Good morning and welcome to the Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau meeting being held this morning at Cottage Grove City Hall. It is June 3rd, 2025 and I am your chair, Justin Olsen. Uh we will start with uh the first item on our agenda which is our pledge of allegiance. If everyone would 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 then uh Alexa, would you please do the role? Chairman Olsen here. Director Lavine here. Director Gasula here. Director Olsen here. Director Ree here. Director Kamada here. And director Hadbit here. Thank you. Item four is adoption of the agenda. Uh if there are no changes on the agenda, I would look for a motion to adopt the agenda as it stands. I'll make a motion. I have a motion from Director Katada. Do I have a second? I'll second. I have a second from Director Lavine. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. I. Opposed. All right. That motion carries. The agenda is adopted. We now move to number five, which is approval of the amen. Approval of minutes rather from 11:26 2024 convention and visitors bureau meeting. Any changes or updates? All right, seeing make a motion to approve the minutes from uh We have a motion to approve the minutes. Director Katada, do I have a second? I'll second. Director Cassula second. Uh any further discussion on those? All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Okay, the minutes stand approved. Thank you. And we now move to number six, presentations. Does not appear we have any presentations on our agenda today. So, we'll move directly to number seven, which is business items. Uh, item one under business items is the 2024 Q4 and 2025 Q1 lodging tax collection. And, uh, this is our communications manager, Phil. Go ahead and take it away. Thank you. Good morning. Uh, thank you, Chairman Olsson, members of the board. Thank you for being here on a gloomy uh, Tuesday morning. Uh, as the chairman said, we're here to talk about the 2024 Q4 and 2025 Q1 lodging tax collections and then a couple other uh pertinent items for the board to be aware of. So, before you I won't bore you by reading all of the numbers, but you have the 2024 Q4 lodging tax collections and 2025 uh Q1 lodging tax collections. Uh the city collected a total of $17,449 in Q4 of 2024 and $16,469 in Q1 of 2025. In total, the 2024 Q4 lodging tax collections was 13.5% over the 2024 total budgeted revenue. The food truck festival contributed heavily to that amount. uh moving forward before you again I won't read I won't bore you by reading all of these numbers but you have the 2024 lodging tax and revenue collection numbers uh again noted there under revenue breakdown you have other revenue um that was largely the food truck festival um which is as you know uh very large and successful and profitable event uh for the CVB uh on the next slide Um when when it comes to lodging tax and revenue, we have a couple in pieces of information that we think is very pertinent for the board to be aware of. Uh and and hopefully good news. When it comes to lodging tax collections, the city uh will be handing that over to the Minnesota Department of Revenue. Um there were a couple actions on the city council not too long ago um that that has the the city now handing over our lodging tax collections to the Minnesota Department of Revenue. This is a service that they provide to municipalities. I believe Woodberry is also another community that's that's engaging in this and has provided really amazing feedback about that system. Uh part of the reasoning for this is uh a couple a couple fold. One, when uh properties are delinquent in their lodging tax uh remissions, uh the the weight and authority that a letter or enforcement actions from the Minnesota Department of Revenue has is far greater with all due respect to the city of Cottage Grove. far greater than the city, you know, going after properties to get those lodging taxes in in order. Uh, additionally, it saves staff a ton of um capacity uh and increasing efficiency and making sure that those lodging tax collections are here and on on time. That will begin on July 1 of 2025, which uh staff are very excited about. The next thing is something you may have heard about is the rental scape software from Decard Technologies. So again, in in hopefully improving efficiencies as well as overall lodging tax collections, uh this software gives us new and uh really incredible insight into short-term rentals or STRs uh throughout the community, both ones that we know about and ones that are permitted and ones we may not know about and are not potentially permitted. So, this software scans through websites like Airbnb, VBO, those are just the most well-known ones, uh, to get us insight into those properties that exist out there in our city. So, this will lead ideally to better compliance for our unlicensed uh, STRs and potentially increase our lodging tax collections. With all of that, I will stand for any questions you all may have. Thank you, Phil. Excellent information there, especially as it relates to the lodging tax collection. I'll look to the board. Is there any questions for Phil on his presentation? Seeing none, we will uh once again, thank you, Phil, and move on to item number two, which is the 2024 annual report. And Courtney's got this for us today. Good morning. Good morning, chairman, members of the board. Um today I'm going to go over the 2024 annual report with you and you do have a copy in front of you as well. Uh so for the 2024 visitor guide, this was our third publication. Uh we had 7,000 copies printed for about $10,000. Uh they were distributed to the Mall of America. Welcome and visitor centers in Minnesota. City Hall also had them. Cottage Grove Ice Arena. Um and we sent them via mail if um someone requested them on our website. uh we had six paid advertisers and we collected 4,450 in revenue for that. And then uh this in 2025, Chandler thinks recommended that we do a smaller visitor guide um kind of streamline the information and so we saved $4,346 with that with our 25 visitor 225 visitor guide. Uh so for the website we had about 32,000 users visit our website. Our top three pages were event pages, which were for the Food Truck Festival, Strawberry Fest, and the Holiday Train. Our monthly news newsletter that we send every month um for subscribers, which we have about 2,900 subscribers um that have subscribed. So, uh we have a scheduled workshop after this presentation to discuss options for website enhancements. So, we'll go over that a little bit more um after this. We worked with various photographers again um in 2024 and then also worked with True Lens Commu Community Media which was formerly known as SWCTC and we did 15 videos with them. And then uh we also are continuing to build a diverse library uh that represents all ethnicities and cultures. For social media, um it's important to note that social media numbers always fluctuate. Um, and so they're very volatile viol volatile and dynamic. Um, so it's hard to explain why numbers go up and down sometimes, but this is kind of an average just to give you an idea. Uh, so in 2024, we reached 6% less users on Facebook. Um, however, we increased our following by 8%. Um, on Instagram, our user reach decreased by 38% but our follower and video count increased. Uh, our most popular YouTube videos were Pickleball and Cottage Grove, Strawberry Fest, and Life of a Hunter. Uh, and then our top top performing campaigns, um, Get Out and Explore Minnesota. That was that was the One Family Fest one. We boosted that one for about $500. Um, and saw about 114,000 impressions off of that. And then our top performing video was just a recap video from the Food Truck Festival. Um, and we hit about 162 impressions on on that one. Or sorry, I read you the wrong number. 2.5,000 impressions on that one. Uh, our partners in 2024, uh, the St. Paul Saints, Cottage Grove, Strawberry Fest, the Chamber of Commerce, Minnesota Explore Minnesota, uh, Swashco Cares, and Minnesota Monthly. Our team engaged with um, attendees at four events. the Cottage Grove Chamber of Commerce community showcase, community night at Saints, the Saints game, and Strawberry Fest and food truck festival. Speaking of food truck festival, we estimated about 8 to 9,000 attendees. We hosted four 40 food trucks, 10 sponsors, and 17 marketplace booths. And then looking to 2025. So we worked with Chandler Thinks as you know um to develop a plan for the future and we have a long list of things that we have put lots of thought towards. Uh the ones on on the screen are just kind of the ones that we've already started to implement um that have kind of gone past that brainstorming uh stage. So uh these current these items are currently in the works. Uh let's see here. So, we are currently launching the bring a friend campaign which is part of the Strawberry Fest initiative. Um, we did a coloring contest for that as well and that's just to encourage um, you know, people that go to Strawberry Fest every year that should bring a friend to participate in the tradition with them. Uh, we also are doing patio week, patio week in July. Uh so we have started reaching out to residents about that and we'll talk a little bit more about that later in this presentation. Uh we plan to implement a tourism summit uh a regular stakeholder meeting or potential awards. Uh so more to come on that. And then we would really love to get out and attend other community events that are not in Cottage Grove. Um just to kind of promote the community in other cities. Then for social media, uh we plan to focus on lo local series spotlights. Uh for example, we've been um you know trying to push our parks. Um giving people examples of what they can do in our parks, what they can do for fun. Um example itineraries, date night in Cottage Grove, that sort of thing. And with that, I'll stand for any questions. Thank you very much. Appreciate all the detailed information. Do we have any questions from the board on 2024's annual report? Not so much a question, but a comment. I think it would be really neat as part of the social media engagement to see some, you know, come spend a day with me in Cottage Grove Tik Tok style videos. I'm too old to make them, but I like watching those. So, if we got some young people doing it, I think that would really grab some more engagement. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, director. That's an excellent idea. Any other questions or thoughts? Yeah, I got Go ahead, Director Ree. Do we know do we know how much re-engagement that we have uh through our social media as far as people coming back to our sites or is or do we do we parse that out or do we just know we have visitors and we don't really know if they're unique visitors that are coming back? Do you mean with the website or social media? Social media. Social media. Um we may be able to dig into that a little bit more. um offhand I'm not quite sure where those numbers are pulling from or if they're revisiting or that sort of thing. Uh but we can definitely look into that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Go ahead. Oh uh with you'd mentioned um paying to to boost the the impressions on social media. Do you have uh like a comparison when you like if you were to just post something versus post it and pay to have it boosted like what what kind of difference in impressions you get? Yeah. Um definitely. Let's see. So I could pull up um Okay, so for example, our top per performing video only had 2.5,000 impressions, right? But say we boosted that. So, we spent 2,000 on the food truck festival event. Excuse me. That got us about 162,000 impressions. So, it's not an exact science, but you can kind of tell that it definitely um has more numbers when you boost it for sure. You definitely get your money's worth in that sense. And then are um are we utilizing uh search engine optimization when we're when we're like posting? So, we do, but I will say um we aren't doing it as well as we could be. Um and that's part of what we're going to talk about with the the website enhancements because that's we get over 50% of our uh audience from SEO and so it definitely could be better. Okay. Thank you. Mhm. Go ahead. I'll just ask one more question on that. When you boost, what is the radius miles? Are you going out 25 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles? Do you know J? For like Strawberry Fest, I guess. Sorry. I'm gonna have Jamie come up and answer that for you. Hi, chairman, members of the board. Um, it really depends on the event. So, Food Truck Festival, we kind of stayed to the metro area because we knew that our audience was pulling from that metro area. I believe um Strawberry Fest, we extended the area a bit further um because for a multi-day festival, your audience is a little bit bigger for that as well. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Other questions? I do want to follow up on the question about um um boosting our ads. Um this is coming from uh somebody who you know uses that function uh during campaign season etc. I know that there's some microtargeting tools that are available. Um I don't know how extensively we may be able to use those microargeting tools, but um one of the things that I've always found helpful is um let's say for example you're trying to um target a specific age group or you're trying to target a specific uh user group. Maybe it's pickle ball players, something like that. Um those tools seem to give you some leverage as it relates to that. Is that something that we're currently doing or considering doing in terms of uh for example one family festival? Maybe we're targeting um you know people who are sports enthusiasts cuz they do a lot of sports at the one family festival. I'm just curious if anybody can answer that for me um as far as the microargeting goes. Yeah. Um I'm going to call Alexa up to the to the podium now. She is focusing on our social media now so she can help you with that. I saw you nodding your head over there. So I assume I assume you pick up what I'm laying down. Yes. Good morning chairman and members of the board. That sorry that is correct. We are currently utilizing that function and we kind of take it per event and what that may look like. Um recently we were working on for example the egg hunt with um our parks and recck department and that was one that we really honed in on keeping it somewhat local. So, we only went 20 miles out. Um, but then focusing on those people who have children within a certain age group that would be attending an event like that. Good. It it seems to me uh in my limited experience like that really helps you gain um the most proverbial bang for your buck uh versus just sort of throwing it out there and seeing you know what you catch. So, I'm glad to hear that we're doing that. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you. Any other questions on this one? Great. Moving on to item three. Phil gets back to the podium to talk to us about our 2026 Explore Minnesota Tourism Grant. Thank you again, Chairman Olsson, and members of the board. Uh, so the 2026 Explore Minnesota Tourism Grant, excuse me, hit the button on accident, uh, is an exciting opportunity for the, uh, Cottage Grove CVB. So, the 2026 Explore Minnesota tourism grant uh is an exciting opportunity and it's a grant funding that was previously available to municipal DMOS and the Cottage Grove CVB has successfully utilized this grant funding uh in the past. Unfortunately, uh Explore Minnesota recently removed that funding opportunity uh in recent years and only now just brought that back uh which was exciting to see albeit at slightly lower levels than anyone would like. you'd always like a little bit more money or opportunity to get that, but nevertheless, good to see you coming back. So, the CGCVB was eligible for up to $2,000 in grant funding. They have different eligibility um parameters around different types of DMOs. For our particular municipal DMO, we're eligible for up to $2,000. Uh it was a competitive grant opportunity that closed in late April of 2025 and the grants were funded on a first come, first served basis. if awarded. So, given that tight timeline and those parameters, uh the city thought it would be prudent to submit an application in order to not miss this opportunity. Uh and we were awarded the full $2,000 for what we're branding a savor the summer uh online marketing campaign. Uh that's going to be geared towards the food truck festival, one family festival, or other late summer activities. And Chairman Olsson, your comment about targeting is certainly a good one. That would be one campaign where we absolutely would target a certain type of age range or a certain type of uh client, if you will, like foodies that live in the the greater Twin Cities area, for instance. Um, namely, this marketing will be, like I said, toward uh people who enjoy, you know, food opportunities or foodies, if you will, in the Twin Cities metro area and who might be inclined to visit Cottage Grove for a unique food truck festival or other fun dining options. Uh this grant has a 1:1 cash match and the thinking behind this grant was that we already have budgeted marketing dollars that would normally be spent on marketing Cottage Grove, things like um Food Truck Festival, One Family Fest, etc. Uh so why not take those dollars and leverage them with this grant in order to double our marketing potential and potentially increase its impact. So, if you're wondering, hey, why didn't the board hear about this grant opportunity earlier? Uh, again, the tight time frame of its first come first-s serve basis competitive. Once all the grant funds are awarded and they've reached the end of their funding pool, that's it. If you apply even within the window, you're not going to get any money. So, we again thought it was prudent to not miss that opportunity and take marketing dollars we would already have budgeted and spent towards marketing these events and apply for that grant. Uh so with all of that, happy to stand for questions and also you have a recommendation before you. Thank you. Uh really great opportunity for us. I mean it's nice that they've brought this back. I know it's something that we utilized early on uh with the CVB. Uh any questions for Phil on this grant? I think it's uh pretty clear that we definitely want to move forward with this. So why I am seeking a motion to approve the Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau to execute the grant agreement between Explore Minnesota and the Cottage Grove CVB. I would move to execute the grant agreement. All right, we have a motion by Director Kada. Do I have a second? I'll second that. We have a second by Director Olsen. Any further discussion on this? Yeah, go ahead. Uh I when I was on council I always tried to encourage um specifically you know there's a lot of parks grants and I always tried to encourage going out for these grants even if you know we didn't weren't going to score the highest form or whatever because it's just every opportunity that we get like this is one more layer we can add to our approach. So, I would say uh good work um and thank you to staff for pursuing this. Absolutely. Yeah, I echo that sentiment for sure. Any other comments? All in favor of the motion and the second, please signify by saying I I opposed. All right, that motion carries. Thank you very much. And then number four, our 2025 events update. Alexa, welcome back to the podium. Thank you. Good morning, chairman and members of the board. Today, we're going to run through some of our upcoming events we have for the rest of the year here. Starting with uh Strawberry Fest. Strawberry Fest is just three short weeks away, running from June 19th to June 22nd this year. Uh as Courtney had mentioned previously, this year we are launching our bring a friend initiative. Uh this is encouraging residents to bring friends from outside of the community into join in on this beloved tradition within our community with us this year. Um, this has been really focused on through our communications and will continue to be a large point of our communications going forward. As you'll see, uh, Discover Cottage Grove will host a booth in the Strawberry Fields Marketplace this year. And following along with our initiative, we are bringing back our friend Eric Dowel. So, he will be there joining us, signing puzzles, meeting attendees, and greeting our talented coloring contest artists. Uh, speaking on that a little bit more, we currently have 40 entries for our coloring contest. So, we will be displaying all of those coloring contest entries at our booth in a binder. Um, inviting all of those coloring artists to come and see their art, meet Eric Dowel, and then we will be giving a certificate to the four finalists of that competition as well. And then, as you saw at your seat this morning, we will also have those fun giveaways, including a drawstring bag, visitor guide, beach ball, the color changing cups, um, and then a flyer for our food truck festival as well. And then moving into that this fall, we are excited to announce our third annual food truck festival. This year it's going to be on Saturday, September 13th. It is running from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. this year. Uh at the festival, we will be celebrating one year of having the puzzle. So we will be doing puzzle sales and then also have those same giveaways that you had at your seat here this morning. And then more details and information regarding the festival, including the food truck lineup, marketplace vendors, and bands will come at the August board meeting. Moving into patio week, Discover Cottage Grove will be hosting its first ever patio week this week or this year. It's going to be July 13th through the 19th. Uh this was a creative idea suggested by the Chandler Thinks team to create a food centered week within our community to really highlight what we have here. And as a team, we landed on uh patio week and with the warmer weather in July, we thought that was very fitting. Um there will be one restaurant patio featured each day this week. And then looking forward to other events we have upcoming, we have the 4th of July fireworks hosted by the Cottage Grove Lions is on July 6th. That starts at dusk at Kingston Park. We have the one family labor day weekend event, hometown holiday which will be on December 4th this year and then holiday train which we do not yet have a date for. And with that I will stand for any questions on upcoming events. Outstanding list of events. Lots of exciting things coming up. Thank you for that. Any questions for Alexa on the list of events or any of the details around those? Um, I'll just make a quick comment on the um, patio week. That's fantastic. I'm super excited about that. So, anything the chamber can do to help advertise that on our calendar too, please send my way. Absolutely. Thank you, Director Leman. Yeah, that that could be a lot of fun for sure. Anyone else? All right. I do have a couple. Sure. Um, first with respect to the um the puzzle and we have uh Eric coming back. I've seen a little bit of social media out there already about um you know he'll be here and he'll be signing puzzles and uh what have you. Uh, will there be any other um I guess interesting events uh that will feature him per se that Strawberry Fest is going to be doing as a sort of a a nod to hey, you know, this guy's in town again. He's a big deal. You know, have they come up with anything that you're aware of that they want to do with him? Uh, currently in terms of Strawberry Fest hosting anything connected to it, we do not know of anything. We did center our coloring contest around the puzzle. So it has a bring your friends also the puzzle kind of incorporated within the artwork itself. Um and then we will have him there signing puzzles as well, meeting with people and he will be doing some promotion on his own page as well. Seems like an opportunity for them. Um, I wonder if it would make sense to reach out to u members of the strawberry fest committee whether that's you know the president Lori or um I know some others like Eric Wit and Katie Towbertz offer and if you guys would like me to do that I'm happy to do that just to plant the seed that he'll be here. I mean let let's let's find a way to keep him busy but obviously we have to also keep in mind his own personal desires and things. Uh Phil, go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Chairman Olsson, members of the board. Great point. And we have been in communication. I've been in communication with Strawberry Fest, multiple phone calls and emails, as well as attended a committee meeting. I forget when the last one was, um, where I brought the coloring contest before it went out, brought the coloring contest to them to see what they thought and, you know, hopefully get some feedback from them as well. And so, we've been in contact with with Lori and with the Strawberry Fest. Um, we we do have a certain council member who tends to get pretty excited about uh, Strawberry Fest. So, uh, that that could be a a leverage point as well. Not that I want to mention Dave's name, but you know, just just to make it clear. Um, the other thing I wanted to mention is um, uh, I I know some of you are aware of this, but the Mississippi River Valley Beyond the Yellow Ribbon team is organizing what they call a ruckun uh, fundraiser the morning of the food truck festival at Kingston Park. And this is one of those things that seems to be taking off. I'm I'm seeing a lot of this uh ruckrun uh fundraising going on in various communities. In fact, there was just a big one over the weekend here um somewhere over in Evergrove in that area. And uh I know that their intent is they want to bring people in for this event uh to fund raise for military families and veterans, etc. But they're trying to time it in such a way where all the events are going to end right around 10:30 so that everybody stays because they'll be hungry after running with their rucks sack on uh for the food truck festival. So there could be some cross promotion opportunities there. Just wanted to mention that. And then um the last thing and this is probably a little early but uh we had a lot of trucks last year, a lot. What are we thinking this year? Are we going to be in the same general vicinity? Uh did did we feel like maybe it was one or two too many or one or two too few? What what's the game plan? Thank you, chairman, members of the board. Uh we did reduce our food truck count this year. So we're going to cap it at 35 food trucks. Applications are coming in. The committee has selected the 35 food trucks. I think we had 47 apply. So I do have weight list trucks if some of the original trucks that were chosen um dropped out of the running, which they do. Yes, they do. It happens quite often. Um, so we will cap it at 35 trucks for this year. Marketplace is wide open, so we have plenty of space available in the marketplace to add on this year. Outstanding. Good. Thank you. Well, hopefully as the word spreads, you know, more and more people will, you know, first of all, want to come as a vendor and second of all, want to come as an attendee. So, that's great news. That's uh we're off to a good start. Any other feedback on 2025 events? Okay, fantastic. So it looks like the next item on our agenda is uh item number eight which is a workshop open to the public and this is our convention and visitors bureau website discussion which will take place in the St. Croy room. What that means is we won't uh actually adjourn the meeting here. We'll adjourn it in the St. Croy room. So I'm going to give everybody just a few minutes to metriculate over to the St. Croy uh where we'll reassemble and we'll go through this discussion. And once that discussion is complete, uh we will call this meeting to adjournment. And with that, uh everybody can move over for the workshop. Thank you.