 Happy May 4th. Thank you. There you go. May the 4th be with you. It is Star Wars Day. So we are super excited. We have a full house here at City Hall for our partnership town hall with a lot of our friends and partner organizations that the city government works with on a regular basis. For those that don't know who I am, my name is Mayor Ryan Sorenson. I have the privilege serving as the mayor for the city of Sheboygan. So the purpose, thank you. So the purpose of this evening is just to kind of educate and engage the community just to get a better understanding of who's out there, what all these groups different do. Some folks know what some organizations are but might not necessarily be super familiar with another organization. So this is just another step forward in terms of transparency, collaboration and moving the community forward because we all play a vital role in just the collaboration component for city government. So I'll just do a quick brief overview of what the city does and how we have our irons and the fires with each of these different organizations and the great work that they all do. And then the organizations will come up individually and they'll do a presentation for their group and do an overview of that and then the fun part it will do just kind of a Q&A. If you want to have a question, if something pops up, you know, as we're presenting right outside of the council chambers, we have a question box. So feel free to write down your question, put it in the box and then we'll start going through those questions after the presentation part. Some housekeeping items. Bathrooms are on that side of the building where I'm gesturing over there. Yeah, like I said, questions over here. So the city government, so the city of Sheboygan where approximately 50,000 people right here, one hour north of Milwaukee, one hour south of Green Bay, so we're, I always say we are the heart of Wisconsin. So we have so much opportunity and potential that goes on right here in our organization and as local government leaders, it is part of our chief responsibility to make sure that we keep the sausage moving and we're getting stuff done. However, we're scrappy organizations sometimes and it does take take a village like I stated before to get things done. So just to kind of a brief overview and the order for that we'll be going in today will be the business improvement district in the acronym that will be thrown around around a lot for them will be the bid business improvement district. So they'll go over that to the Chamber of Commerce, the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation and we'll probably just abbreviate it as SCEDC and then visit Sheboygan is our tourism entity as well. So the city's role in the business improvement district is primarily a taxing jurisdiction if you will. So its primary purpose is to do enhancements along the riverfront to the south pier as well as the main quarter and eighth street. So like I said it's a taxing jurisdiction from the city's perspective to use a portion of the property taxes that that they are paid to be then distributed to back to the businesses to enhance that district to beautify the district provide that extra support for those organizations as they move forward. So a few key individuals from the city staff sit on the board of directors for the business improvement district myself being one of them our planning director Chad Palschek sits on that organizations board as well. The Chamber of Commerce the city has always historically been a very active member for the Chamber of Commerce and we understand that the Chamber of Commerce does a lot of great work in terms of moving our community forward and engaging the businesses that we currently have here and the city participates in a variety of events from the Chamber gala to young professionals month to first Friday forums to a lot of the the the roundtable programs that they do as well. So the city is very active for those programs that the Chamber does. The Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation the the city is one of two for their highest contributors for for the SCEDC. The city provides a hundred thousand dollars as the economic driver sponsorship to really make sure that we have some key strong investments in that organization too. So myself and Administrator Wolff serve on that organization's board and executive board as well because we believe that investing and bringing in new businesses to our community helps us grow and stay stronger as we move forward to the future. Visit Sheboygan is the city's tourism unit so obviously everyone knows that Sheboygan is the Malbu of the Midwest and we are a strong tourism community and a portion when you know when you stay out of town you stay at a hotel Airbnb part of the fees and taxes that you pay are you'll see on the receipt is your room tax. So again that is a tax that you pay and that tax goes to your tourism zone and back to promote the community to bring in more visitors into the area as well. So myself Director Pellcheck and Administrator Wolff serve on that organization's board as well. So that's the the boring government part of the organization. So we have like I said a lot of our hands and a lot of different cookie jars and these organizations will do a much better job at giving a fuller overview of what they do. So sit back relax make yourself comfortable have fun stay engaged introduce yourself to your neighbor and we'll get the show started. So the order of tonight's presentation will be the business improvement district the Chamber of Commerce the Economic Development Corporation as well as Visit Sheboygan. So I believe Paul is kicking it off from our friends with the chamber. Good evening really nice turnout they have here for this. I'm going to wait till they put my presentation up so I know what I'm talking about. I'm going to introduce myself my name is Paul Rudnick and the president CEO of Rudnick Jewelers fourth generation store here in Sheboygan. But tonight I'm talking to you as the 2022 president of the Harbor Center Business Improvement District. What is a business improvement district? This is I'm very excited to be here to tell you all this because we get a lot of questions about it and it's very confusing. Next slide please. The Harbor Center Business Improvement District was started back in 1990 as a way to revitalize the downtown after personal opinion the disaster of Plaza 8. What we do is we we were created to maintain enhance and promote the district to maximize the resources and create efficiencies. Next slide please. I can't really see. Next one sorry I just said that. Who are we? We are a membership driven organization of property owners business owners non-profit partners and government officials. We have a lot of non-voting partners the SCEDC the chamber that sit on our board and we have city oversight as the mayor alluded to. I am appointed by the mayor my entire board is appointed by the mayor. Our our district and you saw in the previous slide was all of 8th street south of Ontario down to the riverfront and the south pier. So if your business is in those regions congratulations you're a member but you probably already know that. How do we exist? Property owners and this is an important distinction. Property owners are assessed a special fee on top of their property taxes that the city levies and then returns to us to be used for beautification events and then now our new our new change in 2021 is a rolling grant program. The rolling grant program is open to all members. The bid funds are used for again beautification projects member led activities and events i.e. our boutique crawl or our part of the hometown events professional development opportunities and we also we also want to provide a platform for bid members to connect communicate collaborate and just come together to make the district better. We have had our fair share of challenges in the past and like I said we are reinvigorating how we do things. One of our goals is to restructure how the bid does things. We've added some new committees. We've worked with consultants to establish the framework that we are now using. We have worked with other bids throughout Wisconsin to and the WEDC to learn best practices and how we do things. We've created a formal and accessible grant program for our members. Like I said committees our committees are communications major investment and business development. The business development kind of handles all of our grants for our members the communications. This is an area we've struggled in the past is communication. It's not one of the things we're very good at because nobody fills out a form to become a bid member. You just are one one day. You you rent a space and you become rent a space and you become a member and sometimes we know you're there sometimes we don't. So we always encourage anyone who's here who finds themselves in our district to please sign up for our newsletter sign up for our emails. We have a lot of great information. We are starting a master list of contact information for our members. We have surveyed our members on a couple of occasions to find out what they want what they don't want what we're doing good what we're not doing very well. We've tried to create some collaborative efficiencies brought some non-voting partners like I said the SEVC the chamber on board. We're trying to teach now that we have a grant making process we're trying to teach everyone how to apply for the grants so that we can give them out and then what you what you all may have seen from us is we're responsible for all the flower pots on 8th Street maybe not all of them but a lot of them and our Christmas lights during Christmas holiday lights I guess I should say. In closing we've come a long way in the last two years from where we were. We have a long way to go but we we just want to encourage our members to get engaged join a committee attend an event we do have links on our website to become part of our board if you'd like and then directly we'd like to we'd like to help from our members to directly impact the beautification and commerce and prosperity of our district. I have up on the screen a couple of our 2021 highlights some things you might have seen the night market the 8th streetery arts festival boutique crawl theater in the park story walk I've mentioned the decorations we've we've sponsored the new incoming playground at above and beyond and the mural at George Michaels. Next slide please. In 2022 we have again more of the same underway that I've mentioned next slide. This is our very basic budget we get about $150,000 in special assessments over the years over the year and this is generally how that is broken up. Next slide. That is all I have for you thank you very much and I look forward to your questions in a few minutes. Oh I'm gonna do this otherwise I'm standing weird. Hello everybody I am Deidre Martinez I'm the executive director with the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce so I'm super excited to be here with many of our community partners just to share with you the things that we do what is our mission and vision who do we support how do we support them and then certainly to answer any questions that you guys might have today so with that all right Scott's got me queued up perfect you can go back so a little bit more about the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce the mission of the chamber is to think big betterment improvement and growth and influence local and the vision is to provide expertise fostering dynamic organizations throughout Sheboygan County. We believe that in everything we do that diversity in our spaces diversity in our organizations diversity in the people that we bring to the table is extremely important and therefore we've made it our mission to ensure that everything that we're doing is equitable for our members and the communities that we serve and is also inclusive so that everybody feels that they belong in our spaces. We also believe that building relationships is vital to the success of our communities but also to the businesses and organizations that we serve and so with that we work very hard to be the hub or the information center that bring folks together so if you reach out to the Chamber of Commerce and say hey where do I do this or how do I do that if we don't have the answer we are going to work really hard to find you the people that will. We operate on three anchors so our areas strongest areas of focus at the Chamber of Commerce are professional development governmental affairs and advocacy and workforce development and we'll talk a little bit more about those things in a few minutes. Next slide. The Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce is a 501c6 non-profit organization otherwise known as a trade association. A lot of people think that because we have the name Sheboygan and we have the name county that we are a part of government and as Mayor Sorenson shared we partner with county and city government and our local municipalities. We however are not a government entity we do not necessarily receive tax dollars. We are comprised of a board of directors up to 18 voting members along with some community partners who serve in non-voting roles and donate their time and effort to the benefit of the community. These directors usually serve a three-year term and then if we can sucker them in for a second three-year term we certainly encourage that and so it is our hope that they spend at least six years with us overall. Next slide. So how are we funded if we're not government and we don't receive tax dollars how do we get our funding? We are 47% membership dues we are 48% non-dues revenue and we are roughly 5% in grants that we apply for and then well if we're awarded receive dues revenue I think is pretty self-explanatory because we are a membership organization in order for an organization a business a nonprofit a government a school to become a member they have to pay dues right that's there it's an optional choice they can say I want to be a member or I don't want to be a member. What are non-dues revenue? Non-dues revenue and a lot of people hear boy the chambers have another event or the chambers doing this or the chambers doing that and we stay very busy but that is really where roughly 48% of our annual revenue comes from so member events and excuse me member events and programming that we put together sponsorships of member events and programming so when our members say hey I really love that program you're putting together I want to write a bigger check so we can make sure that we remove barriers to access and get more people involved and then also advertising sales so our members can choose to advertise in a greater way by paying an advertising fee just like you would to buy an ad in the sun or the shabuagan press and then of course our community guide and I did bring community guides for everybody today so if you have not seen them before I brought you a copy this is our 2021 2022 and we are just getting ready to go to print with our 2022 2023 version next slide so who works at the chamber I do again I'm the executive director so I'm responsible for all things operations actively participates in all programs and events as time allows and then my goal is to really build relationships with our memberships with our business organizations and then of course with the community at large we want everybody to know that they can be a member of the chamber and and if there's a way that we can help support them in their endeavors it is my job to help kind of bridge that gap we also have Caroline Richards she is our business manager so anything related to finance to keeping me on track not allowing me to spend too much money she's the one who kind of keeps me in check next slide we also have Molly who is our yp public relations as well as our event planner so she is responsible for anything to do with young professionals setting up and coordinating all events and then helping to make sure that everybody knows about those events so that they can participate and then we also have John Rogers and so John Rogers is actually an independent contractor we are so blessed he actually retired from full-time employment at the chamber I would say 10 plus years ago and loves his space so much that he decides to come back and facilitate all of our roundtables to this day so we are so thankful to have John on board next slide we also have Veronica Valdez she's our administrative assistant and member services so if you ever come into the chamber office or you call into the chamber office she's generally going to be the first person that you talk to but she's also the person that handles all of our chamber cash sales which we'll talk a little bit more about and she's also the person that makes sure our members understand how to best utilize the tools and resources available to them especially through our website in the back end of things and then last but not least we've got our director of membership and workforce development Scott Keane he is actually in the room with us today and he is well he's he's just known as Scott and he pretty much does a little bit of everything so anything workforce development related anything membership development related but really anything community outreach related Scott's probably involved in it and that is it so that is our chamber team we are a full-time staff of five with one independent contractor and you can go ahead to the next slide I'm not used to not having the button and doing it myself so annually we reach out to our members and our members are about 750 strong so we serve roughly 750 businesses non-profit organizations government entities schools etc and then through them we also represent their their employees and their staff and the people that they have involved in their organizations so when you really think about it our reach is roughly 50,000 strong so if we've got 750 businesses and we're reaching all of their employees we're here to really represent the whole so what we do is on an annual basis we reach out to our membership and we ask for feedback right we've our constituents get to choose every year whether or not they're going to vote with their pocketbooks and pay dues again and so with that we want to make sure that we are providing them with the services and the support that they are in need of so in this past annual survey we found that the top three issues that our community is asking us to whether we are a part of it whether we lead the change whether we support it whatever it might be but the three biggest areas of opportunity right now are workforce development I know shocking housing I'm sure that's another surprise and then the support and market of small businesses and so we know that our friends and partners at the SEDC are doing a fabulous job of working on housing so I'll let Brian talk about that we do a significant amount of work in workforce development at the Chamber of Commerce some some in our own programming and some in partnership with other organizations and this is really the talent attraction and retention of the folks that we need in our community to fill the roles that we need to fill we also do a significant amount of work in small business support and encouraging of every one of you community members to keep it local right stay offline unless you're shopping at Olavu or one of our local stores online websites but if you could stay away from the a word and I'm not sit's not a bad word I'm just not going to say it out loud and televise it but our goal is to really encourage and influence the buyer the you of the community to make sure that we keep our dollars local and so we do that through supporting and encouraging major employers to purchase things like chamber cash instead of gift cards for online vendors or to tell all of you don't go to XYZ we want to drive you to the downtown bid area to do your shopping next slide also based on the information we received from our membership we found that there were some some areas of opportunity some ways that we could fill some gaps so on a monthly basis we have actually become what used to be called the welcome wagon and we send out welcome letters to all new members of the community throughout the whole county so not limited just to the city of Sheboygan so every time we see somebody moving within the community we send them a nice letter that says welcome to Sheboygan county we're so glad that you're here we want you to know that we're a resource and that we're available to you please reach out to us if we can be of assistance also if you'd like a new community member packet you can stop into our office and introduce yourself and we would be happy to provide that to you we also do a significant amount of work in talent attraction and retention explore your future program had generally operated in the past at the sophomore and high school level so what we do is we actually round up all the troops lots of volunteers over a hundred volunteers that then go out to our friends at Lakeshore technical college once per year and bring in all of our software throughout the county to one space so that they can explore their future they can learn about local industry they can learn about I think I want to be an electrician when I grow up we're going to have you talk to an electrician I think I want to be a lawyer when I grow up we're going to have you talk to a lawyer so it's a way for us to really tap into and retain the youth that we already have in our community now in this past year we decided that we were not reaching them soon enough and we actually transitioned that program to the middle school level so rather than touching the students at the sophomore level with explore your future we transitioned it to the seventh and eighth graders we felt before they went through academic and career planning before they were making their decisions on what high school classes am I going to take my freshman year that we probably needed to start having those discussions sooner we also were asked by many of our partners to take over some of the stemfest programming so in the past we've had stemfest science technology engineering and math programming to introduce the third fourth and fifth graders to stem fields but now we have as the chamber of commerce are taking over that initiative because they want to grow it larger and they know that as much as as hard as our volunteers work they were like you guys can take this on because we can't do it all and so we were happy to do so and then lastly we want to reach out to the students at the high school level as well and we understand that financial literacy program is really imperative to the success of our young adults and what they do in their lives as they transition out of high school and whether they go to college or they go into the trades or do whatever it is they're going to do so we have partnered with a group out of Milwaukee to present what is called the money path app and we're going into classrooms and we're teaching students at the junior and senior level of high school what does it look like to budget what college did you say you wanted to go to let's take a look at you know what is that going to look like from a financial perspective oh you want to buy a Mercedes pens fresh out of high school what's that payment going to look like and how much money are you really going to make but this is a realistic way for us to reach our high school students and talk to them more about financial literacy and what they need to be doing moving forward we also host annually an intern and co-op event so last year we had 137 interns that college interns and co-ops that visited our community from all over the world so we've got some phenomenal employers in our space that bring people from all over not just Wisconsin in the country but from other countries as well we also know that in order to retain talent or to encourage them upon graduation of college to come back and live in our space permanently and work for our employers that we need to love them we need to welcome them and we need to show them how wonderful shabuagan county is and all that it has to offer so annually we host a roughly eight to nine week intern and co-op program where we provide programming and opportunity for interns and co-ops to build relationships and also get to know the community so it could be let's go have coffee at a local coffee shop or let's go hike the Parnell Tower or hey we've got a beautiful waterfront space let's go down there and play volleyball so this is another area that the Chamber of Commerce has taken on next slide and I'm going to take a drink of water it's a lot of talking they shouldn't have known better than to have me show up I talked a little bit about diversity equity inclusion and belonging at the beginning and I bring it up again because we know that as a community and for our community and our businesses and our organizations and our governments and our schools to thrive that we need to really really embrace diversity equity inclusion and belonging and we made a decision at the Chamber that it was important for us to make sure that we had built a foundation before we could go out and lead the charge we needs to make sure that our house was built on a strong foundation so in this past year the Chamber staff have participated in DEI trainings provided by UW Madison UW Green Bay United Way and other organizations and will continue this journey to learn and be welcoming and inclusive to all we also hosted the 2021 workforce development symposium which focused on DEIB in the workplace and school systems in partnership with freighters as well as 4am consulting shaborgan area school districts shaborgan area businesses and wisconsin department of workforce development and we also offered a focal point to our membership as well as our team with leslie laster on building inclusive workspaces next slide please additional business support we hear all the time that supporting local is really really important and we are the managers if you will of the chamber cash program how many of you have ever purchased or received or used chamber cash all right there's a few hands not up i will be talking to you before we leave but the chamber cash program is a local currency opportunity it's a way for us to keep dollars local so we sell chamber cash at the chamber office but there is no fee for people to buy chamber cash right so it's not like when you go buy a gift card at the Walgreens and they've got you know a dollar 50 fee in order to activate it or whatever that might be there's no activation fee there's no additional fee to purchase it there's also no additional fee for our local businesses to receive it so when you buy chamber cash and somebody goes and spends it in a local business that local business gets to cash it for its whole value without being charged any fees so the moral is if you don't know what to buy your loved ones for whatever gift may be coming up then i would certainly encourage you to buy chamber cash instead of something else but in 2021 we sold more than 568 thousand dollars in chamber cash and chamber members accepted and cashed 400 roughly 459 thousand dollars this local currency again goes 100 back into the local economy so we are stimulating a half a million dollars into our local economy annually and i would love to see that number double we also surprised local diners in 2021 we want to encourage that shopping local theme so i was out on shops shop small saturday giving away free chamber cash to unsuspecting local shoppers just to say hey thank you for shopping local and i'm going to give you some extra money to spend while you're here we also in this past year partnered with the writer cup to provide additional free marketing to area business through the show your ticket initiative and all shabuagan county chamber of commerce members can be recipients of chamber cash at no additional cost next slide and i know i'll start to move a little faster we also found that technology was extremely important especially through the past couple of years of coven and we also know that many of our smaller businesses or maybe even nonprofit organizations don't have the funding available for updated resources especially technology it's extremely important and extremely expensive so we had decided at the chamber this past year that we were going to update and upgrade our chamber space so that we could make it a space available to any of our membership to use free of charge as well so with that we've added hybrid technology state-of-the-art microphones and ceilings and cameras all over the place kind of like what you see here in this in in common council chambers but we're making it available to our members so about 50 of our members actually hosted the in our space in 2021 and we're hoping to double that in 2022 as well next slide so as this is a community town hall how does the chamber support the community at large we've talked a lot about membership and certainly i'm here to serve my members because they're the reason why we exist but it doesn't mean that we don't do a lot of community driven activities and support as i mentioned earlier we are provide the community guides on an annual basis so this shares with community and visitors alike when they come into our space information about all of the communities in sheboygan county it has additionally a number of ads and different information available about where to shop where to eat where to take you know go to the hospital where to take your kids to school and it also has a membership directory or a business directory we also are the provider of the county maps so we produce those and distribute those as well chamber cash certainly is a huge benefit to the local community but also to our local business we provide a community calendar this is an online option that's been available for a number of years it is not limited to chamber members i will say that again it is not limited to chamber members anybody can use it we have roughly eight to ten thousand visitors on our website on a monthly basis so for a small little chamber of commerce in sheboygan wisconsin it's a pretty significant reach so we would certainly encourage that if you have community events that you're doing and you want people to know about it you don't need a login you just need to go to sheboygan.org or if you're looking for things to do with your friends this weekend you can also find find those at sheboygan.org we produce october feast which is every october we invite a number of our local restaurants to come in and share their favorite culinary experiences and through this we're helping to market the the restaurants but also bringing the community together to build relationships and a fun space we put on the community and business expo every other year we host the leadership sheboygan county program which has been in existence for over 30 years this is an opportunity for us to take the next generation of leaders help them better understand how they fit into our communities and how they can better give back and volunteer and of course fall in love we are the information hub we are we do the new resident letters we provide scholarships to local students and again we encourage you to shop local so how can you support the chamber i think i've said it a lot so if anybody wants to help me here shop local yes you can also sign up for any of our communication so if you want to see what's happening with the chamber or with our members or you just want to be informed in that way there's you can visit our website at sheboygan.org sign up for the newsletter obviously you can follow us on facebook and linkedin and other social media options and that way you know what's happening in real time you can go ahead and next support chamber members so each member of the chamber has contributed not just to the success of their own businesses but really to the success of the communities the chamber of commerce has been here for roughly 108 years and i can tell you that the sheboygan county chamber of commerce has had its hands in a lot of things over those 108 years so things like street lights and road expansions and non-attainment things of you know so not just limited to you know how do we support our businesses but how do we support the community in a larger way next so this is what our chamber cash looks like so if you get some get out there and spend it the faster you spend that chamber cash that you receive the faster you're going to inject those dollars into your local business and then lastly don't forget that um september is chamber of commerce month so um governor walker had decided um while he was our governor that um september should be chamber of commerce month because chambers of commerce across the state of wisconsin but across the country and across the world do significant work in our communities beyond just assisting and supporting the business community and therefore it should be a celebration so um actually we we love to um celebrate with our members um and so we put on an annual brought fry sometimes it's a drive through brought fry so if you ever see signs out at the chamber office and um you see that we've got a large grill out there and we've got a lot of brats on it feel free to stop by because we'd love to share a brat with you all as well and that's what i have thank you the question box good evening everyone my name is brian dowd and i'm the executive director of the shabuigan county economic development corporation just a little bit about me before we get the presentation i moved here in october of 2020 um prior to that i ran the statewide trade association on economic development and really trained people across the state on economic development as a profession and lobbied on public policy related to economic development and the barriers to growth for communities prior to that i was a decade in eau claire county and a decade in portage county so i come to you with a lot of experience in different markets with different um partners and i just want to say on behalf of the board of directors of the s edc and myself we're here to support you and maximize your opportunities so as individuals as residents as council members for municipalities as well as for businesses so as you see opportunities hopefully we are one of your on your speed dial if that still exists today to make sure that we can help you maximize if you go to the slide please next one so i started in october 2020 we pretty much have a entirely new staff based on how our organization is pivoting uh because of the pandemic and because of the barriers to growth for shabuigan county so myself uh you have ray york who is our entrepreneur specialist so he's a full-time person dedicated to growing small businesses and helping people that have business ideas turn them into reality so from i can go from barnapkin to marketplace that's what we do and that's what ray's role is we have britney wagner she just joined us in october and she will be community relations but she's also managing we have a group of in-house corporate trainers from all the various corporations uh that um we have somebody on the mail list i would say around 30 uh participate but she's going to be really coordinating and then trying to see how these corporations in this environment of workforce how we can collaborate more effectively on the private side to support what's going on at the chamber but also overall economic workforce talent skill development then we have brenda uh benzler she is our new branding marketing director um in the past there were two bryans two economic development people now we have converted one position entirely to marketing and branding because talent and and community branding and how we position ourselves in the global economy matters and then finally salah sander out is with the wisconsin you know the internet of things she is that's a state trade association that we've helped launch on cyber security those types of things so that when you start looking at uh how you are protecting your uh confidential information uh how companies are launching new products smart products they're actually thinking about shaboy because that's headquartered here long term they probably will be out their own separate entity but they're being housed and i guess uh launched as part of our organization next slide our core services are really tied to traditional economic development and i might and many of you don't know what that might be but from site selection making sure that if a company wants to locate here or a business wants to locate here we get them connected and actually work through the selection process the make sure that they know the permitting processes that they might have to go through but also look at the financial incentives for many of you in the audience and out there you do a business expansion maybe once in your career economic development corporations do that five to ten hopefully fifteen times every single year so we should be your expansion partners because we do that on an ongoing basis for multiple businesses in multiple sectors market research and data so if you're trying to make business decisions we want to make sure we're giving you good data uh as far as entrepreneur innovation i've already kind of mentioned that we have full-time staff but then i'm going to just go down to community development advisors determining gaps and then barriers to growth we should be trusted advisors for your residents for the communities and for businesses for the city of shabuigan you are very fortunate to have a great professional in chad pelishak but the remaining parts of the county really don't have a chad on staff so we serve in that role throughout the county and trying to make sure that if they the smaller municipalities don't lose out on opportunities that are coming their way and then i would say and this is i just had a business retention call where we go out and meet with companies understand barriers to growth and we talked about an expansion and they didn't realize that we can help them get financial incentives at the state level or at the federal level to help their expansion be more cost effective so my job is to leverage as many programs as possible so that you have less equity in it and you're going to be more successful as a business so you're stronger for you and your employees as far as our budget we are a private partnership so you can see uh that we get uh 200 000 from uh area governments and again that's part of our consulting business as a trusted advisor on their community development and then we have private sector investments and that's really because companies believe in our mission and supporting the community and that's one of the reasons i'm in shabuigan is because you have so many great companies that are wanting to grow and expand here and they're committed to the marketplace next slide our strategic direction so i started in october at this and by we did a strategic planning in uh november and december we adopted these five pillars for how we are going advance number one barriers to growth we need to increase population we cannot accept one percent growth um to maintain the quality of life that you have all enjoyed here for decades companies are growing and we with the retirement population happening for baby boomers we truly need to be able to grow at a much rapid faster pace than we have been talent development recruitment and retention we're going to be more focused in on that talent recruitment and the outreach marketing enhance our dib efforts making sure that our programming is equitable and inclusive across the board single family homes i'll get more into that later on but let's just say because of the great recession we lost around a decade of single family homes at the entry level especially i think at the entry level um price point and you're seeing that across the nation with a great recession you just had a basically turning off that fountain of new housing development and then finally innovation small business development making sure that we continue to build that next generation we have great generational companies here but we need to continue to build every generation new companies new technologies to grow our overall economy next slide so related to talent recruitment there was a joint effort probably five six years ago called someplace better we are completely revamping that and really looking at some place better to be and this will be launching later in may early june i think is when we'll officially announce it in press releases etc but from our perspective this is if somebody has a offer letter to move here for a position or is considering moving making life choices and moving here this is the close this website should say oh my god i did find someplace better and this was you get a job offer word of my partner find an opportunity this website as we relaunch it will provide some of those solutions and answers so it's not just based on relationships and relationships are important don't get me wrong and shabu again is really i've learned so much about relationships and shabu again but we have to make sure that people that are from outside the marketplace can actually have a relationship before they even move here so we're also going to be doing outreach marketing this year we're doing a partnership with discover wisconsin which is normally a tourism entity shabu again county and the s edc have entered in a contract so we'll have a full television show just on shabu again county is a place to live and then we'll be doing this someplace better we'll also be incorporating all the additional details for the type of professional opportunities we have here employment opportunities in the final thing is on this is we will be building out a relationship platform so that if you have family members that have moved away for college or for a big city life for at some point or family and friends and they come home for christmas time or for holidays we want to make sure that you sign them up for this talent relation talent community because we will start doing probably every two months a newsletter dedicated to making sure they know what's happening in the marketplace and building the brand of why you want to be here for your family for yourself as an individual and for the opportunities that shabu again county is uniquely presenting next slide from a small business development standpoint we also have launched a brand new program i know there was discussion about innovation district i'll just say we have backed away from the innovation district just because of the cost of that innovation district and the amount of space that we actually would provide it to entrepreneurs we are doing more programming rather than building a physical space so with what we're doing here is accelerate shabu again county and basically this is the if you spend more than 10 minutes on an application for this program but it's your business idea or product idea and you submit it we automatically follow up with you we vet the idea we try to advance it to you we see try to identify where the gaps are in the concept and then if we think it's patentable we will write a thousand dollar check to get patent pending so that you get technical assistance so every from an equity inclusion there is no financial barrier to gain patent pending technology with the edc so we want to make sure that there is no barrier for somebody to protect their idea for an opportunity then you've all seen shark tank at the end of that process last year we had 50 different applicants at the end of the process there is a five five present for a ten thousand dollar equity investment into their business advancing the business model so whether that is helping them build more product or whatever that's what we do so again accelerate shabu again county is just making sure that there is not a financial limitation for somebody to advance opportunity again maximizing the opportunities of the individual the other thing that will be announcing with lakeland in the very near future is the launch of a seed accelerator which basically means if you have a product or or service and you're trying to gain equity investment we will be launching that program in the third quarter so that we can actually invest ten thousand dollars in each of those companies and also try to get you to get more equity investments so that you can truly launch that business and then the final thing on housing um you all know the housing market is crazy you know building materials are out of through the roof bad pun and the insurance i should say the interest rates are rising so trying to do affordable housing at this time is pretty much impossible and i applaud what the city is doing with land acquisitions and to make land available for that but what we have done is working with corporate partners have created something called the forward fund we've raised and since our initial conversations in june we've raised eight million dollars to be flexible funding to drive entry level homes so long term we're looking at it potentially being used for child care and labor shortage challenges and skills development but the immediate need going back to what we try to do is address barriers the immediate need is entry level homes we very definitely have a lot of apartments that have gone up over the last five years the housing study that the city did shows that 97 percent of those in the city of shiboygan are filled throughout the county i think the lowest rate is 94 percent so we need a lot more housing as we recruit people into the marketplace so our commitment is to over the next multiple years to continue and invest in methods to fill gaps to make developments happen to part with municipalities to grow affordable housing throughout the county so that every individual in shiboygan county can live that american dream so with that i'll close and say thank you all right good evening just going to switch technologies here for a minute all right i should be plugged in i'm emie wilson the president and ceo of visit shiboygan incorporated um let's see here we'll go from the beginning my slideshow was too big to send over email which i don't know is a good thing i don't see it though okay i have that on my screen thank you all right so what we're going to review tonight is what is visit shiboygan our mission and vision our team and location our role in our bigger picture and the tourism economy as it has been over the last few years with all the variables we've been facing and then of course room tax so visit shiboygan is a destination marketing organization for short that's a demo destination marketing organizations promote geographic areas as a whole so either a town a city a region even a country and their jobs are to attract people from outside of the market into the market and in shiboygan the shiboygan area tourism zone consists of the city of shiboygan the town of shiboygan and the town of wilson so we're zone that's the area we market in that area our largest market is leisure travel there's lots of markets and tourism group market meetings and conventions markets but in this market our largest is what we focus on leisure travel and group group tours so our mission basically at visit shiboygan is to create market experiences that reflect emerging cultural and social trends at the forefront of next generation travel which slides right into our vision to excel as the destination leader of next generation travel fulfilling the desires for connection to place environment local engagement and innovative adventure so what is next gen travel basically it's sparked by the millennials generations y and generation z and of course it's been accelerated through all of the post-covid social trends so what next generation travel does is it asks for a sense of culture in place fresh experiences innovative engagement the emerging social values of next generation travel are access and inclusion minimal footprint on the environment ecosystem consciousness and technological cognizance and what does this mean this means that when we're marketing the area for tourism we have to keep all of these things in mind place making and immersing yourself into a place and experiencing its local culture its local relationship with its environment and ecology is really what's driving travel right now it's at the forefront of trending everywhere around the world really for all travelers so the canned kind of tourism that maybe your grandma used to do maybe pulling out the disneyland itinerary that you get handed that's no longer trending as the number one interest in travel or in destinations so here's the visit sheboygan team it's kind of interesting because in 2018 when we were first looking at building the visitor center we had three people knowing that our budget was going to be expanding in the future and that we were going to have a visitor center we went through 2019 without a building and working mobily expanding our team and getting ready to expand our markets and then 2020 hit and everything kind of tanked and but we were very very good without a building for a couple years at working mobile by the time we all went into lockdown so this is our team as it stands today myself up on the top left of your screen shelly harms our public relations director who is here tonight valerie johnson our finance and operations director who is turkey hunting today and then across the top rachel senkovich who is our marketing manager and here tonight sam kesow is our creative services coordinator also here and michelle mcdaniel who's our social media influencer just joined us for about a month now she's here tonight and in the middle melissa geteris our visitor senator services manager who is at a school program this evening and janet devore our special projects manager who is also here tonight so the building we're located at 826 south a street in the building what you're going to find is our tourism offices of course tourist information tourists can come by there a viewing area where we have a giant screen and we play all kinds of videos about all of the things to do sites and attractions places to eat and ship organ and of course the glowing ball in our window if you drive by it tonight it's turned into the death star for may the fourth be with you that is also open to the public lots of good programs to see on there our gift shop and souvenir shop we also have free on-site parking especially for tourists who want to take a walking tour participate in the shooter scooter share program or hop on the trolley so let me give you an idea of how we fit into this bigger picture and you've heard the other organizations what you're looking at on the screen right now and what paul presented is the bid district along the lake shore it's roughly the size of that red circle in the center of the screen on your right are the boundaries of the bid district you've seen this earlier this is very micro engagement with the people in the bid district the businesses that they're serving this is roughly the boundaries of the county served by the scedc and the shabuigan county chamber and of course they are very into expanding the economy within the county business connectivity recruiting workforce development and actually business to business promotion and insight and connection as we've heard this is our market and this is actually our outward market as i said our focus and our mission as a dmo is to go outside of the area to encourage visitors to come into the area the main corridor that we market is i-43 and i-94 roughly that is our what i call the low hanging fruit on the lake shore and you'll see why later but roughly we market a lot within a day's drive of shabuigan area tourism zone as a destination and in that area we have about 15.3 million people that can potentially be visitors to the area putting that in perspective we know countywide we bring in about seven million people a year this is our outward area now as we were starting to expand for 2019 and we'll learn why and where that expansion came from in just a moment we started a new program reaching out beyond the i-93 i-43 corridor along the lake shore and how we were able to do this you can see now we're reaching millions and millions of people on a much much larger scale with our marketing and a lot of this marketing you don't see because you're local so you're really not our target market we send a lot of our marketing efforts outside of the area again to bring people into the area to spend money one of the new campaigns this is just an example that we are launching as of late 19 through 2020 i don't think we probably aren't going to be completing this until the end of this year but rather than doing billboards through the largest market in chicago as an expansion through the midwest we contracted with a local private trucking company and now we're wrapping truck panels and this is actually the routes and all the states they go through so how does this work let's take four billboards in the chicago area four billboards plus installation and renting those boards for just eight months a year is over 208 thousand dollars and that's at the nonprofit negotiated rate if we wrap 36 trailers a panel on each side so that 72 panels the upfront cost is a lot higher but to rent all of those trailers with 72 panels for 12 months of the year it's just over 86 thousand dollars so you can see right away this frees up more money so we can do even more marketing and we can actually capture a much much larger larger market one of the other um expanses that we've gone into over the past few years is in our social media and you know rachel as rachel's route if you follow her michelle as sheboygan shelly and sam as explore sheboygan with scenic sam actually collectively they reach about 1.5 million people through social media but this doesn't include tiktok this is facebook instagram twitter and youtube but on tiktok alone depending on what the trend is tiktok trends about two days to maybe seven days at the most in 48 hours with one of the videos rachel did very short 20 second video she reached 1.4 million people so we just completed a um and actually completed it i think rachel pulled these numbers yesterday because they came offline today or we'll keep moving them through um we just did a couple streaming commercials over social media and streaming television on google platforms just to give you an idea these are two very short commercials one was the malibu of the midwest showing our surfing um one is a drone showing the shoreline and the city over blue harbor on google ads we reached over 700 000 people facebook um we ran both ads one reached 14 000 one over 17 000 and then on tiktok then we only did the malibu of the midwest reaching over 3200 people i'm kind of gleaming through that because that's not the important part the important part is the middle column where we get the engagement and one engagement is is when someone watches these videos to an end shares them on takes people comments or clicks right through to the website and literally starts engaging with these interactions um through this campaign the top states that interacted with wisconsin in illinois really not a surprise iowa california and minnesota now these are those are just a few examples of some of the campaigns we run outside of the area but to give you an idea if we take the top 10 states from our social media our website our visitor guide requests and our visitors into our center of course wisconsin and illinois that are low-hanging fruit along that i43 corridor are number one but if you look at the rest of the engagements a pattern starts to emerge and what you can see is let's look at california californian social media california in web in web clicks they don't really request visitor guides probably because they're mostly online and they're going on their phones but they ended up in our visitor center so what we know if you check out these states is that if we can touch someone and two customer touch points through our marketing the chance is greatly greatly improved that they end up in our visitor center now not all tourists come to our visitor center of course but this gives us a really good idea on how many touch points through these other platform it takes to get someone here overnight and why is that important mainly this so this is visitor spending from 2014 through 2020 we won't find out what our 2021 visitor spending was until june because the independent research company that the wisconsin state department hires to calculate those figures every year is not releasing it until june of this year normally it's released in may and i would know already so we're all sitting on pins and needles so as we look these are the nine counties along the shore the lake michigan lake shore you can tell we've consistently held the fifth position that's not a big surprise you are milwaukee and brown county at the top of course with international airports the packers the bucks the brewers and metropolitan areas we're seeing is pretty much the first stop lots and lots of day trips there they have less hotel rooms than we do but they have many many more stops as you first come across the border from the south so they get a lot of day tripping door county of course has over 120 000 rooms to rent every night in that peninsula now to put that in perspective shabuigan county has 2000 our tourism zone half of that so that gives you an idea of how well we're doing an asset turnover shabuigan county in 2014 had over 203 million dollars in visitor spending that's people that's the amount of money that visitor is coming into our tourism zone into our community spent actually that's countywide so in our zone about half of that so as you can tell over the years visitor spending has increased by 40 million dollars as of 2019 in 2020 of course we all know what happened there COVID um so actually if we look at the bottom line in 2014 the state of Wisconsin had 11.4 billion in visitor spending it increased to almost 13.7 billion by 2019 and in 2020 COVID 9.8 billion if you want to look at the bottom line it's amazing to me that this is how important the shoreline is and the waterfront communities are and on the water activity and the waterfront is the largest asset we have through the entire state the nine counties along the lake michigan lakeshore have consistently owned 30 percent of the tourism market across the state now when you put that in perspective there are 72 counties and over 200 tourism offices in the state of Wisconsin and along the lake shore we own 30 percent of the market share so when something like COVID hits that small corridor as opposed nine counties as opposed to the other what minus the 72 60 63 counties are getting hit 30 percent of the market share so let's hope we don't have catastrophe again so here's the 12-year room tax history um i basically started in tourism here and on june 1st actually 2010 so when i started it was just me by myself created the first website by myself um basically had my own camera and then as we've grown our budget was a little over $300,000 over the years and up to 2018 the budget had increased to $667,000 this is room taxes three room taxes where our budget comes from and you'll learn about what that is and how that works in just a moment um so by what happened between 2018 and 19 you can see our budget jumped in 2018 the bonds that paid to build the conference center at blue harbour resort matured now 100 percent of blue harbors room tax dollars went to pay off those bonds that bond payment every year until it was paid off so it did not come into our budget but our budget was still growing and hopefully blue harbors was too and as we found out it did so in 2019 um was the first year that we actually got to see the effect of the blue harbor room tax dollars coming into the tourism budget which is why in 2018 we were looking to expand we started looking at building the building we started looking at expanding the staff expanding the markets now we have some resources we can go out to the midwest we can increase our capacity increase the tourism visits and so the 1.2 million that we had by 2020 um that came through in room tax what i actually tanked because covid so as soon as we were able to expand um and then we ran through 2020 very risk averse because we didn't know what was going to happen as a lot of you did but i'm sure watching the news and going through covid yourself you know around the world travel was rough it was very risky none of us knew if we should spend another dime well by 2021 as we started to see things recover and like i said we don't know what visitor spending was for 2021 yet but we do know that the room tax collected was over 1.5 million and i've got to say thank you for not canceling Ryder Cup and it got us right back on track so as of 2019 2021 we don't really know what a normal year is for us yet um 2021 was the very first full year the visitor center was open the very full first full year that our marketing expansion campaign is launching and that we're really seeing what can happen and really the very first full year that our team as big as it is now going from three people in 2017 to eight now and expanding all of our markets and using those resources to bring money into the economy the first year it's worked together in one place rather than in coffee shops and on zoom meetings so this is a different way to look at our 12 year room tax history you can see in 2022 we're budgeting 1.1 million because if we look at our history we really don't know what to expect without unforeseen variables such as moving the Ryder Cup from 20 to 21 hoping it doesn't cancel um basically having the blue harbor room tax come into our budget which we didn't have before so we really faced a lot of different variables over the last few years if you're quick at math you will figure out very fast that in quarters two and three we earn anywhere between 65 and 70 percent of our income for the year our room tax income so basically on the shoulder seasons and we all live in Wisconsin traveling in in Wisconsin in the winter is risky and it doesn't draw obviously as well as those summer months where everyone loves to come here so this is the room tax cycle visit Sheboygan is a private non-profit 501c6 we are not a government entity we're not government employees and we're not city employees we're also not county tourism how room tax works is the three municipalities in our zone have all adopted a room tax ordinance under Wisconsin state room tax statute to collect eight percent room tax for every person who stays overnight in a lodging facility if you stay at blue harbor overnight if you stayed in air and be Airbnb overnight you pay a percent room tax on your room rate each night and 70 percent of that income eventually makes its way into our budget the other 30 percent helps the local municipalities funds as the local municipalities are allowed to put that directly into their general funds and spend it how they wish so our job is to get visitors as a dml into the lodging properties and I should I'm sure most of you know but as we're not county tourism each municipality that's adopted a room tax zone or room tax ordinance across the county has its own tourism office right now it's the Sheboygan area tourism zone which is visit Sheboygan we have Destination Kohler Elkhart Lake has its own tourism office Plymouth has its own tourism office and Sheboygan Falls just so we understand the different entities in our county alone but we of course our job is to attract visitors into the area to spend money into the area get that 243 million dollars going through our local economy but we need visitors to stay overnight in lodging properties in order to increase the tourism budget the municipalities collect the room tax from the lodging properties they reconcile that they put 32 percent to their general fund or however they want to spend that 70 percent moves on to our Sheboygan area tourism zone room tax commission the room tax commission governs it through a contract with a official tourism entity under Wisconsin state room tax statute which they're supposed to do and that's visit Sheboygan and then visit Sheboygan again uses that 70 percent to launch campaigns outside of the area to bring visitors back into the area to stay overnight to keep the perpetuating cycle going and hopefully increase the room tax economy which we have seen since 2014 and we've seen a room tax pattern since 2010 does work and when people ask me well what happens if we take tourism away I always say why do you think they launch pure Michigan because the decade before that the state took tourism away and then they realize what it did to their economy so some of the frequently asked questions we have is property tax used for tourism efforts absolutely not tourism is 100 funded by this 70 percent room tax that comes into our budget as I said earlier visit Sheboygan is not a city department we aren't city employees we're a separate 501c6 non-profit who owns the visitor center building and how is it funded this since that building's gone up on south a street is probably the most asked question we don't even own the building actually there's a private owner and a private developer and it was built to suit and we lease the space and one of the other frequently asked question is is why does visit Sheboygan manage the city's fourth of july events and I haven't had a fourth of july off in 13 years except for the covid year so that's a really good question but the reason we do that is because before visit Sheboygan under a separate agreement with the city of Sheboygan decided to take on the event management of the city-wide events for the fourth of july it was being run out of the planning and development department and I believe that was Chad and maybe two people running it plus doing his full-time job and it made a lot of sense for us to to help with that event since we had the staff resources to do it it is not paid for by room tax no room tax dollars no property tax dollars pay for the city's fourth of july events it is 100 paid for by sponsors so anytime you see plenco wisconsin bank and trust and the festival fireworks and they pay for the all of the fireworks directly please thank them for that because without them we would not have those city events and this visit Sheboygan plan community events interestingly enough especially this past year we've had a lot of local organizations or local people with great event ideas call us and say can't you do this event for us can't you plan it for us and as you can see I understand the confusion because we're visiting Sheboygan they see us at the fourth of july and no one completely understands tourism um so which is why we're here now we're usually out and about every year the last time we've addressed even the common council given the annual update is 2018 for obvious reasons um so we're back in the swing now and we don't plan community events though our main focus as a dmo as part of the larger network across the state of wisconsin is to market outside of the area to bring visitors in the area to get them into the lodging properties to spend their dollars into the community to add to the robust tourism economy of over 243 billion dollars a year so this is the tourism promotion and development network of which we are apart um travel wisconsin is the department of tourism for the state of wisconsin many of you may have seen their commercials or heard their ads um chances are you may have they do a little bit in the state but they do a lot out of the state as well so if you haven't don't feel bad um destinations wisconsin which is a trade association for dmo's across the state that brings us together um basically so we can look at marketing trends so we have um our education for tourism and newer technology newer trends newer research for our industry um the wisconsin hotel and lodging association is a trade association for our lodging industry partners and they are partners with all of the dmo's across the state obviously there's a very symbiotic relationship between the hotels and lodging properties and tourism entities or dmo's because we need each other to get the people here get them in the hotels and get that money flowing the local tourism economy so wisconsin harbour towns association of which we are a board member um and wisconsin harbour towns association is a marketing association that comes together to help market all of those lakeshore properties on lakes michigan and or all the port towns along lake michigan and lake superior um great lakes travel is very very big not just throughout the locally throughout the united states but internationally we literally sit on one fifth of the world's fresh water we take that for granted every day um but no one outside of the midwest does it's a huge huge attraction circle wisconsin is also a marketing association promoting group tours as i said leisure travels are number one market group tours is probably our number two market and growing and growing especially post-covid um the group tour market has just exploded so and it was always very solid but it's really exploded um so we're a part of that organization as well and a b a or the american bus association which is a group two market nationwide which helps us bring buses in from all of the united states for tourists who like to travel in groups as i said a growing growing market um at this time i'm going to turn over this podium to bill elliott who is the ceo and president of the wisconsin hotel and lodging association and also one of the states for most experts in our industry in room tax thank you all right thanks for having me here today um i'm bill elliot i'm here to talk about room tax the most exciting topic of the evening but i promise to keep it under two hours so with that now um uh so i'm the president ceo the wisconsin hotel and lodging association are obviously the trade association for the lodging industry in wisconsin and um and and it's an honor to have this role uh yes i have to talk about room tax all the time but i'm passionate about it because it supports tourism and tourism is just an awesome industry to to work into playing and to to to live in i kind of think of it as two things i i love to travel i love to go places and explore things but just as much as i love doing that i love bringing people to wisconsin and showing off our communities and taking pride in where we live and and room tax is a great vehicle to help us uh have the opportunity to do that so um with that i'm not going to go too much into the um the who we are here but we represent right now about 500 lodging properties throughout the state um just like everybody else we're rebounding from covid right now but it's it's coming back strong um we also work with students who are in hospitality programs um we work with the dmo's obviously um and we we work with um there's probably fair or important to mention we work with lodging properties of all sizes so if you own a vacation home on the lake or if you own uh one of the huge conference centers um you know we're everyone in between is is a welcome member of of of our association so we really um work to advocate on behalf of our members obviously within laws room tax laws and many others we provide education for our members and teach them how to be better lodging property operators um so let's talk a little bit about the the room tax side of things um it's uh uh it's important that we're supporting tourism because of what tourism does for our local economies and our state economy um she mentioned before the the longwood study that's that's late coming out so this is a one from a previous year but the numbers typically stay right about here for every one dollar of promotional spend that we put into to um advertising our communities in our state we get back eight dollars in tax revenue um be that sales tax uh room tax local expo taxes all all those those taxes that come in um maybe even more impressive is for every one dollar promotion that we put in um we bring in ninety five dollars of visitor spending um to the to the community that one wants to keep repeating so i'm gonna back up for a minute and talk about how room tax started um it's back in the 1960s uh municipalities and in in regions like shabuigan um didn't have the money to promote their area as a destination um we had some funding back then to to promote wisconsin uh in general um but the marketing was either left up to the state or to the individual properties and when it comes to the budgets that we're talking about to to um to to market a community like this no no single hotel uh is going to be able to to um to do that as effectively as that this the cvbs are so um so what we did in the 1960s is we voluntarily accepted to um to to pass a law that would allow uh for room tax to be put in place and that was specifically meant to help promote um to promote a community nowadays we look at that as a three legged stool and if any of these three legs breaks um it's detrimental to the tourism economy uh in a community um the first one i'll talk about is the state level of marketing now that comes through um through mostly through um general purpose revenue at the state level it's it's it's um the part of the the budget every couple years when when we do that um and that's uh you mentioned pure michigan before it's our version of that it's the department of tourism travel wisconsin you may have heard of i might drive up here i was listening to a radio show and i heard the secretary of tourism talking about all the cool things to do in wisconsin right now um that's where that funding really goes um and and that's that's supposed to drive people to the uh to the macro economy in our state um then there's the the local level again funded with a room tax the eight percent that's coming in here um and um that brings people into the the shabuigan area and then of course equally as important is the individual hotel or lodging facilities marketing um and all three of those pieces have to be there to have a successful tourism economy so a little bit more on wisconsin's room tax model i'm not going to read this all to you and one of these days i have to redesign it because it's way too much but it's it all starts when somebody comes to a property um we collect the lodging tax uh on their their bill with uh along with their sales tax and in and anything else that's on there it's one of our responsibilities to collect that um we remit it to the um to the municipality and in wisconsin you can keep up to uh the municipality can keep up to 30 of that the rest has to go to tourism entity i won't mention there are plenty of communities that that put more than um 70 into the marketing and promotion of tourism as well um so from there there's uh they take that 70 and they either give it directly to a tourism entity or in your case to a tourism commission that contracts with um with visit shabuigan um and of course they take that money and they spend it on um on promotion and and the cycle goes over and over again so again uh uh to go through it a little more detail it starts with that overnight guest they they come in here they pay that tax and they go out and they spend money in the economy it could be your gas station it could be your restaurant it can be your retail shops um and don't forget the business traveler as well that's that's here to do business um so really they're generating that revenue for um for the shabuigan area um and when that room tax comes we we send it right along to the to the municipality um i will mention um uh that um uh there are some grandfathered communities but that's almost a moot point now um under old tax laws it got really screwed up and uh it was fixed years ago now so it's almost all phased out at this point but um overseeing the expenditures of all the room tax dollars on tourism promotion and tourism development is an important job and that's what your room tax commissioners do um since since you're a part of a zone um each municipality has some seats on that room tax commission um it it always differs depending on how big the municipalities are and whatnot um but by law they have to they have to um contract with the tourism entity um which is visit shabuigan here um and um and uh then obviously visit shabuigan has to take that money and use it to put heads and beds as we say in our industry but um but specifically for tourism promotion and tourism development so how can room tax be spent let's go back to the municipalities 30 they get to keep for just a second they can do whatever they want with it um again as i said put it back to tourism is a great idea but if you can't do that um you can do that the the fire trucks the roads the playgrounds and all of those types of things but when it comes to that 70 percent um or more that needs to go to the commission and again the commission will then um push it through to the to the cvb to do their their their work um talking a little bit about the definition of tourism promotion and tourism development this is where some of our debate comes in from time to time um but it's um really any of the following that are significantly used by transient tourists and reasonably likely to generate paid overnight stays at more than one establishment that are owned by different persons so marketing projects um those are media buys those are the the um the uh the electronic billboards or social media or magazines um tv ads is trying to get conventions into a town or or meetings and groups into a town sporting events the bus groups that were mentioned before all of those things are are good use of of room tax dollars um also for things like uh tourist information um services like your visitor center for example um and then tangible municipal development including convention centers so we're just talking about the the bonding for blue harbor and that that coming through or um uh being up now um but those types of expenditures are reasonable and within the the legal framework of of the room tax law um and oftentimes we get asked well what how does the uh uh uh cvb or uh dmo like um visit shabuigan um know if something's eligible to be spent on room tax is it really tourism promotion and tourism development or not um and same with the the the um room tax commissions um the question is quite simple it's really do you have multiple lodging property operators that are telling you yes this is bringing tourism to us um you know we get calls at our office all the time saying you know we want to plant flowers down main street we really think it'll make it pretty and then people will want to come and stay here um and that's a great thing to spend money on but there really is no link that we've ever seen um between that and directly putting heads in bed so it's sometimes where you draw that line but um when you look at a professionally operated um dmo like visit shabuigan they can show you um you know all the metrics on what they're doing and show you the growth and how they're hitting their goals year over year um and that's what it's about to uh to to hire a professional um professional marketing tourism marketing operators um uh to to help promote your communities and bring visitors to to your to shabuigan um also um an important thing to ask is will it be used for for marketing projects um or tangible municipal development um again the the marketing projects i think are fairly obvious what's marketing and what's not um sometimes we get a little um wrapped up in what's the convention center and what's not but again here i don't think you need to worry about that so i'm not going to go into too many details um but right now you have a very healthy relationship and in seeing those the the the results from um from your room tax revenue it just just proves it the great thing about that is as as that's paying off the 30 percent that the city gets to keep keeps going up as well so um it's it's it's rising all boats together so my role in all this and in the wisconsin hotel lodging associations role is to to educate to be here at meetings like tonight and let people know what room tax is all about and why it's important for our our industry and our communities um it's to educate our elected officials on this and and the general public as well um we also advocate to make sure that the law is to make sure that the law is strong um and to make sure that people are following it um and and to protect the law when there's abuses of it and we do that in many different ways again i don't i don't think we need to dive into that tonight but um it's we have a very united community within the lodging industry to make sure that room tax is being used properly um that it's it's funding the um the destination management organizations that will bring visitors to our cities which obviously makes it better for our businesses but also for all those other businesses that are getting a piece of that $95 for every one dollar promotional spend so with that um uh i'll leave it slightly under that two hours i promised but i just want to let you know there are resources available on room tax whenever you have questions um this is all public information at um at wisconsin lodging dot org slash room tax um feel free to go down there and we have a lot of different um uh graphics and and um resources to show you how to best use your room tax how to set up the room tax structure and more um in addition to that like i said our role is to help educate the public and elected officials and i'm always happy to take phone calls or emails or letters um and and that's what we're here for so always feel free to reach out with that i want to say thank you and uh look forward to talking or taking questions later all right we'll take a quick two-minute stretch break if you're bored and want to ditch out this is your out if you want to hang out for the question and answer portion hang tight thanks i think it's amy deidra brian paul get up here pick a seat any any seats i like using that thing at arm's length just so yeah sit by me paul come on see it they put the camera on me to fix my yeah take a seat let me see for questions my lovely assistant todd wolff uh our city administrator will be running around and collecting more questions if they pop up so all right i also just want to do a quick shout out uh our wonderful some of our wonderful city team members are here so when i call you out just give a wave um some of our city council officials are here so we have alder woman grazia parella alderman dean decker um we had alderman joe heideman joe joe's coming in um and alder woman amanda salsar as well so i think those are all the the elders he'll all the alder flicky paneski and of course um right in front of me council president barb feldy so um they they we appreciate the work in their leadership uh to the city so all right so uh i stacked some questions uh here um that have similar themes um you know so if some of the questions are similar i'll just kind of lump them together um as we move forward so first question first category for questions has to deal with just collaboration um and when your mic is red that means it's on if you want to buzz in push it and when it's green you're in the queue so i think i have everyone's all right so first question volunteerism and threat oh this is one of the words i can't say philanthropy there we go our critical components for talent recruitment and retention how are you engaging with the nonprofit sector and helping nonprofits thrive and just buzz in whoever wants to go first paul take it away uh basically most of my board is from the nonprofit sector so we engage very thoroughly with them um which helps keep us in tune with what they're up to and them with what we're up to when it's red it's on so just oh can i just turn it off yeah you did well what the sorry about that i'm new at this we engage the nonprofit community in a number of ways so you guys heard me give a whole long spiel earlier about some of our programs and events but we provide programming we provide support services additional tools and resources at times we send groups out to um like roll up our actual sleeves um literally not figuratively and go out and um work with our nonprofits um in the area we also want to bring awareness so a big part of what we do in being the hub or being the connector is to bring people into their spaces and we do that through building relationships and then again raising that awareness so when we're talking with our members and our members employees and the people that work in their organizations we're also talking about our nonprofit members and how they can connect and how they can be a part of the the larger community in a way that makes sense for them and that they're passionate about because everybody's got a passion it might just look a little bit different and we want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to explore that passion and give back to the community in that way from the Economic Development Corporation perspective I would say we are just building out that model for us I would say we were very internal previously but from our perspective whenever we're looking at new programming what we try to do is so we just help host a zoom call with all the organizations regarding DEIB just making sure we understand where the partners are and who's working on what what sort of initiatives so that we understand what's going on in the overall larger community but also for those nonprofits that are in growth mode or from a business model's perspective we are there trying to figure out how to get them to have solid business models financial statements putting those things together so that they can operate as effectively and efficiently as possible so we partner on two different levels one on the business model side so that we can help them grow but then also on from a community initiative standpoint making sure that we're a good partner and that's the part that we are continuing to grow and learn on and I would just say make sure that if because we're not the traditional nonprofit to partner with just we have open ears well of course as I said most of our how we spend our room tax money is governed by Wisconsin State statute so since we're our focus is to bring people from outside of the community into the community and whether or not those sites and attractions are for-profit or non-profit we don't look as closely at that because that is not how our tourists looks at it but what we're hopefully doing and I'm sure our 240 billion visitors spending across the county certainly is shared in all of those local tours sites and attractions and in our visitor center everyone is equally welcome as a site attraction or hospitality business to bring in their information and be equally represented in what the tourist is looking for when they're coming through our space and they're all equally represented on our website and any of the digital promotion that we have awesome thanks everyone okay now still on the topic of collaboration two questions sort of similar so I'm going to read both questions and we'll go down the line again this question is from the anonymous citizen in the audience thank you Paul for laughing I appreciate that how do the featured organizations currently one complement each other's respective work and to collaborate with one another are there any opportunities or more that you want to do moving forward next question all of you are doing amazing things but how are you really working together there seems to be a lot of overlap and I would challenge you to optimize collaboration who's team that one up Brian I'll start um related to how we're you know just bring up talent recruitment workforce development Deidre and I meet on a weekly basis trying to understand who's working on what activities also from a talent recruitment perspective I talked about we're going to be doing talent recruitment it's very similar to destination visit Sheboygan we are doing the outreach marketing once they come into the marketplace I view that as a transition over to the chamber for that local relationship management but external relationship management from a talent recruitment perspective we own that and we need to make sure that we're helping employers build their brand tied to the Sheboygan brand and we also understand the quality of life amenities as well so that's from a collaboration standpoint on the bid I know we help with like the pop-up shops and things of that nature so we actually refer people to the city for the pop-up shops and work with the city on that as far as I'll just say for visit Sheboygan really we haven't had that engagement yet you know as we hopefully do additional outreach marketing so hopefully some of the collateral materials that we're doing for talent recruitment and destination marketing can be put together and so that we're actually leveraging off of each other that would be a hopeful goal Yes so and as Brian shared the EDC and the county chamber of commerce the EDC's role it has been that of attraction where we really do focus on that retention piece so when Brian's talking about that transition so we actually do a lot of work together to complement each other and part of that question was there seems to be a lot of overlap and how can we reduce duplication and we I agree and I think many of us agree that there is a significant amount of duplication and it needs to be looked at and it needs to be addressed because if we are duplicating efforts that means that we are leaving gaps and if we're leaving gaps and we're leaving holes then we are not doing our jobs to the best of our ability so the EDC and I Brian and I have in this past well now it's been almost a year six months okay so he's newer to the rodeo but but we've been spending on a weekly basis time together to better understand the the purpose of each other's roles and organizations and how we can reduce duplication and better support one another the bid you know has gone through some transition as Paul had shared and we're working through some things just recently I was invited to participate as a non-voting member on the board of directors I'm very new to that role but I'm hopeful that that my ability to have a voice and represent the businesses that I represent on in the bid district will hopefully see some value in that and that we can really grow and expand what the bid is doing visit Sheboygan you know there have been times in the past where we have worked together and there haven't in the last couple of years there hasn't been a significant opportunity for us to work alongside or partner with tourism we would certainly love to see that move in a different direction moving forward because we know that tourism is plays a significant role in in our economy and they're not just coming here to stay at hotels they're coming here to go to concerts at the Wild Center they're coming here to take a walk through Bookworm Gardens they're coming here to go see live music at Levitt Amp they're coming here for programs and events that we are offering in our city much like many other communities do but we're just really awesome we have a beautiful space and we do it better and so we're really hopeful that moving forward we will see a greater collaboration and a greater partnership in working together because we know that it is an economic driver for Sheboygan County and specifically for the city of Sheboygan. Sure um actually I would agree that um some there is some overlap and then with the EDC of course you're reaching out as well um hopefully all seven million tourists a year don't move here we'll really have a whole same problem we won't be able to keep up with that um yeah but in the last in the last couple years as Deidre said I just want to say that it's it's not so much overlap as I see as we have different lanes and different focuses um I really really since we're looking outward and so far beyond the local community when we get people here and by the way our hotels are over 80% sold out for the summer already and they were two months ago so when when we partner with our hotels and with the lodging association and we get people here as a DMO we really look to the organization such as the bid and the chamber to get those people immersed in the community because we can't do both um our focus is so directed um with the the DMO's mission of bringing people here we can certainly help with that um and like I said it's a little bit different working with a county chamber when we're just city and shabuagan area room tax zone tourism we aren't really allowed to market like the american club or the we can only market with our room tax dollars our tourism zone those other municipalities each have their own tourism office and market their own tourism zone um and Deidre and I probably do have to figure out how to form an alliance because there was a um the other tourism offices did have a collaboration group that was really unofficial the tourism alliance of shabuagan county but we found out real quickly that with three very separate markets of five Forbes five star luxury market as the american club and with elk heart lake such as um that has the generational chicago market tourism market and then we're the lakeshore great lakes market three different markets that we go after um we do need um someone to pull that together and it's my understanding that the uh chamber of commerce has a grant from the county and has the county visitor center vestibule which I think we all appreciate because that's where a person can go and find all of the information from across the county and all of it we can't carry in our lobby um hopefully someday there is a way to bring all of those together I would like to see all of us become satellite offices of each other it's been talked about ever since I've been in this position um and hopefully that can get done and that might take more than just our respective organizations and maybe some of the leadership from the other communities to get that to the table and see how we can do that and cross those lines awesome thanks Amy all right now we're gonna have some some specific agency questions here Paul year of first is it only business owners that are assessed and get a fee to be a part of the bid is it residents or just businesses great question so it's actually not businesses at all it's property owners and when I say property owners only property only property owners that engage in commercial real estate so for example the beautiful on-court building that was just built in the last couple of years does pay an assessment but only only based on the amount of retail space they have none of the apartments are assessed the library is not assessed the wild center is not assessed john michael collard center is not assessed commercial buildings like mine we are assessed commercial buildings like the nemshaft building next door to mine are assessed individual businesses Rudnick jewelers is not assessed but my real estate entity is so that's it's a it's a little bit abstract it's a little bit confusing but I hope I got it out there thanks all right I don't know who this question is for specifically but the question is what percentage of people driving to shawing county for work maybe that's a brand question or I need to look and go back to a power point like a from six months ago I would just I would just say the workforce population coming into the county employed in the county we get two percent of the workforce population coming from fondlead county two percent coming from a zaki county six percent is coming in from man to walk county and another two percent coming from Calumet the goal from my perspective though is with the highway 23 corridor when it finally is completed we have to get the east west from highway 41 going north and south to start going east and west from a true employment and I would say destination as well employment perspective trying to make sure that we can grow the economy east and west and just not north and south I think I addressed that sounds good all right it seems that a number of vacation rental properties have jumped significantly in recent years so I'm assuming these are like air bnb type entities does the city collect taxes from these rentals and if so does the city direct any of these revenues to support housing development in the community is that a that's a tax collection question I'm Chad Peleshek the planning director sorry for those online you're not going to see me because I'm standing in the corner but anyway um the this question actually came up from an older person earlier this week so I have the answer in may of uh May 21st of 2017 under a state act 59 governor walker signed into law a bill that precludes municipalities from regulating through land use the use of air bnbs and those types of short term rentals so under that statute we're unable to regulate and have a zoning ordinance that says you can or cannot have short term rentals so basically the short term rental group was pretty aggressive in getting the legislature at the time to buy into their idea the verbose and the air bnb so we aren't able to regulate where they go whose neighborhood they're in whose house they're in um but we can charge we can have them pay room tax so uh we know that they're spiraling out of shape in the city um hence the reason why we're engaging software that we'll be rolling out in the next month with host compliance that will do a quarterly monitor of all of the air bnb sites which those are considered marketplace rental sites and there's over 60 of them um and the company is telling us that there's 233 air bnbs currently in the market and we're hoping that with the software we'll be able to get people to pay their fair share of room tax so at least if we can't regulate they regulate them through zoning we can get them to be paying room taxes for the overnight stays that they're having similar to a hotel awesome thanks Chad next question for the chamber how do you create your welcome wagon mailing list does it include apartments in some of the new condos that are coming to town well i shouldn't tell you my secrets because then we it won't be our secret anymore actually the the lists are provided by um one of our wonderful um places in the city of shabuigan our public library it is as simple as that you if you are a member of the city of shabuigan and you go to the library and you get yourself a library card and they have wonderful people that are working at the library because i don't know the name of the list off the top of my head but they can point you in the right direction so um our tools and resources are available at our fingertips free of charge for city residents at the library awesome thank you and don't steal our idea folks i'm teasing all right thank you nexus for visit uh what is the visit shabuigan steam nonprofit well actually when uh visit shabuigan itself the site was developed and built to suit it was developed in mind with the fact that we are now in the middle of the um national marine sanctuary that was just designated um our partners to the north um manitouac tourism and our partners to the south uh port washington tourism all took as their role in the national marine sanctuary and this is new it's all in development so this is all very new a lot of the community doesn't understand what the national marine sanctuary is about yet but it's a huge tourism attraction there's many across the country we visited one in alpina michigan just to see what the draw is and it'll be incredible for our community once it gets rolling and no one gets their program rolled out but our partners north and south took on um more the history side of shipwrecks and maritime life on the great lakes and being in the middle of it at shabuigan when we built the site we built it along the river and we decided we would be the future and look at what future is like and um protecting our fresh water and how we live in the ecology and water runoff and um the environmental plant life and flora that that are unique to our area um and so we kind of built the site with that in mind which is partially what the sphere is about in the window um in the future there is a science in the sky completely off the grid kind of laboratory teach the um tourists and locals about hydroponics aquaponics um water levels different water conditions we're hoping to in the future the dream would be to have a research vessel if no one will help us as part of the marine sanctuary um but visit shabuigan steam itself as this vision with the national marine sanctuary grew we had some other partners um one of them right now millipore sigman some other local partners who wanted to contribute to this but we're a 501c6 of contributions to this project um as a visitor center site and attraction are not tax deductible so we came up with just the visit shabuigan steam project on the side so that we could have um other participants um in other companies and they could also leverage the site and leverage the vision into the future with us and be able to contribute to it rather than contributing to the 501c6 which really wouldn't be possible for them awesome thank you all right next question for all the panelists all right next topic there's a few questions regarding board members so where can individuals find a list of your board members who who is on them and how are they appointed and then the follow-up question is regarding who is on the room tax commission and how is the room tax commission appointed so board and room tax commission who's on it how do they get on it i'll go fast for the shabuigan county chamber of commerce it is a collective of chamber members you have to be a chamber member in order to be on the board of directors any one of our members has an opportunity if they express interest it would then go to the executive committee which is comprised of five members um and then if they choose to you know move that group forward if you will it goes to the general membership and the membership votes at the annual meeting um typically the third thursday of january of each year so who is on our board it is a diverse group of industry professionals we really like to make sure that all industry and each each group of members is represented um so that could be nonprofits it could be health care it could be manufacturing it could be legal it could be accounting you name it you forgot to mention uh your vice president christin sternes is here and our president mark shoe is right over here as well we've got actually a quite a few nelly weiss is on our board of directors on our executive committee so we've got quite a few board members in the space with us right uh related to the economic development corporation our uh list of board members are on our website uh related to the number of board members we have i think 38 um board members uh yes thank you for saying that um so most of them um represent are either municipalities or partners from the municipal perspective but most of them are corporate business leaders throughout the county um so as far as how our board is selected uh actually we just had that conversation today at my executive committee so we're looking at how we revamp that a little bit but currently there is a nomination committee our board development committee and they give a recommendation to our executive committee which then submits it to the board of directors for adoption cool thanks paul who gets to appoint your board who decides uh i believe it's you mr mayor our board is listed on our website yes i'm getting a nod yes uh our board has um certain stipulations we need a certain number of property owners we need a certain number of business owners um some other partners uh two of my non-voting partners are sitting right next to me we generally provide a slate to the mayor in november or december and then he usually takes our recommendations and and approves them um i i'd like to i'd like to confirm also by the council i'd like to blame them but generally we do provide the names for that list and then uh it's a good list it's usually a good list um i like some of them are in the rooms a lot of them are in the room so yeah uh kind of a kind of a dream team going on right now i like to say so thanks paul amy our board is um our board and the room tax commission are structured according to once again wisconsin room tax law which dictates who sits on our board and how many seats they have um so in the municipality city of shabuigan um according to the amount of room tax that is collected from there they're allowed three seats on the board and on the commission and right now those seats are filled by the mayor the city administrator and uh chad pelishek the city planner um and you'll have to correct me if i'm wrong but i'm not sure if those are all going to board appointed i think some of them are dictated by room tax law um yeah and and or i'm sorry that's the room tax commission now the town of shabuigan and the town of wilson um at the level of room tax that they're collecting they each have one representative on our board um and on the commission and according to the um room tax law both our board and our commission have two hotel representatives um and then on our board we have another site an attraction member that is in our bylaws um so those people we we don't list um actually the commission is is a city entity governed by room tax law so they would have the list of the room tax commission i mean we would have it but you could ask me for it if you wanted to but that's really dictated by them on the board of our board of directors for visit shabuigan incorporated um we don't put that on our website but i would be happy to email it to you i can tell you who they are right now um we have the the mayor um todd wolf um chad pelishak matt four um james schwin from the towns and then uh sue engler from blue harbour and cameron bop from bright hospitality and mike froh um from the was in parks and recs and waterfront marina um and the reason we don't list that on our tourism site is because first of all tourism tourists aren't interested in who's on our board and they are the users of our site not really local people we'll be happy to email it to you but another thing we don't want happening is a tourist who might have a bad experience instead of calling us as the tourism center and the customer service space calling some of our board members um so we like to keep that off of our site can we do that you can if you can avoid angry people well locally you can call them if you want to but tourist is a different thing all right just a few more questions here i know we're a little over times but we'll quick do a quick rapid fire here next one is for brian does the scd edc i almost tripped up on that one charge for their clients we are entirely free so whether you invest in us or not we will provide the same services to you um so our entire goal is to advance opportunities and remove barriers for companies and individuals to advance their dreams all right next one is for the chamber five percent is five percent of revenue from grants on par with revenue within other peers and other similar chamber of commerce so i would say that there are probably um there are not probably two chambers alike um and i say that because um some chambers operate as also a bid or main street as well as the tourism so they receive property assessment um dollars they also receive the room tax dollars and then they operate as a chamber of commerce kind of on the side um some chambers of commerce operate um as a collective of economic development um as well as a chamber of commerce and so they would receive economic um funding from the municipalities we um are like many other chambers in that we are really truly um pretty close to standalone so we do receive uh five percent of our funding and grants as amy shared part of that roughly one percent of our funding comes in the form of a tourism county tourism grant annually so that we can fund our vestibule and we can also produce the community guides and we can also print the county maps that are distributed throughout the community and beyond so i don't know that there's really two that are alike that i could really compare to because it is also significantly different in our market um meaning shabuagan county we are the only um well i shouldn't say that um so elkhart does operate as a separate chamber of commerce and they also have a separate tourism um but i do believe they receive property assessment i'm not a hundred percent sure on that um shabuagan falls and plymouth um operate as tourist bid main street as well as chambers of commerce so in our space we are probably truly the only chamber of commerce which is why you see much of our programming um in the tools and resources we provide looks significantly different we don't we focus on uh we don't do you know parades and community events we focus more on the workforce development the professional development and the governmental affairs and advocacy which really is in line with what the true nature of a chamber of commerce was established for thank you all right for visit shabuagan how do you measure the results of your tourism marketing campaigns when we saw some of the metrics um up tonight during the slide show obviously the room taxes one of the largest visitor spending going up is another one um for individual campaigns we can see right back to where those touch points are and where they move across from our um media buys and platforms all the way into the visitor center um and we can see right now especially since we started our midwest campaign and going down into the south um those travelers are coming there we can see the touch points through our social media through our websites through all the digital platforms in our visitor guide requests and coming right through to the business center and we do actually look at the cross cross numbers coming in we tabulate where they're coming from the times they go out especially with Google analytics it's so much smarter than our own brains it can pretty much drill down right to when that touch point happened and where it happened awesome thank you all right so that concludes the card questions so we'll open it up if for a few questions um if anyone from the public has any final thoughts or questions for the panel come up to the podium and just say your name and let us know what question you got hi my name is paul it's a pleasure to meet you all um you guys are doing a great job i just got here about two and a half weeks ago love the city uh toys restaurant down the street i am uh i'm i'm coming into the community as a bible worker and i just started a couple weeks ago and i'd like to get our church involved in the community and we're a non-profit organization and so i figured i would ask you guys where you could direct me to become part of that i i talked to scott earlier today but i forgot to ask him how to do that so i can i can help you get a hold of scott no problem is scott here where scott at he he left oh scott left all right yeah i think scott's a good good so scott's the guy yep all right well all right well that was easy there you go thank you paul welcome to sheboygan we appreciate you coming here you're learning a lot today all right anyone else anyone else last call all right may it be for you adjourn is there anybody online that would like to unmute and ask a question that hasn't been answered all right well that that concludes our program for this evening thank you everyone so much for attending stay involved stay engaged stay plugged in feel free to reach out to any of these organizations for more information or to be a part of the continuous progress so thank you