Castine panel floats town "concierge" to boost tourism, events

[0:31] Speaker A (unidentified): Oh, shoot, it's too late now, so I have to do this. Is anybody watching our meetings? Or is this me? We are supposed to be streaming. I [0:54] Speaker B (unidentified): know. It's still. I think it's always, like, a slight delay. Well, I have reached a point in my life where I have surrendered to the idea that we will never learn any word I see yeah [Speaker A (unidentified): yeah] so we're so lucky we have a rental it's nice house coming from like oh it's a guy like piles of stuff because we're taking stuff to the dump every day they're actually going to just have like a clean neat house and there's bins that say kids stuff with those black bins with the yellow in the basement we have a rack and it says kids too so like all the stuff that they might want to hang out i mean [3:23] Speaker A (unidentified): we inherited a house with all kinds of home i want that someday it was a lot yeah and this stuff this stuff your parents sometimes say to you like my mother gives me a box of my like my girl scout sandwich like why do you want that oh no jim's mom was like a i always said she was an organized quarter and so it was like she had like 10 sets of dishes and clothes from since she was in high school oh my god she had four closets full of [3:58] Speaker B (unidentified): clothes yeah that's one thing that we can start so when roberta was gone last year for like the six weeks she was emptying out her sister's house that her head hit her parents house and she was a hoarder they found two pianos buried the rooms they would open the doors and stuff would fall out and they found they found one piano and they got to another room and they're cleaning up all the stuff [4:27] Speaker A (unidentified): there was a house on this road a couple years ago that was like that peek in the window so you can see there was a piano with stuff okay let's do it officially on the agenda we were going to start with this but just being just being your right outline but maybe should we push that to at least kate's here sure yeah makes sense then sue hopefully i've had some conversation with my event but i just wanted to report back just casually talking to matt was like why am i promoting the town why am i The one doing something for the town and I was like, what do you think about, we had talked about this after we had met with Helen Miller about how yacht clubs and stuff need like a point of contact here. And more and more evidence is showing up, there's different groups and towns doing disparate things, and we really need kind of a centralized hub person, like I'm calling them a concierge, or like a convention of visitors bureau could be like a whole, I mean there's a lot of stuff going on. And so I mentioned the map and like, how do you feel about this? Because one of our concerns was like the merchants association might not want to like let us take that kind of stuff on. He's like, oh my god, I love it. And then I talked to Roberto, we were doing some casting touring stuff, and another piece of evidence came in because of that cruise ship. The cruise ship wanted to come and there was like there was kind of a massive information, there's a lot of like random people seem to be involved in that to me, when they used to work with Casti Touring to do little trolley buses. And so again, if the cruise line had a point of contact of somebody who's kind of spoke to all these organizations and could coordinate that, would have been really nice. [6:23] Speaker B (unidentified): So do you think this is a person that's like a paid person, a part-time position? [6:30] Speaker A (unidentified): Full-time, like when we start loading up, like if they could run the visitors bureau center they could run the lighthouse days I mean this is my dream yeah they should if you're a club here any kind of organization coming into town they would help you coordinate here's catering here's mma work with mma for housing or whatever I always feel like it's helpful to step back just a teeny bit I think I think you're right there these it's sort of a gap in function and I you know this whole well the merchants association has been helpful in coordinating and really Matt's been doing the work as far as I can tell of liaising with is it Sherry shall we Sherry at the visitor center Sherry [7:25] Speaker B (unidentified): Sherry. No, Sherry, just to correct me, she's a volunteer. She's paid. [7:31] Speaker A (unidentified): She's a part-time paid person. But by the town? By the Merchant's Association. Okay. And I, do we, that's part of what the town provides $10,000 to the Merchant's Association to run the business center, right? Or not the business center, the visitor center. So I wanted to kind of initiate a conversation this fall about what is the job description of that person and what are the functions currently of the visitor center and what might we like the functions of the visitor center to be. Should it be, you know, it's, it seems like it's a big burden on that, but it's really helpful that he does, you know, that, and a lot of what he does he does service like the promoter of the town, partly because he loves it, he takes the initiative, but it's also a burden, yeah. but he's quite he's very confident for it right but it's also a flavor some people love the flavors and people you know would like a slightly altered flavor but I think maybe I thought a starting point would be to say let's write down have written down on a piece of paper maybe we ask the Merchants Association to do a draft, prepare a draft, but I think that 's something that there should be a little bit more open conversation about and that given that the town, whether it's the town manager or select board or our office or this committee, I sort of provide some input in coordination. I think there could be value in clarifying it a little bit. There's some minor things that I think that they should be taking up. We initiated the where to eat in Castine, you know, proof of concept. Oh, that's a helpful thing. And it's, you know, happily received at the visitor's center to say, well, we don't do this, but thank you for, we really, this is so helpful to have this piece of paper here so when people come in. But really it's, the visitor's center could take up that role and every Monday morning have somebody check around. takes an hour to do it to check with all the eateries and just confirm that their hours are the same, there's a lot of variation and stuff comes up and so particularly the shoulder season but even in the middle of summer it's like a six week but still there's sometimes changes so if it was it does not it's not you know sitting in a permanent position that would be a great thing because of visitor center to take up, there are perhaps other things that are coming up, you know, vis-a-vis the concierge function it would be great if somebody else was, you know, if they could as you mentioned [10:27] Speaker B (unidentified): do the volunteer coordination for the lighthouse for example, the other thing that would be really helpful to do all that work and have that person have the social media skills that would promote the town at the same time. Like somebody running around taking [10:43] Speaker A (unidentified): Pictures while they're talking to people and then posting it. Yeah. And if it was a [10:48] Speaker B (unidentified): Paid position, somebody could get excited about it. Yeah, and I think that, you know, if you look at other towns, let's say between here and Frenchman's Bay, that have initiated change and made change. In almost every case, there's been a person who's owned the change. You know, whether it's Linda Nelson or that guy from Frenchman's Bay, the guy that George is talking about. You know, like there are people that grew, they were given a position that didn't have, like, it all flushed out right, and then as they, as they did the work, they flushed out the position and they created change that really impacted the community, you know, whether it's housing or economic development or, you know. Yeah, I mean, yeah, so role could pay [11:55] Speaker A (unidentified): Pay for itself, you know, if we had somebody who could bring in yacht boats and schooners and, you know, another conference or something like that to MMA. I think that's going to end up [12:05] Speaker B (unidentified): Paying, but also, I mean, if we listen, I love using yours, the poster child, right? Yeah, but you know, if you look at, we created this position for I Am, and the grants have more than paper, so multiple, you know, many multiples, and I think that I agree with you. This, and it's an interesting thing, because it's an interesting question, because if this person brought in yachts and the restaurants did better and there was more activity and they worked with Scotty and we arrange, you know, whatever different Events in towns that brought people in, just an example of that person coordinated fundraising on July 4th, okay, which is, which is a complicated job, but like, there's thousands of people here and we had a couple things with you, but if it was actually organized, we had people, you know, people were coming on that we squeeze them into to one lane, and there's two smiling kids on the other side, will you please contribute to our fireworks? I mean, that could be. Right. [13:19] Speaker A (unidentified): You could really explode the position. Yes. And then you need some, I mean, we might want to think about phasing levels of responsibility, right? And I think it's already a big change to say,, are there three or four more tasks or responsibilities that whoever is managing a visitor's center would take on that would move us forward, right? Some of who's running around doing some of the, yeah, I think we've already outlined several different letters of capacity yeah and experience and then I was one question who does but who's in terms of coordinating food trucks is that merchants so that's sitting with our front office here just Natalie and Sue and it's a question that has come up in a couple of different fora it came up last night but it you know the people raising the questions weren't sitting around the table so much I that's that's another you know it's another little bit of a sticky you know people with on different sides of that but there isn't a what there isn't is a is sort of a an approach to what I think you are I think it might have been you that articulated it yesterday what is it that we want right in the food trucks and maybe that's a good starting point not so much like how do we select from the three to have applied or but what do we want to encourage and maybe there's other ways to go out and get [15:01] Speaker B (unidentified): get what we would ideally like to have but even if you look at that if i think about when i came to casting eight years ago and the shack was okay you know it was old dennett that was okay and you'd go down to the dock at five o'clock any night of the week two or three people you know and you know this year i mean if there and every any given nice day there could have been 30 to 100 people down in the dock and i don't i don't think 100 is it there's a stretch there were a couple nice days when every table was full people were milling around people were at the food trucks people were in the ice cream truck and i think there were days when there were just a hundred people down there was a day last week i went to park there was no parking you know so i say that here we created something new the town had the town had a no food truck policy we changed the policy and we changed the feeling on the dock I'm not saying that was all of it you know certainly again it's taking over the eatery made a huge difference but it just shows you that if you made some positive changes the community the community [16:33] Speaker A (unidentified): benefits well I just want to highlight Jesse American Bruce lines back to Custine did not have an idea where to go. That's what somebody thought, but it did turn out, after we scrambled together to make sure that there were options for them, it turned out that what they had actually done was contacted just simply the Historic Society and Wilson Museum and made a program with two of them. And you know, and then sent people down the street for 30 minutes to go down to the dock, so it wasn't that they were here milling. Yeah, to do that's the, what the story that got back to Casting Touring is that they had been dropped off at the top of the hill to do a walking tour with Historical Society, and then they just kind of left wandering at the bottom of the hill when they got. But my issue, from my experience with it when they used to come in the past, well, all those people are not mobile. Yeah, and I think what they decided to do for the, because I talked, I followed up, we made a program. Yeah, you know, we did the where to eat, we got the maps, and we did a here's a variety of things that you can do in Casting just for general information, so we passed, so we, that was handed out by the Historic Society, so I, everyone on the bus received that. Yeah, and I talked to somebody from the touring company on Monday or whatever it was, or the Friday, the Thursday before this thing. By the by mid afternoon I had kind of, I was able to find out who that person was, talk to them, and they were making like a little bit of a tweak, like it was, they had, they needed to drive people a little further, right, so they drove them to the Wilson Museum and then they were bringing them back, so they didn't get where they left him. Sorry, so there was a bus, there's, but there was a bus, and anyway, they changed their, it's their logistics slightly for the third trip, and I think that we have the opportunity to talk to them, you know, in October, you know, call them back and when they're starting to work on their program for next year and discuss a wider range of things, and including if the touring company wants to make a verse. I think you guys have already started, she reached it back out to them and was like, hey, we need to do this for you guys. Yeah, would you already be interested? Yeah, the woman on the phone and I got an email from another guy, was in correspondence with two different people, and one of them said yes, we're really excited about working with the Casting Touring Company on something for next year, let's, you know, let's talk further, et cetera. It was just, it's just an example to me that we still [19:25] Speaker B (unidentified): Don't have, yeah, and then, and then also, I mean, I just want to throw this up so we have the new daycare center. We have new owners of the casting that are interested in expanding their business. Ashley and Britney keep talking about doing more things at their store. Goody B is taking over the bookstore space to do something. She's not, she and she, 's not sure what she wants there. And I said to her when I spoke to her, I said, Goody, I know you're not in the food service business, but if that was a cafe that was open year round and you had art and other stuff, it would, it would, you know, it would be a lovely addition to the town. She's not opposed to it. Oh, I guess my point is, you know, if we had someone who was working to promote the town and also to help businesses, you know, just let's just use the daycare as a center. Okay, they're basically on their own. They're, you know, letting people know that they're open, but you know that is a real community asset that can make a difference in people's lives Now if we had someone who's an idea person that can't be casting concierge and they're, they're there to help all the businesses in town, you know, like do things, it could have an impact. Yeah, speaking of going to be, I talked to her today just [21:01] Speaker A (unidentified): my friend yeah and she said she'd be willing to talk to us next week and talk more about her ideas okay but we're talking a little bit about the story but also just like and like what we heard last time was about bringing more arts together like arts is really good draw you know she was giving me a little history of a plein air festival and how that was a challenge for the local art business right but again she's like if we wanted to do something big like an art of it would be helpful to have somebody in town to be that central point of contact to kind [21:41] Speaker B (unidentified): of help coordinate it. Listen, as a select board member, I now have taken a slightly different tab. It's all right, it's our responsibility to present ideas to the town that we think will benefit the town. It's the voters responsibility to endorse it by voting for it or not when we do the budget. So you know I have no problem putting it on the budget. We probably, we, you know, we want to create this new position and you know and when we do the, when we have the town meeting, we explain why we're doing it So I think, I think that again, you [22:26] Speaker A (unidentified): you have a position that is funded in the visitor center and if we focus about slightly enhancing cycle for a year on a trial basis maybe you're you know it's going from 10 to 20,000 or something or 10 to 15 for a limited you know it's just for the summer so you know something like that would I think we have a longer-term vision for like I think we should prioritize the things that we would want somebody to take on right so we have a very that's why I think I would focus in practical terms about coming up with a short list of responsibilities starting with what that person already does and then how would we want it to see to see it evolve a little bit and I that gives people as you say time to see how that feels i because i think if we if we 've got a lot of different asks on the tables you know you're gonna have a harder job this year than you know even last year i think to keep on lit on it and so i yeah i mean we you don't i don't think we need to settle that now. But I think just the idea of opening the door, and I'm not quite sure how the dynamics of the Merchant's Association work in some respects, in that they only meet quarterly, which is not very often. It's not often enough, really, to do a lot of different things, [24:09] Speaker B (unidentified): right? You're not going to nip the needle that much with four meetings a year. [24:16] Speaker A (unidentified): I wonder if it would maybe help them to take a lot of that stuff off of their plate. [24:23] Speaker B (unidentified): Listen, there's been a certain amount of controversy that I think has dampened the mood. Maybe if things were less controversial, they want to be more, yeah, I mean, the meetings are an opportunity for these difficult moments, and I [24:55] Speaker A (unidentified): can say they worked last year on sort of a vision of what is, what is their purpose, right, you know, and it might be good just to have that. Maybe I was thinking, I, and I reached out to Matt earlier, well, today, just to say, you know, hey, or what, you know, season's winding down a bit, maybe we could get together before, you know, I'd like to have a chat with him before the, before the next virtual association, just to have a sense, okay, of really what they have in mind, but maybe, how are you, maybe it would be a joint [25:32] Speaker B (unidentified): yeah, just to say like, hey, let's, yeah, what do you think, that's some of these ideas [25:49] Speaker A (unidentified): Opportunities, yeah. Well, what he would think, I mean, it's a big burden on him, yeah. And there are not other people in the group who are as facile at the social media. The social media stuff is really important. I think upping, like beginning to develop sort of a concierge concept and citing that in the visitor's center. So it's got a general public side, but it's also got a institute, you know, a group side. I mean, M&A is definitely interested in, you know, promoting more conferences and things like that. And that could be, it might not mean, if we really wanted to go after somebody who's really good at social media and various things, they might not have as much experience as like some other people in the room at big events, right? But they're really savvy on that function, but it could dovetail together. We'd have to figure out, is it a happier position, is it a summer, you know, [26:50] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, but you can use the winters to get a lot of stuff organized. Certainly. Yeah. I just want to get to, well, they came up with this idea of having a casting concierge, which would be a day position in a town, and pick up responsibilities from the visitor center, pick up responsibilities from the merchants association, be the social media if anyone contacts the town about visiting or tour, we would have a point person in the town [27:28] Speaker A (unidentified): And it might be not that we're taking it away, but we are, we are adding it to the visitor center. And I think the question is, in a way, is that run by the town, or does the merchants association want to continue to run it? Do they want to align really closely? Where should that alignment be? Would it take away some of the complexities? I think about like the part about the food trucks that I asked is that, you know, they would keep the calendar of town activities and not just Merchants Association's activities. Yes, that's important. Yeah. I feel like that's important. I think their umbrella is bigger than merchants only. And so I would advocate for the town, they work for the town, but in lockstep with the Merchants Association. Yeah, so with them that Venn diagram, merchants is part of it, but not right. Yeah, that was my understanding. You know, I've kind of pushed, I have done social media casting, touring, but I'm very like hit and run with it because it's like whenever I think about it. And so that's why I was telling them like you really should consider hiring somebody to do that, and you can pre-schedule all that kind of stuff. Like I have a little bit of experience with that, so I know it's a whole, it's a whole different thing. It's a marketing job, so this is a marketing job. It's also more like is that planning to me, this is courage. I agree, it's more like somebody who's got the skills to know like it's like your wedding coordinator who's gonna help you find the vendors you need for like it. I think the Merchants Association did a great job advertising and marketing the town. Yeah, which is what happens when you come here to do something, right? How do you, who do you work? Yeah, well and Matt, you missed the part that I was saying, like Matt's like why am I, didn't tell you guys, he's like why am I doing this for free? Yeah, so he's kind of willing to scale back what he's doing, and he does such a fabulous job, and he, I mean he could still, I mean anybody could be set up in such a way that anybody can, you know, post and people can continue to post, but maybe it's not that person, you know, it's not just Matt's responsibility on top of everything else that he's doing to do it all, right? So if there was somebody else that had the primary responsibility and then there was some sort of, you know, people could add additional content, yes. [30:03] Speaker B (unidentified): in terms of time yeah so we flush this out over a period of time we start the budget process in january we usually finish the budget in march and then you know we have we have the meeting in may so if we wanted and usually what 's what's happened is when a committee chair comes to the select board with an ask it'll be between now and the first of the year so i would think timing wise yeah we need to get our ideas together by meeting up exactly and then you would come into the to the select Board meeting and say this is what the Economic Development Company proposes next year, and then we would make a decision. [31:00] Speaker A (unidentified): I can't speak for Robert, and at the same time that those all the preparatory conversations would need to take place. Exactly. We need to talk with the Merchants Association about how they would feel about an idea like that, you know. You know, Matt's a good starting point. You know, we also need to say for the record that we are, you know, interested in working with any organization that is interested in supporting Castine and bringing in events, sort of the Castine Chamber of commerce as that continues to get off the ground. It might be that if the visitor center sort of shifted to sort of town, it takes away a little bit of the conflict between those two organizations because perhaps we would have somebody that would be managing that and it's it's not it's not completely in the hands of one group versus another group. [32:02] Speaker B (unidentified): Whatever this is, this is this is it's it's we're doing this to help, you know, there might be ways to help the Realtors, there might be ways to, you know, maybe [32:18] Speaker A (unidentified): they take over. Well, I think we want like high level of support and input, exactly, and at the same time recognizing that, you know, they're all small businesses as well and it's a it's a big burden for them to take on the responsibility of doing it for the whole town. Yeah, even though they've been, you know, it's been it's been quite successful. Yeah, but it's it's a lot, it's a big [32:43] Speaker B (unidentified): important. No, I mean, when you think about it, when you have a business owner doing it for the town, yeah, even in the best case somebody will say oh, they're doing it to promote themselves in that other business, you know, like other my business. Yes, so what, no, like that like [33:03] Speaker A (unidentified): is it somebody working in nonprofit like that was my message was like do this in your best self business like it's a win okay so like i don't disagree that 's a criticism but i also so don't know that it holds a ton of water. But at the same time, I think that it's also fair to say, this is actually the value of the town. [33:21] Speaker B (unidentified): You should own it. [33:22] Speaker A (unidentified): And in that process, maybe that process is, that person is not the content creator. The businesses are still creating content, but they're sharing it. And then that person is more of a curator. Yes. Yeah,, yeah. Apologize. We only have like 20 minutes left. So I think this is exciting, and this has a lot of- It's a great idea. And what do you think is the best way to come up with a, not necessarily a full-fledged job description, but to start to identify in some detail the kinds of functions that, like, you know, we'd like to have current functions and then, you know, potential additions or changes. And then what kind of skill set? Yeah, wait for it, wait for it. I don't know if that's today. Absolutely. So maybe we could all think about what those things are, and then maybe, yes, we're talking about taking lead and do, okay, we can talk about like a short list, specific tasks, and then we can talk about the skills. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, okay, great. Kate, do you want to share with us what you learned before, or do we have a chance? And so I understand higher priorities. Okay, so he, so I talked with Michael Hurley in early September, oh my gosh, at this point, it was September 3rd, and he said that the work from home movement that happened because of COVID really revolutionized Belfast as a great place to live. He said, he went to, and I'm just gonna kind of give you all this, it was kind of a disordered conversation. He went to an economic development conference, it's 1980, and at that, at that time, all the towns there wanted to be like a priority for factories, they wanted like manufacturing production, that was like what they wanted, and he said but his takeaway was make it a nice town and it will happen, and meaning make it a nice town and industry will come to you, and so and he thought, he thought that the fact that Bank of America and Athena Hell both moved to Belfast was kind of evidence or proof of that make it nice, they will come, right, you, if you build it they will come, and he said the other thing that was loud and clear to him, not necessarily by the hosts of this conference but by somebody at the conference, was encourage your artists, and he said that the takeaway was where artists go, realtors follow, and so that was kind of a theme that I think we've seen Belfast embrace with the bears and the side, the sidewalk art and the ice festival, ice festival, yes, all of that, so that was kind of another one of the tickets he was really clear about, you know what Casting needs is not what Belfast needs, and we agreed to that, he says the town does subsidize the Chamber of Commerce and Main Street Belfast, which we heard Joe Slocum talk about those two things, and he said the town gives each of them 25 to 30 thousand dollars each, just in terms of benchmarking what does Belfast spend on this kind of effort, that's just for reference, the Chamber of Commerce in the downtown and Main Street Belfast, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's [37:09] Speaker B (unidentified): a program and that kind of spawns a question you may or may not do they have the same form of government that we have that each year those are warrant items on the budget and people have to vote for them i don't know that okay because that would be interesting yes it's also we got [37:30] Speaker A (unidentified): had some good statistics from Joe about last time about, you know, this side comparative size, comparative number of businesses, et cetera. So we're looking at like a factor of 10. Yeah. The other thing he pointed out, he said, we didn't mess with people doing stuff. He said, artists, et cetera. He goes, we didn't ask for insurance. We didn't ask for permits. He's like, maybe this was, you know, in the 80s, 90s, we could get away with this. He's like, now I'm sure if anybody wants to do anything, you have to insurance right or left the wazoo. He's like, but we didn't mess with people doing stuff. We kind of let them at it. And what floated right, and so like they had kind of a very like, yeah, try it, try it kind of approach. He said there was agreement with elected officials and the town manager. Everyone has to be on the board enough, you know. He was really clear that nothing is ever going to be unanimous, but just getting people on board enough. And we turned, we heard Joe talk about that to the consensus building and the way he sees Belfast's existence, I guess, as a, as a place that people want to be. He described it as a three-legged stool, and he said one is the economic development director, which is a paid position, and that person gets free money grants like that's their work. The second leg is the Main Street, Our Town Belfast, which is like the downtown stuff, and then the chamber of commerce is the third leg of the stool. And so that has a wider scope, right? They're talking, that's like out by Tractor Supply, like there's, there's downtown, and then there's a whole city. And so he considers those the three legs of school. He said they get, they get money from the businesses, and that's how they justify the money meet that goes to the chamber of commerce in the street Belfast. He's like, this is your money that we're reinvesting this way. And so that's kind of the loop that they have set up. He said they did a giant big waterfront study and then did everything he said to do and welcoming the waterfront with a lot of priorities, which you see now with the riverwalk and the rail trail that Joe talked about too. And then an example he gave of kind of bringing people to Belfast who aren't there already. He said, it's not a big thing, but he said, an example from the summer is they had somebody with a pontoon boat and they took disabled people out on the tour for a harbor tour. And he said, it was really popular. He said, we have people come from Ellsworth, Foxport. We have people come from all over who never wanted to go out on a boat because it's just impossible for anybody with any mobility issues. So he said that was really popular and really received and something we want to do again and brought people to Belfast. He said the ice festival in Belfast in February, you know, somehow they get perfect weather every time. But that was an example of an event that is outside the typical summer season. [40:45] Speaker B (unidentified): I went to tell a funny story about it. They never called me. And we went two years ago or three years ago. Yeah. And a Stanley Chevrolet had all those vehicles parked down the center of the street. And I'm talking to the sales guy. Oh, this is interesting. It's an electric pickup truck and it gets all this great mileage. That's that's how I bought my truck so I don't know what the next day so I'm just saying that like you do things you don't know what the unintended consequences are going to be like how many other vehicles did they sell yeah because they were front and center yeah at a big [41:32] Speaker A (unidentified): event yes yeah and he said that's been a really wonderful event but it's outside the summer season them right it's not thousands of people yeah and it's Maynard you know it's not you know and then he circled back to like he's like a really helpful thing is to focus on the essentials he said more trees more seating more clean streets get your garden club like have a good relationship with your garden club we year-round bathrooms as Joseph last year yeah the biggest things that kind of helped forward belfast the split bridge the round trail the harbor you know having a walkable place people can park their car and enjoy and stroll and he said now belfast is cruising he said they hit a blip with the salmon farm war that was pretty contentious but now that 's over he's like now we're crazy so those were some of the takeaways notes comments he made you know a lot of them really don't tell with what joe said which makes sense but he was like you know make it a nice place and he's like Casting is a nice place, like, I'm not telling you and you don't already know, but I've seen this nice place, and so focus on those essentials and people will come. [42:48] Speaker B (unidentified): We had 2,000 people for the curtain thing this year. [42:57] Speaker A (unidentified): Is that sponsored by the town? But I think it might have been a flavor of we just let people do stuff. We don't mess with them. We don't get in there and say, are you doing this, that, or the other. Like, we don't mess with them, right, people want to do stuff, we, that's interesting, support them doing. [43:21] Speaker B (unidentified): it yeah just say yes just try it i was i was single-sided street parking i was there saturday night to go hear troy jackson you know there was an event and i went to go to the little mexican restaurant i guess a week before the event there was one seat at the bar where i guess i mean every seat was full was that the dos cantos yeah it's a big place and it's right on route one like [43:50] Speaker A (unidentified): That's the other thing, people, right, you know, we need to, it's really helpful to kind of get these hints and, you know, our benchmark is, and Stonington is different again, it's, you know, more like something, some towns at the end of a peninsula, how do we, you know, how do we look in. [44:07] Speaker B (unidentified): Between, there's also people like to invent, you know, and I mean, Kevin has told the story many times that they were looking for houses in our harbor or something, they first came up here a little different ride back when we go back down to Connecticut and they came down and went to the on the bill so, and they came here and they came to Casting, that's, yeah, that's why, that's, that's. [44:42] Speaker A (unidentified): Who we're, that's who we're getting, yeah, so I do, you have some, like, what are your thoughts about, you know, what are the most important, most applicable things, do you guys think, from Joe and Joe's conversation and the conversation you have with the television, like, what's, what can we use, what should we first investment in downtown, seating, trash cans, walking, I agree, bathrooms, and then once, I think once you have the infrastructure, then businesses are going to be a lot more friendly, not the businesses. But it will be a business. [45:26] Speaker B (unidentified): This friendly place, I don't know the details, but I know that they're planning on more floats, expanding the dock this year, it's not going to have like slips and the fancy thing, but like. [45:40] Speaker A (unidentified): It's a modest expansion anyway. I also MMA is planning and it should be available by next year. 230 feet of boat dock space that is going to be available to public boats coming in. I think that's the right number. Did you double check it? I know we should, we need to pitch right now, but they're, they're inner, they're two inner lines like the boat is on the outside, but the two inner docks they sit in the center that they're planning that, you know, public boats can come in. I'd like, well, so and then I have I have questions about understanding better the waterfront so I need to look up on that but I both the obviously the harbor committee is very concerned with what happens on the water they don't pay a lot of attention about what 's in front you know in front of the dock the rest of the space the harbor and national resources group is would like to be you know have their more kind of have more conversation going around on around what's happening on the space before you step on to look into the water or into a boat that's on a slip, so it might be useful for the three groups to do some planning together. Like I don't so much just it's so hard to kind of get to drill down to the details and not just have the same conversations over which I, but somehow the three, the three groups should triangulate and again before budget season put together like maybe it's putting together a concept, like a verbal concept of what are the key points that we would like to have that we can work on now, what are our priorities for next year, and what's our priorities for the next three years? Like, if we need the garden, you know, and the garden club's like, oh, we don't have enough money. Well, let's like figure out how to raise, you know, like we want, how many pots of flowers do we want, and where do we feel like there's not quite enough of the beauty? Because what they do is really nice, right? But they just don't do all that much of it. And I mean, this discussion about where should the food trucks go? I mean, I have pretty strong opinions about that. Up came up last night again. If you want to have a beautiful view, get the food trucks out of the way. It should not be this endless debate about can they park on the side instead of in front of the water. I, you know, so it's just my, like, one of my personal fees in my pocket, right? I think that the top fundraising, raising priority, and it would be interesting to hear from Craig for MMA, sort of, if and when they've lined up a key donor or two that they've been pitching for some of their waterfront renovation. It sounds like that's their next biggest priority, right? And they want to put in the bathrooms, I want to put in the cafe and a public space, and they want to have showers and some washing machines that everybody can use coming off boats or people in town and students and whatever. And we need to, as the town, like, really be on track. We need a fire station and fire trucks, but we need to really be, I think, make supporting them for future CDAs funding or whatever else. I think that they could make the case for maybe Northern Board of Regional Commission money, because if they can say, here, we can say that they're creating jobs, or that we're, we're really doing an activity that is going to really move the economic needle, and talk about, like, numbers of conferences that are going to come and X, Y, and Z. If we can make a big plan with them, we can go after other kinds of money, help them do that, but also help us meet our waterfront objectives, you know, because we can't do it by ourselves. And so. I'm sorry. We said that three groups should get together, and you're talking MMA, Harbor Committee. No, actually, no, well, no, I was more thinking of Harbor Committee, Economic Development, and Marine and Natural, Marine, Harboring, Natural Resources. Should housing be part of that? I think when it comes to the waterfront, I don't think the housing is the question, and I think they're so having such a hard time deciding what to focus on. I don't think we need talking to MMA and what they're planning on doing helps to understand what we don't need to do or do you need to do, because you don't want to be doubling efforts. Exactly. And again, you know, Dan has conversations regularly. There's the tanning gown videos that we could request a topic be put on that, so if there's some specific questions, but we also need to make sure that we're not [50:59] Speaker B (unidentified): If we said we'd like to have the economic development committee, we'd like to have, I think that if we said we'd like the economic development, we need to present. I think that it will help change the conversation. I mean, the conversation that we've had with school is completely different now than it was three years ago. We're actually talking about forward-thinking ideas that will change both the town and the school. So it makes sense to- [51:42] Speaker A (unidentified): Sorry, it's my hot water here. No, it's fine, it's keep going. Yeah, so yeah, and we [52:09] Speaker B (unidentified): say listen, we had a really productive meeting where we're talking about this concierge that would help liaison with the whole town, and you know, you Craig comes and be kind of like, yeah, we're thinking about this and we're thinking about that, we're thinking about this other thing, and it's so exciting, but it's not like very general, it's very general, and I think that if we had this really interesting conversation with Belfast about how they turned Belfast around. And we just would like to talk to you because he's not, of course he's talking first about the school, but right behind it is the town of Gadsden. [52:55] Speaker A (unidentified): But I think thinking about timing on this, and when he said to me a couple of weeks ago, he asked me to come in and meet with them, and he gave me like the quick rundown, which I think you've already gotten, of all the different things that they're trying to raise money for. I went down and looked a couple of the spots together, you know, when I turn the practice feed, you know, that parking lot back into a practice field, they want to do this thing on the waterfront, we are longer term, maybe they'd be open to trying to get money for a new dormitory, you know, which would make a huge impact on regional housing, right, so they're, you know, it depends what they can get big donors to really give substantive starting point grants for, and when he said we have a number of, you know, and certainly for the waterfront, we're almost ready to share, you know, our ideas, and you know, so he showed me this digital rendering, which I think has been trotted out before, of what that would have fronted. Well, it's on the wall. Basically, it's what's there, but with the old lab space near the doc entry, near the old lab space near the takeout knocked down, and one of the other buildings pulled forward a little bit to close through the, and you know, and the stuff that's on top of what Payson Hall, you can walk on top there, yeah, I'm building that up and having lots of big windows out to the waterfront, yeah. So I mean, they said that for a year and a half or two years now. I don't know how useful it's going to be to have a conversation until they're willing to share that, because then you can say, here's our, I think that we that the, this group should do a little bit of work. Here's the six things that are, you know, priority, and we think that they're, we think, hope they're going to be in place, you know, next, what can do next summer, here's what we can do by the summer after, like three year plan, and here's when our expectation is that we'd like to see these things. And I don't think the list is very long unless there's some big new creative ideas, but you know, and then maybe there's a wish list out there like, here's what we really think how it should be revolutionized, and it mean, and maybe it's not, maybe it's a one-on-one or like a three-on-three with maybe this group talking first to the Harvard and Natural Resources group who's introduced also as ideas about us, like three people also, and then coming around to the Harvard group. I think the Harvard group is a little more complicated because there's seven or eight of them, they, you know, they're the same guys who've been doing this forever, and they're really focused on the important logistics that happen on the water, and understandably, but the interface I think is a little, I don't know, less clear. And I think maybe, I mean, I suggested that the Harvard Natural Resources, like people, You must start to get yourself down to that Harvard Committee meeting and sit and, if not participate, listen and kind of get a feel for how that's going. But we need to kind of get some of that interface going. So I do think that down the road, if we're really well-prepared and we have some very specific asks or some very specific things to request, that bigger group, there's about, often there's seven or 10 of them of their senior staff. You know, and I sometimes I wonder like why are all these high-paid people like sitting in the room not having much without all that much going on. I mean, it's it's respectful of the town and it allows, you know, a town spokesperson to share the same thing with everybody, but the conversation [56:58] Speaker B (unidentified): is not very dense. I actually think that he's doing it to make a very clear message to all the staff that this is important in the relationship with the school, with the time to support, and it's transparent, as much as transparent as possible. Yeah, I think you're right, and it means [57:18] Speaker A (unidentified): we need to get more substance into the conversations, but we need to be really well prepared. Yeah, with something pretty substantive to share. Yeah, I think that would be my two cents, and then so what I wanted to, because it's a clock lady, I really would like on the groups. No, it's okay, the groups, it's no, it's right, the group's feedback and what we need to. Yeah, like just like I think it's easier to do individually because you have to sit down and think about it, and I think the next there's just sort of three levels here, and it references like, well, which strategic framework area does it support, is with economic development several, not just one, but and even what we have listed as actions, they're pretty general, they're pretty on, you know, what really needs to happen next, what would the steps be to actually, what do we want to actually try and do that would support this, and not if not everything needs to be addressed this year or by this or, you know, maybe it's only two things that we're focused on, but then what are the detailed steps that would go towards focusing on it, and that will allow us to better communicate with other people, and like if we can, if we can flesh this out a little bit more, and it's stuff that you actually want to work on, I mean, I think this is a pretty focused, dedicated, small but mighty group, and I, if we had something a little fleshed out, maybe this would be something to share with mma because it's within a clear structure. Yeah, it's phased, we're identifying just Pieces of it probably prioritize, and here's what we want from you. Here's how we hope, you know, do we have our assumptions right that in three years from now we're gonna have year-round bathrooms down there, right? Or should we, is that a five-year assumption? I mean, can't answer all those questions, but we should, we should press them to give us their working, their working timeline line, because they must have one. Yeah, I, you know, I think they feel like, well, stuff's in great for my time, gotta work everything out internally, then we'll let you guys know. But yeah, I like that idea of having and even like Fleshy was not even more specifically like, yes, planters, yeah, you know, like those, like what are the, like there could be a whole separate page just for waterfront, and I'm going to get this back into a matrix. It just sometimes it's, I like it from an outline, yeah, I'd like different things, and it can be easier to see the levels and where it fits with the matrix, but then you're like looking at these little boxes, yeah, it's harder. I so okay, I just want to jump on it, so maybe our assignment is to get this, maybe add, edit, extend, yeah, react, thank you, thank you for doing that. Yeah, and I feel like this, I appreciated your cover of it, so I was like, oh yes, I understand what she's doing, and that makes sense. And then I was like, I will put time aside to do this. At some time. To be thoughtful. Yeah, and I shared the economic, which is also in a detail, that. Yeah. It's like my short end. And I'm slowly getting, putting out drafts for the other groups as well. So then it's, Yeah. Okay, we'll have a whole compilation of people, and then we'll submit it to the support group. Should I invite both Giddy B and Matt to come with the next meeting, or is that how much both those could it be? And I mean, if we said to [1:00:57] Speaker B (unidentified): them we're in a one-hour meeting, bad 15 minutes, yeah, 15 minutes, and then we like, we were very structured, yeah, I think we just say, listen, we 're trying to get a lot done and the meetings are an hour, you know, so we time in order, yeah, but I think, I don't know, that could be good [1:01:14] Speaker A (unidentified): to help us brainstorm too. Oh, I think so, absolutely, yeah, okay, and we can call, I mean, and it's okay to have it like, you like you've done. Yeah, and you to have individual conversations synthesize it and yeah. But yet another person I haven't, I haven't talked to enough is His parent. Yes, and yeah, so I mean we're pick up the job of interviewing like business owners so we'll get some of that, yeah. But if anybody wants to have that informal conversation with her, you know, it's less about her business, more about her pretty picture ideas. I've been meaning to do that, she's was so busy. One thing that I also mentioned, I was talking to roberta yesterday about casting touring and the main tourism support or whatever has this program where you can agree to be like a pr host town and like basically an influencer could come to casting and they get to stay at one of the inns and they get to take a tour, yeah. And so she said they're thinking about casting touring like being willing to pay for that, so they would, so like the pentagon wouldn't have to give a room for free and like karen wouldn't have to give it to her for free, so that's a huge fantastic, yeah. So she's reaching out to us like that, but that seems like, I mean, I guess a little bit, isn't the influencer space kind of annoying, fabricated, and that's on the way out? They call it back in the old days, it's public relations, and I think until it's totally out, I think we need it. 's they used to call them fam tours back in the old days before social media, it was familiarization tours, and if you were a tour guide or anybody who worked in tourism, you would go and do these little things, and so it's basically like we used to get that, right? You didn't find it, right? Exactly, should come and do it, so they would do an article in the boston globe, right? And it said that still, that's what did happen, yeah. I mean, yeah, I don't know if you saw the article that went out, so I did, I did, that was basically, I think every couple years, maybe every decade, there's like a big like, oh yay, we're in the New York Times, and like, okay, like, but I don't know, it's not pretty, the space is so crowded. I know, I understand that, but I'm, I'm, yeah, you're feeling, I'm not saying it doesn't bring people to town, I'm saying is that, I guess I'm just questioning, is it the right, is the right way to go about it, or is there, are there better weeks? I don't know, I'm just, I'm cynical about the whole influencer internet, let's pay for somebody to come and promote us, like it just feels thick to me, so I'm going to be sorry [1:04:15] Speaker B (unidentified): So every week in the summer, the Tinder Heart turns away three thousand people. They're completely booked, and they turn away three thousand people. So there's people here. We don't need thousands and thousands of people. I'm just saying, like, to create some buzzer.