The Fall River meeting on January 31, 2023, primarily served as an announcement and celebration of the city's new logo, alongside updates on related initiatives to modernize the city and boost tourism. The logo contest, launched at the end of the previous year, garnered over 200 entries from various locations, with a committee selecting six finalists before public voting determined the winner. This new logo is a key component of an ongoing effort to upgrade the city's website, aiming to make it more user-friendly and efficient for residents to conduct online business and access information. The company Revive, with consultant Josh Pereira, is leading the website development to incorporate features like easier navigation and an updated events calendar.
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okay this is a uh this has been a long time coming in the city of Fall River and of course I want to thank everybody for being here tonight uh again we're uh supported by um our legislative delegation um Maureen uh Flanagan is here from Senator roderick's Skyler's here from Schmidt's office and also joining us in person we're glad to have her with us as a representative Carol Fiola let's give
0:25her a hand for coming out tonight tonight we're here to celebrate the many efforts big and small big and small to celebrate the many things we're doing to make Fall River a more modern exciting place to live work or start a business of course the main event tonight is the announcement of the winner of the logo contest um and obviously this has been a long time coming we launched a contest at the
0:55end of last year and we received over 200 entries from all across the country and some from the Philippines and foreign countries it was a very very very competitive uh contest then we assembled the committee to review the logos and they made the difficult choice to go down to the final six which you see here tonight the reason we were doing a new logo is because we're trying to upgrade the
1:22website for the city of Fall River obviously the logo will be at the Forefront of it but we wanted to make it more friendly more workable so people could do their business online not have 48 steps to go through easy to maneuver those are the focus on on changing the website for the citizens in the city of Fall River and we're very very grateful to the citizens of Fall River for voting and
1:47for allowing us to have the six finalists here tonight um there's a station near the door on your way out if you take a look at it you'll see the company that's doing our website is a company called revive and they've done websites all over the country and uh we have our one of our Consultants with us here tonight Josh Pereira he's been working with us on it coming in to help us and it's it's going
2:09to be adding many many important features to our website to make it easier for the residents to navigate get the answers to the questions they want get a calendar that's up to date so they know what events are going on in the city and that's going to be our Focus and obviously part of this all is to attract new money into the city of Fall River and you do that through tourism
2:30we are going to highlight the great things that forever has to offer so people come here spend their money in our restaurant do some shopping go down to the Waterfront spend some time here and I am also very pleased to announce that through Opera fronts the city has partnered with Viva Fall River Patty Migo is going to get up here in a minute and we're investing 600 thousand dollars
2:53onto tourism work we're hiring um a UMass Dartmouth to do a survey for us to see why do people come to Fall River what's the draw what can we build on and what can we make it a more creative fun place to come to what events bring people in why do they come they literally go out with clipboards and ask questions and try to see why are you in Fall River today how much are you
3:15spending those are the kind of things that a real tourism survey will do to get us back and viva's Paul Rivers experience which again led by Patty is managing the community calendar and their previous tourism campaigns they've had to make themselves an excellent partner to the city of Fall River and I am going to ask Patty if she'd come up for a couple of minutes to say a few words about Viva Fall River and where
3:40they're going with their with this with this stuff thank you I'll do tippy toes thank you so much um so my name is Patty Rigo I'm the executive director of Viva Fall River but even though I before I became the executive director of Viva Fall River I used to like to call myself the chief City Cheerleader I'm very passionate about helping Fall River and its Community uplift itself and take pride
4:07in the unique and diverse assets that can help Elevate our city and its profile as a premier South Coast destination rather than go on about the work that Vive has done in its partners because can't do anything alone that we've completed in the last two years I brought our year in review it's over at the by the door so you can take a look at some of the some of the work that
4:27we've done we don't just talk about change we play an active role in creating that change and that's the kind of energy and commitment that I'm bringing to this project working to create a foundation for a strong tourism economy in Fall River our contract with the city will allow us to focus resources on establishing a Baseline and taking stock of what we have right now to Market and leverage and conduct a
4:48research study as he mentioned to gain insight into traveler behavior and profiles so that we can begin to formulate targeted strategies and campaigns to get more visitors and dollars into our city we're going to look at also be looking at what we need for future success how we can become a true destination with infrastructure that will again attract visitors and dollars we have a great opportunity with
5:10the new Norton City Pier as well as the underutilized potential of our really valuable and gorgeous Waterfront in the coming months we're moving forward with some initiatives that highlight our unique culinary culture also on the table by the the door you would find some Bingo cards Bingo style cards for a promotion that I'm working on with my friends in New Bedford destination New
5:32Bedford and New Bedford Food Tours we are doing The Prestige and not to throw down which of course is our beloved Portuguese egg custard Tarts it's a month-long promotion whose main goal is to help spread awareness of all the great bakeries in Fall River New Bedford and markets in both cities as well for this effort I'm a big proponent of regionalism and creating collaborations that will Elevate the all of the South
5:55coasts and thereby all the cities and towns that make up the South Coast I like to say a rising tide lifts All Ships um so there are cards on the table like I said and a QR code to scan following that I also want to mention that we have our second spring Fall River restaurant week coming up that's March 25th to April 2nd I hope you'll all come out and
6:15support we're going to be ramping up our promotion regionally and throughout the Commonwealth actually to get more diners in the doors and at our local establishments and that's just the next eight weeks we have a ton more planned for the summer and the fall and we're going to utilize those research findings we talked about to really create some amazing plans for 2024. so I'm really
6:34honored to be able to to work in a city that I love and um and that I choose to raise my daughter in and yeah be of a Fall River
6:47okay I also I do want to make one other announcement a couple of our partners in city government uh they wanted to join us tonight but they had a city council meeting so they ducked down to say hi um vice president of the council Linda Pereira uh and my longtime friend from Durfee High School uh Brad Kilby so they they came down to support the event tonight now finally finally finally we get to
7:12the announcement we've been waiting for so we had six finalists and I say a prayer every night I was not on the selection committee I had nothing to do with the picks the voters did the pick uh after the selection uh committee picked the final six and uh I don't envy anybody that had to go through that um first I want to recognize a designer who was kind enough to submit an
7:42application although he didn't win it was absolutely another excellent one lance gunberg from New Bedford come on up Lance
8:02thank you thank you um and this is these these four are in no particular order they just went away with the name fell um our city administrator also had an entry in but I don't see him here tonight he probably is home crying because he knows he didn't win either um I feel bad but we'll make sure he gets his gift tomorrow Seth Aiken another well-known fall of a resident who worked extremely hard on his
8:37proposal and he's here tonight to join us or no I'm sorry he didn't make it it's a well-known far of a name uh Thomas Junta he also had an excellent design and now the hard one for me um the students from Diamond were nice enough to join the competition and two of them were right in it to the end but this young lady did not make it Lila Tebow nice work thank you very much
9:22now the winners uh this is really really special for me um I know I'm going to say this name wrong but this young lady uh she's already got a job with us next year doing face painting at the Fall River events uh don't you dare deny it either so she came in second we also did an extra little gift for her because uh she did a great thing obviously first prize was 500 but because
9:52um I've seen Sadie's work and I've seen her do the face painting and it's also money to rope her into face paint at our events she's going to win 250 dollars and a couple of gifts so come on up Sadie Sadie cruzic the second foreign
10:20okay now it's obviously everybody knows who's there's one person left I'm happy to announce the winner um of the Fall River new logo contest Nadine Messier she'll win a check for five hundred dollars thank you oh my gosh oh my gosh this is the winner right here folks
11:06thank you so much oh thank you thank you you want to say something yeah hello hi can you hear me no a little louder okay hello hi um yeah I'm about to cry this is so awesome um my we had to enter a story with our comp with our entry as to what our connection to the city of Fall River was and it's a whole long story but my great-grandmother came here in 1904 when
11:36she was 16 from Europe and um that's how my whole family started was a year she worked in the Mills when she was 16 and that was my connection to the city and my whole family grew up here in Woonsocket and I grew up everywhere and now I'm back here where my family started so this is really exciting so thank you thank you all right I gotta also thank um Elena pavita special projects person um
12:09she did a great job on this and she's the one that drove the car down the road to get this done and I got to give her all the compliments she does a nice nice job working for the city of Fall River now I can't thank you all enough for coming out tonight get something to eat we're all we're going to wrap it up now look at the uh the web company that's doing
12:28our website look at the ideas coming off Viva Fall River and thank you all very very much for coming out tonight really really appreciate it thank you