Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record. Home addresses that residents give are left out of this page.
[0:46] Samantha Schipani: Sam is just checking email again.
[0:53] Ann Creed: I think there's one more number that's coming down to me, okay.
[0:58] Samantha Schipani: It's very cool, that's head, yeah, you know, I [Speaker C (unidentified): haven't] read anything about it on purpose.
[1:36] Sundance Campbell: That's my favorite way to go to a show, no idea what I'm up all
[1:56] Samantha Schipani: right, we'll start the meeting. Good morning, everybody. We will do introductions because we've got some new members. Yeah, let's start with that, and I'd love to know your name, how long you've been in Bangor, and what made you interested in the cultural commission, or, you know, something else about what you do. My name is Nina, I'm the chair. I have been, I've been back in Bangor for about five years now, but I went to high school nearby, and I work as a department manager for a design agency, so I've been in creative stuff, and I am excited about Bangor doing more cultural things and being able to support events and
[2:52] Mariya Doncheva: people showing up to things.
[2:54] Samantha Schipani: We'll go around to the classroom.
[2:56] Sara Elizabeth Green-Hamann: Sarah Green-Hemmon. I own an HR consulting company, Chalwood HR. are. I have been in Bangor for most of my life. I grew up, for the most part, grew up here. With the Cultural Committee, my son's very active in theater and in the arts. And so it's really important for me to help to continue to grow that in this area for him as his younger and then hopefully for him and other kids as they grow up in the area, giving them options, yeah.
[3:36] Sundance Campbell: So Sundance Campbell, I've been back in Bangor for what to me doesn't feel like all that long, but it's really been 17 years. I work at Morgan Stanley, which is an investment firm, where I have my own practice but also run the office locally. I do some work with the Penobscot got theater on their board too. What drew me to the commission, because I'm very interested in how the arts come together as a whole in a city and in a region, and always interested in looking for opportunities where art organizations can help each other and kind of come together to be kind of a cohesive unit for the region. And so that's why I joined the commission.
[4:16] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: Great. Now, Elmore. I've been in Bangor about 50 years. What brought me to the Commission, I taught art in high school and was very involved in advocating for the arts in small ways, but it's sort of been my thing. It's together and seeing more partnering and continuing the progress we've made with murals, theater, just there's interesting things happening.
[4:59] Ann Creed: Great, thank you. I'm Ann Creed, I'm the director of community and economic development for the city. I love the commission's work because I really believe that arts and culture are a big part of our economy and reason why people want to live and work here.
[5:24] Mariya Doncheva: Great, and then we'll do, yeah, my name is Maria Donceva. I'm originally from Bulgaria, I've been in Bangor for five years, I'm a real estate agent and an accountant by trade, and I would love to serve the people of Bangor. So this, there was an opening and I applied for the commission.
[5:43] Samantha Schipani: Lovely, thank you. All right, Kelly, and then Jen. Hi, my name is Kelly Chanel.
[5:53] Nina Earley: Gosh, I've been back in Bangor almost 10 years. I was born here and spent all my summers here and between here and upstate New York, but I've been back living here with my son for it's going on 10 years now. What drew me to commission, I actually applied for a different position at the city. I really wanted to volunteer and give back, I love this city, and this actually was like given to me I think as a gift, but they didn't have an opening on the other committee I applied for and I landed on this. Committee, and being a musician and going to school for music and dabbling a little in art, it's been just really awesome to do something positive for the.
[6:37] Jennifer Snow: I'm Jennifer Snow. I h since 2014. I currentl resources at Sergeant in the commission. I've alwa girl and I think that the area are better if they c And I kind of see the cultural commission as a kind of grounding force in that the ability to put people in touch with one another and provide support to work together so that's part of why I wanted to join the committee.
[7:25] Samantha Schipani: Thanks, everybody. Sam is in the meeting, but we can't see her. All right, hi Sam, can you hear us and see us, oh. Come on, I can hear you and see you, there we go, hi timing hello. So I think we're doing introductions but I've been like going in and out of this meeting trying to like figure it out so sorry, but I'm Sam Skapani, I've, I've been on the Cultural Commission for like a year and I just had a new baby. So this is my first meeting back in a while. And what else are we saying? What made you interested in the Cultural Commission or kind of what you do professionally that you bring to the commission? Oh, okay. I used to be a journalist for the Bangor Daily News and now I do communications for the state, But I am a writer and a musician so I love the arts and I have like long been involved in sort of like arts impact, and I'm going to do the same for Bangor. All right, thanks everybody. We are missing three members, but I think that's all right. I know this time is tough, so I think one thing we may need to chat about over email is whether this time still works for people, given that we have three pretty much brand new members this year. We can always reschedule to a different time if there's something that works better for everybody or the majority. We've got eight people here of 11, so maybe this does still work, but if anybody has opinions, let's chat about it, but I do want to make sure I include the people who are not here, since clearly this time, all right, meeting minutes, we will postpone, we don't need to vote on that, right?
[9:41] Ann Creed: Or do we? Yeah, no, I apologize that they're not in the packet. We, when we recorded the meeting last month, the sound wasn't on, so we're assembling your minutes with our notes. So if you don't take good notes, I'll take your notes to add to mine, because I did take notes because we had a lot of discussion that I needed. So I do have a piece of notes. Yeah.
[10:07] Samantha Schipani: Memory. Okay, yeah, we can plug in AI to take notes for this. I don't know, that's
[10:14] Ann Creed: a city, what's that like, an AI? Oh yeah, or this, and then yeah, we are looking at a step level using AI more for minutes taking and things like that, yeah, and then going back in for accuracy.
[10:30] Samantha Schipani: That's what we really, yeah, all right, my report, I don't have much to report. January was a bit of a vortex and weird month, but what I would like to do is we need to elect, well, reelect or elect a chair, and we need a vice chair of the whole commission, and then we also need to either reelect or elect committee chairs. And we can talk through, I know last month we talked kind of extensively about what the different committees do, but with new members we'll talk about that a few more times. But we've got a grant committee, we've got a cultural asset committee, and we have an Artober committee. Grants is a twice yearly currently grant cycle where local organizations can apply for a grant and they can get up to five thousand dollars in a grant. Our commission decides who gets how much, and we always have really great applications. It's a really fun process, I think. It's really interesting to see what the different organizations want to do with that money and what to put on and organize for things that are happening around town. The Cultural Asset Committee is a bit lower effort often. They, however, they might have a big project this year. They are in charge technically of keeping track of all the cultural assets we have in town. So that's public art. It's various pieces that exist in public that the city is in charge of maintaining. We are in charge of keeping track of what needs to be maintained. It's been, it's a system that has been not highly prioritized in the last few years, both on our side, I think, and on the city side said, because of lack of assets, lack of funding, lack of time. It's a difficult project. We do have a report, a spreadsheet somewhere of what exists currently, but it needs to be updated and it hasn't happened in a while. Last year we asked the city for funding to hire a student to do the actual tracking in town to check the things. Someone who's maybe be interested in history or art or culture or archiving or you know something where it would be useful as a project we don't want to hire students for free so we're trying to get money to pay them but if we didn't get money last year so if we don't get money this year we as a commission might need to do that we might just need to split up the town and everybody has to take a certain area and track what exists there and update the spreadsheet accordingly. So that will be ongoing this year, so we need to cheer for that. And then Artober is our big October art celebration, so Artober and Bangor is art month. We usually put on an event at the beginning of it where we give out the arts award. So we give $1,000 to an artist or art supporter in town. We've done that for the past four years, right? This would be the fifth year. And we engage local jurors to help select. We have a big open nomination. This happens starting in the summer. So it's kind of a big project for that committee from maybe early July through the beginning of October. And then we just try to get people to join things that are happening in October. There's always a sidewalk arts festival and there's a lot of other things and the city puts up banners that have our October branding through the month of October so lots of fun things happening. Why don't we start with the chair? So I've been chair for two years. I'm happy to stay chair, but also happy to hand a baton to someone else. I don't need to be chair. So I want to open it up. It often feels a bit weird for me to lead a discussion around re-electing me or not. But if anybody has questions, if anybody's interested in the position, speak up. This is a friendly and welcoming environment and I want to hear your opinions and yeah.
[15:07] Ann Creed: Or take nomination. Right, absolutely.
[15:09] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: to do a nomination to nominate Dina for chair. I think she's done a wonderful job. I second that.
[15:17] Samantha Schipani: I'll third that. I'll say all in favor. Hi. Okay, thanks everybody. Congrats. Thank you. It's funny because I've only been on the commission I think now three years, right? But now we've had so much turnover. Kyle has been longer been here longer than i have but it will start at the same time sorry the same time then yeah we're the ones who've been here the longest but that's also kind of the point to keep having new people be engaged in city stuff okay our vice chair holly turned out so she's no longer here we need a new vice chair responsibilities for a vice chair is if i ever can't make a meeting you would run the meeting, but you get an agenda from Sarah, and it's lovely, and it's not that much work. And show up to things, participate, be involved. Would anybody, is anybody interested in becoming vice chair? Or would anybody like to nominate somebody?
[16:24] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: I nominate Kelly.
[16:27] Nina Earley: Oh, my word. I second.
[16:32] Samantha Schipani: Kelly, would you accept the nomination? nation yes i would cool nice all in favor all right all right congratulations by the chair kelly all right now for the committees people who were chair last year are welcome to remain sure so sundance chair to the october committee i did holly chair the grads committee yes yeah right okay so we need a new grants committee chair we need a new cultural asset committee chair and would you like to remain chair of the october committee or would
[17:13] Sundance Campbell: you like to pass that along i'd be happy to do it i'd like to do it but you know the will of the committee right i mean if people want to go in a different direction that's fine too nominate him
[17:27] Samantha Schipani: Do we need, do we do official nominations and seconds and votes for it? Well, for subcommittees, I don't think you need to. Yeah, I'll second it anyway. All right, yeah, all right, all right, great, one less thing that needs to change, great, thank you. And right, with all these committees, the chair will do the organizing and the pulling the meetings together and kind of keeping track of things. The chair does not do all the work. The work is still done by committee members. Every commission member has to be a member of at least one committee, so everybody will be involved and participate to the degree that they are able, but there is an expectation that you show up to things, that participate. Is anybody actually, let me rephrase, can I nominate somebody for the grants committee and just ask them if they want to be? Jen, any chance you're interested in chairing the grants committee? Sure, I'd be happy to. Great, all right, I don't think we need to vote unless anybody wants to show support. I think Jim, congrats Thank you, thank you, all right, so cultural asset committee, again this is the more complicated one potentially this year, but we're hoping to get some money to hire somebody to do this work. We can't just take money we have
[18:50] Ann Creed: have and do it well. One thing, I don't know if you want to jump to it, but I was going to talk today about your budget for next year and the downtown tip. Yeah, I've tried to request funds for, you know, I have a list of options that you could use those funds for, but to ask for or a certain amount, and then maybe it's the cultural asset and a strategy, because it would be good to have sort of a strategy document going forward, as well as sort of like, this is what we have. These are the kinds of things we want to see happen over the next 10 years. Or increasing your grant amounts. You know there's, or trying to park funds for a specific public art project that you want to do, more funds for Artober, you know, in past Artober's, you know, you've done, you know, a poster contest I heard years back, and you know, things like that, you know, to really bring even more layers that if you wanted, and also the art installation of Pickering, if you wanted to give a stipend for that, for example. Yeah, and right, somebody part of
[20:25] Samantha Schipani: The plan is to ask for more money in more specific ways this year so that and with more support and more documentation to hopefully get some out. I think this TIFF bucket might just be a valid solution for us to be more likely to get against. We are also pursuing still, and are always on the lookout for any other grants
[20:52] Speaker C (unidentified): that we could apply for.
[20:55] Samantha Schipani: But it's less likely to get grant money for something like a cultural asset. It's much more likely to get grant funds [Kathy (Kal) Elmore: yes the] the reason we don't want to take money from the budget that we currently have is that we have so little and it takes money away from grant
[21:23] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: It seems like it's a project that's been waiting for a long time and I think the benefit of it is to is to get a full accounting of all the different things that are under the purview of the city. And I mean, that's a great selling point.
[21:48] Ann Creed: Yeah. And that would be my recommendation as your first year using TIP funds is to do the cultural asset and strategy with a consultant. Yeah. That's working at your meetings with
[22:03] Samantha Schipani: Right. And if there's potential that we could get a little bit more than a stipend, then we could hire someone who actually, hire someone who's a professional at doing this type of work. Right, yeah, a consultant. Exactly.
[22:19] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: A side note is, it's come up before and I don't know where it needs to be addressed, but the murals that used to be in the front here don't seem to be anywhere. I haven't gone I'm looking but it used to be all the ones in the lobby I just don't want
[22:41] Ann Creed: them lost and forgotten I know that when we were in the planning stages for this project to redo the floor that there was a lot of research done you know the significance of those and there wasn't a lot of information but I can find out what information was gathered. I just know once things like that are put
[23:12] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: in storage it's going to stay forever and it was a pretty nice mural even if it's
[23:22] Samantha Schipani: not white walls where art can hang there seems there should be wall space here or some other public space okay I mean the city has art in storage maybe cultural assets yeah storage sometime and see what exists there also and make recommendations for maybe work quick question yeah what assets do we have really we don't it's not assets in this the financial sense of the asset it's public art that exists in town so murals are counted as part of the cultural assets for our town or sculptures or other public art so any other examples you know down by the
[24:13] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: River there's a couple of sculptures but yes sculptures and murals and all of those because
[24:23] Samantha Schipani: technically like historic markers or blacks or historic squares with information are also considered part of that so we need to take like asset inventory yeah but should we take like
[24:37] Mariya Doncheva: pictures as well together with a spreadsheet so we can refer back to things yes right that's that's
[24:43] Samantha Schipani: what we want to do that's the idea yeah and we'd like to right because we want to make sure it's organized we'd like to hire somebody to do it because we all do this as volunteer but we also have jobs and lives and families and it is it's a big project there's the spreadsheet exists but there's also stuff that isn't recorded on the spreadsheet because the last time it was done So it's part of like walking around town and seeing what has been added and noting the condition. Yeah. And so it's also, it's a project that either way won't start until later in the spring. It's not a winter project, but yeah, the goal is to walk around and add anything that has been added. Anything new. New. I don't know if the current spreadsheet and report has pictures. I think it should because part of it is also tracking conditions. So if there's graffiti on a mural, we would track it and then report it to the city to try to get them to fix it if the city owns the mural. Or if it's damaged, this would be tracked in that.
[26:01] Sundance Campbell: Question about that, since you bring it up, like these murals, I assume were privately owned.
[26:06] Samantha Schipani: Some of them, there's some that are kind of gray area, but some, yeah, some of them are non-city property. So like the B mural is not something that the city paid for. I think the cultural commission did give some money, grant money to it, but it was Bangor Beautiful who organized it and did the fundraising and I don't know what their agreement was with who owns the building but it's not city but the one the school for school they're different right because that's more city property it still is not always a mural at the city paid for itself but or like the bathroom so that would be city property the yeah and the one by the post office right yeah so like some Of them are a bit gray area. The vernal pool one is a private property. Doesn't also mean that we can't as a cultural commission track those four purposes of helping people know what exists in town. So there's the, it is kind of a dual purpose of city maintenance and making sure the city knows the condition of the things that they own, but also helping people know where the murals are and helping tourists see what exists in town and like advertising that in a way. That right, we can't really talk about all the murals unless we know where all the murals are. All right, on that note. We need a chair. We need a chair for cultural assets.
[28:06] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: I'll do it if nobody else. No, I'm instructed in it. It's just, I'm worried it's a big.
[28:14] Samantha Schipani: Right, it's a daunting project. I am I can be on the committee with you also happy to have other people be on the committee ultimately if we have to do the report it's gonna be a full commission project I think everybody will receive some parcel of land that they need to walk through and you know if you have an hour at some point this sorry that would be enough to participate but this it won't be just you doing this by yourself no I'm right yeah but right the hope is still that we can find some funding all right cool that Concludes our election and my report financial report any questions in the packet this is something we do every month we take a look at it we always know where our finances are don't have a ton of money most of this money is for grants we usually the past several years have started the year with 20 000 earmarked for grants and 2500 for october whatever we don't spend of the 2500 for october goes back into the rent bucket we because we have two grant We try really hard to keep it close to even With what we give in the fall so that we have enough left in the spring. I have yet to see a year where we are able to give all the grants that are requested. We don't have enough money for what we're seeing coming in through the grant requests. So that's also an ongoing project is asking for more money. But right now, we have $9,581 left for the spring grant cycle. We have no other expenses, so that money is all going to grant, but Sarah did note here that we're still waiting for some additional invoices, so that amount might change. Do you happen to know what's outstanding from the fall grants?
[30:25] Ann Creed: I don't believe anything. Okay.
[30:29] Sundance Campbell: Do we know, it was never clear to me whether the stage door billed for the use of the space for Arctober or not. I've gotten mixed answers on that. It was around $1,000, if I remember right.
[30:43] Nina Earley: Maybe that question. It should be. Oh yeah. I think I saw it.
[30:50] Sundance Campbell: Was that an answer or was that?
[30:53] Samantha Schipani: Kelly says she thinks she saw it. I saw it. They were beautiful, $1,000. That was the arts and jewels right kelly was for the flowers yeah and then i don't see anything else in here for october so it's possible that 's another thousand dollars
[31:17] Speaker C (unidentified): It's gonna come out yeah we had some turnover but that's from the we have
[31:23] Samantha Schipani: Have about 448 of the October bucket right that's that's what I was seeing yeah we included this so if Penobscot Theater hasn't built us yet then Sarah will follow up that still means we'd have 448 left over that will go back into the grants bucket which puts us right around how well that worked out all right any other questions on finance I have some clarifying
[31:57] Mariya Doncheva: Questions so where is the 20,000 coming from the city from the city and that's like every year yeah so every year they give us 20,000 dollars where else can we apply for grants in the state Federal, state, public? Yeah. So we can ask the public for money?
[32:17] Samantha Schipani: I don't know that we can ask the public just for donations, but we can apply for grants. Yes. We do have to, if we see a grant that we think we're eligible for, we have to go through the city grant system. So we have to ask permission and ask permission for us from the Economic Committee with City Council for us to apply and then we apply and we get help from the grant administrator of the city to do that. So usually we'll put together some materials, but they submit it. So it takes a bit longer than what if just a person was applying for a grant, but we can apply for grants. We are considered a non-profit through the city so we're part of the city. So if we think we're like municipality is eligible we would be eligible. Have we ever received any other grants? No. We applied for two last fall. This is a new thing. We did not get either of them but one of them was in NEA grant and that was very unlikely anyway. That was a big federal. The other one was a statewide grant and I don't know why we didn't get it,
[33:30] Mariya Doncheva: But we didn't. Yeah. And who writes those grants? Do we write them?
[33:34] Samantha Schipani: We, yeah, staff, city staff writes them, but we put together the materials because city staff doesn't sit. It's not Anne, it's someone who's not in our meetings. And so we have to send them all the information. And then they put it together.
[33:48] Mariya Doncheva: And besides that, what do we do with the $20,000? Like what's the cycle?
[33:52] Samantha Schipani: We give grants. So on here, this is what we give for fall grants. These are the organizations that applied and the amounts that we gave them. And the fall ones are, applications are due October 1st and then we, right, we deliberate November 1st to then pay out after that. That. Spring grants, the applications are due April 1st, right? Yeah, so they're live in March. They're due April 1st, and then in May we discuss. And so usually the grants committee, between when the applications are due and the next commission meeting, they'll meet, they'll vet, they'll make sure all the information is there. We can send any questions we have back to the organizations and then usually they send a representative to that next meeting so the main meeting we may have people joining us from the different organizations we can ask them questions and then usually they leave the room and we can discuss and decide how to split up the money the goal generally is to give away all the money we don't want to end the year with anything
[35:03] Sara Elizabeth Green-Hamann: Anything left in the account.
[35:06] Samantha Schipani: And we always have asks for more than what we can give. So usually it's not a problem to give away how many they got.
[35:14] Mariya Doncheva: OK, well, thank you so much. Yeah.
[35:16] Samantha Schipani: And any organization that applied in the fall isn't eligible in the spring. So it's usually a different set of.. Individual artists are also eligible to apply. So we've given grants to teachers who had a show at the Zillman we give grants for murals occasionally yeah favor beautiful wasn't on the list in the fall so they're very likely to apply for something in spring they have all the time so
[35:48] Mariya Doncheva: This money doesn't go towards people or organizations adding to the city cultural assets it's just
[35:56] Samantha Schipani: No, it's grant money for, and I can send, we can send you the application, I think it's live on our website, it's generally for art, it can be for art installations, so it can be for a mural that would then be considered an asset for the city, but it can be for an event, it can be for something that's free to the public, it can be for something that's paid tickets. So, I think if we look through the list from the fall, the Bangor Authors Company, they started as an individual, so for the past three years an individual applied by himself and he was organizing this Bangor Authors Festival, and then he made that into a non-profit, and so then he applied as that as the organization last fall. That's a festival that happened in December at the library here. here. The Robinson Ballet Company usually applies for a specific performance and I think it might have been the soup one. Some theater company applied for some funding for lighting equipment. Knopscott Theater, I don't remember which show, they usually apply for a specific show and then it's funding support for the performance in some way but people organizations can apply for generally we don't pay for salaries we don't pay for like something that and we don't prioritize things where the organization can make more money off of it 's usually to make things more accessible or reach a broader audience or some sort of knowledge of the public yeah exactly okay
[38:02] Mariya Doncheva: well thank you so much that makes more sense no yeah I know it's a lot of information and I always strike the
[38:08] Samantha Schipani: money it's a bit of a complicated system but we're hopeful always that we eventually will get more money because there's lots of great things happening when does the city vote the budget of the committee yeah in the late spring so usually sometime in May I have to go and whoever wants to join me please feel free I'm gonna be like every year become better prepared but it's your I want just so many examples and facts and statistics. But I go to a city budget, city council budget meeting workshop. And so I present what we're asking for and they ask me questions and I answer the questions. And then they go back and deliberate for the next month and a half. And then the budget is decided at the end of June for the fiscal year that starts July 1st.
[39:08] Mariya Doncheva: I can be of help for fiscal things. Love that.
[39:12] Samantha Schipani: if you need perfect also need people who can speak to a big group of people without getting
[39:20] Ann Creed: flustered yes like internally we have to get our budgets in at the end of february yeah
[39:27] Samantha Schipani: so we're working on there now we yeah and that'll be we end up putting in a request a like written request in february but then we have to defend it without making it too
[39:39] Sundance Campbell: long a meeting it's been 20 000 for a fair amount of time how far back does that go or at least
[39:46] Samantha Schipani: i think more than that i don't know that it's been increased
[39:51] Mariya Doncheva: Every week five years, yeah, I can increase it for inflation. That was part of my argument last year.
[40:00] Sundance Campbell: It's tough, I'm sure, that inflation's running faster than
[40:07] Mariya Doncheva: Do we, do we have any people applying for things that can, like, sculptures, for example, that
[40:11] Samantha Schipani: We can, we can add to the city. Yeah, do we have anything? Yeah, the waterfront canoe was not, so we didn't get money to that. No, it was a percent for our building construction, that's
[40:28] Speaker C (unidentified): For the project, but we were part of the selection process for the downtown Bangor get money for
[40:34] Sundance Campbell: That fish that was in front of the library that maybe is still in town as a sculpture, so yeah,
[40:41] Mariya Doncheva: Something tangible just so we can, when we go and present these projects, we can show actual
[40:46] Samantha Schipani: Progress, because otherwise they're busy, they won't see it. Yeah, it's so looking back at the
[40:53] Jennifer Snow: Because I'm looking at the website now that has all of the previous grants from 2024 and back, it doesn't look like there's been a lot of visual arts that are permanent. So a lot of what visual artists are applying for is like pop-up art exhibits, and things that are going temporarily into a space. So that does make it hard to have something visual that you can show to the, like the city council, and say this is the type of thing that we're funding. But that is a good point. Unfortunately, it's about getting the word out when the grant cycle is open to those people that would be putting up those permanent types of installations. So if there are great ways of thinking about how to get that information out, that would be amazing.
[41:48] Mariya Doncheva: Yeah, great, does the city has have a marketing team? Yes, and do we have access to that committee? Well, it's, yeah, can we, can we work, can we use city assets like other teams and
[42:02] Ann Creed: Other committees to work together and specific projects? Yeah, I mean, just let us know what you
[42:09] Samantha Schipani: Want to do, and yeah, in the past the city has posted when the grant cycle is open on their social media. I think it goes in a newsletter and it goes on the website. We also all post about it and share it with our networks as much as possible. We also have now, this is what we've built in the past couple years, a kind of our own contact list of people who have participated in something that we've done. So arts award nominees and kind of a bigger group of local art teachers and local artists, and so we usually try to send something around that time also. That usually comes from a personal, because none of us have a city emails, but we can do outreach like that. We don't have kind of a separate marketing print ads budget, and I don't know that the city, that's a question. Yeah, I mean, that's another
[43:05] Ann Creed: Another thing to ask for specific funds for, I can add that to the list, you know, more marketing materials.
[43:16] Samantha Schipani: It's always a big tough question, it's where do we find more artists to apply for grants and to participate in things.
[43:25] Mariya Doncheva: And specific artists who would like their work to be showcased and appreciated by the public.
[43:31] Samantha Schipani: Yeah, I think part of the complicating factor there, too, is that the city then, like, they have to, if it's a sculpture, they have to have a place for the sculpture. So the city wouldn't necessarily just provide space. I think we could work with the city, and that could be something where we could be the go-between. But we would just give the grant, and the artist is responsible for it.
[44:01] Ann Creed: And I think that would be a great conversation to have if you end up doing a cultural strategy, is to talk about those types of things, like, you know, what public spaces should we be looking at, or, you know, public art installations. Those are the kinds of conversations you have.
[44:20] Samantha Schipani: Yeah, right, we're gonna do a full report overhaul of where all the art is, include where there spaces of that don't we art, yeah, based on condition we can swap things
[44:36] Mariya Doncheva: Sounds like a fun year ahead of us. Yeah, all right, where were we, any
[44:45] Samantha Schipani: Committee reports were
[44:47] Speaker C (unidentified): Good, yeah, we'll meet in March to get going for the year. Yeah, and then Jen, you and I can
[44:55] Samantha Schipani: Chat about grants and when the grant committee needs to meet, if you have any questions. But sometime in March the grant committee will actually, sometime in April the grants committee will meet to invest them. All right, annual training, if you still have time
[45:13] Ann Creed: So these solicitors are going to do an annual training, I'm
[45:22] Nina Earley: Going to be late, David
[45:30] David Szewczyk: check the city solicitor and i'm going to be talking to you about the Freedom of Access Act today, which is a state statute that actually has two purposes. One is actions of public bodies need to be taken openly, so that act tries to assure that 's what happens. And also it has to do with the records of public bodies, that they must be available to the public for inspection. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about each one of those prongs of the Freedom of Access Act. I'll talk about the public records part first. So any record that is in possession of this, of the city, or any of its public officials, that would be you, that involves the business of the city, in your case the business the commission, are considered public unless a statutory exception applies which makes them non-public. There are a lot of statutory to our exceptions, so we're not going to go over those today, but it's safe to assume that if you have any documents or communications created or received by a commission member involving the business of the commission, then you should assume it's a public record. Written communications would include texts, emails, social media posts and communications and electronic messaging systems or any other electronic communication regarding the business of the commission. Communications regarding the business the commission should be considered public record even if they're on your personal device. It is recommended that you create a new email address for your position on the commission and use that for any and all commission communications, and we suggest that you don't delete any communications, documents, or notes taken during Commission meetings because they may be the subject of a Freedom of Access Act request from the public. The public can request those things and they do. I don't know how much, how many they would request from your Commission, but they, the public request makes Freedom of Access Act request that we deal with every day here at the city. So the city might request to view your electronic communications involving any business the Commission in response to a citizens Freedom of Access Act request. Any questions about the public records prong of the Freedom of Access, we call it FOA, if you ever hear anyone talking about FOA in the city it's Freedom of Access Act, that's the state version of the, of the public records law. There's a public proceedings aspect of the Freedom of Access Act law. Commission meetings are public proceedings and as such they need to be advertised and open to the public. There are certain exceptions where executive sessions might be held. I don't know if that would really happen on your commission, but executive sessions close the public proceeding but are only allowed for certain reasons that are specified in the state statute, and I'm not sure you'll be using any of those, but you'll be Guided by staff, if there were any reason to ever go into executive session, one of them would be consultation with the attorney regarding the legal rights and duties of the commission, or discussion of information and records made confidential by statute. That might be, but I'm not sure that any of the other ones would apply to your, to the things that you do on the commission. If you need to go into executive session, you would need to, it would be, you have to go into it by a public recorded roll call. Vote of three-fifths of members of the commission present for voting, and a motion has to cite the statute section that allows it if you want to go into executive session, and Ann would be able to help you on that if that ever were to come up. [Sundance Campbell: So.] your the ordinance creating the commission says that a quorum consists of four commission members so your meetings have to be noticed to the public and there has to be at least four here in order to go forward if there are less than four the only thing you can really do is close the meeting and schedule it for another time but then you're also you have subcommittees and i 'm not familiar with how many committees that you form but each subcommittee has to have at least a minimum of three members And the ordinance says that majority of the voting members appointed to a subcommittee would be a quorum, so if you happen to have a subcommittee of three members, then two of those members would constitute a quorum. And the reason why I just point that out is has to do with like communications amongst each other outside of a notice public meeting. You don't want to have communications about the business of the commission amongst members that might constitute a quorum, so if you're talking about the. Whole commission, that would be at least four members. You'd have to avoid any kind of meetings, including reply all emails, and you could have, you know, you could potentially constitute a quorum of a subcommittee if you happen to have the right members that are communicating, so you want to be careful of that if you try to communicate outside of the meeting, because you don't want.
[51:22] Speaker C (unidentified): To violate the open meeting law. May I ask a question? Sure. Thank you. Does the chair count.
[51:31] Sundance Campbell: Toward quorum? Yes. Okay, thank you. So a quorum is more than 50 percent or 50 percent in this case.
[51:41] David Szewczyk: Of this commission, the ordinance specifically states a quorum shall consist of four commission members. I'm sorry, I'm thinking about subcommittees. The ordinance says a majority of the voting members appointed to a subcommittee shall constitute a quorum, and the majority is not.
[51:57] Sundance Campbell: Is that true? The reason I'm asking is like, certainly more than 50, right? So we wouldn't want committees of three because then two people our power section committees of four, two people could like, so practically you'd want to avoid a three-person subcommittee because two people
[52:16] David Szewczyk: could never talk. That's right about that subcommittee of business. Yeah, so I mean if
[52:21] Sundance Campbell: you have at least, if you have committees of four or more, two people could have a dialogue
[52:24] David Szewczyk: long without creating, without their, yeah, you know, I mean, so I'm going to notice up the meeting, yeah,
[52:30] Sundance Campbell: so you know, we practically want to have at least four people on each subcommittee. Yes, but we're not
[52:35] Speaker C (unidentified): a real big committee, so that's, well, I mean, if you can avoid it, right? I mean, three subcommittees and
[52:42] Samantha Schipani: we have 11 members, so if I'm on two committees, then that means every committee can have four people, can also be members of multiple committees. Good work. I was, I'm
[53:03] David Szewczyk: only really intended to talk about Freedom of Access Act today and so if you have any questions I 'll field them it basically means that everything we
[53:14] Samantha Schipani: discuss as a commission needs to happen in a meeting like this, right? And email can only be used potentially to reschedule or to notify that you can't attend or to get the Zoom link, like that type of admin stuff. So we don't discuss actual grant information over email. We receive grant applications, we take a look at them, we send questions, but we don't discuss any real committee business over email.
[53:43] David Szewczyk: Yeah, that's what's recommended.
[53:46] Samantha Schipani: Right. We don't delete any emails that are related to the commission.
[53:51] Mariya Doncheva: What if the events, how do you deal with that outside of the meetings? Because that's very dynamic.
[53:57] Samantha Schipani: I think an event is not an official. Actually, that's a good question. Like we host the Bangor Arts Award event. I don't think we discuss any official commission business. Business. We can all chat, we talk, we can all talk about personal stuff and get excited about
[54:20] David Szewczyk: the Arts Award and present with each other. That's okay. A quorum could all be at the same place at the same time as long as you're not talking about the business of the commission.
[54:33] Sundance Campbell: I mean, we could sort it out not right now, but it could be tough, right, like, you know, somebody wanted to text and say John so-and-so is willing to be a juror. I mean, that's a pretty reasonable way for like the October committee to do its business, so we'll have to sort that out, yeah, because
[54:50] Ann Creed: your actions that go to council are in the form of advisory. So like, for example, if there's a public art piece, it comes here first and then you recommend it for the city council to either approve it or not. So the reason, you know, one of the many reasons why it should be in public is so that the general public understands how you arrived at that decision. So it's sort of a everybody knows how that came about, that
[55:23] David Szewczyk: recommendation, and if there happens to be an email that goes around to all of you and it involves city business, I would avoid reply alls so that you're not end up, it could be argued that you're having a meeting with reply alls without having noticed up the meeting if
[55:45] Samantha Schipani: you're talking about the business of the commission. In the past, subcommittee meetings had not been public, like they don't get recorded on YouTube. The subcommittees typically don't. Do you think
[56:01] Ann Creed: think they should be? I mean, they usually meet here. We used to always, yeah, we often use a smaller
[56:07] Samantha Schipani: conference, right, and the conference was so big for three people to meet, right, but or the public
[56:13] David Szewczyk: bodies are supposed to be open to the public, yeah, so they do meet here in the building, right, so and
[56:19] Samantha Schipani: they go on the official schedule. Are they noticed? Yeah, we post them. Okay, yeah, okay, so they don't
[56:28] Sundance Campbell: need to be video meetings if they're posted, if they're here, don't, because we don't typically
[56:34] David Szewczyk: do that with subcommittees. Yeah, I think that has more to do with what is technical, technologically practical at times. I don't think we don't video every single subcommittee meeting at the city. So excellent, this is as long as it's noticed and
[56:57] Jennifer Snow: okay, right, because the notice allows the public to attend if they choose to, right, yes, and I suppose
[57:03] Samantha Schipani: any member of the public could request to join a subcommittee meeting, and if they're not able to
[57:07] Speaker C (unidentified): join in person, we would then have to disseminate it, and open to the public means open for inspection
[57:15] David Szewczyk: by the public it doesn't it doesn't give the public a right to participate right that 's
[57:20] Samantha Schipani: a separate request. Someone can request to speak with us during the meeting or present something
[57:26] David Szewczyk: To us all right, okay. Any other questions? All right, if you've ever want any training on any other topics, just let us know. All right, okay, thank you. Nice to see all of you.
[57:43] Samantha Schipani: You too. All right, we got three minutes. Oh, we have talked already a bit about ongoing projects and plans as part of our, this is a jumbled agenda, but why don't we skip
[58:01] Ann Creed: that and go to staff updates. And so as I'm developing your budget to go in at the end of the month, I'm assuming you want to put funds into the test. Yes, do you, what I was going to try to do as we go through the budget process, we may have to get more specific, so I'll put this on your March agenda as well to talk more about it, but sort of to save funds for, and then that list that I talked about before, I can repeat it, sort of, I got added marketing, working with a consultant to develop the asset and a strategy, you know, for our cultural assets for the city, increasing your grant funds, a possible specific art piece, or it may be the art installation at Pickering, because the thing about the TIF, just a reminder, tax income and financing funds that we get, they have to go into the district, so and the district is basically downtown out to the cross center, so it's a big area, but still it has to stay within that space, not the city, not city
[59:31] Sundance Campbell: wide. Okay, and what's the high level overview of this, you know, expected revenue, but also the
[59:37] Ann Creed: expected project? I mean, tift cert brings in four million a year right now, and I'll put this in you pack it next time. I mean, you know, right now we have, you know, 1.4 that goes to the death service for the cross center, you know, so I mean, it goes to, right now a lot of capital expenditures like downtown sidewalks, pedestrian improvements, some funds go to the downtown partnership for their work, we do use some for overall downtown marketing efforts that we work with the downtown partnership on. I'm just looking at what else is in here, like the retaining wall change, you know, upgrades that need to happen, so I mean, it's right now it's a lot of capital
[1:00:36] Sundance Campbell: The money has to go to a lot of things. And this is not a new pool. It's just new that we can be included in. Is that right? So it's not like there's $4 million that no one knows what to do with. It's already been allocated in the past.
[1:00:47] Ann Creed: In previous years, yeah.
[1:00:48] Sundance Campbell: We just now can be a part of, our cultural assets can now be a part of that.
[1:00:53] Ann Creed: Right. The tax and commit financing program is controlled by state statute, and for years, it was really specific about what you could spend it on, you know, like I say, capital improvements, other things like some economic development, but you couldn't use it for arts and culture. And then the statute changed last year, where you can use it for that. that and then we went and changed our TIF abilities to be able to do to assign funds to that as well so this is the first year of having this conversation about how to you know how much and how to allocate that for yeah and the tip runs out in 2036 so we have 10 years left on this tip. And then it goes away.
[1:01:54] Sundance Campbell: And so is it the purview of this committee to help the city explore that kind of the space thing we've talked about informally a few times, like, we wanted another multi purpose performance space? Would it be this committee's job to ask for some money to consider the feasibility or even start a
[1:02:13] Ann Creed: I mean, and I think that, again, would be a conversation that you would have with the cultural strategy.
[1:02:21] Mariya Doncheva: Right. Right. Yeah. And who would pay them?
[1:02:27] Ann Creed: Well, that's a possible project for TIP funds, is to have a consultant work with you to come up with a full-on, you know, cultural asset and strategy document.
[1:02:40] Samantha Schipani: So we would ask the city to earmark the X amount from that TIF budget. The city would pay them, the city would officially hire them, but we would be the organizing in between. We make the recommendation. Did you already say this? I apologize, I just replied to something. How much of that $4 million is not accounted for?
[1:03:05] Ann Creed: Well, I mean, in the current budget it's all accounted for, but of course, yeah.
[1:03:12] Samantha Schipani: Like the current year, yeah, but for next year, yeah, for start, what we're asking
[1:03:16] Ann Creed: For starting, I mean, first, you know, I just look at, just to compare to other things that are sort of non-capital, you know, like we get 15,000 to, you know, economic development support, we give thirty thousand to marketing for downtown and generic downtown amenities, thirty thousand, so I was gonna offer forty. Okay, because we get four point, well, this year the amount is four point. So 40 might be a good starting point to ask for, that would be my recommendation.
[1:04:02] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: I mean, the cultural strategy request would include all the things.
[1:04:06] Ann Creed: Well, what I'd like to do is to be able to at this early stage to say 40,000, and then the commission will bring a recommendation of how you're going to use that 40,000.
[1:04:23] Samantha Schipani: Can we include the whole list in the initial ask?
[1:04:25] Ann Creed: It just buys you a little time.
[1:04:27] Samantha Schipani: Yeah, can we include the whole list in the initial ask so they know that we have a list? Yeah, these are things. Right? Like we already have a list, we'd like to have more time to put together a solid proposal for that money. Exactly. 40 will likely pay for some of what's in this list. Exactly.
[1:04:45] Sundance Campbell: Does that just like when things kind of align with other projects? so is it true that like public construction projects require one percent to go to some kind of art funding like if you built a brand new city hall is it one percent that number so i mean maybe you're already doing this but we're asking for a similar amount right one percent of the hip essentially or a little less in line with that kind of pre-existing mandate so that 's
[1:05:10] Samantha Schipani: good yeah that seems good yeah i like that number as a starting point because also if we end up with a little less we could still do something so they have room to negotiate that's beyond the 20,000 like to ask for 25 for grants back that up with all kinds of information and reasoning yeah I think 25 is reasonable it they likely will still say 20 but I'd like to ask for 25 for grants this year okay and then still ask for 2500 for
[1:05:51] Mariya Doncheva: oh, so they pay for that. Yeah.
[1:05:54] Samantha Schipani: All of our money comes from the city, okay, so it's 20 to five, got it, and that's initial.
[1:06:01] Sundance Campbell: Right, like if we wanted to refine that next month, or does that not, like this is 25, like we have to get that number in now? We do, right? Yeah, it's the end of the month. That seems like a reasonable number. Yeah, happy to. I mean, it'd be good to tie it to the inflation rate cumulative for the last five years or two, but it's probably the same, not probably, about what's happened cumulatively. Okay, awesome.
[1:06:24] Samantha Schipani: I mean I'll take 30 if they want to get 30. I think we need to, the more reasonable we are at their request, maybe the more likely it is, and so keeping the Arctober funds the same, also knowing that we haven't spent all of it for years, I think, is reasonable, and we're not asking to increase.
[1:06:46] Kathy (Kal) Elmore: And it was a nice event, it went off really well.
[1:06:50] Mariya Doncheva: So they have access to our budgets, right, the City Council? Yep. And has it been a pattern where the event is saving money on that $25,000?
[1:07:04] Samantha Schipani: Yeah, but I mean, it's part of our overall budget anyway, so whatever doesn't get spent that goes into the grant portion of it. So the city doesn't save money on the 2,500 they give us. We don't give it back to the city.
[1:07:16] Mariya Doncheva: But they can see that we haven't utilized at all.
[1:07:19] Nina Earley: For the event, I don't know that I want to show them that.
[1:07:21] Mariya Doncheva: Exactly, that's why I'm asking.
[1:07:25] Samantha Schipani: Yeah, great, we, okay. It has built a buffer for us for grant money because we haven't received more than 20 for grants in the past several years, but we always get asks for more than that. And so having a little bit left over from the October budget helps us with the grant money. I still think it's, I'd like to ask for more, always ask for more. Yeah, all right, okay, that's all I have. Great, then I adjourn the meeting. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.