Meeting Minutes: Feb. 2017

[Christel Manning]

The Economic & Community Development group met on Monday, Feb. 20, 2017, from 6 – 7:30 pm at 20 Grand Ave. Present: Christel, Andrew, Brenda, Richard, Nathalie, Lee, Kathleen.

 

Our main agenda was planning for Riverfest 2017.

1. Road Race: Contract is signed with timer for one mile dash. Race course is set to start and end near intersection of Pine and Front; course will be certified. Dancing Lobster logo is all set. Grand Apizza will sponsor pizza 50/50 (free but only for runners). Race entry fees will benefit Friends Center for Children. Andrew will contact Alder Bernie Santiago for street closing.

2. Bands. Four Barrel Billy said yes, and they are flexible with time. Rich will confirm  that rain date works too. Carlos Y su momento Musical can do the date, but they usually get $550 which is above our budget. Lee will talk to them about lower price. Bregamos Drummers are happy to come back and will help with set up if we can get a floor/stage.  Rich applied for grant to cover cost of portable dance floor, but grant was rejected. He does not want to with with Bregamos floor again; too complicated to move. So it’s unclear if there will be a dance floor or not, which means Sweet Sixteen Dancers may or may not come. Rich has a few other ideas for getting a floor; will report back later.

3. Canoes & other water activities. QRWA can join us again on May 20, but they are not available on our rain date. Their insurance now requires a $25 copayment from the marina. Christel will talk to Lisa about this. CDBi suggested doing a boat parade (tides will be too low to do a race).

4. Budget. We will need about $1200 for the bands plus $400 for marina one day event insurance. Lee and Nathalie listed all of last year’s sponsors we hope to see donate again, plus Andrew said the race organizers could probably chip in $100 to help pay the drummers. So we should be fine. Nathalie will ask for $ from Common Ground and Anastasio, Lee will contact various other organizations from last year, Christel will talk to Rob Balduc to see if his restaurant wants to sponsor.

5. Food & beer. Lisa Fitch was unable to attend this meeting. She said Nicole Anastasio would attend in her stead, but Nicole did not come. Christel will connect Andrew with Lisa to sort out beer availability after road race.

6. Arts & crafts. We don’t have a volunteer to coordinate art/craft sale, so this may not happen this year. Kathleen proposed doing a plant sale, and Nathalie followed up by contacting Land Trust about doing a seedling sale. They are interested but we don’t have firm commitment yet.

7. Kid activities. Christel’s daughter, Sheila Hutchings will get some other teenagers to help with this again. Christel will donate the supplies.  

Sign purchase: We briefly discussed a request from Sally to purchase more signs and posters for various CSNA events. The order is relatively inexpensive (around $120) and well within CSNA’s budget. Everyone agreed Sally should go ahead.

Dining Out Night: We did this last month, so next one should be a Soup Night but we don’t have a host. So we will do Dining Out again, this time at Salsa restaurant on Grand Avenue. Date is Thursday, March 2, 6 – 8 pm.