Good morning. Welcome to this morning's meeting of the Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau. It is August 26, 2025. We do not have a quorum this morning. So we will not be taking any action on any items. The meeting this morning will be informational only. Uh we will provide feedback as necessary on theformational items. But again without a quorum we won't be uh doing any votes on anything on today's agenda. And the first item of business on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance. Please stand. 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. >> Thank you. And Alexa, will you please do the role? >> Chairman Olsson, >> here. >> Director Leavine, >> here. Director Gerasula, Director Olsen, Director Reese, Director Kada, Director Hadbit >> here. >> Thank you very much. Normally, we would uh ask for a motion and a second to vote on adoption of the agenda, but with no quorum this morning, we will not do that. So, we'll move on to uh approval of the minutes. We did have minutes for the 63 2025 CVB. Again, we will not vote on these minutes, but was there anything in the minutes that uh either of the two directors present would like to uh notify staff about? >> No. >> No. >> Okay, perfect. Uh and it looks like we do have Director Reese here, so that will give us a quorum for today's meeting. Good morning. And since we do have a quorum, I will ask for a motion to approve the 63 2025 meeting minutes. >> I'll motion to approve. >> I'll second that. >> So, we have a motion and a second on the meeting minutes. Any further discussion on those? Seeing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying I. >> I. >> Good morning, Mr. Reese. Thank you for joining us. and those minutes stand approved. Item six is presentations. I don't see any presentations on the agenda this morning. Item seven is business items which is going to start with our 2025 food truck festival update and Jamie is going to take us through that. Good morning. >> Good morning. Thank you chairman, members of the board. Uh so we are excited. We're getting real close to our 2025 Cottage Grove Food Truck Festival. So I'm here to talk a few details of the event. Uh, it is Saturday, September 13th at Kingston Park. The event this year runs from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and we have all sorts of fun things planned in addition to food trucks. So, this year we are limiting our food truck entries to 35 trucks. Um, currently we have 27 trucks that you can see on the screen that are confirmed, meaning all of their paperwork is done, their payment is made, we're promoting them on Facebook. Um, I do have eight additional food trucks that are in a some stage of paperwork completion, whether they're waiting on a payment or a piece of paperwork. Um, once they're complete, we get them added to our Facebook event so we can continue to promote all of the great food trucks we have um coming. There's quite a variety this year. Um, the committee took some time to choose um a wide range of different types of food for the event this year. We also um have sponsors that are helping us pay for some of the aspects of the event. Um the list you see on your screen is both um paid and inind sponsors. So like Tennis Sanitation provides dumpsters to us. Um so we give them the value of um the dumpsters as a sponsorship. Uh at this point we are at $6,500 in sponsorships collected and we are still working on gaining a few more sponsorships over the next couple weeks before the event. We also have our marketplace coming back for the second year. Um our goal was to have 10 to 15 vendors. We currently have 16 that are confirmed which you can see on your screen. Um it's kind of a again a wide range of vendors that will be there um selling goods, talking to people. Um so we're excited to have the marketplace back again this year. And entertainment and other activities. So this year we have Basic and Boring opening the day for us as our band. Uh Revved Up, who was there the first year, is back again this year uh to perform at the end of the day for us. Uh so we have two great bands that will be performing and keeping everybody entertained. We also have a couple bounce houses this year. Um Strawberry Fest ambassadors will be there providing carnival games for a portion of the event. And new this year, we are doing a photo booth, which um it's kind of a rustic backdrop. We'll have some props. You also see we're going to have a face cutout um stand, the image on the left with the pizza and the hot dog. Uh that'll be there for people to take photos um and hopefully tag us in their photos of the event. And then in advance of the event, um we've been uh coordinating with the Mississippi River Valley Beyond the Yellow Ribbon group. Um they are hosting a run, walk, and ruck for heroes um in advance of the event. I think it starts at 9:00 a.m. at Kingston Park. Um and the run will finish right around the time the food truck festival starts. We're hoping that some of those runners will come and join us at the food truck festival. Uh they are still taking registrations for uh anybody that wants to run, walk, or rock. It is a 5K, a 10K, or a 15K that they have available. Um, and you can find information on their Facebook page. And we would like to invite our board to volunteer to work with us at our Discover Cottage Grove booth. Um, booth hours will be from roughly 10:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. And you were sent an email. Um, asking if you'd like to help us. Basically, it's talking to people, handing out our swag, answering any questions that people might have. Um, it's a fun event to work. If you like people watching, it's a ton of people. Last year we're estimating we had just over 14,000 people attend. Um so we're hoping to have more this year. And with that I would be happy to stand for any questions. >> Thank you. A lot of planning went into this so far and uh really appreciate the hard work and effort of the staff putting this together. It seems like it gets bigger every year. Um really looking forward to it this year. Uh does anyone on the panel have questions for Jamie about the food truck festival? Okay, seeing none, uh I want to say first of all, thank you for mentioning the um Mississippi River Valley Beyond the Yellow Ribbon event that morning. I'll be there to volunteer for that event and then I'll also be there to volunteer for us and for the Lions who are going to be there later in the afternoon. Um so I really hope the weather's nice cuz I'm going to be there for a while. But the walk run ruck is uh a 5K, a 10K, or you can combine the two and do the 15K. And it's a fundraiser for local military families and veterans that be on the yellow ribbon are serving. And as we get closer to the holiday season, any monies donated uh or raised during these kinds of fundraisers uh will go towards the adopt a child uh holiday shopping event that the Beyond the Yellow Ribbon team does in conjunction with the Cottage Grove Lions. So uh this is a great way to show your support for our veterans and our military families, especially those with deployed soldiers right now. Uh, and that starts at 9:00, as you mentioned, at Kingston Park. Should be done right around 11:00. And like Jamie mentioned, perfect time to just head over and treat yourself to some delicious uh food and snacks from the food trucks. I would encourage members of the CVB to uh sign up to help out. It's a busy day. There's a lot going on. So, uh, as with anything else volunteer related, um, more hands make for lighter work. So, if you have the opportunity to even give an hour or two to help support the CVB at the food truck festival, I think that would be greatly appreciated. Jamie, did you have anything else for us? >> No. >> All right. Any other questions? Uh, director Reese, >> can can I just ask what kind of promotion are we doing um outside of is is I assume we're doing social media promotion, but is there other is there additional promotion and is there something that is kind of packaged that we can do? >> Uh, yeah. Thank you, chairman, members of the board. We are doing some paid social media advertising um to promote the event. We obviously have an event page on Facebook which has thousands of likes. I'm not exactly sure of the current number. Um but we're continuing to post in the event, share it on Facebook through the Discover Cottage Grove page and the city's Facebook page. Um it goes in the Cottage Grove reports which goes out to all the households and businesses in Cottage Grove. Um so while we know Cottage Grove comes to the event, we also push to um promote to a larger audience as well. >> Okay. Is is there something that other than going through and doing repost and stuff that can be packaged that the board and the council and whatever could push out through their own um channels? >> We could look at putting something together for that. Sure. >> Okay, that'd be great. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It was right there on the front page of my Cottage Grove reports when I got it. So, uh I liked seeing that. That was great. And I know we have done social media. I am curious um you know to sort of build on that question with all the various social media outlets that we have now. Um you know we've got Facebook, we've got uh Blue Sky, we've got all these other ones. Are we utilizing all of those formats? Either of you able to let us know? Some people get a little picky about where they absorb their social media information. So, I'm just wondering if we've kind of taken the approach of hitting everything. >> Uh, Cher Olson, members of the board, really good questions. And uh for 2025 when it comes to say Blue Sky for instance, >> that has largely been uh we'll call it a test balloon for the the city of Cottage Grove's kind of main social media presence, not necessarily Discover Cottage Grove >> because in an effort to meet residents where they are at per the city's overall strategic plan, uh we were finding that engagement and views and uh activity of any kind outside of Facebook was really >> scant >> and we were kicking around, well, are our residents no longer on a certain platform? Are they on maybe a different platform? >> Well, Blue Sky was gaining a ton of popularity at the time. I'm not sure if that popularity has plateaued since then. This was, you know, 6, nine months ago. Uh, and so we decided to to opt to test that platform out to see if our residents are there. That again is activity mainly geared towards City of Cottage Grove communications, not necessarily Discover Cottage Grove. Um, having said that, uh, most of our engagement, most of our views on all, uh, pages, our main city page, public safety page, uh, Discover Cottage Grove really do primarily come from, Facebook. That is definitely where our residents and viewers and engagers are at, at least at the moment. Uh, so our online paid social media advertising is mostly focused around Facebook given that fact. I will also add finally that uh we did kick around the idea of doing some other types of advertising say radio ads uh and we reached out to uh gain some insight around pricing availability what might that look like I don't know if that's something that has been done in the past but we just wanted to get some research and figure out if that's something that would be viable uh not exactly sure why but we did not actually get a response to that inquiry which was a little disappointing because we are >> potentially >> paid you know customers So, doesn't mean we can't continue to explore, you know, other opportunities, billboards, radio ads, TV ads. Um, but to date, we're primarily focusing on that Facebook social media advertising and seeing some really encouraging results in terms of link traffic back to our website. >> And of course, you and I had the opportunity last week to do our uh promotional video as part of the council update process. So, >> correct, that's coming out this week. >> Yeah, that should be out this week. So, True Lens um was there to uh film Phil and I for the normal council update video and we focused on food truck festival and uh walk run ruck. So hopefully, you know, that'll come out and um they found a way to make me look much skinnier on camera. That would be good. Uh and then we'll um we'll we'll share that profusely as well. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Anything further on food truck festival? Good questions. Thank you. Moving on to item two under business items, the 2025 Q2 lodging tax collection. And this is Phil. >> Yes. Well, morning again, uh, Chair Olsen, members of the board. Uh, so this morning, uh, we're here to talk about Q2, uh, lodging tax and revenue collections. So, as you see before you, uh, I won't exactly bore you by reading all of the numbers, uh, but for, uh, 2020 2025, excuse me, Q2 lodging tax collections and other revenue, which does include, uh, some revenue from the food truck festival, uh, we're sitting at $30,49. That is $4.7% higher than the 2025 Q2 budgeted revenue, which is largely caused by the food truck festival itself. So, registrations, vendors, sponsors, as you all know, the food truck festival is a very successful event uh uh financially, attendance-wise, and so happy to happy to see those numbers coming in and a decent clip there. Uh with that, that's all that I have for Q2 lodging tax and revenue collections, but I will happily stand for questions. >> Any questions for Phil on the budget, on the revenue capture? Phil, can you just clarify Q1, Q2? Uh, what are the time frames for each of those? Are we running the standard calendar, January, February, March for Q1, April, May, June for Q2? >> Cheryl, members of the board, that's correct. >> Yes. >> So then it might be fair to say, tell me if I'm wrong, um, Q3 we we will also see revenue from the food truck festival because of course June is uh a little further away from September. So, as more of these vendors look at the opportunity and decide they want to come forward uh in addition to sponsorships, etc., um we should see some some other revenue. And I'm not sure if you're going to know the answer to this question. Maybe Jamie would, but I'm curious how our sponsorship revenue is comping to last year. Does anybody have that answer? I know it's a bit of a curveball. I'm sorry. >> That's right, chairman, members of the board. Uh last year in sponsorships we had right around $9,000 in sponsorships. We did budget for about $8,000 this year, not knowing if the trend would continue. Um so we are about $1,500 away from our budgeted goal for sponsorships this year. >> Okay. And we're still uh obviously soliciting for additional sponsorships should opportunities arise. Correct. >> Absolutely. I know I know last year we had uh a lot of excitement around the food truck festival with the puzzle release and things too and this year um you know that's not part of the equation but uh still seems pretty healthy. Thank you. >> All right. If there are no further questions on the lodging tax collection, I'm going to move forward to the 2026 preliminary budget approval. And I believe Phil is going to take us through this as well. >> That is correct. Chair Olsson, members of the board. the 2026 preliminary budget. Uh, as you all know, budget season is here in full swing and so we are here to discuss the CBB's 2026 preliminary budget. Uh, you have the full um 2026 preliminary budget worksheet in front of you and in the packet. So, I will not bore you with reading that entire spreadsheet. uh uh I would happily do so, but I'm sure you have more interesting and better things to do. At any rate, um lodging tax projections uh for 2026 uh in similar similar to other years, we base that on a 63% occupancy rate, which gets us in at around $72,300 uh year for lodging tax projections. Uh visitor guide ad sales come in at $4,500. As we just discussed, the Food Truck Festival, a pretty big premier event for Cottage Grove and the CVB at $23,000 in total revenue projected. And then you've heard me discuss before uh but new this year uh is the Explore Minnesota Tourism Grant. That is a program that has been uh that the city has been successful with in the past um for reasons unknown to me. It went away I think about a year ago and then they brought it back uh for cities running a a convention and visitors bureau. So, we were successful in getting a $2,000 Explore Minnesota tourism grant, which we will use towards uh speaking of advertising for the food truck festival and other outdoor food related events like the food truck fest one family festival. We'll be using that towards online advertising uh from that grant. Uh, also similar to other years, we have our expenses broken out in essentially marketing expenses, operating expenses, and other. Uh, again, won't bore you by reading all of the numbers and all of the line items. Um, many of them are most likely familiar to you. Uh, and a lot of the numbers um largely unchanged from from previous years. Uh, with the exception of of a couple things. Uh again, we've got that uh um uh something that I mentioned before, which is the Deckard Technologies Rentalcape software. Um that is a piece of software that helps us scan and uh find uh short-term rentals in the city of Cottage Grove, making sure that they are operating properly, licensed properly. Uh and that is a shared expense between uh the CVB and Community Development. Um, and our marketing and operating expenses come in at a total of $56,35 for marketing and $49,79625 for operating expenses. Uh, the 2026 preliminary budget, uh, total revenue projections come in at $101,800. Expenses come in at 105,931.25, 25, which if your quick math shows you is about a $4,13125 uh loss. Uh a note on that, as we would do any year, we will keep very close tracking on our expenses to zero that out and cut costs where we can. uh this last year for instance uh we saved a fair amount of money on visitor guide uh printing due to a a much shorter and more streamlined visitor guide. Uh also that $4,13125 could be made up with remaining fund balance as again we uh spend a little less money uh trim things where we can streamline things where we can and use remaining dollars or expenditure savings to make up that cost. Uh with that, uh there's a motion in front of you and I will be happy to stand for any questions or comments. >> Thank you, Phil. Any questions from the board on the 2026 preliminary budget? >> Nothing. >> Okay. Uh I do have a couple for you, Phil. Um one of the things that uh obviously plays into this budget and it's a pretty important thing is your revenue capture. And that revenue capture comes from the lodging tax. Uh I know that um the EDA and the staff have been working closely together to uh hopefully come to uh some agreement with a hotel chain, a hotel year to um to put another hotel in town. I'm wondering if anybody uh may have a update on how that process is going, whether that's you or Jamie or the administrator. >> Uh Mr. Chair, members of the board, in regards to the RFP that we put out for the hotel, um the deadline is the end of August. So, we put out a reminder last week to all of the holders of our RFP, our proposal, waiting for those responses to come back in. We are continuing the remediation efforts on the property uh that we're looking to acquire. Uh we completed a phase one. We have now moved into a phase two with um some soil sampling to take place. There had been a potential uh fueling station at the one corner of the property way back in the day. U Mrs. Ross can remember pumping gas with her grandfather um out on East Point Douglas. So um something that we need to track down and work on. And then in regards to the infrastructure that would uh be needed to support that, we've started the preliminary design work for that effort. And if you'll recall, we have a grant from the federal government for about $3 million. Our intent is that we would build $3 million worth of the infrastructure uh next year and capture uh those dollars to really prime that site for uh development. So, we will keep our fingers crossed in the coming uh days here um as we seek to find someone to submit a proposal for that property. >> Thank you. Any responses to the RFP at this point? >> No one has formally submitted yet. >> Okay, wonderful. Well, we still have a few days. So, um thank you for the update. I'm glad we sent out a reminder on that. Uh any other questions from the board? >> Okay. I'm looking for a motion to approve the 2026 Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau preliminary budget. >> So move. >> We have a motion by Director Reese. >> I'll second. >> Second by Director Lavine. Further discussion. Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. >> I. >> I. Opposed. >> Awesome. That motion carries. Thank you. And then uh moving forward to item number four and I think this is Phil again uh CVB website redesign. Yes, Chairman Olsen, members of the board, uh the website, as you recall, uh back on, I believe, yep, June 3rd, 2025, uh we were discussing the Discover Cottage Grove, uh website as part of the one of the recommendations coming out of the CVB strategic plan from Chandler Thinks. Uh one of those key recommendations was the website itself. Now there are some things that we have done and will continue to do to update the website regardless of how we move forward. Uh things like improving SEO and you know updating images uh making sure content's correct so on and so forth. Having said that, the website overall uh is I believe uh several years uh old at this point and as we discussed on June 3rd of 2025 uh are we ready for a potential redesign of the website, a refresh as as they are want to do every few years or so. Uh the board did express we we presented a few options uh regarding the website kind of a a keep things as is uh hosted on a new platform. Option number two or option number three a full redesign. The board did express interest in a redesign of the website. At the time that we are discussing that potential, we estimated that the website redesign cost would come in at around $7,000 to $12,000 which is what we discussed on June 3rd. Uh given the board's interest in redesigning the website, we did pursue a couple quotes from local vendors, Anselman Innovations and Dapper Dog Marketing. With that, the two quotes uh that you see in front of you, uh Anselman Innovations came in at $11,000 for the website redesign. Dapper Dog Marketing came in at $7,150 for the website redesign. Uh so while I'm happy to report that the both of those quotes came kind of right smack dab in the middle of what we thought it might cost for the website um it is still very much uh on your plate so to speak to kind of give us guidance as to what we'd like to do uh with the website. If approved, the redesign could be pulled from, as again, as we discussed on June 3rd, uh, from savings from the printing of the visitor guide, uh, unspent social media advertising dollars, uh, and, uh, so forth. So, with that, uh, there is a motion before you, but I would be happy to stand for any questions. >> Questions? >> I have one. Uh, what what what are the differences between the two? You have one at 11,000, you have one at 7150, it looks like from Dapper Dog. Um, what are the two differences between the two quotes if you wouldn't mind? >> Uh, Chair Olson, uh, Director Hatfett, I think a couple things. The the two quotes, um, both full quotes are in the the packet that you have in front of you if you wished to to kind of go through. And I think the other thing is uh they are taking two different approaches in terms of um how do I want to phrase this the the website hosting service. So one thing that we came in uh exploring pretty seriously was a a DCG website hosted on the Wix platform. Uh that is the the platform that uh quote number one utilized to to to develop their proposal. uh and then besides you know what you'd expect uh work to be done on the website redesign I think that particular quote comes in as a result of you know whatever time and cost calculations uh they are doing to to provide that website redesign uh quote number two uh is not using the Wix platform which is not something we expected to be uh interested in not for good bad or otherwise that's just we'd heard really good things about Wix and I think it probably is still a very great platform uh but Dapperd dog marketing did uh provides I think some important feedback about that platform or any other platform for that matter and uh you know regardless we were very uh happy with the information that we were pro that we were provided from from Dapperdog and uh Anelment Innovations. Uh but you know I don't want to speak too specifically about how they came up with their numbers because they're vendors and they you know cost calculate and and so on. >> Any follow-ups on that? >> No >> questions. Director Reese >> based based on based on what you did get back from the two vendors. I mean kind of what was your feeling as far as what you're going to be getting from services? Um I saw but but you're you know you you met with them and talked to them. What was your kind of feeling as far as services? Was there a big difference in service and ability? Um not not thinking about price but what they were going to do and s was there a big difference between the two? >> Yes. Cherylson uh director Ree and and other directors. Um good good question. I think at the end of the day, we walked away from both of those conversations uh feeling extremely confident in either vendor. Uh they have different approaches, different styles. Uh which again is not good, bad or indifferent. They're different people. They're different vendors. So, of course, they do. Uh but either way, uh uh quote number one, quote number two, I think we would end up with I know that we would end up with a very nice, very solid, uh newly designed uh website. And so I would not have any misgivings or you know concerns about either vendor. Uh again I think with quote number two uh a couple things being the the low quote um which is important to consider for obvious reasons but also I I don't have any concerns and while I won't speak for staff I think we all agreed that uh the low quote doesn't mean the bad quote quote unquote right. So, uh, we we we definitely had very strong feelings about Dapperdog skills and and abilities to give us a really good website. And beyond that, uh, you want a website that looks and functions very well. Uh, that is the product you're purchasing, but also you need good customer service. And in terms of references, in terms of, you know, as you're interviewing somebody, which is essentially what that is, uh, they both performed very, very well. >> Any followup on that? Okay, >> I'll add really quick. Um I'm I'm not familiar um with the quote number one, but I will add with um Dapper Dog. They are um uh chamber members. Um and Tara is just um crazy talented. So, I'm really excited that she was one of the uh one of the um companies that you took a look at. And I think that um like you said with either company would probably be really um excited and happy with them, but going with um Dapper Dog is just she's local here. She's really invested in the community, has worked with um several other um lots of other businesses and and cities around the area. So excited to see that. >> Well, that's a nice testimonial and it sounds like uh the staff did some homework in terms of references, etc., which I certainly appreciate and uh if if all of those came back as well as uh the reference that we just heard uh that's a pretty positive sign. Are there any other questions for staff on this topic? If not, then I will be looking for a motion to approve the service agreement subject to minor modifications by the city attorney with Dapperdog Marketing to redesign the Discover Cottage Grove website for an amount of $7,150. >> I'll make the motion. >> Okay, we have a motion by Director Lavine. Do I have a second? >> I'll second that. >> Second by Director Havvet. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying I. >> I. >> Opposed and that motion carries. Phil, you're off the hot seat now. Thank you very much for that. >> Thank you. >> Item eight on our agenda today is a workshop. We do not have a workshop. Uh item nine is comments from the board. Are there any comments or questions for staff from the board members? Okay, then we'll move right on to item 10, which would be adjournment. I'm seeking a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion. >> Okay, we have a motion by Director Hotvet, did I hear a second? >> All right, Director Ree, any further discussion? You guys want to hang around a while and just see see what's going on? No. Okay. All in favor of adjournment, please signify by saying I. >> I opposed. >> Motion carries and we are adjourned. Thank you all for joining us this morning.