Eastern Shore of Virginia Tourism Commission Meeting Minutes March 25, 2014 at 2 p.m. 25 A Market Street, Onancock, Virginia 23417 Commissioners in attendance Larry LeMond, Chair, Northampton County Board of Supervisors Laura Belle Gordy, Accomack County Board of Supervisors Paige Addison, Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel Carol Evans, Cape Charles House Bed and Breakfast Dawn White, Dawn Staff Present Kerry Allison, ESVATC Executive Director Laurie Chamberlain, ESVATC Operations Specialist Sarah Barban, ESVATC Content Producer Allan Burns, ESVATC Welcome Center Manager Sally Richardson, ESVATC Welcome Center and Tourism Summit Project Manager Guests Present Evelynn Shotwell, Executive Director, Chincoteague Chamber of Commerce Kristin Wills, Lower Shore Productions Meghan Neville, Lower Shore Productions Bobbie Walker, Virginia Tourism Corporation Lynn Allison, Green Valley Farm Roberta Kellam, Eastern Shore Eventacular Neal Guilder, Eastern Shore Yacht and Country Club 1. Call to Order LeMond called the meeting to order at 2:03 p.m. The consent agenda could not immediately be approved because White was running late. Prior to opening public comment LeMond took a moment to address those gathered. LeMond said that when he was appointed chairman of the board he didn t want to have to run tourism commission meetings as strictly as county board of supervisor meetings, but that recently tourism commission meetings had gotten out of hand and he would like to rein it in. Often more than one person was speaking at a time and people were speaking without being recognized. The meetings would go more quickly if there was a little bit more order, he said. 2. Public Comments Neville and Willis gave a presentation about the production company they had formed with a few others and about the music festival they planned to put on. They were currently scouting locations in southern Northampton County for a multi day, multi genre music festival. The idea was to offer camping so people could stay in the area overnight and to drive business into local establishments overnight, Neville said. Both day passes and full weekend passes would be available. The goal is to launch the festival in August of 2016. They had been looking at other regional festivals and there seemed to be a gap in late August. One aspect that would make this festival unique would be access to the beach. The water would provide people an opportunity to cool off during the festival, which would help minimize the risk of people overheating. Neville said they were looking into grant opportunities and local partners who
might want to participate in the grant process. Willis said the Virginia Tourism Corporation had been helpful with talking them through the grant process. The group was also working on a business plan to present to businesses and potential sponsors. The idea was to hold a family friendly event incorporating bike rides and 5ks, as well as hiking, kayaking and winery tours. Willis said they wanted to do the event right and so they had a lot of research to do. The goal is to create an event that would go hand in hand with what makes the ESVA special. She said they had received several letters of support, including one from Sheriff Doughty, and they had also received clearance from the Northampton County Zoning office. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel had also offered a letter of support. Lower Shore Productions was doing everything they could to ensure stakeholders are well aware of their intentions so that as time went on everybody would be supportive of the event. Kellam asked if the organization was a non profit, Willis said no. They didn t have plans to be profitable, but ultimately they are a production company and there was also the possibility that the company would put on other events, such as a monthly concert series. The idea wasn t to focus entirely on Northampton County. Neville said they did want to incorporate non profits into the event, with non profits set up at the event providing information. Walker asked if they were modeling the festival after Floyd Fest and asked how big they anticipated making it. Willis said they were thinking 1,500 people to start. They were modeling their event more after Festy, a small festival in Nelson County, which was family friendly and featured onsite camping. The idea was to keep the festival small and personable, Willis said. The idea wasn t to rake in dollars, the festival would be very carefully planned with vendors. Lower Shore Productions was looking at bringing in some big bluegrass names interested in playing micro festivals, Willis said. At this point neither county could actually accommodate anything the size of Floyd Fest, Neville said. Lower Shore Productions didn t want people to walk away unhappy because of large crowds, and they also wanted to make sure that artists walked away determined to return to the festival a second time. Addison asked if Lower Shore Productions had talked with any of the organizers of previous festivals such as the Shore Made Music Festival. They had not, Neville said. Addison said that any of those in the group that formed that festival would be great as a sounding board and to share their experiences. Willis said that Lower Shore Productions was only about seven meetings into the process so they were still collecting information and bringing stakeholders on board. Kellam spoke next. An idea had been proposed by Northampton County Supervisor Granville Hogg to set up an information tent with Eastern Shore products and information at the New Kent Welcome Center just outside of Richmond. Kellam asked if it would be possible to set it up at the Tourism Commission s welcome center at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel instead. Walker explained that you can do a demonstration for a day free of charge at a Virginia Tourism Welcome center. Allison said that if the commission could find the time, budget and a product to promote that is aligned with the tourism commission s marketing mission they could do this to build awareness about the Eastern Shore. The idea behind Hogg s proposal is that people traveling past the New Kent Welcome Center are already inbound to the Eastern Shore s market area. Allison asked if it would be possible to put up at a tent at the Eastern Shore Welcome Center. Addison said that action would have to be approved by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel Authority and that it shouldn t be a problem. Walker said that it would be a similar situation at the New Kent Welcome Center, but that VDOT would have to approve a tent being placed on the property and she didn t expect that being a problem. Walker said that Hogg or someone here on the Eastern Shore would need to supply the tent. Kellam said that so far there was a question of who would coordinate the whole effort, but Hogg had already talked to several groups, including Tall Ships, the birding festival and aquaculture producers, about pulling together an Eastern Shore tent display, but at the present time it was just an idea that needed someone to run with it. Walker informed the group that for $500 the Eastern Shore could essentially own a welcome center for a month and could fill the welcome center with any information we want. Allison suggested taking the discussion offline to get the right people in the room and decide what they were aligned to so that they
could come back later with a budget and a recommendation. The April budget meeting would be where funds would be allocated if the board decides it is a good idea. Walker said that the visitor center seminar held on Chincoteague was a huge success and she said Evelyn and her team rolled out the red carpet and there were over 100 participants from more than 50 visitors centers across the state. The Eastern Shore message can be carried to travelers headed towards the Eastern Shore because the front line tourism staff have much better information to share. Walker also informed the board that VTC placed an Eastern Shore full page ad in Southern Living for April. Walker said she felt that it was a great ad to show that you don t have to go to Virginia Beach to go to the beach in Virginia, but can come to the Eastern Shore for quaint towns, good shopping and excellent food. Walker also informed the board that a blogger had written a great article about the Inn at Onancock. Walker said a team would be coming through Chincoteague later that spring for a Drive Tourism Workshop, which Walker said she hoped she would have complete by July when she retired. She also reminded everybody that the VTC grant cycle was opening in April. Guilders spoke next. He said he primarily came to observe but it occurred to him to mention that Onancock currently didn t have any marine fuel stations because Bagwell Oil had removed their fuel tanks from the harbor, which means there is a very limited supply of marine fuel on the whole bayside of the Eastern Shore. Onancock had plans to put new pumps in but would have to do some reengineering at the harbor before they could do so, meaning it would be months before they had fuel. The country club has fuel available to all boaters, but Pungoteague Creek isn t equipped to handle large boats. Davis Wharf Marine also has fuel and is open on demand during the season. Shotwell said the visitor s center seminar did go well and now the chamber was focused on the Easter Decoy and Art Festival, the Seafood Festival and the Drive Tourism Workshop. 3. Welcome Center Report Burns said things were looking good this year as far as visitors. The welcome center was 6 or 7 percent ahead of the previous year and for the time being they were ahead of their best year. Over the weekend around 300 people per day came through the welcome center. Burns had removed a number of businesses from the website that had closed and new rack cards had been received. Blue Heron Realty committed to a spotlight display for the month of June. His top three takeaways from the visitor s center seminar were that small is significant just because you re small doesn t mean you don t have something to offer; he also observed a lot of enthusiasm about the drawings for weekend getaways offered by the TC at the seminar. Two drawings featured weekend getaways in Onancock. 4. Consent Agenda LeMond called for a vote on the consent agenda upon the arrival of White. White motioned to approve the consent agenda, Evans seconded the motion and it was unanimously approved. 5. Executive Director s Report Allison reported that an organizational meeting for the Society of American Travel Writers media tour had come up on April 22, which was scheduled as the date of the next board meeting. Could the meeting would then be held on the 29 th a budget workshop and a regular meeting? The board members agreed to get back to Allison with their availability. Allison then told the board that she had begun working on her presentation for the upcoming tourism summit. She asked for feedback from the board on what they d like to see in that presentation. She intended for it to be a brief outline of what the tourism commission was doing with the resources they were being given. LeMond asked if she had good pictures to go with the presentation and Allison said she could get some. White suggested that the mission of the commission lead the content of the presentation. Burns pointed out that at the bottom of Allison s report it showed that Burns had been paid double his normal amount, he informed the board
that he hadn t been given a raise. Northampton County accidentally paid him twice and that this would be corrected in the next pay period. Burns also informed the board that the county had an incorrect vacation and sick time accrual for him. Burns suggested that the county probably didn t know that the commission policy was that employees could carry over 48 hours of sick leave from one year to the next. He said that they hadn t accounted for that carry over but that issue was being worked out. Addison asked in light of issues such as this if perhaps the board needed to take time to review personnel policies. LeMond said that Northampton s HR department informed him that those did need to be looked at and the board needed to schedule a time to do that. Allison circled back to the content for the tourism summit TC presentation. She informed the board that the previous year they didn t have any data or numbers to present but this year we could share the story of what the commission had done over the last year. She suggested talking about tax revenue growth over the years and said she would put something together and get it to the board for them to weigh in on. Evans suggested showing off the redesigned website. Allison said she would do that and also be sharing some of the media coverage the Eastern Shore had gotten over the last year. Kellam asked if the board had seen the cover of Nature Conservancy magazine because Barry Truitt, an Eastern Shore resident, had been on the cover in November. Addison said after the first summit a survey had been done to gather feedback and asked if that feedback had been taken into account and looked at. Allison said they had taken that feedback into account. For instance they received feedback that there hadn t been enough breaks the year before so they had restructured the day with time for breaks. Water and coffee would also be offered because of requests. Evans said in planning the refreshments she noticed oysters and wine would be served and offered to do cheese and crackers from Cape Charles House to balance the menu. White said that the narrative needed to be for those who don t engage with numbers and graphs and the full spectrum of attendees needed to be reached. She liked the idea of telling the story of the commission and suggested that it all needed to be folded together. Burns commented that the top five pages in analytics showed the calendar in the top pages. Burns said that staff at the Eastern Shore Community College held science seminars and often asked people how they had heard about them and the commission calendar was at the top of the list. 6. Old Business Northampton County Fiscal Agent Allison said that staff is still working out processes with the county. LeMond asked what needed to be done still. Allison said a shallow budget report was still coming out of Northampton County. The report didn t reflect expenses prior to January 1. Allison said she and Leslie Lewis had a miscommunication and Allison was traveling and ill so a key report didn t get done in time for this month s financials. Several issues were being worked out such as Allan s payroll and sick leave issues. Getting anything done was a bandwidth issue, Allison said. Allison still didn t have a county credit card and had been using her personal card to pay for expenses. LeMond said there were going to be changes, that s a fact of being tied to the government and if the commission wanted them as their fiscal agent they needed to work with them, he said. LeMond said he was willing to help any way he could, he asked Allison why she didn t have a credit card, seeing as one of the first things the commission did was cancel her card in anticipation of her receiving a county card. Allison said Sandy Esposito was the person to talk to about it. Allison said she also didn t have an answer on whether or not the commission could use Square, a mobile payment system, to accept credit card payments for boxed lunches at the tourism summit. Using technology like Square is important for the commission because they needed to be a role model for innovation. White said five dollars in cash didn t seem like a big deal and asked if Square was necessary. Allison said it was important to be prepared for any local business owner to use a credit card. Allison said they were waiting for permission from Northampton County because Square needed to be tied to a
bank account and the plan was to deposit the money in the one open bank account the commission still had, but technically because Northampton County was their fiscal agent the commission shouldn t have any open bank accounts. Allison said there was also an issue with travel. Allison asked Esposito how the county handled meals while traveling and her only instruction had been to make it cheap, but Allison pointed out that cheap means different things to different people. Allison asked if they should use the federal standard per diem but hadn t gotten an answer yet. Allison said in her experience those on per diem could skip lunch and have a more expensive dinner, but Walker said that in her experience each meal had a set allowance. Burns said he had put in for an advance of money for his travel to Chincoteague for the visitor s center seminar two weeks in advance, but because of the check cutting cycle he hadn t received the cash he requested for the trip. He paid his $180 in expenses on his own credit card and had filled out a form for reimbursement. Burns said it seemed as if it would be easier in the future to charge travel expenses to his own card and then get reimbursed. Audit Allison said the auditors found nothing material and provided recommendations, some formal and some informal and those recommendations were being implemented. The final audit would be submitted by March 31 2015 to both counties. Tourism Summit Richardson informed the board that the tourism summit would be on April 7, registration would start at 10:30 a.m. and the event would begin at 11 a.m. and end at 4:30 p.m. From 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. there would be an oyster and wine pairing. Richardson needed six more volunteers. LeMond asked how many people had signed up and Richardson said about 90. LeMond asked how many people attended the previous year and Richardson said about 200. Kellam volunteered to help. Richardson said ads had been placed in the Eastern Shore News and on WESR and staff had visited businesses to distribute post cards for the event. Allison said that the Virginia Tourism Corporation had been a major financial partner the year before, but not this year, and that the expenses were about $4,858. The budget had been cut in half from the previous year but she didn t think it had hurt the summit. Roughly $1,500 had been received from sponsors. Allison said she hoped to receive money from ESLAND. 7. New Business Key Learnings from Artisan Trail and VTC Welcome Center Seminars Burns said his top three take aways from the VTC seminar were that even small organizations can be significant, how much the Eastern Shore has to offer and how grateful the people at the summit were to be exposed to the Eastern Shore. Burns said he got comments from a number of people about how much the ESVA has to offer. He said many people told him that they planned to come back. Burns said the post visit to the Barrier Islands Center, Chatham Vineyards and the Oyster Farm were well received. Almost a quarter of the attendees stayed for post events, Burns said. Barban shared her three take aways from the Artisan Trail Conference. Barban said she learned that the Eastern Shore trail benefitted from earlier trails that served as tests, that fundraising events would be important for the Eastern Shore trail and that the artisan trial has the potential to foster relationships with other trails in the state, particularly on the western shore. Allison shared her top three take aways, one was a simple trick from Dave Neudeck to gain more impact on shared posts on Facebook. Continuing education in social media would be important for both she and Barban, she said. Allison said she went to an entrepreneurial workshop and came up with an idea to sell local products through a digital online store hosted by the Tourism Commission. The site would feature local artisan wares for sale, and when an order came in the commission would pass that on to the artisan who would fulfill the order. White said that instead of
doing all that work the commission should use Etsy to host the store. Allison said that might work the idea is to connect visitors and local products. The commission could use it as a revenue generator by taking a cut as a middle man. Top Three Priorities Allison said number one was the Society of American Travel Writers trip in May. Several post conference trips had been planned in the coastal Virginia region for the writers. The Eastern Shore trip sold out in about a day. The coordinator for the conference asked Allison if she would open the ESVA tour up for more writers, including the president of SATW. A total of ten people would be on the tour, including Barban and Allison. Allison said Barban had also organized a completely comped media tour for a woman with the family blogging site Trekaroo. The cost of the SATW trip was at roughly $2,100. Allison had to produce 35 digital media kids for the SATW trip. There was a one day itinerary and a three day itinerary, Allison said. The one day itinerary included a trip to the barrier islands, lunch on the island and a kayak winery tour at Chatham. The second itinerary involved the whole shore. The trip started with lunch at the Barrier Islands Center provided by the Machipongo Trading Company, a tour of the BIC, a tour of the Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge, a wine and oyster pairing and dinner at Don s Seafood, an overnight stay on Chincoteague, breakfast at the hotel, lunch and a tour of Ker Place and the Waterman s Museum in Onancock, dinner at the Shanty, a stay at Hotel Cape Charles, breakfast at Cape Charles Coffee House and then a trip back across the bay. Allison said everyone was in fundraising mode between the tourism summit, Trekaroo and the Visitor s Center Seminar. Walker asked when the tour was, Allison said May 15 to the 19, and Walker suggested mentioning the tour at the tourism summit. It was one of the biggest things the commission could say they did for the Shore this year. Allison said the tourism summit was also a key priority but they had done one before so it wasn t as pressing. She said another priority was Northampton County. She said they were still working on mastering the processes. Matters by Commissioners Evans said the beach front at Cape Charles is being widened and there was an entire football field between the boardwalk and the water s edge. Walker asked how deep the water was now, because before it was great for little kids because the water was so shallow. White said she had been keeping an eye on Onancock and felt like it was going to be a great summer. Addison said they were just tunneling forward. Burns passed out brochures for the Tall Ships festival and said they had expanded by tying into Tall Ships America, meaning there would be a lot more ships and activity. The Eastern Shore would serve as the starting point for the Tall Ships Race. Next Meeting The next meeting would be scheduled pending board canvas and would begin at noon for a budget workshop with a 2 p.m. regular meeting. Closed Session A closed session was called to discuss finances. Evans made a motion at 3:15 to go into closed session and White seconded. The closed session was adjourned at 4:30 p.m. and the regular board meeting was opened. Adjournment The regular board meeting was adjourned at 4:31 p.m.