The City Council Committee on Economic Development and Tourism convened on May 19, 2022, to discuss two main items: an update on Fall River arts, culture, and tourism initiatives, and the amenities available at the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. The meeting began with the adoption of the April 19th meeting minutes. Representatives from One South Coast Chamber, Viva Fall River, and the Fall River Arts and Culture Coalition (FRACC) presented their efforts. Patricia Rigo, Director of Viva Fall River, detailed initiatives including granting $275,000 to 29 small businesses, implementing a hanging planter and cleanup program on South Main Street, and organizing 37 events last year, 25 of which were downtown. Ashley Aquino, Executive Director of FRACC, highlighted the organization's 146 members, efforts to implement the Arts and Culture Creative Economy Plan, and projects like the South Coast Creative Arts Lab and Viva Murals. Councilors praised their work, particularly the "We Heart Fall River" event, and discussed the need for better city support, a dedicated tourism/events coordinator, and improved coordination of community events, including church festivals. The committee voted to table this item for future updates. Next, Mike Labossiere from the Forest Department, Jim Theriault, Chairman of the Water Board, and Paul Ferland, Director of the Water Board, presented on the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. They described the 16,000-acre reserve (4,500 acres in Fall River) and its amenities, including over 50 miles of hiking trails, a new 20-mile hiking loop funded by a Mass Trails grant, designated areas for mountain biking and dirt bikes, and various organized group activities like monthly walks and trail races. They also discussed future plans such as a Bioreserve Environmental Education Discovery Center, connecting the Quequechan River Rail Trail to the Bioreserve, and increasing public transportation access. Councilors suggested collaborating with Durfee High School for PSAs and developing a local curriculum for schools to educate youth about the Bioreserve. This item was also tabled for future discussion.
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committee on economic development and tourism come to order pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendance are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and deemed acknowledged and permissible if you could call the role here
1:48is there any citizen input no item number two is the minutes of the april 19th meeting is there a motion to adopt second all in favor item number three needs to be lifted from the table second all in favor it's a communication from one south coast chamber regarding the fall river arts and culture viva fall river um if you could just state your name for the record my name is michael sullivan i'm the
2:21co-ceo of one south coast chamber oh hi everybody i'm patricia rigo i am the director of eva fall river and ashley aquino executive director of fall river arts and culture coalition and you have a presentation you can get started with that mr o'sullivan do you have any comments prior to it i would like to start by just thanking you for the opportunity to come and speak um we're very proud of
2:50what we've done with viva fall river and with the florida arts and culture coalition and we appreciate the opportunity to give you an update and see what we're working on how hard we're working on it i know you've seen quite a few of the events and things in the community but we thought it would be good for us to make a presentation and you can ask us questions and see see what's happening so thank you very
3:16much we're grateful for that and i'll turn it over to patty and ashley so i will also say thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk a little bit about um what we're doing um i know at the last meeting there was some discussion on what's not being done to promote the city in advanced tourism initiatives but i strictly want to focus on the things that ashley aquino my um
3:37my colleague from the forever arts and culture coalition and i have done in the last 12 to 18 months and what's currently being done for by both frack and viva fall river to promote the city and inform the community and foster a vibrant arts and culture ecosystem so what is viva fall river viva fall river is not just a phrase it is a movement it is a call to arms an invitation for
4:02all community stakeholders to celebrate and to take advantage of everything that this promising city has to offer so that's creative arts rich and ethnic cultural traditions diverse businesses our beautiful waterfront spirited events and of course our passionate community and our mission is to leverage those assets to make fall river a premier south coast destination our vision is also to craft a new
4:25narrative that uplifts our community and inspires change and motivates action to put our best foot forward to people who are on the outside looking in but also to foster a sense of city pride our approach to achieving these goals is with focused platforms that address the key components of economic revitalization so that's business arts and culture tourism events and community initiatives
4:49i'm going to cover each very briefly but i urge you to go to vivafallriver.com and take a look at the breadth of content and information that's on the website under each of these categories so viva business we make things happen with the power of collaboration which is how viva fall river started it was conceived of through the work of the fall river tdi partnership with crucial
5:10resources for mass development which is the state's finance and development agency so tdi stands for transformative development initiative which is a program for gateway cities designed to accelerate economic growth within focused districts and fall river has one of those districts and has had one for the last three years it is two large blocks that occupy some of the bank street purchase street area and
5:34most of south main that is downtown and one south coast chamber of commerce is one of the founding members of the tdi partnership that i mentioned and through their foundation that is our fiscal agent um so they incubate the viva fall river initiative our business platform focuses on small business support so that can be providing resources whether that be financial or technical um it also we
6:00also work out to engage more diverse retail economy by assisting startups and entrepreneurs and we also work to cultivate a sense of community among businesses and on that point we're currently working with a group of stakeholders to determine and establish whether we can do a district management entity such as a business improvement district which provides a means for focused revitalization efforts such as what's
6:25been piloted in the south main district so that's viva south maine as i mentioned the tdi program provided resources um specific to the tdi district which is why a lot of the work that i'm going to talk about in this presentation happened downtown um our efforts over the last three years have been focused on to work working on key issues that affect the downtown area such as vacancies lack of visitors and cleanliness
6:52but it's also about challenging and changing the perceptions of not only residents but people from outside the um city so it's showing of the things that we've done there it's about showing what's possible with focused resources manpower or in this case woman power and a collaborative approach to revitalization so i've done some talking but i just want to quickly highlight some of the
7:16work that we've done and this is all um you can find it and we gave you a packet that has a year year in review infographic that kind of talks a little bit more in depth about the work that we did over the last 12 to 18 months but um so since the summer of 2020 we've granted out 275 000 to 29 small businesses through operational grants technical assistance and physical improvement programs and we're actually
7:42just talked about it last wednesday we're going to be launching a new grant program specifically for businesses who'd like to make um physical exterior improvements to kind of start sprucing up things on the outside of course we started with you know the bones and the foundation helping people to keep the lights on and with stuff like websites and social media but i think it's also
8:00important now to to help them um on the stuff that maybe you dream about but don't have the money to do like signage or or just you know physical upgrades the outside paint um we also um connect with and inform the community via multiple channels which i've listed here we have newsletters we have social media and targeted online forums so we've got about collectively 4 000 or so
8:23um different followers on all across all these new platforms and our newest one being tick-tock which you know they had to drag me kicking and screaming into that one so um quality of life and aesthetics are also key components of any thriving neighborhood and so we piloted a hanging planter program and clean up program last fall along a large stretch of south main so 60 baskets were hung and 28 yards of debris
8:49collected and 30 bags of trash and this was all funded through um grants that i received through the state so this was not um you know anything on the city um this year we are going to do it again so within the next two weeks i i would love to you know for people to keep an eye out we're actually doubling the size of the baskets to make them more you know big
9:09and noticeable and but that also means we have to reduce the number because i have limited funding but we're going to continue with our cleanups continue with the trimming vacuuming the street just making sure that downtown stays presentable and and you know makes people feel good about not only being down there business owners feel good about doing business down there well this is my fun part to talk about
9:35we're not all work we know we don't always just weed and uh and cut trees but um we also do a lot of event programming which i think is really important to um to kind of bring people in but also foster a sense of community pride so last year we did 37 events it was a very busy year and 25 of those are in downtown alone um and in a lot of those events we
9:56always endeavor to include as many local businesses or entrepreneurs or individuals anybody who wants to work with us is welcome to work with us and for instance um you know we just did two events one of them was fall river um spring restaurant week which was um a big success and we're looking forward to doing another one in the fall didn't really even take much resources it just takes bringing people together
10:19underneath this platform that was very positive and i also did a little um regional advertising for it so looking forward to building upon that for the fall and then this past sunday we did we heart fall river which is a celebration of arts and culture and community i estimate about between 500 and 600 people attended and it was also the start of the second season of the fall river farmers and
10:41artisans market which now kicks off every other sunday through november um this last one we had i think it was 38 artisans 38 different boots and that's the most we had at any time last year so we're really looking forward to a really strong season this year um the next one is sunday may 29th and then other key priorities i mean we do we do a lot of things um we also just
11:07had a soft opening at our viva fall river pop-up shop which is on the corner of south main and columbia we featured we participated in um fracks open studios and we hosted the work of uh local artist filomina patello so it was really lovely um and we had lots of people come in and the idea for the pop-up shop is to be a made in fall river showcase so selling things made by people
11:30in fall river but also showcasing the manufacturing that goes on here and just kind of i like to call it my hype shop it's just going to be a place where you can you know feel good about the things that are going on fall river learn about what's going on in fall river gather um and i'm looking forward to doing some programming there we've hired a retail manager
11:48when is that open it's well so we had a soft opening this past weekend we're gonna do a grand opening probably in late june we're looking to work with vendors right now so looking for those fall river artisans and kind of cultivating what's going to happen in the space we've also been working on outdoor dining with the city which is really important we have three locations earmarked for downtown and working on
12:10rolling out some outdoor guidelines uh outdoor dining guidelines which i think will be really important to um for the restaurants um and then our we have a you know of course we have to you know we're very focused on getting people from the outside in but i think it's also important that we want to encourage active and meaningful community engagement and bringing people into this movement that i mentioned earlier
12:34and so the viva community piece of the website is where residents can find information and resources this is strictly um you know it's something that i i didn't want to not include when we did when we built out the viva platform because the strength of our community is and the actual people and so this is a place i just wanted to make it easy for people to link out and to get um information on non-profit
12:58organizations on community happening so this is a really good resource for people as is the viva events calendar which i know is something that we heard loud and clear that people lament that there's no place to find out what's going on in the city um well i'd like to say that the viva events calendar is um is fairly well populated and it aims to be that resource but of course
13:21i can only find so many events and then our hope is that with better promotion and promotion by different groups we can invite people there is a community submission link there's also a video on there to um to to show people but it's very very easy and um the more you know this is only going to be successful if we're able to get those submissions from people but we do we do pretty well so far and
13:45we do this all free so there's no pay for play it's you can submit your event and then what we'll do is my communications coordinator then goes and she'll pull from there and also promote on social media so that's a you know a huge benefit that a lot of times you know media will want you to pay for that and that's that's what makes this different this isn't media this is a movement
14:06um and the key the calendar is a key piece in our efforts to showcase and celebrate fall river as a must-stop south coast destination so the viva visit section of the website is uh tourism information it includes itineraries and fun promotional programs that leverage our assets such as meat pies and i'm sure that you might have seen me eating meat pies online in our our nepai self-guided tour is fun
14:30and light-hearted but in all seriousness it's geared toward culinary travelers who seek out these unique experiences such as what we have here in this city plenty of unique experiences so there's a lot of work that needs to be done on the the tourism section but frankly that you know takes funding and so that's something that i'm continually looking for funding to build up this you know
14:51it's custom content this isn't content that i can just link out to it's things that have to be created like this campaign that as i was awarded money from the massachusetts office of travel and tourism so and and the southeastern massachusetts visitors bureau to create and launch a summer tourism campaign which is going to be coming out in memorial day and then it's going to come out fully by mid-june
15:16we're still working on the videos but it is called take 5 off 195 and it confronts the perception that people only that seasonal travelers only come to fall river on their way through that they don't stop so we're going to encourage short visits we're going to encourage you to take a break on your way to the cape before you hit that inevitable bridge traffic so there's five custom
15:36itineraries and they match target target traveler profiles with assets that we have here so we have one that's for foodies one for history buffs public art our waterfront of course and family fun and those are all you know those itineraries include small businesses they include different areas of the city so that we can spread the love and i mean obviously it's nice that people
15:57visit but the goal is to have them spend money and so you can put money into the local economy and so that's what these itineraries are subtly doing we're not doing a hardcore press but um and so obviously the intention is that these short stays will encourage people to come back and stay longer and stay you know for multiple days and last but not least is one of our most important assets which is our
16:19creative community culture and creativity touch everyone in every business which is why we work really closely with frack to highlight artists and makers and support collaboration within the community and other sectors of the community to drive economic prosperity and enhance the quality of life for residents so i'm going to turn it over to actually thank you everything towards me
16:42thank you so much well thank you again for for allowing us to come and share with you today and so we we actually haven't we've met andrew before but for councillor we've never had the opportunity to meet so yeah we did meet at a meeting that you had at the um arts on belmont street that's right when you first started when i first started i was just i guess i didn't make an impression on you
17:07i'm just not good at remembering names and faces but my my point for saying that was that um it's been now i think just four months since i've come on board as the director so i'm learning names and faces still well welcome so bear with me so so what is the frac so the fall river arts and culture coalition is a committee of the one south coast chamber foundation and so within that committee uh
17:34the chamber of i mean i'm just happy that the chamber has kind of drawn a line in the sand and stands behind arts and culture uh so much so to make it a committee and then so much so to hire someone to come in and manage it and so our mission is to advance arts and culture to create a vibrant inclusive and sustainable creative economy and we do this because it's a critical arts is a
17:57critical driver for our economic future for prosperity a community of diverse artists and creatives and valuable resources are key for our community and with frac we're able to collaborate bring these opportunities together and help weave them across different sectors so that way we can really become kind of the sum of our parts and become stronger by doing that so i can happily share with you that frac now has
18:24146 members and so we are a member based organization we are collaborative and we are transparent about how we operate and how we provide access to materials uh so that means we're open source and we're committed to being open source and so some of the ways that we share this information is we have 222 monthly email uh e-news subscribers we have an instagram page that i had started in february and we're now up to
18:53308 followers and we've reached over uh 23 000 accounts and we have engaged 232 accounts and part of why we've reached so many that number's so high how did we get there that's through support from the southeastern mass visitors bureau and through the mass cultural council we received some funding for marketing this year and so here's just a little bit of a snapshot of some of our materials and so i knew
19:21i do know that you are on our newsletter list um because i've gotten emails from both of you and so i do know that you read our newsletter but i just wanted to show it here as well for folks and just kind of highlight that you know for example on our march newsletter we're advertising that we have a special guest speaker for our monthly meeting and that guest speaker was brian boyles and he's
19:41the executive director of mass humanities and so that is a really big re-granting and advocacy group that works with the national endowment for the arts and i also have a little snapshot of our instagram page on here so you can see uh in this particular snapshot lots of artwork is being shared because we were coming off of open studios so as you know frac has been around for a little while it started in 2019 when
20:06some like-minded individuals got together and we've continued to focus on the idea of sharing ideas and being collective and really trying to advocate to move everyone forward and so this comes together and ties us back with viva so in 2020 the uh frack got together and they hired siddiq moxie to come in and put together an arts and culture creative economy plan and so building off of viva's movement
20:34for arts and culture this large plan was put together and frack's role oops let me go back and so frack's role essentially is to implement this plan so we are the governing entity for the viva arts and culture plan and so it is our job to make sure that we implement to support arts culture and the creative economy and as as you remember when you read this amazing plan
20:59that a lot of this plan ties back to the main goals of the city's master plan for downtown and for economic development and so we frac see this arts and culture plan as an extension off of the city's work that they're already doing in ways that we can enhance the quality of life and grow our economy and most importantly increase opportunities for everyone so while i'm tasked at shepherding the
21:23implementation of this multi-year plan it's frack's goal to make sure that it is inclusive and sustainable while doing so within this plan there are six goals and 27 strategies that we constantly look back to as we move forward with our work and so what i wanted to show you is some of the things that we are doing so as i mentioned at the beginning it's about creating an infrastructure in a sustainable
21:49infrastructure and so some of the ways that we're doing this is listening so in february 2020 i launched a creative arts impact survey that went out to both organizations and individual artists here in fall river with just the simple question of how are you doing and what do you need and it was actually very astonishing what we heard from both organizations and from individuals and i can just
22:14share with you kind of a snapshot of it they haven't quite recovered from the pandemic yet and we know that we know that they're still struggling and so organizations across the city are about 40 percent behind where they were in 2019 and individual artists are 70 percent behind where they were in 2019 and so this type of information i can share with you at a real granular level offline sometime but this
22:40information is really important and why i wanted to gather this information was so i could be an advocate how can i advocate for for these folks if i don't know what their needs are so we have this survey it's it's still out it's still active i still encourage people to to reply to it it's no more than 10 questions but it starts to address some of the goals within the plan and number one
23:03goal is to just create a sustainable and economy that can go forward but as we look down the list of other things that we do here at frack we promote as i mentioned uh we got those 23 000 engagements on instagram and that was from grants from the southeastern masses visitors bureau and from the mass cultural councils festival grant which i just want to highlight that the mass cultural council's festival grant there
23:25were six grants awarded to fall river this past round that is absolutely something worth celebrating and so we'll just take a moment to acknowledge that but as we go through we're also looking for ways that frat can support organizations through grant applications like the city's arpa application and so one of the things i can share with you is that um i've had some wonderful one-on-one meetings and group meetings
23:48with arts organizations here in the city to just talk about the application talk through questions that they might have um because they're not always they're not going to come to necessarily to city hall they're they're going to want to have kind of an offline conversation about their their concerns or questions about what a good application for them could look like and so i've been very happy to
24:09continue to work with organizations as they work through this process and and kind of serve as a guide for them the best way that i can um and that also comes back to teaching um you know whether teaching people about just resources that are out there making sure that through our newsletter and through our social media that we're sharing all the grant opportunities that we can find that would be applicable for um
24:31organizations and artists working in this area and we also make things happen just like viva so two of the projects that we have that we're working on right now since i've come on board is the south coast creative arts lab this is an out of school time program that's in partnership with the narrows and fall river public schools so this is a pilot program that we'd be looking to launch well maybe at the end
24:56of next year or as beginning early early january but this pilot program is really unique in the sense that it is very tailored and inclusive and working with children that want to really use art to help work through passions through troubles uh through being able to build a community with different friends and so what this program will do is is really address a lot of the issues that have been brought on by covid too
25:31we know that art is a great healer and it's a great communicator and it and i'm really excited to see this program launch in the future and really i'm excited to see how many kids are excited to participate at it as well um i i mean i just can't say enough about how the importance of having a program like this and this is where frack again how can we support organizations like
25:54the narrows or fall river public schools to provide resources for the students who so desperately need them another thing that we had mentioned earlier is the fall river open studios this was a two day event across 10 locations in the city with over 25 artists participating and fall river open studios was really created to live within the fabric arts festival as part of their main programming that they had
26:21and it also just happened to fall within south coast spring arts week and so this past i guess two weeks ago was the second iteration so there had been an arts week that the bosch center had put on out of boston for several years and in 2020 that went away and we at the south coast we love a good good reason to have a celebration so we got together and we created the south
26:43coast spring arts week and so this is the i mentioned the second time and this is a wonderful celebration of the arts where it runs from fall river to wareham so we we are one of the main kind of bookends of that event and again it looks to address the different uh goals of the arts and culture plan and patty also mentioned the second annual wii heartfall river event and so frack was very happy to be
27:09invited to be involved in this event and to work with the children's museum and organizations standing together to put together a really fun and wonderful family engagement section on gramata plaza and also uh our newest project that we're involved with is viva murals and so this is a public art and engagement project that we're doing in partnership with beaverfall river and beyond walls
27:32which is an organization out of wind mass and so this summer we're looking to bring two world-class murals to the city while also engaging the community in meaningful opportunities to see the art being created to make art with their own hands and i would say that i mean the murals might be just my favorite i don't know there's every part i love about this but i think that one of the things that is really crucial to
27:57this particular endeavor and that makes it so unique is a cultural exchange between students in fall river and students in haiti so this virtual exchange will allow students to work independently and collaboratively but ultimately create elements of design for the mural that will be created in each of the countries and so that's something that we're very excited about and you know as we kind of kicked off with
28:20the big viva fall mir roll river mural at the front of our presentation it has absolutely started to change the visual landscape of the city as you come through from the highway and so the walls that we're looking at for this particular program are also visible from the highway we're looking at doran elementary school and potter's printing building on pocasset street and and we boost the creative economy i mean
28:49that's that's right from the very beginning in our mission so we're working hard to make sure that money ends up where it belongs and to frack that's in the pockets of our artists so some of the projects that we're working on to address this is the creation of the ignition fund for artist recovery and so this is a fund that frack is working to help artists who we would say are in the
29:12gray zone they might not be a 501c3 they might not be a small business but they are feeling the effects of the pandemic and so how do we help them recover to be the strongest asset that they can be to our city and to really provide back to not only their own practice but to the community as well and we again work to address advocacy and provide assistance to organizations that are
29:35struggling with capacity and so this might mean a meeting at seven o'clock on a sunday night somewhere you know it's about you know really being available for organizations if if they're having trouble or if they they need uh someone to come to a meeting with them to to help them present or to help them prepare for something to help leverage money if they're meeting with a big sponsor how
29:58can how can frack make sure that they have all their ducks in a row so they can get the the best benefit back and so as i mentioned we do have our instagram account and and i am out of the south coast chamber office um and so some of the artwork that i did show on here is some of the mural artists that we're looking to engage with this summer as well so it is really
30:19really beautiful work but at the end of the day as the executive director of frac my most important job is to be an asset and a resource for people i just want to be available and i want to make sure that we're in the position um as a city to see funding come in in a really meaningful and growing way across the city whether it's individual artists that are applying for grants or if it's organizations applying
30:49for grants there's there's just so much money out there and a lot of it has gone to cities around us and it's time for it to start coming here and so that's where frat can can really step up and help these folks make that happen so you know and one of the things that i i don't know if i mentioned but i know we had a snapshot of it was you know just continuing to
31:10provide educational opportunities at no cost for the for the members of the frac and of course membership's free so so anyone can be a member but one of the opportunities that we had recently was a virtual workshop about grant writing for individual artists and it was hosted by the mass cultural council and so they provided a fellow for us and we had it on a saturday morning so it
31:32was virtual and and people could come and ask any question they had and they did and of course the mcc is always wonderful with their staff resources and so that that particular person was like i'm still available after this this workshop ends to answer your questions and so it's really about putting frac is about putting the power in the hands of those that that want to be part of the movement to go forward here
31:55so you know i look forward to seeing what the next four and months and in four years spring for frack but i'm i'm excited to at least see what has happened um in in my short time since coming into this organization thank you yeah thank you this microphone is patty could you unplug that because i think that's interfering with the sound it might not be is it interfering with the sound or is the sound kinda microphone
32:34uh sound guys help us out here yeah how's yours
32:49i don't know but mine's like really loud and andrew's is totally off and i have a hearing loss so i tend to talk loud so if this is loud and i tend to talk are you going to feel like i'm screaming at you and i'm not but some of the questions do you want to ask when your mic's on i think you're supposed to say testing test oh there i am there you are thank you gentlemen
33:21may i go ahead absolutely so just just a few things um first and foremost i was at the event on sunday fabulous absolutely fabulous i enjoyed it it was nice to see all the different collaborations um all the activities i had a ball i mean i think i think it was fabulous um and in the short time that i've been here and we we met already once before and that meeting i felt was very
33:46productive to kind of get caught up with what was going on i think this is fabulous and i think it's something we need to embrace a little bit more um so i would personally like to have a letter drawn up to to send to the administration about how we can further support this organization i think this is fabulous it brings everything what forever stands for what forever needs to do to move forward to change that public
34:12perception because there's so many great things happening here so there's a great opportunity to say hey listen and i think you alluded to it already there's a lot of funding out there that's here it's ready to go we need to embrace it and we're never going to change how people feel about forever until we take five steps forward and say look this like that event on sunday alone just sit there for 10 minutes and just
34:37take it all in and what was going on it was just a beautiful showing of what forever can really be and what it is so it's time that we i think we embrace that so i would like to get a letter sent to the administration to advocate on on my behalf and i'm sure my colleagues would agree to look at ways that we can further support this organization as a whole and with that i'll yield
35:02thank you i have different opinions on that um but some of the questions that i have is i know that the graffiti walls on the quickest hand rail trail was painted over and a lot of art was done there was that done through you patty or through who was that done with arts festival they did that but what so that they painted over was literally graffiti like exactly exactly i
35:32i went for a walk with my husband i took a load of photographs as i was going walking through with all the graffiti even on our emergency boxes on the rails it was disgusting and i i said for years we need to paint white on those walls and let artists that come in and do positive paintings be done there so that was through michael yes and the fabric fest yes okay
36:02the other question that i have is downtown there was a gentleman alan amaral who owned the tuscan building over on globe street and i know that there was a group of people that were looking at changing the facades downtown there are some beautiful facades underneath the aluminum and ugly things that they've put up over the years i'm not sure if there's still money available in that so i don't know who would be the
36:34one to try to connect with mr amarillo and see what's there because he had some funding to do that and also for signage fall river is the signage is very poor coming off the highway or you know it'll say cape cod this way it won't say fall river i've talked to rep fiola about that too so we've gotten some of them done the other thing is the flowers that you're putting on
37:00um the floral pots have we talked to bristol aggie that does that and could do that for us for near nothing um if if it was going to be a continued effort with the city then i would say yes but this was funding that was earmarked from it was it really was it was meant to be like a district management thing to show so i don't know if bristol aggie would
37:22commit to multi-year so we have to go with what's sustainable and what sustainable is when you actually pay for the services but you might be able to pay them a lesser portion um you know to get those done and if you're going to hang them who's going to be watering them every day well that's the thing so i'm not just paying for somebody to hang them there's somebody who goes three times a week and waters
37:42them so that's why i mean we could get we could certainly get plants from bristol aggie but they're not going to be maintaining them they're not going to maintain the tree beds they're not going to cut the trees they're not going to vacuum the street so that's all and what is being paid for and i think that's part of what council raposa was talking about that the city should be a better partner with doing
38:02some of those things we have a watering truck downstairs i i believe we got that from a grant and i'm not 100 sure but i think that was through sandy and dave dennis that got that watering truck um and it's a matter of somebody going around and watering the plants you don't want to put them up and then not water them the kids programs that you talked about um ashley where are those located
38:28so that would be located it would take place at the narrows at the narrows yes is there um any concern for transportation in our community transportation is always an issue is there a funding source for transportation have we talked to serta to see if they would do a special run do we have trolleys i know i tried to get the trolleys that we had repaired but i think they're beyond repair and then the
38:52mayor said something about renting trolleys i said come on buy the trolleys let's not rent try buy them outright so that we have them and we can give kids rides yes and what's up put the transportation on getting kids there so for this particular project we're actually um potentially about to get some arpa funding to to help pay for it and so if that's the case the transportation it would have to go to to bid
39:17right for us to pay for it um yeah so i mean transportation it's the probably the the stickiest point of that program is the transportation for a couple of different reasons it's the cost but also just the amount of time the children could potentially spend on the bus um going back home from the program if they come from a school that's you know on the other side of the city from the narrows
39:40so but when would you have this in the summer or well yeah so this would be after school on tuesdays and thursdays from approximately depending on when the child arrives from about three to five um and we would look to have it happen from uh i think it's about 28 weeks during the school year so we skip vacation weeks um and we skip the summer dinner and transportation home and
40:04that's the that's what makes the cost so big not the food the transportation home a lot of times there's those after school programs they'll take them there but then it's up to the kids to get a ride home so this i mean it's a costly program but you know investing in youth is costly yeah so we tried to make the program as holistic as possible between the transportation making sure that we're feeding them and the the
40:24programming that that we're providing them it's about it's about the wrap around it's about making the kids feel like they're part of a community and not just be like this isn't a daycare it's not it's not meant to be like an after-school deal yeah this is a serious art program where where all children will have the opportunity to participate in dance and movement but then they can choose which
40:41path they would like to do whether visual or performing arts um so that's why the narrows is a great space great place for it they're providing they are providing the space and kind to us but they just have the wonderful resources for us to use there that's good but but i do know transportation is something and upper money this year is good and for next year but then when we don't
40:59have opera money what do we use and do we collaborate with the boys and girls club with the ymca with other and and i think that that's a piece to me that's missing i think frack does a wonderful job with their piece and patty just astounds me with all the work and things that she's done with her piece um but it's it's trying to put everything together and i think the city needs
41:23somebody in tourism as well to coordinate with what are the services that the city can provide and i know that frack is through the chamber and you're working also with new bedford and fall river you know kind of jointly and i'm almost feeling like we need somebody and i've had discussions with the mayor i know that you know there's discussions about giving extra money to frack and viva fall river to move things
41:50but i'm of the opinion we need a person here to help coordinate with all of the things that you've talked about i didn't hear one mention of any of the church events that we have uh espero santo where um andrew was very connected with espero santo and um you're very connected with saint michaels church and i'm with saint anthony of padua church another all of the festivals today a
42:16friend of mine i saw at lunch and he was talking about uh saint stanislaw's feast that's going on different cultures and stuff how do we that's what i'm talking about like how do we put all of it together because i think some of the things you're doing are great um and i think the open studio is good the outdoor dining i've done that for four years trying to get that going and the
42:40ordinance committee put together an ordinance on outdoor dining you know i i know you've collaborated with them on that as well but where you know where do we go um from there uh i i thought sunday's event was good i personally am a pearly baker fan yes yes i know so as you know but it was a good vibe and it was it was i mean that was a great band for like you know you can't
43:05you can't i hate dancing in the street i mean that is really um but i mean i i i to your point i understand what you're saying but that that function is more of an events coordinator events director and that's not a tourism person that's in person has to put together campaigns to market the city and so i mean so do i think that there needs to be at least a process or some kind of
43:27person who's like a point person yes i mean that and that it makes a lot of sense i mean just because there is a lot to know people don't even know what goes into how do you go i didn't know how to get an event done in the city until i started doing it and made a lot of mistakes along the way it could have probably been a lot easier if i had one
43:44point person to go to i totally understand that i think that there needs to be some sort of point person here i mean you have people that want to light up lower kennedy park you know they had to go in front of the park board they had to get permission from the park board now they have to work with diamond to see if they'll help design certain things now they have to
44:03see who else can do signage for them or if they want to have a ban there from thanksgiving to new year's every saturday have some event in the pavilion even to paint the pavilion the pavilion is painted and it's like 10 10 inches from the ceiling like what we didn't have a ladder that made no sense to me so you've got a group of people that are willing to come in and paint the pavilion well you
44:32really can't do it because the park department has people and it's a union and they have to paint at even if it's overtime if not then you're stepping on their toes so there's all those little technicalities that one doesn't really think about if i may i just want and i'm and i might be ignorant in saying this but i know i having been on like the historical commission i know there's commissions
44:53who kind of facilitate such things like if i wanted to get something done on my house that would be who i would go to if i had a historical home is there would there would there be like an events commission or like a civic events commission where people could go in front of them like i'm not saying that there is one but is there a model for that because that would i mean being
45:12able to go to it and that's the kind of information you get from a commission they're like these are the resources like the like for a historic commission they'll tell you to go you know the cpa and whatnot so i'm just i'm just i i invite us to kind of like we all we all agree on the problem but i invite us to kind of try to figure out what the solution is exactly
45:30what is the solution for fall river exactly like there's an event on sunday the 29th there's another event but also on sunday the 29th is something that's going on at the vietnam memorial wall where they're going to be putting uh wreaths up at every monument that's there so you know two people who were vietnam veterans will place the reits um two people who were from the korean war will
45:56place wreaths and then they're having a big event at the liberal club after that i just got the fireplace over the weekend and i told him i said we'll put it on for you but see that's the thing too like i i have to get a flyer from somebody like exactly so i just i i feel like if there was a platform for me to be able to tell the city like this is
46:15the this is where you go people need to like also give their information over you know i just don't think they know where to go and we've we've made a dent but yeah we haven't we haven't there's no way we're maybe getting 40 of the events that happen right now and that's from us doing the work you know right i think that you know all of the churches in that show oh yeah we talked about
46:34that i want to get all the ashes and i and i got yours when you came to visit i didn't know when that was and that is that's a huge important thing because those events specifically take city resources as well those are the ones we really need to coordinate so that the city's not over taxed on one particular day and i'll tell you it's very difficult for example many of the portuguese churches
46:53they have the dominguez how many dominguez are there a lot six seven seven dominguez times x amount of times x amount of parishes and now we cannot use auxiliary police to block the street when they're bringing the crown from somebody's house over to the church and you can't use a police officer who's reached the age of 70 a retired police or he's 70 he can no longer handle the you know
47:20handle a detail and with all the road construction we have you know these contractors obviously are paying the police details but how many police officers do we have how many of them besides working a shift how many details are they going to take and how many people have vacations that they're entitled to and they take them in the summer that is a real cut in fall river how do we
47:46and any event that you have you need to have police there saying you know you have um spirito santos may 30th they start off with all of the festivals st michael's ends back in august they're the last ones but then there's so many in between and if you don't have the number of police officers to be there you know it makes it really that's why i think there needs to be somebody in here
48:10in this building to help to coordinate all of that stuff too and i don't know how to do that maybe mike you have to meet with the mayor and i'll gladly talk to the mayor about anything and we have we have a very good relationship and we we talk to each other quite frequently and i think um it's hard for us to i know we can't control what happens with public safety even though we need
48:36public safety for these events we absolutely do and they and i think they do one hell of a job with the resources that they have um but what i'd really like to say is that in the tdi team came to the city of fall river it'll in on july 1st it will be three years and frack we started working on fracking just about three years ago now and they've done a great job right and
49:04there's an enormous there's an enormous amount of stuff that's happened and i think that i'm very confident to say that i think if you look at us three years from now what we will have accomplished is will be mind-boggling to a lot of people because we're making great progress we've got great people like patty patty came out on a part-time basis with tdi shortly after it started then she became
49:29a full-time employee last year ashley only started four months ago so you know we're making we're doing what we can to bring the people in to make to make things happen and to make things work more importantly than anything is i think with 99 of the community we've opened the door with our willingness to convene and try to champion just about anything and i think that you know so those
49:56all the i don't look at these as problems i look try to look at things as challenges and opportunities right we've got we've got incredible opportunity in front of us and as long as we all keep talking about it and we will continue to talk to the mayor and we'll gladly continue to talk to you and the rest of the council if you need us to no but that's what this
50:17committee is for mike we want to look at okay these are the things that are happening like i have people saying how come there's you know a sign here is like do they get permission yeah if that's a privately owned building people have a right to put whatever they want and they're building we're not going to censor them not that anybody's putting anything rude up because they're not
50:35but it brings life to the city right it brings life to the community you know i travel and i go to other places and i see things spruced up i see bathrooms that are open that's a big thing for me you know and when you can't have bathrooms open for people who are walking the boardwalk um it's mindful well we're afraid so for the for the minuscule amount of people
51:04in the city who don't follow the rules into a bad thing but there's thousands you know that are doing the right thing and providing you know good cleanup and this and that it's not everybody goes around and litters the city it's a small percentage of the population so you know then we have to go around i mean i know one of the things you talked about was cleanliness and that's that's important um
51:30but i just think we need to have a focal person in here to to reach out to or if i have somebody that wants to decorate um the lower part of kennedy would they call either one of you for advice on what grants are available or they would reach out to you and you would be able to funnel them through and you would know this is what you have to
51:50do yeah i think some of it i think a lot of what we're talking about is education yeah and i mean yes a person is is definitely one way to do it not and i i can say pros and cons on that but having just like processes like like even if it's a checklist online even if it's i think what people need to understand about great ideas is that a you have to
52:12be willing to follow them through execution but you need to come with your own funding i know a lot of people come to the city and say give me money that's not that's a civic education you need to realize that not all money sits in a big pot and they just pull out for whatever there's money that's earmarked so i'm just i feel like a lot of the work that
52:26i do i i enjoy the events and i enjoy all that but it's about educating people so that they have the power then to make an educated decision like yeah let's do an event in july that's not next to any other event but it's it's at the education piece that i think we're missing and i mean i i would love and that's viva community perhaps that's something that we could explore like
52:46having a place where you want to throw an event in fall river these are the this is where you start i mean i know that that won't solve the issue you're talking about but it could at least i mean that's what we have those portals on the website for is for people to go and get information so and i don't have a problem with throwing opera money towards viva or frack because you're
53:05doing a great job but on the same hand i think that you need to have a point person here who's going to be able to communicate with you or if you get jammed up with something i mean my go-to person is mike dion because he just has the answers for everything that i have a question for you you know so thank god for mike um but you know that's that's my feelings i just think the city
53:28should be more involved and i think you know the money you got from bay coast to start out was a wonderful thing i think that works but with that i yield council repository if you mind my jumping of course sir i don't want to lose sight of it um just to verify we got money from baikos from uh bank five the community foundation okay and senator rodriguez to get started on frack
53:52just ask centered around it for more money we always do it's very generous so i just want to home back my original point one thing i heard as you both presented is the key word of partnerships none of this doesn't none of this would have happened without partnerships and i think to council pearl's point to a point the partnership between the city and your organization needs to grow and
54:23my and with all due respect to my colleague i think what i'm looking at is how do we have the city is in a position to bolster the great work you're doing i don't necessarily think that we should jump in and say this is how you should do it i think you're doing fabulous work i think we need to embrace it and we need to kind of kick you up a little bit and go here's
54:46the resources we can provide to help you do that you know not only you but so many other organizations that are doing great work we need to begin to build that culture of embracing it and celebrating how wonderful it is the educator in me agrees with you as well the education pieces is critical i think as a youth in the city it's important to educate them not not always what's about outside of our walls
55:11what is inside our walls is fabulous and if we could some way like i think through your viva community platform is what i'm thinking about getting into the classrooms getting into the schools and say i can give you a laundry list of all the wonderful things that fall river has and you wonder how many of our youth know that so it starts there for me that's the biggest thing civic engagement education
55:36to show to the youth of fall river all the wonderful things we have and then build from there you know and i think for me that's critical but partnerships in any way i think the city can boaster what you're doing and it goes back to what i originally asked about having that communication with the mayor i think that's the greatest step forward i yield thank you all for coming in thank you
56:01thank you thank you very much you're sharing with us uh you might want to hang around for the next people that are coming in to speak this might be something else you could promote item number four resolution to discuss the amenities available at south coast massachusetts bio reserve trails with mike labassia and mr terrio jim theriault from the water chair do we need to do anything we need
56:28to lift it from the table do we do anything with item three though or is it just we're good to move on um i would i would keep a table okay do you want to motion the table uh motion to table second all in favor all right because i think it's worth them coming back and yeah i would actually like to as and maybe that's something we consider that maybe every you know quarter or
56:50some sort of timeline where we can have them revisit give us an update of the events i think this is a great platform to keep the public educated on their events i mean again this is on frg tv and all that so here's a platform where people can see these the upcoming events this is what's happened hey come check it out so i would love to see that's fine that's why if they table it
57:10every few months i'll have them back perfect on item number four to discuss the amenities available for the south coast uh southeast massachusetts bio reserve motion to lift from the table second all in favor aye and with us we have mr labassier who is our forest up in the forest department mr jim terrio who is a member and chairman of the water board and of course the director of our water board paul ferland
57:40good evening thank you for being here thank you so again um i think this was a great time for this committee to be able to lift this from the table so that we can come and discuss the ongoings in the southeastern massachusetts buyer reserve you know the small portion that the city of fall river plays with the 4 500 acres up there with the overall of 18 000 acres including the freetown state forest
58:10properties from the trustees of the reservation uh as well as other partners that we have um dcr uh being one of them so you know again we were here i believe it was about six months ago or so uh and kind of started the discussion to talk about the trail system uh the different types of events that we have up there and now is a good time coming right into the spring with uh what they're saying
58:38is going to be 90 degree weather on saturday i think it's a uh bring it on exactly i think it's a great time to let people know what type of uh what we're doing out there what type of amenities that we have and what they can enjoy out there um so thank you guys very much uh for allowing us to come back if you want i'll turn it over to mike uh boss here a
59:02little bit and i think what we'll start off with is kind of a recap of some of the events that we've that we've had maybe over the past six months or eight months out there uh and then we can talk a little bit about some of our partners and some of our other uh events going forward mr furlin have you or mr labassier mr cerio have any of you reached out with frack or viva fall
59:25river on the events that you have up in the reservation area we have especially especially when there are flyers patty's been very good to uh you know repost flyers on facebook and things like that okay so it's been it's been a help and if we can't recruit patty i think we should clone her because the level the level of energy and creativity is is one thing that um you know we're sort of we're equipped to
59:55take care of the forest but that that extra dimension of you know integrating it with uh with you know things that are already going on in the city getting getting involved with schedules calendar uh and all that but i thought what i would do first and thank you counselors for for giving us us this opportunity um so i would just i would just like to whip through very quickly this because
1:00:20the it sounded like you you're interested in the amenities we had that you know the uh right we had a nice zoom zoom meeting the last time and we kind of went through a powerpoint um so i'm going to go quickly through what what the different opportunities are out there you know identify some of the properties and things like that um so the buyers almost 16 000 acres um four partners and
1:00:45it's uh it's giant in fact i think it's so big that people don't even know where to begin and and that's and and that you know focusing on that uh is an interesting thing and that's not just not just for the residents of fall river but i mean it's big enough that it's regional a lot of our events attract um and i say r and i'm going to use that like royal we
1:01:08because really the the water department itself uh is a is a small component but it's these other partners and and bringing partners in you know you you that that uh that phrase is resonating over from the last presentation um first thing i'll do is talk about hiking over 50 miles and that's that's a low number i don't think anyone's really sort of you know accounted for all of the fire
1:01:31lane single lane trails and all of that on all of the properties expanding which which by the way start in fall river and they go all the way to lakeville connected forests protected lands lakeville um uh dartmouth and freetown um tatapanam trail that's probably the oldest trail uh it's on wilson road the whatever reservation that 2 800 acres has been around for about a hundred years uh
1:01:54copper cut woods is the new five 500 acre uh trustees and reservations property it's that's got a very unique aspect to it the miller brook conservation area is is uh another one that the city owns but that's actually owned by the conservation commission the freetown fall river state forest which got established in during the depression era there are parking lots um there's there's about 10 or 12 parking
1:02:18lots throughout many of them are in fall river there are also pull-offs you could basically pull off the road instead of having a separate parking lot there are trail maps and i've got to think you have seen these before but but i brought some to uh just to pass out anyway um the unified trail map this is the second revision as properties have been added to the buyer reserve and protected um they now appear on this
1:02:43trail map the unique part about the trail map if you're going to have 50 miles of trails you're going to have a lot of intersections and one way you can navigate walking on the trails is using the intersection markers there's there's over 200 intersection markers so um and and then lastly again under the hiking bullet city got a mass trails grant to build or not build the trails exist but to
1:03:10mark permanently mark a 20-mile hiking loop and that's similar to other trails in the state as i i read a couple years ago there was a newsletter that talked about the seven top trails in the state and actually they mentioned the bio reserve but the buyer reserve was the only place that didn't have a distinct identifiable branded trail you know you have the tully trail the appalachian mountain
1:03:32trail you get a lot of named trails we didn't have one so we applied to the state to get some you know some some funds to be able to mark the trail get some of those you are there sign you i hear signs uh and that sort of thing so we're working with the appalachian mountain club to do that and that will probably be ready toward the end of the summer uh
1:03:53fully marked and we'll do some kind of event to mark that um so in addition to how many miles is that trail it's 20.
1:04:02um it's it feel i feel like it's growing a little bit as we sort of get but it's going to be 20 to 22.
1:04:07which so when we have a grand opening we can walk that trail oh yes can you take a motorcycle on that trail or a moped no this is passive recreation trail now the ones do you have any up there that mopeds can go on the state forest does the state forest has a motorcycle parking lot on bellrock road and so you could park there and there's a designated loop that dirt bikes can use
1:04:29i wish that kids knew about that instead of riding around the city sometimes if they want to go up there is there parking there on bell rock road there's a desert there's also a season and that season runs from may first to somewhere sometime in the fall i don't know exactly when but it might be it might book end around hunting season i gotta think oh there's that so cool so so hiking can hiking
1:04:58can be an individual thing but but it can also be a group a group outing so i've got a category called open group hikes and tours appalachian mountain club for the since last march actually started during uh you know right in the height of covid but they do a monthly walk everybody knows appalachian modern club they're they're a nationwide you know uh organization and they have a regional chapter and
1:05:22they do these hikes and they're free uh you have to register online this coming saturday they actually have uh i should say sunday may 22nd they have a family walk it's the first one they've led in fall river um and so they'll continue that you know in the coming season trustees of reservations which is of course is one of our original um original buyers they're partners they've done 15 walks since september of
1:05:472021 and they've got another nine plant through september those are mostly at copacot woods which is like i said their their flagship property in fall river um just to give you a sample i'm gonna i can pass this out but they they they will do walks with themes and these are just just a random few sunset hike a toddler nature trek owl problem women's hikes wellness hikes i'm i'm planning on going in june to
1:06:19donut day hike that sounds pretty healthy there's a dog day hike so so you know hats off to their creativity they're bringing some you know creative approach out there um green futures you know the the grandfather of uh environmental groups in the city they do monthly hikes which are very good and and the water department occasionally does it as well we've done the interlocking tour in the past and things like that
1:06:43um what time do these start uh i don't know um these meaning the um the trustees yeah the trustees they've got a fantastic website and and they'll have that information on that probably morning though probably like mid morning then there are planned activities that that go on we've had everything from the we've had when there were trolleys we had trolley tours uh carlos from the
1:07:09flint would would put those together for spiro santo kids and uh and they're fabulous by the way have you been on one uh i have not yet but i've i've been the principal at the school for five years and i've been there for eight years in total and every class that's gone over the number of years have loved it i believe it and it goes back to what i said earlier about the youth not knowing
1:07:29about some of these things their mind was blown that this exists so yeah and i'll give you a um proof of concept um i just i just recently became acquainted with the trail runner who ran the united way trail uh run in september and it turns out he he came on one of the trolley tours you know years ago we mean and he's working for people inc now as uh doing wellness
1:07:55uh you know doing wellness uh program for people inc and i i really think that there it does have an impact so i appreciate you saying that um so actually that was my next bullet under that it was uh you know that's mario uh dorigo dorigo um and he's leading that wellness group in fact we're doing a walk this saturday with him uh leading his group um the united way does their annual fundraising event
1:08:21um it's called united we move and they've done that the last two years in the reservation and that's growing great they're going to do it again this year um we've had partnership with the morton middle school with a footbridge design and a volunteer boardwalk thing that they did we've had eagle scout projects last year we started a partnership with mass audubon and talbot middle school
1:08:42and did a series of educational things mountain biking again people are out there solo small groups there are events run out of this the freetown state forest one in particular called the free town 50. a 50 mile in the buyer they have a 50 mile mountain bike race put on by rock hard racing trail running another solo or small group activity um and last week last sunday we had this is the
1:09:12it was the eighth annual what's up at 10 30 50k trail race we had 112 people um registered from everywhere from rhode island to again boston cape um some some from fall river but the point is we've got we've you know we've got what it takes to this is a world-class resource that we have that we're attracting people you know from far field and that's a great thing to say um snow showing in cross-country skiing
1:09:40when we have it that that one day a year we have some snow um we have a lot of dog walkers they they mainly walk copico woods in the state forest um bird watching photography hunting of course is uh is is about 12 weeks there are places that you can be in the fire reserve that do not allow hunting so that's a safe it's a safe consideration for people especially families and school groups
1:10:05um when does hunting season what's what time perimeter is that early september and then as and as the year as the weeks roll by uh you know these the the the animals might change the the the uh you know the weapons might change but um you know archery starts i think in september last week yeah and then it ends probably about the second week in march is the end of coyote so so um it's
1:10:41the bio reserve is so large that i you know and i'm there every day and you almost don't notice the hunting because it's you know you know hunters aren't going to be sort of in in the perimeter they're going to be they're going to be well within and you know i to mine you know we have not had any sort of problems with that so um you generally expect that hunters are good
1:11:01sportsmen and and abide by my grandfather was the hunter he was there all the time perfect um fishing of course is since 2009 when the when the reserve uh conservation restriction was was uh first recorded there is now fishing on the shoreline fishing from the copper cut reservoir only and there's five different locations that are easy to access or park at um on the copacat reservoir i didn't know that yeah
1:11:28um there are accessible trails i'm sorry there are there are not accessible trails but the trustees the reservation is working on a uh accessible children's uh play area at copaca woods and they they got that same mass mass trails grant that we got are those five areas on this map for fishing yeah uh the parking areas around copacaba yeah that's fresh water it's fresh water yes um there's a couple of places that that
1:12:01you could picnic and primarily it's the state forest headquarters there's a pavilion there's a splash pad there's public restrooms you were mentioning restaurants before i agree with that point by the way um and um there's some points of interest we probably know those the sonnet ledge doctors mill pond there's a few of those um but i think what would be really you know good to leave you with this
1:12:22note um at least for this part of the presentation there's some future thinking things um one is when the bio reserve uh was conceived back 20 somewhat years ago the idea was to build a bio reserve environmental education discovery center because you know we who grew up in the city with the tupper reservation that was prohibited from use we don't really necessarily know you know where that is what there is
1:12:52what there is to do how to take care of it and the idea of a bar reserve discovery center would be you know where does where do you bring school kids to get oriented you know where do they have their first contact where can you have some indoor programming you know you know where's a place that a family can show up and be directed and help to you know understand
1:13:13here's a good place to hike here's a good place to do something so that's an idea we've been pursuing for a few years uh we've got some prototype ideas um we've got some thoughts about how we're gonna acquire this and um but there's a lot of work ahead but that that i think is the key to to creating a buyer reserve that is that adds a lot of value to the people of fall river and
1:13:36also has that sort of engine of economic development that will bring people to the city and then we connect up with with what you know what we're doing on the inside and then we you know we bring the whole thing together um i'll just run through these last bullets um another idea that i i think is worth pursuing is working with westport to connect the quickest river rail trail to the bio reserve
1:14:01transportation is a real issue and a lot of people don't have the luxury even a car but if we could if we could work on the bike access and hiking access and connect those two things and connecting one part of fall river from the other that's separated by that big you know chunk of water um another transportation thought might be to bring public transportation you know maybe there's a bus stop at wilson road
1:14:25or you know something where people could get some access that way good idea um the idea we we've partnered with public schools before i think we could do more uh neighborhood groups uh you know carlos is a really good example of what we've done but there's so much more we can do and then working with other environmental groups we've had we're working with mass audible and right now
1:14:46we've had interest from the narragansett bay estuary program and and all of that the planning department has a cpa grant to identify and catalog historical areas and in an hour we put together like 90 to 100 historic sites of interest out in the buyer reserve you know that that that are just uh you know part of hiking is discovery and adventure and you know i think people finding some of these things uh
1:15:15again in fall river farmers have forest and water who would know who would think of that um yeah weren't there some famous people that uh in fall river from many years ago that had horses up in that area that had summer homes in that area the foundations are there now not the summer home but it sounds like you're talking about the spencer board man yeah yeah yeah um and um last thing i say
1:15:42we've paul and i have been serving on the durfee cte partnership uh committee green and green green industry opportunities i mean you know green industry opportunities is what the water department is all about uh whether it's whether it's you know working in the in one of the plants working out in the bio reserve um people the people that have been you know sort of helping us our workforce some of them
1:16:08come because of the opportunity it's a lifestyle job and you know being being able to uh convey that to students that this is this is uh you know this is this is a job that you work outdoors um you know and interaction with with with people is is is both vocational but educational and so um we're just scratching the surface as far as i think how the city how the city can sort of parlay this
1:16:42environmental brand because if you're going to have half of your city be dedicated toward your water supply and quality of life we should really you know hit a home run with it and really get it i always think the bio resource reserve is such a hidden gem in fall river that you know people don't know about it and some of the roads going through there are so on chem but you don't want to really repair the
1:17:12roads and have a lot of people driving fast and crazy through there so you know maybe we need to put some speed bumps around there but the roads should be fixed if there's a fire and i mean it's going to be tough for our trucks to get there you know because some of them are bad well the key the key is i think staff yes you know like there are good models say the national
1:17:36park service for example has a good model with maybe we're not building you know chapter 90 24 foot right wide asphalt but maybe we're building a sort of logging road qual you know like gravel that we can maintain keep the speed low and we need more staff we need a fully staffed environmental police force for example which we don't have what do you have now mr leforce how many well there's five positions
1:18:04but we're challenged we're challenged to to uh fulfill those we've got one yes we've got one so there's currently one environmental police in talking with the chief uh so water department funds a portion of those uh positions because they patrol our lands as well as the chapter 90 roadways out there uh one of the issues from my understanding that they haven't is so the um what you mentioned earlier about uh when
1:18:30police get older they yeah they're unable to work anymore and different restrictions that are put on by the new regulations that came down uh to try to get people to go into that uh that position those environmental police positions you know in relation to that since those positions are so so uh tough to fill something that we've talked about internally um and that you know we may be putting the proposal
1:18:55together is uh possibly doing some internal some ranger positions so they're not a they don't have the full enforcement of the law and everything but they're able to at least provide a presence out there and be able to uh provide um you know protection for the water department lands as well as the fire reserve and stuff like that i think that's good yeah other things that we've talked about um potentially would be a
1:19:16educational ranger we're calling them you know possibly somebody to be able to go into the schools in the winter and teach the kids about the buyer reserve teach them about what's out there and then be able to do more guided tours or different activities within the summer to be able to to be able to get people out there you know i think uh just touching on a couple of things that mike said
1:19:40you know uh 50 you know you talk about the tourism uh and bringing people into the city that draw into the city you know imagine a family being able to come to fall river spend half the day in the 50 percent of fall river that's either forest or water and then spend the second half of the day in the urban city that's promoted by viva for river and other organizations like that that you
1:20:04know they can go to a nice restaurant or go to the downtown and be able to enjoy that you know almost within a mile of each other you don't even think that you're in the same city because it's almost a 50-50 split from water and forest to an urbanized city so you know i think that's a great thing and to be able to have something out there uh you know people come into fall
1:20:27river now and they go to the different places you go to battleship cove and they get the ideas of different places to go in the city and stuff like that to have a point location out there um you know as a discovery center or an educational center somewhere to be able to have somebody to greet people in a family or people coming in saying okay we're looking for a nice spot to bike
1:20:50well here are the trails right now they're going to try to find the trail map or other resources to be able to locate all that information to be able to have somebody to guide them and give them an idea of where to go um you know would be excellent and it would be able to take that winter it's just you know uh potentially less utilized to be able to get the people out there in the
1:21:13winter into a building or something uh to be able to uh to be able to do that education when kids are in school uh not just in the uh in the summertime when kids are out of school you know we we had a meeting on tuesday evening and we um talked about those qr codes that they wanted to put those in some of the parks maybe a billboard that they
1:21:37could take a picture and it would talk about where kids could go for different kinds of help maybe we need to do a qr code or something like that so that people that are down at the battleship take a picture of that and say hey do you want a bike trail something yep so through one of the recent grants that we had through the mvp program we were able to develop a website
1:22:00it's the watapa reserve dot com it's a website that we had created as some basic information currently on it about has the trail maps uh and some other information actually about projects that we're doing on southward tupper and other things you know again it's tough um you know i'm not a technical guy luckily one of the my staff members in my office has been able to kind of manage the website
1:22:26but it goes back to being able to have the staff to be able to do those types of things you know the water department our primary concern is providing clean safe drinking water to the 100 000 customers the protection of the buyer reserve in our lands is part of that because that helps protect all of our drinking water supply um so and those promotional things are additional things that are
1:22:50that are you know put on our employees even when they have time or when mike's able to do outreach and stuff like that so um that's a tough thing to do sometimes within uh within our limited constraints of staff so thank you it's always a pleasure having you here to explain everything that you're doing up there counselor so i feel like a broken record tonight but i want to highlight the partnerships and
1:23:15i have a thought and a suggestion for you um the first about the schools which i think is fabulous and again the educator in me says the best way to get children into these situations is through field trips during the school day where they can come down during the day and see some of these things so i would love to see you continue to do that and i think what
1:23:37carlos does with with the students at es is kind of a small idea to expand on where could we have a partnership between the schools where they can get kids out to see what's going on in the bioreserve maybe the bus companies can provide either a discount or a donation to advocate for education of the bioreserve for our kids i think that's a great way because i universally believe that
1:24:00when the kids see these things they go home and tell their parents and maybe their parents don't know about it so now the kids are educating their parents about what forever offers that they never knew about so i mean i i give you a lot of credit for doing that i hope you can continue to expand on that partnership i just have this idea as i'm thinking about it i love fred tv i love the work
1:24:21that the durfee high school students do in that television studio have you ever considered or reached out to them about possibly doing some sort of psa or project to highlight the bio reserve because i know they do a lot of great work but i don't know if this is every something they've ever looked at to do and do a project to then show the community we have in the past we've just kind of
1:24:44nibbled at that a little bit we've done one or two um and i think we're on tap to do one we're we're in a queue i know it was talked about a few months ago uh you know you you could you could do one a week because there's so much content out there and you know uh yeah can i jump in on something um that's a very good point um two things um
1:25:13it's unfortunate that the worst roads into the bio reserve is wilson road coming down to what is known as fighting rock corner where blossom and bellrock intersect and then we've often talked about if we were to do an improvement it would be wilson up yellow hill and link in the homes that are on yellow hill currently the entrance from westport is very good yes you can come in blossom road off to the old
1:25:50old fall river road and all the way to the reservation headquarters is in very good shape and i have to say indian town road is in very good shape and yellow hill to the tower yeah after that that's not good um but what you touched on is interesting we really didn't have a chance to talk this afternoon about this but um i have to say this my son does videos for real estate in new york and
1:26:33i've been watching how he puts these together and he uses for the most part on apple and i think that would be a really good thing for uh perhaps for us to chew on a little bit i'd like to see the water board chew on that a little bit um i'm out there constantly maybe it's something that you know i can add into my little forages through the woods and and whatnot um
1:27:08and then be able to post something like that on a weekly basis i often thought about um the biggest problem that we you as elected representatives we as uh employees of the city or or citizen who work on boards and commissions the hardest thing for us to have attained is respect for water because every time we talk about water we talk about rights and the ability of this city to produce water is is is
1:27:53unbelievable we have assets and i think the more that we react interact with the young people the more we're going to instill upon them their responsibility for the future to take care of this because we're going to pass we're all going to pass but the people in 1870 who began to put together the reservoir commission and all of that and brought potable drinking water to the citizens you know your grandparents
1:28:29remember when people went down to the cockshelf fountain down here to get drinking water and then lugged it home and so the more that we can bring in and teach about ecology and there isn't a building that makes air in fall river but we do have one that makes water and without water you don't have a community whatsoever so we're all very enthusiastic to to do these types of things it's it's been a labor of
1:29:09many years but it's a labor of love but you know and i like i like what you're saying and i'm just as i'm brainstorming here you know as as the educators and i'm sure people who are watching this will understand this you know we have state standards that we address across you know history and science what have you but i think one thing we should probably consider and maybe this is an opportunity to bring some local
1:29:31educators together to build a local curriculum of this like this is this is a fabulous opportunity where we can build some local knowledge some local curricula to bring our educators to say well you know we always talk as teachers to take the learning out of the classroom here's chapter one right here right in front of us build a local curriculum where then we can you learn about it partnerships
1:29:57between the water department conservation teach all of the students in the classrooms what we're doing and the culmination of it see it firsthand so that's i think for me important you know if that's something you want to kind of chew over and think about and begin to build those partnerships within the school department and and also you know the catholic schools and the private schools in the city i think that would
1:30:21be fabulous again it gets more eyes on what we have and what people may not know about to your second point too about the the video and using apple iphones social media and i think ashley and patty said it already is such a great tool and we talk about transportation's tough to get a lot of people there well again we can't get them there right away or it's going to take a little time but
1:30:45let's bring it to them right in front of them the thing they spend so much time on so even if it's a 30-second minute video of hey this is the x and y trail in the bio reserve this is what it is and then just keep doing stuff like that highlight bits and pieces of this huge map that you gave us and again it's public education and then now people like oh we should go
1:31:05check that out or hey you know bring it to my my classroom teacher and say hey we should go do a field trip to this get the conversation going that's i think that's what we do and and one thing i'll tell you i think we often complain about a lot of the negatives this past hour and a half that i've been sitting here there are so many positives that we're talking about how do we get
1:31:28this message out louder and we face it social media is a wonderful tool it can be used wonderfully so i think to your suggestion i think that's something you should look at and consider and it ended really what does it cost all of us have cell phones in our pockets already so yeah do it do it and run with it do you yield i yield thank you and and i know mr terrio's son
1:31:50and he does an amazing work with computers and iphones etc but i think doing a curriculum for school i think your wife and some of her colleagues his wife was an educator or principal she would relish the opportunity to do this they're always looking for things to do that are positive and you can give her so much information on it i think those are great ideas and and i know that um kochman
1:32:19um over at the high school in piermont and there was another person that i spoke to they did videos with kids and i was like these videos should be aired you normally have a school committee meeting and they're in the executive session put on videos that these kids have done and this is another example of that could be utilized there when the council meeting starts and then finance ends
1:32:42and the council meeting is starting it's blank time put that on there you know get things on there people watch the council meeting they watch school committee meetings those might be helpful i mean i'll get on a committee with barbara to do curriculum i think that's good and if we can get even if we have to pay for buses to get kids up there on field trips it's you know we do field trips every
1:33:06year with kids why not do it in our backyard and show what we have and i think council repose is right i mean we've been here since 4 30 and all we've heard of all the positive things going on that's why i was delighted to chair this committee because we need to look at economic development and tourism and and showcase ourselves i'm so tired of the negativity when we have a community that
1:33:32offers so much and has so much you know different culture and diversity that's amazing you don't get that unless you're in bigger cities like new york we have that all here in fall river and we don't tend to spotlight it but thank you for coming in i would look for motion to table and maybe we can talk about these ideas at a later date motion to table second all in favor aye aye aye
1:33:57thank you so much for taking your time appreciate it thank you very much thank you for your support i appreciate it appreciate it thanks for coming down uh motion to adjourn second all in favor aye aye thank you so much thank you end of the economic development and tourism meeting is closed
1:34:53you