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OK. Call this meeting to order at 8:34 AM and I would like to open to general public comment about anything that is not on the | 00:00:05 | |
agenda. | 00:00:11 | |
Mr. Gibbs, would you like to say something? Yeah, please. Thank you. | 00:00:21 | |
Jacob's in the downtown business of Equipment Districts Board. | 00:00:27 | |
My name is Mike Gibbs. I'm here as a private citizen, although I will disclose I'm a member of the Pacific Grove Economic | 00:00:32 | |
Development Commission and we do have a we do have a business here. My wife and I, it's a non profit, the members of the chamber | 00:00:39 | |
and we have our downtown office. So I just wanted to. | 00:00:45 | |
We have a very great interest in Pacific Grove and business. You should be on the bid. | 00:00:52 | |
Put me on. | 00:00:57 | |
So I'm here to talk today about, it's hard to believe, but literally three weeks after the election, we're in Christmas season, | 00:00:59 | |
right? So we're talking about from Thanksgiving all the way through November. And I, I think I mentioned this before, but I'm here | 00:01:05 | |
to say let's make Christmas bigger, better, and more fun. We all know that for downtown businesses and businesses all over Pacific | 00:01:12 | |
Grove, it is a great season. | 00:01:19 | |
To bring people in, to make people feel great and. | 00:01:26 | |
It is a big revenue generating season. You know some people make as much revenue in that three months, 2-3 months as they make the | 00:01:30 | |
rest of the year. So I have a couple of suggestions that none of these are particularly new. | 00:01:37 | |
My wife and I've been coming to Pacific Grove at Christmas for almost 30 years. We've lived here for 10 lights on lighthouse. They | 00:01:44 | |
used to be strong at Christmas time. We have a few lights but Christmas season they would basically canopy flight house and I | 00:01:53 | |
think that would be really cool. Some cities have a downtown Christmas decorating contest Julie Beck has. | 00:02:01 | |
A I guess her son and daughter-in-law artist. | 00:02:11 | |
Going to participate I understand something like that we were in San Luis Obispo last year they have a great I mean it's a great | 00:02:14 | |
if you've been there go there this year Christmas is just wonderful and they have a couple things in in Liz Jacobs knows this they | 00:02:22 | |
have a buy local program and they have little cards and this is their one from last year is going to be hard to see what it says | 00:02:29 | |
downtown solo holiday hustle now this is. | 00:02:37 | |
Done by the businesses downtown and the hustle is and $100 or more November 25th of December 30th and you get a certificate for | 00:02:44 | |
$10 off of a purchase at $40 or at any of the participating stores and then they are sponsored by 20 or 30 companies. | 00:02:56 | |
Their monetized health. | 00:03:09 | |
All the local car companies a sponsored downtown, so shop local is big. They do a gift guide, right? So they have their own | 00:03:11 | |
website, downtownslo.org and they have a gift guide on the website so local owners and restaurants can feature gifts or dinners. | 00:03:20 | |
And I think that's really pretty cool. And I would guess if you set a goal, you know, and we'll participate it business | 00:03:30 | |
participating and said, let's increase traffic flow downtown by, oh, say 25%, right? Get them into the stores, get them into the | 00:03:38 | |
restaurants. I think it would be a huge self capitulating, you know, annual event. So if you want to know more, it's downtown SLO. | 00:03:46 | |
Oh, I believe it is a Stanley Visco and they started up right around Thanksgiving. Go over there. | 00:03:56 | |
Take the train, go to Salinas, take the train down to San Luis Obispo, take some people have dinner and walk in some of the shops. | 00:04:03 | |
It's really a neat thing. And if something really that I'm sure other people, the EDC and maybe the BNRC Beautification National | 00:04:10 | |
Resources would participate in helping, you know, decorate downtown. So I will participate. I can bring a few people in as | 00:04:18 | |
volunteers. It's something you choose to do. So I don't know if I move my 3 minutes. | 00:04:25 | |
Oh, we're a little bit less formal here, so. OK. All right. Yeah, great. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. | 00:04:34 | |
If I could just say really quickly regarding your question on quorum, I would say let's go ahead and you can and have your meeting | 00:04:44 | |
today, have a meeting to look a little bit further into any action you take with three members, if that would be, if those would | 00:04:50 | |
be sustained actions, we'd have to retake the future meeting. So we're looking at the code and we're trying to figure out three | 00:04:56 | |
does work. | 00:05:02 | |
That makes sense. So let's just bear in mind. I mean, I think the only action we might take is about the logo, but. | 00:05:08 | |
Well, we can always, yeah, do that another way too, So. And we voted by e-mail with the logo, so I don't know. | 00:05:15 | |
I think we can confirm it. That's true the oh, but you know what the the vacancy that we have, yes, that will need to that we | 00:05:24 | |
would probably have to defer to next time because we have to vote right to I think that's where we are. OK, I always rely on | 00:05:31 | |
Christy on technicalities, but. | 00:05:38 | |
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's those what we've always done in the past, so OK. | 00:05:45 | |
I know that we don't have to comment on public comment and a lot of people don't, but I would just like to say. | 00:05:53 | |
Mike, just to let you know. | 00:06:01 | |
The because it's always a thing, right? When you go to a new place and you say like, here's an idea, like what are they already | 00:06:04 | |
doing and what, how does this fit in? So we have a Christmas. | 00:06:09 | |
Celebration that we do that. | 00:06:15 | |
Steve handles, he takes care of it's, you know, the Inns is open and there's open house and the shops and things. And So what I | 00:06:19 | |
think just to not let an idea die, but to sort of give it a little bit of, you know, let's test it out and see what we get with | 00:06:25 | |
it. I think that maybe a subcommittee would be a good idea because what you said requires city staff. That's been our perennial | 00:06:32 | |
problem on the EDC as well. We get great ideas. | 00:06:38 | |
Council already has their ideas, you know, the commissions have their ideas. We have to somehow find a way that we all kind of | 00:06:46 | |
meld and that and the resources are there. So let's you know, that's what I would suggest anyway. Any other comments? I know we | 00:06:54 | |
don't normally comment on comment, but who puts the lights up in the city downtown? It's in public works. | 00:07:02 | |
Yeah, that'd be my assumption. I don't know directly because I'm surprised I've never heard that they had the canopy. That's | 00:07:11 | |
gorgeous. That's like Alvarado St. All the retailers on Lighthouse want that. Yes, so. | 00:07:17 | |
Yeah, I can just provide a little background. So lights used to be strong across the street like you would see in Alvarado. | 00:07:25 | |
However, when the new antique light poles were put in, you know, 15 years ago or so, it was determined that they were not. | 00:07:35 | |
They were not constructed in a way that would allow for the lights to be attached to them, and so that's why they they stopped | 00:07:47 | |
stringing the lights across because there used to be the. | 00:07:52 | |
You know, the regular style lights downtown and whether they were allowable or not to have the lights attached to them strung | 00:07:59 | |
across the street. That's how it was. But when they changed, I think it was a height issue when they changed to the to the antique | 00:08:06 | |
lamps, if you will. | 00:08:13 | |
That's when that happened. Sorry my I'm doing this from home so my dog is barking, but just to provide a little time. | 00:08:22 | |
Yeah, OK. Thank you. OK, so and that kind of raises the question that answers one question I have because all the retailers really | 00:08:32 | |
want it. They say Alvarado Street, so cool. And then you know we could be cool, but why you know, why aren't we? So is there any | 00:08:39 | |
way that we can do a work around because it can't be that hard to find a workaround, but that would involve. | 00:08:47 | |
Resources and so I mean, what I just heard kind of makes me wonder is more of a structural thing if those life standards weren't | 00:08:54 | |
strong enough to stand that. So that's a different probably situation. I would say, you know, any of these type of things where | 00:09:01 | |
you're asking about the staff time or all that. I think the the process that we're trying to funnel into is more of a make a | 00:09:08 | |
recommendation, you know, and we'll have a form. We're going to talk about that tonight at the council meeting. | 00:09:14 | |
And then that'll kind of filter its way up in the City Council direction. | 00:09:22 | |
We really need that because you know, we have all these interested, engaged and committed people that kind of want to do | 00:09:27 | |
something, but maybe we don't really know how the constructive way to do this. And I would say, you know, we're going to make kind | 00:09:32 | |
of those recommendations. We probably want to like kind of maybe focus on something one or two like are the ones you really, you | 00:09:38 | |
know, I would say a lot of them probably water it down. | 00:09:44 | |
And that's the other thing is like, you know, we discussed this that for our, you know, we basically we have our budget. | 00:09:52 | |
We have a couple events that we do. We just are this board usually just prioritizes a couple of things and that's all we do in the | 00:09:57 | |
year. But we do them, you know, where we build each year we do the same one and we get better at it so. | 00:10:04 | |
You know that's. | 00:10:13 | |
I think it's it's, you know, worth us sort of focusing on our strengths, I guess, and, you know, say, like, can we make the | 00:10:16 | |
Christmas thing better? How do we need to do it? And, and I'm so pleased there's going to be a way to interact with the other | 00:10:21 | |
parts of the city that we all can reinforce each other, so. | 00:10:26 | |
Anyway, let's go on. So ongoing business. | 00:10:32 | |
A is reviewed June July 2024 financials. So over to you Stephanie. So Christy and Elon are accountant are working on. | 00:10:39 | |
Categorizing like we requested so that we're going to have line items for all of our events, though it's a little clearer where | 00:10:53 | |
the money is going. | 00:10:57 | |
I think we need to table this until the next meeting because we were we're only up to the end of May. We don't have the financials | 00:11:03 | |
yet for June and July. | 00:11:07 | |
They're they're still working on that. It there was no change because we, we our last event was chalk the block, which was. | 00:11:14 | |
You know, back in May. | 00:11:23 | |
But. | 00:11:26 | |
My, my question for Lori and I, I, she kind of answered it before the meeting was when are we going to be getting our assessment | 00:11:28 | |
from the city 'cause it was. | 00:11:33 | |
Finally approved and she mentioned September and I don't know if that's. | 00:11:39 | |
Where it usually falls. It seems late to me, but. | 00:11:45 | |
But I historically, I don't know, I've never been the treasurer, so I don't remember when that when that check usually lands. | 00:11:51 | |
This is Lori. I can put our by. The contract that you have with the city is that we make 2 payments a year, the first one in | 00:12:03 | |
February and September. | 00:12:08 | |
OK, umm. | 00:12:14 | |
So. | 00:12:16 | |
I don't believe did we get a February payment. | 00:12:17 | |
We did OK. | 00:12:23 | |
So I think we should put this item to review the year end because that'll be the year end, our fiscal year in July, financials at | 00:12:31 | |
the next meeting. | 00:12:37 | |
OK, I move that we do that. | 00:12:47 | |
We move. Does anyone 2nd? | 00:12:51 | |
I'll second. All right, thanks. | 00:12:57 | |
So there's three of us all in favor, aye? | 00:13:00 | |
OK. So we'll move that agenda item to next time. Thanks so much. So now over to Steve. We we've got the new bid logo and updates. | 00:13:08 | |
You know what, I did not open that topic to public comment. So may I fix that and ask is there any public comment on the | 00:13:17 | |
financials agenda item? | 00:13:25 | |
OK, seeing none, let's move to 3B, which is the bid logo and over to Steve. | 00:13:37 | |
Thanks everyone, bear with me while I share my screen real quick. | 00:13:43 | |
Sorry, stand by for just a moment. | 00:14:25 | |
Just a side note, just so everybody's aware, the Monterey County Weekly Best of Voting is going on right now and there are a ton | 00:14:44 | |
of EG businesses. | 00:14:51 | |
Nominated. I went through the ballot and was voting straight PG and there was at least one business for pretty much every | 00:14:59 | |
category. So I encourage people to to vote. When does when does that close? | 00:15:07 | |
I think at the end of at the end of the month. | 00:15:15 | |
I see. So maybe we should remind Christy to send out like an invitation to members to vote and. | 00:15:19 | |
One thing whilst we're still in sort of between the parentheses, I think it would be really nice to do a quarterly e-mail to the | 00:15:29 | |
bid members. And that's why I'm excited about the logos. Yeah, get that on. And that would be the sort of thing to to put in the. | 00:15:38 | |
The e-mail last is. | 00:15:48 | |
OK. | 00:15:57 | |
And Liz, dovetailing on that, that's a, that's a great idea. Sorry about that. For some reason the PDF function was not coming up. | 00:15:59 | |
So this is just the Word document. And Liz, I did receive your comment and your poll, your poll results. | 00:16:09 | |
Those are included within what I'm about to present. | 00:16:19 | |
So just as a very, very brief bit of background, we started this process about six months ago, the initial logos that we brought | 00:16:23 | |
forward. | 00:16:29 | |
Included some of the long standing iconic. | 00:16:37 | |
Graphical elements that are in the city, butterflies and lighthouses, but we didn't feel like that truly represented downtown. | 00:16:42 | |
Kudos to Stephanie who sort of made the, you know, hey, what about the, the lamps in downtown? You know, those are unique to | 00:16:51 | |
downtown. And, and so we took that idea and incorporated it into this process. And I'll just very briefly review. | 00:17:00 | |
Where things stand. | 00:17:09 | |
And also just by way of a little bit of background information, I did speak with Christie yesterday just to get her thoughts on | 00:17:11 | |
this and she did, you know, give the the thumbs up for her votes to be placed into the the discussion for this. So I'm going to | 00:17:20 | |
run through this is ranked in order of number of votes and. | 00:17:29 | |
So the first one received four votes. | 00:17:38 | |
Alexa and Christy commented on this. It is a round presentation on Pacific Grove is highlighted in the top downtown Business | 00:17:42 | |
Improvement District. And obviously the focal point of the logo is the, the, the lamps and I'll just call it the lamp, the street | 00:17:51 | |
lights and it, it does have multiple colors in it. | 00:17:59 | |
In a, you know, with a with a blue hue. | 00:18:10 | |
But it is clear and round and one of the things that I like about this, and Christy mentioned that is that it would be easy for | 00:18:12 | |
this to appear on. | 00:18:18 | |
Everything from hats and jackets and shirts, but more importantly within the social media buttons, Facebook and Instagram, | 00:18:24 | |
Twitter, things of that nature. So the the round shape lens that to be something that is that is easy to utilize. Additionally, if | 00:18:33 | |
we're just looking for a graphical element utilizing the center area here. | 00:18:41 | |
Is also something that you know, we can pull out of that as a as a piece to it. The second one is received three votes. Alexis | 00:18:50 | |
said that she loved the fact that downtown is highlighted. | 00:18:57 | |
And that it's very bold. So you do see downtown being the highlighted of this, the highlighted portion of. | 00:19:06 | |
Of this choice, and again, it does show the the lamps up here. | 00:19:14 | |
The third choice received three votes. There weren't any comments to this one. This is horizontal and it utilizes again a color | 00:19:21 | |
scheme similar to the first one, the darker and lighter blue. The one drawback with this is again, as I mentioned, it is | 00:19:29 | |
horizontal and so from the standpoint of. | 00:19:37 | |
Easily including that graphically in ads or on social media, you do would have to shrink it down or perhaps take a look at it in a | 00:19:46 | |
in a different format. But something to to think about there. Choice #4 and I'm sorry. And that was three votes. Choice #4 | 00:19:55 | |
received two votes. And Christy mentioned that she thought this would look nice if it was in 2 shades of blue like the first one. | 00:20:05 | |
Again. | 00:20:15 | |
The more round graphical element this has a little bit more of a of a triangular feel if you will, with the circular graphical | 00:20:16 | |
element being the the point on top and then the text down below a little bit more. | 00:20:24 | |
Formal, if you will, just because of the font that's utilized and it's got a little bit more of a traditional logo feeling than a | 00:20:34 | |
modern feeling. | 00:20:40 | |
And then the last one which received one vote was again a a horizontal element that have the lights in the middle and again has a | 00:20:46 | |
little bit more of a modern font to it and utilizes the the two color scheme. | 00:20:55 | |
Again just reviewing this one received the the most votes and as Alexa said, she really liked the color burst and the design grabs | 00:21:06 | |
the attention. | 00:21:13 | |
Does honor the traditional iconic light post and interestingly taking a look at it from the visit the visitors standpoint, which | 00:21:21 | |
is really what we're trying to do. | 00:21:25 | |
Great option to create excitement for what we aim to accomplish for the city. And Christy noted that this was her favorite. So | 00:21:31 | |
with that being said. | 00:21:36 | |
I'll turn it back to the board and you guys can discuss again. Whichever one we choose, we are able to. | 00:21:41 | |
Whichever one we choose, we're able to make adjustments to it and as part of the design process and there's no extra cost for | 00:21:51 | |
that. | 00:21:55 | |
Great. Thank you so much. Steve. That's a really I feel like we've got somewhere significant with this year long process that | 00:22:01 | |
we've had with it. So thank you so much for your steady work on it. Before we have board discussion, can I invite any comments | 00:22:07 | |
from the public? | 00:22:12 | |
Steve, if you can minimize your slide show, I can see the attendees. | 00:22:19 | |
Oh, sure. Sorry, I'll, I'll. | 00:22:25 | |
Do you want me to just stop the share? | 00:22:29 | |
The bottom there dispense. | 00:22:33 | |
There you go. Click on that. OK Oh, no hands raised. OK, perfect. And no hands here. OK Oh, yes, there is. No, I just, I mean, I | 00:22:41 | |
remember being here and just being discussed. So this has been under discussion for a while. And you had a contest. I think the | 00:22:50 | |
comment about the second one that I liked. I liked the first one, but the word downtown. | 00:22:59 | |
There's there's a lot of words on the bottom there and I like the focus on the down. You know that on the downtown piece if | 00:23:08 | |
somehow you can maybe highlight the downtown on the first one. | 00:23:13 | |
Just my thought that nickel will even get you a cup of coffee, but yeah, thank you. No, no, that's great. To be honest, that's | 00:23:20 | |
what I was going to say as well. I mean, I invite everyone, but I'll just throw mine into the ring to start. I I think a seagull | 00:23:27 | |
would be really great on there. But you know, that was I like a little whimsy, I have to confess. | 00:23:35 | |
And also the writing is very small there. I'm not sure that that's graphically what we want. | 00:23:44 | |
If we could just put downtown or if we could add like as an, you know, an optional, sometimes you have like a circular logo, then | 00:23:50 | |
you have the horizontal version of it, then you have the the long version of it, depending on what you're using it for, what media | 00:23:57 | |
you want to put it on. So maybe, you know, we could do something like the big downtown arched text underneath that, or maybe we | 00:24:04 | |
just put downtown in the larger letters somehow in the bottom half of that. | 00:24:11 | |
And if you want a seagull on top, I'm totally behind it. | 00:24:19 | |
So that's my. | 00:24:22 | |
Anyway, even though we battle with them every day. | 00:24:26 | |
They remind me a lot of Pacific rope. Yeah. Anyway, the other thing and and I have the ability to do this, you know, once if we | 00:24:31 | |
get a finalized logo from the artist. | 00:24:37 | |
One thing, although I like the blue, our light posts are green and so I'm wondering if we shift that color, you could do the exact | 00:24:44 | |
because it's kind of monotone. I mean, it's just different shades of the same blue. I'd kind of like to see what it would look | 00:24:50 | |
like in different shades of the green I. | 00:24:56 | |
Just because when I think of those light posts I think of that green but that that would be my only. | 00:25:03 | |
Comment. | 00:25:11 | |
And the banner could be. | 00:25:13 | |
Go with the shape of the circle making downtown larger. We could mimic potentially that at the bottom of the circle or. | 00:25:17 | |
Across as a banner, perhaps? | 00:25:26 | |
I like all of those ideas too, the potentially a sequel and emphasizing the word downtown. | 00:25:31 | |
And you know one thing, and this is this is the balancing act with this is that, you know, you have the downtown Pacific Grove | 00:25:39 | |
shopping district, if you will, you know, downtown Pacific Grove. And then you also have, you know, our entity, which is the | 00:25:47 | |
downtown Business Improvement District. And so to your point, Liz, and, and also. | 00:25:55 | |
To Stephanie's you know, there's a way that you could do 2 versions of the logo, sort of the official. | 00:26:04 | |
Group or entity logo, if you will downtown, you know like like we see here just as a for instance, but then. | 00:26:10 | |
For advertising and marketing purposes, you could then have say downtown, be in letters up here, very big and bold and then | 00:26:21 | |
Pacific Grove underneath and it still retains everything. And again, Stephanie, we can move into some of the green shades that you | 00:26:28 | |
would discuss. We can make it, you know, whatever color we want to. | 00:26:34 | |
But then you have that one version there which is promoting, you know, that to visitors. And then if it's a something that's, you | 00:26:42 | |
know, we're utilizing, hey, downtown, the the bid is sponsoring something or it's on the, the letterhead, quote UN quote for our | 00:26:50 | |
agendas or on the website, then you could have the Pacific Grove downtown Business Improvement District. | 00:26:59 | |
And it's just, it's like you said, Alexa, two versions of the same logo. | 00:27:09 | |
So should we say that next steps would be? | 00:27:20 | |
To try out these. | 00:27:25 | |
Suggestions then? | 00:27:29 | |
That's a that's a Steve question. | 00:27:33 | |
Yes. So the next steps would be to if, if, if we're all landing on. This is a concept. | 00:27:37 | |
And it, you know, Liz is I'm a I'm a whimsical guy. I get, I get needled for it by my family all the time, but I. | 00:27:48 | |
Given the seagulls and our battles with them, we can certainly, you know, take a look to see if that would work, but I think we | 00:27:58 | |
might. | 00:28:03 | |
With all due respect, want to keep the seagulls out of it. Now, that's not to say that you know, we can't get a seagull costume | 00:28:10 | |
and have that for our events. I mean, I think that'd be cool as our as our mascot, but. | 00:28:16 | |
Putting that in here, it could be a little bit a little bit problematic, but but I think next steps would be, you know, if we land | 00:28:24 | |
on this as the concept, we can take this, have the designer then augment it into a couple different versions. And then, you know, | 00:28:31 | |
Stephanie, I know you've got the program capability to to do some of this. We can play around with the colors then if we want to | 00:28:38 | |
do that. But we've secured this as. | 00:28:45 | |
The. | 00:28:53 | |
Final quote UN quote design. | 00:28:54 | |
Yeah. So would we based on the design product or whatever it is, would we then, I mean, we were awarding this artist the the, the | 00:28:58 | |
prize, correct? Yes, Yeah, we would, yes, based on design crowd, we would award this artist the prize. We'd let him know we need a | 00:29:08 | |
couple different versions of this and then we can probably also, you know, go to him or her and. | 00:29:17 | |
Say, can you know, can we see a couple different versions and some different color palettes? You know, this blue, we could go with | 00:29:27 | |
a green. | 00:29:31 | |
I you know, I was thought that portions of the of the lamppost were black and and that may just be the colorization of, you know, | 00:29:37 | |
over time of the of the posts or the the lamp portions themselves. I. | 00:29:46 | |
But yeah, we can certainly augment that as we need it and we could even do that internally. Sure. | 00:29:56 | |
And I'm happy to make any adjustments, you know, we need once we have the the artwork too. Sure. Yeah, 'cause they'll send | 00:30:04 | |
everything over with the, you know, the Indesign and EPS files and the native base files, Yeah. | 00:30:11 | |
OK, great. Well, we have a few other agenda items to get to, so we will happily leave it with that is our choice and to explore | 00:30:21 | |
the tweaks and we're getting close. Thank you so much. | 00:30:29 | |
OK. Any other questions, comments, Steve? No, no, I was just moving over to the next item. | 00:30:41 | |
Sure. OK, so. | 00:30:50 | |
Agenda item for new business, the bid board vacancy. So for applications we've got. | 00:30:51 | |
We had two well. | 00:31:00 | |
We'd already actually reached out to Alexa and all approved her her position and thank you very much for submitting the | 00:31:03 | |
application. Alexa, that's a sort of retrospective and then also. | 00:31:09 | |
Alessandro from Alessandra Bush from the Mechanics Bank also, so we. | 00:31:17 | |
Yeah. My only question is, I think we wanted to approve. | 00:31:27 | |
The new, you know the the new person so. | 00:31:33 | |
Do we need to wait for that? Is that your advice? I think for today's purposes I would go ahead and if you want to do that and | 00:31:39 | |
then like I said, we're checking to see if it'll be a valid. | 00:31:44 | |
So, yeah, I will. I will make it kind of one clarification that I think we followed up with after the last meeting with Christy. | 00:31:51 | |
Technically, I believe that you're welcome, Alexa. I believe that you'll want to send the names over to to us, I guess, and we'll | 00:31:59 | |
put it on the council agenda then to ratify the roster. But it doesn't hurt if they're endorsed by this computer. | 00:32:08 | |
And I apologize. I thought that they had given it to me. I thought that was the process that Christine was able to see. But that's | 00:32:18 | |
the next step. OK, I guess. Yeah. Because when we did the roster the first time, we didn't have vacancies. | 00:32:24 | |
So according to the resolution. | 00:32:32 | |
You know, fulfill that process, OK, it's not a big deal. It's just OK, sweet. All right, so. | 00:32:34 | |
So we have one opening and one application for that. So, so it's I think I would like to move that we well actually let's first | 00:32:43 | |
have discussion and let me open it to public comment if there is any. | 00:32:52 | |
I don't see any, so the board would anyone like to discuss? | 00:33:04 | |
I think Alessandro, I've met him, I think he's a great choice and I'm happy that someone from Mechanics Bank, especially him being | 00:33:11 | |
the manager, is willing to be on the board because that shows support because we use that courtyard so much for different events. | 00:33:18 | |
And he was very gracious helping us with Chocolate block. So I think he's a. | 00:33:25 | |
He's a great candidate. | 00:33:33 | |
Yeah, I second all that. | 00:33:37 | |
So, yeah, all right, any, any other questions, comments? Well, I'm going to go ahead and make a motion let I would like to have | 00:33:40 | |
invite Alessandra Bush to be a board member. | 00:33:48 | |
Any second, second. | 00:33:56 | |
Thank you. So we may need to do this with a quorum, but we'll vote for now and all in favor say aye aye. | 00:34:00 | |
So we approve Alessandra as a new board member and it will go to Council next and we'll we'll hear back about the formalities down | 00:34:13 | |
the line. So thanks everyone for that. Next up is. | 00:34:21 | |
The. | 00:34:30 | |
Downtown trick or treat event and let me just see what how we're doing for time. It's 10 past. So we do have the business updates | 00:34:32 | |
to get to. So we can maybe put a time limit on this one, Steve of 10 minutes. Can would that work? Absolutely. I will be. I'll be | 00:34:40 | |
brief so as always. | 00:34:48 | |
The event itself and the. | 00:34:57 | |
The budget for it was approved with the approval of the 2024-2025 fiscal year. So we're going to run through some of the elements | 00:35:01 | |
of this and then be able to entertain any questions, changes, stuff like that. So this is the 12th annual Downtown Pacific Grove | 00:35:10 | |
Halloween events. This is our creative from last year for the 11th annual Green Hue. | 00:35:19 | |
And. | 00:35:30 | |
This is just a quick review of last year's event. We estimated that there were about 3000 plus trick or treaters and families. We | 00:35:31 | |
had 65 businesses that were confirmed. We did partner with the museum on Science Saturday for their snakes and spiders. There was | 00:35:40 | |
a large social media presence and outreach as you can see from. | 00:35:49 | |
The results here we reached over 30,000 people. We had 788 event responses. | 00:35:58 | |
And our post engagements were over 1500 with over 835 link clicks. We had advertising, media outreach and our merchant | 00:36:05 | |
communications included 5E blasts and then direct communications with the participating businesses. This is the proposed creative. | 00:36:17 | |
For this year, and I'll get into a little bit why we want to speed up some of our placement processes in just a second. But again, | 00:36:30 | |
all of our posters and our creative include the event, the event time and dates and of course. | 00:36:39 | |
Our little our little rider down there that the event is free and open to the public, but that we ask all children must be | 00:36:49 | |
accompanied by a responsible adult and then we also include the. | 00:36:55 | |
Sponsors of the event, including the Chamber and the City of Pacific Grove that joins in. | 00:37:02 | |
Secure Stone. | 00:37:10 | |
Some reason this is not moving forward. | 00:37:17 | |
Sorry my my screen is is frozen. Can you guys still hear me? I'm going to share this again. | 00:37:31 | |
Apologies. | 00:37:37 | |
OK, can everyone still see this? | 00:37:52 | |
OK, great. It's just a little bit smaller. I, I apologize. I'm not quite sure why that's not advancing forward again. The proposed | 00:37:57 | |
event information for this year, October 2026. | 00:38:03 | |
From 10 until two again, it's going to be free. All the businesses are going to receive their social media toolkit, their poster, | 00:38:10 | |
their flag and the starter bucket of candy and toys will continue to reach out and Co brand with the Pacific Grove Museum. Also, | 00:38:18 | |
if the library is going to be doing anything this year, we can Co brand the event with them. We are already. | 00:38:26 | |
Going to have tabling and booths from the Pacific Grove Police Department and the Recreation department. | 00:38:35 | |
We will once again have our Scarecrow contest, which is very popular. We will have corn stalks, pumpkins and hay bales installed | 00:38:42 | |
throughout downtown starting on September 30th. And then Christy and I spoke. And there is also the potential for a second smaller | 00:38:49 | |
hay Bale installation at the Mechanics Bank Courtyard. | 00:38:57 | |
Alessandro, who is now for a member of the board, had mentioned wanting to partner during Halloween and so there is that | 00:39:05 | |
possibility to for us to put a smaller installation there as well. I. | 00:39:12 | |
As I mentioned at the at the top here. | 00:39:21 | |
We have an accelerated timeline this year and one of the biggest reason for that is the 2024 general election. We want to make | 00:39:25 | |
sure that our advertising and both on social media and also our print advertising is placed early so that we can secure that space | 00:39:33 | |
at the lowest rates possible. And we also want to make sure that we get our posters and things like that. | 00:39:41 | |
Ordered and produced and ordered and printed. | 00:39:50 | |
Before a lot of the print houses get overrun with mailers because it is a general election, we, you know, this is a, this is an | 00:39:54 | |
issue that we want to make sure that we don't run into. And in speaking with the media outlets, we're going to definitely want to | 00:40:02 | |
take advantage of that. So today, 87, we're looking at the event. | 00:40:10 | |
The creative is reviewed and we can make adjustments via e-mail, but conceptually, if you like that, we can move forward. | 00:40:19 | |
On 812 we are. We'd like to book the DJ for the 26th as well as getting our advertising placed on the 26th. We'll do our press | 00:40:25 | |
release and calendar alert and we'll send the initial e-mail to the businesses. If you can believe it, it's two months out at that | 00:40:35 | |
point, so time flies fast. We got our posters printed on 9/2 and then 916 is when the advertising begins. Social media. | 00:40:45 | |
16 or candy gets ordered a month early. We send our Flyers to Pacific Grove Unified School District electronically. If there is | 00:40:55 | |
the opportunity for printed Flyers, which I've heard maybe a change from what their policy is, we may be able to do those again. | 00:41:03 | |
We can we can do those pumpkins, hay bales and corn stalks would be installed on the 30th. That leaves basically one month for | 00:41:10 | |
those to be up and they'll stay fresh and then the. | 00:41:18 | |
Posters are distributed, distributed on 9/30 to 10/2 and then our third e-mail goes out to the businesses on 10/7 and our print | 00:41:25 | |
advertising runs on the 11th and the 16th and then our final call for participants on the 21st and candy pickup is always then as | 00:41:32 | |
the three days prior. | 00:41:39 | |
Here's a breakdown of the costs. There are. There's no additional costs this year and I was able to secure all of the same levels | 00:41:48 | |
as 2023, which is great. So our advertising consists of Facebook and Instagram as well as two quarter page ads in the weekly. | 00:41:58 | |
That's our kind of our best event place. And then we also have a digital run that I've been able to secure. | 00:42:08 | |
This year as well, that's going to be on the Weeklies website and in their e-mail newsletters, posters and flags. The event | 00:42:18 | |
management, which includes the public relation, marketing, graphic design, social media, advertising, placement, all that good | 00:42:24 | |
stuff. The candy, same as last year, but obviously a little bit more expensive than a few years ago, especially with the number of | 00:42:30 | |
businesses. | 00:42:36 | |
Our buckets we order early and so those are inexpensive. | 00:42:43 | |
Our corn stalks, pumpkins and hay bales and that also includes removal of those. And then our DJ and I did want to go back here | 00:42:47 | |
real quick and highlight this was the winner of the scarecrow contest last year. You know, between making delicious breads, Pavels | 00:42:54 | |
always seems to be able to come through with something really, really special and that was the a Barbie scarecrow that they | 00:43:00 | |
created. | 00:43:07 | |
Along with the movie last year and just you know. | 00:43:14 | |
I don't know where he gets it, but it's special. And then final finally some some pictures of of the event last year and will that | 00:43:19 | |
I will take questions. | 00:43:24 | |
Yeah. Can I ask if anyone in the public would like to comment? | 00:43:32 | |
No hands raised. Yes, Mike, just real quick, maybe I missed it on the advertising part. Did you mention the pine cone at all? | 00:43:40 | |
So we so when we place our advertising we're looking for. | 00:43:52 | |
Who can we, you know, what audience do we want to bring in? And so we do a lot with the pine cone for our. | 00:43:59 | |
For our holiday open house and some of our other events, we tend to go with the weekly for this event because we want to try to | 00:44:09 | |
bring in more families. That's not to say that the Pine Cone does not have, you know, readership that are families. We just need | 00:44:16 | |
to balance a limited budget now if at the pleasure of the. | 00:44:23 | |
Of the board if we want to include pine some advertising the pine cone, we absolutely can. We just try to you know, keep the event | 00:44:30 | |
total cost. | 00:44:35 | |
Pretty similar year to year, but again, we can always shift some dollars to the pine cone if we want to, or add a little bit in if | 00:44:41 | |
you'd like. | 00:44:45 | |
Reason for asking was not to increase the budget, I believe, and I'm glad to check into it, the pipeline actually has a community | 00:44:52 | |
service where they will list the event. It's not a big display ad, but they were listed for free, Free advertising. That's always | 00:44:59 | |
good. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So that's so their event. Their event listing is actually a paid thing, but a lot of times we're able | 00:45:06 | |
through the media outreach to get a little bit of a story placed in there. | 00:45:13 | |
And so that's part of the media outreach as well. | 00:45:22 | |
OK, Yeah. | 00:45:27 | |
OK, open this to the board to discuss and. | 00:45:30 | |
It's. | 00:45:36 | |
Wow, it's like early August and we're doing this. I'm impressed. You know, kind of my ongoing concern and I know it's it's getting | 00:45:39 | |
worse and worse is the cost of the event for the businesses because I personally spend about 400 to $450 on candy. | 00:45:51 | |
For the event and I've always wanted to have someone sponsor candy or. | 00:46:03 | |
Get Andronicos or Grove Market or somebody to allow us to order candy at wholesale. | 00:46:10 | |
You know, that can open it up to the businesses, 'cause I know several businesses last year didn't participate because they simply | 00:46:19 | |
can't financially. | 00:46:23 | |
So I don't know. | 00:46:29 | |
I don't know how we go about doing that, but I think it would be really helpful because it's costs of candy are crazy now. | 00:46:32 | |
Stephanie, that's a great point. And it's something that I mentioned to Christy about a month ago the last time that we talked. | 00:46:43 | |
And so I think when she gets back into town tomorrow, I'm supposed to meet with her and she and I can develop a plan. | 00:46:52 | |
To, you know, to reach out to Grove and see if we can't or Andronico see if we can't order wholesale through them or even go | 00:47:01 | |
through targets community portal to see if there's a way to be able to order candy in bulk at a discount and maybe even, you know, | 00:47:08 | |
go out to the businesses and. | 00:47:15 | |
Somehow include that in there and figure out a way that the businesses can contribute, but we're buying just a larger bulk amount. | 00:47:24 | |
And you know, for candy rather than buying retail, because even I try to hit the sale at Target, but the last couple years they've | 00:47:35 | |
decreased the the discount a lot. So it, it used to be 30% off one day a year like in September, but it's gotten lower and lower | 00:47:42 | |
and. | 00:47:49 | |
And I love this event. It's great I you don't see more traffic downtown than for this event. | 00:47:57 | |
But I I just want businesses. I want all the businesses to be able to participate that want to. | 00:48:04 | |
Agreed. And that's why I'm glad that we're bringing this forward when we are, because it gives us a little time to be able to dig | 00:48:13 | |
into that and figure it out and maybe leverage the relationships that the chamber has to be able to, to go through and and get | 00:48:18 | |
something in bulk. | 00:48:23 | |
OK, I mean, on that point, I know we need to move on, but can anyone brainstorm? Like, I don't know, I was just talking to someone | 00:48:29 | |
who said that Montage was, you know, sponsoring their event and some of the big companies locally. And I just was wondering, like, | 00:48:36 | |
I can't see montage sponsoring something where people eat candy because they're health oriented. But can you bring psych? Is there | 00:48:44 | |
is there, you know, like often a corporation or a company, whatever they they. | 00:48:51 | |
To promote values that are part of their own ethos. Can you think of any kid friendly or fun or creative or you know whatever Corp | 00:48:59 | |
or you know which? | 00:49:05 | |
Like is there anything locally that that would align with this? | 00:49:12 | |
That we could approach in the interest of time. Let me give some thought to that and then I can e-mail out to the, to the board | 00:49:17 | |
some ideas. And it may be that there are some businesses that would like to to sponsor that. Certainly as we've discussed in the | 00:49:24 | |
past, sponsorship of our events is on the table. And you know, other business improvement districts, you know, even as Mr. Gibbs | 00:49:32 | |
mentioned the the downtown slope, you know they have. | 00:49:39 | |
Entities that you know, they get their logo on things and so that may be a way to mitigate some of the costs for the businesses | 00:49:47 | |
because I know it has grown and that's why our candy. | 00:49:52 | |
Line item has gone up as well because we're trying to provide as much candy for the businesses as possible. | 00:50:00 | |
Yeah, I mean, I, I bowed out after spending $300.00 and it was gone in half an hour, you know, and I just thought, well, I can't | 00:50:07 | |
keep up with this. I just, it's not, I suppose really our, you know, demographic either. But if you know, I'd love to just support | 00:50:13 | |
it if, if it were, you know, more, you know, return on investment or more, you know, less of an investment and more anyway, OK, | 00:50:20 | |
let's. | 00:50:26 | |
That we'd have to get that tied in pretty soon because you're starting advertising soon, so. | 00:50:34 | |
If we're going to offer like your logo on our advertising, then we, yeah, we should explore that, make a few cold calls or | 00:50:38 | |
whatever. So, yeah, I'm gonna meet with Christy tomorrow and we'll we'll get hopping on this. Excellent. OK, well, that would be a | 00:50:46 | |
really fun improvement for this year if we actually got some more budget. So that would be great. OK, so business updates. | 00:50:53 | |
I so the EDC. So here's the thing, there's the chamber, the EDC, the BID and the HID. We're all the business community and we all | 00:51:02 | |
have a lot in common and. | 00:51:07 | |
You know, I, I can talk about this, but the nice thing about having Christy here is that she knows all of these groups and that, | 00:51:14 | |
you know, gets a little bit more of an overall. | 00:51:18 | |
Umbrella view of things, which is useful for the bid I think, but you know, regarding. | 00:51:23 | |
Overlap between bid and the EDC, there's a couple of things. I think we mentioned the sign project that Mike is doing. We | 00:51:31 | |
mentioned that last meeting that's still ongoing. There's a new Commissioner Richmond. | 00:51:39 | |
Captain and Stoker, she's she was interested in an initiative where, you know, the facade improvement program could also cover | 00:51:49 | |
pots of flowers or, you know, big like planter boxes in front of businesses. And you know, had said I'm going to be great if we | 00:51:56 | |
had landscaping too, but we kind of pulled that from that and we're just looking at that. So so there is a subcommittee which is | 00:52:02 | |
actually. | 00:52:09 | |
Might give myself and we're going to talk to the. | 00:52:16 | |
NRC and. | 00:52:20 | |
And public works and just kind of explore how best to do this and you know, whether we're doing it in the right way, if we have | 00:52:24 | |
the right idea or not. So that was really the only initiative right now. | 00:52:32 | |
I mean, I could say a lot more, but I, I think I'll just leave it at that. I think some exciting news and I'm feeling it for | 00:52:42 | |
Christy because she always does the exciting news. Hops and Fog is going to open next Tuesday, I believe. | 00:52:48 | |
That's a big event in our downtown. Yeah. Anything else from other people in the business news We do have there's a new full time, | 00:52:57 | |
I forget his name, but there is a new full time worker who is working on cleaning up downtown and. | 00:53:06 | |
Tweeting and you know, working on little projects so. | 00:53:16 | |
That's really good because that kind of goes he's kind of looking at the planters out front of the businesses too, and because | 00:53:23 | |
some of them could use some love. | 00:53:28 | |
Right. | 00:53:33 | |
Yeah, yeah. Chad, Chad, that's it. Yeah. | 00:53:36 | |
Right. So I, the one of the topics that came up in the EDC, just FYI, was that we would like to go from those baskets of silk | 00:53:40 | |
flowers to real flowers. But it's a whole logistical nightmare because they need watering, they need fertilizing, they need | 00:53:49 | |
deadheading, they need, you know, they need a lot of maintenance. So I'm not sure how that's going to go forward, but it was. | 00:53:57 | |
A really nice idea that was that was presented but. | 00:54:06 | |
Yeah. Any any other comments? | 00:54:11 | |
OK, so we finally have sunshine. I was beginning to think we need to rebrand Pacific Grove as the sweater weather capital of the | 00:54:17 | |
country. It's been so cold, but I think it has a nice effect on retail when we do get a little sunshine. So that's good. Got that | 00:54:26 | |
coming up. dot car week coming up and lots of events. So you should have a nice busy rest of the month. | 00:54:34 | |
And any other questions, comments or can I adjourn? | 00:54:43 | |
All right. So I need to, I need to adjourn this meeting at 9:29. Thank you so much. | 00:54:49 | |
Thank you everyone. | 00:54:58 | |
We should be able to let you know soon whether or not. | 00:55:02 |
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OK. Call this meeting to order at 8:34 AM and I would like to open to general public comment about anything that is not on the | 00:00:05 | |
agenda. | 00:00:11 | |
Mr. Gibbs, would you like to say something? Yeah, please. Thank you. | 00:00:21 | |
Jacob's in the downtown business of Equipment Districts Board. | 00:00:27 | |
My name is Mike Gibbs. I'm here as a private citizen, although I will disclose I'm a member of the Pacific Grove Economic | 00:00:32 | |
Development Commission and we do have a we do have a business here. My wife and I, it's a non profit, the members of the chamber | 00:00:39 | |
and we have our downtown office. So I just wanted to. | 00:00:45 | |
We have a very great interest in Pacific Grove and business. You should be on the bid. | 00:00:52 | |
Put me on. | 00:00:57 | |
So I'm here to talk today about, it's hard to believe, but literally three weeks after the election, we're in Christmas season, | 00:00:59 | |
right? So we're talking about from Thanksgiving all the way through November. And I, I think I mentioned this before, but I'm here | 00:01:05 | |
to say let's make Christmas bigger, better, and more fun. We all know that for downtown businesses and businesses all over Pacific | 00:01:12 | |
Grove, it is a great season. | 00:01:19 | |
To bring people in, to make people feel great and. | 00:01:26 | |
It is a big revenue generating season. You know some people make as much revenue in that three months, 2-3 months as they make the | 00:01:30 | |
rest of the year. So I have a couple of suggestions that none of these are particularly new. | 00:01:37 | |
My wife and I've been coming to Pacific Grove at Christmas for almost 30 years. We've lived here for 10 lights on lighthouse. They | 00:01:44 | |
used to be strong at Christmas time. We have a few lights but Christmas season they would basically canopy flight house and I | 00:01:53 | |
think that would be really cool. Some cities have a downtown Christmas decorating contest Julie Beck has. | 00:02:01 | |
A I guess her son and daughter-in-law artist. | 00:02:11 | |
Going to participate I understand something like that we were in San Luis Obispo last year they have a great I mean it's a great | 00:02:14 | |
if you've been there go there this year Christmas is just wonderful and they have a couple things in in Liz Jacobs knows this they | 00:02:22 | |
have a buy local program and they have little cards and this is their one from last year is going to be hard to see what it says | 00:02:29 | |
downtown solo holiday hustle now this is. | 00:02:37 | |
Done by the businesses downtown and the hustle is and $100 or more November 25th of December 30th and you get a certificate for | 00:02:44 | |
$10 off of a purchase at $40 or at any of the participating stores and then they are sponsored by 20 or 30 companies. | 00:02:56 | |
Their monetized health. | 00:03:09 | |
All the local car companies a sponsored downtown, so shop local is big. They do a gift guide, right? So they have their own | 00:03:11 | |
website, downtownslo.org and they have a gift guide on the website so local owners and restaurants can feature gifts or dinners. | 00:03:20 | |
And I think that's really pretty cool. And I would guess if you set a goal, you know, and we'll participate it business | 00:03:30 | |
participating and said, let's increase traffic flow downtown by, oh, say 25%, right? Get them into the stores, get them into the | 00:03:38 | |
restaurants. I think it would be a huge self capitulating, you know, annual event. So if you want to know more, it's downtown SLO. | 00:03:46 | |
Oh, I believe it is a Stanley Visco and they started up right around Thanksgiving. Go over there. | 00:03:56 | |
Take the train, go to Salinas, take the train down to San Luis Obispo, take some people have dinner and walk in some of the shops. | 00:04:03 | |
It's really a neat thing. And if something really that I'm sure other people, the EDC and maybe the BNRC Beautification National | 00:04:10 | |
Resources would participate in helping, you know, decorate downtown. So I will participate. I can bring a few people in as | 00:04:18 | |
volunteers. It's something you choose to do. So I don't know if I move my 3 minutes. | 00:04:25 | |
Oh, we're a little bit less formal here, so. OK. All right. Yeah, great. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. | 00:04:34 | |
If I could just say really quickly regarding your question on quorum, I would say let's go ahead and you can and have your meeting | 00:04:44 | |
today, have a meeting to look a little bit further into any action you take with three members, if that would be, if those would | 00:04:50 | |
be sustained actions, we'd have to retake the future meeting. So we're looking at the code and we're trying to figure out three | 00:04:56 | |
does work. | 00:05:02 | |
That makes sense. So let's just bear in mind. I mean, I think the only action we might take is about the logo, but. | 00:05:08 | |
Well, we can always, yeah, do that another way too, So. And we voted by e-mail with the logo, so I don't know. | 00:05:15 | |
I think we can confirm it. That's true the oh, but you know what the the vacancy that we have, yes, that will need to that we | 00:05:24 | |
would probably have to defer to next time because we have to vote right to I think that's where we are. OK, I always rely on | 00:05:31 | |
Christy on technicalities, but. | 00:05:38 | |
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's those what we've always done in the past, so OK. | 00:05:45 | |
I know that we don't have to comment on public comment and a lot of people don't, but I would just like to say. | 00:05:53 | |
Mike, just to let you know. | 00:06:01 | |
The because it's always a thing, right? When you go to a new place and you say like, here's an idea, like what are they already | 00:06:04 | |
doing and what, how does this fit in? So we have a Christmas. | 00:06:09 | |
Celebration that we do that. | 00:06:15 | |
Steve handles, he takes care of it's, you know, the Inns is open and there's open house and the shops and things. And So what I | 00:06:19 | |
think just to not let an idea die, but to sort of give it a little bit of, you know, let's test it out and see what we get with | 00:06:25 | |
it. I think that maybe a subcommittee would be a good idea because what you said requires city staff. That's been our perennial | 00:06:32 | |
problem on the EDC as well. We get great ideas. | 00:06:38 | |
Council already has their ideas, you know, the commissions have their ideas. We have to somehow find a way that we all kind of | 00:06:46 | |
meld and that and the resources are there. So let's you know, that's what I would suggest anyway. Any other comments? I know we | 00:06:54 | |
don't normally comment on comment, but who puts the lights up in the city downtown? It's in public works. | 00:07:02 | |
Yeah, that'd be my assumption. I don't know directly because I'm surprised I've never heard that they had the canopy. That's | 00:07:11 | |
gorgeous. That's like Alvarado St. All the retailers on Lighthouse want that. Yes, so. | 00:07:17 | |
Yeah, I can just provide a little background. So lights used to be strong across the street like you would see in Alvarado. | 00:07:25 | |
However, when the new antique light poles were put in, you know, 15 years ago or so, it was determined that they were not. | 00:07:35 | |
They were not constructed in a way that would allow for the lights to be attached to them, and so that's why they they stopped | 00:07:47 | |
stringing the lights across because there used to be the. | 00:07:52 | |
You know, the regular style lights downtown and whether they were allowable or not to have the lights attached to them strung | 00:07:59 | |
across the street. That's how it was. But when they changed, I think it was a height issue when they changed to the to the antique | 00:08:06 | |
lamps, if you will. | 00:08:13 | |
That's when that happened. Sorry my I'm doing this from home so my dog is barking, but just to provide a little time. | 00:08:22 | |
Yeah, OK. Thank you. OK, so and that kind of raises the question that answers one question I have because all the retailers really | 00:08:32 | |
want it. They say Alvarado Street, so cool. And then you know we could be cool, but why you know, why aren't we? So is there any | 00:08:39 | |
way that we can do a work around because it can't be that hard to find a workaround, but that would involve. | 00:08:47 | |
Resources and so I mean, what I just heard kind of makes me wonder is more of a structural thing if those life standards weren't | 00:08:54 | |
strong enough to stand that. So that's a different probably situation. I would say, you know, any of these type of things where | 00:09:01 | |
you're asking about the staff time or all that. I think the the process that we're trying to funnel into is more of a make a | 00:09:08 | |
recommendation, you know, and we'll have a form. We're going to talk about that tonight at the council meeting. | 00:09:14 | |
And then that'll kind of filter its way up in the City Council direction. | 00:09:22 | |
We really need that because you know, we have all these interested, engaged and committed people that kind of want to do | 00:09:27 | |
something, but maybe we don't really know how the constructive way to do this. And I would say, you know, we're going to make kind | 00:09:32 | |
of those recommendations. We probably want to like kind of maybe focus on something one or two like are the ones you really, you | 00:09:38 | |
know, I would say a lot of them probably water it down. | 00:09:44 | |
And that's the other thing is like, you know, we discussed this that for our, you know, we basically we have our budget. | 00:09:52 | |
We have a couple events that we do. We just are this board usually just prioritizes a couple of things and that's all we do in the | 00:09:57 | |
year. But we do them, you know, where we build each year we do the same one and we get better at it so. | 00:10:04 | |
You know that's. | 00:10:13 | |
I think it's it's, you know, worth us sort of focusing on our strengths, I guess, and, you know, say, like, can we make the | 00:10:16 | |
Christmas thing better? How do we need to do it? And, and I'm so pleased there's going to be a way to interact with the other | 00:10:21 | |
parts of the city that we all can reinforce each other, so. | 00:10:26 | |
Anyway, let's go on. So ongoing business. | 00:10:32 | |
A is reviewed June July 2024 financials. So over to you Stephanie. So Christy and Elon are accountant are working on. | 00:10:39 | |
Categorizing like we requested so that we're going to have line items for all of our events, though it's a little clearer where | 00:10:53 | |
the money is going. | 00:10:57 | |
I think we need to table this until the next meeting because we were we're only up to the end of May. We don't have the financials | 00:11:03 | |
yet for June and July. | 00:11:07 | |
They're they're still working on that. It there was no change because we, we our last event was chalk the block, which was. | 00:11:14 | |
You know, back in May. | 00:11:23 | |
But. | 00:11:26 | |
My, my question for Lori and I, I, she kind of answered it before the meeting was when are we going to be getting our assessment | 00:11:28 | |
from the city 'cause it was. | 00:11:33 | |
Finally approved and she mentioned September and I don't know if that's. | 00:11:39 | |
Where it usually falls. It seems late to me, but. | 00:11:45 | |
But I historically, I don't know, I've never been the treasurer, so I don't remember when that when that check usually lands. | 00:11:51 | |
This is Lori. I can put our by. The contract that you have with the city is that we make 2 payments a year, the first one in | 00:12:03 | |
February and September. | 00:12:08 | |
OK, umm. | 00:12:14 | |
So. | 00:12:16 | |
I don't believe did we get a February payment. | 00:12:17 | |
We did OK. | 00:12:23 | |
So I think we should put this item to review the year end because that'll be the year end, our fiscal year in July, financials at | 00:12:31 | |
the next meeting. | 00:12:37 | |
OK, I move that we do that. | 00:12:47 | |
We move. Does anyone 2nd? | 00:12:51 | |
I'll second. All right, thanks. | 00:12:57 | |
So there's three of us all in favor, aye? | 00:13:00 | |
OK. So we'll move that agenda item to next time. Thanks so much. So now over to Steve. We we've got the new bid logo and updates. | 00:13:08 | |
You know what, I did not open that topic to public comment. So may I fix that and ask is there any public comment on the | 00:13:17 | |
financials agenda item? | 00:13:25 | |
OK, seeing none, let's move to 3B, which is the bid logo and over to Steve. | 00:13:37 | |
Thanks everyone, bear with me while I share my screen real quick. | 00:13:43 | |
Sorry, stand by for just a moment. | 00:14:25 | |
Just a side note, just so everybody's aware, the Monterey County Weekly Best of Voting is going on right now and there are a ton | 00:14:44 | |
of EG businesses. | 00:14:51 | |
Nominated. I went through the ballot and was voting straight PG and there was at least one business for pretty much every | 00:14:59 | |
category. So I encourage people to to vote. When does when does that close? | 00:15:07 | |
I think at the end of at the end of the month. | 00:15:15 | |
I see. So maybe we should remind Christy to send out like an invitation to members to vote and. | 00:15:19 | |
One thing whilst we're still in sort of between the parentheses, I think it would be really nice to do a quarterly e-mail to the | 00:15:29 | |
bid members. And that's why I'm excited about the logos. Yeah, get that on. And that would be the sort of thing to to put in the. | 00:15:38 | |
The e-mail last is. | 00:15:48 | |
OK. | 00:15:57 | |
And Liz, dovetailing on that, that's a, that's a great idea. Sorry about that. For some reason the PDF function was not coming up. | 00:15:59 | |
So this is just the Word document. And Liz, I did receive your comment and your poll, your poll results. | 00:16:09 | |
Those are included within what I'm about to present. | 00:16:19 | |
So just as a very, very brief bit of background, we started this process about six months ago, the initial logos that we brought | 00:16:23 | |
forward. | 00:16:29 | |
Included some of the long standing iconic. | 00:16:37 | |
Graphical elements that are in the city, butterflies and lighthouses, but we didn't feel like that truly represented downtown. | 00:16:42 | |
Kudos to Stephanie who sort of made the, you know, hey, what about the, the lamps in downtown? You know, those are unique to | 00:16:51 | |
downtown. And, and so we took that idea and incorporated it into this process. And I'll just very briefly review. | 00:17:00 | |
Where things stand. | 00:17:09 | |
And also just by way of a little bit of background information, I did speak with Christie yesterday just to get her thoughts on | 00:17:11 | |
this and she did, you know, give the the thumbs up for her votes to be placed into the the discussion for this. So I'm going to | 00:17:20 | |
run through this is ranked in order of number of votes and. | 00:17:29 | |
So the first one received four votes. | 00:17:38 | |
Alexa and Christy commented on this. It is a round presentation on Pacific Grove is highlighted in the top downtown Business | 00:17:42 | |
Improvement District. And obviously the focal point of the logo is the, the, the lamps and I'll just call it the lamp, the street | 00:17:51 | |
lights and it, it does have multiple colors in it. | 00:17:59 | |
In a, you know, with a with a blue hue. | 00:18:10 | |
But it is clear and round and one of the things that I like about this, and Christy mentioned that is that it would be easy for | 00:18:12 | |
this to appear on. | 00:18:18 | |
Everything from hats and jackets and shirts, but more importantly within the social media buttons, Facebook and Instagram, | 00:18:24 | |
Twitter, things of that nature. So the the round shape lens that to be something that is that is easy to utilize. Additionally, if | 00:18:33 | |
we're just looking for a graphical element utilizing the center area here. | 00:18:41 | |
Is also something that you know, we can pull out of that as a as a piece to it. The second one is received three votes. Alexis | 00:18:50 | |
said that she loved the fact that downtown is highlighted. | 00:18:57 | |
And that it's very bold. So you do see downtown being the highlighted of this, the highlighted portion of. | 00:19:06 | |
Of this choice, and again, it does show the the lamps up here. | 00:19:14 | |
The third choice received three votes. There weren't any comments to this one. This is horizontal and it utilizes again a color | 00:19:21 | |
scheme similar to the first one, the darker and lighter blue. The one drawback with this is again, as I mentioned, it is | 00:19:29 | |
horizontal and so from the standpoint of. | 00:19:37 | |
Easily including that graphically in ads or on social media, you do would have to shrink it down or perhaps take a look at it in a | 00:19:46 | |
in a different format. But something to to think about there. Choice #4 and I'm sorry. And that was three votes. Choice #4 | 00:19:55 | |
received two votes. And Christy mentioned that she thought this would look nice if it was in 2 shades of blue like the first one. | 00:20:05 | |
Again. | 00:20:15 | |
The more round graphical element this has a little bit more of a of a triangular feel if you will, with the circular graphical | 00:20:16 | |
element being the the point on top and then the text down below a little bit more. | 00:20:24 | |
Formal, if you will, just because of the font that's utilized and it's got a little bit more of a traditional logo feeling than a | 00:20:34 | |
modern feeling. | 00:20:40 | |
And then the last one which received one vote was again a a horizontal element that have the lights in the middle and again has a | 00:20:46 | |
little bit more of a modern font to it and utilizes the the two color scheme. | 00:20:55 | |
Again just reviewing this one received the the most votes and as Alexa said, she really liked the color burst and the design grabs | 00:21:06 | |
the attention. | 00:21:13 | |
Does honor the traditional iconic light post and interestingly taking a look at it from the visit the visitors standpoint, which | 00:21:21 | |
is really what we're trying to do. | 00:21:25 | |
Great option to create excitement for what we aim to accomplish for the city. And Christy noted that this was her favorite. So | 00:21:31 | |
with that being said. | 00:21:36 | |
I'll turn it back to the board and you guys can discuss again. Whichever one we choose, we are able to. | 00:21:41 | |
Whichever one we choose, we're able to make adjustments to it and as part of the design process and there's no extra cost for | 00:21:51 | |
that. | 00:21:55 | |
Great. Thank you so much. Steve. That's a really I feel like we've got somewhere significant with this year long process that | 00:22:01 | |
we've had with it. So thank you so much for your steady work on it. Before we have board discussion, can I invite any comments | 00:22:07 | |
from the public? | 00:22:12 | |
Steve, if you can minimize your slide show, I can see the attendees. | 00:22:19 | |
Oh, sure. Sorry, I'll, I'll. | 00:22:25 | |
Do you want me to just stop the share? | 00:22:29 | |
The bottom there dispense. | 00:22:33 | |
There you go. Click on that. OK Oh, no hands raised. OK, perfect. And no hands here. OK Oh, yes, there is. No, I just, I mean, I | 00:22:41 | |
remember being here and just being discussed. So this has been under discussion for a while. And you had a contest. I think the | 00:22:50 | |
comment about the second one that I liked. I liked the first one, but the word downtown. | 00:22:59 | |
There's there's a lot of words on the bottom there and I like the focus on the down. You know that on the downtown piece if | 00:23:08 | |
somehow you can maybe highlight the downtown on the first one. | 00:23:13 | |
Just my thought that nickel will even get you a cup of coffee, but yeah, thank you. No, no, that's great. To be honest, that's | 00:23:20 | |
what I was going to say as well. I mean, I invite everyone, but I'll just throw mine into the ring to start. I I think a seagull | 00:23:27 | |
would be really great on there. But you know, that was I like a little whimsy, I have to confess. | 00:23:35 | |
And also the writing is very small there. I'm not sure that that's graphically what we want. | 00:23:44 | |
If we could just put downtown or if we could add like as an, you know, an optional, sometimes you have like a circular logo, then | 00:23:50 | |
you have the horizontal version of it, then you have the the long version of it, depending on what you're using it for, what media | 00:23:57 | |
you want to put it on. So maybe, you know, we could do something like the big downtown arched text underneath that, or maybe we | 00:24:04 | |
just put downtown in the larger letters somehow in the bottom half of that. | 00:24:11 | |
And if you want a seagull on top, I'm totally behind it. | 00:24:19 | |
So that's my. | 00:24:22 | |
Anyway, even though we battle with them every day. | 00:24:26 | |
They remind me a lot of Pacific rope. Yeah. Anyway, the other thing and and I have the ability to do this, you know, once if we | 00:24:31 | |
get a finalized logo from the artist. | 00:24:37 | |
One thing, although I like the blue, our light posts are green and so I'm wondering if we shift that color, you could do the exact | 00:24:44 | |
because it's kind of monotone. I mean, it's just different shades of the same blue. I'd kind of like to see what it would look | 00:24:50 | |
like in different shades of the green I. | 00:24:56 | |
Just because when I think of those light posts I think of that green but that that would be my only. | 00:25:03 | |
Comment. | 00:25:11 | |
And the banner could be. | 00:25:13 | |
Go with the shape of the circle making downtown larger. We could mimic potentially that at the bottom of the circle or. | 00:25:17 | |
Across as a banner, perhaps? | 00:25:26 | |
I like all of those ideas too, the potentially a sequel and emphasizing the word downtown. | 00:25:31 | |
And you know one thing, and this is this is the balancing act with this is that, you know, you have the downtown Pacific Grove | 00:25:39 | |
shopping district, if you will, you know, downtown Pacific Grove. And then you also have, you know, our entity, which is the | 00:25:47 | |
downtown Business Improvement District. And so to your point, Liz, and, and also. | 00:25:55 | |
To Stephanie's you know, there's a way that you could do 2 versions of the logo, sort of the official. | 00:26:04 | |
Group or entity logo, if you will downtown, you know like like we see here just as a for instance, but then. | 00:26:10 | |
For advertising and marketing purposes, you could then have say downtown, be in letters up here, very big and bold and then | 00:26:21 | |
Pacific Grove underneath and it still retains everything. And again, Stephanie, we can move into some of the green shades that you | 00:26:28 | |
would discuss. We can make it, you know, whatever color we want to. | 00:26:34 | |
But then you have that one version there which is promoting, you know, that to visitors. And then if it's a something that's, you | 00:26:42 | |
know, we're utilizing, hey, downtown, the the bid is sponsoring something or it's on the, the letterhead, quote UN quote for our | 00:26:50 | |
agendas or on the website, then you could have the Pacific Grove downtown Business Improvement District. | 00:26:59 | |
And it's just, it's like you said, Alexa, two versions of the same logo. | 00:27:09 | |
So should we say that next steps would be? | 00:27:20 | |
To try out these. | 00:27:25 | |
Suggestions then? | 00:27:29 | |
That's a that's a Steve question. | 00:27:33 | |
Yes. So the next steps would be to if, if, if we're all landing on. This is a concept. | 00:27:37 | |
And it, you know, Liz is I'm a I'm a whimsical guy. I get, I get needled for it by my family all the time, but I. | 00:27:48 | |
Given the seagulls and our battles with them, we can certainly, you know, take a look to see if that would work, but I think we | 00:27:58 | |
might. | 00:28:03 | |
With all due respect, want to keep the seagulls out of it. Now, that's not to say that you know, we can't get a seagull costume | 00:28:10 | |
and have that for our events. I mean, I think that'd be cool as our as our mascot, but. | 00:28:16 | |
Putting that in here, it could be a little bit a little bit problematic, but but I think next steps would be, you know, if we land | 00:28:24 | |
on this as the concept, we can take this, have the designer then augment it into a couple different versions. And then, you know, | 00:28:31 | |
Stephanie, I know you've got the program capability to to do some of this. We can play around with the colors then if we want to | 00:28:38 | |
do that. But we've secured this as. | 00:28:45 | |
The. | 00:28:53 | |
Final quote UN quote design. | 00:28:54 | |
Yeah. So would we based on the design product or whatever it is, would we then, I mean, we were awarding this artist the the, the | 00:28:58 | |
prize, correct? Yes, Yeah, we would, yes, based on design crowd, we would award this artist the prize. We'd let him know we need a | 00:29:08 | |
couple different versions of this and then we can probably also, you know, go to him or her and. | 00:29:17 | |
Say, can you know, can we see a couple different versions and some different color palettes? You know, this blue, we could go with | 00:29:27 | |
a green. | 00:29:31 | |
I you know, I was thought that portions of the of the lamppost were black and and that may just be the colorization of, you know, | 00:29:37 | |
over time of the of the posts or the the lamp portions themselves. I. | 00:29:46 | |
But yeah, we can certainly augment that as we need it and we could even do that internally. Sure. | 00:29:56 | |
And I'm happy to make any adjustments, you know, we need once we have the the artwork too. Sure. Yeah, 'cause they'll send | 00:30:04 | |
everything over with the, you know, the Indesign and EPS files and the native base files, Yeah. | 00:30:11 | |
OK, great. Well, we have a few other agenda items to get to, so we will happily leave it with that is our choice and to explore | 00:30:21 | |
the tweaks and we're getting close. Thank you so much. | 00:30:29 | |
OK. Any other questions, comments, Steve? No, no, I was just moving over to the next item. | 00:30:41 | |
Sure. OK, so. | 00:30:50 | |
Agenda item for new business, the bid board vacancy. So for applications we've got. | 00:30:51 | |
We had two well. | 00:31:00 | |
We'd already actually reached out to Alexa and all approved her her position and thank you very much for submitting the | 00:31:03 | |
application. Alexa, that's a sort of retrospective and then also. | 00:31:09 | |
Alessandro from Alessandra Bush from the Mechanics Bank also, so we. | 00:31:17 | |
Yeah. My only question is, I think we wanted to approve. | 00:31:27 | |
The new, you know the the new person so. | 00:31:33 | |
Do we need to wait for that? Is that your advice? I think for today's purposes I would go ahead and if you want to do that and | 00:31:39 | |
then like I said, we're checking to see if it'll be a valid. | 00:31:44 | |
So, yeah, I will. I will make it kind of one clarification that I think we followed up with after the last meeting with Christy. | 00:31:51 | |
Technically, I believe that you're welcome, Alexa. I believe that you'll want to send the names over to to us, I guess, and we'll | 00:31:59 | |
put it on the council agenda then to ratify the roster. But it doesn't hurt if they're endorsed by this computer. | 00:32:08 | |
And I apologize. I thought that they had given it to me. I thought that was the process that Christine was able to see. But that's | 00:32:18 | |
the next step. OK, I guess. Yeah. Because when we did the roster the first time, we didn't have vacancies. | 00:32:24 | |
So according to the resolution. | 00:32:32 | |
You know, fulfill that process, OK, it's not a big deal. It's just OK, sweet. All right, so. | 00:32:34 | |
So we have one opening and one application for that. So, so it's I think I would like to move that we well actually let's first | 00:32:43 | |
have discussion and let me open it to public comment if there is any. | 00:32:52 | |
I don't see any, so the board would anyone like to discuss? | 00:33:04 | |
I think Alessandro, I've met him, I think he's a great choice and I'm happy that someone from Mechanics Bank, especially him being | 00:33:11 | |
the manager, is willing to be on the board because that shows support because we use that courtyard so much for different events. | 00:33:18 | |
And he was very gracious helping us with Chocolate block. So I think he's a. | 00:33:25 | |
He's a great candidate. | 00:33:33 | |
Yeah, I second all that. | 00:33:37 | |
So, yeah, all right, any, any other questions, comments? Well, I'm going to go ahead and make a motion let I would like to have | 00:33:40 | |
invite Alessandra Bush to be a board member. | 00:33:48 | |
Any second, second. | 00:33:56 | |
Thank you. So we may need to do this with a quorum, but we'll vote for now and all in favor say aye aye. | 00:34:00 | |
So we approve Alessandra as a new board member and it will go to Council next and we'll we'll hear back about the formalities down | 00:34:13 | |
the line. So thanks everyone for that. Next up is. | 00:34:21 | |
The. | 00:34:30 | |
Downtown trick or treat event and let me just see what how we're doing for time. It's 10 past. So we do have the business updates | 00:34:32 | |
to get to. So we can maybe put a time limit on this one, Steve of 10 minutes. Can would that work? Absolutely. I will be. I'll be | 00:34:40 | |
brief so as always. | 00:34:48 | |
The event itself and the. | 00:34:57 | |
The budget for it was approved with the approval of the 2024-2025 fiscal year. So we're going to run through some of the elements | 00:35:01 | |
of this and then be able to entertain any questions, changes, stuff like that. So this is the 12th annual Downtown Pacific Grove | 00:35:10 | |
Halloween events. This is our creative from last year for the 11th annual Green Hue. | 00:35:19 | |
And. | 00:35:30 | |
This is just a quick review of last year's event. We estimated that there were about 3000 plus trick or treaters and families. We | 00:35:31 | |
had 65 businesses that were confirmed. We did partner with the museum on Science Saturday for their snakes and spiders. There was | 00:35:40 | |
a large social media presence and outreach as you can see from. | 00:35:49 | |
The results here we reached over 30,000 people. We had 788 event responses. | 00:35:58 | |
And our post engagements were over 1500 with over 835 link clicks. We had advertising, media outreach and our merchant | 00:36:05 | |
communications included 5E blasts and then direct communications with the participating businesses. This is the proposed creative. | 00:36:17 | |
For this year, and I'll get into a little bit why we want to speed up some of our placement processes in just a second. But again, | 00:36:30 | |
all of our posters and our creative include the event, the event time and dates and of course. | 00:36:39 | |
Our little our little rider down there that the event is free and open to the public, but that we ask all children must be | 00:36:49 | |
accompanied by a responsible adult and then we also include the. | 00:36:55 | |
Sponsors of the event, including the Chamber and the City of Pacific Grove that joins in. | 00:37:02 | |
Secure Stone. | 00:37:10 | |
Some reason this is not moving forward. | 00:37:17 | |
Sorry my my screen is is frozen. Can you guys still hear me? I'm going to share this again. | 00:37:31 | |
Apologies. | 00:37:37 | |
OK, can everyone still see this? | 00:37:52 | |
OK, great. It's just a little bit smaller. I, I apologize. I'm not quite sure why that's not advancing forward again. The proposed | 00:37:57 | |
event information for this year, October 2026. | 00:38:03 | |
From 10 until two again, it's going to be free. All the businesses are going to receive their social media toolkit, their poster, | 00:38:10 | |
their flag and the starter bucket of candy and toys will continue to reach out and Co brand with the Pacific Grove Museum. Also, | 00:38:18 | |
if the library is going to be doing anything this year, we can Co brand the event with them. We are already. | 00:38:26 | |
Going to have tabling and booths from the Pacific Grove Police Department and the Recreation department. | 00:38:35 | |
We will once again have our Scarecrow contest, which is very popular. We will have corn stalks, pumpkins and hay bales installed | 00:38:42 | |
throughout downtown starting on September 30th. And then Christy and I spoke. And there is also the potential for a second smaller | 00:38:49 | |
hay Bale installation at the Mechanics Bank Courtyard. | 00:38:57 | |
Alessandro, who is now for a member of the board, had mentioned wanting to partner during Halloween and so there is that | 00:39:05 | |
possibility to for us to put a smaller installation there as well. I. | 00:39:12 | |
As I mentioned at the at the top here. | 00:39:21 | |
We have an accelerated timeline this year and one of the biggest reason for that is the 2024 general election. We want to make | 00:39:25 | |
sure that our advertising and both on social media and also our print advertising is placed early so that we can secure that space | 00:39:33 | |
at the lowest rates possible. And we also want to make sure that we get our posters and things like that. | 00:39:41 | |
Ordered and produced and ordered and printed. | 00:39:50 | |
Before a lot of the print houses get overrun with mailers because it is a general election, we, you know, this is a, this is an | 00:39:54 | |
issue that we want to make sure that we don't run into. And in speaking with the media outlets, we're going to definitely want to | 00:40:02 | |
take advantage of that. So today, 87, we're looking at the event. | 00:40:10 | |
The creative is reviewed and we can make adjustments via e-mail, but conceptually, if you like that, we can move forward. | 00:40:19 | |
On 812 we are. We'd like to book the DJ for the 26th as well as getting our advertising placed on the 26th. We'll do our press | 00:40:25 | |
release and calendar alert and we'll send the initial e-mail to the businesses. If you can believe it, it's two months out at that | 00:40:35 | |
point, so time flies fast. We got our posters printed on 9/2 and then 916 is when the advertising begins. Social media. | 00:40:45 | |
16 or candy gets ordered a month early. We send our Flyers to Pacific Grove Unified School District electronically. If there is | 00:40:55 | |
the opportunity for printed Flyers, which I've heard maybe a change from what their policy is, we may be able to do those again. | 00:41:03 | |
We can we can do those pumpkins, hay bales and corn stalks would be installed on the 30th. That leaves basically one month for | 00:41:10 | |
those to be up and they'll stay fresh and then the. | 00:41:18 | |
Posters are distributed, distributed on 9/30 to 10/2 and then our third e-mail goes out to the businesses on 10/7 and our print | 00:41:25 | |
advertising runs on the 11th and the 16th and then our final call for participants on the 21st and candy pickup is always then as | 00:41:32 | |
the three days prior. | 00:41:39 | |
Here's a breakdown of the costs. There are. There's no additional costs this year and I was able to secure all of the same levels | 00:41:48 | |
as 2023, which is great. So our advertising consists of Facebook and Instagram as well as two quarter page ads in the weekly. | 00:41:58 | |
That's our kind of our best event place. And then we also have a digital run that I've been able to secure. | 00:42:08 | |
This year as well, that's going to be on the Weeklies website and in their e-mail newsletters, posters and flags. The event | 00:42:18 | |
management, which includes the public relation, marketing, graphic design, social media, advertising, placement, all that good | 00:42:24 | |
stuff. The candy, same as last year, but obviously a little bit more expensive than a few years ago, especially with the number of | 00:42:30 | |
businesses. | 00:42:36 | |
Our buckets we order early and so those are inexpensive. | 00:42:43 | |
Our corn stalks, pumpkins and hay bales and that also includes removal of those. And then our DJ and I did want to go back here | 00:42:47 | |
real quick and highlight this was the winner of the scarecrow contest last year. You know, between making delicious breads, Pavels | 00:42:54 | |
always seems to be able to come through with something really, really special and that was the a Barbie scarecrow that they | 00:43:00 | |
created. | 00:43:07 | |
Along with the movie last year and just you know. | 00:43:14 | |
I don't know where he gets it, but it's special. And then final finally some some pictures of of the event last year and will that | 00:43:19 | |
I will take questions. | 00:43:24 | |
Yeah. Can I ask if anyone in the public would like to comment? | 00:43:32 | |
No hands raised. Yes, Mike, just real quick, maybe I missed it on the advertising part. Did you mention the pine cone at all? | 00:43:40 | |
So we so when we place our advertising we're looking for. | 00:43:52 | |
Who can we, you know, what audience do we want to bring in? And so we do a lot with the pine cone for our. | 00:43:59 | |
For our holiday open house and some of our other events, we tend to go with the weekly for this event because we want to try to | 00:44:09 | |
bring in more families. That's not to say that the Pine Cone does not have, you know, readership that are families. We just need | 00:44:16 | |
to balance a limited budget now if at the pleasure of the. | 00:44:23 | |
Of the board if we want to include pine some advertising the pine cone, we absolutely can. We just try to you know, keep the event | 00:44:30 | |
total cost. | 00:44:35 | |
Pretty similar year to year, but again, we can always shift some dollars to the pine cone if we want to, or add a little bit in if | 00:44:41 | |
you'd like. | 00:44:45 | |
Reason for asking was not to increase the budget, I believe, and I'm glad to check into it, the pipeline actually has a community | 00:44:52 | |
service where they will list the event. It's not a big display ad, but they were listed for free, Free advertising. That's always | 00:44:59 | |
good. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So that's so their event. Their event listing is actually a paid thing, but a lot of times we're able | 00:45:06 | |
through the media outreach to get a little bit of a story placed in there. | 00:45:13 | |
And so that's part of the media outreach as well. | 00:45:22 | |
OK, Yeah. | 00:45:27 | |
OK, open this to the board to discuss and. | 00:45:30 | |
It's. | 00:45:36 | |
Wow, it's like early August and we're doing this. I'm impressed. You know, kind of my ongoing concern and I know it's it's getting | 00:45:39 | |
worse and worse is the cost of the event for the businesses because I personally spend about 400 to $450 on candy. | 00:45:51 | |
For the event and I've always wanted to have someone sponsor candy or. | 00:46:03 | |
Get Andronicos or Grove Market or somebody to allow us to order candy at wholesale. | 00:46:10 | |
You know, that can open it up to the businesses, 'cause I know several businesses last year didn't participate because they simply | 00:46:19 | |
can't financially. | 00:46:23 | |
So I don't know. | 00:46:29 | |
I don't know how we go about doing that, but I think it would be really helpful because it's costs of candy are crazy now. | 00:46:32 | |
Stephanie, that's a great point. And it's something that I mentioned to Christy about a month ago the last time that we talked. | 00:46:43 | |
And so I think when she gets back into town tomorrow, I'm supposed to meet with her and she and I can develop a plan. | 00:46:52 | |
To, you know, to reach out to Grove and see if we can't or Andronico see if we can't order wholesale through them or even go | 00:47:01 | |
through targets community portal to see if there's a way to be able to order candy in bulk at a discount and maybe even, you know, | 00:47:08 | |
go out to the businesses and. | 00:47:15 | |
Somehow include that in there and figure out a way that the businesses can contribute, but we're buying just a larger bulk amount. | 00:47:24 | |
And you know, for candy rather than buying retail, because even I try to hit the sale at Target, but the last couple years they've | 00:47:35 | |
decreased the the discount a lot. So it, it used to be 30% off one day a year like in September, but it's gotten lower and lower | 00:47:42 | |
and. | 00:47:49 | |
And I love this event. It's great I you don't see more traffic downtown than for this event. | 00:47:57 | |
But I I just want businesses. I want all the businesses to be able to participate that want to. | 00:48:04 | |
Agreed. And that's why I'm glad that we're bringing this forward when we are, because it gives us a little time to be able to dig | 00:48:13 | |
into that and figure it out and maybe leverage the relationships that the chamber has to be able to, to go through and and get | 00:48:18 | |
something in bulk. | 00:48:23 | |
OK, I mean, on that point, I know we need to move on, but can anyone brainstorm? Like, I don't know, I was just talking to someone | 00:48:29 | |
who said that Montage was, you know, sponsoring their event and some of the big companies locally. And I just was wondering, like, | 00:48:36 | |
I can't see montage sponsoring something where people eat candy because they're health oriented. But can you bring psych? Is there | 00:48:44 | |
is there, you know, like often a corporation or a company, whatever they they. | 00:48:51 | |
To promote values that are part of their own ethos. Can you think of any kid friendly or fun or creative or you know whatever Corp | 00:48:59 | |
or you know which? | 00:49:05 | |
Like is there anything locally that that would align with this? | 00:49:12 | |
That we could approach in the interest of time. Let me give some thought to that and then I can e-mail out to the, to the board | 00:49:17 | |
some ideas. And it may be that there are some businesses that would like to to sponsor that. Certainly as we've discussed in the | 00:49:24 | |
past, sponsorship of our events is on the table. And you know, other business improvement districts, you know, even as Mr. Gibbs | 00:49:32 | |
mentioned the the downtown slope, you know they have. | 00:49:39 | |
Entities that you know, they get their logo on things and so that may be a way to mitigate some of the costs for the businesses | 00:49:47 | |
because I know it has grown and that's why our candy. | 00:49:52 | |
Line item has gone up as well because we're trying to provide as much candy for the businesses as possible. | 00:50:00 | |
Yeah, I mean, I, I bowed out after spending $300.00 and it was gone in half an hour, you know, and I just thought, well, I can't | 00:50:07 | |
keep up with this. I just, it's not, I suppose really our, you know, demographic either. But if you know, I'd love to just support | 00:50:13 | |
it if, if it were, you know, more, you know, return on investment or more, you know, less of an investment and more anyway, OK, | 00:50:20 | |
let's. | 00:50:26 | |
That we'd have to get that tied in pretty soon because you're starting advertising soon, so. | 00:50:34 | |
If we're going to offer like your logo on our advertising, then we, yeah, we should explore that, make a few cold calls or | 00:50:38 | |
whatever. So, yeah, I'm gonna meet with Christy tomorrow and we'll we'll get hopping on this. Excellent. OK, well, that would be a | 00:50:46 | |
really fun improvement for this year if we actually got some more budget. So that would be great. OK, so business updates. | 00:50:53 | |
I so the EDC. So here's the thing, there's the chamber, the EDC, the BID and the HID. We're all the business community and we all | 00:51:02 | |
have a lot in common and. | 00:51:07 | |
You know, I, I can talk about this, but the nice thing about having Christy here is that she knows all of these groups and that, | 00:51:14 | |
you know, gets a little bit more of an overall. | 00:51:18 | |
Umbrella view of things, which is useful for the bid I think, but you know, regarding. | 00:51:23 | |
Overlap between bid and the EDC, there's a couple of things. I think we mentioned the sign project that Mike is doing. We | 00:51:31 | |
mentioned that last meeting that's still ongoing. There's a new Commissioner Richmond. | 00:51:39 | |
Captain and Stoker, she's she was interested in an initiative where, you know, the facade improvement program could also cover | 00:51:49 | |
pots of flowers or, you know, big like planter boxes in front of businesses. And you know, had said I'm going to be great if we | 00:51:56 | |
had landscaping too, but we kind of pulled that from that and we're just looking at that. So so there is a subcommittee which is | 00:52:02 | |
actually. | 00:52:09 | |
Might give myself and we're going to talk to the. | 00:52:16 | |
NRC and. | 00:52:20 | |
And public works and just kind of explore how best to do this and you know, whether we're doing it in the right way, if we have | 00:52:24 | |
the right idea or not. So that was really the only initiative right now. | 00:52:32 | |
I mean, I could say a lot more, but I, I think I'll just leave it at that. I think some exciting news and I'm feeling it for | 00:52:42 | |
Christy because she always does the exciting news. Hops and Fog is going to open next Tuesday, I believe. | 00:52:48 | |
That's a big event in our downtown. Yeah. Anything else from other people in the business news We do have there's a new full time, | 00:52:57 | |
I forget his name, but there is a new full time worker who is working on cleaning up downtown and. | 00:53:06 | |
Tweeting and you know, working on little projects so. | 00:53:16 | |
That's really good because that kind of goes he's kind of looking at the planters out front of the businesses too, and because | 00:53:23 | |
some of them could use some love. | 00:53:28 | |
Right. | 00:53:33 | |
Yeah, yeah. Chad, Chad, that's it. Yeah. | 00:53:36 | |
Right. So I, the one of the topics that came up in the EDC, just FYI, was that we would like to go from those baskets of silk | 00:53:40 | |
flowers to real flowers. But it's a whole logistical nightmare because they need watering, they need fertilizing, they need | 00:53:49 | |
deadheading, they need, you know, they need a lot of maintenance. So I'm not sure how that's going to go forward, but it was. | 00:53:57 | |
A really nice idea that was that was presented but. | 00:54:06 | |
Yeah. Any any other comments? | 00:54:11 | |
OK, so we finally have sunshine. I was beginning to think we need to rebrand Pacific Grove as the sweater weather capital of the | 00:54:17 | |
country. It's been so cold, but I think it has a nice effect on retail when we do get a little sunshine. So that's good. Got that | 00:54:26 | |
coming up. dot car week coming up and lots of events. So you should have a nice busy rest of the month. | 00:54:34 | |
And any other questions, comments or can I adjourn? | 00:54:43 | |
All right. So I need to, I need to adjourn this meeting at 9:29. Thank you so much. | 00:54:49 | |
Thank you everyone. | 00:54:58 | |
We should be able to let you know soon whether or not. | 00:55:02 |