Beautification Committee

CITY OF SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS ROBERT K. MCCARTHY ACTING MAYOR Salem Beautification Committee: Chair: Henry Gulergun Vice Chair: Ariana Lema-Driscoll Secretary: Kim Parkinson City Liaison: Janelle Rolke 5/9/23 – Hybrid Meeting Present: Zachary Schaad, Ariana Lema-Driscoll, Henry Gulergun, Kim Parkinson, Brooke Nagle, Jeremy Baker, Janelle Rolke (City Liaison) Absent: Mary Ellen Halliwell, Jason Lang, Sam Fiore, Charlene Bailey Guests: Joann Kowalski Agenda: • Mission Statement • Approval of April 2023 Minutes • Old Business: o Great Salem Cleanup Recap o Traffic Island Sponsor Update o Sticker Removal • Sub-Committee Reports o Lady of Salem o Grants o Traffic Island • New Business o Window Box Competition Mission Statement: The mission of the Salem Beautification Committee is to assist the City in developing and pursuing initiatives that promote the beautification of the City. The goal of the Committee is to create civic pride and to motivate the City's diverse population to participate in the beautification process. The Committee will identify areas in need of improvement, will create programs, recruit volunteers and will secure the funding resources to achieve its goals. • Minutes Approved from April Meeting unanimously • Sandi Power has sent in her letter of resignation, a big thank you to Sandi to all of the work that she’s done over the years! • Welcome to our newest member, Charlene Bailey who has officially been sworn in by city council. We still have one vacancy in case anyone has someone they know who would be interested! 1 Old business: o Great Salem Cleanup Recap  Weather was rough that day (April 23rd) but luckily the serious rain held out during the cleanup  Great BComm presence on that day! Had about 300 people committed total, more like 130 showed up given the weather  Thank you to those that helped organize the day and the sponsors who helped on that day – NY Essex & East Regiment  Sidelines will be the partner for the next event (30+ people signed up) on 5/21 (10-12). KSB + BComm will manage it and help with traffic island cleanup and litter cleanup depending on how many people attend. We will focus on Canal Street and the bike path  More conversations have been happening about the cleanup events, showing up in Salem news, on social media, and is being mentioned in relation to the  Since going live with the new website, 52 new volunteers have come through the new site! o Sticker Removal  We’ve talked about the traffic island sponsor signs and how we need to remove the stickers with the former Mayor’s name off of them  Henry will be at DPW Tues at 12PM, potentially Wed, potentially Fri to help if anyone can do it! Bring some putty scrapers!  Once the signs go back into the ground, Brooke wants to get pictures Sub-Committee Reports: • Lady of Salem o Artists have delivered figureheads and boards to Ken at Concept Signs. Sam and Mary Ellen will map out LoS locations on Essex & Derby for Katie and the DPW o Installation is set for the morning of Wednesday May 24th o LoS website and QR code placement is a work in progress – include locations, bios, history o New 2023 "Lady of Salem " brochure for distribution at Salem Ferry, Destination Salem, Hawthorne Hotel being created • Grants o No updates this month • Traffic Island Program o Brooke met with Charlene yesterday to go through the sponsor spreadsheet and compared it to the map to make sure every pin was in the right spot. 3 are in question that will be confirmed this week and 8 were recently adjusted. Also gave extra instructions on some of them like Riley Plaza where there are several in a small space so that people know exactly which part of the street they should show up at o Always looking for new volunteers, lots of work to be done! o Meeting on Friday to discuss the flowers for this season, more to come o Feedback has been given about how there is a lack of native plants in the traffic islands. Something to consider for the future as it should help use less water and could be less upkeep  Could we send something to the sponsors to make recommendations on which types of flowers to plant?  Kim to talk to neighbor about the native plant recommendations o Think about inviting sponsors to a future BComm meeting to welcome them, share what we do, give best practices, get feedback from the sponsors 2  o All sponsors that were 2022 sponsors have been reached out to for re-sponsorship, Janelle is only waiting on 1 to confirm (have gotten verbal confirmation though) o Island on the corner of Washington & Norman St Dunkin – they’ll be weeding it this week and then BComm will take over, new owners didn’t know about the sponsorship until recently o The only islands in red (8) haven’t been sponsored in years – only 1 sponsor from last year did not renew because their business is no longer in Salem  We should take photos and share them as open for sponsorship  Have reached out to some potential sponsors, waiting to hear back, but let’s get moving on trying to get these sponsored before it’s too late o Brooke is doing some reconciling on a few different spreadsheets to ensure everything is in one place New Business: • Window box competition o After the Great Salem Cleanup, this came up as a great potential option to bring up again o Zach and Ariana are working with the garden club to work through logistics and intentions to move forward together – meeting on Thursday o Garden Club would potentially judge around Heritage Days – consider hosting the awards ceremony that Thursday  Can we recruit businesses to contribute potential prizes? Or pay for them? o Historically it was window boxes and traffic islands, thought we could add businesses as well o Could we monetize this for the committee? Donations? o Salem Main Streets also does a window display competition – may be good to pick their brains and get their lists o Could also do something in the fall and/or winter o This hasn’t happened in a few years so we need to make sure we get the word out o Still a lot of questions, need to get answers before we decide anything on behalf of BComm • Next time we meet, we should have a new mayor, would be great to invite him to the next meeting o Could we organize a trolley ride around to see the traffic island route with the new mayor? o Invite some of the Lady of Salem artists too? 3