind of a fun flexible pencil in there. We had looked at doing the snack bags which were recommended at the last meeting—those kind of don't draw kids in, so we took those and did them as a City for the Community Showcase event. While we had great excitement from the parents on those, the kids weren't quite as excited, so we wanted something colorful and kind of entertaining for kids for our giveaways here. We do still have some luggage tags remaining, so we will be handing those out as well at the community night. [00:34:45] **Jaime Mann**: Our largest event of the year is Strawberry Fest, which is at Kingston Park on June 20th to the 23rd. Discover Cottage Grove will be at a booth Friday and Saturday—I think Friday from 4:00 to 8:00 or 4:00 to 9:00, and then Saturday we'll be there all day from after the parade until about 7:00 that night. Again, we'll have the same giveaways for people. People tend to think of us as the information booth at Strawberry Fest even though they have an information booth, but in previous years we've been kind of right on the end of an aisle and people come to us and ask questions. We usually get Strawberry Fest maps to hand out as well, so we just kind of help the Strawberry Fest information booth by passing out the same information as they are, but we're also trying to get the word out about Discover Cottage Grove. And that's a great event because it's not just residents that come—they bring in a lot of visitors as well. Most of the people that we talk to are not from Cottage Grove. [00:35:30] **Jaime Mann**: We are also hosting our second annual food truck festival at Kingston Park. That event is September 14th; it's a Saturday. We're going from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; we added an hour on to the end of the event. Right now we are at 33 food trucks that have said they want to participate; six have completed the paperwork process and they've paid. We're promoting them on social media. We are also putting together sponsorship and marketplace information, and that will be coming out probably in the next two to three weeks for us to start promoting a marketplace area and the sponsorships that we have available. And then we will have a booth there as well where we'll have giveaways for kids or families that come up to us too. Also on that day, our Doozle puzzle which we presented to you last time—the Doozle painting will be revealed. We have shifted this; it was going to be at the food truck festival, but while it's still the same day, we're shifting it to Cottage Grove Middle School. So the painting reveal will start at 8:00 a.m. We will have puzzles for sale at the middle school during the reveal, but we'll also be selling them at the food truck festival. So some exciting things happening in Cottage Grove, and with that, I'd be happy to stand for any questions. [00:36:45] **Justin Olsen**: Okay, more good information from Jaime—this being all the various events that we'll be participating in this year. Any questions for Jaime? [00:36:55] **Board Member Hansen**: One more question. I noticed that the Minnesota pen is something I found in my own house, and I think my kid picked it up at a school event. Do you know if we'll be representing at school again this summer? [00:37:05] **Jaime Mann**: They have not reached out to us, but that is something that we can reach out to them. We work with Sashco Cares for the food truck festival, so I think our next board or our committee meeting is next week so we can touch base because I believe they run that program or one of the people that's on our committee runs that program. [00:37:20] **Justin Olsen**: That sounds great. I—it was very popular because of the pens. We do a lot with school through the Cottage Grove Lions as well, and they're just tremendous people to work with, so that's a really good call out. Any other questions at all? Okay, Jaime, I think you get to sit down now. Item 7.4 is our CVB strategic plan update and recommendation, and this comes from our Economic Development Director Gretchen Larson. [00:37:45] **Gretchen Larson**: Good morning, Chairman, members of the board. It's good to be with you today. We're going to review the—oh, there we go, technical—a hand on the wrong key. We're going to review the RFPs that were... well, we're not reviewing the RFPs but the RFP process. If you'll recall in February, we had issued an RFP, but we didn't receive a lot of proposals, so we recommended that we extend that and you all agreed with that. And then we ended up receiving 10 proposals. Out of those 10 proposals, the top four firms were interviewed on Monday, May 13th. Of those four firms, "Chandlerthinks"—the proposal that's in your packet—was recommended by the evaluation team as the most experienced firm to complete the strategic plan because they had extensive tourism and destination branding experience, more so than any of the other firms who kind of wandered over into the economic development side. And as you know, they're very similar processes but they're not the exact same thing. [00:38:45] **Gretchen Larson**: And so with that, that was the recommendation that we shared with the Chair and the Vice Chair, and they agreed to just bring it to the full board. The total cost for that project is $35,750, with $1,500 earmarked for post-project consultation. That was the only group that also left some of the money in the budget so that when we have questions after the plan has been approved by you all, we could have that experience and say, "Hey, well what about this?" and try to tweak it to make sure we're implementing it the way it should be. One thing that hardly ever happens in the life of the RFP process: they were also the actual lowest proposal of the entire group, which is very unusual. So they were what we believe is the top firm and the lowest proposal, so it made a lot of sense that they would by default be the highest recommended. And then the $35,750, as you can see from the screen, is recommended to come from the Economic Development Trust Fund. Now this actual item for the approval of the agreement—I know you guys cannot make a recommendation today—but it is also on the Council agenda for tomorrow because the Council has to approve the funding and they also have to approve the agreement should you have recommended it to move forward to them. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. [00:39:45] **Justin Olsen**: Thank you. This is one of those items where we wish we had the quorum here tonight so that we could recommend moving forward. But I will ask if any of our board members have questions or anything they'd like to share with Gretchen regarding this? No. I will tell you that I had the opportunity to read through each and every one of these proposals, and Gretchen and the team were kind enough to ask for recommendations from the Vice Chair and myself. This group had a very strong proposal. One of the things that I look for when I look through these various proposals, whatever it might be for, is are they willing to spend time in the community, are they willing to connect with the community? You know, does it look like they're invested, or are they trying to just get another opportunity to fill out a bunch of reports and get paid for doing so? And this team seemed very "roll up your sleeves, let's work together." So I think it's a great recommendation; I'll look forward to voting for it tomorrow at our Cottage Grove City Council meeting. One thing I did also want to add, and Jennifer, I'm going to ask you if you wouldn't mind to just take a brief minute: could you explain to people what the difference is between the ED Trust Fund and the ED Fund? [00:40:45] **Jennifer Levitt**: Mr. Chair, members of the board, I'd be happy to. In regards to the EDA Trust Fund, we have one business in town that makes a large financial contribution to the fund in the efforts that we promote economic development within the community. And so there's no taxpayer dollars associated with that—so there's no tax levy and there's no taxes going into that fund. And so it's purely by a donation made from that one company within the community. So that's been a long-standing relationship with that company, and so that enables us to do unique projects like this for greater value within the community. [00:41:15] **Justin Olsen**: Thank you very much. I always want to clarify that because it's easy to get it confused, but the reality is the ED Trust Fund does fund projects like this, or the city's recent trip to ICSC in Las Vegas, and that's all paid for through money that is donated from a local business for the purpose of economic development and growth here in the City of Cottage Grove. And of course, we're very grateful that they continue to make that donation—this has been in place for a very long time, and it's one of those things that is kind of a nice gift from this organization back to the community, and we try to use those funds very wisely. Any other questions or thoughts for Gretchen? [00:41:45] **Gretchen Larson**: Thank you so much. [00:41:50] **Justin Olsen**: Thank you very much. Excellent information there. Item 8 is workshops—we have none today. Item 9 would be comments from the board, and I'll start to my left with Board Member Grula. [00:42:00] **Board Member Grula**: I've already had a lot of questions today, but comments: I loved seeing this plan. I think this is such a nice way to raise the money to improve our parks, and I'm really excited to see these events and hopefully a "Yes" vote on all of these coming forward. [00:42:15] **Justin Olsen**: Thank you very much, that makes two of us. For Board Member Hansen, any comments at all? [00:42:20] **Board Member Hansen**: Just to go off what she said, I didn't know this much about this plan until today, and I think what you said—it's going to be about education. And so just got to talk to our people around us and go from there, and hopefully it works. [00:42:35] **Justin Olsen**: And I'll tell you that that is always the case. Misinformation tends to travel faster than accurate information does, so you have to work twice as hard to get half as far sometimes, which is why the team is really working to communicate, whether it's at the chamber business expo that we recently attended or various other chamber events, various other commissions and boards, to make sure that people have the right information. And that's really our job: our job is to inform. And I appreciate your comments on that, but again I would encourage you—I promise there's a neighbor or two who are going to ask you about it or talk about it. If they need help understanding how this is supposed to work, send them our way; we would be happy to answer any questions that are out there. [00:43:15] **Justin Olsen**: As far as my own comments are concerned, real briefly: I want to thank everybody who was able to attend this year's Memorial Day event. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't super cooperative, so we had to have the event inside in our training room here at City Hall. It was very well attended. Kudos to Herb Reckinger, who is the chair of our Advisory Commission on Historic Preservation here in the City of Cottage Grove. Herb does just a ton of work with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and as our guest speaker this year, he did a marvelous job of telling what I thought were very heartfelt stories. It was more of a conversation than a speech, and I think people appreciated that as our theme this year was a salute to Vietnam-era veterans. I also want to thank the staff down at River Oaks for providing the chairs, our Park and Rec department for cleaning up the veterans memorial outside, fixing up all the plant beds and all that kind of stuff to make it look really nice even though we weren't able to be outside. We were able to do the laying of roses as we do every year—the various markers out at the veterans memorial that represent each branch of our armed forces—and the SWCTC... I'll be happy when they change that name, they're working on that right now by the way... that team did a really nice job of some drone footage, so it turned out well. If you weren't able to attend the ceremony, you can find it online; I'm going to do it again, SWCTC.org I believe it is, but it is on their website so you can Google SWCTC Memorial Day and you'll find it. I've watched it a couple times, and I think it was a very appropriate and moving ceremony for Memorial Day. [00:45:00] **Justin Olsen**: And then the last thing I just want to mention is: you know, we're about to get into the nitty-gritty as it relates to our budget conversation for 2025. And what that means is the City Council will begin holding meetings with staff essentially on a weekly basis in July. We've done a lot of preliminary work and we'll get more information as it comes forward. But we embrace the challenge of the budget each year; it is a very arduous process. we go through everything line by line by line. And the reason we do that is we want to provide the greatest value to our taxpayers. The City of Cottage Grove is the second to the lowest ranked city for tax rate of our Washington County communities, the lowest being our neighbor St. Paul Park. The difference is St. Paul Park gets a lot of what we call local government aid from the state that helps support their budget—and when I say a lot, I mean a lot—and the City of Cottage Grove gets very little, roughly $50,000. So we have to be very diligent about using taxpayer dollars wisely, and we have a staff that definitely does that and guides us in that direction. So if you have any questions about the budget, how the budget should tie into this proposed local option sales tax plan, or anything else that we're doing in the community, again please reach out to your council members, your mayor, or your staff here at City Hall. And with that, I will adjourn the meeting because we won't be able to vote on an adjournment motion. Again, thank you all for joining us today; I'm sorry we weren't able to execute some of the business at hand due to the lack of a quorum, but I still think we got some really good information. Meeting is adjourned.