Loading...
FINAL CASE Committee Meeting Minutes 1-18-24CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2024 IN PERSON AT AVON TOWN HALL CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES, 18 JANUARY 2024 PAGE 1 | 3 1. ROLL CALL Present: Committee Chair Doug Jimenez, Committee Member Danielle McNair, Pedro Campos, Calyn Rieger Thomas Walsh and Town Council Member Ruth Stanley Staff: Culture, Arts & Special Events Manager Danita Dempsey, and Special Events Coordinator Chelsea Van Winkle Absent: Committee Member Lisa Mattis, and Justin Chesney and Town Council Member Lindsay Hardy The meeting was called to order at 12:31 p.m. 2. PUBLIC COMMENT No public comments were made. 3. MINUTES Committee Member Calyn Rieger motioned to approve the minutes from November 16, 2023. Committee Member Thomas Walsh seconded the motion and it passed unanimously. 4. STAFF UPDATE CASE Manager Dempsey quickly went through the 2024 approved budget, Fireworks in Avon Recap and Avon Arts Celebration additional date which are included in the committee packet (available at Avon.org). CASE Manager Dempsey then reviewed that the CASE committee has two open seats and there have been four applicants. There are two new applicants and two currently sitting on the CASE committee. The goal is to get in front of Council so they can choose the new committee members by end of February. Research Culture Plans CASE Manager Dempsey detailed out the plan for going to look at different communities and beginning our culture research. She explained that multiple communities could be visited together as a day trip or overnight. As well as that there could be dates where the monthly CASE meeting is canceled and the group visits communities instead. Once the team gets the communities scheduled, they will schedule time on everyone’s calendar. CASE Manager Dempsey then reviewed the Silverthorne Art and Culture plan included in the committee packet (available at Avon.org). She stated they are updating the plan in 2024 and hiring a consultant so it will be interesting to see what they come up with and what we can learn from it. When you look at the list of everyone involved, it is a lot of people to get together and figure out who best fits to make the plan. It is impressive how many people came together to make it happen. She stated that the CASE committee and staff have good structure and bones to start their cultural plan. CASE Manager Dempsey explained the work we have done with our strategic plan, may have been ahead of ourselves and now is our time. The work that Town Manager wants to do is making the strategic plan like others in the Town of Avon. One thing we have been charged with is “Culture is….” and she pointed out that Silverthorne tried to answer this through quotes. CASE Manager Dempsey told the committee that she tasks everyone to think about what culture means to you as a resident of Avon. As well as to start think about what questions we need to ask when we go visit. She explained her CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2024 IN PERSON AT AVON TOWN HALL CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES, 18 JANUARY 2024 PAGE 2 | 3 questions are what the policies are (who, the how, etc.), what was their process (in spaces, brainstorming, white board, etc.), did you do a needs assessment, what is their criteria for success, etc. From their research and plan, it looks like Silverthorne used the “Before I Die” project to help springboard and helped them develop their plans. We are charged with mapping out the steps and CASE Manager Dempsey said she liked how Silverthorne does. Before we map out the steps, do we need a needs assessment ourselves? The Committee commented/inquired: A. Are we going to make a plan like Silverthorne’s? Would a consultant help? B. I don’t think we need a specific assessment about what they want as we have asked the community already in our surveys. C. The community survey is such a massive document that some of the information we are looking for may get diluted or lost. I think it may be beneficial to have people ask those questions at events. D. A target survey that is more focused on culture and arts may be needed. E. What struck me is all the people listed that helped with Town of Silverthorne. I like that they opened it up and did an advisory committee. F. We bring in all these different aspects of the community and then send them the survey. We “choose” who the survey goes to and who are community is made up of. G. Silverthorne has done a great job in getting a shared vision to get this done. H. Besides surveys, to open the floor more is offering round table discussions. I. I liked the way Silverthorne mapped up at the steps and goals at a glance. J. Their goals at a glance are really clear. We have done a lot of this work and accomplished a lot of it too. CASE Manager Dempsey responded that when I think about the process, I think yes, we make a plan similar to Silverthorne and that may include help from a consultant. CASE Manager Dempsey said in the next community survey, we will focus more on arts and culture instead of events. The community survey will be conducted this year. She liked the idea of adding culture and arts themed questions into our Intercept Survey’s at summer events. Special Events Coordinator Van Winkle explained that Town of Silverthorne got lucky that Lake Dillon Theatre left the Town of Dillon and was looking for a space, so Silverthorne jumped on bringing them to Silverthorne and I think it really helped skyrocketed their cultural goals. With the Vail Valley Art Guild, hopefully they can help us do the same. Culture Ideas and Thoughts To get the committee thinking about the Avon Culture, CASE Manager Dempsey posed the questions, “when a visitor is coming to Avon or Beaver Creek, as soon as they exit what’s the impressions?” and “do they know they transitioned to Beaver Creek?”. There is no Welcome to Avon. The Committee commented/inquired: A. They panic because of the roundabouts. B. We still don’t have a Welcome to Avon sign. C. Denver Airport has done a campaign about aliens maybe we should poke fun at a “roundabout town”. CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2024 IN PERSON AT AVON TOWN HALL CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES, 18 JANUARY 2024 PAGE 3 | 3 D. Minturn has done a really interesting job; they have the best sign coming into town, you know you have arrived. E. Vail created these things over the off ramps, Edwards has the Mikaela Sign and Eagle has a welcome sign at the roundabouts. F. I happened to visit the City of Delta and they call themselves the city of Murals. They have collection of historic and new murals that they now focus on. G. What are we known for and identify those things. H. Do Vail and Eagle have culture and arts plans? I. Vail is building the arts in residence program and having a home base for artists. They are doing a culture arts center on the east side of the Lionshead parking garage. This facility could be many years down the road. J. The space that we have and the development coming in are their stipulations that these developers must contribute to the community. How do we make that when they develop, they are required to include art and community projects. K. The Development group could maybe put some money aside to help with arts and culture and develop more of a community. L. The Skate Plaza is a huge art opportunity, Should the art in the skate plaza be part of that budget or CASE? i) We discussed that the Skate Plaza would be a mirror of the community, through an expression of art. It is a meaningful part of the project. M. Will we be going back to the Creative Industries Summit in Pueblo? CASE Manager Dempsey stated that the Town of Avon needs to work across departments so when we build a new building, we make sure they include art. CASE Manager Dempsey sits on the Town of Eagle MEAC committee and shared that Eagle does not have a culture plan, but they are being charged with who they are, what they want, etc. She shared that she had reached out to Town of Vail, and they are in the process of finalizing their strategic plan for arts. She explained that this work is sometimes like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks or the tactics come before the vision and strategy. CASE Manager Dempsey said that the Town of Avon has a budget to take the CASE committee back to Colorado Creative Industries Summit and that if the entire committee was able to attend that, it would be fantastic. CASE Manager Dempsey again requested that the next step would be that the CASE committees begin researching and that information be compiled into a One Drive, that way everyone can drop in information and can be ready to talk about it next meeting. 5. CLOSING COMMENTS CASE Manager Dempsey gave a final update about staffing and told the committee we are interviewing a couple applicants for the Special Events position and hopefully will have someone in the seat by the end of February. 6. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 1:41 p.m. Respectfully submitted by: Chelsea Van Winkle Specials Events Manager