Lodgers Tax Committee

LODGERS TAX COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES 3/19/2019 10:00am City Council Chambers, 110 W Aztec, Gallup NM 1. Roll Call: Cindy Tanner, Anna Connell, Jeremy Boucher Approval of Minutes Motion by Cindy Second by Anna 2. Presentation of Annual Funding Chart and Expenditures Guide Jennifer explained to the LT Committee how to read the funding chart and attendance columns on the Annual Funding Chart. Jennifer explained the expenses and reimbursement documents and announced they’ll be mailed with letters after the funding requests see City council. Following questions Jennifer explained that each interview would take approximately 7 minutes due to the volume of interviews. She asked Cindy Tanner to speak about what exactly the committee wants to address with the applications. Lastly Jennifer reminded everyone that funding as always is a first come first serve process and thanked everyone for being there. End of FY19 Applications Funding Remaining: $80,965 Amount Requested: $82,500.00 Amount Recommended: $78,500 1. Memorial Day 5K Last year’s dip in numbers was weather releated and they are requesting the same amount. Motion to recommend $5000.00 by Jeremy second by Cindy, all in favor RECOMMENDATION $5,000 2. Adventure Gallup Guide Request $25000 Discussion about not doubling up with Visitors Guide Jeremy moves to recommend 25K Cindy seconds, all in favor RECOMMENDATION $25,000 3. Lions Club Rodeo requested $25000. Cindy comments that the advertising budget is very impression Anna motioned to recommend 25K Jeremy second, all in favor RECOMMENDATION $25,000 4. Lions Club BBQ Request $5000 the people are already here. Jeremy- what is the goal with your BBQ? To give people something to do during the daytime because the rodeo is in the evening. Cindy added- wasn’t the BBQ at the park at some point? It has moved often. They said that it is mailed out to applicants and contestants. Discussed their radio ads in Texas and Oklahoma. They are going to Grow with Google to learn how to do social media. Anna motions to recommend funding at 4K, Jeremy seconds, all in favor RECOMMENDATION $4,000 5. Spanish Market Request $12,500.00 Jennifer asked Barb to explain how they track attendance- this year they’ll be doing surveys and more consumer interaction. Barb stated she’s reducing her ask by 1,000 because the street banner isn’t reasonable and only attracts locals. Cindy makes a motion to recommend $11,500 and anna seconds. All in favor. Barb states to adjust the AZ Knights of Columbus ad. RECOMMENDATION $11,500 6. New Mexico High School Rodeo Semi-Finals Request $10,000. Committee desires to recommend last year’s amount of $8K and doesn’t to fund the buckle awards. Motion by Cindy second Anna. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $8,000.00 1 FY20 Part 1 Grant Applications Funding Available: $250,000 Amount Requested: $218,161.43 Amount Recommended: $196,736.98 Balance potentially remaining for all unfunded FY20 projects: 53,263.02 1. Freedom Ride Flight and Cruise $17,891.09- Francis explains he’s mostly just changing the media mix. In previous years they used ad agencies to place social media and placed ads on Pandora radio and Pandora tv in AZ and NM. Last year and this year they don’t plan for that but will be doing more Facebook social media advertising. Francis explains that they would like to have more people for the event and that in order to host more people they need to utilize more space. They are discussion increasing the power available to the vendors’ area. Cindy motion to recommend 17891.09 Jeremy second, all in favor RECOMMENDATION $17891.09 2. Red Rock Motorsports Desert 100 $12,500. Greg says that they track through wrist bands and entries. Cindy moves that they recommend 12,500, second by Anna. All in favor. Greg thanks the committee. RECOMMENDATION $12,500 3. Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial Request $50K Jennifer explained the coop grant. Jeremy motions recommend 50K, Cindy seconds 50K. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $50,000 4. Touch Down Football League Request $20,000 Sammy said it’s their 10th anniversary this year and they want to do something special for the teams this year. They had 40 teams last year and they can expand to up to 52 teams this year. One of the things they want to do is a Championship banner- part of an award package for the teams that they can display at other tournaments. They have 18 teams that come from ABQ and Rio Rancho. Pueblo, CO, brought three teams last year. Jennifer asked if he planned to ask for 20 again next year for year 11 and he said probably no, it would be less. They got the idea for the banner from a team from northern AZ. He also brought up wanting to use a social media contractor. Jeremy motions to approve the request in the amount of 20K, Cindy seconds. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $20,000 5. Wildthing Championship Bull Riding Request $35,000.00. He has historically not asked for more because he couldn’t but last year we changed the rules about what we could award. Larry requests additional funding to help grow his Friday night crowd. The committee passed around photos and flyers from him. The lodgers tax funding offsets the costs of putting on the event- the sponsorships can go toward the quality of the event instead of going toward the marketing. He always spends more than 25K on marketing. He also explained how he’s a fundraiser for Manuelito Children’s Home. Cindy: What does the firework display cost (just out of curiosity)- Larry says they get a special price because they’ve been doing it for over 20 years. It’s about a 10K shoot for about 8K because the condensed down the amount of fireworks within one song. Cindy said it seems to get bigger every year. Larry agreed, this year they’ll be keeping it the same size as last year. Jennifer mentioned that Southwest Planning will be doing an event evaluation of this next year and also mentioned we’re using a Wildthing photo on a billboard soon. Jeremy motions to recommend the amount of $35K and Cindy seconds. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION OF $35,000 6. Friends of Hubbell Fall Native Art Auction Request $4450.00 They discussed that since this event hasn’t append yet they are funding it at the same level as their May event last fiscal year. Jeremy recommends funding at 4100, anna seconds. All in Favor. RECOMMENDATION OF $4,100 7. Tri-State Firefighters Convention Request $8,596.49. McKinley County is hosting the event for the firefighters this year. The City hosted it last time. Cindy asked them to describe the event. They state that they anticipate 250 people coming from outside the area. It moves every year. The event is three nights. The committee asked if this is something that could be recurring. Jennifer mentioned that the difficulty with this kind of event is that there isn’t an opportunity to recoup cost from entry fees so they can’t guarantee their own income to continue to host the event. Jennifer asked how they are getting people to their event because their entire ask is promotional items. They explained that they do a mailing to the individual fire units and firemen. Jeremy: normally 2  we don’t fund more than 5K for a first-time request, but can we put on a show to attract people? Cindy then asked what goes on for family members that grows the event. They described the dinner events. Jennifer reminded them that need to be remembering that we have the level of funding that we have and stated that she would remind them between all the applications about the funding levels (this continued throughout the meeting) Jennifer explained that the City will not be sponsoring the event- they are tapped out with how many events that they can sponsor, and that it was discussed with the Gallup Fire Department and City Manager. Jeremy motions to recommend $5K, Anna Connell seconds. RECOMMENDATION $5,000 8. Kicker Arenacross $18,500 Jennifer explained that they historically see about 5K in attendance at their events. Tod is showing the awards and posters to the committee. He’s been holding events in this community since 1995. For a long time he was the second largest arena cross event promoter in the country, and his competitor quit this year. One third of his budget is local but that’s because its important to have a full house for the racers. The rest is Google, social media, and more. They received 12,000 in funding last year. This year they have seen a complete shift in their advertising since he brought on a social media person. The online and door tickets are $10, they can go for $5 in advance from O’Reillys. The committee is discussing the difficulty of their current event. Cindy motions to recommend 14K and Anna seconds. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $14,000 9. Squashblossom Classic $9,866.00 They are increasing their ask back to what it was in the past. ($10K). They have historically spent more than the 10 they have been receiving. They are trying to grow the event by targeting younger bike racers, teams, and working with Scott Nydam’s group to grow the youth component of the event. Right now, there isn’t an official NM Nica league but they’re trying to tap in to that. They doubled their Facebook and digital a17ds budgets. The middle age and millennial demographic is saturated but they want to lead in the youth event component. Jeremy discussed Scott’s plans to build out the NM team. Jeremy motions to recommend the $9,866. Second by Anna. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $9,866 10. Mario Estrada Softball Tournament Request $8650. The application says she’s going to double her attendance but there isn’t a plan spelled out for that. Anna takes issue with the fact that it’s all local with no plan for growing outside the community. Yolanda Azua mentioned that Sandra would text Jennifer about not being there. Jennifer checked her email and saw that Sandra sent one sentence saying she had to work, but did not outline a plan to represent herself in any other way. Jennifer attempted to call the applicant and she was unavailable. Jeremy motions to recommend at $5K and anna seconds. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $5,000 11. Gallup Film Festival $22,422.26 Knifewing stated “When something goes lower we need to spend more money to fix the advertising issue. They didn’t spend a lot of time looking at why attendance was low, but they spend a lot of time looking at what their strengths were.” They had more film submissions and they spread out their films and that could be a reason. He believes that they had less people from in town show up. He’s discussing the possibility of a project but it hasn’t confirmed or contracted anything in our community. Continued effort to get some of the Sundance submissions to come their way, not the winners, but they submitted. Jeremy brings up that when they’ve awarded 20K to people they’re looking at numbers over 4-6K people in attendance. When you’re looking at the amount of funding per head, it doesn’t make economic sense on a per head spend to recommend his ask. Cindy asked why he would want the increase and where that would go- he discussed the film freeway stuff and stated that he was very interested in getting more film submissions and while that might not get more people it would help the event. Jennifer reviewed his spending for the last two years and that an estimate of over 10K per year hasn’t left the community with regards to advertising (two years ago he spent $13,000 on building a website, last year was about $10K on making a film and editing video). Knifewing says they’re advertising for increased submissions- it doesn’t mean people will come but those who do will come from further away. Cindy asks if it could be the dates- Jennifer confirmed there are three applicants in the same weekend (Squashblossom, Red Rock 100 and this event) and Jennifer also noted that she emailed all three event organizers to let them know their events overlapped back in December. Knifewing made the point- once they’re here 3  they’re here so the events taking place at the same time shouldn’t be an issue. Jeremy- walk me through the moviemaker social media- four posts over a few months is massively expensive. Facebook is much cheaper. Jeremy explained that you can dial in those targets for significantly less money. Knifewing says that it doesn’t reach the same targets. Knifewing showed his program ad booklet. Cindy appreciates what he does for the event. Jeremy moves to recommend the 16K to see what he can do since it doesn’t make sense to him to increase when there are events pulling in many more people with a smaller budget. Second Anna. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $16,000 12. Gallup Senior 50/60 Plus Softball Tournament $7905.70 Jennifer asked how they break up the park since there are two tournaments going on at the same time in the same park. Yolanda explained she’s the secretary for the men’s league but runs the womens and that they are on separate fields. Jennifer broke it down with Yolanda- the banners would be for the traveling teams to have banners. The 7300 is specific to the Labor Day tournament. Jennifer asked why is there an increase of 2K. Yolanda said that its promotional items for branding outside the community. Jeremy brought up that the entire budget isn’t doing anything to bring people into the event because it is entirely promotional items- it’s all a bonus after they are here. He says the committee is looking for more straight marketing to bring people into the community. He said they opened the flood gates with their traveling team last time, but that this isn’t helping the event get attendance. Jennifer: how are you planning on growing attendance on the events- Yolanda says she’s going to the big ABQ tournament to give out materials for two weeks, she’s taking info from the Chamber with her. Jennifer explained that legally we can’t fund the June event advertising in ABQ, nor can they fund banners for the traveling team because they are independent of the labor day event. The only thing that can be funded is materials pertinent to the labor day event because that is what is spelled out in the application. Cindy asked- how many teams come for the labor day event. There are 16 teams and 10 of that come from out of town. Jeremy motions to recommend 5K because there are only promotional items but no marketing outside of the community within the application. He encourages her to consider apply for marketing/advertising expenses in the future in how she breaks things down. Anna seconds. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $5,000 13. Gloria Saucedo 40 Women’s Tournament $2379.89 The application doesn’t say what they are buying from Sportsworld. Yolanda clarifies its hoodies, t-shirts, and other promotional clothing items. Yolanda clarified these are the prizes given out at the event. Jeremy motions we approve the 2379.89, especially since it is a decrease from their funding two years ago. Anna seconds. All in favor. RECOMMENDATION $2379.89 Applications not received yet for F20 that were received in 2019: 24 Hours in Enchanted Forest, Race at the Rock, Red Rock Trailer Roping, Red Rock Balloon Rally, Spitfire/Classic Invitational Rodeo, USTRC Team Roping, Adventure Guide, Lions Club Rodeo, Lions Club BBQ, Spanish Market, Memorial Day 5k, NMHSRA Semi-finals, Native Film Series Motion to Adjourn: Jeremy, Seconded: Cindy 4