1. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL Francine Ramaglia not present.

Transcription

1 Board Members: Cathy Balestriere - Chairman of the Board Annette Gray Vice Chair Francine Ramaglia Treasurer Scott Porten- Secretary Vin Nolan DELRAY BEACH MARKETING COOPERATIVE, INC. BOARD OF DIRECTOR S MEETING Thursday, December 18 th, :30 A.M. Location: Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors Agenda 1. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL Francine Ramaglia not present. 2. PUBLIC COMMENTS (Limited to 2 mins) Public Present: Ryan Boylston, Mark Dinkler, Mary Boutin, Joan Goodrich, Marjorie Ferrer Mark Dinkler from Vince Canning Shoes: I sent Stephanie an regarding the downtown businesses unhappy with the street closing early, and the vendor right in front of my store was selling the exact same thing I have. I came to the Board to ask that you do not have vendors at the Tree Lighting. Stephanie said that she will work with me in the future, the downtown is great, but you take business away from the local merchants business. We will try to come up with a solution. Cathy we are going to talk about some of this in our agenda if you would like to stay and listen. Any other public comments? Ryan Boylston DDA Board. I was not at the last DDA Board meeting and I m playing catch up. I recently read the letter from the DDA Board. For the first time sitting on the DDA Board I was embarrassed, the way we went about it was not right. I think we should have been collaborative and worked together. We should have talked about why we have vendors. If our merchants don t want them let s work together and find a solution, I wasn t at the last DDA meeting an overly strongly worded letter. If you are going to call any event carnival like, that is not it. We are going to put together a guide to downtown events; we will include everyone City, Chamber DBMC - for what is the vision for events for the future. We have a lot of events that have been around for a long period of time. We are responsible for doing that. Scott Ryan thank you for that. I was profoundly offended by the letter. You took the steam out of my argument by apologizing. I have no issue with the content, but I took terrible offense to the form. Annette Ditto Cathy Same Stephanie To bypass me and not even give me the courtesy of a phone call or is extremely disrespectful to me and I would never do that to your organization. And I don t want to see that happening again. I do appreciate you saying what you said. And Mark you know I will work with you. I took the On The Ave s off of Atlantic Ave. 1

2 Karen from a Chamber perspective. Ryan thank you we have this alphabet soup and we are trying to be team players, we should be able to just pick up the phone and talk to one another and try to work things out. Cathy we will amend our agenda to discuss the letter, feel free to stay to see what we have to say. Any other public comments? Public comments Motion to add the discussion of the DDA letter to the Regular Agenda under A. Second by Scott Porten. All in favor. Approved. 3. CONSENT AGENDA a. Approval of Agenda b. Approval of Minutes of October 2014 c. Approve Financial Reports for October, November Motion to approve the consent agenda by Annette Gray second by Scott Porten, all in favor. Approved. 4. Regular Agenda a. Discussion of the DDA Letter Cathy I d like to have Stephanie start. Stephanie I have some ideas on how we can do this. Annette this meeting is not the meeting to discuss the solutions, you can map those out and share them. I think we should discuss the overall issue. Stephanie My overall issue is that if you want to address any issue that my department does, you should come to me first at least via or phone call. The spirit of the way we do things in Delray Beach is to collaborate. And I just want to put that on record. Scott Marjorie, were you at the meeting when they made the decision to write the letter? Marjorie Yes, the Board was pretty upset about it. Scott someone came to the conclusion that bypassing us (the DBMC Board) was the way to go. Marjorie I think that, I m trying to remember no one realized it was going on until that night. Scott No I understand that, what was the dialogue at your Board. I know everyone on your Board and they would know we would be pretty upset by you going to the assistant city manager was better than going to the DBMC Board. Marjorie I think there I had spoken to you outside of the Commission Chambers after a meeting, this isn t about keeping the public informed, we all want the same thing. We all do this as a love for the city. I would hope that you can direct your Board. I was focused on the form not the substance. I was less offended by Mark s issue his was personal and on the night of the event, I get it. This was something that we were all going to discuss as a Board. I ask that this not happen again and if it does, just know the message that you send to us is that we (the DDA Board) have no confidence in your Board (DBMC). Stephanie I get it too. Vin This was shocking to me to have this occurrence. Particularly with the vendor issue. I got it as I walked from the Tree to Big Al s, I saw little Al, he was doing a vendor count. I could see that he was doing that. I participated in the spring in a review of the City s events. There was a huge miss that night. What we struggled with in the spring DBMC, DDA and City staff there is no one uniform entity deciding what the events are. We tried to get to the right answers, but as many things over the last year have occurred, there were so many changes that happened, 2 we were trying to wrap up

3 there was a lot of turnover in the City staff. We understood what we wanted to accomplish, however we never got to a conclusion. Vin one of the observations is exactly what the Mayor said. Essentially we do need to revisit the purpose and their goals. Have we gone beyond where we should be. Some are historical, but we need to manage them with how we are today. I agree with Annette s comment that we aren t going to fix this today, but we can work on it. Annette events are designed to spur economic dev. We have a DDA district amidst a CRA district with a DBMC. I ve said that we need to move the events west. The changing of the guards is in the minority today. Ryan I appreciate your comment, I came here fist pumping. The DDA Board showed the same level of disrespect when they pulled out of the partnership with little to no notice. Where did they think that money was going to come from? We are a staff of four people with budget that goes to three entities. I just about floated over here on a broomstick. There is a cause and effect in life. I understand there is a miss and how we respect each other in fixing that mistake. Economic development is about retention and recruitment. Cathy I m not going to beat a dead horse about how this was communicated to us. You are the Executive Director of the DDA Marjorie. You have been at every meeting of ours. We had a gap in our budget; we learned and saw the mistake that we made. The fact that you have an ED that is at every single one of our meetings. Our ED deserved better, she deserved a phone call from you. I m going to look at the issues. I wish the Mayor was in this room. The police department is the one that closes the street it said 3pm. Stephanie in the past it was at 2pm. This is the first time that they ve closed the street earlier. When we do the recap we will Vin the anticipated closure of the events is due to the size of the crowd Stephanie that is up to the PD Annette the event will not happen if we do not adhere to what the PD says. We have to re-ask the question Steph we Cathy we will continue our dialogue in our planning meetings. We did take a focus on the food. Give us the opportunity to work with you on that. Steph The food vendors for First Night will all be at the Tennis Center due to the issues from last year. And there will be no outside vendors. I d like to make everyone happy. Marjorie may I just make a comment in regards to the vendors there was no discussion of vendors being on the street during the Tree Lighting. Cathy That is not something that we are trying to keep a secret, she details all the events. Annette what s wrong with having a vendor with aluminum shutters at an event that has a majority of the population of the City? Cathy we are by no means making money we are here to cover the cost of the events. Vin we need to scale back this is not an economic development driver of an event. The On The Ave s is to bring people to places they aren t going. But the Tree Lighting event is a community event, the City needs to pay for the costs. Cathy it was described as something more magical than Disney World. I was speaking the top 3 Christmas Tree lightings in the country. The expression on the kids faces and the adults. Every year I am amazed, it is not something that I want to see us just walk away from. But if it is something the city wants us to scale back on and just light the tree, then we will look at that. Annette I don t think we 3 have a choice in scaling

4 back. We are now a destination. I would hate to be part of an organization to take step backwards. Our housekeeping details can be figured out. I ve asked for a joint Board meeting between the DDA Board and our Board. Steph it s on our list for next year. Cathy two more comments and then we will continue on. 4

5 Joan on behalf of Francine, the City will be brining everyone together the week of January 9 th for a Tree debriefing so the dialogue will continue. Ryan how many people were at the Tree Lighting? Steph Between 30,000-40,000 Ryan how many complaints did you have from attendees, not merchants and not City officials? Steph none. Ryan I want you to keep that in mind. It s about the families about the people. I like walking down Atlantic Avenue. Now we can only do that 3 times a year. some of the events are not Karen this event is about the kids. Thank you for all of your hard work. I watch what it takes for it to happen. As a parent that night is one of our favorite nights of the year. I had a great time. Scott My son wants to know what we did before the helicopter was invented. Cathy please bring back to your Board that did not show up to this meeting today that we did discuss this in depth. b. Review of Sunshine Laws David Tolces I m the CRA Attorney, my gift to you is a refresher of the Sunshine Laws, and you are subject to the Sunshine Laws. I m going to briefly go through this. Public records and sunshine laws we are using texting and . Different types of social media being used. Steph - Is it required to put the minutes on the website? David it s not required but a good idea. Cathy happy to see the Signature cards and the Sunbiz on the agenda. It should be immediate. Annette if you do it at the same time as your update, you don t get charged the fee. c. Signature cards for Bank United d. Sunbiz Updated with new Board members we will update in January. 5. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR REPORT a. Post Event Report Dec 4 th Tree Lighting - Steph - we don t need to go in depth for this. You can take a look at the expenditures; some part of this event comes from On The Ave and others from the overall Holidays budget. I wanted to point that out. Only issue we had is the one we discussed. We were on 5 different television shows for the tacky sweater, we were 170 short. A picture is worth a thousand words if you look at the photos at the end, you can see why we have to close the road. Also in regards to the Holidays, I met with Francine & Lori. We need to update our financial procedures, and numerate more things. Both Francine and Lori do you have a report of what we are doing so far for the Holidays. Cathy that is both? Steph we don t incur any cost for First Night, we have Annette excess of income over expenditures Steph I estimate that we will have 136,000 income and 132,000 expenses. We won t lose a lot of money. A lot of the bills come at the end Cathy in the future in this report state that it is interim. Scott it s a current expense statement, you don t have to add anything. Oh I m looking at the wrong one. I understand it s the same statement here too. 5

6 Steph we are tracking daily almost per day it is more or less from last year s donations. It tracks almost exactly. Cathy what about the GoFundMe account? Steph it Annette who does your social media? Steph We do. We do it organically. Tiff we have a GoFundMe for First Night as well, so we are trying to Annette there is more than one way to share the link, if you do your programming with infographics Donation Wednesday it becomes engaging. How does the Board feel about asking for donation for a community Tree? Vin I think it makes a lot of sense. Steph we need a lot for the building and maintaining. Annette the reason I m asking is it s hard to get the community engaged in kick starters, I know every drop counts. Do you have a list a list of banks who are not reaching their FDIC CR goals Community Reinvestment goals? If you got our hands on that list put us on a 5 year plan for support. Stephanie that s interesting we will look into that. b. First Night Update Moving food vendors to the Tennis Center and putting a lot more activities in the tennis Center. We didn t have anything in the Gym last year, so we will have Vintage games at the Vintage Gym at Old School Square. Last year we had sumo wrestlers and bowling. So we tried to have more activities. We do a c. Dashboard Measurables in November, while we are building the Tree please take a look at all things that we participated in. We are nominated for the County s highest Tourism award, we were invited to speak on behalf of the TDC on their budget, we provided information to Visit Florida Germany. We created a new vignette, we got rid of the penguins and on a $0 budget and we created a Santa s workshop. We had Santa painted. Added a phone booth to call Santa and bought two new trains. I m really proud of our team. Cathy just the part of the Tree Build. d. Special Event Sponsorship Update No change from we are about 6k over from the Holidays. e. Staff Update I have 3% built into the budget and I d be willing to give it up and give to my team as a Christmas Budget. They work so hard. Cathy we have to negotiate your contract, the 3% was built in for the last year. Steph we got them in the past. Scott it just may be called something different, Annette If you can have a conversation with David and see how to legally make that happen, that is fine. It s a good stand point explain to the staff that we just need to figure out how to do it. Scott there has to be a way to do it. Marjorie it can be called a salary adjustment. Cathy come up with the dollar amount Steph - $500 per person. Annette see how Cathy did the staff get the 3% increase? Steph yes but I didn t get mine because we didn t negotiate. I will talk to 6

7 Vin You are free to do because we are not statutorily created like the CRA. Scott and you are working within the budget confines. Annette I think it s better to have legal opinion. Vin but you do have 6. BOARD COMMENTS Annette I was at the airport, I had to plug in my phone and the chargers in the PBIA airport have opportunity for branding. It s very unique and tasteful it may be more cost effect that the big ads that Marjorie does. Steph I ll ask Stephanie Richards marketing mgr. Annette - who knew we had a city holiday parade? It is the event that I will use as an example for the cultural divide. 7. ADJOURNMENT 7