2.21.2023 City Council Committee on Economic Development & Tourism

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good evening gentlemen good evening good evening good evening I know that Mr labassi has been doing a lot of work along with Mr frillan up at the rail trail and I know you've received some money um from the city to do more work up there the Appalachian trails Etc tell us a little bit about that what's being done up there and how are we getting that out to the community okay for sure so I

I guess if we're the water department we're handing stuff out well so these are this is a a little printout of the different means that we're communicating you know as you said there are different walks and and these are websites and also I'm giving you a copy of the Apple the 20 mile trail that we were working on with the Appalachian Mountain Club we've actually established the 20 Mile Trail which is

actually just linking together existing Trails but in a meaningful way so that we have a nice Loop and that's called the Biore Reserve loop trail easy to Remember The BLT um and then this is oh I think I've passed out these this is a tadapatnam trail uh um guide which was re um was was redone by a student from Roger Williams um university just recently in fact got the trailhead up there yeah

the Trail guide is up there so the tatapatnam trail was actually the city's first public hiking trail opened on the what's upper reservation in 1995.

at a time when the what upper reservation was not open to the public it's hard to even imagine back then but for a hundred years the trail was not open I mean the uh the the what's up a reservation itself was not open to the public hunting no hiking you know I remember the old signs no picking flowers it was it was it was a very Stern message I mean so now that's been flipped on his

head and really you know there's a welcome sign out now to use the what's upper reservation except for a certain ring around the the shoreline of the Northwest upper itself which we have to safeguard for you know for keep the water supply itself pure so from Blossom Road to the east all of the watapa reservation is now open to the public and it connects with other lands that's owned by the trustees of

reservations as well as the the state uh division of conservation Recreation and um open for all kinds of passive Recreation okay we've kind of went over this last time so the challenge is you know my staff in the process of taking care of the water supply itself um is pretty busy we're not really necessarily in the in the in the business of um uh of you know doing Public tours and so

forth but we are really fortunate to have a lot of Partners in this the bio Reserve itself the whole idea of having a bio Reserve was to have multiple agencies multiple landowners working in a coordinated fashion and so this uh flyer that I that I handed out kind of the first part of it talks about you know how are people discovering the buyers of it I think that's really one

of your main ideas like what you know what is the tourists or what is the economic development aspects of the buyers driven is it really working some of the ways that we're we're getting the word out through Facebook Appalachian Mountain um Club is has been since 2020 a big partner of ours now they're a they're a National Organization uh very well known and they have a a large following and

they are uh a premier hiking organization their concerns are inclusion uh to make sure everybody that goes goes into the woods comes out of the woods um they're especially good at um you know providing services to first-time hikers because frankly we we do get a lot of first-time hikers and getting people uh to understand leave no Trace you know that's an important uh obviously an important Sportsman aspect

of hiking uh Sports person and um also um well so so their leaders are trained so they go to actually leadership class so they can they can provide very nice tours and they're very interested in learning about Fall River and the history of these lands so they're so we you know we've given them some literature about the history of the Farms the history of the water supply how the how you know

how it was put together how it you know protects the water supply and they're really good at sort of bringing that education to it as well they're they're offering free hikes uh they're twice a month and so um that's another you know so so they have a website you can register get on the hikes um you know there's there's email letters that go out of course Word of Mouth

um we seem to be getting a lot of attention lately because of the buyers of Discovery Center that is is something we're looking forward to actually closing on this property and and you know getting the the center itself underway as far as design and construction um you know Viva Fall River has been one of our partners uh and and it helps us to get the word out and we have a

website that works up a reserve which is which is something we're overhauling right now to make more user friendly is your website also connected to the city's website so if I went on the city's website and I typed in reservation would it pop up that February 23rd there's going to be a maple maple tree tapping by Creative Arts Network that March 5th is going to be a five mile hike in the copaco woods

like what I get this is all great information that's on here but I I find that the piece that we miss is people aren't going to go to every single one of these websites but if it was on the city's website and then you could Branch out to the different things that are happening are you working on that at all Mr Ferlin yeah so with the overall plan to I know the administration is over

pulling the current City website the website that we set up which is what tupperreserve.com is a separate independent website but it will be a link to it from the city's website as Mike said we currently have a intern working on how with Tupper Reserve website and there's a number of things that we want to add when we started that website about a year and a half ago you know it's a basic website that's that's

what we uh that's what we started with we were lucky enough to be able to get a an intern from Roger Williams that's going to be uh adding a lot of different uh things to the site a couple of things that we've talked about was a dashboard a calendar of upcoming events and then also spots where we could have people register for certain types of events and things like that you know that's

something that's uh not within my realm or any of my stats Realms so we were lucky enough to be able to get to actually the same girl that made the Titan panum Trail um interactive and developed the map for it so a very good student and she's really going to be helping us out with that so yeah I think that's one of the things you know it'll be a link from the

city website to our separate website we decided to maintain it as a separate website with everything you know we have other partners within the bio Reserve so if you go to trustees or the reservation again you know on our Tupper Reserve website uh there's a link to there to their page so that they can talk about their events a couple of events that are listed on this page of their events AMC

also and stuff like that so yeah we're trying to uh trying to broaden that uh that website right now we actually met with them last week and I think probably about a month or two we should see more of a result thank you Council Washington first as a comment the town of pan Trail I love that I'm so excited you're here because who maintains that first of all it's always so well kept it the people

that use it are so respectful of it who maintains that property that would be making this stuff yeah but I agree with you if the community doesn't respect the place it it goes It goes bad fast um and interestingly in the last week I've been in touch with the BCC Veterans Center and they're interested in in adopting that trail oh wow so that is such a cool concept and you know they're

looking for ways to have Community impact and they're looking for ways in fact they came to us through the AMC so the connectedness of all these organizations um multiply what the city is able to do and um and and and the the law you know the size of this buyers are and and the just the sheer quality and sort of world-class uh quality of it attracts these good partners and if we're you

know if we play our cards right and um you know ourselves become good partners the possibilities just seem endless so I want to thank you for the job that you do up there it's amazing I've always wanted who who takes care of this so it's beautiful and the Biore Reserve it's just that's I think it's so under promoted in the city what it's like up there and so my question would be what

could we do what could this committee do what could we do to help promote that better um in a way that people will go up there and respect it just like the people that use it now do if you have any suggestions so you know a lot of people go towards social media and that type of aspect to be able to find out about events and stuff like that so far as the water

department we don't have policies or procedures or somebody to maintain a social media sites so we haven't ventured into that into that realm cat in the future if we wanted to do something like that you almost need to get a promotions person that would maintain uh you know maintain something like that because you always need to be constant constantly updating things you know if

events have changed or canceled or or et cetera et cetera so you know that becomes almost a job within it I agree you know and it's tough because again you know um Water and Sewer Department Mike's water department our primary concept is Mike started out with is almost protection about water supply we're able to with the protection of the water supply also provide these additional amenities

so uh you know that's one thing that's tough again you know we try to use every resource that's out there reserve.com website was originally created through a grant through the MVP program The Intern that we have that's going to be updating the site is something that Mike reached out and found through Roger Williams so you know those types of resources as we reach out and we find

these very low cost no cost to the city or the rate payers um you know input you know those are the things that have really got us moving forward so I appreciate you working within your means it's not your scope of work is to to be doing that so that's fantastic that you've been able to even create a website to do that but I think that we can do better I mean when we

talk about rebranding the city and promoting the city we I feel like this is where we're lacking it's such it's so beautiful up there it really really is and I think that um you know I think that's something that I'll take back and and brainstorm how can we you know promote that better we have a lot of programs I see cans on here they promote Trails up there so um how can we use

what we have better to assist you guys so you can just do your job in a hierarchy of like expense okay okay so starting at the bottom the neighbors out there are really helpful you know there's only so many staff it's a giant resource so I really count on Neighbors being eyes and ears and the neighbors for the most part I mean they're out there because they love it they were

they were attracted out there and they loved the place and they want to help us and they do so that's really important and I think we try to you know we try to maintain a really respectful relationship with them and be responsive and all of that and then again we talked about Partners look at some of the partners on this list I mean the United Way I think this is the third of the

fourth year they're they're actually having they're centering their united we move in the buyer region because they get what it is we're doing they have they do a hike bike walk and and every year there's more people and they're people who are respectful who are enjoying the place and and again you know when we animate the landscape with good use and people doing appropriate things it sort of displaces you know the

stuff that might otherwise be undoing what we're trying to do so that really works um we have the um in the fall involved there's a there's a new uh New England mountain bike Association has created a South Coast last fall they created a South Coast chapter and part of it's because of this resource and they can actually that you know there's enough interests they usually have a 50 mile

race so you know folks can come out start you know not only racing or maybe just coming out and cheering and that'll build that you know continues to build on that brand the brand is environment and protection the brand is Recreation and fun you know and all of that and I mean that's what I think when I when I think of the city this is what's happening in the city right now people

it's a it's a lifestyle Choice it's a lifestyle excitement that's happening um there's a couple of um AMC is doing these hikes uh the trustees and reservations are doing uh the All-Pro Wildlife tracking green Futures has been here forever you know they do uh special things like the Moonlight walk and different things you know different themes different locations all in an effort to help people to sort of see

different parts of it and get to fully comprehend what's out there the spiral Reserve Discovery Center it's going to be some heavy lifting it's going to it's going to take a few years but I think what we can build out there is a place people come out and you don't have to know a thing about anything you're going to come to a visitor center there'll be exhibits you'll be able to

learn the history learn the you know biodiversity you know things about climate change it'll be it'll be history but we also you know Forward Thinking and and that's important because the land protection we do is permanent this is permanent land protection so we need to be you know Generations ahead and then there are some things with big tickets I mean we got to think about the

roads out there you know that is a that is a real problem for some people yeah and so you know gonna make some decisions do we fix the roads do we do we gate off some areas do we you know what's what's the plan and I think um a lot of people get fooled by you know Google Map is great but Google Map will send you in some crazy places I've

been there I've been I actually had that happen I came out in Dartmouth somewhere um I want to thank you again it's just so beautiful out there it always drives me nuts when people like I'm gonna go hike in the Blue Hills I'm like you don't need to it's so beautiful out there so I'll yield to that but um it's just so beautiful and whatever we can do and suggestions that you have

to help thank you so much yeah so just one thing that might that might mentioned too that I want to you know the Neighbors being our eyes and ears Mike's death probably spends uh two to three days part of his staff two to three days a week Clean cleaning up the illegal dumping or other issues that occur DCM whenever we need their assistance they they always help us as well but again I

think being the you know the neighbors really help us try to uh try to curve some of that away so uh if anybody ever sees anything out there don't be afraid to confirm water department to call Mike's office call so can try to curb any of that stuff in the future can I make two more comments right time environmental police they're excellent we need more I mean we have we have five positions in this one right

now so that's that's really key it's really critical and I think compensating our staff um because we you know the work that's being done out there has to do with um you know using chainsaws um there's there's a high element of risk involved we mow dams you know slopes like that with with power equipment um in some areas that don't have good cell service so I don't know that that's

fully appreciated and I think that they really need to they do great work they love being out there they love the work that has to it has to be fairly compensated I think that's important to talk about the environmental police and all of the work that's done up there and the fact that you don't get cell service and I know when we have a storm and trees fall then those trees have to be cut picked up

um so that if that God forbid is a fire the trucks can get through and I know that there is a program when um the dead trees fall that you can pay so much go up at a certain time and you pay x amount of dollars and you can take that wood home yourself um I don't like the fact that some companies will come in buy it and then

sell it at a higher price I think it should be Fall River residents that have first dibs at that um but again when does that happen and how do we get that message out to the community even the buyer Reserve it's beautiful I mean counselor Raposa is principal of a school that would be a great school trip to have the kids go up for hiking and they can have a picnic there so could

all of the other schools in Fall River but if the school's Department doesn't know about it or what's there um they're not going to do it another thing that I would suggest is these brochures that you have that talk about all the trails these are great to put in the different hotels the one on Airport Road the one in Dartmouth and Westport but you don't have the manpower to do that is that what I'm hearing that

there's not enough manpower to do that well that's that's a broad task you're right it is and we're like laboring in the woods that's that's almost like a different almost needs to be like a side Department right that could that could like a tourism director if we had one I hear you the trustees of reservations once had an Outreach in education a full-time person who did that kind of

thing right and you know if you look at any land trust as you know the Dartmouth Land Trust Westport land trust the trustees reservations Audubon they all sort of have that side to them but we're so we're so conservation oriented and you know as far as the work of the stewardship of the land that's almost that we almost have a an empty seat where we should have a person that's full-time education Outreach to fully to

you know to fully make a robust attempt at doing the Outreach that we could do yeah you know myself and Mike we've talked many times about uh I think we've called it an educational Ranger position again that would be somebody that would be able to do Outreach to the schools and be able to manage different types of activities and things that occur out there but again with uh with budgets and

personal uh as it is it has been something that's been fully funded yet maybe that's something that we can look at around budget time uh you know if there is money available to put in a position like that um thank you both very much for coming we can either leave this on the table and come up again and see where we're at or we can just give it leave to withdraw since

we've heard all the information it's a choice of the council second motion leave to withdraw first and second all in favor aye thank you very very much thank you thank you thank you item number four is a resolution regarding an Arts public Arts policy and let me give a little bit of history on this because we do have a new member to our committee but Council reposer and I um brought this to

the economic development tourism meeting there was a big discussion about it and then um I met with um Mr Akins along with members of frack and then they met with members of can and then it was the then it came back uh and it was to be a meeting held between frack and can to come up with what was a good policy quite frankly this does not belong in this committee the way I see

it because this committee is not a committee that creates policies it should have been it should have gone to the ordinance committee we did refer it to ordinance and ordinance sent it back so it's the motion of the committee on what to do I would hope that people would get together and come up with a policy that everybody agrees with that weekend then send to ordinance but it's up to the committee for your choices

come slow Washington if they can work together I would say make a leap to a drawer and have them work together and hopefully come up with a policy so I make a motion leave to withdraw motion leave to withdraw second for a second all in favor aye item number five used to be lifted from the table item number five is one South Coast chamber regarding the Four River Arts and Cultural plan along with Beaver Fall

River this was a letter that we received from Mr Sullivan who's the head of the chamber in Fall River requesting to speak at this committee at that time that the meeting was scheduled he was unable to be here so we rescheduled them right did we lift the item four from the table I thought Robert did okay so it's got to be lifted no can I go ahead can I lift item number four

from the table is there a second second all in favor and then can I make a motion leave to withdraw second motion leave to withdraw on number two all in favor aye thank you thank you Lauren you're right on the ball item number five lift from the table item number five left from the table is there a second all in favor so item number five is basically about that so if we could have um

South Coast one chamber for our Arts and Cultural plan and Viva Fall River come down to the table Mr Sullivan you had a presentation to give

One Direction

welcome you could just state your name and address for the record Ashley Aquino 200 mccasset Street Michael Sullivan 200 Pocasset Street thank you for having us sorry we couldn't make it the last time okay my pleasure um we really want to talk about Frack but I thought it might help especially with a newer counselor um to just give you a little bit of background about frack and how it fits within the Chamber

of Commerce Chamber of Commerce is a 501c6 that also has a foundation it's called Bristol County Chamber foundation and it does business now as one South Coast chamber Foundation that's a 501c3 so people donate money to it it's tax deductible well giving out tax advice right now but the important thing I think the important part of it to to recognize is that you know we worked with the state we worked with

private businesses and we worked with philanthropic organizations going back to sometime in too early 2019 and we created a plan that came to life in November of 2021. everything we do with Frac is is a direct is directly tied to that plan and Ashley can explain some of that but when we we've raised money we've raised arpa funds for programs those programs All Tied back to that plan

one of one of those programs that we've created and actually again we'll talk more about it but is but ties the education portion of the plan so that there's a lot there's a lot there it's very important I think but we have the foundation is split it covers um it covers four or five different organizations larger organizations and then it has covers a lot of smaller project-based type things some of those

are Viva Fall River leadership South Coast by black New Bedford because we're a regional organization and then we've got the smaller ones I don't think I missed anything yeah I'll turn it over to Ashley oh excuse me for that thank you Mike and so in terms of smaller base things one of the things I wanted to highlight was that the chamber Foundation served as the fiscal sponsor for the diversity

sculpture on the corner of the building here so that's an example of one of the great things that they did as the foundation but I also have a one-handed I did want to share with with the committee

and so thank you again for allowing fact to have this platform this evening to talk a little bit more about the arts and culture plan and also to talk about what a wonderful year 2022 was and what 2023 has in store as Mike so nicely mentioned our plan was put together and launched in 2021 and at the time 90 members of the community were engaged in that and I'm happy to say at this point

um frax membership which again I'd like to say again and again it's open to all it costs zero dollars and to participate just show up at a meeting just let us know everyone is welcome um and now we're having well over um maybe close to 170 people um on our regular contact list and our e-news list is even higher with 300 our social media which just launched a year ago has 760 followers and their real

followers not Bots that we actively engage with and so that's very exciting how many people attend the meetings Ashley great question thank you for asking so are meetings range anywhere from 25 to 45 people in attendance regularly and so our meetings happened the second Monday of every month they happen either on Zoom or in a public location during December January and February we did meet on Zoom but we'll

be resuming in March on the 13th at Heritage State Park and that meeting is actually an extra special meeting because rep Carol Fiola will also be presenting that night about Revolution 250 and the work that she's doing to push that initiative forward to celebrate and so we're happy to have that as a platform in previous Frac meetings we've also had the the opportunity to host the Massachusetts

cultural Council last August we had six different program officers which is a huge number from the council come and present in our August meeting and last April we had Brian Boyles who's the executive director of mass Humanities come and present as well and so we again continue to invite people to come and present we invite professionals as well it's been a great place for people to make connections

with each other learn about other things that are happening even you know new artists or people that have moved to the city that are looking for a place to kind of find a community and I'm even happy to say that Nadine Messier joined our last meeting and if that name sounds familiar she won the logo contest for the city of Fall River so we were thrilled to have her join our meeting

because she was just looking to get more involved with the city's Arts now that now that her her work is out there in a very big way so as we as we go through our arts and culture plan there are six goals and 27 strategies that we refer back to and I'm happy to say that since the plan has launched we've touched very deeply on 23 of the 27 strategies and some of the strategies we've we've

yet to really dig deep in really just require more collaboration for us to to get there especially from the city side which I want to stress has been a wonderful partner to frack um and so as we as we look um forward to what's happening um in 2023 I want to just take a moment and reflect back on uh 2022 briefly uh so we mentioned that we've had wonderful Frack meetings that

have happened over the past year and if anyone is interested in how they can participate in a Frac meeting you can find the information on our website which is thefrack.org you can find us on Facebook or Instagram and Eventbrite which is another third party website that contains lots of different events so it's a great way for people to kind of just stumble across us so there's lots of different ways that

you can come and join our meeting if you do not get to come to the meeting and if you would still like to participate let us know I'm happy to send the meeting notes to anyone who would like to review them and perhaps if you cannot come you can send information ahead of time and I can include that as part of the meeting as well so as we look back again to 2022 we've

had wonderful Frack meetings with great attendance happening we've also had collaborative workshops hosted with the mass cultural Council and our collaborations have extended far and wide with working with the fabric Arts Festival and with Summer evenings in the park through summer evenings in the park and fabric we did a community engagement project called common spaces where we

held a Saturday Workshop during Fabric and then during each of the eight weeks of Summer's evenings in the park we held we hosted a community table with a map pinned to it we invited members of the community to tell us how do they engage with the park what do they like about it what kind of events would you like to see there and we had wonderful conversations and so that information will actually be shared

through an upcoming episode of T Viva which Frack co-hosts with Viva Fall River and so we'll be digging into that we felt like green spaces in March was a great tie together episode and it will help us set the stage also as we looked forward to this coming summer and the engagements that we'll be doing last spring we hosted Open Studios which involved 10 Studios across the city with

over 25 people participating I'm happy to say that over 700 people attended the two-day event and then as of course everybody has seen the mural project that has taken place across the city with the three large murals that were installed last summer we had a sick over 615 people engaged between free food truck events art activities at the Fall River farmers and Artisans market and I think the most

significant was the virtual pen pal exchange between the students at Doran and children in tarabamba Colombia and if you haven't seen there are videos on frax and social media that feature that and as we look ahead to 2023 again we're excited to get back out into the community and continue to invite people to participate with us we'll be uh spearheading uh We Heart Fall River along with Viva Fall River and uh the

Narrows in the city last year we had over 500 in attendance and I'm sure we will beat that this year Frack will also be hosting 10 mini pop-up art events by the individual artists around the city and that's made possible through the mass development creative Catalyst Grant and then of course fabric Arts Festival which is one of the tentpole events that happens we look forward to working with their

curators and program team to really bring some quality uh events for multiple days uh come this fall and from there our really our our relationships just continue to grow um the trustees were previously mentioned they're a regular at our meetings um the Audubon Society has also been participating as well so it's not just the traditional arts in the sense that we think of painting or sculpture but there's a

variety of folks that have been participating and all of that has been moving the arts and culture plan forward because as you can see from the the broad six goals that I shared it's really about creating this Economic Development between the vendors whether they're at um one of the events whether they're tabling there selling their own items that they've created or if they're um at an Open studio and they're selling

their work off the wall or perhaps they are one of the many pop-up events that are happening and so they would have gotten a stipend to do that through Mass development support well we've always had Mass development many of those other agencies that you mentioned were agencies that were already working in Fall River one of the questions that I have explained to me the difference between frack and Viva

Fall River is it one or is it two separate entities it is two very separate entities so Frac is which I should explain for those and not just use the acronym frax the Fall River arts and culture Coalition is a committee of the one South Coast chamber Viva Fall River Committee of one South Coast is a committee and New Bedford or just one just the Fall River group

or is it both it's the same there is no Fall River it's one Chamber of Commerce so everyone that's part of Frac is from Fall River New Bedford because the chambers merged is that Chambers merged in yes the chambers merged if somebody from New Bedford wanted to be a member of the fact they can they can okay it's not exclusive to Fall River though I would say that the majority of our our

participants are Fall River because I was a little confused about that then we also had that uh Jim McKee McHugh is he still around Jim mccaig is he still around yes okay and is he the one that had TDI Monies to give yes he works for Mass development so he works at Mass development so the money that he had from TDI that went to the chamber or that went to Viva or that

was flipped between both he went to the went to the chamber Foundation as a as the fiscal sponsor of what of TDI originally which has kind of grown and and morphed into the Fall River no I'm not understanding that I'm sorry Mr Sullivan that's okay so O'Sullivan um who originally the TDI District which covers primarily South Main Street right that area originally when Mass development

worked with the city to create TDI Network right they needed an organization they needed a local organization to service what's referred to as the fiscal sponsor so the chamber Foundation became the fiscal sponsor of the TDI Network at that time the Tei group um over the years is that because it was originally it was originally a three-year plan I think it was three and then it became

four reminding the two and it became three I don't remember off the top of my head now um but it got extended for one one additional year um and and now it's changed a lot Mass development has changed all of their TDI programs around entire region we don't have a specific TDI fellow like Jim McKee only Jim McKee is responsible for the mass development downtown efforts in Palm River today I

always thought it was a little weird to start downtown when we're trying to push the Waterfront that it should have been down into the Waterfront but that's just my personal feelings how much money did TDI give how much money did you get from them for for which it depends on there there's multiple grants and I don't have those exact figures with me right at the moment I'd be happy

to provide the message yeah if you could I mean I'm just curious as to uh how much money I mean and I wanted to know what the difference was with Frac and Viva and also artists how many artists do we have living in Fall River now I know that some of the artists with the when we had the covet pandemic many of them went through Mr Fiola to be able to get reimbursed let's say that that

artist made forty thousand dollars just for figure and they lost 20 000 then they would supplement them with another 20.

um but how many of those artists he had very few that applied there I don't know that they knew how to start a business or do anything like that does the chamber still do that for like women entrepreneurs artists do you still have that program we have a small business seminar series that works across many many different Avenues of business like this morning we had one on on marketing your small business

so yes we do you do do that we work with nas Small Business Development Center we work with dsba um we work with New Bedford Economic Development yes we do that okay you have any questions yeah I go ahead thank you um you were talking about the food trucks so what is it that you do with the food trucks is that use that UV but I so so the uh food trucks that I

referenced were for a specific project that Frack was involved with with the murals so we don't normally have a food truck party that's that's more Viva that you're thinking of that would be doing that um but but so the the real project we were Partners on it so it was uh Frac Viva Fall River and Beyond walls and the city actually who partnered together to bring the murals to fruition

um and so for us yes the the food trucks were kind of like more of a one-time special deal so I guess does so the bio Reserve that was just here is that a Viva thing or a Frac thing like who would like where does that fall into the there's a lot of there's a lot of Overlook there's a lot of bumping into each other and collaboration okay between them

um well I would say that for example so like the trustees offer offer programming there so they they come to frac meetings they talk about their programming it becomes part of our record and our notes and um something I would include in my monthly newsletter that would go out to everyone um but that is different than the promotional value that they received from from viva Fall River so I guess my

wheels are spinning so you you've seen that they were down here and the struggles that they have promoting their stuff would you be able to in your group think that you could help promote that so if you know you're taking over the Arts and the culture and you're doing that with the chamber do you see a vision to be able to promote that because I think when we're talking about

rebranding the city we have all of these amazing things happening and so how do we pull all of these amazing things together so that would be my thought of I mean and I'm going to ask the same thing to can like what's your idea of bringing those things together so I like the collaboration but let me ask you this are you your own 501c3 are you just a fiscal conduit we're the physical

conduit that is a it's a literally a committee within the chamber okay do you have plans to become a 501c3 this time not at this time okay you're working so I okay is Viva I know I met with you guys in the beginning I forget no Viva is not they're not C3 okay no which is why we both have fiscal so so if you have a Fiscal Agent you many times it implies that you're notified

501c3 so it makes a little bit more sense to me why you're with the chamber in the Commerce because you're not you're wrong five one C3 so um so then I go back to the the bigger picture for the promotion in the city and the events of you know do you see yourself being able to to involve all of that the promotion of the bio Reserve I mean that's such an untapped resource in

this community that I think we're missing people think of Fall River they think of you know Columbia Street they think of the Portuguese culture they think of you know these beautiful mirrors murals that you installed but we don't think of it as a hiking district and all of these things so you know thinking that broader do you think about those things we do the things about those things

whenever whenever people come to us to talk about it and ask us especially things that are specific to the city we always participate in the city we always want to be a good partner with the city whatever the city has happening and we always have considered if Mike Bossier some things going on we'd be happy to help so what has the chamber have done anything at this point to help with that I

I'm not positive but moving forward we will I mean clearly yeah they can absolutely hearing and you know hearing Mike and Paul talk about it just sitting up there and just I you know one note I made to myself is that I need to talk to my team so that we you know that their stuff gets in our e-newsletters and that we're talking about it as you know what's happening and you know different newsletter and

any and using it on our social media as well and working with that so Mr O Sullivan how many is on your staff so you have a fiscal conduit for frack and Viva do you hire staff to oversee that do you have a team of people in place like how does that operate what's the organizational um right now because it's going to change by the end of the year dramatically but

um right now we have there's 10 people on our staff in total we have myself and the other um Rick hitter Chief Operating Officer um we have a financial person we have an events person a membership person and then there's sleep and Patty is eight I'm not sure yet vice president oh ken Monique yeah you forget about your vice president does leadership does Donna fall underneath there we have and there's actually

it's Christine Terrell but he's actually 12 because we actually we're also the fiscal sponsor for leadership South Coast and then one doesn't Chris Tyrell work at Battleship she wears a Battleship Cove part-time and she works at the chamber part-time oh okay on our on our tourism the regional Southeastern Mass tourism stuff that's not related directly to Bedford or directly to Fall

River and you're so and your 10 staff that's just not Fall River that's your Regional that's that's your Regional and and the way the way the response the exception of Ashley attacks right everybody's responsibilities cross over across the region classroom patio the only two that has specific responsibility to one of the communities and that's because Frack was originally created Frac was

created before we've urged and it was designed for the benefit of Fall River and the way we talked about how Viva grew from the original was originally TDI it's the same thing so so they're the only two but therefore they work in Fall River perfect okay I yield any questions I just had one follow-up question I remember some time ago you were working on a project with the schools and the art Arts

trying to remember exactly the details of that did that ever come off the ground are you thinking of the out of time school program yeah yes yes it did get off the ground can you report on that and how how that worked out uh yeah I will say that transportation is tough these days for for everyone um you know just just lack of Staff across capacities and all working Fields really but I know the program has

launched uh it involves all the different Fall River Public Schools that were eligible to be involved we have fantastic staff and we have set a date for our closing party uh so May 11th please save the date that evening at the Narrows from five I believe 5 30 to 7.

so yeah it's it's been going very well and um and if and if anyone on the council would like to have a tour while the program is happening I'd be happy to to bring you through that was uh the program that came out of the 199 thousand dollars from arpa yes awesome thank you any other questions thank you very much thank you thank you do we want to have Viva come down though

yeah now if we could have a E before River huh what is that I'm sorry I can't hear you okay

Patty Rigo 25 Ward Street hello how are you tonight so I have some things so I'm going to be talking about the year 2022.

and some of the events um I mean I could go so everybody has one okay oh yeah I don't know how I lost one in the past in the process I apologize oh um this I was specifically um asked to talk about the events that we did so I can start with that but I'm happy to answer about anything that's on here um this has been released since the beginning of January it's on the Viva

Fall River website and we did promote it because I want you know everybody not to see there's not always time to talk about the things that we do because we're on to the next one all the time so always have it's always uh kind of astounding for me when I do this as a second year now that I've been doing a year in review and it's kind of awesome to see when you start putting all the

numbers and how many people attended and how many people collaborated to make things happen so it always makes me happy to Do It um so I did 28 events last year under the Monaco of Viva Fall River um we uh some of them we will be doing again like Fall River spring restaurant week which you see at the top there last year we did 12 restaurants um right now we have sign ups through next

Friday March 3rd and I've already surpassed that so I'm hoping to get double that I'd love to see 24 restaurants and we're also adding a lunch option because um you know with every program we do we go back and we ask the people that were involved you know or the people who didn't more so the people who weren't involved why didn't you do it and some some of the restaurants wanted lunch and so you know

the aim to please um and so we are looking forward to that and it's already getting some good traction um the event that Ashley mentioned was uh We Heart Fall River Festival that started as part of South Coast spring Arts week which is another Regional collaboration Ashley and I both work really closely with our colleagues both in New Bedford and across the south coast region because it's just really

important that we all start to look at ourselves as not one city or another city or another town but the south coast region and how can we get more people to pay attention and more visitors and more monies in this region as opposed to other more populous or more popular areas in the Commonwealth so um so that event is uh it is about celebrating arts and culture and Community

um and so Frack will be taking the lead on that because Ashley is you know does the um for the arts and culture piece of it um and that really is just a big celebration it's it's a place for everybody who's doing things in the city if you have an organization that's Arts Studio Life dance they wanted to come and dance Whoever has something that they want to do we aim to bring them in

um and let them showcase what they do for the city and uh community community organizations as well so every year it's a little different and we're looking forward to bringing something different this year and that will be on May 13th um the Fall River farmers and Artisans Market was something that uh started with a local business and they had asked um when we did we heart Fall River the

first year people some of the makers and the artists thought it was so great to have a way to to really show the things that they worked on during the pandemic or the things that they worked on before so we started this and we do it on um Old Second Street we do it on every other Sunday from 11 to 3 but we're gonna do something a little different this year I feel like

um you know you kind of watch the trends and you see what's happening we haven't really found our audience I think Sundays especially in the summer can be really difficult for for not only the vendors but for people you know coming so we're gonna we're gonna give it a shot and do something somewhat like what New Bedford does with their really popular aha nights that they've had for

over like 20 years so it's a great model um this will be a little bit different because everything that we do has to be uniquely Fall River I'm not trying to you know I'm trying to emulate other people's things not copy them um but we're going to try something called the third Fridays it's gonna be the third Friday of June July August September and October and it will be like an evening

market on a Friday from four to eight not just the market with vendors but live music performances food trucks and the like um and it's just basically it's also to to kind of combat what people say well there's no nightlife in Fall River that's fine you've got to start somewhere this would be something on a Friday people get out of work my hope and my intention is that people would

come downtown for this event it ends at eight and then maybe go to some of the restaurants and see something else to do so that's um that is will be done in conjunction with the city and more information will be coming about that soon I do not um still working on Restaurant Week right now some of the other events we did last year Ashley had already mentioned the Viva murals Community engagement events

those were those were literally just free events for people to come and enjoy what was going on and it is really all about getting the word out and sometimes putting things out on social media isn't the best way you have to really entice people and this was one way that we did that and we met a lot of new people through that so um really really enjoyed those we always participate in City

events when we can like the Earth Day cleanups we do love to clean up downtown and um and yeah and you know initially Viva Fall River was born out of the uh the TDI downtown district but as things change and now we are in the second we're kind of like the graduated TDI District we're in a different program now what we still do receive some funding from Mass development but our

um our work with small businesses is expanding beyond the downtown so it's to be you know other other areas other areas of notice and concern so the Flint Waterfront what have you um some evenings in the park we touched upon just a great event to be a part of again these community events are just really important because these are the places where we find out what people would like for us to do and what we're

doing well and we kind of just listen sometimes people just want to be listened to really um the downtown spooky stroll was something that was um this was for downtown we wanted to get more people downtown people were always saying that around the holidays more specifically Christmas time but they remember people walking the streets and and people be you know there there was lots of

merriment and decorations so we thought it would be nice to invite families to come down and it was also a precursor to the um this Halloween event that greater Fall River Recreation has every year so um that was really you know I think you know it was any time you do the first year of something I mean it's not we didn't get thousands of people wandering the streets but we did have a lot of

families who you know were really really surprised and excited to be downtown and just seeing places that they had never seen and that's the problem too A lot of people don't walk downtown they don't even know the businesses that are down there so another thing that we try to do is promote all the diversity of um of businesses and then the last two are the thanks Miss Night Celebration which is

the Christmas celebration or actually pre-holiday so that's why it's thanks Miss Thanksgiving and Christmas um again that that was actually our probably our biggest event last year was really really well attended people really love it and and it was kind of because of that because of the night market and people enjoying that vibe that we kind of took some of our learnings from The Artisans Market we

saw what worked and we said you know what maybe people want a night market maybe people want something to do at night we're gonna give it a shot because that's what you have to do you have to try new things and the last thing was something really great um I partnered with UMass Dartmouth and a bunch of regional partners for Fall River entrepreneurship day it was part of global entrepreneurship week so that was

really great to be part of something Global um worked with so I finally was able to um to work with some of the high schools from Durfee High School which was really great I've been forming a good relationship with them and they're marketing students and learning from them and more probably more than they learned from me and um and we had a city Proclamation that the third Wednesday of

every November will henceforth be Fall River entrepreneurship day so really looking forward to uh what we can do with that and support the the small businesses and the the entrepreneurs who hope to be small businesses um so that's you know that's the events um Council Washington you have a question yeah I do sure you do a great job I went to some of the events over the summer and I was pretty

amazed about the amount of people that that came out um I do have a question do you plan on becoming a 501c3 um I'm not I don't really have plans right now I'm kind of just doing you know not really feel focusing on that I mean I I've definitely looked into and discussed it and whatnot but I have to weigh out the benefits and whatnot so here's why I asked because

you do a great job there's no um and you you carry yourself and with the planning but when you have a fiscal conduit like that the the money that's provided gets spread up between all the people salaries and then there's uh um you know an admin fee to the you know to the fiscal conduit so you know it just makes me think with all this great work you know for the people that are

actually doing the work to you know maybe think a little bit further of becoming a 501c3 or becoming Incorporated LLC or whatever so you're receiving all of that benefit to the great work that you're doing in the community because you know I learned this 10 people on that thing well they don't get they don't the grant monies I have my own like special special so when they but if they have a like the fiscal

age so they basically just handle my bookkeeping basically that's what it is like I need somebody to write checks that's yeah getting to keep my to keep the QuickBooks and all that I don't know anything about numbers so I don't do that so they and so that's like there's different models there's different models if you look at um fiscal sponsorship and they handle my my bookkeeping so there's the

so the chamber the chamber does right so okay so they're not there's not big like people aren't getting salary so that's not an admin there's nothing literally it's me and then I have a retail manager who works at my who runs the Viva Fall River pop-up shop which is a whole separate you know densities could really be its own business I suppose um and then I have and then I just hire

contract workers so I use you know and that's really based on need um I'm actually looking for somebody right now but um but yeah I mean it's just it's a lean staff and all the money really goes back into the programs to be honest with you that was my biggest concern about that um and then my I'll ask you the same thing so when you see the bio Reserve do you see yourself being able to

incorporate that into your bigger picture like your stamp over like I just it's a big thing and so I don't know if you've Incorporated that yet but do you see yourself being able to incorporate that into the absolutely so one of the things I did last year was take five off 195 which was a like a tourism um you know really light culturism light because I didn't have a ton of money but

it was about itineraries and that's what people want they want if a place is unfamiliar to you you want some suggestions on where to go I only have a couple hours so one I did not do one specifically focused on Recreation last year one was Waterfront Foodies you know I had a couple different ones I'm going to add new content this year and one of them I do want to add is these the

recreational activities so I think the watapa rowing Center the bio Reserve Copa cut Woods um you know bike path just using the boardwalk just for walking simply walking those type of things and then yes there are there is currently research being done um so that we can get some good numbers behind things I mean I have great assumptions and I have great observations but you know numbers speak

much much louder than that and the eco-tourism is something I'm extremely interested in um and it's something that it needs to be done right because as to what I'm Mr Ferlin and Mr Lavoisier were saying this is this is conservation for life this is for the long term so you don't want just a bunch of people coming in and using it like this like glamping playground and I want and it's it's very important that

that eco-tourism is really connected with the history and and the peoples who came before us here so that I still it's just something I'm still learning about and just trying to understand like the best way to go about it but I speak with Mr Lawson quite often because I do um I I as somebody who grew up here I didn't know that we were almost 50 Woods right which is it's really just it's

it's awesome to tell people that because they think they're lying right it's kind of it's great with that I yield thank you that's that yeah just the Viva Papa yeah since June so just thinking about like just kind of I want to focus on that a little bit because I think that was a great great opening a great you know I've been down there plenty of times already um talk about how it's grown and how

many people are in there you know how many uh vendors are in there different items they offer if you haven't gone down that you should go down there soon take take it away sure um so right now we have I think we started with like 20 different um artists and um and makers now we're up to a little over 50.

um and we definitely are always looking for more people um I think in the beginning it was an opportunity for people who aren't quite ready to create their own to have their own brick and mortar locations and some people just don't have all the tools and I think I heard you mentioned that earlier about artists and whatnot there's a lot to running a business I never wanted to run my own business

because there's a lot there's just things that you need to know and not not just how to put up a sign and open your door how do you sustain and so part of what we do with the pop-up is not just provide a place for people to sell we're also um engaging in workshops and like talking to them about merchandising and pricing and profit and helping them with their social media and helping them to

you know providing opportunities with markets and whatnot so there is a deeper it's not just a store it's a it's kind of like a it's kind of like I call it like a maker University even though my retail manager hates when I say that but it is about empowering people to know their business better and to be and I and and to hopefully someday fill up one of those vacancies downtown I would love nothing

more than to place people into spots because we have an awful lot of those and some of these makers you know they do such wonderful things um so part of it is that but also part of it is it's kind of like a maiden Fall River showroom we want to we have a big map on the wall that has um uh maybe call them like pin drops that tell you over the 70 things that are produced

that 70 manufacturers in this city um some of whom I didn't even know and there's QR codes so you can learn more about them as we progress this year we're starting to buy more Fall River made merchandise for Branded merchandise and we really want to become a spot where if you're coming to town we want you to stop at the Viva pop-up first so that we can tell you how great it is and

tell you where to go so kind of like a little bit of a de facto tourism like kiosk type of thing but we really just it's like a fall ripe shop we just want people to know that there are amazing things happening here and if you have a question about what's going on you will be happy to help you find the answer to it so it's more like just a place for

people to come in and be like wow I didn't know this was here and I love hearing that like all the time yeah yeah thank you great what I'm concerned with is you sit here and you you know tell us all these things that are going on and I know that we get it on an email of different things that are going on but that's not out to the public as much

you know I have said years ago that we should have a digital sign on City Hall so when people are coming on 195 they would see what events and what's Happening Here similar to what they had on Route 195 years ago do something like that I think our website in this city needs to be better run and it needs to be user friendly to get these things done I look at you know the hotels up on

Airport Road and in in Westport and Somerset Swansea Dartmouth every time I go to a hotel there's always one channel that talks about the area and what is being seen why not develop one of those things I'd rather see you know that being developed then you know having um let's go down and do a restaurant row this week I'd rather see something being developed that would bring people in a lot of the

brochures Mr Basia has a brochure and I'm sure a lot of these things even a fly like this you know why aren't those being put and it seems that we're missing someone to have that as their job to do that um that to me is bothersome because there are a lot of things going on in this city but how do we get people to know about them and transportation is a

problem so that means you need to work with Serta and see if the buses stop at six o'clock then where are people going to go we don't have taxi cabs the taxi cab now doesn't run at night anymore I had someone call me complaining about that two taxi drivers were Rob that knife point or something so nobody wants to work at night and the taxi cab has stopped that so what do we

do for transportation because you talked about Transportation the other thing uh somebody else said maybe it was Andrea said that she did she talked about it that Transportation sometimes can be an issue and it can be but those are the kinds of things that I would like to see that happens more of you know the coordination of different things that are happening around the city and how do

we find out about them you have the summit evenings in the park July and August that the Housing Authority did for years the Housing Authority did that that they would have that so if we're doing something that they're already doing then we don't need to duplicate it um you know uh I can't speak to that I don't I don't know what the Housing Authority did and I'm not 100 sure they

were doing it exactly sure because I attended them but they did them okay they did them so if that's something that you can put off to them that they can do that's one one of many things that we do and so I that was actually run by the Narrows in the city it wasn't run by me I was just like a collaborator so you didn't do that the Narrows did that I

was a collaborator so I was there I did participate in it meaning that if you collaborate I don't have to be the lead on it to be a part of something and to have done the work on the event so I was part of it yeah but I know that they they had done it and that was nice they usually would do it at um Kennedy Park because there was a lot

of parking and stuff like that they'd have it I think it was on a Tuesday night if I'm not mistaken um and they would have you know a bunch of different people come different do you know why they stopped it no I don't they also do them um sometimes at all of the senior high-rises they'll have a band play and you know be one night and everybody goes there and dances and they have food you

know they'll have little cookies and coffee or something and that's always fun and I tend to go to them when I know that they're having a um well I agree with you about the brochure and whatnot and I mean I think those are all things that I mean they might not have been done yet but they are probably being worked I just don't find that there's the coordination that I would like to see from this community

you know even if you go to New Bedford they'll have a fold of things that are happening in the spring in the fall in the summer in the winter and you can get those at almost any store that you go to so you pick up that brochure and you know all these events that are happening throughout the city and if people are working so hard at doing things but the community is really not knowing about it

like I I liked the idea of the take five off of 95 but where was that promoted or done so last year I had very limited funds and so there was a lot a lot of money goes into the creation of content people you have to pay people to do videos and take photographs and whatnot this year some of the funding will be spent on actual advertising so it will be will be advertised outside of the

city to people we're looking for people on their way to the cape that's a tourism thing that's not necessarily as like a resident initiative but that's what we want is a tourism thing to get people off the highway to come in I'm so sick and tired of hearing that fall river is in such a premier location that we're close to Boston close to the cape close to Newport close to Providence and people just right

through it so what is the catch to do that that's why I personally feel we should have a tourism director that would work with all these groups and put things together I mean we're spending money on tourism and we don't even have a tourism director it boggles my mind groups working together so I'm just curious as to like what that would like like how are you going to make people

work together more than they're already working together because I think you need to have somebody in the city in this building here with an octopus arm to all of the people that are doing things so that there's one central location you're doing some things Ashley's doing some things can is doing some things though the uh Mr labasia is doing some things either the rose Center is doing some things the picnic area is

doing something The Narrows is doing something I could go on and on the Arts Center is doing something I could go on and on and on but it doesn't seem to bring it all together you know and I see all these things here and take five you know to have it for Memorial Day to Labor Day I think that's good but you know I would love to have seen the visitor center still opened because that

was a great thing I mean I think everything is a stepping stone to you can't go like like there's a lot of ideas I know there's a lot of ideas but I've been here for 20 years with the idea I understand Linda yeah it's very frustrating when things don't happen and again we're starting from ground level so it needs to be a collaboration of everyone together but there's got to be

one person that handles all of that I mean I I did a couple of things with people um we had a Halloween thing and we had that Winter Wonderland that we had in roxannosia with that and it was very difficult it was very difficult to get things together even for anybody to come to the city to do an event the park Department sometimes the water department sometimes it's DCM they all have a piece in

helping out but if you're coming in to do something and you've got to go to the health department and you and the police department and the fire department and DCM and all over the place to have somebody sign one piece of paper that to me is crazy why not have it online or why not have one person who's in charge of saying okay ma'am what is it that you want to do in

the city you're going to have food you need to have the Board of Health there you're going to have that you need to have the fire department you need to have police you know what I'm saying absolutely that to me that's not a tourism director though that needs to be showed up it's got to be somebody I don't care what you call the person but it's got to be somebody and a tourism

director would be somebody who can get money Mass cultural Council Fall River we get money from all over I mean just this year alone 199 from TDI was branched out uh what was it 760 000 from Oppa was sent out and then there's another thing for 173 dollars to train people to get into a business which both you and Mr O'Sullivan said those are programs that you're you're doing and I think that's great because anybody

wanting to come in yeah absolutely I know years ago I knew a group of people that went I think it was a month or two every Saturday to the chamber I think Mr melon was there at the time and what they learned was how to start a business they even had one full women entrepreneurs and what was available for loans and things to get you started so that was happening there that's over a

million dollars in total and and we still don't have a focal point that's that's my that's my feeling on it uh I'll yield to Mr Raposa Council reposa so the other part of this conversation is looking at the 2023 so outside of a lot of the things I think like I said I've been to a lot of them they've been very successful are there any new ideas that are coming forward that you may want to

share with us um well sneak peek I think the third Fridays is going to be really different because I think that's something that I can Market to places like Providence and Newport and having like a higher level of music and a nighttime thing really is not so focused on families it really is trying to get people to come here and then go to restaurants afterward or then maybe go to a show at the Narrows so

that's part of like it's a stepping stone to a larger thing I mean there's definitely going to be more coming um I think you know I you know Viva Fall River was um given some money to work on some tourism initiatives and like I said we're doing research and we're going to have those plans based on numbers and facts and well I'm happy to come back here and talk about them we start solidifying

them I would love that so because you should know about them everybody should know about them good thank you thank you I think that's good and I think we would like to keep this revolving to see what we can do as a committee to assist in everybody that's trying to do things you know one of the ideas that I I always loved Fall River celebrates America but when we lost some

of our big manufacturers who were big contributors it the money is there you want to get a band you have to pay to get that band but we should have Fall River celebrates diversity how fortunate are we to have so many varied cultures living in this city and if you went to these businesses you know the store down on North Main Street that cooks Indian food on Fridays they're very good

um you know you have Lebanese food you have Polish food you have um you have Portuguese food we don't have a lot of Italian food I like to have a good Italian restaurant here but if you had a thing where they all went Fall River celebrates diversity and set up that stage and let every single culture either get up talk about their culture do a dance about their culture what have you the Cambodian I'm sure

they'd be willing to come with some of their foods and you know and then people would pay you pay so much people love food and you'd sample food that's yeah and we have that's something that we have that we should celebrate is our culinary culture here absolutely but even if you had something for a buck that I could try a nunchuck from here yeah or I could you know get a mini uh meat pie from Sam's

absolutely now if everybody tried it now you'd know that we have that if you're comfortable and that would get you to go to those businesses right but we will continue to have you up yeah absolutely I would love that thank you so much for your time thank you very much appreciate it what is the motion to table um or do you want to do number six I think for five I think we've satisfied

it so I'll make the motion grantly to withdraw their second second all in favor aye number six on the agenda is discuss future events or past events with varied Community organizations does anybody want to come up and talk about a past event what could be better or new events that we could have come on up come on up mm-hmm

come on down if you could just all state your name and address for the record I've seen longstone 22 Harriet Street Dave Dennis 132 ion Avenue Fall River Sandy Dennis 132 Highland Avenue Fall River I only have one thing that I would like to talk about um as far as an experience of the winter wonderland my biggest concern is I'd like to see something that was when we had gone to go and do all the permitting

to do all the running around to go to airport road to go to this place to go to that place it took me and you half of the day to go and find wherever we need it excuse me wherever we needed to get for these permitting if I had one place where I could have gone if there would have been one pocket where I would have known okay if we were

having cotton candy if we were having this but then we had to go to this office if we were having a fire we had to go to the fire department if we had this if we had that that would if it could all somehow been in one area instead of taking almost four hours to go to different areas and if it wasn't where somebody was in the office we'd go

to one place this person wasn't in the office we'd go to that we'd have to come back it was like it just was the most hectic experience that the I think more um information about insurance that was really that had me stumped about the insurance policies the city the difference between the if they could have somebody that excuse me could I have a Mr Atkins could you come down

just so that you can be a part of this and maybe the administration will look at how we could tweak some things that we do

no sir go ahead you can continue so it was the going around and then that was Insurance the craziest part I as a individual trying to put out an event trying to figure out where I need to go first who I didn't know anything about going to a parked apartment I didn't know anything about where I had to go who I had to speak with thankfully I made relationships with Sandy and uh

Christine and Viva and and knew a little bit of where to go but if if I had not known them then I would have never known when to even begin um calling this one call now and I made more phone calls and lost my voice through so much of this of putting on this event where I just when it came time for the sign off it was really confusing to me you have to go to this

one you have to go to that and understand why do I have to go to a fire department when we're not having any fire or why do I have to do this why do I have to do that when it came time to go in front of the park Department that was another little confusing thing but I worked my way through it but the most stressful part was the sign off sheet

that was just ridiculous I mean three it took us half of a day to get it done and I I would have never known and I've been raised born and raised in the city I would never known that airport road we had to go all the way up there get it signed off there go to the police department go to the chief go to we have to go up to um anyway but there was just

two it was just too intense I think if we had one location or a packet and if they they minimized it where okay if you're gonna have this this and this and your event then maybe those people go to the office or something and sign off on instead of the individual having to go all over the city to get it done we had the building department I had to go get

that signed off I had the water water department whoever else and it was like but none of this is is for my event so it just doesn't it doesn't make any sense why I have to do all of this so if that that would be my only two cents that I think is kind of a little crazy maybe that's something the city can look at and administration can look at perhaps you know having something signed off

by the my internet my computer or something anything anything to make it a little bit easy because that was everybody's in the offices Council Washington has a question I'm sorry Council Washington is it a formality that has to be done like so are you going there with your sign up sheet and are you having to explain your event so they can approve or not approve or are they just signing uh you have to explain

exactly so if we had uh what are they if we were using some type of water we'd have to go down there and have them sign and explain exactly what we were doing on bathrooms if we were having food we had to explain what was going to be you know what we were going to have do we have to have a permit for that there was a lot of I was lost along a lot of the

ways I had done like a few things wrong which I I wouldn't have known any different because I it's not something that I do all the time but there was a lot of things that could have been prevented that just it was very complicated to put on the event that I can say okay I yield taken so um I'm sorry you had that experience it's okay it's a learning experience right I learned but what's what's interesting

about what you're saying and this is something we we've actually been working on for probably the last six to nine months um is there is an approach right now that sort of presumes that the person holding the event already understands what they may or may not need from the city in order to do it it's a little bit backwards exactly the people that work in the building are paid to be the subject

matter experts on what you need to do and the people that are holding the events should have as few roadblocks as possible to putting the event on so the approach that we're taking with the new sort of single I can't say it's going to be one stop but I can say um the design is for a single person to help you Shepherd it through the idea is to ask questions about your vision for

your event and based upon your answers tell you exactly this is probably what you're going to need so something weird like are you gonna have food vendors that are going to travel more than 50 miles right that's a weird question right there's actually a good reason to ask right that actually has to do with with food and milk inspection um you know do you plan to have alcohol if you plan to have alcohol well then

you can't have it in a park at least right now right right so these facts that you already have in your head not necessarily the how but the what and the why are going to trigger um us to be able to say you know what this is where you need to go let's go there exactly like a Pacquiao or something where it directs you to okay like the insurance I would have never

known that I had to get my own insurance policy until it was brought up and I and I was like puzzled like what do I have to get an insurance policy for I wasn't quite understanding I mean of course obviously I went and I had to go get it and so on and so forth but even the same thing with like the non-profit and the the physical agent and like all of these

things it was like whoa it was just so overwhelming that it just could have been so much easier I thought it would just go to the city go in front of the park board you know explain what you're doing and they have this packet and you check it off you know like I'm a hairdresser we go to school at the end of it we go to state board we have a list of everything we

have to take and we're on our way no confusion but this was just wow that's all I can say it was challenging we did it um but I learned a lot I'm not gonna you know say that I didn't but I just think that it needs to be more uniform somehow where if you're going to have a carnival and you're going to have candy then okay you have to have these two

things signed off and should people come to the office sign it off and or have the person have a detailed presentation on what's going to be at the actual event and you know and take it from there so yeah that was that's my only uh my only thing that I have to put my two cents in for so um I think I can say confidently that that's all going to change very soon uh

certainly for the the spring season going into summer My Hope Is that response is going to be WoW instead of wow right there's two very different responses it's like oh my yeah right so wow with like an exclamation point as opposed to a sad period right um and so I don't know that I can represent that it's going to be perfect but I do believe it's going to be better that's all that matters as much feedback

as we can get to continue making it better is really important perfect that works thank you thank you thanks for telling us that thank you very much

sorry try to get up here can I ask you a question Cindy did you do you have to get insurance when you have events yes and we always fill out our indemnification through the law office through the Law Department here to indemnify the city if we do it on any kind of city property but then we do an event on city property we always fill out our indemnification so we identify

the city so they're not responsible but we always get insurance we spend a lot of money on insurance when we do an event or programming so that we do we know and we always suggest that everybody get their insurance um but I just wanted to go under here under resources that we have on our website and it will help people like Roxanne um we have fees and forms and permits so if you're

looking to do an event and you need to go to you want to serve liquor or sanitation or if somebody wants to open a business a body art they can go right on our website and click to that department and hopefully get help if you're looking for a building permit if somebody's building a new gallery or a building electrical fees forms Fall River fire department you would find all of your forms there

parade permits just about everything you need to do in event or open a business in this city we have on our website for resources now is that also on the city's website that would go to you or is it just your website our website's linked or at least it was linked on the city website I haven't checked lately but it's all on our website's always been linked to the City website so unless

that's changed and they've taken it off we've always been we've always had a link on the city website to our website well we're looking at doing a new uh website is that something that Administration is looking to do because I think with all the organizations that are promoting or having you know different things that they're doing that it there was just something on our website that could link them up to all

of these if that's something that could be done I'm not sure about yeah actually that's going to be a pretty significant investment that the city is making right as part of the website uh it's going to include everything from a certain online permitting to start that will grow over time but we're going to have the the back sort of the back of the house infrastructure to do it and the intent

is for that to include event planning and execution so yeah I think you're going to see you're going to see the new process on paper first uh but in the next couple months when the website launches that's going to be one of the big new functionalities you're going to see is a lot of online functionality and then over time it's going to grow even more a great example if you want to

check out you know what we're sort of shooting for is the city of Worcester so the city of Worcester uses the same back of the house software that we're going to be using they started with maybe five or six different permits and now they have literally hundreds because once they figure out how to build them out you don't have to pay somebody to do it you can build it out do a workflow that

makes sense the workflow that that's you know sort of easily understood and is intuitive to the resident that doesn't need to be an expert in events I mean Dave and Sandy are experts in events and and they thankfully are passing along that knowledge to other people that said if you're doing it for the first time it shouldn't be your loan in the wilderness uh and hopefully uh the new process and

the new website is going to be go a long way towards towards making that an easier thing even if they had even a simple thing that could probably be done now is a calendar and at any time there's an event that it's plugged into that calendar when events are happening so that people know you know that these events so that if I went online and looked at what's happening in Fall River and hit the

calendar it's going to tell me you know this is playing here this bit I mean there's a lot of different places like um um I don't know Shorty's Pub for example they have music on a Sunday afternoon with different artists so it would be there and what time that's from or you know dunny's just opened up a new dining room area and they have some kind of a Texas jalapeno something or other but

they'll have specials on stuff like that this has happened now or maybe Scotty's is having this uh whatever venue they're having it would be good to have I know when I go down to Florida and I go on the Pompano Beach website and I look at the calendar I already know what events are going to be happening they'll give me a whole list I I just want to figure out a way that people

find out what's happening because there are so many groups doing so many good things that there's got to be a way for people to find out about them and I mean every kid has a cell phone right so you could get it right on your cell phone go to the city's website and it will pop up there up Mr Dennis just want to mention Kian has had a self-posting calendar for

a number of years anybody anybody can go up and post on the calendar it comes back to us obviously absolutely if it's a legitimate event that somebody's Backyard Barbecue then it gets posted on that calendar so we've had that that's a good functionality there for years um in fact I don't want to give up anyway bye and then just I mean just to show I mean things to do like on our website if you

just hit on museums I mean you'll find you'll find all kinds of things Battleship Massachusetts um virtual tours of Museum the preservation Society it's all the museums really in the city um and they're all on our website they link directly to them tours arts and culture coffee shops bakeries places to eat shops and Specialty tours historic sites uh you know the historic sites is it's really interesting because it's

it's just a lot of um history like Frederick wood the Olmsted Parks I mean people still don't understand what an Olmsted Park is and how many we have in Fall River and they truly are pieces of art um you know famous people the cathedral so we put a lot of history we put a lot of thought behind this website for people primarily for tourism because we started as a half Fall River so we were

Community Foundation was our fiscal sponsor and what happened is we we learned that Fall River wasn't like New Bedford we couldn't do what New Bedford did with their aha nights we knew we needed to change what we do we needed to add tourism to our mission we were self-sustaining so we met with them and they said you know it's probably time that you be on your own so we are a 501c3 non-profit

and we decided that in doing that we changed our entire name to create a bot Network to actually Network and group people together to do the kinds of things that you're talking about a place for people to go get resources get help we just recently we've gotten several people that have called us wanting to do events and not knowing like Roxanne how to navigate so we literally sit with

them and fill out their permits if they're doing the DC up fill out permits if they want parking we'll sit with them and do that for them what they need to do to go to the Blackboard will help draft their letters to the pockboard so that they can go we'll go with them as support we'll set up meetings with other departments that they need to meet with and let them know

about the licenses that they need and the insurances that they need so we literally sit with people and go over all of that with them so where does your funding come from to do well um recently it's been dried up for us we don't really get much funding so we have to now look at private funding donations and sponsorships we used to get a lot of funding but over the last two or three

years we're not seeing much funding from the state level coming our way we applied but we applied but we just yeah we get denied have you applied for Oppo or Bristol County Opera we applied for offer and we've got a meeting with Cara she we were going to meet with her today but she had a you know she got called out for something so we're going to reschedule that meeting I

was not aware of Bristol County off of funds so I will be applying for that so I just need someone that can kind of help navigate me through that process but yes Cara's good to do that so I want to to talk to her because I didn't realize we could apply for both well the Opera funding comes from the city and the mayor has a group together that goes through all of those the Bristol County

Opera comes to the city council and they vote on where that money is going to go so yeah we'll be in the process of applying for Bristol County Alpha funds as well we were it was some funding that was suggested to us we had a meeting with we had a meeting and it was substantially less than we had asked for yeah we did apply for Grant but so it was now going back and asking

you were talking about oh really yeah yeah it was the five senses of art and culture so people glad to see touch feel taste and have the music and the food at DC I don't know all of that but um they funded us like a mere fraction of what it would have cost us to do that event what are you thinking about like that would cost um to do it right to do it right you're

probably talking about 20 25 000 if you really want to make an impact to the city um I mean it sounds like a lot but no it just doesn't have to put into that um I mean we when I tell you we work on a shoestring budget we do all our events have been sellouts we did the Lizzie board and Lantern and ghost tour this year it was we had so many people we had to

tell them we couldn't have them come I mean that's how many people we had um and it was a great event for the city so um that's one of them but in the past we've done hundreds I mean literally hundreds of programming and events um this year we're working on some really big events an International Event the young man that you saw sitting with us on in the audience we're working with

him helping him to navigate the city to put this event on a lot of logistics a lot of Permitting a lot of licenses insurances so hopefully that's going to go off in June we're also working we have a really good working relationship with DCR and if I can show you what we've been doing is we've been incorporating a lot of education and history into our projects so we have events like the Titanic

inspired event that's going to be happening the Fall River Line inspired event is going to be happening interactive type events so that people can kind of really get a real feel of what that era was like but this one here it's the mass memories Roadshow it's a tentative event where in the process of filling out our application but um it's just a three minute video but this will give you an idea of what's going to

come to Fall River um it's a really wonderful opportunity for the city and we're hoping that it's going to drive a lot of people and really document the history of Fall River in today's world we're surrounded by images through social media and some of those images are going to be collected but most of them are not the last number's Roadshow provides opportunities for people which you

preserve copies of the photographs that are important down I came here because I think it's important to memorialize the parts of our history that made me sort of on their way out the mass memories Roadshow is a Statewide digital history project that's produced by U.S Boston's healing library in partnership with local communities we document people places and events through personal photographs in New York

we organize two different kinds of events events connected to a city or town in Massachusetts

experiences or Irish immigration everyone is welcome at Roadshow in fact everyone is needed for a road show to reflect a realistic portrait of their community whether a person was born into that Community worked went to school whether their family is part of that community and that family arrived 20 years ago or two years ago or 200 years ago everyone is welcome everyone belongs and it's

the stories and the photographs that everyone brings to a Roadshow that have such important parts of that community's history and a Roadshow participants are guided through a series of stations where they share information about their photographs and their connection to their community participants write down stories about their photographs in their own words we invite people to bring their original

photographs we carefully copy and scan them so that people keep their originals and bring them home without photographs can be old or new color or black and white print or digital it's either off a cell phone they can find out more about their community's history from other participants or local experts and they can learn to preserve their photographs for future Generations after a rojo

participants will be able to go online search for their name and find the photographs and stories that they contribute to the event if they recorded a video interview that video will be available for them to share with friends and family the inclusive and collaborative Spirit of the Road show is really tied to the mission of UMass Boston the U.S Boston is still committed to working with

communities collaborating communities and we really take that seriously with the messages today not only did we get so many great photos and videos and stories but we have got social events so people were able to come in and see people they hadn't seen for years I think it's great that our history is being documented because it's really like a deep history wheelchair maybe our children can save our lives

what they are doing and then it will be fun UMass Boston calls it a snapshot of the town and that's um that's what's happening so we're really happy so that is hopefully what will be coming um in September you know who I'm very impressed with Mr Lopes we're probably partners with him on this um you know I've gone down there he had Sheila Oliveira who did a lot of the paintings and paintings of the first

African-American woman school teacher in Fall River um you know went off to college and did wonderful then taught for a few years then fell in love and back then if you were married you couldn't teach so I don't know who came up with that I haven't changed I guess they have actually it's one of the projects that we're working on because her father actually worked on one of the Fall River

Line ships he did he's so one of our storyboards we'll talk about history of the Fall River Line and it was her father that actually worked on that ship so we want people to understand that yes it's a floor of a relationship but who are the people that actively were connected to that ship that's the kind of history that we want people to learn about the city there was even a

filmmaker they had a film over at the picture show actually and it was about the bridges how it was first the ferry and how the Brightman Street Bridge was named after breitman and slightest Bridge it was you know Partners if you went over to Somerset you paid and they got the money if you came this way Bridge yeah I remember that bridge it always made a rickety sound when you're

10 feet off the water and high tide yeah yeah that was the one who could swim but no I think that that's great you know to do something like that well I want to thank everyone who came today who attended I don't still like to reach out to Mr denmead who came and spent the evening here with us because often times when any event is done you need the assistance of DCM and he is always ready

willing and able to help out and thank you for people who came um to listen we're all doing some good things let's just try to put it all together and get it into a funnel so that you know an upside down funnel we can have somebody that leads out to everything else can I just mention a couple of more sure you're working on absolutely we started our new campaign um because what we've learned we do a

lot of surveys we did a survey during cobit and what we found is um most people want up for events now we're working with the bioreve on the maple tapping but we've worked with them in the past on several events when Linton was here cross country skiing always heard we did the lantern tour we did all kinds of events there but this one here is history loves company and let us plan your trip

because we're very good at planning events and trips for people so we know that we can put a good weekend long event together for people so this is something new that we're working on we worked with Boston University on a survey on the hydrangeas and it was interesting that people want to see a lot more outdoor Gardens in open space they want to do a lot more events and what we found through our website is we

are now we have been in the past pre-covered and now really attracting people out of the area so the tourism portion of what we do is really starting to show at the Lego event we did in the Lizzie Borden Lantern more than half the people that attended were from outside of Fall River because we surveyed all our events to find out you know where people are from but there's lots and lots of stuff

here that we didn't get a chance to talk about things we've done in the past things we've done yeah we're working yeah we're working on the historical storyboards for the Colorado district with UMass dot Coastal Mass Coastal Rail south coast Rail and they're in self-guided interpretive talk boards to talk about the history of Fall River and then we're working on some public arts for the Waterfront nice and of course

the Cultural District is an ongoing um project that's moving along quite well I'd love to get our trolleys we tried as you well know we've had multiple conversations right and causal raposo Council Washington that had not had the chance to sit down and talk but I would love to sit down and talk to you if you've got a couple of hours much of what just very quickly much of the work that Creative Arts Network has

been doing since 2014 really came out of this committee as I was chair of the committee you recall one of my first resolutions in January 20th of 2011 was to create a someone to do exactly the work you were talking about this work on behalf of the city because in 2023 now and uh it's it's still a good idea and it still should be done it's in the budget it's

in the budget good good I'm glad to take it took a few years but uh city government doesn't move too fast but that's okay uh the other thing you might want to push for is something I've talked about for years and years and years and years at nauseam we used to have a business information center okay up in Seekonk that's no longer there uh there is no business information center from the Rhode Island

border all the way down to Wareham when we had the first tourism sumpa we had the first tourism Summit back on the city council in June of 2014. uh Betsy wall we had about 127 attendees all from from New England we had him down at the Heritage State Park Betsy wall who was his executive director of Basketball Office of Tourism and travel I asked her I said geez Betsy you know what's the

one takeaway from this from this day's event that we could use with the city she said get a point of contact for us we don't have anybody to contact in Fall River another reason to have a tourism director or a something like that um so and the other thing was we talked about the business information center they referred to him as a new excuse the expression but that's what they refer to

him as they used to refer to them as P stops they don't do them anymore the problem is that we have about 91 000 cars a day go over the bread over the bracket Bridge according to massdot's traffic numbers so if you took 91 000 if we got only five percent of those people uh and I think I did this one time I don't really call them it was something roughly like if every if only five

percent of those people could off and came to the city of Far River where we could actually put a business information center at the base of the bridge I talked to the battleship about us in the battle part of the battleship uh that will represent somewhere around roughly uh about about 1.5 million dollars in addition to additional Revenue you kind of figure it out just that number six in my head it could be

you know fairly fairly close but it's not except for it's something like that it's a significant amount of money uh it again average family of four to spend five to spend 100 hours they get off the brackenbridge they go to the bathroom they go to another base bridge to get around the battleship and the kids says oh gee dad mom dad you know why don't we go on that big ship over there uh it

doesn't take much to spend 100 hours with a family of four um we're missing that opportunity my background before I became a lawyer was actually sales and marketing I was a division manager for a rival purple association that became Harvard uh potato was a sales rep for a number of years so I'm not unfamiliar with sales and marketing it's a huge opportunity that we miss here in the city road tons of Revenue

and Betsy well said most of all get somebody down the city of four of us so we can talk to somebody so we can have someone that can spearhead a lot of this stuff we don't have any being down there so again that goes back again to 2014. so uh but um the other thing was is trolleys as you know we have a long query about seven has a long history of

trying to get trolleys and the reason for that is what a great place to put a trolley where at the base of the bridge where newer business information center why because everybody likes a trolley people get on trolleys they drive trolleys around okay and then what you always do is they bring people Uptown and then people get off and then they go into the places to eat like sagarish and some of the other places

that was the reason for The Travelers and it actually provide some Transportation additional transportation to people um and some of the the events around the city everybody loves a trolley we have these City trolleys uh people love to get on the wall and have the bell and he ring the bell sounds simple but it works and it's uh it's a great marketing tool it cost you about 150 000 we had 75 000 unfortunately um

uh things happened and we weren't able to get the other 75 000 but otherwise we'd had a trolley running today but the reason it was expensive is because we wanted a handicap trolley um so that everyone could access it and on the storyboards that we're doing we're we're doing interpretive services for the hearing and the vision impaired so anyone that looks at these historical boards

um will have a braille on them and we'll have a QR code that'll clip to a video with closed caption on it so our goal is to have true inclusiveness so that everyone can experience thought and culture whether they have a hearing impairment a vision impairment if they're bound to a wheelchair um you know we all enjoy it and as not in culture and tourism magazine we expect everyone to be able to enjoy it

and participate not in culture in our city so we've made a big effort to do as much it's expensive but we're willing to take it on and have our boards have that translation on it for them so that's another thing that we'll be really building on for 2023 and 2024 so funding for us is you know really important because I mean we're in full volunteer staff we don't have any paid salaries so

we do depend on the money we get in because it goes right back into the community so about 100 of the money that any plenty that we raised goes back in we don't we don't take any salaries and then we all work and we all work and sometimes we even make up for the some of the show funding without our money so we've been doing this for a long time Mr

Aiken do you know anything about the trolleys I thought it's a very broad question oh like specifically what do you know anything about when the city will be getting trolleys if we're trying to get them if we're I know that Mr denmead has looked into the costs of trolleys um it wasn't on the agenda I'm not going to encourage him to come down here to talk about something he must prepare

okay but no no you don't have to just we know something's being worked well I wouldn't say it's being worked on we've at least looked into the cost of it but I don't know that there's been any planning beyond that thank you thank you well again thank you all for attending everyone who came and just keep doing the best job you can do for the city and also the mayor did send

out a a flyer of everything that the city did in 2022 so we will have it available if people want to look at it um there were a lot of things done so let's just keep Fall River moving thank you is there a motion to a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn is there a second what is that yes okay so I might make yes you may um I think the resolution has been satisfied so I'll

make a motion great leads with droplets is there a second all in favor aye motion to adjourn second all in favor aye thank you very much I thought it was really good I um foreign