 All right. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the October 12th meeting of the Amherst cultural council. I'm going to read the little disclaimer from the attorney general here pursuant to the chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting is conducted via remote means and members of the public who wish to access the meeting can do so over zoom. No in person attendance of members of the public is permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time, be a technological means in the event that we're unable to do so. We will post and regard this will be posting the recording this video on our on the town's YouTube channel. And, you know, shortly after the meeting. So that is the that is the disclaimer that we have been reading for the COVID pandemic and will continue to do so until we're off zoom, I guess. And now we'll just go around and do, I guess we just need to do sort of an mic and audio check so we just need folks to audibly tell us that you can hear us and be heard. So I'll just call out across the screen the boxes on my screen. I can hear you. And Toby. Hello. Eleanor. Hello. Hello. Cody. Loud and clear. Interesting. Can you hear me. We can hear you. Okay. So we do have a new secretary Leah. I don't see her right now. She is running, she is running late. So I emailed with her earlier and I said we could take care of taking notes until she gets here so I can take care of that. Okay, thank you very much for doing that. And then. Okay. We do have a guest speaker who's going to join us here. She's, she's picking up a kid, but she said to just text her when we're ready. So I will just say we are ready. And so that'll be Gabrielle Gould. We could, we could approve the minutes if we want to approve the minutes we have a quorum now and it's always good to get that done sooner rather than later so they don't pile up. They want to make that motion to, to approve the minutes. Motion to approve the minutes. Second. Okay. So now let's do a quick roll call. Toby. I yay or nay on the minutes. Yay. Cody. Yay. Julian. Yay. Yay. Christie. Yay. And I am also a so the minutes are approved. Thank you all very much. And now it is my pleasure to introduce Gabrielle Gould, who is the executive director of the downtown business improvement district and also of the Amherst cultural district or chair of the cultural district, I think. And so I invited Gabrielle because, you know, we had some really exciting conversations with our group last time about possible activities that the local council could do. And the cultural districts of which Robin is a member. I'm a member and then some of our past folks are members. And it has an annual allocation as well that they, that they get from the state. They're going to have about 15,000 this year I don't think they're definitely not looking to put all of that into an event, but, but there's enough. I think there's enough energy and enough synergy there that since we were talking about events that we could put on. I thought it was worthwhile for us to just sort of hear from Gabrielle in terms of where those conversations are at with the cultural district. And since we were going to talk about our own activities today anyway, it seemed like a natural thing to just look for opportunities for potential collaboration synergy, etc. So without any further ado, I'll turn it over to you, Gabrielle. Thank you. Hi everybody. As Matt said Gabrielle Gould I am the executive director of the business improvement district. I'm also the founder of the downtown Amherst Foundation which has created the Drake live music and performance venue in downtown Amherst. And yes I sit on the cultural district group and so I have my plate full, but I'm excited to be here and tell you a little bit about what we have been doing and what we'd like to do in the future. I can start with the bid. Hopefully everybody was able to attend or maybe saw photos or were part of the block party this year we had our biggest attendance to that events over 7000 people. We close North Pleasant Street from Coles Road or realignment park all the way to the top of Amity in Maine, and we bring out all the businesses along that street and other businesses in the downtown come over. They put out all their food we hire different kinds of performers and performances. And this year we built a real stage at the top of the street and had Mr. G play and also the soul magnet so all in all that was a really fantastic exciting and great success. And after two years of not being able to produce the block party it was great to have it back. We also host the summer music series at the bid which is the four Friday nights in July and August. We work, we collaborate with UMass jazz in July and culminate their jazz in July on the common. Those four concerts are free for everyone and we try really hard to get a great swath of genres so you know we have a country singer we have, you know, something that's more child friendly dance friendly. Of course jazz rock and roll pop and all of that so those were very successful this summer as well. So that's a little bit about what the bid does in terms of running some cultural entities and cultural events downtown. The downtown Amherst Foundation as I said is a 501c3 nonprofit, it serves a totally different board of directors than the bid and we recently about six months ago opened the Drake. The Drake has been highly successful last week. We had six shows in a row, and we brought over 1200 people to downtown Amherst for live performances. If you're paying any attention to the Drake you will see that that is running the gamut of world music pop funk hip hop rock and roll open mic nights. We have about six nights this year dedicated to working with the high school and bringing those students on to our stage and we're also working on collaborations with Amherst college and UMass Amherst college recently we brought the Amherst library string quartet to the Drake and did a Brandenburg we had 47 musicians, all playing Brahms at the Drake it was incredible it was a free performance for everybody. So we're doing a myriad of free programming and then of course ticketed programming as we bring world class accent. So we're heading ahead of the cultural district if you will. The MOU for the cultural district grant and funding does go through the bid offices so we handle all the billing and paying out etc for anything that the cultural district does. Like many things. The last couple of years were hard for the cultural district. We have a lot of cultural members just due to probably burnout and ready to move on to other things, but we have a bright future ahead of us we've had really great conversations with mass cultural. Our liaisons there and we kind of see the path forward and what we're doing and we're about to present to our group at the cultural district which Matt and Robin both serve on I'm not sure if anybody else on this serves on that board. So we'll be presenting. There's going to be a $15,000 grant to cultural districts this year which is quite a step up from their normal 5000, and we have some really great ideas on how to use that to promote the arts and culture of Amherst outside of the Amherst area so 50 miles out and really look at it as the destination tourism driver that we think that it can be and also hopefully do an event this year as well. Thank you so much for joining me and a little about about what we've been doing in the past year. To you all. Having learned a little bit more about the cultural council through Matt and Robin. We would love to present or propose to you to create a new event late spring when all the students are still here and part of our community. So we're going to be talking about Block Party as an event that would be focused on art and culture live music, wet paint, creating art like right there in front. I was like brainstorming and just thinking about how we could maybe call it the Amity Street block party and close off all, you know, Amity Street and take over the parking lots of the Amherst Cinema Bank of America. We could also create a community built mural which has been on our list of something to do for about three years, which would be sort of a paint by numbers that anybody ages two through 105 could do. And then the artist would come and kind of finesse it so it could all culminate in this incredible mural being completed and put up and we could put everybody's names on a plaque next to it. And these events as someone who throws them regularly are not inexpensive. It would take a collaborative effort of funding to get this and pull it off and work with the artists and, and, you know, bring this to something that I think could be a big festival. And this could be the first annual collaboration between all of us that could hopefully grow and thrive in our community. I'm going to let you guys ask questions. Good to see you're still enthusiastic. Thanks, Robin. So at this point, does anybody have. Sorry, I am outside. Does anybody have, you know, I don't know, kind of open up for questions for Gabrielle or, or just, I mean comments in general, I guess a little background for new members. We've said it before but, you know, the local councils have the option of spending up to 20% of their annual disbursement on a local local local council initiated programming as I believe has phrased. And so our allotment from the state is around 53,000 and change. So the number will go up once we figure out how much money has been on has not gone to use with the current cycle. So, you know, and by no means do I think we necessarily need to spend all 20% on an event so like that. But that would be the ceiling that we could go to so that's, you know, somewhere in the 10,000 range, potentially, that we could spend on an event. You know, I think, if it's the right thing and it feels right for us, that that certainly is, you know, within our purview. Obviously that you know the, the counter to that is that you know anything we spend on an event doesn't go out to a grantee. And so, you know, I think it's oftentimes best for us to make to hold off on a final decision on a number, until after our, you know, our grant deliberation cycle and just sort of see how things are shaking out there. But so I just want to kind of give you a ballpark of what we what we potentially could be talking about money wise. I just jump in. I part of this would be getting together a committee who would, who would form this event and inform this event. So we would hope that there would be people from the council who would want to create this event and be part of it and then people from the district. And then, you know, some, some local community members who are very invested and interested in seeing like this happen. So it's also kind of a working commitment, not only a financial commitment. But one thing I would say is that, you know, for members who are not officers who are wondering, I mean, it is nice sort of to have side projects like this that are sort of local and give, you know, give you a place to sort of work on behalf of the council. Rachel please. Hi everyone sorry I'm staying off camera because I have a really bad cold. So, Gabrielle I came in late apologies for that and did you already say how much the district is is budgeting for this already or it was 15,000 or was that some other number. 15,000 is the amount of the total grant that the cultural district will receive from mass cultural at large. And our meeting as a group we have yet to have our meeting to discuss the proposed spending of the funds it would not be the entire amount by any means, because we have some other initiatives that we'd like to accomplish as well. But we still have not had our group get together and confirm any of this so we're still in the very baby stages, but we definitely wanted to bring it to you and see if this is something that you'd like to see come together. Do you have a similar deadline in terms of decision making as as our funding cycle or no. In terms of how. December, I believe the grants has just been announced. I believe December 18. So that is when we will have to put in the grant and tell the cultural district what we're planning on doing with the funds. Thank you. And I apologize to everybody I had a kid need to be picked up and my other people cannot be found so I had to go multitasking. Um, I guess I'm curious what you talked I loved the idea of kind of like having artists come in and then like finish up this mural or that's like maybe the seed of an idea. Would you just kind of put out feeler to the community and like ask for like any local artists who wanted to volunteer for this or I don't know if there was another thought process. This is kind of an idea that had to be put to bed because of COVID. This is a local artist named Nikki a belly who also runs the Amherst rec, which was formerly LSSE. This was an idea that we created with her pre pandemic and she created this really beautiful paint by numbers mural concept. I love to see it come to fruition. And again this would simply be a part of the entire events. It wouldn't it would be the culmination if you will as, you know, allowing the community to paint but it wouldn't be the events. Does that make sense. Yes, that does. Thank you. Again for the notes. I just didn't catch it. Nikki. I don't have that for the notes either. I'm working on the notes. Yeah, I don't you're breaking up a little bit. What was the name of the. Oh, Nikki a belly Nicole a belly she is one of the four hunters of Amherst rec. Well, I do that. Because I just came back from Washington. And what we did, we did a mural, but we had a lead on this. And I'm not saying this will be the case, but what we did was I have him in a set group. Hey, the meal and the community was invited to help out. That way there's a guaranteed number of people working on the meal. And it got done. So I'm clear. Are you asking if we would like to have signups for to make sure that we had enough people to complete the mural. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's something we could probably do and work within the community on. But I also think that the event itself would really bring people to the mural. So even if you didn't know about it, and we're not really intending to paint the mural that day you might join in and paint it. Did I answer your question. Yeah. Go ahead, Toby. There's the artist. Nicole, does she already have some of the logistics or the costs that that this person would has a ballpark idea of what they would need as far as supplies and. I think in terms of the mural and what that would cost and the location we've done a lot of that. That's something that the business improvement district would happily will be the funder of. It's more the greater event for artists and artisans and makers and musicians that we're discussing I think the mural is just sort of a small part of it. So I don't want to get too focused on the mural because also, if anybody hasn't done this in this town, we do have to go through design and review board. This will be a permanent. And even though it's on a private building, it has to get approval for for a permit for it. So the one thing that I, you know, I would get excited about something that we could show off some of our grantees as well. You know, so so as we are entering into the deliberation round and we'll be sending out, you know, grant approvals and ultimately grant money out to a lot of our artists, and we can communicate to them this date, you know, and an idea. I think for me, that's sort of the one of the really valuable parts of this idea is that this could be a showcase, you know, we're doing we're doing a video showcase of the Amherst media right now on some of our previous grantees and to do a live showcase. Some of our other grantees I think that could be anything from a performance to a piece to a booth where you just talk about what your organization does. I think that would be a really exciting way to sort of make things feel more live and several lia, especially, but several of us, you know, just have been talking a lot about how, how nice it would be to sort of I'm looking for a better word than press the flesh but you know to be in person together with all of our grantees and you know and kind of a more human way. So I mean literally since I've joined the council, it's all been on zoom, and so much of our grantees have been working on zoom that the opportunity in the Amherst media work is going to be beautiful these showcases are are really exciting these videos but to actually be you know physically together with our with our grantees, I think is one really nice aspect of this idea. If we do this at the scale that we'd like to, we have a full stage. So dance, you know, music, you know, theater I know that the Drake is hosting a couple of your grantees from last year session that are not really the Drake sort of genre to normally do. But, but we're happy to do so because we do have the stage and we do have the room, but I think that this would be a really great opportunity to take the grantees. And it can be, you know, if, if, if there are, I'm not sure how many you have a year but we could even look at this as like a multi year, like over the past COVID years to say like this is an opportunity to come and show what you've done. And what you've created with the grants since, you know, the, you know, the last COVID round. I like that idea we have in various various initiatives we have gone back a couple of years on grantees and, you know, sent out requests and you're absolutely you know people like to say, even if they're not applying in this given year they like to stay in the orbit and it's you know it's a nice community building practice. And I also think they're just so many artists that have been. I mean it's just been impossible and I'll tell you like even with a live music space it's amazing how many people have said that they're just not ready to come inside and they're not ready to see our and person and you know and support artists. So an outdoor venue where it is not only free but feels very safe and comfortable. We all hope that by the time we're throwing this event COVID is a far distant memory. But I've been hoping that for a long time, and the numbers are going with my hope so I think it would be a really great opportunity to get not only the artists out with community who wants to support those artists out to hear see and interact with them in a safe place. I think Gabrielle I mean I think we as a group need some time to sort of talk about other ideas that you know we've been percolating on and whatnot but what would be helpful for us, you know, given that we're probably going to be able to, you know determine a dollar number tonight and it'll probably be not until until I would say January before we can actually pin down a dollar number but what would be helpful from us tonight for for sort of moving this forward or continue to explore this idea. I have the ability to share the concept with you of arts and you know an arts makers crafts event late in the spring. Could this be a collaboration between all of our organizations to make it financially feasible to do this for the community for free. So I think that's something that should be created amongst yourselves think about it. Once the cultural district gets our grant application ready to go will be more solid on a thought, but we also didn't want to come with anything to form, because we really do feel that this is something that should be created collaboratively instead of us coming and dictating to you what we're doing. We want your input. Certainly, you'll certainly get it we I mean we were passionate bunch and you know I think it's really, it's just it's just really as a special, special thing to have these, you know these grantees and this huge set of artists and cultural events, you know. I think it would be nice it would be I personally I think it would be really nice to find a way to collaborate in some way, just to sort of show off some of our grantees and as a council I think to move towards some in person programming as well. Well, the folks have if folks have other questions for Gabrielle now is the time otherwise I think we should let her get on with her. Gabrielle is there a day for the next district meeting. We're sending out a doodle poll Robin we haven't been able to get a consensus. Really. I know you're shocked. Who would think. Okay. Would this be sorry I'm just, I got back from work late. Would this be something we're looking at 2023 spring or. Yeah, when would this event be. I think we could definitely pull this together for 2023 spring. Yeah, Leah we can I mean we can we can also fill you in on some of the stuff but but I think the basic idea was a sort of an arts and culture focused block party Esk event in like May of 23. April. Yeah. April or yeah. Yeah. Like, well the students are still here but well it's also a little bit on the warm side. But we're going to be outside. We want to push it as late as possible for the sake of weather. Because we all we all know how spring can be perfect. Thank you. Gabrielle I just want to say thanks for for including us and for welcoming the collaboration. I think, once we're able to to really chat about it as a group and come back to you with some ideas that this will be great and with the success of the block party why why not add add to that. Excited to work with you. We are too. Well, thank you very much Gabrielle I really appreciate you taking the time for us. Thank you all so much and again I'm sorry I had to multitask but I really appreciate the time this has been on my calendar for a while, and you know staff who's happened. Yeah, it's it's just the, the way it is for all of us don't worry about a bit. Yeah, all right. Thanks a lot. Bye bye. Bye. Thank you. So funny. I mean, you know that opportunity to sort of hear what the bid cultural district we're thinking about came up. You know after we had sort of agreed to talk about local programming. You know, we do have on the agenda now and I, I would invite you know a little bit of conversation now folks want to if there have been things that you've thought about since our last meeting in terms of the local activities. One thing I'll say is that you know the amount is capped at 20%. And that's, you know, that's a max when we don't have to use 20%. But it's not the activity it doesn't have to be one activity. So in other words, you know, we could do multiple things with that 20%. I mean, are we, are we pitching ideas for activities or are we talking about things that are already established. Call it a pitch if you want to, I mean it sounds like. Yeah, I've been. I'm writing this like essay so it's been like on my mind but about just like with like how to restructure the art world and museums with visual arts and I've been thinking a lot about like, early education with the arts so like maybe with community outreach like some work with like, like I loved like the public school mural project I love when we fund like the drummer who went into the schools. I know when I went to the block party the Meade Art Museum at Amherst College does like a lot of outreach to like kind of engage youth in making art and kind of just, I mean with our with our like, we, I think one of the biggest ways to increase diversity and all sorts of ways of art is when we just really encourage that at a young age that builds the seeds of this like future generation of like Amherst high school artists and adults eventually so something that would like, I really love the mural because it's something that's really engages the kids in this like way that turns them into artists but then benefits the public as a whole something like that I really like. I don't know, we kind of, I don't know like where we get resources to do that but. Yeah, I went to this year's three fair and I thought it was very, very good. And I was looking for things that stood out. And and while spitballing for ideas I always kind of start kind of like superficial or just kind of fun. And one of the things that stood out for me was that they actually had a t shirt that I think was something that you didn't just want to throw away, but you wanted to keep it and I don't know I guess I'm just spitballing but if we if we did a t shirt you know definitely have something go into it and and I guess make people want to keep it rather than toss like you know spend money and something like that and then toss it but I guess that maybe it's about the sentiment that idea whatever we do that we make sure that like, like it's just not throw anything to throw away. I don't know, I'm just spitballing thinking. I like that as well and I think co created, you know, things that can be co created, which you know obviously the early education component would would include some you know some making of art as well you know what I think but I, I like people that have something to walk away with as well for many. From my perspective, I particularly like to get behind events, you know that that bring people together and and get encouraged collaboration amongst artists and the Council, you know one of the reasons was while we have five colleges here so much of the arts and culture happens in in the classrooms and I wasn't seeing it in the community the way one one might think. That's one of the reasons we had had tried to do the patch a kucha night was you know to get creative people up in front of the community and have them present the work that we're doing you know. I don't think that, you know, when when co bids no longer on the table that that would be really exciting and I'm excited about this counterpoint block party in the spring. Because it sounds like it would be more focused on on art, perhaps then than what we have in the fall, which is, you know, wonderful for the kids but maybe this might have, you know, a larger age range with that. And really highlight artists and of course musicians and everything to. I was thinking about the patch a kucha as well. I don't know I love the idea of a block party kind of thing a lot, but I was kind of thinking about how we can maybe like marry the two ideas together. And maybe not exactly but like I love the idea of like, having various stands set up or something with like local artists to kind of present their work, and also like to allow people to engage in their medium in some way. I think it'd be really cool. That's what I was thinking about. I mean to be clear, we don't necessarily have to choose to support the block party or do patch a kucha patch a kucha. In my mind works better as a more intimate kind of social event and hosted on a regular basis. It all comes down to really a financial decision about how much of the max of the 20% that we have on hand. How much do we need to utilize. And, and then, you know, for anything that we are supporting, how much do we need to get it done. That's a kucha had a had a price tag before because we were particularly going to rent out that back room over at bistro 63. So, who knows, maybe, maybe if I reach out to Angela there's a way to do it at the Drake where, you know, there's a pre night and the costs are different. So, this is all to be explored and you know there been lots of other ideas we can come up with with our own ideas as well but like Matt said anytime we make this kind of decision it's, it's funds that we're taking out of the grant pool. Right. So one of the things we very much wanted to do with petra kucha was so is that it's accessible to the public it would be free, but we were really going to be pretty active about requesting donations. Because we felt that at a worst case it should break even right. And ideally, we'd like to have some of these events that actually generate additional funds to go out to the community. That would be a really powerful concept if there's, if there is something that can actually generate more funds than we're getting from the state, that'd be great. And I don't know what that is, but just all of this is stuff to think about Rachel. So the reason I was asking earlier about the timing of when to make these decisions. In part is that we as a council obviously we don't need to decide this today or, you know, we don't need to decide until probably towards the end of our grant decisions is we as a council ought to think about depending on the type of applications we get, and how many are like proposing similar types of projects, like do we pride how do we kind of divvy up the money. You see what I mean. So if there are other, let's say we get other proposals grant proposals that want to host similar types of events and if we want to have, you know, a diverse pool of activities I'm just saying that that's the type of our minds in terms of, you know, how much up to the 20% we think as a council we want to designate towards this to support that effort. That makes sense. I think Matt's frozen I can't tell that that does make sense. And I would say that we really probably, we're not in a position to make a decision about any of that right now, tonight, but these decisions do need to be made. In conjunction and alignment with the total grant cycle. Because, you know, we're not we wouldn't just hold on to money, hold money out of giving it to grantees, unless you know we all had voted on a clear purpose for it that benefits the community, because it provides no public benefit for us to just sit on money. Right, so that's what I'm saying is like how much of that we're going to give to, you know, this particular initiative, depending on what else, what other applications we get what types of activities or projects are being proposed. So that's just, you know, like you said it doesn't have to be decided anytime soon. Yeah. I have, I have a question about some more finance stuff. Is the cultural district district wanting us to pay for like wanting some of the block party if we're involved is that coming out of this budget, and also is the possible like accessibility thing with Amherst media also in this 20% budget. So the Amherst media project is FY 22 funds that we've already kind of set aside right sorry not work. But yes so that was that was kind of the, the pitch with Gabrielle is that the cultural district, the cultural council, potentially some other kind of similar entities, chipping in to create more of an arts and culture focused event, but you know I think as as Rachel, especially, but I think everybody has kind of said, we don't have to decide anytime soon in terms of how much we could pitch in. I think that's there there will, we will need to be an ongoing discussion with, you know, the bid cultural district around. How much, how much, how much would we like to spend on this event, and then of course, you know how much do we actually have to spend on which are not always the same thing so it's, you know that's where sort of that ongoing dialogue comes in and you know I think, I think, as Julianne said, when the numbers start to become more and more real as we start working on the grant actual grant process. That's when we'll start to have a better sense of how much we can and want to chip in on this or on any kind of, you know, local activities. But yeah I think I think one thing that, you know, makes this a possible reality is that the cultural district by itself, the bid by itself probably can't afford to put on, you know a full fledged type block party so it, it would take, you know, pooling of funds. I have an idea from someone that the, we as a cultural council could possibly apply for grants. Did I hear this somewhere. Yeah, that was your idea. Yeah, we have. There is an activities grant that is available through MCC and there is a deadline for it which is not. It's not forever. Like it's in December I believe. And that activities grant, I'm trying to search for it really quick. I believe is another 15,000. It's a fairly substantial amount of money that we can apply for and would be a, we'd be a shoe in just to be like, I was told by Jay Wong, you know like cultural councils are the, you know, the main recipient of this kind of grant. So it would take me a minute but that would be a nice chunk of money that we certainly could just go out and get directly. So thank you for bringing that up. We should have decided we want to apply for that. Yeah, it's kind of, I hadn't really thought of that but I mean, if we can apply for money and receive it and that really does fit into our due diligence and our charter and why we exist that we should be sure to get all the money we can for the community. Yeah, absolutely. And frankly, Gabrielle what Gabrielle just spoke about I mean we could literally just put in for we could put in for that as a local council and secure those funds and then that's a that's a nice start to, you know, for the conversation. Right, but it has to be written. I'm pretty sure it's a pretty straightforward thing but yes, it does have to be written. I, I don't know if this is the time to propose but it, but I can't do to write the grant right now but if someone felt they could do that I would totally support us applying for that, and then taking that money and putting it into this kind of project that Gabrielle was proposing, and then we still have the rest of the other money. Give to grantees or whatever we want. So it's called the festivals and projects green and it's actually it's only 2500 so it would not be really wouldn't be enough to get the block party going but it would be, you know, enough, enough to get. Yeah. So, Robin was that a moment that sounded like almost I didn't know if I couldn't make a motion for that now I don't know what people are feeling but if I can then I would like to make a motion that well, except that I hit somebody else write this grant because I can't do it right now. You'll apply for it. And then we apply for it. So that we use to participate in producing this block party. That's the bid and the district. Want to collaborate with us and probably others to to produce in the spring. If we get that grant would it actually take away from the 20%. No, just the opposite it would leave us all that, you know, that money. What I meant is like, can we still give them 20% on top of that grant. Yes, we could. Good. In principle, I was just curious. Yep. Yeah, so it's called a festival. It's called a festival and projects grant. And on the topic of people doing the work was the proposal to have council members helping out this or to have council members help recruit other volunteers. I didn't catch that part. My reluctance in making proposals that I'm proposing it, but I'm not able right now to write it. And I hope somebody in the ACC would have to write it since the ACC is. Applying for it. If I'm understanding what the grant is. So. Yeah. Yes, that's a good, that's a good point. So I mean, I'm very familiar with the grant and the system. It's very straightforward. I'd be happy to help somebody who wanted to do it. It'd be great if a non officer wanted to. Just sort of, you know, Give it a shot. It really is a very straightforward. Like a very short application and I don't want to say shoe in, but, you know, You should be. Yeah. I have to focus on like my college application. So I don't think I can do that, but. I actually, I would be happy to help out with it. I feel like I don't know how much I'm going to ask. I would be like, I know almost nothing about that process, but you'll get to learn this way on an easier grant. Anything I could do to help out or work with you, Matt. That'd be great. So I will second Robin's motion. I think we definitely need to get these funds. I thank you, Julian, for reminding me, because I totally spaced on that. But yeah, it's $2,500 that are sitting there that we should scoop up and put to a good use. Am I sorry, advocating for the motion. You're seconding the motion. I'm seconding and advocating at the same time. That's great. Any discussion about it. I guess the only thing that is probably worth just bearing in mind, and we can work this in Eleanor is. If for some reason this particular block party idea does not launch, you know, we would then have the burden of repurposing the money for something else. I think we would just have to deal with that if that, if that comes to fruition. There are worse problems. Yeah. Yeah, we'd write something in there that would say, you know, a little bit of conditional language just so we can wiggle. Okay. Thank you for. Okay. So let's, let's do a vote unless there's other discussion. Rachel. Yes. And thank you. Eleanor for volunteering. Julian. Yes. Cody. Yeah. Leah. Oh, yes. Eleanor. Yes. And Toby. Yes. Great. Yeah, Christy. Yeah, she fell out. She's on a train. Oh, she was. I didn't miss it. Yeah. That's a good excuse, though. Although I had to move inside my car because the anyway. So great. So, so the motion passes and we will definitely get that application up and in. It's great. So, and I will just say too that, you know, as we go into the deliberation cycle and we start reviewing grants as further ideas come up, you know, as we go into the, as we go into the discussion, as we go into the discussion, we will certainly dedicate some time in those meetings. To talking about local activities too. As you know, as the money starts to take shape and new ideas come up and folks talk to folks. So I think it's, it's good to just sort of have an open. You had a dialogue running on this and I'm, I'm really grateful to, you know, particularly. Well, Cody and Eleanor for asking a lot of questions at our first meeting, but to everybody for just sort of. You know, I'm excited to do some stuff in person. I think it's been missing in my experience at the cultural council and several of us have had that experience. Julian, do you want to kind of talk us through the deliberation cycle as, as it stands right now? I sure do. Okay. So a little bit of a shop keeping first and I'm sorry for the very, very, very short notice, but I think it's urgent that I get responses on all of those doodle or the doodle poll that was sent out. And here's why we have a slate of deliberation meetings planned. And we need to have a quorum to have these. So if the plan that we currently have, if there are certain dates where we are truly short a quorum, then I'm going to have to propose other dates to everyone. And I'm happy to do that. But the current cycle right now, it closes as of next Monday. And I was just poking around in here. It looks like there are about 66 applications in there. Matt, if you look recently, I just looked before the meeting. So there's a whole bunch of drafts. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, people who have drafts are probably. Most of them probably will. Yeah. So yeah, it was, I think 28 and 20. Probably still have it open. So yeah, my guess is it's probably going to be about 60. Yeah. Yeah. And last year. Yeah, but there's still probably some folks who, you know, they. Yeah. They'll apply over the weekend or what have you. So. We've got about the same number that we usually do. And why that matters is. We certainly want to give quality deliberation time to each one of these grants. And we're basically planning based on what we have last year. And it looks like we're pretty well in line to have about the same volume this year going forward. So. We do want to do some things differently. Let me just run through the dates real quick. So the grants close on the 17th. And after that, we'll be waiting to be able to first get the digital PDF. Once the digital PDF is ready, we'll coordinate with Angela to be able to have paper books printed for anyone who would like them. The paper books are, are, you know, literally yay thick. They're, they are large. So, but we are happy to make those for anybody who would like them. Anyone here who has a preference for digital versus paper. Are you asking us to. Yeah, Robin, are you a. Anyone else need a paper copy. No. No, I work from the digital. Okay. No one else. Okay. Leo, you wanted paper last year. Do you want. I'm honestly happy with either. I found it really difficult to. Yeah, maybe I'll, I might, I might take a paper one. Cause I do like marking it up. Yeah. Thank you so much. Okay. So we will arrange to have the paper copies made. And then the good news about the digital copies. Is just that we can get started a little sooner. Cause they're available faster. So. Yeah. Because what, what we'd like to do, Matt. Had a great idea last year. Just, just that one since last year, Matt, that's the only guy. There's a good year for me actually. Yeah. Yeah. So we've had an evolution of kind of scoring and ranking and validating. The grant applications. Yeah. Yeah. So I was done on paper and then I came in and I said, oh gosh, we should be able to do something with Excel and then Rachel improved on it. But basically where we ended up last year was Matt. Asked that everyone. Really at a bare minimum. Kind of say, you know, would you fully fund this grant? Yes or no. And we'd like to build on that and simplify at the same time. So what we have in any particular grant year, let me see if I can open. I'm going to open the digital PDF. Give me just a second. And I'll, I'll share the screen here. I'm going to have some, some examples. Or all of the, the grants. Sorry. I'm a screen share challenged here. What are you doing at there? Right now there are 25 drafts. And 29 submitted grants. So. Yeah, we'll probably have at least 60. Sure. So one of the things that's most challenging. About understanding. And I think one of the things that I think is, whether to fund a grant or not is really just kind of going through it. And it's a great process. And I'm really excited for our new members. That you'll be going through this with us. But. I certainly learned a lot from going to the physical in-person meetings and discussing. The grants and hearing what the criteria was. To accept fully fund versus, versus reject. The grants and hearing what the criteria was. And I think that's one of the things that's most challenging. Coming in the door, having not, not done it before. But to make things more efficient. What we'd like to do this year. Is have everyone, once they get the digital copy. Do a quick evaluation. Of all of the grants. To determine basically. How would we get to the point where all of us could do that? And why do we want to do that? Well, one of the reasons we want to do it is previously we've, we've gone through the grants alphabetically. And. You end up spending a lot of time on the ones that here, the applicant name begins with an A. And then by the time we get to the point where all of us could get to the point where the applicant name begins with an A. And then by the time we get to the end, we're like just really rushing through. And, and. Trying to keep to our hard deadlines so that we're able to. Finalize which grants are in which ones were rejecting and have the appeal process, which all of it is really fun. It happens pretty much over Christmas. So it's really fun to be able to get to the point where all of the grants are in the way. But we have to have the whole thing final with all of the steps by January 17th. So just to stay on schedule for that. We have to have several meetings. We get to have several meetings. And we need to, to work through the grants quickly. So I thought it might be useful tonight. To kind of go through some, some examples here. I'm going to try to do this quickly. Because what we'd like to have you do is. Go through some grants. And just taking. The summary of it. Here. Come up with your own idea of whether you think that this is something that should be funded or not. So I'm going to go through. So this is a project highlighting the work of emerging play rights. Centering on the work of queer play rights, play rights of color. It was with the five college consortium to provide significant opportunities for matriculating students to produce their own work. But once the students graduated, it was hard for them to find venues and funding to produce their work. So they proposed that they would produce a selection of public play rights, public play rights, public play rights. Fully produced short plays emerging play rights, allowing them space to refine their work and find new audience, audiences and collaborators. The project highlighted will be from communities whose work is typically underrepresented on stage. And the project will also feature the work of both emerging and established actors and directors. And we'll build sustainable connections within the areas that we're working on. So for this particular grant, I'm just going to jump to the end here. This had tremendous support from the council. It was one of our stronger grants last year. Why would that be? It's supporting communities that are generally underrepresented. As far as the benefit to the community here. The public benefit statement. The performance was free. And they did. Have sliding scale donations. And their public benefit statement was strong as well. So for something like this, we would be asking you pretty much just to read. Summary. To the audiences and, you know, to the audience. So I'm just going to give you a couple of questions on this so far. Now. I'm going to flip to. To two that. We're not funded at all. In the end. So the summary of this was. This was the chamber of commerce. Asking to present something called resilience habits for busy business people. We're calling it happiness experiment. You know, we all like happiness. And the audience was. Business owners and managers in western Massachusetts. They listed it as free. And. This one ended up being rejected. Because. It wasn't going to be promoted to the public. It wasn't going to be promoted to the public. It was really for people who were part of the chamber of commerce. And you have to pay to be part of the chamber of commerce. And. We spent quite a bit of time about evaluating it because nobody wants to shut down happiness. But our events. Do have to be free and open to the public. And if you have to be a member of the chamber of commerce, the public doesn't want to shut down happiness. And we're not going to do that in a different way. They were missing a piece there. Another one. That. The right bookmark here. Special names. Yeah. This, this was a tough one, but in this case. This grant was, was really going to benefit people within, within the school system. We had to question whether the cultural council was, was really the best grant program. For, for this. Because it was, we do fund. Events and. Within the schools. But. And anyone who's here from, from last year who wants to, to chime in on this as to why we didn't. You know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it. Feel free, Matt. I think you had, you were particularly. Careful about this one last year. So. It might make it, it might be helpful to also let a new, new members know about sort of the criteria that we. Funding them on because. You know, our, our conversations are pretty rich and nuanced. And I actually don't remember specifically what it was. We, we basically, in our letters. The MCC website only really allows us to have a handful of. Actual criteria for. For denial. And in the vast majority, I want to say 99% of. The denial last year. We just said, you know, the public benefit was not sufficient. You know, and that's kind of, that's like boilerplate language. And so we would send out that letter. And, and, you know, use that phrase. And then Julianne and I typically are the ones who have. The follow-up conversations with folks who are denied who want to know a more. And of course, there's always a more textured nuance. You know, ration. Those denials. And. That is a family. Part of the process to be, to be honest. And so this one. I'm pretty sure if I went back and checked, it would be. You know, it was the. Local benefit was, was not adequate. And. So, so I guess that's what I would say is that as we're doing this, you know, there will be a lot of sort of shades of gray. And the discussion. But the list. I don't have it right here in front of the list of. Actual reasons why that we're actually going to put into the. The notice is a fairly, it's a fairly short list. It's. It concerns about the application itself. I'd have to, I'd have to go back and check. Like a venue, lack of dates. Like a benefit really. Yeah. So this one, they were asking for over $4,000. We call. This year's putting it for 500. For which one, I'm sorry, the special needs. Yep. Yeah. But for 500. So I think we just were not clear also on. Who this benefits, how they figured out. This number of students they said. And, and that isn't really in the purview of the cultural council. Because this seemed more. About. Even though they talked about there being, you know, seven cultures, which of course there are. To us. To me, several of us who really pushed for the disability stuff. Just, it wasn't. It just wasn't making it. Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of. There are a lot of discussions about them and we really do. Yeah. Talk about the stuff a lot. So. It just didn't make it. Even for me. We do fund most of the grants partially. You know, some of them at a higher percentage. Others at a lower percentage. And then there was this one, which was a painting class. And it had. Two, four hours sessions outdoor. And, you know, we were able to go and review this particular artist's work quality technique and. One of the things we struggled with was that. It was only 12 participants. And in this case, we, we did fund it. Nowhere near fully funding it because, you know, once we discussed it, this was people actually making art. You know, and, and, and getting their own hands dirty to make art. And. And it was community coming together. So. It did have public benefit. And we reflected. I think that the amount they were asking for was really quite large. Yeah, it was, it was $1,000. And I think we may be. Yeah. So, so the grant was in the neighborhood of 200 or $250, which when we looked at 12 people participating and thinking about. The public benefit, you know, for such a small group. That, that we had to, to kind of tailor it to that. So. Nothing that you put down as far as, you know, whether you're, you're fully funded or, or you question funding at all. I mean, none of that is final. What we're going to be able to do with this though. Is as we. Go through our deliberation meetings. We're going to, to actually time box the deliberation discussions for any of these particular grants. I don't know what that time is going to be, but you know, let's, let's say it's a max of 10 minutes that we would spend on any grant. In, in the opening session, because what we want to do is to get through. And at least open the discussions on all of the grants. Right. And. With the information from the group here, as far as if, if it comes back with a particular grant that, you know, no one champions it. And, and we have pretty much people saying I wouldn't fund it at all. And someone saying I might, but you know, I don't know. It's a different discussion. Likewise. So we have spectacular grants that come back and, and it ticks the boxes for everyone. And, you know, they're, there isn't necessarily the same need to, to have a lengthy discourse on a grant where everybody fully supports it. We know that we're going to fund it. Just, you know, how much can we give them. So that will shape our conversation. And that will be based on your initial review. And. Once we get through all of the grants, then we'll be able to go back to the ones that require. Longer discussions that we weren't able to take care of him in the, the initial time box of, you know, we're conceptually right now we're saying 10 minutes or something like that. Eleanor, did you have a question? No, I just, you answered it. I was just thinking. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want us to have a quick overview of all the grant, just make notes on our own. And then we'll. And I'll try to, and Excel again, you know, okay. The other question I was going to ask is that as a council. Is there, because this didn't even occur to me until I saw the North Hampton Arts Council kind of call for proposals. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I've been there. Kind of listing that rarely do they fully fund any project. So I'm not saying that we need to follow that example, but I'm just because I think that there is. Sometimes we might. Fully fund something because they're asking for so little. Right. And we support the project. So I just, I'm just raising as a question that have no opinion on that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying that. Both Matt and I were really transparent. Saying that most of this is partial funding. And that we. Are really looking to see that the grantees. Have contingency plans. Have multiple sources of funding. Yeah. I froze. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I don't know where it cut off, but yeah, I'm not going to go into that in our public sessions. Yes, Matt. So. I mean, this is, so this is going to be an interesting. Interesting process. And I think if I, if I was a new member. Or, you know, or just trying to put yourself in your shoes. I guess I would, I would recommend two things. You know, or I guess three things. First of all, you know, you're going to have. 60 to 70 of these grants to sort of review. And I think your, your best bet. Is to sort of read through them when the, when the material comes to see what we'll have three or four weeks to review the, the packet before our first meeting. So just kind of reading through them and, and just reacting authentically, like just reacting authentically to does this project strike you as, as being worthy of merit. And so, you know, it's a, it's a very important thing to be aware of. And, and fine tune our opinions. And as Julianne is saying, you know, how much you have, but, but really, you know, your, your instincts in reading these things is really valuable. It's why you're on the council. And so, you know, although some of us have been through the cycle a couple of times at the end of the day, you know, we want your authentic. Just sort of the action to the, the grants. Like, does this strike you as something that will bring benefit to you? I would just say that Julianne, if you don't mind, I will share my screen. I can show the denial letter. So the folks can see specifically what areas we did, we might deny on, which I think is helpful, but I would say, make sure before you do that read through or that skim through of the big panel book, number one, look closely at our council guidelines, because that's really the main, you know, that's the only thing we can actually. You know, make sure that we have a good report against her for is our guidelines. So that's number one. And then number two is the LCC, the local council guidelines. That the, that the state puts out. And that's linked on our guide. Really, if you're fluent in our guidelines and in that book, more or less, you'll, you know, you'll be more than ready to, to participate in this. I want to add on to that, Matt, you get the book that's the sick. We're certainly not asking you to do independent reading and read every single thing that the applicants are putting in and support and everything else. Matt's word use, use your instinct for this is exactly correct. But just to, to get started. I'm not asking anyone to fully digest all of this. Just, just get a feel for it and use your instinct is what we're asking. And I think it, at that level, it's certainly manageable and much more efficient to go into this. Clearly knowing where the group is and what, you know, where concerns are. So I want to just show folks the denial letter since, since you actually brought up a kind of a complex application from last year. You know, this is, so as, as we go through getting a feel for which, which applications people really want to champion full funding for and which applications people really don't want to fund at all is helpful because those tend to be the most difficult conversations. But I just want to show this is, this is the actual denial letter that was sent to that group. And this, there's only three areas. So the first area, your project is not clearly related to arts, humanities or science that happened to this application that happened to be our criteria. This is actually the only application that we use that criteria on last year. Most commonly is the second one, you know, that it just, it didn't provide enough public benefit to the community compared to other proposals we received. And then the third one, as you can see is an area where, you know, if our council guidelines have some other area that the grant didn't meet, then, you know, we could, we would literally fill that in there. So I just wanted to show, show that to folks. Ultimately, I mean, and, and believe me, like the conversation will be nuanced and we want to consider, you know, a rich, rich, but, but ultimately it'll have to be reduced down to one of those three reasons. And one last thing to add is that I see your hand, Cody, is that even, even when we send out that rejection letter, folks can still appeal. So the rejection in and of itself is not hard and fast. And not that many people write back and appeal. So, um, you know, it's, from, from my perspective, it's a very fair process. You know, if we're rejecting and they're not appealing, then, uh, you know, they were just requesting the funds. Cody. Yeah. I had a quick question. I see a lot of people saying, this is an outdoor event. So, you know, we are still in this weird time of COVID-19. Do we consider over a thousand people in a small place? That's not fun. Because that could be a super spread. Or don't we? Good, good question. As far as at this stage. Is the council, uh, being asked to weigh from a public benefit perspective, whether we are putting the community at, at risk. And, uh, that's been interesting as we went through it. As I said, our first Pecha Kucha, uh, we ended up canceling. Uh, it was two days before we, I guess, went into lockdown because, because of concern that it, it could be a spreading event at this point. Things have evolved quite a bit. I will leave that to the health department. And, you know, to the extent that people, they are going to concerts, they are going to sporting events, they are gathering and not social distancing. So, uh, I, I don't believe that that's something that we as a council have to, to decide and that the health department should, should be deciding that. So the questions. That are still kind of pandemic related. Um, some communities are still looking at, at virtual events to, to say safe. Uh, we, we do still accept virtual events. And again, this is going to come down to using your, your instinct as you read through this, you know, does. This event as a virtual event truly provide community benefit. Um, we, we definitely had to take a lot of the, you know, a lot of people served with a grain of salt. Uh, in, in the virtual events. You know, we, we were getting. Hardest saying, I'm, yeah, I'm going to reach 500,000 people with this because it's virtual. So, uh, just again, just use your instinct as, as you go through. Great question. Cody, thank you. Well, all right. So it's hard to do. We don't really have the time. We don't have the time. We don't have the time. We don't have the time. We don't have the time. I'm not sure, but. Might. And there's just a, so just want to just think about, you know, if we have 20. Classical music. Proposals. Yeah. You know, about a variety of it as well as, you know, if there's like 30 within two months of each other. And not necessarily a lot, you know, spreading them out. But I'm so glad you brought it up because we, I'm going to see if I can't find the. I can't put the link in because we can't use the chat, but we did add. Two hour. Guidelines. This last year. Let's see to be able to consider that because we did not have that clearly stated before. So. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with classical music. Yep. Let me see if I can find specific to that. Conditions. Yeah. We added some language as I recall, I'm looking for it. But it basically comes down to, to public benefit. And we now have reserved the, the right to prioritize. To assure that. Yep. Cover that. Okay. So. I would hope that everyone could try to, to respond to that doodle. Back to me. Today would be great. Sorry, I'm a little pushy here. We did get responses from. Five out of nine. So. Yeah. I think we'll be able to do that. We'll be able to do that with the, we'll be clear about forums once we have the, the other four of you. Completing that. I don't know if I would be able to do any 12 to one meetings. That's understandable. But yeah. I would be. Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I was going to say, I can do like one to two, but that's not really helpful because I don't know if other people can. Yeah. Yeah. We'll just have to. Okay. The noon meetings are one hour. Oh, and then the evening meetings are 90 minutes and. Anyone who was with us in prior years, we often ran over on our deliberation meetings and to even be able to do that. I think that's one of the reasons that, which is one of the reasons that, that Matt and I have come up with the concept of time boxing. You know, the, the, the per grant discussion so that we, we do move through and at least get the open, the discussions on all of them. Before we end up in lengthier conversations on, on some. So yeah. The lunchtime meeting absolutely must be an hour and really for, for all of you. I think that's one of the most important things that we have in the community. I think that's one of the most important things. In the community. I mean, we can also say that we have a lot of items, I say as we're getting a six minutes from seven 30 here, 90 minutes in the evening is, is quite a lot. You know, and to the extent that we can keep to that, that would be great. We really need to. So with that, Matt, you're muted, Yeah, so the one thing that I will say is one really great change that the state has made, in my opinion anyway, is two or more council members can approve a small modification to a grant like specifically, not not financial but if you know if they want to push their deadline back change their venue little things like that. It's going to be a big benefit to us. So we do have one such case that happened, we'd since our last meeting, but I'm actually waiting for them to give me their date. In terms of the actual performance before we because what we'll do is we then will just come back and say put it on the record kind of like, you know, we are approving so and so to reschedule their grant advance from now until you know a certain date, but we don't have that date yet for so I'm just going to sit on that one. That was the only grant update that I, that I had on the tip of my tongue. Robin continues to, you know, do an incredible amount of work in terms of turning around these financial reports. Thank you to Cody and Rachel for agreeing to weigh in. Cody and I looked actually we took a little bit of time to look at the smart simple website just so he can see some of the reporting features that go on in there and Robin if you guys haven't connected yet, I think you're in really good hands in terms of tech tech support slash, you know, I mean, the, which is a place. And that aspect definitely crossed my mind to that. It's nice for you to be able to connect in person and occasionally, you know, whatever whatever you need in terms of helping with the process so I think you know I feel really great about, and I'm happy that both Cody and Rachel are willing to help out on that front so just, you know, great appreciation to you both on that front. I'm really happy you have the help with the 2022 report being due I guess Monday, right, and that's exciting because whatever remains from 2022 2023. I can tell you what that is. I just want to go over it one more time. So there will have been gone over like in times but it's a lot of money so we've got the 50. We've got the 53,800 53,800, and then we will probably have 23,051 dollars and 46 cents I'm not sure where that came from. That's a big allocated. Some of it is from 21. And some of it's from 22 that people never submitted for contracts so people should keep in mind that we are at direct granting. That means when we give them a grant as long as they get the contract back we give them the money. And so, you know, we're not sure it's going to it's realistic. I think we need to consider that. Yeah, but at this point they will run past the deadline right Robin they can no longer. I, unless they were unless we give them a specific. Well, no 2022 right if they have not given us the contract, the way past the deadline and I released it for 2023 to be using 2023. So it's interesting Robin. So the 23 grant award letter says you have 12 months from the issuance of that letter to apply for your money. And so we're going to actually hit that 12 month point right at our debt at our deadline for the deliberations here. That's going to be, I don't think we'll be reimbursed those funds in this current cycle. No, we should know if you if you look at, yeah, we can talk a little bit about yeah I haven't made it yet so we should talk about that. Well I don't think I don't think we're gonna so I'm going to open one up just a random one that I just pulled up and so this is an approval letter. I told them was project completion. No I know but there is a. We said please complete this within two weeks. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's for the only reimbursement. Yeah, reimbursements and if it's not we just need to make sure that doesn't happen. Because it was the first time it's you know we're figuring it out because with the direct granting. We, if we gave them the money we gave them the money. Right. It's it's out there. So as far as just to clarify that point though if they didn't return their grant agreement. Yeah, we didn't give the money. There is some unknown here as far as folks that received money. Don't complete their project and give the money back to us we don't really have control over it is coming back. So that's not the case. What brought up though is when folks we made the decision to give, you know, Joe Schmoe $1,000 for his play, we sent him a letter and said, you can have the $1,000, and he didn't fill out the one page paperwork that is that money. So we can roll that forward. I'm rolling it forward. Yes. And less. Okay. Could we ask, I think we might need to notify them that we're going to roll it forward. We told them to return the contract. And it's not hard headline. We said, please return it within two weeks, but that's not a life. All right, well, how much time has passed. I'd say at this point if people haven't gotten their direct grant funds for 2022, which had been available for months. And didn't tell us it's just there is that they are responsibility that was just that one little thing they needed to do. So that's kind of the point of view we need to get that into the hands of people who will do something with it. I mean, we get it unless they ask so. That's why I gave all that stuff that I think the next contract needs to be very clear. You need to get this money back, you know, the contract back, or we will assume you don't want it. Because, you know, we just started doing this but as far as I'm concerned they, they haven't applied for it. You know, I mean, Yeah, we gave, I mean, we gave them a week, we gave them a two week deadline. Several people reached out and said, Hey, I can't make that deadline because I'm out of the country or something. Those cases we worked with them. So, I mean, Yeah, 10 months. Yeah. No, I know, but I agree with you, we need to make that more explicit this year because, you know, just because we give you a deadline, you know, that also means that if you don't meet this deadline, you're not going to get the funds we didn't say that part. We said, we said this is your deadline. We didn't say you don't. Right. In the real world. I want to talk about it before I submit the report. No, I agree with you. I mean, I think I think we can do it and we should but I also think we need to be more explicit this year because yes, which I said and I was going to be do so. And anything that was left over from 21 is totally released. I mean, you know, it's not going to be used. So that's why we have so much money. There's quite a few people did not submit. Well, sadly, that's also. I think COVID really, I will still getting events that just didn't come together and right. I think people didn't know if they were going to use this so they didn't submit the contract which organizationally is a nightmare. If that happened a lot. So it only happened once so far but I know, but this is the reality we are in COVID. It's not going to be perfect and I'll be steps and stages and we'll change it. But we still have to be financially responsible. I do have to bring us to an enjoyment, unless there's any pressing business. So just going to say to anybody else wants a hard copy. Let me know because as soon as it's available. I'm going to go have a printed. And I was quickly going to ask is there a reason for meetings for deliberation we're sticking to Monday and Wednesday. Those days happen to be like my heavy dance days, but also if there is, I don't know if I was like not here for discussion of that but like whatever is easiest for the whole council work. At this stage, you know, it's coming down to trying to assure that we have a quorum. So, I'll most likely be reaching out about additional days, because in some cases we don't have a quorum so. We're open to additional days. We were trying to get into, you know, kind of a predictable rhythm so it wasn't like all over the place, but really I just just need responses for everyone. As far as your, you are yes likely to be able to attend or no, it's blocked. And then we'll just from there. For sure. Thank you. I can like move stuff around if like need be, but I was just like wondering, I don't know. Sure. Yeah, thank you so much for all the work you've done with schedule. Yeah. Thank, thank Matt because I've only dipped my toe and he's usually in the thick of that. Yeah, great. But Leah, you can't you write your college applications that your priority. That is your priority. Yeah. Yeah. So Matt had motion to adjourn. I guess I will second the motion. I don't, I don't think we have to take a roll call for that. Does it. Thank you. Matt individually, if you have anything. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Wonderful. Thank you for stopping the recording.