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HomeMy WebLinkAboutM081412 TCC Minutes, Draft, 8-14-12 Quilcene Historical Museum 10:00 am Members attending were: Bill Roney, Joy Baisch, Allison Willing, Diane Schostak, Carol Christiansen, Chuck Others: John Austin, Christina Pivarnik, Teresa Verraes, Bud Schindler, Howard Legitt, Jennifer Lampe for Debbie Wardrop via phone Staff: Kitti deLong Unexcused: Amanda 10:02 am Bill Roney chaired the meeting. Joy was stuck on Mount Walker due to paving. Minutes: Diane moved to accept the minutes as presented. Carol seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Financial Report: Bill stated that he normally pays for changes on the activity map, but this year, the changes came in startlingly over what they normally cost at 10.5 hours for $635 from Dan Youra for only six changes. Bill has a contract with Dan saying that the files for the map are TCC property. Bill would like the TCC to pay 50% of this bill. Also, we have received the bill from the Printery for $2,999.99 for the reprint of the activity map. Discussion. Bill stated that he is going to negotiate with Dan to try to lower the price of this bill, if possible. Diane moved that TCC pay half of the bill of $650, up to $325, to Dan Youra, as negotiated by Bill. Chuck seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Financial Statement Kitti will check on where we are in process of the County reimbursing TCC for the budget shortfall at the end of last December for 2011 (due to the extraordinary expense at Gateway VC for the damage). Invoices for July: 2012-19: OPTC $3,665.02 2012-20: OPVB (Portion of Spring Campaign) 3,860.16 2012-21: Coordinator’s Services & Expenses 761.69 Invoices for August: 2012-22: OPVB (Portion of Spring Campaign) $4,366.90 2012-23: OPVB (Portion of Spring Campaign) 500.00 2012-24: OPTC 1,611.87 2012-25: Coordinator’s Services 700.00 2012-26: Olympic Pen. Loop Culinary Assoc. 4,000.00 2012-27: Printery (Reprint of Activity Map) 2,999.29 Total: $22,464.93 Diane moved to approve the July and August Financial Statements, including the Culinary Loop invoice and the Printery Invoice for reprinting the activity map. Allison seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Addition to the Agenda: None Port Townsend LTAC – Christina This is “harvest time” for tourism. Upcoming are the Uptown Fair this th weekend, Wooden Boat Festival, the Film Festival and will conclude with the 30 Annual Kinetik Skulpture Race. Nathan Barnett, co-owner of the Old Consulate Inn and the new chair for the Victorian Festival and co-chair for Steampunk, will join the PT LTAC. There are many magazines and media articles coming down the pike starting with an article in AAA Journey magazine coming out in Sept. and continuing into next year with a travel article on our "Victorian Vibe" in NW Travel magazine. There will also be an article in Mother Earth News this fall on the Farmers Market and PT's culinary scene. Last week, there was a great article on all of Port Townsend's upcoming festivals in the Tacoma News Tribune and The Olympian. American Cruise Lines will have Port Townsend as a port of call once a week for 15 weeks. The day of the week for the stop is not known yet, though the cruises start on April 6 and conclude on October 26. The ship holds about 100 people. The ports for each location are trying to pull together a meeting to see what they can do collectively to offer something enticing for the cruise line. Christina will attend the WA State Ferries marketing retreat in Anacortes this week, with Marta Coursey, WSF Communications Director, to brainstorm more cross promotion. WSF is trying to determine how to bring more visitors to ride the ferries. Port Townsend is in the middle of applying for “Prettiest Painted Towns in America” contest. Will hopefully be one of the 60 finalists. Teresa stated Steampunk had about 450 people come. Surprisingly, there were more people from Port Townsend than from outside the area. There were 160 people from out of town, which was less than expected. Photos of this event went viral, and were tweeted, too. Made $2,500 after all was done, which will go to kids programs, who will vie for funds by coming up with proposals for a science project for next year's festival. Teresa took over the sales on the PT map this year to be able to include a County focus, and has done some advertising for Port Ludlow's Festival on the Bay and Hadlock Days. Teresa distributed copies of the map and the new 2012 membership directory. Howard Legitt joined the meeting at 10:30 am. Commissioner’s Update – John Austin John told about Mackinaw Island between the Upper and Lower Michigan Peninsula that you can get to only by ferries which are privately owned. Vehicles are not allowed, only passengers. The largest porch in the US is attached to their Grand Hotel. There is also a fort from the 1830’s with people dressed in period costume. There are 500 people on the island to work the horse drawn carriages that are used for transport for visitors and baggage. Had a great meeting with Mike McFadden from Quilcene who has thrown himself into the County Parks Advisory Board and Cathy Claire has been working on future plans to have a Park District. Port Townsend City Council is threatening to stop contributing its part of the sales tax that goes to the Community Center and Memorial Field. Mike has worked up a to show to the City Council that shows the challenges with those facilities. One of the top goals of the Parks Committee is to get the Chimacum Campground re-opened next to the Tri-area Community Center. If this happens, would like to have a hookup for a Resident Host. Or an option is to have it attached to the H. J. Carroll Park, which also has a resident host. The Transit Authority is negotiating to purchase the Chamber of Commerce building. Teresa stated the Letter of Interest has been written but there are still a lot of logistics to work out. It would be optimal to continue to keep the Chamber of Commerce and the Visitor Center together. Sales Tax receipts are up a little bit. We have done better than expected this month but cumulatively, we are still behind. There has also been an improvement in the LTAC income. July was better that the last three years in July. Christina reminded us that these figures seem low but this is without the 49 rooms at the Inn at Port Hadlock! Over all, we are going in the right direction. Theresa stated that there are some really exciting things in the works to bring business here. Supplemental Budget Request – John Austin The supplemental budget requests were approved and the check is in the mail! OPTC – Diane Diane introduced Howard Leggit who is here from Union. He will be visiting with Diane re: a forage festival in Mason county. He is Executive Director of McCreavy House. He is interested in spawning a new artists community from Alderbrook to Eldon. John Austin left at 11:02 am. Fall Campaign Proposal – Debbie Black Debbie based the proposal on a $23,500 budget. If it needs to be adjusted, Debbie will do that. Debbie did some early outreach from Seattle Gay News, which was supposed to publish an article in September but that article came out this week. Will be an article in this issue, as well. The writer had a great experience and was very positive. That helped to carry us through the summer as well as the Edible Seattle guest blog piece. This will be a six-week campaign from Sept 10 to Oct. 15 though some of the components will carry through to the end of the month. We have not advertised with Seattle Metro or Seattle Magazine before. Deadline for both is end of this month. Seattle Dining does not publish a new issue for September. Joy arrived at 11:11 am after being stuck on Mount Walker because of road paving. Sound Publishing has clusters of newspapers in each area, one of which includes Bainbridge Island Review. Debbie proposes a one-half page ad that would rotate throughout this group of newspapers. Diane felt that the Kitsap market was not an overnight market here. Christina agreed. Joy agreed. After discussion, Debbie will switch out Kitsap clusters for King and Snohomish clusters, which includes Bellevue, and will eliminate the Kitsap Sun. She will also look at doing some online advertising with the Olympian. Christina suggested doing that same thing with the Portland paper. Portland has a new magazine called Portland Met and that might be a good thing to consider for the spring. Also, NW Travel has a new publisher who is very professional and are looking at purchasing NW Palette. Debbie will look into that. Carol stated that she is comfortable with the proposal if we take Kitsap out of the mix. Giveaways: Warm needs five identical packages for giveaways. Would love to have overnight stays, but this could be restaurant certificates as long as they are $50 or more. We will receive 15 live, 30-second promotions. KIXI has up to three giveaways. Allison would like to take OPVB website giveaway. Resort at Port Ludlow would be up for doing five giveaways on STAR 101.5. Diane will approach Aramark to see if they want to take part. Diane will put this out and needs to have her OPVB Board and the OPTC see this, as well. Diane stated Seattle Dining is working on an auction as well. Maybe we can add to this. Promotional Opportunities: New Day NW is a lifestyle program that King 5 runs at 11:00 am and offers interviews. This might be an opportunity to talk about the Culinary Adventure Route, etc. This does require travel to Seattle where all the shooting is done, which includes six segments per show. The interviewee must be there at 9:00 am. If we do this, we would need to identify who would be the guest and state what they would be presenting. This opportunity is strictly promotional and there is no cost. Jennifer stated that Seabrook was on this program and it turned out to be an integral part of “Win a Beach Cottage for the Summer” event. Port Ludlow Resort would be interested in doing this with Chef Dan as the guest and pulling in some of the farmers. Christina stated that she did this interview for the ferries a couple of years ago and suggested Laurette from Sweet Laurette’s, who is very good at doing interviews. She is a trained chef and uses all local produce. Discussion about how to do this. Consensus was that the Board wanted to do this. Edible Seattle: Four writers contributed to the guest blog and the editor would like more guest bloggers about the Peninsula. This is a no-cost opportunity. Debbie reaches out to work with the writers and then works with the editor to get those articles delivered on time. Debbie would like to put together another media tour with travel and food writers. Will be reaching out to food, wine, and travel publications. This is tentative depending on media availability and would need to identify all destinations that would want to be a part of this. Are planning that this would be a two-day event and would between Quilcene and Sequim or Port Angeles. Would have Willie Nelson transport the writers in a luxury vehicle. Carole stated that the Timber House is going to reopen. Consensus was that the FAM tour is a go. Diane hopes to use Ajax this time and pull in some wineries. Debbie stated there is an opportunity to have a couple of wine makers come to the FAM tour stop and pour. Jennifer stated that Port Ludlow Resort would be glad to do anything they could to take part. Carol moved to approved the Fall Campaign Proposal with the change of taking out the promotions for Kitsap County and replacing them with promotions for the King County area and Bellevue. Allison seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Diane needs to run this past her Board and discuss this at the Tourism Commission. Debbie will make the changes and get this to Diane today. OPTC – Diane Diane was not at the meeting last month because she was out with a German film group traveling from Lake Quinault to Sequim. They are doing a travel series of seven States for the first season and would like to do a second season. They felt the Olympic Peninsula is really world class destination. All members of the film group are from New Zealand, have visited every continent, have promoted all kinds of great travel and were gaga about the Peninsula. This series will air in 114 countries, will be translated into seven languages and will run for five years with re-runs. Have had a lot of German leads, most of which come from ITB. Teresa said that PT is having a very large number of visitors from Germany, as well. Diane stated that when people from other countries hear that the Olympic Peninsula has World Heritage sites, that gets a lot of attention. Diane has set up a lot of tours around the Peninsula. Lake Quinault is in Grays Harbor, works independently, and a lot of what we do on the Peninsula is anchored at Lake Quinault. It might be a good idea to approach Lake Quinault to see if they want to become a member of the tourism group. Disucssion. Consensus of opinion was that this would be a good idea. In a side note, Diane announced that Kakaloch will change hands in September and will no longer be an Aramark property. Another concessions is purchasing Kakaloch and they do not have any other properties on the Peninsula. It would be great if we had a contingent of two or three people from the tourism group go down there to explain the LTAC system to them and invite them to participate. WTA – Diane WTA has been in the throws of meetings to determine how to design long-term funding. Had a meeting last week to meet with Jay Inslee. Next time, will meet with Mike McKenna. Jay will do what he can to reinstate the State Tourism Office. He was also supportive of the Parks. Christina said that if he is elected, she felt she could call him to talk to him about issues. He was very approachable. There is another Long Term Funding meeting later in this month. Diane and Christina will both attend. WTA Increase in Member Fees – Kitti Kitti reported that TCC had paid member fees of $300 in February when 2012 funding became available and then a few months ago, received a bill for $500 for 2012 member fees. This bill was sent close to the original date TCC joined. Discussion about the fact the WTA really needs support right now. Bill made a motion that TCC support WTA marketing for Washington State by meeting their membership threshold of $500, which would mean sending an additional $200 to WTA, and next year, TCC will budget for the $500. Carol seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Diane stated that every dollar is being counted. Funds are really needed, especially for the website which costs $16,000 per month. Adventure Map – Bill The map has been printed. Bill distributed copies of the updated map. Carol requested that Brinnon and Quilcene be added to the agenda for their updates. Kitti will add this to the agenda. Joy asked if Diane had yet received the Dean Runion report. Diane will get a copy to TCC. LTAC request for funding – Joy Joy stated that the County is really only required to ask how much money is needed by an organization requesting funding, and to also ask how that organization is going to use those funds, as per the State. Diane stated that she may not be at the next TCC meeting because her daughter is starting school in Idaho. Quilcene-Brinnon – Carol Carol sated that the first Concert broke even with 350 people. Have received a $30,000 matching grant for the Worthington Park purchase and also a $5,000 grant. Blast of Brinnon is August 18, as is the Wine Tasting. The fence at the school is getting a mural! Meeting ended at 12:30 pm.