Budget recap - Memberships are coming in, most using Cheddar up. The insurance bill (Pecan) came in and was paid for the year. Will be on Feb spreadsheet.
BMO - CD’s would cost us $500 to break them. Group determines it wouldn’t be worth it to break them for the current interest rate. Should we open another $5000 CD? No.
Is this our banner year? No, because they weren’t up most of the year. Let’s do them in the winter next year so they have more time to be up.
Did we have the state of the village yet? It’s tomorrow (2/15)
Nick Palmer, new village administrator, joins meeting. Notifies us the Feb 21st meeting regarding the downtown reno is being pushed back to an undetermined date. Q: Is there anything we should work on that will affect the Chamber? Unknown at this time, there are alot of ideas, but priorities have to be set. Part of the reason the meeting is being pushed back is that all ideas hadn’t been vetted and need to be planned out in detail before bringing to the public. Nick hopes to have more information in the coming weeks and months as things are solidified. He will circle back to let us know.
PHONE…..Can someone please take care of this. We have to go to a network owned store (T-Mobile), not a franchise. It needs to be set up under the business. At this point we are fine using any company, however, T-Mobile has the best deal. Any store can do the contract, a person has to be connected to the account, they don’t do anything that small with a tax ID number alone. Mandie will do it since she is the one carrying and using the phone.
WE ARE NEVER TALKING ABOUT THE PHONE AGAIN!!
New Website - Please go to the link for the new website and click through to make sure everything is ok and doesn’t need to be changed before it goes live next week. Mandie is going to have a tutorial with the website creator to learn how to edit things on the back end.
Arrowhead After Hours 2/22 - No speaker - We have the big bar reserved. Mandie emailed to figure out what we are doing with appetizers, waiting to hear back.
Light up the Village Green - When to start? 2/22. Last year we gave the business a guest spot in the newsletter but the wording was a bit confusing. Need to reword for this year. What can we do to entice the businesses to participate? Lunch for their office? Free sponsorship to our next event? Or an event of their choice? Give an end date to choose the sponsorship.
Irish Fest - Raffle tickets, do we want to sell them? Do we have a list of volunteers? They will email it to us (Kristy)
Sponsorship - Chamber will sponsor a $500 spot if they can still create our own banner, if not $250. Mandie can take a check to Gallagher’s. Donna will call Mary Kestel to get details about the turnaround time for banners then we can vote on decision.
Scholarship - The scholarship is $2000. There is one winner between the 3 schools. LW would like to have their winner by mid-April. We should ask for applications back by March 31st. What topic?
Choices - How will this scholarship help you?
How have you contributed to your community?
…..Kathy has the list.
How have you contributed to your community is the group favorite, or some variation of that.
Kristy will call Providence and Kathy will contact Peotone for school contacts.
Park District - Easter Egg Hunt - They want to sit down and talk to us about how they would like things to go. Jay will let Kristy know when and Kristy and Mandie will attend that meeting. Brad may also join. 4/1, 9am and 10am, is the egg hunt at Round Barn. We are ordering things from Amazon or Oriental Trading. Are they having people register kids ahead of time. Budget for prizes? Everything was covered by sponsors. $680 came in through Cheddar Up last year so approx $500 is a safe plan for now. Push the sponsorship flyer out for the businesses, use the same format as last year. Can we do the same thing for Easter this year as we did for X-mas, purchasing things on clearance at Michaels this year for next year.
Heritage Fest Craft Show - Hours 12-5 - Planning to have flyers to pass out at the Irish Fest Craft show for people to sign up for Heritage Fest.
Car Show Sponsorship - We can sponsor one of the 3 car shows, July, Aug, Sept. We can have a table there. If we do July we can pass out flyers for future summer events.
Kristy will be meeting with someone before the state of the village address to talk about meals for the guards of the moving wall then we can figure out how to structure sponsorships.
How to reach out to the LWABWO women? April will create a Canva flyer of sponsorship events and send to Mandie to use when reaching out to these women.
Welcome Bags - We need businesses to bring their items to fill the bags with by a deadline, 4/1. We can make multiple drop off places. Q: Do we need to order more bags? We have some paper ones but they are not practical. Mandie thinks we have a large box of the green bags, she will check. Mandie would like to get some organization bins to help keep things organized. Carrie from the transition program is looking for businesses to allow the kids to assist with the stuffing of the bags. 100 bags to pass out is a good number to start at.
Decals - They should be to Mandie’s house soon. We have stamps and envelopes to send the decals out to businesses. 77 Decals need to be mailed out right away.
What is happening with the green lights? The village has them. They are going to decorate the light poles around town. The lights are in the back bedroom of our office, Nick will get them and give them to the village.
Meeting adjourned.
