 a quorum, so welcome to you all. In the chambers, join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. I will note that we have Amy Wilson as the guest from Visit Sheboygan. Vanilla is on the phone. Who else is in the chambers? Can you let us know? Sure. We have Tara Dewey, Chad, Carrie Ehrens, Mayor Mike, and myself, and a gentleman from WSCS. The case of business is approval of the minutes of our December 14 meeting with someone so moved. That moved. Second. We have a motion and second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Very good. Let's move on to 3.1, which is a resolution authorizing city officials to execute a first amendment to the agreement between the city of Sheboygan, Visit Sheboygan, and the Sheboygan area, room tax commission regarding reimbursement of expenditures made by the city related to the Blue Harbor Resort and Conference Center. So I am thinking that it might make the most sense at this point if Todd, Chad, if you would just give us some background on the agreement, and Amy, feel free to chime in anytime. And I'm sorry, my connection is not super good. I can hear everyone just fine, but the picture's not real hot. So just let, if I really freeze up, just let me know. All right, Chad, take it away. Thank you, Chair. So earlier this morning, I shared an email from Amy Wilson that came in over the weekend from Alderman Bourne's questions on where we are with room tax closing up 2020 and where we're projected to be in 2021. I'll let Amy talk about her response to that, and then what other things Visit Sheboygan is working on as it relates to 2021. But in essence, this is an agreement that was executed back in 2019 that required the Visit Sheboygan to reimburse the city for expenditures made at the time when we had debt on the Blue Harbor Resort and Conference Center. In the years that Blue Harbor did not make enough room tax payments to cover the debt payment, the general fund subsidized the payments, and that money was calculated out to be, I want to say, right around $800,000. And the plan was that Visit Sheboygan would make yearly payments in a range of $100,000 to $125,000 over the course of the next eight years to repay those room tax expenditures. Given that we're in the COVID and the room tax dollars have been substantially less in 2020 and projected to be similar in 2021, Visit Sheboygan has made the request to the city to postpone those two payments and then to push them out at the end of the payment cycle once we can get through 2021 and hopefully travel picks back up again and room tax rates increase. So at this point, I think it might be good to turn the floor over to Amy Wilson at Visit Sheboygan to talk about what she's planned for their budget in 2021 and what her projections on room tax collections looks like. Before we do that, Chad, does anyone have any questions about the underlying agreement itself? I do. This is Berks. Go ahead. The room tax payment was a $100,000 a year. Did it include interest at all? The room tax, go ahead, Chad. This contract did not include interest because it was, in essence, repaying back something that really Visit Sheboygan didn't have any control over at the time. So the plan under the original agreement that the council approved was to just pay back roughly the $100,000, $125,000 per year without interest to just make the city whole on advances as it related, but it did not include interest. Madam Chair, Mayor Van der Steen, I'd like to make a comment. Please, thank you. I think you have to go back to 2018. There was a new bill passed at the state legislature and it changed the playing field with relation to the room tax being paid back to the city. So originally, the room tax was paying off that debt, but it didn't cover it all in all the years. And the city had always planned to continue to take the room tax in until all the money that was paid back to the general fund. But that state law changed the playing field so that could no longer be done. And this agreement was put together to make the city whole and pay everything back to the general fund at that time. So we just have to realize that things changed once the state changed the laws as it relates to how we can use the room tax. Very good. Any questions for the mayor or Chad? If not, I'm going to turn it over to you, Amy. So the floor is yours. Thanks for coming in. OK, thank you. I should say. Digitally. As you probably are aware, it's been a pretty challenging year for everyone. I don't quite remember how many years our agreement is for, but we did make the $100,000 payment at the end of 2019. Once COVID hit, of course, we didn't see the shutdown coming at the end of 2019. And that really wiped out our quarter two room taxes for 2020. So if you look at, I'm sure you all have the figures that I sent. In 2019, our budget was just over $1.2 million. In 2020, it dropped by about $400,000 in losses. Not as bad as we projected it to drop, though, simply because even through the pandemic, outdoor recreation got a huge boost. So we did actually do well during the warmer months, June through September. Occupancy was up sometimes near 80% as people were doing outdoor hiking, supping, surfing, sailing, boating. So that really helped us. In the winter, this winter, we don't expect occupancy to be much more around 50% to 60%, maybe at times a little lower. And that's simply because it's the winter months, it's flu season, we're still in pandemic. However, as the vaccines roll out more, we do expect occupancy to go up and at least be up again in the summer and in the fall. By the end of next year, we're hopefully looking at going back to some normal levels towards the end of 2021. So for 2021, our room tax projection for the budget, for tourism is about 984,000, which is about 70% of the projected collection. That's still about 266,000 down from what it would have been in 2019. We're asking to move the payment for 2020 and 2021. In 2020, we really, what happened when we shut down when a pandemic shut us down is we called our contractual obligations in marketing and advertising. And we asked them to push them out. Knowing that starting them in spring, we normally start in March, maybe February, nothing was gonna happen. So we had them pushed way out towards summer. Actually, we started a few of them back up in late spring. So normal contractual obligations that would have been done by the end of the year are possibly renewed, depending on the marketing strategy for the next year. Actually ran us into next year's obligations because we still have to honor those contracts, which is both good for us because at least it keeps our marketing robust as we come out of the lockdown and come on the pandemic. So know that we're still paying though. So we did ask for 2020 to be postponed. We asked for 2021 also to be postponed, not knowing how the vaccine was gonna go and what we're coming into. We're starting to feel better about it now as we're starting to see how that's taking hold in the distribution. We would still like to request the two year postponement, although in the pro forma budget that we have for 2021, we did budget to make that room tax payment to make the 100,000. So we're only asking them postponement in case there's something we can't foresee that's the out of our control with the pandemic situation. We're starting to feel actually pretty good about that. But I also wanna give you an update too, as you know, the visitor center was open maybe a month before the shutdown. So then we had to shut it down and it wasn't open to the public because we were still setting up the inside. The structure was done, but the inside was just a blank slate. Last year out of our budget, that also took about 78,000 just in the furnishings and setup and the interior design took about another 70,000 just in normal setup. New computer equipment, new phone system, mostly some IT, setting up the gift shop and getting some of that rolling. So that hit our budget pretty hard as well last year. The only huge item we're looking at coming into this year is still gonna be about another 35 grand to put up a huge monument sign outside in front of the building. But we're also already started. We're continuing, like I said, some of the marketing that we had to postpone, that we can no longer postpone from 2020. But about 41% of our budget this year will go towards all of our marketing. That's billboards, print advertising, television advertising in some markets. And then they are doing throughout the Midwest, we did a contract with a local family-owned trucking company and we're wrapping a semi-trailers, which it turns out to be a better long-term investment for covering more territory than some of the station or billboards that we used to do. And we're already getting a lot of feedback with some of those on the road. So basically what we're pushing for the next year is trying to ride this outdoor recreational way, coming into spring and going all the way through fall. And the reason for that is while we're starting to see some meetings, rebook and some conferences, business rebook, it's not till way out in the year in 2020. We're not really seeing much of that at all through winter and spring. On the upside, our hotels are already sold out going into June, July, and all the way through Ryder Club. So hopefully the economy starts to stable. There's a lot of pent-up consumer frustration out there and outdoor recreation has boosted. We're looking mostly to be flat in 2021, but again, that third quarter and the month on each side of it should give us a boost to start looking back at a normal cycle as we go into 2022. So that is pretty much the year in review for us in the short version. All right, questions for Amy. I've got a couple of questions. Amy, comparing 2019 to 2020, what was the area of REVPAR? I'm sorry, what was the area was? REVPAR, Revenue for Available Room. But well, actually the hotels don't support that to us and room tax can't tell you that because the room rights fluctuate. Most of our hotels are privately owned under private owners or LLCs and they are not required by law to give us that information. We're also not required, or actually the state statute prohibits us from reporting any single hotel numbers. At average daily rate, I can tell you, did drop pretty much at, in the midst of the pandemic, it dropped about 40%. Some of our hotels actually shut down even longer because it was less expensive for them to stay closed after lockdown for a longer time than to reopen. Okay, I think that's opened up a can of worms that I don't know if I'm prepared to talk with you about today. So let's switch gears here to the budget itself. What are the largest expenditures you've got going on in the visits to Boykin for 2021 and beyond? The largest expenditures are all in our marketing and advertising buys, all of it. It's probably about, like I said, it's about 41% of our budget. We're looking at spending over $360,000 in marketing and advertising. And a little bit, but right now, the new expenditures are about 360 weeks, so we have obligations from last year. We're fulfilling all of them. So do you have $100,000 with the discretionary funds that you could cut out of your budget? We actually could do less marketing and advertising. Most of the rest of it is fixed costs on our building. And with the visit to Boykin board of directors, we've gone through the budget. We just did this a couple of weeks ago and looked at like, do we really cut the marketing when the hoteliers are really putting pressure on us to get the advertising back out there so they can start recovering occupancy? Thank you. I guess let's open up one more question if you would entertain me for one more, Madam Chair. So what do you find is the ROI and the visit to Boykin advertising? How is that tracked and explain that to me? Like, so for every dollar spent, how much is coming back to the community and how do you measure that by marketing? Actually, every avenue of advertising that we do is tracked separately. So a lot of us track for the website and social media because we direct a lot of it right back there because it's easy, easily trackable. The return on investment depends on room tax is 8%. So a lot of this is out of our control because a lot of it doesn't just go to hotel rooms, it's day trips as well. The average overnight expenditure is about $168 per person. And that's basically 2.3 people per occupancy per room. The average day tripper is worth about $58 per person. So could you do the simpler math for me? I guess, so if we spend $1 on marketing or if visit to Boykin spends $1 on marketing, how much comes back to visit to Boykin to continue to spend on marketing? Well, yeah, I could give you an average. If we spend $1 on marketing, we're probably looking at anywhere and it depends, $20 to $50 per person. It just depends on the time of year. The rates fluctuate so much, you take something like PGA that's peak season and the rates are way up compared to that basically Chicago level. An average time of year or average, room rate's probably around $89. I follow you Amy, I spent better part of a decade running a hotel. So that's why I'm so pointed with my questions today. I guess I'm formal, really understand here so that if visit to Boykin spends $1 on let's say a campaign X, the highest campaign return that you've seen is what ROI? Well, the thing is we can only count it based on room occupancy. So I would say it's $20 to $50 per person based on their travel expenditures. However, the recreational expenditures in the hospitality industry, as you know, are spread out between so many other industries. Even the State Department of Tourism doesn't track these necessarily through all of the restaurants, the spending on recreation, the spending on shopping, those divided and spending on gas stations, spending on food markets, those divided through the tourism industry from regular local buys are somewhat difficult to find the ratio for. So we do rely on the Wisconsin State Department of Tourism because they spend tens of thousands of dollars on marketing research that we use to tell us where to put our marketing dollars. And actually right now, because we jumped on, we started jumping on the recreational market because we saw this coming like three years ago, not with the pandemic, but the United States outdoor market recreation survey that's done every year. And I cannot wish it could remember the organization that does it, but the State Department of Tourism passes those surveys on to us. And Wisconsin is number three in outdoor recreation in the United States, actually followed only by California and Florida. So when we started that campaign and then the State Department of Tourism saw that they knew it too. They didn't hit it quite as hard as we did, but now after COVID, they are. So we're kind of, they're following our lead, we're following theirs. And we're going with that area of activity for recovery because we don't see the other markets coming back that far. Marcus, any other questions? I need to contemplate for a moment, feel free to move on to someone else. Okay. Madam Chair, I've got a question, Annie. Hypothetical question. What if we didn't make a decision on this today and we held us over until after the third quarter in 2021, you would probably have a better indication then of how things have gone in 2021, see if the Ryder Cup is still on, if that's going to come to fruition and make a decision right after the third quarter and see what your financial position is then and see whether you could make the full payment of if it's going to be $100,000 or if you, if we're having a good year, whether you could make 75 or 50, would that bollocks things up for you going into the year, knowing that we're going to revisit it at the end of the third quarter? Yes, actually that would not be a terrible position to be in at all. I would like to point out though that at the end of third quarter, there is a 60 day leg before we see any of the numbers. And the reason is because the Wisconsin State statute allows the hotels 30 days to remit their payment to the room tax commission or to the municipalities and the municipalities have another 30 days to reconcile that before it goes to the commission and then comes to us. So we're actually fourth in line of that pass through and that takes about 60, 70 days to happen. But you would have a pretty good indication by that time though how 2021 is going with the, with the vaccine and all the various activities that we have here during the summer, you would have some kind of an idea of what your year is going to turn out to look like though. Well, we would have an idea only based on what the hotels tell us, which doesn't give us the, it doesn't give us the best room tax projection, but it's going to let us know what gives us the best room tax production is the tourism commission telling us what the actual number is that the hotels report you through the municipality. But we'll have some indication for sure. And we'll definitely know if Ryder Cuff's going to happen. Jim, I can point out, if I can just point out that one of the things we need to deal with today is the 2020 room tax or reimbursement per the contract. So the contract language itself, although it's a little fuzzy, not fuzzy, it's just not super precise, but provides for exactly what you're looking for. And I think if both Amy and Chad can note that toward the end of the year, we would appreciate a report. And Thomas, maybe you can even calendar that for 2021. But I think we do need to act today. Don't we, Thomas, on 2020? You wouldn't necessarily need to act. I mean, it could just sit out there with a payment that was due in two days that isn't made. I mean, I would think from a Visit Sheboygan perspective, having this sort of liability out there isn't great really for anyone. It looks like the city's got an unpaid invoice. Visit Sheboygan has an unpaid bill. But as a legal matter, you could decide if you're not going to enforce. There are some interest penalties baked in if payment isn't made timely. So if you wanted to, you could amend it, and I don't know if this would be agreeable to the other signatories, you could amend it to just deal with the 2020 payment and to punt 2021 if you wanted to. I think that part of the idea here is, sort of deal with it holistically based on the best expectation at the time. And if the facts change, there's nothing that would prevent the Second Amendment to this agreement. Well, I'm comfortable, and my level of comfort really relates to having a clear indication from the council that we are comfortable with waiving, or I shouldn't say waiving, postponing the 2020 payment. I think that gives us some sense of, if not finality, at least certainty. So my view is that we should do that. And built into the amendment is the ability for the city to review the waiver of the 2021 payment towards the end of 2021. And that seems sensible to me as well. I don't know how all of you feel about that. I do think it is, I would certainly support the waiver of the 2020 payment. I think based on the figures that Amy provided us and our general knowledge about the, you know, the bottom falling out of the room tax world, that that is a sensible and necessary action on our part. So I'm just putting that out there. And, you know, however we wanna fashion the motion, I think I'm gonna need that clear postponement or clear postponement of the 2020 payment. I'd like to ask a question of the financial people from the city and perhaps city administrator Wolf. I mean, this is a $100,000 that's not gonna be coming in in 2021. And we've already had $800,000 hips on from the general fund on this. This is gonna be another $100,000 that should be coming in that apparently won't if we decide to waive it for the time being and adding it on to the end. And I think 2022 is going to probably be a difficult budget year. We have a lot of uncertainties with the city going forward to 2021. So I guess, you know, if we do this, it's just gonna mean that for budgeting for 2022, we're just gonna have to take another $100,000 out of the general fund to fund this. And then are we gonna be looking at, you know, more raises next year, another 2% is a $500,000 hips on the, you might as well say on the general fund because we probably can't levy for it. So, you know, what do our financial people feel about doing this? Well, they probably don't have to make that decision if I could, because in 2021 on our budget right now, that payment is accounted for. Okay, well, I'm talking first of all, I'm talking about the $100,000 for 2020. Okay. Well, Jim, I'm not sure. So Jim Alderman-Born, your proposal then is not to postpone the 2020 payment. In other words, not, so you would vote against amending this agreement. Is that what I'm understanding? No, what I would like to hear is from our financial people, Tara or Daniela or perhaps city administrator Wolf, administrator Wolf is, you know, this would be, for 2020, this would be another $100,000 that would be going back into the general fund. That's not gonna happen if we vote to forgive it and move it to a later date. You know, what repercussions is this gonna have? I mean, I just hate to keep taking money out of the general fund and, you know, for budget shortfalls or employee raises. So the financial people, tell me if they're comfortable with doing it. Jim Alderman, this is city administrator Todd Wolf. For 2020, the $100,000, although that is a large amount of money, I'm not as worried about 2020 as I am 2021 because with the numbers that we projected and cut back for 2021, 2021 is really gonna be tight city-wide. I did not come prepared, so I apologize to see how that would affect us in the 2020 budget. But I have to make an assumption that knowing the numbers that we were looking at during the development of the 2021 budget that 2020 doesn't concern me as much, but I will say $100,000 in the 2021 budget is going to be not a positive situation in any way. But 2022, as you had touched on, and I know I've pointed this out many times, the 2022 budget is going to be very, very difficult to withstand $100,000 additional loss. So I guess the question is, where does it shift? If it's gonna hit me in 2020, I think we're in better shape if it's gonna get pushed to 21, it'll probably help me. If I'm gonna lose it in 22, it's gonna be very difficult. So I don't know if that assists you. I understand, and I don't have the document right in front of me, but the proposal was to postpone the 2020 payment and potentially postpone the 2021 payment. That's correct. It does not speak to postponing the 2022 payment. Is that correct? Correct. Okay, all right. And like I said at the time, we couldn't see what was gonna happen with the vaccine, but over this last month, we're feeling a lot better about 2021. Okay, other comments, questions? Madam Chair, I've got I think one comment to make here. Back in 2016, I was on the opposite side of this argument, delivering for the WHNLA to institute this tax reform where the money was going to stay with the tourism entities. And now being on the city government side only a short time after lobbying for that, I see the need for us to put that money into the general fund. I wouldn't be in favor of postponing the 2021 payment, but the 2020 payment being postponed, I think that makes a lot of sense. So I'd love to see an amendment. I don't even know how we word that, but I agree with you, Madam Chair, that that's what the process should be. So you're saying Marcus, that you're not interested in any flexibility in 2021, no matter what happens. I think they've budgeted for it and that money should be coming to the city. If it comes down to marketing dollars for tourism or policemen, we pick the policemen. Well, I think that's pretty reductionist and I think we need to be very careful about making those reductionist kinds of statements. It's, we're not choosing here between police officers and room tax. We are not choosing here between employee salaries, reasonable raises and room tax money. I think we all need to just kind of take a deep breath and understand that this is a repayment of debt that visit Sheboygan owes. And for a wide variety of reasons, we extended to the city or to visit Sheboygan this repayment flexibility. So out of our $130 million budget, $100,000 is very important, but I don't think we're talking about, I mean, if administrator Wolf says we are going to have to eliminate 20% of employee raises or we're going to have to lay off a police officer, we'll need to consider that. But I think what we're looking for here is just some flexibility for a particular industry that was hit in a particularly difficult way and preserving some flexibility to make sure that it continues to work well for us. And remembering we have two other partners in this enterprise. And then also making sure that the money that the money that is generated from room tax is really exceptionally helpful to the city and without a whole lot of effort on our part. So I mean, it's a nice tax dollar. So I don't think we want to horse around with that, I guess it's what I'm saying. I have a couple of questions, if you wouldn't mind. Oh, yes. Amy, do you submit quarterly payments on your room tax? Do we get quarterly payments? We the city. Oh, okay. Well, I'll explain it to you, but normally how room tax works is 100% is collected from the hotels of the room tax by the municipalities. The municipalities, according to state laws, are 30 of that right off the top for their general fund. And 70% is passed on to the tourism commission, which is then passed on to us. That's just normal collection. So the debt payment is scheduled to be made by the end of the year every year. So in 2019, it was made the end of December or at some time in December. This is the year, excuse me. We're looking to postpone and we have it budgeted as an annual lump sum payment at the end of 2021. So it's not done quarterly. Part of the reason for that is because quarter three is our best quarter. There's about five months of the year where we literally earned 70% of our income. And quarter three is our best quarter. So when we receive those funds in December, that's normally when we would make the payment. Okay. Right now we're looking at all or nothing. Is there some reasonableness in asking if since there were no interest payment, I'm kind of flashing back to contractual arrangements that redevelopment has with the number of organizations and corporations. How interest-only can you provide us with 20,000, 25,000 for this calendar year? Let me move the rest out. We, I would have to go back to our board and look at our budget again to see what they'd wanna cut because we'd have to make a cut. But I'm not gonna say that's impossible, but I'm not sure if everyone's aware where this payment originates from to begin with. When Blue Harbor was run by, was it Great Wolf? They obviously weren't running it as a convention hotel. So the occupancy was not up as high as it is right now since it's been bought. However, there were a period so many quarters under that management that Blue Harbor did not collect enough room tax to pay the city to make the payment on the bond that built the conference center. So 100% of Blue Harbor's room tax went to pay off those bonds until about 2018 and the bonds matured. That's when the room tax started funneling through the system like the other hotels going to the municipality 30% single general fund and the rest of it coming into our budget. So really 2019 was the very first year. We even saw a full year of the Blue Harbor room tax added to our budget. So I don't wanna say no, Roberta, but we don't really know what their room tax is like under normal circumstances. We're playing a lot of things here. We can go back and look. I can call a meeting of our board of directors, Chad and the mayor are on that board. They were in the meeting approving the budget so with the executive committee, so they do understand the situation that we're in. But if we're going to go that route, we're gonna need to do it now because we're already signing contracts for next year to try to get the following and we don't wanna default on any of our advertising agreements either. I appreciate that. Other questions, comments? I think I'd like to make an amendment to this agreement that it would delay the 2020 payment and would not delay the 2021 payment, but we can look at it later on in 2021 to see if it is an even issue that they cannot rebate. How about if we, in the spirit of that motion, if we have a motion that provides that the payment due to the city is postponed and not required to be made in 2020 and that at a time toward the end of 2021, the matter will be brought back before the finance committee to review the possibility of the 2021 payment. That'll work, I like that. I would second that. All right, so we have a motion and a second. Is there any other discussion on it? I have a question. Is this- Is that work for you? I'm sorry, buddy. Is this in effect pushing the payments out for an extended year at the end of the contractual agreement? It seems to be from what I read. Thomas, is that the case? I mean, it adds years on to the agreement. Is that correct? The agreement as it was originally drafted had the last payment of that $49,399 in December 30th, 2025. So this would push it out two years. Essentially, there's two years of no payment and then everything just is added to the end. I'm hearing one year of no payment. Yeah. I'm talking about the amendment as it was included in your package. The motion, as I understand it, from Alderperson Donahue would keep the no payment for 2021 or for 2020, excuse me, ambiguous in terms of what would happen with that. If I understand Alderperson Donahue's motion, it would give the authority, remembering this is a three-party agreement, it would give the authority to the city to determine whether the 2021 payment is made, essentially in 2021 or in 2026. Well, actually, I think what the motion does say, and I don't know who's taking minutes and could read it back, is that the city agrees to review the 2021 payment at a time that is, it sounds like in December, Amy would be the smartest way to determine whether the revenue expectations have come true or whether we have a new advanced strain of it, whatever. So the intention of my motion at least was to build in a review at the end of 2021 to determine to what extent, from a full payment to a partial payment to no payment, depending on the circumstances. So there is that built-in flexibility for both Visit Sheboygan and for the city. Make, may I ask a clarifying question? My question is, did everyone understand the motion in that respect or should I be? May I ask a clarifying question? Sure. So right now, it lists out all of the payments to be made with dates next to it. The amendment did and the original contract did. Are you imagining an amendment that lists a 2021 payment of $100,000? No. Coupled with a statement that will be revisited or no reference of the 2021 payment, but essentially keeping the payment structure as it is in the amendment as drafted and inserting essentially a promise on the city's part to reevaluate whether making a payment is appropriate. Correct, because if at the end of December of 2021, it needs to be amended, the whole agreement will need to be amended. So all this making sense in a statement specific review promise, a specific review agreement. So that at the end of 2021, this committee, we'll be looking at this and Amy will be saying, hey, we had a great year, here's your $100,000, or she'll say $20,000 or somewhere in between. Madam Chair, may I ask a clarifying question? I just, let me finish through with Thomas. I don't think we need to fuss and dust over much about the payment schedule right at the end, because if in fact there's a payment, that's gonna have to be amended anyway. All we're doing is building the review process. Does that make sense? I think it does. I think I'm following. So essentially that review isn't necessarily going into the contract. Part of my thought is any change to the contract would require both other signatories to approve it. I believe they've approved this amendment as written. Amy, do I have that right? I'm sorry, as written? The structure where there's no payment in 2020 and in 2021. Has that gone to visit Sheboygan or the room tax commission? No, but that was sort of the room tax commission. It has not. It has not gone to the room tax commission because the room tax commission had advised they wanted to see what the city would do first. Madam chair, I would be comfortable leaving in the 2021 payment, but subject to review late in 2021. And I am comfortable with foregoing the 2020 payment for right now. I have a question for Thomas and the agreement here. It says that so long as reimbursement payments are made timely, no interest shall be calculated on the reimbursement. Now, according, you said there was some interest payments built in there by not doing the 2020 payment. Is that going to trigger interest? No, so there's a provision in section three of the original agreement that deals with late payments. And it forces a late payment charge of 5% of the entire unpaid amount of the installment. So that would not accrue if we change this underlying payment structure where there is no 2020 payment. Okay, thank you. Thomas, I have a question. The amortization table for lack of another way to say it, that amortization table, is that going to change or is that not going to change? So the amortization table is essentially a limit of this $749,399 shortfall and there was no interest imposed initially. So the amortization table such as it was essentially a list of dates and payments. And then it clarified that there was no pre-payment bonus. So the only change would be what dates go with those payments. Madam Chair. Okay, Burt, were you finished? My screen is so bad. I just want to make sure. I am still not clear. If we say, okay, unusual circumstances, no payment for this year, where do we keep track of the $100,000 and where did it go? Does it move everything out another calendar year and should the document reflect that? It would do that and that's what the amendment is doing. It is taking the payment schedule, the amortization schedule from the original document and changing the payment date so that all of the dollars would still be repaid. It is just pushing it out. And according to a portion of that original documentation, will the city collect the 5% on the unpaid balance for this calendar year? I would not interpret the agreement as providing that because we are essentially making it so that the 2020 payment wasn't unpaid. We are changing that so that there was no 2020 payment. Could we add? What are you trying to do? Go ahead. Could we add that in lieu of $100,000 payment for 2020, we will charge interest on the 2020. It's like an interest only payment. We will charge that for this year and move all the rest of the payments out. I mean, we could do that Bert. My concern is a couple fold. One is we're making this really complicated. Number two, although I was only on the edges of the negotiations and Todd may have some input here and Mike, this was a really, this was a very difficult situation that came up because of the Blue Harbor issue. And this was essentially a compromise of interests that were involved. And the problem now is, and we need to remember what we're talking about here is just the city's repayment. If we modify that agreement, we need, I believe to go back to the room tax commission and to our other partners to ensure that this is what goes on. I know this may seem like we're not being punitive enough that we aren't, from a fiduciary point of view, we really should be holding visits to Boygen's feet to the fire, doing it in a friendly way and saying, you don't have to pay for 2020 but we're going to assess a 5% late payment on the entire amount. I just think all we're trying to do here is to say reflecting the reality of the financial situation now, we're gonna put off the 2020 payment. We're not gonna give it up. We're not gonna augment it with interest. And then toward the end of 2021, we're gonna ask Amy to come back and perhaps it will be such a nice year that Amy will say to us, hey, we can make the 100 grand payment. Don't worry about it. And then that amortization or payoff agreement will change somewhat. If she says it's a terrible year, a year from now, this committee will be sitting around talking about what it should do. But this is with respect to what visit Sheboygan owes the city. And we need to be careful about Hudson and Dutson with the room tax board or the room tax commission because other people have standing here if we're gonna start doing more drastic contractual alterations, I would say. So I think that the motion before us, it's pretty plain, it's pretty simple. It's flexible and I think overall, we're just very happy that Visit Sheboygan is doing a good job of bringing people into the area and that we're making really a fair amount of money on this. This is happy news for us just from the room tax alone, much less all the other stuff. And so I think we wanna just be as sustaining as we can be if all of that makes sense. I'm sorry I kind of blathered on there, but my view is that the proposal before us is the clearest and the easiest and we can just move forward. I'm happy to hear what other folks have to say. Madam Chair, do you mind if I ask a clarifying question here on your amendment? It's not an amendment, it's just a motion. Or on the motion. The motion to amend the agreement. Yes, on that. I move. So yes, it means go ahead. I'm looking at paragraph two as the list of dates starting with December 30th, 2019. Would your amendment say December 30th, 2019, December 29th, 2021, then 22, 23 and so forth? Or would your agreement, your amendment or your motion state 2019 and then 2022? What it would state is what the motion says. So, and what I'm gonna do Marcus is go to the particular language of the agreement. And Thomas, if you wanna chime in at any time. If I can see. Don't get into it. And answer this based on my understanding of the motion. So I think that the sort of two discussion points are whether the default position is a 2021 payment or no 2021 payment. As I understand Alderperson Donahue's motion, it would be a default position of no 2021 payment with a requirement to evaluate whether there should be a 2021 payment. Well, at that point, and there's no teeth in this agreement, there's no obligation for them to come back and say, oh yeah, we'd love to pay you money. We don't really need to pay you. I'd love to see the 2021 date in there with the promise for the city to review it, knowing full well that we want to be accommodating, but I don't want to give up the judiciary teeth that we would have in this agreement to say, hey, where's our money? I agree with Marcus on that. I would also like to see the December, whatever it is, 2021 dates still in there. But with the idea that we are gonna review it towards the end of 2021 to see what shape the organization is in, whether they can afford to make the payment. But I agree with Marcus. I don't think the 2021 should be removed or left out. I think it should be in there. I'm the schedule. I think they're agreeable. I withdraw my motion. And Marcus or Jim, please propose your motion. Go ahead, Marcus. So I would motion to amend paragraph two of the dates. So they read December, 2019, December, 2021, and so forth to keep the payments correct. With an understanding that in December of 2021, the matter will be reviewed to determine the ability of Visit Sheboygan to pay the $100,000. Exactly that. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I have a question. Do we need to then also say there is one more year tacked on to the end of this table? Thomas- We'll just show, we'll wind up Thomas to make that change. Thomas is shaking his head. Okay. So we'll make that adjustment. We're not trying to collect $850,000, just the 749. Is acceptable language for the reevaluation? The parties agree to reevaluate in December, 2021, whether the December, 2021 payment is financially feasible. Is that agreeable? And then I would say and comma, if not financially feasible comma, the council or the city rather agrees to enter into discussions with Visit Sheboygan to determine the 2021 payment. I'm good with that. That makes sense, Thomas. I just wanna make sure that it's crystal clear that even if the 100,000 is the default, there will be a discussion about this at the end of 2021 to ensure that we don't put Visit Sheboygan in such a financial position that it can't do the good work that it's doing in order to make us money. And to make our city prosperous. So that's my deal. And Thomas, I'm taking for granted then that we're gonna waive the 2020 payment and you'll just add another year under the schedule that we have. And also we will have the revised schedule and time for our council meeting to review with the rest of the council Monday night, coming Monday if necessary. That will be the plan. All right, good. I'll second Marcus's motion. I don't know if there was a second and I don't think there was all seconded. All right, so does everyone understand the motion before us? Okay, hearing no further discussion, all in favor of the motion, the state aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Chair both sides, the motion passes. Very good. Thank you. Amy, thank you so much. We really appreciate all the work you do. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to 3.2, which is a resolution to authorize transfer of appropriations in the 2021 budget. We'd like to take this for us. Mary Lynn, this is Todd. Really, 3.2 is actually a very simple situation. It's just a clerical error that the monies were documented in the wrong category. So we're just cleaning up the budget by communicating to you where the money really needs to be. So it doesn't affect the final numbers. It just has to come out of these categories. Otherwise, we will have an expenditure restraint situation. It was just a clerical situation. The monies were supposed to come out of the correct categories, but it was documented incorrectly. Thank you. Does anyone have questions for Todd? If not, I would be looking for a motion to authorize the transfer of the appropriation. So moved. Second. Very good. Is there any other discussions? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair both sides. Very good. And I believe, let me just get back to board docs. Well, that's it folks. Our next meeting is January 11th. Do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All right. All those in favor, state aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and wishes all of you a very happy new year and stay out of trouble, Jim Bourne. No, I'm just kidding. Happy new year to a better year. Happy new year to a better year. Thank you all.