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Volusia County Tourist Development Council
Meeting Minutes
September 3, 2002 - 9:00 a.m.

Others in attendance:
Frank Gummey, Charlene Weaver, Rhonda, Orr, David Moore, Barney Kane, Maria Hayworth, Mike Jiloty, Gary Libby, Rick Prioletti, Jim Wachtel, Evelyn Fire, Sharon Moch, Sally Gardiner, Jon Hunter, Michael Torent, Rick Hamilton and Chad Smith.

Approval of the minutes. Mr. Stead motioned, second, Mr. Bazemore. I got motion seconded, any discussion? All in favor say "I". Motion carries.

Ocean Center and Ocean Walk Village Marketing, Mr. Jiloty. The original focus of this, as I understood it, was the Ocean Center itself, so Mr. Jiloty, not that we don’t love you, but a brief presentation would be apt.

Rick Hamilton: Before we start here, before we get to Mike, I put together for you a new marketing plan for the coming year. If you would, most of this stuff in the front you can read, if you go back to the budget, which starts on page 19. Dick asked be to put together the monies that we were spending this coming year. As we asked Mike and Maria to come back to make a presentation they made at the Ocean Walk Village the other day. Mike also works with the CDD, he also works with the County and the economic development, the Ocean Center, and the airport, so he is pretty much a representative for our advertising, marketing, and PR all the way around. He is going present to you, he and Maria, this morning our participation in the Ocean Walk Village Alliance, which is $32,000 approximately next year. The News-Journal, we advertise locally and in Orlando, our scheduled events. The next item there is the Amusement Business, that is what advertising we do for concerts throughout the country, which is minimal. The next item is our insert for Ocean Walk Village for various publications and tradeshow magazines. When we go to the tradeshows, which you’ll see in just a minute, they usually have a newsletter or a monthly publication that they sent out to everyone, all their members. That’s $15,000 this coming year. Tradeshow Week is a national publication that we advertise in their annual report and their directory. It’s $1,500 a year. Central Florida Sports Commission, the County Council, each year, appropriates $75,000 out of their budget to Central Florida Sports Commission to bring sporting events into the area.

Big John: This is otherwise known as the rip-off of the Ocean Center.

Rick Hamilton: I didn’t say that.

Big John: I vote "no" on it every year, but the rest of the County Council… Mrs. Godo said it wasn’t appropriate for it to come out of this budget, and that she would move it, but she didn’t get to it.

Rick Hamilton: The next item is the thing that I referred to in the beginning, where Mike represents the County of Volusia, economic development, in tourism development, and what they are doing. Mike you may be able to elaborate a little bit more when you come up to speak. They advertise the enterprise areas of the county, that being the airport, the port, the economic development of the Ocean Center, Parks and Rec, and we contribute to that on the basis of $35,000 per year. It pays for the advertising "The destination, Volusia County" .

Big John: Clear up: the enterprise owns the Ocean Center, the airport, and solid waste. Solid waste makes more money than any other part of the County Government.

Rick Hamilton: The Association and trade show schedule is on the next page, which will be the next thing we’ll discuss. The Florida Meeting Planners Guide, $4,500 a year and the Volusia Magazine Radio Show, that’s something that the County does, and contributes to that $6,000 a year. If you go to the very next page, you’ll see our tradeshow schedule and who is attending for the following year. It’s Lori, Jan Peter and myself. And those are the events we a going to, how much our membership costs, show cost, travel, and what have you, to the tune of $45,580 for the next year. If you go back, starting at page 23, Chad and his staff have updated convention history starting at 1995 through the present. And I am extremely proud of them for how many days they have booked and how much it has increased over the years. In 2002, which we are currently in, they have currently booked 106 convention days. This was very brief, very quick, and if it’s OK with the Chair, I would like you to take this and review it, as if we come back to the next meeting, make any suggested changes or recommendations which you might have. After Mike and Maria make their presentations, we will be happy to entertain any questions.

Big John: Just the one, I’m going to ask you, why did 1998 have so many more days?

Rick Hamilton: These are the years they have been booked in, and not the year they occur in.

Do you follow me?

Big John: OK, so now, Mr. Fornari, is this pretty much what we wanted? OK.

Larry Fornari: What’s the normal budget for advertising, if you take, the breakdown you got, I know the $75,000 is going to the Sports Commission, that was supposedly not to happen, if you take that out and take out the Volusia Magazine, it’s about $170,000 of which the majority is going to the Ocean Walk Village, that’s not even 5% of the overall Ocean Center budget. And I am just wondering what the norm would be for general convention centers as far as their advertising budget goes. This seems awfully low.

Big John: There is another number that we don’t have. Rick tell us what the inner office transfer, or whatever, for being a part of Volusia County Government, Mr. Gummey’s services.

Frank Gummey: It’s currently $53,000.

Big John: OK. That’s what the Ocean Center pays to the County for personnel services, legal services.

Rick Hamilton: I can’t answer your question, I would have to do some comparing, because I don’t know what others are doing.

Larry Fornari: The concern I have is, that we a going to have to bring people in from the outside, and if you look at the budget, and take out all the local scheduled events, it leaves very little.

Rick Hamilton: Again, I would like Mike and Maria make the presentation, so you could see what we are doing as a village and we’ll come back to it. In my mind, we are contributing to the village, but so is everyone else who is a member of that, so that’s what we are doing there.

Lori Campbell-Baker: I think that one of the reasons that we had asked to look at this too, is to see how it coincided with Highboard’s marketing plan. And whether those two purposes meet and help each other and the tradeshow schedule too, are we duplicating efforts and can we save money and people and somehow making sure, that we are not.

Big John: There is one other one, too. Cook stays in touch with you pretty good, doesn’t he? Maybe we should look at the Highboard, the Ocean Center, and the airport, all almost as one. And Jiloty, because of this huge amount of money, that you are being paid by the Ocean Center, which, I didn’t know that, because he was mostly hired for the economic development. I didn’t think you would be doing that much for the Ocean Center. Probably Mr. Hamilton was told, that this was coming out of his budget, end of conversation, I think. But, let’s hear from Mike.

And by the way Mike, at the next meeting, if you don’t mind, and Maria, I would like to see the way that the Highboard, the Ocean Center and the airport, as Mike was also hired for the airport. He does something for the airport and so I am excited to see what you’ll do for the Ocean Center, and how they all fit together.

Rich Hamilton: Mike’s firm, subcontracting Maria’s firm, represents Ocean Walk Village and our PR efforts and I have already explained the co-relation of Mike and his firm with the ? Bureau and the County, so, Mike.

 

Mike Jiloty: Thank you very much. We do do a great deal of work for different aspects of the County and we have done more work this year so far for economic development, than any other group and the division that comes in second in terms of spending, is Solid Waste. So, we are doing a lot of marketing for Solid Waste Department. For those who I might not have had a pleasure meeting, I am Mike Jiloty of Jiloty Communications. I am with Maria Hayworth of Hayworth Creative Advertising and Public Relations. A couple of years ago, the Ocean Walk Village invited us to offer a presentation of marketing of Ocean Walk Village and we participated in that presentation. We did so in partnership with Hayworth Creative Adveretising and Public Relations for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that Maria used to head up the public relations function for Visit Florida, a statewide division of tourism. And there are other things that are brought to the table, so you are really in the position, the village is, having two shops representing them, and I think it has so far worked out very well. We are very pleased. We do have books for the TDC members. We are just going to walk you through in a brief fashion to highlight some of the things that we done for the marketing perspective. On the very first page, beyond the title page, you see a rendering. The headline began with a vision. Of course the Ocean Walk Village, long before it was named, was really visualized in take part two initiatives of some of the other studies that were done. It evolved to become Ocean Walk Village, and now has really achieved some substantial critical mass in terms of marketability. On the rendering, and I say rendering, it includes illustration, it includes photography, it’s kind of somewhere between rendering and photography because as the years go by, the Ocean Walk Village is becoming more and more a reality. Everything in this rendering exists, except the second tower in Ocean Walk Resort, which is getting out of the ground now. The shops are near completion, and the rendering has been substantially cleaned up in terms of the surrounding neighborhoods. This is used extensively in tradeshows throughout the country and gives people a very good vision of what it is we have to market here. We do have a great story to tell, and Maria was able to put together an extensive press kit, which she is going to tell you about.

Maria Hayworth: One of our main objectives obviously in talking to the press is to be able to hand to them or send to them some kind of comprehensive piece that includes overall message. And the message in not only the Ocean Walk Village, and all of the alliance, but it’s also about the destination and the history of the project and the history of the destination. We are selling the destination as well, not just individual properties within the Ocean Walk Village. So, we created a media kit, or a press kit, that we mail out to over 500 editors at daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, consumer publications, trade journals. We give them to Susan McClain at the CBB when she goes on behalf the destination to different media functions.

Mike Jiloty: The press kit is show on the second graphic that is telling the story and reading all about it. It’s the page with a few press clippings. In the first couple of years, we tallied nearly a thousand column inches of coverage on the Ocean Walk Village. Much of which, includes generous reference to the destination as a whole, hotels, LPGA, to some of the other things that are featured in this destination mapped around and calculated at straight comparison over a ¼ million dollars. Our public relations program is working very well.

Maria Hayworth: To make everybody understand, that is earned media that is not priced media. So that, I think is very important and a very impressive number. If we were to have to go out to buy that advertising space or that editorial coverage on the destination, it would have cost the Ocean Walk Village and the different members of CVB, like Mike said nearly ¼ million dollars.

Big John: Do you have the breakdown we put in, the Ocean Center, $15,000?

Rick Hamilton: The same thing.

Mike Jiloty: The next page has the headline: Cyperspace. That is simply a graphic of the home page of the newly created website. We have a website for the Ocean Walk Village, OceanWalkVillage.com. I encourage you to visit when you got a moment, it not only presents the Ocean Walk Village story, but it does have detailed information on each member of the alliance. So, if a media planner were to punch out that web site and see a little bit of the meeting facilities in the Adam’s Mark for example, it’s all liste d on that web site. So, that’s a good tool for us. It has only been up a couple of months in its new form. And we are tracking its traffic. On the next page, we have an ad that headlined on the pages "an unconventional venue." One of the first things that we did, in fact, I think that we might have done this ad before we got actually started, was to create an ad to present Ocean Walk Village as an attractive venue for meetings and conventions, basically something new in Florida, something new under the sun. So, we show you a copy of that ad as one of our yearly efforts, primarily to show the positioning of media convention venue. On the next page is an ad that was created by the convention and visitors bureau. The headline on the page is: "It pays to advertise." And the headline on the ad is: "hot, cool, new." And this is an ad that was created by the CVB to generate inquiries on meetings and conventions and the program was opened up to partners. If you look at the next page, actually two pages down, we have a brochure. Before I talk about the brochure, let me have Maria tell us about the second half that was done in meeting and convention publications.

Maria Hayworth: This side is for the Florida meeting planners guide and was produced by Visit Florida, which again is the state tourism promotion agency and the meeting planners guide is mailed out to a select number of meeting planners who are considering booking venues in Florida. And also then distributed to all different trade shows that they participate in.

Big John: Maria, how do you work with Sally, meeting finders?

Maria Hayworth: She has all of our materials, if she needs the information. If she is going to a meeting or trade show, we usually work through season, because it’s more of a public relations side. So, if we know that there are going to be journalists there then we’ll have the information that is necessary.

Mike Jiloty: As far as this ad goes, we work with Sally’s department in terms of identifying publications where it would be appropriate to advertise. So, this ad is placed directly by CBB in publications that would generate leads. The ad Maria spoke of is representing Ocean Walk Village directly in the key publication of the state’s meetings and conventions. On the next page there is an actual copy of the brochure that the CBB produced, which has participation by several partners. That brochure is the fulfillment piece for the ad that I mentioned a moment ago that had the headline: "hot, cool, new". Inside the brochure is information about each of the partners in the Ocean Walk Village Alliance. There is generous reference to golf, LPGA International, the Daytona International Speedway.

Big John: Are we partners in it?

Mike Jiloty: I’m not sure who put money into it. It was a CBB offering, but each of the elements that are represented here, have contributed money to the piece. So, that’s a fulfillment piece, and on the back page of the fulfillment piece, those who have books, there is a matrix of square feet available, serves as a quick reference piece for meeting and convention planners. So they can size up what we have available in the community.

Big John: Has it worked?

Mike Jiloty: It has worked very well. Evelyn Fine has taken this piece to focus groups and has a couple of volumes of input, so we are looking at retooling the thing before we go back out to market with it.

Big John: So it has worked well, but it’s going to work better in a new format.

Mike Jiloty: Precisely. If you flip to the next page, we have a picture of an apron, and the headline of the page says "honchos". Every month, we invite about ten or so community leaders to a luncheon. It’s kind of patterned out to a luncheon meeting, or dinner meeting, that Rick used to do when he was up in Tennessee. We sent this invitation out which is an apron and has a small invitation actually attached to it. We call it "The chef’s table luncheon", and we have ten or so community leaders who come to either Adam’s Mark or the Ocean Center, or Ocean Walk and we actually prepare lunch for them. Sometimes it’s served right in the kitchen. The idea is to give the chefs a chance to show off their culinary mastery and to give the guests an overview of the Ocean Walk Village and the individual property in which they are seated. This has worked very, very well, we had about 75 or so guests so far during the different luncheons and it gets a real good reviews and we think it is a great way to get the word out about the Ocean Walk Village. Universally the comment is, that people really weren’t aware of all the resources that there are in this part of the town. They may have known something about the Ocean Walk, Ocean Center, or the Adventure land near Adam’s Mark, but they really didn’t have the big picture and they really didn’t know how the neighborhood was being marketed for both, tourism, meetings and conventions. So, that has worked very well for us.

Rick Hamilton: Mike, could you also mention, that we do for fam tours that come into town.

Mike Jiloty: I could do that. We also do that for familiarizing tours that come in town. Sometimes they are travel agents, sometimes they are writers, but in all cases it is a captive audience. People will come here to specifically learn about our community and those presentations have been particularly effective, because the stereo typical image of Daytona Beach changes before our very eyes when these people are here and get a chance to see what we have to offer.

 

 

Maria Hayworth: We had last September invited what was considered meeting trade fam, and we invited writers from meeting trade publications or efforts to come and experience first hand the Ocean Walk Village and Daytona Beach area. And we had a great turnout on that and actually when we get further down in the book, you’ll be able to see where we printed out who some of those writers are. And also, so that you’ll know, we are planning in January to invite some of the writers back again, so that they can see, instead of the hard-hat tour, they can see more of everything now up and available. The next page in your book, is celebration, actually the next two pages really go hand-in-hand. You probably remember, a few years back, there was a kite festival event here, and we brought it back this last April, and some of you were able to come and have a nice day at the beach. It was a half-day event. The Ocean Walk Village was the presenting sponsor and we solicited other sponsorships from the community businesses and organizations. And we a pleased to say, that we had fifteen, we targeted to fifteen sponsorships and we completely sold out or negotiated all the sponsorships which did include, of fact sheet, you can see too, there was the county radio station and newspaper. So, it worked out very well for us. Again, it was a half-day event of kite flying and sand sculpting.

Big John: You said the county radio show?

Maria Hayworth: No, actually the radio station in the county. We actually had the fifteen sponsors and fifteen piles of sand. We had a lot more people coming up wanting to participate. So, we felt like it was a good turnout. It was a nice family event for the local community and we do plan to have it again this next year.

Big John: How many people came?

Mike Jiloty: We didn’t have a gate or anything like that I would say we had several hundred people over the course of the day. We had a quite a few folks who wanted to participate in the sand sculpturing, more willing participants for sand sculpturing than we had piles of sand prepared for the competition. So, we think it is a good foundation for next year. We had an awful lot of comments about the fact that it was a family event being held on the beach.

Big John: What was the number one problem.

Maria Hayworth: We didn’t have enough wind. That was the problem. We know now, that the kiting event will have to be in the afternoon, instead the morning.

Mike Jiloty: As far as things learned, we’ll a little more wide open in terms of encouraging people to participate in the sand sculpturing part.

Big John: Seems to me that parking would have been the number one problem that we had. Or that it was hard to get to. I know that your star in the picture there, Mr. Green had hard time getting there. And when it is done, if it ever gets done, we’ll be in the 28th final day of the parking garage negotiations, people will get there much easier. And we will make that successful and we will make the parking garage a part of the event, so it will be user friendly.

Mike Jiloty: We look toward to that. The event was a good one. We have a good and solid foundation for next year. I think we’ll be doing it again next year as Maria said it was a good turnout for sponsorships, another nice benefit of it was that built into the financial model was that we were going to raise some money for charity, and the chosen charity was Futures, which helps our public schools and we raised $1,700, so, we did not only break even, the first year, but still ended up with a profit for the schools, which I thinks was a very good thing.

Maria Hayworth: Yes. The next page talks about the promotions, and this really actually covers a couple of different things; promotions and the actually bartered vacation packages and give-a-ways. And also promotions in that we are very active on some of these organizations. For national tourism week for example we worked with the Central Florida-Polk County CBB and gave away vacation package that they ran in their area, promoting people to come and visit a nearby destination during national tourism week. We work with a radio station in Chicago and Daytona International Speedway for Pepsi 400, where we provided some vacation room nights with tickets and we were able to get again media exposure. And, again, there is no outlay of cash here, this is just pure, we are giving away some rooms that we had and they were giving away the tickets and we exchanged that for the media exposure on the radio station. The same is done with WFTV, which is obviously the ABC affiliate here. As Mike mentioned, with Visit Florida, we are very active with. I used to work as their director of public relations and I’m now the Chair of their PR Task Force, so we work hand-in-hand on lot of programs with them and keep in touch with a lot of activities that are going on there. Public Relations Society of America, they have a very, very active tourism and a travel component to that, and we participate very heavily with them. They do have an annual conference, where you can participate as a tradeshow vendor, and they invite travel editors from around. They get a very good attendance to that, so we are able to exhibit and promote different destinations or organizations at that time that we represent. Florida National Festival, we work with them and handle their public relations, so again, we are looking out for the Ocean Walk Village and their best interest and make sure that we get any kind of inclusion in that. Wings and Waves, I know that Mike’s crew worked with them and they are planning an event again this year.

Mike Jiloty: It’s going to happen again next year. We handled their national media relations last year and when we are in a position like that, we are in good position to make sure that the tourism element is properly represented. So, we make sure that this entire neighborhood is properly recognized in promotion in Wings and Waves. And then there is a county seal as well, and obviously we have done well in the county. We identify ways to cross promote on regular basis, so again, we are in good position get leverage for each client. Beyond the blue sheet is a typewritten page, it’s just a recap of the report that we made to the Ocean Walk Village Alliance last week, and then beyond the pink page is a copy of a media release that summarizes the results of the first two years of promotion of Ocean Walk Village. I think that our next major promotion for Ocean Walk Village will be the opening of the shops. That will ad a new dynamic to the neighborhood and will give us an excuse to in terms of publicity and marketing, so, with that we’ll answer any questions.

Big John: Date?

Mike Jiloty: Date. I think it’s the Thanksgiving weekend. I am not sure if that is the official date or not.

Maria Hayworth: I think they are opening and their grand opening is the fir st week in December.

Rick Hamilton: One of the things that we were extremely successful with was on page one after the blue page, Maria and Mike were successful on a media tour. If you look at the list of Mike’s agency was represented on that media tour, it just seems that every major convention publication in the country. That goes a long way.

Maria Hayworth: It does. And if you look at the list of the writers, we have a really good cross section. Travel Weekly, that represents the travel/trade side. When you look at the Florida publications, which we all know the drive market is very important to the visitation. So we had a good representation of Florida publications. Like Rick said, on the meeting side, Successful Meetings, Meetings and Incentives, Meeting South, those publications are just the best that you can get. They are the cream of the crop of the meeting/trade publications.

Big John: Did you invite Suzie and Sally to that?

Maria Hayworth: Yes, they participated. Actually we had, again, more on when we are working with editors, we try to include more of the public relations side. So were Susan McClain and Angela participated, because they are the ones that deal with the editors on the daily basis.

Big John: But, whatever you do, you include CBB?

Maria Hayworth: Absolutely.

Big John: Ocean Center pays $15,000. Who else pays $15,000?

Rick Hamilton: The Adam’s Mark, the Ocean Walk Resort, Fairfield, the parking garage was in, but they are kind of in negotiations. Waiting for a decision. If the things work out, they’ll come back.

Mike Jiloty: For marketing purposes, we had not removed the parking facility, or to venture into our story, because we think that, that’s an important part of.

Big John: Just so Mr. Gummey hears this, OK, we are going to get a report from Mr. Gummey in just a matter of a second here, but I would not see the Ocean Center paying twice for the parking garage which benefits the folks across the street a lot more than it benefits the Ocean Center. I mean, they’ll have to pick up the slag from that.

Lori Campbell-Baker: Why do you say that? We do pay twice now?

Rick Hamilton: No. The Ocean Center pays the same amount. What’s happened in the parking garage negotiations, is they are behind, OK. When all this works out, hopefully, they’ll catch back up. We are not paying any more, nor is any other member in the Alliance.

Lori Campbell-Baker: OK.

Big John: OK. Any other questions for Mike and Maria?

Rick Hamilton: The parties again: The Ocean Center, Fairfield, Ocean Walk Resort, Adventure Island, and the parking garage.

Jim Bazemore: The shops are their separate entity?

Rick Hamilton: The shops have been, they were originally with Ocean Walk Resort, where probably this next year, we are right now talking to them and think that they should have a membership of their own.

Lori Campbell-Baker: Are the shops now owned by The Ocean Walk?

Rick Hamilton: It started out as one developer and when we started the Alliance, and as it has evolved, like Fairfield came in, and as it evolves, we’ll have more and more people coming into the Alliance.

Big John: Other questions?

Gary Libby: Is there an opportunity for Peabody and the city to get involved in the Alliance once the auditorium is…

Big John: We’ll talk about that is just a second. These folks would not know about that. Mr. Gummy, give us a quick update on the parking garage and Peabody.

Frank Gummey: It is status queue. The parking garage, Central Parking, has agreed to operate through 12th of September, and negotiations. I’m hopeful that a progress is being made, but it’s not over until everybody agrees. It seems like we more in the detail stage than large concept stage.

Big John: Let me give a tiny little better update than that. As I understand it, Haskel Peck will fade off into the distance for owning us money not yet negotiated. The other one is that Central will run the garage under the direction of Mr. Hamilton and the county at some level will have the authorization to change parking prices, which is what I talked about on the thing. I think if you are going to hold a kite-flying, community event, it’s very difficult to get the families that don’t have a lot of money to pay $5 to park. And I would take a long term, but there would be some kind of a county parking pass for non-peaked periods for festivals. And that might translate to Wacky Towers, tower parking for Wacky Wednesdays, and that the Boardwalk would have parking every Wednesday, you know. That’s the way we need it. We need to start calm our people to get in. They hate the parking garage. Nobody is going to go in there, unless they are forced into it, so we have to prior to that, Mr. Hamilton needs to make sure that it’s clean, re-landscaped, and safe, and have courteous employees. And we know that Chad and Mr. Hamilton can do that if it’s worked out contractually. Central said, that they’ll do anything to stay, that would make us happy, and I said that if you can make Mr. Hamilton happy, that would make me happy. If I really want to get them, I would ask that Ms. Godo will receive the parking garage with the white clove approach, but we don’t dislike them that much do we Charlie. OK, so that was the wonderful update on the parking garage. Can we do that with Peabody?

Frank Gummey: We have had some discussions with the city administration, howeve r, we have no formal response to our offer in February.

Big John: But we are starting to get a little closer together?

Frank Gummey: We are talking.

Big John: I think that we are more positive at this time Mr. Libby, but nobody wants to get specific.

Gary Libby: Can you restate what your offer of February is for the public, please?

Frank Gummey: We offered to manage the facility.

Gary Libby: Under what terms?

Frank Gummey: Under terms of that would enable us to capture our operating costs and increase revenues for the city by a much greater utilization of it.

Gary Libby: Any specifics?

Big John: It is hard to get specifics.

Frank Gummey: 30% of the revenue.

Gary Libby: So, that was the offer that Rick, you and I have seen.

Rick Hamilton: Yes, that’s the offer that you have seen.

Gary Libby: OK. Thank you.

Big John: Any other questions of Mr. Gummey? Mr. Gummey, you always make the meeting just a little bit better. And don’t worry all of you lawyer lovers out there, Mr. Gummey gets his shots in at the County Council meeting. He will do, when he’s got ten lawyer supporting him on Thursday. Now we will the level of excitement one step higher and Charlene, you are on. Charlene is going to tell us all about how we collect the tax, how we audit the tax, and everybody is very excited about this report. Charlene, we waited for months for it now.

Rick Hamilton: And Charlene, I apologize, I thought Rhonda and David were taking your place and that you would not be here.

Charlene Weaver: I originally wasn’t.

Big John: I don’t dislike Rhonda enough to introduce her when Charlene is sitting there.

Charlene Weaver: Well, Rhonda would probably do a better job with this than I am.

Big John: What else is that you have to do, I mean if you want someone else to do it it’s OK with me.

Charlene Weaver: Well, I have Barney Kane, he is the director who is here, who oversees this part of our finance department and Rhonda and David More we heard him to talk about the refunding.

Big John: And he is our financial advisor and the County Council almost slipped a $25,000.000 bond issue past us, but they pulled it off first, for some other reason, and told them that we needed to discuss it here. Remember, that we had said, that one of the rules would be that we would try to discuss things and made a mend to the County Council which is something that they are not quite comfortable with yet, but we are doing better. So, we are going to discuss a $25,000,000 bond.

Charlene Weaver: The first two sheets, Barney is probably the most knowledgeable here, and most of you probably knew how this works as far as how the money is collected. We did provide you with some basic information on the first two sheets. It kind of gives you a recap of how we collect the money and if you have some specific questions on that, I am going to let Barney answer on those, but what I would like to do, is just briefly go over.

Big John: I thought you would tell us how much it cost you to collect the tax.

Charlene Weaver: I am sir.

Big John: OK. I always worry about paragraphs, you know, were we could have a number instead.

Charlene Weaver: Let’s see, this is typical of Big, he never let’s us get through our presentation before he starts asking these questions.

Big John: That’s right. I’m helping.

Charlene Weaver: We try to think of what he might ask us when we prepare, but we are not always successful. If you look on the page four, which is how much we collect, how that money is spent and what we gave you was this fiscal year. It shows that we collected about $237,000 and then how we send that and the first line of the expenditures is specific expenditures that are utilized by us to pay for our staff that handles the collections and the reporting regarding these revenues. Then we have operating expenses which are about $35,000. Mostly have to do with software, is that right, Barney?

Barney Kane: Correct.

Charlene Weaver: And then we have some administrative overhead which is within the revenue department, which is Barney and myself and some payroll clerks and some micro analysts and some network people, folks that have to handle the system itself and that’s about $15,000. And then we had some hardware capital costs, of $18,000. And then we have some general administrative overhead, which is people like Mr. Gummey, and the accounting department personnel, purchasing, county manager’s office, the county council, and those numbers are calculated by our budget department. And that gives us a total of $230,243. Now, these are estimates, and sometimes we come in a little bit over and sometimes we come in a little bit under. But this will give you some idea of how we spend the money.

Jim Bazemore: This is how much you charge, how much we collect in this period, $6,000.000?

Charlene Weaver: Total between the Ocean Center and the three authorities is about $11,000,000 I think.

Big John: Do you charge the Ocean Center the same amount?

Charlene Weaver: No, we charge the Ocean Center, well we take our 2% for the Ocean Center.

Lori Campbell-Baker: So, this is the cost of collecting for all of those entities.

Charlene Weaver: Right. We take 2% of the general taxes. This 2% is on the $11,000,000 that we collect. Now, there are some other cases they collect 3%. We just can’t justify collecting 3%, we don’t have enough expenditures to justify that.

Jim Bazemore: Is there a legal limit to you can collect?

Charlene Weaver: 3%

Jim Bazemore: You can collect 3%, but you are taking only 2%.

Charlene Weaver: We are taking 2, because we can only justify 2.

Big John: It’s up 2. Remember we did that in late 80’s, didn’t we? When we said that we could collect better than the state can for less money. I thought that the state was charging more than that at the time. OK, on the next page, Charlene, you are going into…

Charlene Weaver: The next page what we did, was got some information on the audits. The decision to reduce a number of audits was made by my processor, and I asked Barney to go back and collect some information on the audits that had previously been done and how much revenue had been generated and basically the basis where the decision to reduce the audits. I would have to concur with the decision, and you’ll note that the last, I’m on the very last page next to the last paragraph shows that of the 136 audits, 5% of those audits generated 80% of the revenue. So, 7 audits generated 80% of the revenue we received in the 6-7 year period.

Big John: Was this a field audit?

Charlene Weaver: Yes, these are audits, where they actually are doing the wo rk. We also had some desk audits, and with 136 audits completed, and 82 of those resulted in 0 revenue, and I think a bulk of those were done in the office. Compliance audit.

Jim Bazemore: What is the procedure for an audit either in the office or on the field?

Barney Kane: It varies. If we are dealing with a condominium association, we might just go through the management company, ask them to identify the rental unit. Then we sent a compliance letter out to those folks and say just in case you are not aware, you are supposed to be collecting tourist development tax, and this is how you do it, and we don’ t show you registered with us to perform that function. And then they might get back to tell us that they no longer rent it.

Jim Bazemore: What’s you procedure on following up on that? I suppose, you go out to audit somebody, you sent them a bill, or it’s supposed to be a bill, owners don’t comply, what do you do then?

Barney Kane: Then we offer to levy their bank account to secure that money. We have all kinds of enforcement powers, which we can use when something fails to collect. When we have identified you as someone who should pay, and you either refuse to pay, or fail to admit, then we can seizure your bank account or levy your bank account or, and we do that.

Lori Campbell-Baker: So all of these where there is money owed, delinquent collections, there then were some legal action against.

Barney Kane: Or maybe just a thread wire, legal action, we might settle that. If the money did come to us through a normal billing cycle, we had to go after them.

Lori Campbell-Baker: So we did get that back.

Charlene Weaver: And that goes to the heart of the decision regarding these audits, because the money is in the collections. When we identify people who owe us money, it’s going after them and getting the money. That’s were you get the large sums of money, when people a delinquent. That’s were our staff spends most of their time, and that’s were we get most of our money. It is in the collections area, going after it.

Jim Bazemore: In construction so much, things popping out of the ground all over the county, how do you make sure that you don’t miss somebody just came in last year or two?

Barney Kane: We contact the sales tax people through the registration process that they go through, to register to collect sales tax for the State of Florida. We use that as the main method.

Charlene Weaver: On the audits, we a going to do a couple of things, I’ve asked Barney to look with his staff and come up with some methods of going after audits that will have a possibility of generating substantial revenue or some revenue vs. just working randomly and also working with the department of revenue sales tax folks. When they are doing audits, there is a possibility that they can also look, we can contract them to do some audit work for us. So, we are looking at both of those things, and being really aggressive on the collection side.

Tom Staed: They do a very excellent in-house auditing.

Lori Campbell-Baker: So, the cost of the audits is in here somewhere, right?

Charlene Weaver: Yes, it’s a part of the budget under our staff.

Jim Bazemore: I have a question. So you can collect 3%, but you collect only 2. Do you really, in your opinion, need the 2% to do the job right?

Charlene Weaver: Yes sir, I believe so.

Big John: They have $7,000 left over from the $337,000, right.

Charlene Weaver: Yes, and sometimes we are over and sometimes we are under, it’s an estimate each year.

Gary Libby: Giving the overall economic growth for the county, what in your estimate is the percentage of uncollected tourist tax dollars? You’ve got to have some ballpark idea of what you are missing.

Barney Kane: I really don’t, I would say that we don’t have in the hotel/motel world almost none. Now in the condominium world, when we have casual renters out there who are escaping taxation, I am sure we do, but they are a small tip in the iceberg, so we build the resources where we can make the most money.

Big John: Now, Charlene, you said that you doing field audits, going out to the field and actual auditing a property.

Charlene Weaver: Not at this time. What I asked as a part of the review, is to look into developing some guidelines and targeting some areas where we expect we can generate revenue. And the reason is, because previously they were doing all these audits, we were spending a lot of money, we were spending more money than binging in. So, it just did not make a lot of sense. So, as you can see, only seven of the audits produced 80% of revenue. We are going to try to find some way to target high-risk areas and audit those, which would give us a better chance of generating money. You know, basically, being more effective in using our staff’ s time.

Big John: Now, Mock just got a hunk of money about a month ago, right, several hundred thousand dollars, $114,000. You guys found it. And of that, you probably had penalties and interest, right.

Charlene Weaver: Was that on collections? That was on the collection side.

Barney Kane: Right. That did not result from an audit.

Big John: That was just some that was late?

Barney Kane: Exactly.

Big John: Then, did that money include penalties, or do you keep the penalties to yourself?

Barney Kane: No, it’s distributed. Whatever we collect in the interest and penalties, is distributed.

Big John: And did we get all the interest and penalties on that?

Barney Kane: We didn’t get all the penalties.

Big John: We didn’t. And who makes that decision?

Barney Kane: I do.

Big John: Does this get reported to anybody?

Barney Kane: Yes, it gets reported to Charlene.

Big John: And whom does she report to?

Barney Kane: I don’t know.

Big John: So, in other words, it’s, let’s make a deal?

Barney Kane: I mean the penalty can be three, four, six, eight times as much as the tax. It’s a compliance handler rather than something that you expect to collect every nickel of.

Big John: It’s like (?) enforcement?

Barney Kane: Exactly so.

Big John: OK, any other questions for Charlene and Barney?

Sharon Mock: I have a question. You mentioned that $114,000 distribution, when we received our report they put it in that months collections, and we felt that it should have gone down on the adjustment line, and that it excuse the actual collection for that month. Is that not right? Does that seem logical to you?

Barney Kane: I don’t know because the months when they should have been constructively received, and it wasn’t, it askewed those months too, so if you go back and identify not by month received but by month when it was owed, the way to make it right would to go back and adjust those reports also.

Sharon Mock: Could you do that?

Barney Kane: We could. I’m not sure that it’s important to the authorities that we do that.

Sharon Mock: It is important in, that that’s the measurement we use how a business is doing throughout the year. And when we a really short or really over, comparison is done year to year.

Barney Kane: But it seems like we can’t report to you on the first of the month money that wasn’t constructively received that month because we haven’t done the research to verify the accounts out.

Sharon Mock: It would be nice to have that as well. We did not know, that you were able to project that. You are able to project that, are you?

Barney Kane: No, that’s what I am saying. When we report to on the first of the month on the month the information for the preceding month, we really don’t have any way to project at that point how much in these delinquent collections we are going to collect.

Gary Libby: It’s the catch-up that we are concerned, right. It’s how we report the catch-up dollars, because it took us for a while to anticipate that those were catch-up dollars. It looked like they were used to bubble up in business in that month. We all got the reports. I guess, the question is, when you do get a catch-up amount, can it be redistributed and add it in the month where it should have been reported without getting rerouted to the adjustments.

Tom Staed: If you just gave them the months it came from, I think and adjust our records, and she could adjust her numbers to perfect that.

Charlene Weaver: I think we can provide you that information, so that you can use that however you desire.

David Moore: I’m David Moore, with Public Financial Management that service the county ’s financial advisor. You may remember about a year ago, we did a little presentation on tracking the history of the bonds that we used to finance this facility. In that point we referenced that if interest rates stayed low about this time in 2002, we would be able to refinance those bonds, and were are here, the rates are still low, that’s the report. The bottom line is, we have gone through all the document preparation and all those things required to refinance the bond, and have before the county for this Thursday approval of those documents so that two weeks from then, we can sell the bonds, a week from then, and there will be savings about, this is as of Thursday last week at about $4,000,000. Which is about $135,000 per year. That is refinancing all of the existing $22,000,000 would be the new financing and it’ s paying off $23,100,000 in bonds.

Big John: We have a 92 page document here, which is the actual document produced for the County Council for anybody who would like to see. Any questions for David?

Tom Staed: Is there any way to finance the cost of some amount of additions to this facility in advance?

David Moore: There is tax laws that govern how long you can have tax free proceeds until you spend the money. If I remember correctly, using the existing tax, there was about $913,000,000 of capacity. You could do that, you’d have to spend all the money within three years, or they would be complications. Most likely what you are going to do, is to wait until you had something more specific.

Tom Staed: How much do the primes vary. What are we paying on the bonds?

David Moore: Right now, you are paying on the average, every year the interest rate is different, on average the interest rate right now is 5%. It will about 3.6% when we are done. These bonds were 30 year bonds in 1983 which means that final maturity is in 2013, so there is really only about 10.5 years left. So, you have really slipped down, what we call a year curve rates. Rates are very, very low.

Jim Bazemore: You didn’t point it out, every time that you refinance, do you extend the time period or just that cut-off time stays.

David Moore: You could, but at this time we are not.

Jim Bazemore: Have we ever done it?

David More: I don’t believe so. I think the original financing was for 30 years, which would be 2013 and the bonds we are refinancing go to 2013, so we are not changing the structure at all. We are essentially level, were the debt service stays exactly the same as it was, except that is about $130,000 less per year.

Larry Fornari: That’s a net savings?

David Moore: Yes, that’s net of everything, correct.

Jon Hunter: What was the principal balance of the financing in 1983.

David Moore: The original, I think it, there was $29,000,000 bonds issued 1983. When the refinancing was done in 1986, that increase a couple million dollars, because you have to pay off the old bonds, and so forth. In 1993, the principal amount was about $33,000,000. A significant amount has been paid off in last ten years to down about $23,000,000.

Jim Bazemore: So every time that you refinance, it goes higher?

David Moore: Just like your mortgage on your house, a lot of people are financing their title insurance and all those things and your interest rate is significantly lower, same thing here, you have costs you have to pay us, you have to pay underwriters who sell the bonds, all the attorneys. You have to pay a call premium. If there is $20,000,000 in bonds outstanding, there is a 2% call premium, that ’s $400,000 more, so almost always your principal amount goes up when you are refinancing.

Tom Staed: What is your projection on, where the bonds are headed as far as rates are concerned?

David Moore: If I was really good at that, I would be on some island rather than here. One of the reasons we are pushing this through, we don’t think it’s going to get any better. I mean, you are talking about all time, at least my lifetime, and almost everybody here, low interest rates. When you can get 11-12 year money at 3.5%. So, we don ’t necessarily think that the rates are going up in the next month, or two, we don’t think that they are going to get better. When you get to the end of the recession or slow time in the economy, what happens in the bond market is, you don’t get much warning when the rates head up.

Tom Staed: I wish we were three four months further along, if we were to do this project, it would be advantageous.

Big John: I want to pursue that. You said, that if we were to do a bond thing, how much more do we have that we can get for a new building.

David Moore: Of the existing revenues, between $11 and $13,000,000.

Big John: OK, and Charlene, somewhere a number sticks in my mind at $49,000,000, what’s that?

Charlene Weaver: That was the original penny.

David Moore: If you did an additional penny, and did 30 years financing, you could pick up about $30,000,000 just from that penny.

Big John: Is that just the Halifax area?

David Moore: Yes. And then you ad the other $11-13,000,000 and you end up with a total of $40,000,000.

Big John: OK, and you said that we can do that and then we don’t have to spend money for three years before we get hit with arbitrage, right?

Frank Gummey: You have to spend it all in three years.

David Moore: When you go borrow the money, one of the people in this room have to sign a certificate that says you expect that money to be all spent within two years. You are given another year in case projects get delayed, things like that.

Big John: And then we get hit with arbitrage, right?

Charlene Weaver: Yes, basically you earn more interest than you are allowed, you have to pay it back, correct.

David Moore: Yes, if you are paying 4% and you earn 5%, you have to give back the difference.

Big John: That’s not terrible.

Frank Gummey: Not only do you have to give it back, you have to give it to the United States treasury.

David Moore: Right.

Big John: Well, I guess we just have to make the decision as soon as we can.

David Moore: This is a good time to borrow. Your financing capacity drops as the rates start heading up. So, if the consensus is there, you want to move as quickly as possible. It’s not uncommon for entities do a start-up financing, whether is $10 or $20,000,000 on paper for certain things, and then get the rest later.

Big John: Any other questions for David? Alright, thank you David. Mr. Wachtel.

Jim Wachtel: Last month at the Council meeting, the Chairman asked us to develop a design fee for taking the design project to the next level. And we thought, and worked considerable about how to do that and to give the council the product that you can be assured of. Now, when you are designing a $20-30,000,000 project, which is how we came out of the council meeting last week. That is a lot of work, a lot of people, in order to produce the design document, the legal documents, the testing that needs to be done, and it is a considerable amount of money that the council is going to have to approve. Be it this council or the County Council. At this point, I don’t think that the council has, we have a lot of numbers, we have a lot of ideas, but no one real product that you all have seen that says, this is what we are going to build, this will work, and this is the amount of project that we can do. In order to come up with full schematic design on that, we are talking several hundred thousand dollars. And I don’t think, that in you all’s best interest you all should approve that amount of money without having something that you know can work and go on. So, we developed this in three different phases. The first phase, and these are incremental steps to get us to that end of schematic design. First phase is to take the numbers and the ideas that we have been talking about for the past six months, and actually come up with floor plans, elevation sections, possibly a mass model of what a Phase I of the expansion would look like. How big it is and how it would function. And then how that would grow into the full development that the C.H. Johnson report told us we need to do. We don’t want to build something that we can’t then expand to the final aspect of it. The first phase of this will give us a product that you could look and say "yeah, that’s 40,000 square feet of meeting room space, there is a 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, that works the way we want to, that will be a product that we can sell to the meeting people, and that this will cost this much, that we can afford to do this taxing, or the tax revenues and the bonds." That’s the product that you need, that we all need in order to go to the next step. Once we develop that product, and you have looked at it and said, that yes, you feel confident that we can go on and build this thing and find money for it, there are a number of steps that we have to do to go onto the full schematic design. We got parking and traffic issues that Rick Prioletti is going to talk to you about, about the City of Daytona Beach in the Main Street redevelopment, and we have been talking about the traffic impact for a long time. We need to look at those. With this product, what kind of impact is it going to have, where are these people going to park, what can they do. We need to know that 40,000 square feet of meeting rooms space is fine, but is it one big meeting room or ten meeting rooms or combinations. We need really program at the master plan, how this function works, how it relates to this building, how it relates to the new exhibition space. So that the master planning step is next, after the product is looked at we say, yes, that’s it. Does it really work the way we want to and defining that scope, defining that function, from there we can go on and talk about how it’s going to be air conditioned, how the electrical is going to be distributed, what it is really going to look like, how cars are going to move around here, how the landscaping is going to be, and going into the full schematic design. The second two phases of that are dollar figures that really the staff and the Tourist Development Council can not approve on they own, so that’s going to have to go before the County Council, and that’s obviously going to take a lot more competence and a lot more numbers that we have right now. The first phase, the step one in the concept development can be approved by staff and this council, and it will then give you a product. Our goal is to give you a product that we can have cost estimate attached to and you know that this particular project is ex amount of square feet, it sits on the side like this, it functions as Rick needs it to, and the visitors community and it’s going to cost this and stay within the budget. That’s our goal on the first phase on the concept development. Knowing that it then has to go and been tested in this full schematic design later on. I have said in here, that we can do the first phase in approximately four weeks, and I think that we can do that, but I would like to break that apart so that we do some of that and bring back an interim report to you all and to the users who are really going to evaluate, can that work, do we need to modify that, do we need to ad, change, or do whatever to give you all an intermediate review maybe in the next TDC meeting and after that we define that plan and concept and bring it back to you two weeks or four weeks later. I want to build that review time with TDC on this concept.

Tom Staed: How much of the $23,300 is in the step one that you are going to do before you bring us back step two?

Jim Wachtel: Step one is all $23,300.

Tom Staed: But you were breaking step one, I thought in A and B.

Jim Wachtel: No, the whole schematic design is going to be several hundred thousand dollars. So the first step, step one, is the concept development and then go on into the master planning and programming.

Jim Bazemore: But Jim, you just said, that you wouldn’t a part of this. I understood it has Tom did, the first concept you want to come back in two-three weeks. Is that the whole $23,300? Or do you want to have two phases before get approved that $23,300?

Jim Wachtel: No, that will be the one step with an intermediate review in the middle of it.

Jim Bazemore: But, you have committed the money right now, so far as that goes.

Jim Wachtel: That’s correct.

Tom Staed: I guess that this is got to be in some point in time. Do we submit step one to the county if this group approved it? And where do you get to the stage where you are going to approve the cost, the ultimate money needed to do the project? Is it after step one?

Jim Wachtel: If we come back with step one, and it’s within the $25-30,000,000, I would assume that you could approve the whole project at that point in time. You may want to delay that approval until you study it some more, do the master planning, and do some schematic design, go on an approve some other design work, and at the schematic design, then approve the whole project, $25,000,000, $30,000,000. It might go down to $20,000,000 based on your studies.

 

Tom Staed: Sooner or later, the sooner the better seems to me, we got to, this group’s got to recommend a course of action to the County Council about ultimately paying for the $25,000,000. I don ’t mind them agreeing to pay $23,300, but going much beyond that seems to be…Who would make an ultimate decision on that. It’s not our decision, but the County Council’s decision and the County Council is 65 days away from having new participants. Or they could have some, could have none, I don’t know. Or it could be more than two, so, it seems to me that we have been dancing with that issue for a long time and pretty soon we got to do it, because they are going to have to do it. You can’t go much further without saying that we are going to fund it. Because you don’t want to spend $6 or $700,000 or three or four hundred, what ever it is, without saying that we are going to do the thing and here is how we are going to do it.

Big John: I think that it’s going to have to be approved either after step one or after step two. I don’t care which one it is. I remember Herb Sussman cost us a ¼ million on the airport. And we designed an entire Midfield Airport terminal which never got built. That was a bad deal, so we don’t want to get too far into this before we decide whether it’s going or not. Which means that we are going to have to decide on the penny pretty early on too.

Tom Staed: Or some other source.

Big John: Well, we looked at pretty hard at the other source, but we came up pretty empty, so, we are going to have to come up with another source yet. So, do you want to make a motion that Wachtel proceeds, but maybe we need to…What I think, I hear Mr. Wachtel saying, is that he would like to have a decision before Ward leaves.

Tom Staed: I am open on the step two. That decision would be from the County Council.

Big John: Yeah, Ward is gone the first meeting in November. Once the election day hits, he is gone. So, there is one member who is gone.

Sharon Mock: Frank, did we determine that you could add the extra penny in southern district or…?

Frank Gummey: Yes.

John Masiarczyk: We a talking about the issue that is east side totally. I mean, the grand idea in 1983, about this being a county wide facility might have some validity back then but it sure doesn’t today. That means this is not a facility that the west side has any concern. And I have been trying to talk it up. We have been here for a year, and I know that based on legislation, yours, the largest city has a person on here, but I think that if we are going to separate financial aspects, we should separate the entire thing. I have a hard time thinking, Jim and your group, you would have fantastic abilities if we could start him on phase one. I have been here for a year, and I don’t see consensus with this group on what they want to do. Until we give him some kind of direction, how is he going to prepare this in four weeks? The conceptual floor plan, we beat to death.

Big John: Well, we got to first approve a 100,000 square feet of meeting room.

John Masiarczyk: We have agreed on something, but at every meeting is changes a little bit. I would like to see one final meeting where you’d put a chart on the wall and say "OK, we want this much" and then make it work. I am too uncertain to be voting on this, until we have a meeting where we can have a vote of the people here, and we say "OK, $100,000 on this and $30,000 on this.

Big John: I thought we had agreed to that.

John Masiarczyk: We talked about it a lot, but I haven’t seen, you know…

Tom Staed: Mayor, let me ask you a question. Did you just say, that you want to take the west side and the southeast to the board? You want to take the two pennies that they are paying now rather than the original situation.

John Masiarczyk: I didn’t say that. I said that the decision making process that was set up needs to probably be looked at. We have looked at long term, a lot of financing. We have looked at 30 years, we looked at a lot of things and some of that is tied in to the original money from the west side. If you are going to do some additional financing, and we are looking at that. What about the share that the west side is paying to this side? You are talking about separating that for collection purposes because the majority of the money is collected over here. But if you go to the west side to look for facilities, there are none at all.

Big John: Are you saying the next one penny, or are you talking about the previous.

John Masiarczyk: We haven’t gotten into that. We haven’t looked at the east side, west side split. We haven’t discussed that in any length, but I think it is only right, that I mention it. I find it very difficult for me staying here and being against or even for that has absolutely on affect on the west side of the county. Your original intent was that this would be a countywide facility, but that is not a conditioned to that any more. Not when you’ve got a 100,000 people down there, that we had maybe 6,000 or 10,000 in 1983. I mean, it’s just totally changed. And the new growth is there. And for this facility being a countywide facility, it’s just not…

Big John: Well, Gummey lightly mentions, that we could split up to three districts. And additional penny could come from just this one district. And that’s the way I am thinking.

John Masiarczyk: But it is still financed with money coming from the west side.

Lori Campbell-Baker: I’m just wondering, if you’d split the second part of it, doesn’t that sort of open the door. If the second part is not valid, isn’t everybody going in to jump onboard and say we don’t want the first part either?

John Masiarczyk: That’s my point. They brought it up and I didn’t want to go any further without at least airing it. I haven’t brought it up because I haven’t had a real handle on it.

Wasn’t initially that we looked at it or talk about it, but as we have gotten further into it they are wondering about that. Because we talked one time about a different location. We talked about possibly, and I have had this discussion with Mr. Hamilton too, about one time they talked about building another Ocean Center facility or whatever, way over on the west side to encourage that and to capture some of that growth in the Heathrow/Lake Mary area. There are a lot of things that have never been talked county wide. This was a countywide project in the beginning, but it’s totally not any more. It’s totally, just not discussed countywide level any more. I thought, that I owe you to air it again, because there is some concerned by some people about that.

Tom Staed: Well, I don’t think that you can re-cast the original two cents. You still be baying for that part of the original facility. And I would hate to disturb that pathway. I agree with you, if you want to get another meeting in four weeks or four and half to five weeks and go through the thing and take a vote on it, because we ultimately have no authority. We are an advisory group only and the make up of this group and the make up of the County Council politically, is quite different.

John Masiarczyk: My attempt was not try to drop the two cents, I think we are committed to that at least until the maturity of these bonds. That was not my attempt, but I am saying there are people out and when the county starts talking about huge expense of the Ocean Center, we should be very clear to those people that it’s not going to affect them. When you are talking about some long term financing for that kind of addition, so they really need to know.

Big John: I separate out the monies are about $106,000 for west Volusia. Well you have got a place there in Jackson, that is going dramatically going to increase that number.

John Masiarczyk: The hotel?

Big John: Yeah, and there will probably be other hotels coming up, right.

John Masiarczyk: Right, whenever it is.

Big John: And southeast has got $309,000. We are now here with Wachtel, and as Mr. Staed mentioned, we want to move ahead and I agree with that. My understanding was there was $100,000 for exhibit, $40,000 for meeting and a place for Mock.

Rick Hamilton: $30,000 ballroom.

Big John: But, I thought we took that out.

Lori Campbell-Baker: I think we need to revisit that.

Cross discussion about dollars and square footages.

Big John: Well, which way do you want to go now?

Jim Wachtel: Let me say, with the conversations last month, Mr. Arp’s subcommittee, and that group, I think that there is at least a direction on what the full build-out and the phase one is. I can’t tell you what those numbers are and I think that I need to verify those with Rick and Stewart and Sharon, but we can be on the same page relatively quickly.

Big John: Obviously he would not be here if Godo didn’t say it was all right. So, Mrs. Godo has already prepared to sign off on this.

Lori Campbell-Baker: On the entire thing?

Big John: No, no, $23,300.

Lori Campbell-Baker: So we could commit to phase one and not commit to anything else at this point.

Big John: That’s correct and I think we need phase one to go to the County Council. For phase two, we are going to need a very good picture, a good show and tell, to show how this thing is going to work .

Jim Bazemore: Mr. Chairman, I move we recommend to the County Council, we accept and recommend to the end phase one.

Lori Campbell-Baker: Second.

Big John: I have a motion and second to recommend to the County Council, did you say County Council. You don’t have to this is just a staff deal. This is not going to the County Council. Mrs. Godo is going to authorize this.

Tom Staed: I am a little complexed with five people being here and not the entire number or most of the entire number.

Lori Campbell-Baker: How many are we missing?

Big John: Four. We may have lost Ms. Li because she sold her property. We do not know the answer to that question.

Frank Gummey: Because she has resigned from west Volusia, correct?

Big John: She has?

Frank Gummey: I thought that was a discussion.

Lori Campbell-Baker: I think that she resigned from the Tourism.

Big John: Well, what do you say Mr. Staed, one minute you have us going quicker, and the next minute you are slowing us down.

Tom Staed: Well, I don’t think that we are going ever to be able to make a further decision without getting step one, so for that reason, I can see my way clear voting for it. But I really don’t want to go any further than that without everybody signing onto it. I am for an early decision on where you get the money because my fellow hoteliers, a lot of them have a great deal concern, and I have no position on it yet. I need to be convinced and I need to hear a lot of talk about it because it’s another penny, you could say that’s not anything, but it is, when it could make us out of proportion with many of our neighboring counties, not all, but many.

Big John: Well, some locals, like Adam’s Mark will profit from this a lot more than others, no doubt about that.

Tom Staed: That’s way I have always been hoping that we would find some other method of financing it.

Big John: Remember we looked at special taxes. We tried to uncover every stone.

Tom Staed: The Federal Revenue stone would satisfy me.

Big John: Comment? All in favor say "I". Opposed is "Ney". The motion carries four to one. (Ney from John Masiarczyk) OK, Mr. Prioletti.

Rick Prioletti: You know the Ocean Center and all the things that you are involved with here, is a part of a bigger picture of redevelopment. This happened many years ago, when we decided on a redevelopment and we have seen the fruits of that over several years.

Big John: Will this be a long, flowery presentation?

Rick Prioletti: No. One of the things that has been missing, is before you here, and that is trying to develop a master plan for parking for this whole downtown region. I say that, because the city is involved and is interested in not only the beach side but also the west side of the river. We had contracted the city with a parking consultant who does this kind of planning throughout the country. They are on "as needed" basis. We got them doing a little work in downtown on a very small project, and we had asked them to come up with a scope of work to help us, this community, to develop a parking plan. And that’s what you have here. The plan has lots of components to it. When you are doing one of these plans, you have to do an existing conditions assessment. A part of that is looking at what the future is for these areas, which includes the Ocean Center and its expansion. But there are other things happening here, other redevelopment projects, we have a business district that we want to see improved to complement the Ocean Center and the hotels in the area. So, all of those things will have parking demands, and the idea is to see what we have today, how it’s organized, where its needs are, and what the future vision is, and what our parking needs are going to be in the future. So, that as we make decisions day-to-day, incremental decisions, we don’t have to invent the wheel. We know where we are going. We put things in the right places. They work. And we haven’t wasted our money. And that’s what this planning effort is all about. So, you do a space inventory, you look at land uses today and in the future. You project the demands, you look at your expenses, you evaluate sites, appropriate sites for parking facilities, feasibilities, analysis, cost, operating revenue projections, to go through this list, pro formas on each site, and management plans, how to manage this system. We have a mixture of management up here now. We have some vast parking areas. We are going to need a lot of parking for this expansion of the Ocean Center. Who is going to manage that? And are there other people interested maybe in using those, that you would receive revenue from. Staffing, enforcement, marketing, these are the types of things, near term recommendations, mid-term, long- term recommendations on improvements. This gives you a ten-year master plan for parking that corresponds to what we see happening, what we want to happen in this whole downtown area. So, this was given to us by Rich and Associates as a draft. This is what a parking plan looks like and this is the effort that is involved to do one of these master plans.

Big John: We appreciate the fact that city is doing all of this wonderful stuff, but we are sort of a mind that all we care about is right here around the Ocean Center. So, when can they get back to us with a mini study as to what we need to do here?

Rick Prioletti: I can have them do that. I can have the take a piece of this.

Big John: Isn’t that what we need?

Rick Hamilton: Were is Jim? We have a little dual purpose build into here, so we need to decide on that. Because a part of Jim’s work or the next phase, I guess, isn’t it Jim, Cyoby.

Jim Wachtel: The next step after step two. We had __________???Lassiter scheduled to be a part of that team. Studying the vehicular traffic and parking requirements for whatever we come up with as an expansion and they need to coordinate with the city’s parking people.

Big John: But he is already going to do it.

Jim Wachtel: He is going to do from the Main Street stand point, the kind of requirements there will be needed for the commercial district and the developing parking areas and the vehicular through for the whole area. How the Ocean Center fits in there, we have to tell them that and then they can sort of pick that up.

Rick Hamilton: The only reason I mentioned that is that for the next phase, I wanted everyone to understand that there will be some other additional work. I agree with what Rick is saying, but are additional things that have to be done.

Big John: Do you agree with Wachtel?

Rick Prioletti: His information is a part of the first stage, OK. You block that information and if we only had money, the city and the county to do the beach side, then we have to figure out what this whole thing is going to cost and break it down. Then we would be looking at some type of use for the people who would benefit from this information.

Big John: OK, but I am worried about phase one right now. And in phase one, you are going to have to come up with an estimated number of parking spaces and an idea where they are going to be, right.

Jim Bazemore: Your opening comments were that he was coming in here, and that the city was coming and they were going to do a project that they need for the city. The city is also going to tell Rick how many parking spaces he is got to have. There are requirements in the development order which would require you to have so many parking spaces. You are going to evaluate the impact of what this would change, right. So your information would be what we would need exactly. It might be helpful, but it’s not going to…

Rick Prioletti: Well, I think what you have to add, both parties working together so that things are put in right places, you know, that the traffic system works, and if it’s going to be shared facility.

Big John: Would these folks decide if Peninsula and Halifax is going to be one way?

Rick Prioletti: I think what you’d have is probably a city/county review of that. They would give you options of how to make the parking system function.

Frank Gummey: I think that you are looking at a potential duplication of, at best, and conflict at worst, I mean, I read this scope of service as creating a feasibility study, to finance parking. You will need for the Ocean Center expansion a feasibility study, telling you about the financing, about parking aspect of the expansion and if you have two different entities doing it, they might be doing the same thing.

Lori Campbell-Baker: What is you timeframe Rick?

Rick Prioletti: We just asked these consultants to give us a scope of work, to develop the plans. And I think what will happen is, we’ll move forward when we have enough participants that want this plan to happen. We will move forward to the extend that we got the funds. The detail we’ll put in this, will depend on the funds we have collected.

Big John: I tend to agree with Gummey, if we are going to put some money into the deal, I rather see it put into his deal, because it’s the overall thing, rather than something different.

And you wouldn’t care about that, you’ll take the parking from whomever gives it. But I am worried about phase one not paying any attention to the parking.

Jim Wachtel: That was not its purpose.

Big John: It’s just for the building, but don’t you have to say: by-the-way, for this building, we might need 500 parking spaces?

Jim Wachtel: Yes you do, but you can’t say that until you know how big and how that thing functions, maybe you decide to cut that down because of cost or whatever. Let me also say that we have got two governmental entities that are trying to get to the same man at this point. We have the county at this building, and if we work myopic way just what functions with this building, we could put a parking garage or a parking lot in that will function perfectly for this facility, however, it maybe detrimental to the City of Daytona Beach and the Main Street development and the Landings. Likewise, if they do their thing without taking the impact of the Ocean Center, it maybe cross purposes that way too. So the two entities will have to come together. Whether they are under the city’s control and some of the costs are shared by the county or under the county’s control, some costs are shared by the city, makes no difference, but that consultant is going to have two masters. And it is a potential difficult situation. They give the city what they want, and the Ocean Center what it needs.

Lori Campbell-Baker: I think that that is a good point, and the city’s public enforcement department right now has about ½ million dollars in that on-street parking program. They game up with the budget workshop, so we are trying to make the garage work, they are going to have to make the on-street parking work, so it definitely is going to have to be coordinated. I would hate to see a duplication of the study that goes into it.

Rick Prioletti: The other big part in making these things work, is like an y business, you want that parking lot full. You want customers, and we want business on Main Street and on A1A.

So, the facility, if it can be designed in a manner that these users can use it and the cash flows in to pay for it, then you’ve reached an environment where all this works.

Big John: Thank you, Mr. Prioletti. I think we should tell Wachtel to tell Ms. Goby not to count her pennies before they are in the bank. We are not going to have dueling purposes here.

Jim Wachtel: Just be aware that that consultant will have two masters. And that will be a difficult situation, so those two masters probably need to come together and make a person who is in charge, that will give the best results for the whole area. And it may not agree with that county council or the city commission.

Jim Bazemore: But, Jim, you have done it before, right?

Jim Wachtel: Constantly.

Tom Staed: In final analysis: the city controls their city, so they have got to be a player. We put this facility in and screwed up the traffic for the last 20 years because we didn’t coordinate it, so, I want it done right.

Lori Campbell-Baker: I think we just need to make sure that whatever it was that was in Jim’s proposal and Miriam’s proposal, that if it is not yet in Rick’s scope of work, and Rich & Associates’, that we get in there and if we have to somehow….

Rick Prioletti: We’ll negotiate between the two. The consultants may have expertise in different areas and sometimes you can come together to collaborate.

Lori Campbell-Baker: Yeah, just so we are not missing any pieces because we are doing different work.

Big John: OK, Rick thank you for a very exciting report. OK, the River Runs North is a documentary that has been made which LCB knows about, Mock knows about it, Gary knows about it and it’s been made on the St. John’s river and wanted to discuss it here, but we are running late. Mr. Staed is getting ready to leave, I am going to ask him to make a presentation at our next meeting, if it’s OK with you all.

Jim Bazemore: May I ask what the purpose is? Are they going to ask us for money?

Big John: Yeah, they are here for money.

Lori Campbell-Baker: I could kind of see the hub work but how do you make work with TDC?

Big John: Well, all the other TDC’s in the other counties, that ’s where they got their money from, Mock, did they get their money from TDCs? (Followed by cross-discussion of budgets for this type a purpose) Next order of business, just so that TDC always knows what scheme Mr. Hamilton has up in his sleeve, he is going to be spending some money, and so he is going to report to you on seats and signs.

Rick Hamilton: First one is already done, getting ready to go before the Council, I sent for approval, if you would Bob, really quick on redoing our sign out front.

Bob (RLM): We got a little project going on. The marque on Atlantic Avenue has constant maintenance problem. It’s going to the County Council, I think, this Thursday. We have bids in and I think it is going to be in the range of little over $67,000 to replace it. It’s going to be LED technology, state of the art solid state electronics in it, it ’s going to ______operated and work our lights which saves us about $12,000 a year in just electricity.

 

Lori Campbell-Baker: Is that grandfathered in?

Big John: The sign is not changing. Seats, let’s do the seats?

Rick Hamilton: Seats, really quick, the lower deck in the arena, which is from the concrete sidewalk that we are on right down, is worn out. By last concert we had about 60% of the seats that we had to fix permanently with bolts and what have you to keep people able to sit down. We have got that out to bid. The bids are supposed to be in this afternoon to replace that entire system and it looks like it’s going to be in the neighborhood about $1.2 million, so I’ll be brining that back to you.

Big John: OK, for the next meeting I want to focus on Wachtel. And Wachtel, you want to have a two-part deal, then Mr. Staed talks about some movement here, so I am not sure that we want to drag you out for 60 days. So, how would we want to do this next phase.

Tom Staed: I don’t understand the question.

Big John: Mr. Wachtel wants to have a two-stage first step, and to that end, does that mean that he comes back a month from now, and then again two months from now, or do we try to speed that up a little bit?

Tom Staed: Without knowing what he is going to present in step one or in step two, I can’t answer.

Jim Wachtel: The original proposal was to be done at one time and to come back next month with a concept proposal. Knowing that you all will probably have some comments about how that is arranged and what that looks like, how big that is, I wanted to maybe put in an intermediate step to review that before the final presentation. That intermediate step could be done with the staff, it could be done with one member of the TDC, so it’s not a sunshine law thing, or there could be sub-committee. They could review, say, in two weeks or three weeks before it comes to the full TDC. But I’ll be clad to come next month with full presentation.

Tom Staed: Why don’t use the sub-committee that I snug into their meeting on, because those were all knowledgeable people.

Big John: Let’s not do it quite that way. Let’s use the sub-committee along with TDC. We’ll do a Sunshine meeting. Let’s call then two meetings. Wachtel, is two weeks long enough for the first step.

John Masiarczyk: I’d like to ask a question, before you go on. You agreed to do this now.

What step will have to be taken to get an approval to actually fund this, or is it done?

Big John: It’s done. Mrs. Godo has already agreed to it.

 

 

After some dicussion, it was decided to have the next meeting on Thursday, September 26, at 9:00 a.m. at Sharon’s Board Room, Chamber of Commerce. The second meeting two weeks after that, on Wednesday, October 9, at 9:00 a.m. at the Ocean Center.

Big John: Any other information that should come before the Tourist Development?

John ? : For the record, we were all invited to Deland to cross-pollinate the county council.

Big John: I missed that, everybody heard about cross-pollinate, but me.

John ?: It was by invitation. On record, there was nobody there from county council to cross-pollinate with us.

Big John: No, they don’t come. Other comments?

The meeting was adjourned at 11:05 a.m.

 

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