Tourist Development Council Meeting on 07/15/2026 - Jul 15, 2026

Not that we needed that. It seemed to have gotten quiet just about the right time. So welcome, everybody. Good to have a good turnout today. I think we just hit quorum here. Do we have anybody else coming in? Okay, good. I have a couple more joining us. Some good, important topics this morning. So if we go ahead and get started with the pledge, Mayor, if you'll lead us in the pledge, that would be great. You know, I pointed in that direction and said Mayor, and I realized there's two of them. I'm sorry. Anyway, good to have everybody here this morning. We'll probably just go ahead and jump in. I did want to say that Amplify Clearwater had a really nice event yesterday, and our leader was one of the folks that led the, I guess it was panel one on area discussions about tourism and jobs and that kind of thing. So it was really good and enjoyed having Mayor was there in the panel question number two about Clearwater and the county. And so we had a good time with that. So all good, talking about our county and tourism and its effect on all of us here. So good stuff. All right, let's jump in. I need approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion for that, please? Thank you. Dylan Helbert? Second. Second. Thank you. Any questions, comments? Mr. Chairman, could you clarify who the seconder was? I'm sorry? Could you clarify the seconder? Right down there, right in front of you. Thank you. Okay, got it. Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. All right. Any public comments this morning? No public comments. All right. We'll jump right into presentations. Ryan? Thank you, Mr. Chair. And the first presentation we have today is intended to create a discussion, and it surrounds the Capital Projects Funding Program. Just a refresher, late last year, early this year, you all recommended, and the Board of County Commissioners approved, some revised guidelines to the program. Amongst those changes to the guidelines, two things that we're going to talk about today, more so one, but two. We included the addition of Beach Park Facilities as eligible projects in our capital funding program. Additionally, and what's going to be the main focus of this discussion, is in an effort to provide some direction for both Visit St. Pete Clearwater staff and set expectations for applicants, we put into place that prior to opening up this application cycle and every application cycle moving forward, which is a reminder, occurs every two years, we're required to get a budget for that cycle from the Board of County Commissioners. And so, this morning, I want to introduce that discussion, and I hope at the end of this, we can have come to an agreement on a recommendation that we can advance to the Board of County Commissioners in advance of opening up this cycle. Before we do. Yes, sir. Because I'm supposed to let Doreen Moore weigh in today, but we need a motion and a second to allow her to participate. If I can get that motion. I move. So moved. Okay. Motion and a second by the Mayor Gattis. Dylan Hubbard, please. Got the motion and got it? Okay. All right. So, I want to let Doreen weigh in if we can. Anything else? Beautiful. I also need a clicker. I realize I don't have it, so. In baseball, we call that an indicator. No, I'm kidding. We don't call it a clicker anymore. Yeah, exactly. And for those who umpire in baseball, they get that goofy humor, so. All right. Go ahead, Brian. And if the folks in the back could bring up the capital projects funding program discussion. There we go. All right. So, this is what we just talked about. Again, looking to set that budget for this cycle of capital projects funding program. So, just as a reminder, the current TDT funding allocation is divided 60% towards destination marketing, 40% towards capital projects. The only dedicated source of that capital side of things is for beach nourishment, and that amount is one half of one of the 6%. So, our discussion today that we wanted to propose, and I know it says recommendation, it's more of a proposal for discussion, is that we're recommending $30.6 million for the 2026 application cycle of capital projects. And you'll see we have traditional capital projects. So, those are the things that historically we have funded. So, those are the things that we have funded, museums, ballparks, tournament ballparks, aquariums, things of that nature. So, there's 15.3 million, and beach park facilities, the new category, also at 15.3 million. So, totaling 30.6 million, and that equals combined one of the 6%. So, when you add that up, and why that's 30 million is because that's over the two-year cycle. So, each one half of one of the 6% is approximately 7.65 million. You multiply it by two. That's how you get the 15.3 recommendation for each of the categories. So, when you combine this program with the funding that's allocated towards beach nourishment, you are allocating up to one and one half of the 6%. That equates to approximately 24% of the total TDT collection, which leaves a remaining 14% of the total TDT collection to go into capital reserves. So, it's our belief that this approach would prioritize and maintain funding for beach nourishment, while also providing the opportunity to invest in capital projects, beach park facilities, and plan for future projects that are unknown. So, I'll stop right there, and I'd like to hear some discussion surrounding this, answer any questions that you see on this screen. I do have more in this presentation. Yeah, and I know everybody around this room can follow all those percentages, but it's just always, every time I do it, and I haven't done it for a while, it's like dusting off all of the, one half of 1% equals, add them all up, and it's 24% of the total. So, anyway, let's go ahead and get started with some conversation around the room. Yes, Clyde. I just, my observation is it's a concern of mine how low the beginning fund goes in 28, and then especially in 29, beginning fund gets down to just $4.5 million. It doesn't have a lot of wiggle room if something happens. Yeah, so the question is in relation to the forecast for the TDT capital side of things, which is on the next slide. And I'll just dive into this if that works, if that's all right with everybody. So, what we did on this forecast is it goes from 2025 with our actuals, what was collected, what was spent, and it goes out to fiscal year 33. And you see there the beginning fund balance for each year, the projected TDT revenue, which is the 40% of that TDT, and then you see the dedicated projects that have been approved. One of the things I want to bring to your attention is you'll see a line additional beach funds, and in FY25, you see $86 million. And then I highlighted in FY28, $43 million. What that is, is the beach nourishment account is separate from this, the TDT capital reserve side of things. So, in 2025, in order to cover the cost of the emergency beach nourishment project, $86 million was transferred out of the capital side into that beach nourishment pot. In 2028, the negative $43 million that you see there. And why it's highlighted is because the state of Florida came and appropriated $43 million towards that project, so about half of what was transferred out of this account. So, it would be my intent to simply request a transfer back into this account for the funds that the state provided. And so, you will see here on the future decision points, we have penciled in $40 million in 2027 and $45 million in 2028. That is for the Phillies Baker Ballpark facility with the City of Clearwater. And a term sheet has been agreed to. They're still working on finalizing that agreement. I believe that will be done hopefully by the end of this year, but that's when that money would be paid out. And then below that, you see the capital projects and the beach park facilities. We have just penciled in so you can see future projections, what that looks like, this recommended funding amount for each of those silos. Dylan, were you finished? That $43 million, we already have that money or is it projected? We do not have that money yet. It is not in the bank account yet, but it's been approved by the state of Florida. And already passed the governor? Yes. Clyde, were you finished? I'm sorry. No, I think that answers it. So, that $43 million would then add to those beginning funds if it gets approved to move back into this fund. The ending TDT fund balance that you see before you includes that transfer of $43 million back in. If we were to not include that and keep it in the beach nourishment account, we would be in the negative in the capital side beginning in 2028, and I believe for at least the following three years. Anybody else? Yes, Phil. I really hate to do this, but you know I'm the numbers guy. You made a mistake. If you look at the recommendations, $15.3 million, that's 1%. We're not recommending $30.6 million for those two, plus another $15.3 million for beach nourishment. One half of 1% is about 7.5% to 8%. Well, because the program. It's two years. It's two years. There you go. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, I'm concerned, but. Good catch. I guess it'll do math that well. Chuck. Thank you, Chair. The Beach Park Facility Program was not in our budget for years, forever, until we talked about this a year or two ago, and now it has come, and $7.5 million up to, is that inflation where it's going up to nine by 3033? Why does it keep climbing? So that's just on our forecast, that's based on the projected TDT revenue growth in outer years. So it's just a tremendous amount of money for what we talked about in the meeting, in my mind, was a pavilion, a ramp going down to the beach. How are we spending $100 million over the next 10 years? Explain to me a little bit about that. I have a little heartburn with that. Beaches are our number one priority. Don't get me wrong, but that's an awful lot of ramps. I think my response to that is I don't have a good answer. This is the first time that we're going to be considering those types of projects, and we don't know what the demand for that is going to be. This was simply a starting point, and the rationale from staff's perspective was that we fund these projects no more than we fund beach nourishment, and this is what it would look like. So I think one of the other things that I would mention is that beach park facilities will compete against beach park facilities, and the traditional capital projects will compete against other traditional capital projects. But if in either one of those silos there's excess funds available, and the other one maybe doesn't have enough money to cover some of the projects, we could certainly consider spilling over into that other pot to fund the other pots. I guess what I'm trying to say is perhaps you have more than $15 million in traditional capital projects, less than $15 million in beach park facilities, and you could use those beach park facilities to fund traditional capital projects, if that makes sense. It does. We have some very dynamic and well-spoken mayors, not only at this table, but in our community, and so I just can see if they see that $7.5 million, $8 million, $9 million, and then we come back and say, well, listen, you're only going to get $2 million this year because we're going to do another capital project after we finish the fillies. I can just see some high blood pressure. So I think that needs more discussion in beach park facilities. I think it's too high, but I understand it's just a place hoarder-ish. It was a guess. It was an estimate. So anyway, I have concern about it. I think it's too high. It's a fair comment, I think. And the response was, you know, we're going to play it by ear because we really don't know. We know that that's important, and we know it becomes almost like, in effect, if we don't end up, it becomes a second reserve fund for us that we can use if we need to on anything else that this group recommends and that the BOCC approves. So I think we're going to – hold on one second, Phil. Did you have a comment, Dylan? Yeah, I've felt very similar. And when I was thinking about it, to me, it's like our first stab. And we saw this with the events. We've seen this with a lot where the staff does a really good job once we have the framework set up of massaging it moving forward and dialing it in. We've seen that with capital events, capital – or all the different things, elite events, how we set these programs up and then massage them over the years and dial it in even better. And as far as the amount of money goes, capital projects – I haven't been on the TDC very long, but the capital projects' last go-round came pretty close to that $30 million fund. So I don't see it as us spending a bunch of increased funds. I see it as we're just kind of allocating some of those funds more specifically to something that needs it. And I think in the early onset of this, there will be a lot of beach park facilities that might go for it and might qualify, in my head, Fort DeSoto, those bathrooms and pavilions. And that's a big beach park facility that needs a lot of funding. But then maybe down the road, there's not as many that meet that requirement. And maybe we start siloing back to capital projects and continue to massage it in. And I personally feel that we have – we're blessed with a lot of great beach park facilities and we're blessed with a lot of great projects that are going on. So I am a little concerned about us going down to $4.5 million, but also I'm on the side – erring on the side of I'm happy we're fully utilizing the ability – or our funds that we have and actually doing good work with it instead of being concerned about holding on to that money and letting it accrue interest. If I can go ahead with a comment, I agree 100% with you, Dylan. There's major work that needs to be done in the parks. There's a major draw, and I think it's very important to do that. I think the judgment that staff is recommending is a good number to start with on it, and then when you get input from the other municipalities that have projects too, I think we're right on. I think that also that in the past – I think it was like five, six years ago, Phil – wasn't it that we dipped down to like almost zero? I think we almost had to wait a year, and that's why we kind of pushed towards two years a few years ago. So this is not the first time we've had to dip. The part about this that's good is there's no financial cost or anything. We're paying as we go along with this. And I think that's the good part that we're doing on this. My question would be is talk a little bit about beach renourishment. We just went through this, and it was $120 million, of which we got $86 million out of here. We got back half of it. What does she say about future? How much coverage that we're appropriating now, that half percent, and where that works out? And if something's shortfalled, where does it come from? Well, you're stealing my thunder of my comments. I was going to give an update on that. But you bring up a great point because beach nourishment is obviously a significant use of these funds. And what I can say is I don't have yet a projection on what those future costs would be. Based on the agreement that the Board of County Commissioners and the Army Corps recently signed, we feel strong that it's not going to be every six years as much as it was this time. I will also say the project, while it was budgeted and planned at $125 million that was recently completed, it came in under $100 million, I believe. So we did receive, plus with the state of Florida's $43 million, that refilled that account. I think the next beach nourishment project they're looking at is 2030. And I don't yet have any cost projections for that. But I think it would be less than those $100 million projects that we recently did. Another question, if I can ask. And I'm very much supportive of the parks and so forth and all. And that is an interagency of the county that controls that side. So there's the two sides of us and them. How is this going to develop? How are they going to move forward that in a year or six months from now we see reports? And how does that also work in the decision-making with the municipalities that may have something as it comes along in that time? How do you see, how does staff see that working to progress? Yeah, it's a bit of an unknown at this time because we haven't opened it up yet. I do know, obviously, some specific projects have come up or some specific parks have come up on this board as well as the Board of County Commissioners. We talked about a Fort DeSoto, a Sand Key. Other than that, there are a number of municipalities that have beach park facilities that may have projects. I think what we've done is we've made it clear that these will compete against each other based on their contributions to tourism. So they've got to provide the data to show why that project is needed to maintain or increase tourism. And the better the data you have, the more competitive you'll be. One of the other requirements is that whether it be the county or the municipalities, they've got to have a 50% match. So they've got to be committed to the project as well. This is not 100% funding of the project from the Tourist Development Council. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yes, go ahead, Mayor. I've been following this for a long time. And whenever we couldn't get sand, whenever it was such an issue, I recall the Barrier Islands coming together and asking for an increase in the one-half of 1% to guarantee that we would have enough money in the event that there was a funding issue. I'm having a little bit of heartburn with the fact that we are actually considering an equal amount for these facilities as we set back for sand. A lot of things could happen. We could have another storm. We might get off schedule and may have to do another emergency nourishment. But we'll have new facilities. It just doesn't make sense to me. It seems to me that the beach, the sand is more important than any of it. I don't have a problem funding these facilities. I think it's a great idea. Certainly there's several of these parks. They definitely need an upgrade. But the exact same amount as what we're setting back for sand, just it doesn't set well with me. Thank you. Mayor Refter. Yeah, well, I appreciate that. I also appreciate that this last go-around on beach renourishment didn't renourish beaches that really were directly in front of properties that generate the bed tax. In large part, they were far south of the main part of Clearwater Beach. There were seven properties south of Sheridan Sand Key. And it was right that we did that because of the benefit. But to do that again, to use, you know, I just don't know, you know, how often we want to use this money for that when it really is money that's generated off of hotel rooms, Airbnbs, folks that use it. So I would say that to the beach renourishment. I think it's an appropriate amount that we're putting aside for that just in case. I would say this, that the elephant in the room is that we all know that there's a property tax reform measure on the, probably on the ballot. I don't think it's officially there yet. There's some challenges to it, but probably there. The message is loud and clear from our residents here in Florida that they would like to see less burden on maintaining all these nice things that we maintain for tourism fall on property tax owners, particularly full-time residents here. So I think this is a gesture in doing that where we are limited and how we can use these bed tax dollars, but all of our municipalities and the county here and our residents, our taxpayers, they bear a heavy burden tax-wise in keeping things nice for tourism and supporting tourism industry, and particularly our hotels and resorts, they pay heavy amounts in bed tax. So I think that to the extent that this is, these beach parks tied to those parks that are heavily used by tourists, I think it's an appropriate thing. And I think it's a good thing for us to do to show the taxpayers and show the residents of the state of Florida that, you know, we, we hear you, you know, we, we need to be more efficient with these property tax dollars and, and utilize all the revenue sources we have to keep things nice and offset the wear and tear that our tourists, that they just naturally from the volume we have, we've had, particularly over the last five years, we've had some of the most successful years in tourism and it is a heavy wear and tear on all our streets and roads and everything here. And unfortunately we can't use the bed tax money for a lot of that infrastructure, but this is an idea and one way we can do that to help improve our community, particularly the county parks, which was mentioned. And so I think it's a good idea and I support it. Bill. Two questions. Can you give us an update on where we are with the Army Corps of Engineers? You said there was a development. And secondly, can we see the fund balances in the beach nourishment reserve? Yes, I can provide both. And I'm going to read from a script from the expert. I anticipated that we'd be discussing this. And so Kelly Levy provided an update for me. So generally speaking, the Corps advised that there is nothing in law requiring public access and use in easement language and that public access and use could be provided in other ways, such as customary use ordinances, similar to the one adopted in Indian Rocks Beach. The remaining easements need only be construction easements and would only run through the life of the project. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is willing to work with residents on the easement language to get to a yes. We have a template to start from, but they can ask for changes, and this was not previously allowed. So I think what we saw with the agreement signed between the Army Corps of Engineers and the Board of County Commissioners is before it was you need 100% of the easements or the federal funding will not come whatsoever for the project. And permanent. Now they're saying you don't have to have an, all you have to have, if you don't have an easement on a property, on a few properties, will still cost share on those other properties you do. The county will have to pay for the sand on those properties that they don't have easements. And they're going to make it easier to get easements because it's not, this is the easement, sign it, and we're not changing a period. Now they're willing to amend language in there to address the residents' concerns. What they heard mainly was they didn't like the, that they were in perpetuity and that they had public use in them. So now neither of those exist in the easements. So I hope that answers the first question. Before you get off that, what about those that have signed a permanent easement? Are they have retroactively allowed to go back to say, oh, put me on the temporary status like the ones that hadn't signed it? I don't have that answer. I'm just curious if it was addressed. I can, I can provide an answer to you at a later time. I just don't have that answer. And then the second question was, what is the fund balance in the beach nourishment account? And I would look to Drew, our OMB analyst. He is the mastermind behind those and can address that. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Andrew Brown. I'm with the Office of Management and Budget. We are forecasting $74 million in FY28 ending fund balance. No, that is with, that is prior to the transfer. So there's $74 million prior to the transfer and roughly $30 million remaining if we did the transfer. Where was that reserve? I'm sorry. What, what fund balance? So in the Capital Projects Fund where the beach nourishment program exists, that program fund balance is projected to end in FY28 at $74 million. If you do the $43 million transfer, we'd be somewhere around $30 million. Just as a totally side that has nothing to do with this conversation. Do you happen to know what the reserve is on the 60% side of the business? I can go look it up. I can answer that one. I've got it pulled up in front of me. So it's projected at the end of 2026 to be at $172.8 million. And the only reason I brought that up was just, this is a planned project and I think there probably will be some adjustments as we go along on the facilities program, the beach park facilities. We'll see how that goes. This is our plan. But emergencies come and we'll be prepared to deal with those as they happen because the BCC shares everybody around this table that the sand is the most important thing out there. We've got to have that and it's what brings people here. So from a priority perspective, of course, I don't speak for the other six, but I feel pretty comfortable that they feel similar to this board. So it's important to know where the reserves are. I do think the other conversation, and you brought that up about the property tax issue that's hovering out there. And, you know, I keep saying 55% is going to be the number, which means it wouldn't pass. But nonetheless, our residents are speaking about fiscal conservatism and being careful and all of that. So we've pressed before about use of TDT funds, TDC funds for other uses just to see there's not been an appetite at the state level for that. I'm not saying that that would change. I have no concept or idea. But if that did change, that we could use some of those funds for other items. Obviously, that would be discussed here first. And then obviously, the BCC would weigh in on it. And it would be really infrastructure as it relates to tourism facilities, because as we know, we have a million people in this county. With our visitors, on average, it's about two and a half. So they do put a lot of wear and tear on our systems. And there is argument for that. And I'm not saying that that's what our BOCC is looking at. But when we look at tight times, and people are looking for other ways to raise funds, you just have to keep that in the back of our minds as we move forward. So we'll address that as it comes. But we'll address emergencies as they come as well, and take care of what we know is most important. Yes, Mayor Gannon. Thank you. Brian, can you briefly discuss the existing obligations and the fluidity of some of them? For example, the Dali Museum and how that could affect the forecast for those in the out years? How that could impact our reserves? Yeah, I'll do my best. We have essentially placeholders in there in those three years, 26 through 28. For all of those that we have that are approved projects, that agreements are in place. Those, any projects that go through our capital funding program, we then enter into a three-year funding agreement. And so that's why you see that from the last cycle in 2024. You see 2026 through, well, actually, the Dali was before the last cycle. They were in 2023. So you'll see those typically in about three-year increments from the time that the agreement signed until the time the agreement ends. But as we've noticed, that is kind of fluid. The Dali Project's been out there for some time. We've got the Florida Holocaust Museum in 2026, and that was approved years ago. Is there any possibility that any of these agreements would need to be modified in the next four to five years such that it would have an impact on that beginning fund balance in 29? Yeah, I think there's always the possibility that projects, under the old system, there were, what we found is, is that specifically if it's a project that's maybe leasing a building or leasing the land from a city, perhaps you've got to get all your ducks in order on that project. If you're a museum and you're raising funds, because you have commitments, you've still got to go out and raise those funds. And depending on how that occurs, some of these projects may or may not get started on time. So some of those may need to be extended and pushed out to the outer years, which would increase the fund balance in the closer years and decrease that in the outer years. And if any of the projects didn't come to fruition, that would obviously impact it as well. Is that what you're looking for? Mm-hmm. Thanks. And by the way, we tried to address those situations in the new guidelines, saying that you can't use projections of what you plan to raise. You need to have that money on hand before you apply. Anybody else? Oh, goodness. I could go here to Copley. Thank you. Brian, in 2025, or the last CapEx round, what was the total allocation for CapEx two years ago? Zero, I believe. The last round we opened up. Oh, the last round. I'm sorry. That was approximately $26 million was ultimately approved. So, and I think most everybody here knows I try not to be the negative Nancy, but I'm going to be it today. And so I agree with Commissioner Prather. I'm struggling with this. When we talked about Beach Park facilities, I was skeptical about it because every time we take a crack at this system, this is kind of what happens. And, you know, when we had $26 million the last time we opened up applications, now we've allocated $15 million towards Beach Park facilities, of which really we've only talked about two Beach Park facilities, Sand Key and Fort DeSoto. You are taking $15 million away from the rest of the county to focus on two Beach Park facilities. And so I really struggle with that. I mean, I know of projects that are going to come and ask for $45 million for CapEx. You know, the city of St. Petersburg has not asked for TDC funding since 2000. And very specifically, because we knew we were going to have a big ask, we tried to be a good neighbor to the rest of our municipalities and our beaches. And I'm not arguing one bit against re-nourishment. I would never do that, especially on this commission. And so I would never do that. But to talk about allocating, and I understand that it's the framework, but every time we do that, we open up the door to take money away from other facilities. And at $26 million, the last go around, and now for there only to be 15 available, when we know there are major asks coming across, and Mayor Rector, this is not at you, but in the past, there has been North County versus South County. And I think we have done a very good job of not doing that. And so please know that I'm, that's not what I'm doing. I'm just using it as an example. But the city of Clearwater has $100 million in allocations for facilities as it stands today. And now there is $15 million for the entire county available for the next two years. And again, the city of St. Petersburg, I'm speaking for me, speaking for our residents, has not made an ask knowing that there was a chance of a large ask coming. Now that that's gone, we have other facilities we need to take care of that are, that are drawers. We had never asked for the marina. We had never asked for Allang, Mahaffey, those facilities that draw those people. And now we are limiting that bucket. And I'm struggling very, very hard with that. And so, again, I'm not, I'm not against the re-nourishment. I am totally for the re-nourishment. Mayor Rector, thank you for, you know, making, I appreciate your comments about, hey, I'm not sure we should do that again. That says a lot about where you stand on this. And I very much appreciate that. But, again, from a facility standpoint, to automatically say, well, we're going to go $15 million for two facilities, this is where I had trouble with the original vote. And so I'm struggling with this. I needed to say it out loud. I appreciate you all listening to me. And, again, I know, I know we only have a small sliver of beach. Our facilities are our drivers. And the way we look at it at St. Petersburg is, yes, they come to go to the beach. And then they might stay an extra day or two to go to a museum, to go to a facility, to go to a Rowdies game, to go to those things. And so we are helping with that. And I want them to come to St. Petersburg and stay on the beaches. I stayed on the beach two weeks ago with my family, two miles away from my home. And so I'm doing those things, too. And so I just I'm struggling with this allocation. And we really need to be intentional about how we're spending money on our facilities. Thank you, Chair. Okay. Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. And I think you said it best that there's been a request kind of in limbo there for a while. And that's gone. So we expect there to be additional planning thoughts coming forward. And I do, you know, it's a big deal what's going on. And, I mean, when you look at the Dali Museum, I think that's a significant investment, not to the city government of St. Petersburg, but certainly to St. Petersburg and our entire county. Probably one of the most popular places when I have family coming down and visiting. It's like, let's go down to St. Pete. Let's go down to the museum. There has been an investment there. But I do think that your point is well taken. I do think that there's going to be some additional asks, and we'll flush that out when we start looking at these projects. So having said that, Phil, and then we'll come to you, Chuck. My first question, well, let me rearrange things because I kind of somewhat agree with what he's saying. And the recommendation is for $30 million over the next two years plus a placeholder, and don't get me wrong, I'm not against this at all, for the Phillies for $83 million. Well, your budget has $85 million for a Phillies project, but yet the next two years we're only allocating $15 million for traditional projects plus the $85. Like I said, I'm not against that project, and we're rearranging things, taking money out of the beach nourishment to cover it. But to clarify, we're able to go in and out of beach nourishment reserves, and we're able to go in and out of the 60% if we need it for emergency purposes for capital like beach nourishment, correct? Correct on both of those. And I think going into the beach nourishment to put in the capital is not something that typically would be done. In fact, the reason it's highlighted is because we would need to get authorization to do that. OMB would not typically do that. Typically, we're adding money to the beach nourishment pot. But as far as dipping into the operating reserves, what's built up in those operating reserves and allocating them towards projects, whether it be beach or something else, yes, we can do that. And likewise, if we had an emergency where we had to do more promotions and so forth, on the 60% side, we could take it from the capital side if it was voted to do so. Well, realistically, I don't see where that would ever occur because we have the significant reserves. We have, but. It goes both ways. Yes. It can, but it's got to be approved, right? Yes. I say that with just, I'm looking to the attorney and to OMB just to make sure. My assumption is correct. My point is we have flexibility should something unexpected come up. And that's what a lot of concern is. Yes. We need to reserve this money because what happens if something terrible happens, either to the beaches or to the promotion side for whatever reason. I think where you would get into trouble is if one year you said, hey, we're going to do 100% on marketing or 100% on capital and do no marketing. That's where you would not be able to do that. Right. I'm just talking about, you know, should something unexpected, which the unexpected will occur at some point. Yes. Am I, did I say anything? But getting back to my point, we're saying $15 million, but we're also saying $85 million for one project, which is deserving of it, I think. But it's not decided yet. It hasn't been approved yet. And we're also talking about looking at, you know, moving money out of beaches for insurance to fund that. So I don't know how that shook out, so to speak, when you're limiting the monies for traditional capital projects, which haven't been applied for, but we have an $85 million placeholder for one project. Well, that project is not part of the Category D. That does not go through the capital funding program. That goes a separate path. It's a separate category. I believe that's Category E projects, I believe. The funding, the projects that go through this funding program get reviewed by staff, come to the TDC, and then ultimately approved by the BCC are only Category D. Professional sports stadiums and professional spring training facilities are a separate category. But within the 40%? Within, yeah, it's a capital project, so yes. Okay. That's good clarification. It's a different category. That's why it's there. Yes, sir. All right. Because I know a lot of people might be asking that. I figured, well, if you only get $15 million for traditional capital, then how do we get $85 million out of that? But that's a separate category. Yes, sir. All right. Very good. Chuck. Thank you, Chair. Mayor Gannon brought up a very good point, I thought. We, what was it, two years ago that the DALI came and did their beautiful presentation? And their ask, my memory says it was in the mid, a little bit upper mid, $30 million ask. And we negotiated and we negotiated and we talked and ultimately we decided on this 25, wherever it is there, $25.2 million and then come back to us at a later date for the last $10, $12 million. So, of course, that's not up there because that's not what the BCC approved. But has there been any discussion of that remaining ask that they originally did at the TDC two years ago? No, the last discussion was what came out of the Board of County Commissioners meeting is that they would approve the $25.2 million and that additional, I believe, is $8 million. You have the ability to come back to the BCC and request those additional, that additional funds if and when the BCC gets to a resolution with the Army Corps. So, if we do that, as Mayor Gannon mentioned, that ask would take us into negative numbers unless we adjusted one of the other categories, which a lot of them you just said are placeholders. So, I think that's important to note. Yeah, I think just for clarification, there are ideas of projects. You know, we're working on some studies for some projects. We're out at RFP for projects. We don't know what those costs are going to be and they haven't been committed to. So, those don't show up on here. The only funds that you see on here are for projects that have been authorized by the Board of County Commissioners. I think that's a, as you said, that's kind of a dynamic process. And the ask three years ago is going to be different than the ask this year or next year or the following year. So, we just have to see what comes in and then prioritize because some haven't had any. So, anything else? One last clarification. Between the two, the two half percents, one for traditional, one for beach parks, when we see what's actually applied for and we see maybe there's more for traditional and there's more for beach parks and less for the opposite, would we be massaging those at that point or strictly saying here's our budget for traditional and here's our budget for beach parks and if we don't have asked for it, it's going to go in reserves? So, if you're talking about during the 2026, this two-year application cycle, yes, we would look at that. And if we went out and it came back with $25 million, we recommended, we'd like to recommend up to $25 million on the traditional side and there's only $4 million even requested on the beach park facility size, we would suggest that we would suggest that you would be able to tap into that for traditional or vice-versa. And as a reminder, I know we forecast in here that one half of 1% for each of the outer years, every year in perpetuity, but I'm going to come ask and we're going to have this discussion every two years before we open up this cycle. So, what we're looking for today is only a budget for this two-year cycle. I'll come back in two years and ask at that point in time, based on what's occurred, what's been funded, where we stand, that cycle, what would we like to allocate at that point? So, that will be, that will change. Perfect. Thanks. So, I've heard a lot of strong opinions around the table about that beach park facilities program placeholder. And I've heard, well, it's at half a percent now. I mean, our recommendation could be less. It could be the same. Again, I just wanted to make, the issue of infrastructure expenditures of these funds that we have are very, very limited. I mean, we, we, I mentioned the fact that there, that could be opened up down the road. Who knows? It doesn't seem likely. So, what we're, what we're saddled with is limited infrastructure. And the beach park facilities was part of that infrastructure that really complements that whole effort of opening up our beaches to folks. There's nothing worse than if you go up to the Tarpon Springs, Red Howard Park up there. I was up there, I don't know, maybe a month ago. And the beach, the bathroom facilities are closed. They're not, they're, it doesn't look good. I mean, they go up to see the, you know, the sponge docks in Tarpon Springs. They want to spend a day at the beach there, for instance. And you see that kind of stuff. It doesn't reflect well. So, I think there's an argument for that. But if this group is, you know, I want it, I want that discussion to be had. I would like to know if we have a consensus at leaving it at a half a percent here. Or do we want to drop it back a little bit and go from there? Because it philosophically challenges some of the thoughts that you all have as it relates to priorities. So, I've heard different conversations, pretty strong ones, too. So, I think it's important that we leave this conversation with an understanding that, now, we, as a majority, want to drop that down a little bit. If it's a, you know, instead of a half, it's a quarter and put the other in whatever, you know, capital funding, beach re-nourish, whatever we want to do with it. But, I want, you know, again, we don't have everybody here, but I think it's important that we have that discussion. Do we have to do that today or can? I would like to get some direction because I'll be presenting to the Board of County Commissioners on August 6th. And I can't open up the applications until we get that direction. Yep. Direction and the approval. And then approval the following month in September. Dylan. Yeah, just to kind of summarize and clarify, Mayor Rector's comments were, I agree with, and very good in my opinion. And, to me, this is a stab at our first try at these beach park facilities. And this conversation and trying to use some TDT funds for infrastructure has been ongoing. And, to me, this is our first stab at it. This is just for this two-year cycle. And, I've heard many times, Brian, you state that it's liquid in the state that if we have a lot on the traditional side and only a little on the beach park facility side, we can be fluid. So, in my opinion, that's why I'm leaning towards supporting this. And, if I could just clarify, I just want to make it clear. I wouldn't want the expectation to be, if we get $75 million of capital, traditional capital project requests, and we get $15 million or $10 million on the beach park facilities, that we're automatically just going to say, hey, there's a bigger demand over here. And, we're not going to fund some of these beach park facilities because we think these other projects are better, have a stronger ROI. We would not do that. We would only dip into that other side if the requests there simply didn't come to fruition. Does that make sense? I'm not sure it helps comfort people, but it does make sense. But, to that point, we have a conversation about it around this table. Yes. Copley. Thank you, Chair. I guess my clarifying question is, why wouldn't we just base everything off the ROI of, like, why have it be too separate? If that's the case, why not have it one big pot and base it solely on ROI? Well, in the guidelines, we do have two separate standards for the applications. And so, we set it up in a way for beach park facilities to compete against beach park facilities and traditional to compete against themselves. And, particularly, you know, we ask a lot of those traditional capital projects in their application. We need them to hire an economist to do an economic impact report. We want to see those 10-year projections of incremental economic impact, visitors, tourists, room nights, that sort of thing. We simply couldn't ask that of all of the beach park facilities. So, the standards are different. And so, on the beach park facilities, we're looking for the data that the county or the municipalities can provide. So, we're talking about, hey, we've got Park Mobile app at this beach park facility. So, because of that, we see license plates. We know that over the last year, we got 800,000 cars, and of those, 600,000 were from outside of Pinellas County. That's a good data point. But we don't expect them to come forward and say, have a 10-year economic impact study for these beach park facilities. So, I'm not picking on Clearwater, Mayor Rector. You just happen to be the only other municipality on this list. So, when, two years ago, when Clearwater Beach Municipal Marina applied in traditional CapEx, did they have to provide an economist in a 10-year, even though it's a municipality? They did, because that's not a beach park facility. That's a public facility, which is another category that hasn't come up today, but that's already allowed in the plan. That's all I had to. Thank you. Bill. Since we've discussed this and throw it all around, we know there's a lot of flexibility. I'd like to move that we support the recommendation and let Brian go forward with the commission as it is. We can have a second, and then we'll just continue the discussion if we have a second. Second. Okay. Motion and a second to leave as recommended. I saw it. Mayor Rector. Yeah, I love St. Petersburg. You all, you made really good points. And your point is that we have an appreciation in this county for beaches and all the tourism beaches generate. But the city of St. Petersburg generates a lot of tourism that doesn't have anything to do directly with beaches. And we appreciate that. And certainly, you know, things come up in the future. You can count on us to support that. So, I appreciate that. That's important. Yeah, it is. I do want to say, though, that the number in reserves is striking. That's a very big number. The other side, you mean? Yeah. Operations. And I think that's a tough explanation to residents and taxpayers why we're sitting on that large of an amount when there's this pressing need for affordability in our area. I think that's an understatement, and I think that's something we're going to have to wrestle with. I mean, I'm not quite sure where that wrestling match takes place. It'll take place here, I would imagine, at some point. But it is a little uncomfortable conversation, only because it's like it's just sitting there, and it's like I don't know how that reserve level has been over the years. Maybe I should ask that question first, but, like, say, the last two or three years, and our anticipation, I think, has been increasing every year, is my guess. Yeah, the only answer I could give you on that is that we have a 60% allocation for the operation side advertising and marketing, destination marketing. And as far back as I can look, we've never been allocated in our budget request to operate Visit St. Pete Clearwater and market the destination. We've never been given 60%. It's been from 40% to, prior to me getting there, up to about 49%, 50%. And since 2023, when we did request an increase of $6 million and then requested the following year for that to set the new baseline, so essentially an additional $12 million, we've gotten it up to about 56% of total collections, I believe, in the 2027 request. So that's why it's built up. Over time, the 60%, you know, as much as 20% of that is going into reserves every year on the operating side and not coming to our organization to market the destination. I remember asking that question as a new commissioner and thinking that 60% seemed high for all of the reasons that we're talking about. And I was just pointed in a different direction of where my thoughts were. So it is a ticklish topic, but I don't think it's one that we can't have here. I mean, we have to be able to discuss it, for crying out loud. If we can't talk about it here, then I don't know where we can talk about it. The county commission, I'd rather them, you know, hear our – we're not going to get into that today, okay? I'm just saying we don't have the time for that. But I do think that's a healthy conversation to have for all the reasons we're talking about, for transparency, for fiscal conservatism that our residents are screaming for. You know, we had a conversation yesterday just simply about, you know, a new county attorney that we chose yesterday and how his salary package is going to end up consolidating under one number so it's more transparent to our residents instead of having different categories. And you say, well, his salary is this, but he has other things or she has other things. So we're going to kind of talk about that. We haven't solidified that, but that's the direction I've been given to negotiate. So the idea of transparency is critically important, and I think that's something that we here have to embrace so that our county commissioners get our thoughts on that. To your point, we've never gotten to 60% in terms of funding, and so our reserves, even with that, have gone up to where they are. So we talk about wanting more money, where it comes from, and all of that stuff. Just be thinking along those lines, again, for another day of dialogue. Chair, if there's no other discussion, I'd ask for a roll call vote. Yes, thank you. That's where we're going right now. Okay, can we go? Is a roll call vote okay? We'll start. The motion on the table is to leave it as recommended. We'll start with, can we do a roll call, please? Yes, we can. We've never done that before. We've always just done. So, Trace, if you can keep track of, if we can just go down the list and comment if that's okay. The reason why I feel so strongly about this issue is because beach park facilities is pretty much a static, all right? You're going to have regular maintenance. You're going to take care of it. You can put it on a schedule. It's very predictable. The beach, the sand, it's unpredictable. You have storms. We don't know what the Army Corps is really going to do. We don't know if the state's really going to, how much money we're going to get from the state each time we have these issues. And we also can't really count on, we don't know what's going to happen with tourism fluctuations. The reason why I feel so strongly about this being an even share is because we're all gambling that they're the same. And they're really not based upon what I'm seeing is that, you know, I feel that we owe it to our beaches that we should, if we're willing to throw a one-half of 1% towards beach park facilities, that means all this time we've been holding back on that one-half of 1% that we were asking. We were actually asking for 25% of 1% increase whenever we didn't think we were going to get any funding whatsoever. And this group said no. They absolutely said no. And now we're willing to go ahead and do more than what we were asking for. I just, I would feel better if we would commit a slight bit more and a slight bit less for each fund, because at the end of the day, it is unpredictable. We don't know what's going to happen. I know that the county can come through for us. We've seen it. But it shouldn't have to. It should just, we should always have enough money to fund the beach in the event that something happens. And to your point, Mayor, I mean, just so you know, the county can come through either way. So even if we do what you're asking, we can come through in a different way. And we typically embrace the feelings of this board, because we all share them for the most part. I understand your point. Maybe it's more symbolism than, you know, that we are more committed to beach renourishment than we are to, you know, the infrastructure part of the beach is that I can certainly understand what your point is. But I think the fluidity of the funds, I think is, I mean, I think we all know that. But so anyway, just making a comment about that. So I appreciate your passion and your thoughts about that. Any other comments on that before we start the roll call? And I mean that. Let's get this out. If you have something else you want to bring up. I mean, this is important. And the vote that we take, I mean, unanimous versus 51-49 is a message to the Board of County Commissioners that, hey, this is a ticklish issue. And maybe it's not about the funding fluidity, because we know we have it. And we know it's a priority. It's just maybe more about a message. I don't know. I'm not putting words in your mouth. No, that's fine. I just, I feel that our first priority should always be the beaches. Well, I don't think that's ever, I don't think we've ever swayed from that. And I don't think anybody that sits on the County Commission will ever do that again. Oh, look who's raising her hand. Doreen, go ahead. Sorry. Thank you. I apologize for the tech don't. I won't go into a long dissertation. I can't deal with my volume. But I'll wait for the consensus vote instead of comments. Sorry. Okay. Did I see another hand up? I know that Copley had asked for a roll call, and I didn't get a second on it. So I'm taking a little prerogative here to open up any other conversations. Okay. All right. And we'll, are you ready to keep tabs? And we'll start down with Phil, please. Aye. Yes. Yes. That's two yeses. Go ahead. Yes. Aye. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And that motion carries. Do you want to get Doreen? Oh, Doreen. I'm sorry. Sorry, Doreen, about that. Yes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten to one on that vote. Is that what you have? Okay. All right. Then we'll move on. Um, but I do think the message here, um, your comments, a lot of comments are on this table will be taken to that, to the board. Go ahead. Thank you, sir. Well, with that, we can move from capital to our other favorite topic. And that is elite events. And Craig is going to, I believe, do a amended FY26 elite event request. Um, so we can knock that one out and we'll be out of 2026 and in the, into the future in 2027. Good morning. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Excited to be here. Yeah. We're going to do a quick, uh, flip-flop here. So in your agenda, it lists fiscal year 27 first, but we're actually going to tackle fiscal year 26. Uh, we do have, uh, just one quick item. Uh, there's an updated request, uh, from a new organizer. Uh, so, um, Clearwater Offshore Nationals is now under a new promoter. So Tampa Bay Charities, uh, is no longer the, uh, organizer. Uh, we received that information back on May 21st and Race World Offshore was named the new organizer and they have submitted a new application, uh, no substantive changes to their, uh, footprint. They were actually the, um, contractor who executed most of the operations for the event in years past. So they're obviously familiar with that event. Um, we received that application May 27th, uh, for the same funding amount that the original applicant had received, which is 125,000. Uh, you can see the metrics we considered, uh, our staff recommendation is to keep, um, the same funding level, which is 125,000. Um, and then really just wanted to have a quick conversation, answer any questions you might have about this application, but we would like your recommendation that we can take to the BCC in August. Any questions? I have a motion to approve. Uh, Copley on the motion. Second from Mayor Gattis or Dave, I should say, if I'm going to say Copley, I'll say Dave. Sorry about that. Um, any other comments? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you so much. And if we could switch the presentation to FY 27, I trust everyone is warmed up by now. So let's jump into, uh, FY 27, a lead event recommendations. Uh, first off, excuse me, excuse me. So just kudos to this board, um, as well as the County Commission, the recommendations, uh, that you made back in February, uh, and that the board approved in March, uh, extremely well received, as you can see, we had a record response this year in number of applications. So 63 applications for funding this year, uh, over $5.1 million requested. That's an increase of, uh, from 50 applications and 3.59 million requested last year. So, uh, obviously we have a budget, um, you know, constraint that we need to work around here. The budget is $3 million for this program. Um, our goals as always for this program, like two quick points, a good stewards of the funding and B maximizing ROI. Um, so those goals in mind, I'm excited to show you how we got to our funding recommendations for fiscal year 27. Uh, first off a quick refresher on the funding criteria. So I won't go line item by line item here. Um, but we did capture the change that was recommended by Phil and the board, uh, back in February to transition from a percentage of tourist based model into a number of tourist based model. So that is reflected here in the guidelines and in the criteria. Uh, so category one, uh, just a reminder that, uh, these are your high impact and high visibility events. They must check both boxes for attendance and broadcast. And those eligible events are, um, can qualify for funding up to $250,000 category two. It's an either, uh, or proposition. So they must check one of the boxes of either attendance or broadcast for funding up to 150,000 and then categories three through five. You can see it kind of scaled back or scaled down from an attendance and tourist numbers and the up to funding also scales down accordingly. Uh, so what were some of the considerations and factors that, uh, the VSPC staff, um, had when we started our review process? So, uh, data first and foremost, of course. So Placer AI, um, is our tool to verify attendance and tourist figures and that's across all events. Um, as presented back in February, um, we've performed significant testing and validation of this tool over the past year and a half to two years. So it gives us, um, a lot of confidence in the numbers, uh, that that tool provides. Um, a quick note on non-ticketed public events. So we used what we called an attendance uptick. So essentially we took the average amount of people that entered the public space during non-event, uh, times versus how many people entered that space during the actual event. And then the event received credit for the difference, AKA the uptick there. Uh, and I'll highlight some of those events as we go through the, um, spreadsheet later on. Uh, the 50% rule, that was, uh, an important consideration. Uh, there were 10 events, uh, that you'll see in the spreadsheet that did not qualify for funding, but per the 50% rule would receive 50% of the funding they received this past year. Uh, and this applies to only fiscal year 27. So that is a one year rule there. So once we had, uh, verified all the data, we had taken all the, uh, special circumstances into consideration, we had, uh, a plan for the 50% rule. Um, we were then able to place every applicant into an appropriate category. Um, but it still didn't address the, uh, $3 million budget concern. We still had, uh, funding eligible funding requests in excess of the funding available. So we had to continue to get creative and that's, um, where we started to explore a number of different scenarios, um, where it would just simply get, uh, get us under budget. Um, so we are recommending what we're calling the tiered funding approach. Uh, so with this, uh, scenario categories one and two, there'd be no changes to, uh, either of those funding buckets categories three through five, you would see, uh, adjustments there. So category three, they would be eligible to receive up to 70% of the category max category four up to 60% and category five up to 50%. Um, so, uh, mentioned earlier, our goals of being good stewards of the funds, maximizing ROI. This approach helps us in our mind was the best approach to help us accomplish those goals by, um, prioritizing the high impact events while also investing in as many as, uh, eligible events as possible. Um, here's, um, more of like a visual breakdown of that tiered funding approach. So, um, we'll start to dive into our spreadsheet here momentarily, but I wanted to kind of cover off each of the different categories here. So category one, again, no adjusted cap there. There's three events that qualify for category one, um, category two, no adjusted cap there. Ten events qualify in that, uh, particular category. And then category three, you start to see the adjusted cap number. So 70%, which means the new max for category three is 52,500. We had seven events, uh, qualify for category three and then, uh, four. There's your 60% adjusted cap down to 30% or 30,000, uh, six events in category four category five. There's your, um, adjusted cap 50%, 12,500 is your new max 11 events in that category. And then the 10, uh, events that did not qualify, uh, with, but would receive the 50% rule. A quick footnote here on the use of funds. So, uh, it mentions category ones and twos would are negotiable. And really this is to ensure, uh, that we receive maximum visibility in those events that, uh, offer broadcast, uh, categories three through five, uh, we would do a 50% split half of the funding towards marketing and the other half through sponsorship. Um, and with that, we'll do a quick run through of the spreadsheet. Um, so let's see here should all be color coded for you. So the, uh, events numbers one through three, these are your category ones in yellow. So you can see the breakdown of their funding requests, the total number of attendees and tourists, whether they met that broadcast criteria, uh, ultimately what they were eligible for funding wise and what our recommendation is. And then also, um, there's additional information there on the right, uh, the increase or decrease compared to last year's funding, uh, category two here, uh, in orange. So numbers four through 13, I will call out, um, and I apologize. I totally glossed over, uh, the special circumstances here. So I'm going to backtrack, uh, the middle of this slide here, special circumstances. Um, we had a handful of events that we needed to look through a slightly different lens. So Clearwater Jazz Holiday, Spring King of the Beach, uh, those events were impacted by weather this past year. So we took their three year attendance average. Uh, Clearwater Jazz, uh, was canceled in 24, um, due to the hurricane. So we looked at, um, 25, 23, and 22 for their three year average. There's also three events that are relocating from other markets. And, um, um, I'll, I'll touch on this in the spreadsheet here momentarily, but we had some challenges collecting data for those three events. And I'll, I'll indicate those on the spreadsheet here shortly. And then the peer events bundle. Uh, so five events from the peer events organizer, downtown St. Pete qualified for funding. We, uh, are recommending to bundle those five together, which offers a little bit of savings, uh, towards the budget. Um, we thought it was a bit more reasonable, uh, approach for funding those events. Um, so back to the spreadsheet and sorry about that. Um, so events four through 13, number nine, there's your peer events bundle. So five events would be, uh, packaged together. You can see the total attendees and the tourists when you do that. And again, each of those five events, uh, would qualify on their own merit. And when bundled together become a category two, um, your category three events. So number, uh, so that's 14 through number 20, uh, clearwater offshore nationals, uh, number 14, just wanted to highlight, they would actually receive a recommendation above the 50% rule. So this is the first category where that, um, uh, where the, sorry, the adjusted cap would kick in. So 52,500 is the recommendation for every category three event, except for clearwater offshore nationals because of that 50% rule. And then category four, we have those six events, 21 through 26. There's really no, um, comments on those category five. So clearwater jazz holiday, number 27. Those are the three year average figures that you see their total attendance and number of tourists. Um, all the other category five events are eligible for 12,500. However, clearwater jazz would be at 37, five due to the 50% rule, uh, Tampa Bay barbecue festival. Similarly, 50% rule there, $20,000 is their recommendation. And then down towards the bottom of page two there, you have winter wonder St. Pete luxury automotive experience. And then number 37 on the next page, Mustang week, Florida. So for these, uh, these are the three really relocated events. So winter wonder, uh, coming over from Tampa, the luxury automotive experience from Naples and Mustang week from Myrtle beach and, uh, gavels Galveston, uh, Texas. And, um, we came across, um, basically a data collection concern there. We weren't confident in the data. We certainly have hard data for every application here. Um, we were not comfortable with the, uh, tourist numbers. So based on that information, we're suggesting category five for those three events. Uh, we do recognize that the attendance, uh, will likely be much higher than the 7,500 that's listed there, but it's really the tourist number that's lacking from the, uh, placer AI tool. So I wanted to highlight those. And then, excuse me, on page three events, 38 through 47, we have, uh, the spring king of the beach. That's number 42. And, uh, we're using the three year average on that event as well. Um, and all of these are technically don't qualify on the numbers, but would receive the 50% rule funding. And then lastly, on page four, uh, you'll see the events that applied and, um, did not receive a recommendation. So, uh, feel free to review that information. So that's it for the spreadsheet. And again, kind of wrapping it all together here, 63 total applications. We're recommending 46 applications for funding in addition to one bundle, uh, that would consume the entire $3 million budget. Some of the program impacts, um, when you collectively look at all these events, over a million attendees across the 47 projects, over a half a million, uh, tourists that, um, would attend these events. And of course, the broadcast assets, uh, we would receive across Fox, ABC, golf channel, NBC, things of that nature, uh, tremendous exposure for the destination. We did receive some information from, uh, future partners, our official data research vendor yesterday, kind of translating, um, into some other figures here. It's over 135 million in economic impact and over 116,000 room nights, um, generated by the program. So massive impacts for the County. Uh, I think it's a program we can all be proud of. And, um, that is it for my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. I know we have a couple of comments folks want to bring up. So we'll do that in a minute, but go ahead. Craig, a question on the, uh, did not qualify, but they're falling under, excuse me, the 50% rule. Is that 50% of the former 100% funding? I mean, cause the others, you tear down with, you know, 70, 60 and 50. So it's strictly 50% of what they received last year in the FY 26 cycle. So if you look at festivals of speed, just calling that one out, they received 62,500 or sorry, 65,000 last year in funding. They did not qualify in this year's cycle. So they're receiving exactly 50% of that. Okay. I know I voted on the 50% rule when we set these up, but if we're trimming all the ones that do qualify some almost at the next level, I don't know that, that they should get a hundred percent of the old 50%. Copy that. Yeah. Uh, how it's kind of written in the guidelines in our minds, it was pretty ironclad that they cannot receive less than 50% of what they previously got. But some of them are getting more than 50% based on the funding request. I'm sorry. Based on, I mean, I'm looking at the chart. It looks like the second one for it, just as an example that, you know, the previous year they got 50, so they're getting 25. Then you see one that's got 25, it's getting 25. I was just... If they qualified in that, um, like, can you give me an example there? Yeah. In that category of did not qualify, you're saying they get up, up to 50% of the previous year, or is it 50% of the previous year or 50% of the request? Of the previous year's funding. Okay. So that, that event received, if, are you looking at saver? I'm just looking at, yeah, I'm just looking at these, the ones in the white, the white category here. It doesn't show what they got last year. So it's hard to compare. So essentially, if you were to, um, add up the two columns on the right, that's what they received last year. So $32,500 plus $32,500, they received $65,000 last year. So all those numbers... All those numbers are 50% of the previous year. That is exactly right. Yes. Okay. Did you have anything else? Um, just a comment that I, I just think the way the category three, that everyone got dropped down to that $52,500, despite their number of tourists, it doesn't seem like it's equitable. I understand they all fell under the 70%, but, you know, some have over 10,000, some have just over 6,000, but everyone's getting the same amount. Knowing we had to cut some because of the amount done, it just seems that it's not shared properly. Sure. And our, again, our, um, kind of approach here, um, and goal was to prioritize those high impact events. So category ones and twos, that for us was the high priority. Um, in category three through five, you know, fantastic events, but didn't quite meet the level of one or two. So we have explored other, you know, scenarios for sure. Um, one of which, um, and you know, basically you'd have to take from category two to then bump up all the threes, fours, and fives. So there's, there's scenarios out there. And on that, like number 17 on the list has got attendees of 28 and tourists of 13, um, and higher than several of the ones in the category above. Um, each one, each one of those categories was higher than several above. So I just, I know there was other reasons for. Exactly. Yeah. Category two has the broadcast consideration. So if they check that broadcast box that sent them right into category two. And so all those, those that were below that number, um, above had the broadcast piece to it. It looks like. Correct. That's one of the, that middle column there broadcast meets eligibility. criteria. Yeah. Okay. I'm just trying to make sure I'm understanding. And then the split number, was that an arbitrary, uh, that's 70, 60, 50 versus 80, 70, 60, or does that just how it kind of worked out as far as funding availability? How it worked out. Yeah, exactly. For, for availability. So if we went to 80, 70, 60, as an example, we probably have to take a little bit because it wouldn't be much from each of the other two categories, one and two. Correct. You have to find it somewhere. That's exactly right. Yeah. If the argument is you're going to leave it at 3 million, then we have to find it somewhere. So if you wanted to boost those numbers a little, we'd have to take it from one and or two. Correct. Yeah. And I can touch on, I have a bonus slide here. So just for conversations purpose here, uh, our recommendation is scenario one, as you see there on kind of the left side there. So 70%, 60%, 50%. Um, scenario two was okay. We would take a little bit of, out of category two, they would have a new max as well. And everyone's at 80%, uh, from category two through five. So those would be the new adjusted max. You see the categories three, four, and five, they go up a little and category two comes down a little. Just try to get a kind of a sensitivity thing, you know, how to work. Dylan. And I, I personally looking at this at first, I, I saw it as a kind of a good problem to have, right? We have so many great events and so much requests. Uh, now the word's getting out about this. And, um, I mean, $135 million impact was pretty crazy for, uh, essentially $5 million investment. Um, so to me that ROI is, is there, uh, and there's no way to get more funding even with this really large, uh, reserve that we're sitting on, uh, because it's in the plan, I, I believe. Right. So to answer that, um, the, both the guidelines, but also the tourist development plan, um, call for up to $3 million for elite events. And so, uh, is it possible to increase, increase that? Yes. Does that require, um, a number of levers being pulled? Yes. So that would require this board to approve the tourist development plan, increasing the funding for elite events. It would then require the board of county commissioners by a super majority vote to amend the tourist development plan to increase that funding. And then we'd bring these back to you. So I think, can it be done? Is it possible? Absolutely. Um, the impact it would have is that many of these events start in, in late September, early October. And in order to do that now, you're looking at September, October before we even are able to bring these back to you all, assuming the board of county commissioners approves that change. So that's certainly something that could be done. However, if, if that's what this board is looking for, I would suggest next year would be a better time when we, uh, instead of at the end of the application cycle, any other questions, Phil? I won't be here next year. So I'll make this, uh, suggestion now. Um, I'm not suggesting we change things for this year, but, um, it's kind of mulling around thinking about this thing where we have so many attendees and so many tourists. And if you have a one day event, you have so many attendees and so many tourists that are there for one day, but if you have a four day event, you have so many attendees and so many tourists, but they're only counted once when they're there four nights, if they're from out of town and have each day they stay is an, is an impact on a four day event. If they're there for all four days, instead of counting them just once when they've got at least four room nights, shouldn't they be counted four times for each day they're there? This is for next year. Um, if that makes sense, since we're talking about attendees that may be there four nights, some of them local, they live here, not much of an impact from a tourism standpoint, but the tourists that are here, if they're here for a one day event, they may be here one or two nights. If they're here for a four day event and they're all four days, they may be there for four or five nights. Um, so I'm thinking that there's a room night impact based on whether it's a one day event or a four day event. And if there's repeat, um, attendees that are from out of town, they should be perhaps be counted, um, as an attendee each time they come. And having said that, I will commend the staff for weeding their way through all this to figure out a good way to split out that $3 million. I think it's fantastic. I'm glad that, um, they were able to come to something that made sense. But as I'm looking at this, I'm thinking for next year that maybe we should address each out of town attendee for each day they're here, as opposed to one attendee being here for four days for a four day event and how you figure all that out. I don't know. Yeah, that's certainly something that we could, we could talk to the data team on the difficulty runs into, um, if it's a one day event, how do you know somebody didn't come earlier and stay the night or stay the night after? So you'd have to determine how long those folks are staying for. And if it's a multi-day festival, how do you know that they stayed for more than one of those four days? So is it, again, I don't know the capabilities of our, our technology, if we can break it down that granular, but it's certainly something that we'd look into. You know, the one day events like the Florida offshore nationals, they do have boats practicing the day before people come in for the whole weekend. And if we're only counting Sunday when the race occurs, that's kind of an injustice. That, that particular event isn't considered a one day event. That's, we count, we count multiple days because they've got trials going on practices. So they get the full time, the, the shows in town. As you discussed, you and I discussed that it's compared to the other three weekends of that month to see what the influx is and the true difference, um, which makes a lot of sense. So, all right, I didn't really, I would say it was a one day. So anyway, I think you get the idea of what I'm trying to get across. Thank you. Thank you. Dylan. So, sorry, just bringing this back up again. So as far as going back and trying to get more funding allocated towards this and, and you utilizing some of our surplus, because I think this relates back to our earlier conversation about infrastructure and, and trying to let residents, uh, kind of benefit from this TDTs. These events are not only attended by tourists. It's residents take advantage of this as well. And I think this is a, a big, I think, draw to our area and not only a draw for tourists, but also a draw for people like to live here because we do a lot of cool things and there's a lot of cool things to do. Um, so I would like to see us try to not cut funding to some of these folks. And I understand some of these events potentially might not benefit from that. Maybe the event is happening in September, October, but I can't imagine this full list of events is, is it would be in that timeframe, right? I would, I would imagine some would benefit if we were able to try to expedite, uh, increase of funding and try to more fully fund this project. Um, so I would like to see that board, this board have that conversation about potentially going after more funding. Chuck. Thank you, chair. Um, I agree with Dylan. Um, but there's some, some good folks behind us in the gallery that want to speak on this. So I think we can continue this portion of the discussion after they impact what we're going to talk about because they have a lot of things to tell us, um, about their festivals. So I understand. I just want to make sure that the board has any questions right now, and then we can, we can jump to that and then come back for further discussions. Anything else right now for, okay. Can I make one comment? So Dylan, to your point, um, if we fully funded every project at the category that they're eligible in, we would need another $355,000. So the budget would need to be increased by that amount. Three, five, five. And that was a hundred percent my intention not to fund what they requested, but if they're eligible, let's fully fund them. Yep. Okay. Tracy, do we have, how many folks do we have? Just how many do we have? Two people. Okay. All right. We're going to try to limit those conversations to three minutes. I have a little authority, a discretion to make it a little bit more, but let's try to keep the comments, uh, specific and directed. So please, and please introduce yourself and all of that good stuff. Can you keep it up on the time? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, uh, I failed to raise my hand earlier when you asked for general comments because I figured we would have a chance to do that. So I apologize. I should have done that. Nope. Nope. Sorry. My name is Keith Overton. I own OCC Roadhouse and Museum. I formerly was a principal at Tradewinds. I've been in this tourist market for, uh, 35 years and I'm one of the guys that is impacted from the disproportionary cuts on categories three through five. And, um, what I'm asking for is sort of a level playing field here. Um, I, I appreciate the, the, the hard task of getting this, uh, refunded or, or additional funding by going back to the BCC, but I don't disagree with Dylan's point about the fact that, um, you could do this simultaneously. You could make some adjustments to it now, and I'll make one recommendation for that. And then you could come back. And if that funding is available, anybody that hasn't been funded yet would be the beneficiary of that. And candidly, you could even do it in arrears for people that have already had their event. If the money comes later, there's no reason that you can't reallocate that to them based on the new funding levels. But one thing that concerns me the most is, um, there are a lot of events that are new that are coming in here that are unproven. We don't know how they're going to do. We've given the benefit of the doubt that they're going to do well, but I think it's a little unfair to take money from a seven or 10 year event that's hit its numbers every year. It's done well and to reallocate dollars to an event that we yet don't know if it's going to produce or not. That's one point that I would make. The second point that I would make is if the DQ categories, the, the, the areas, uh, that the, um, funds that weren't funded that went to 50% on that rule, um, maybe the answer is let them roll out. And when those funds become available, then the new entries get to utilize those funds at that time. I mean, that's one suggestion that you could handle it, uh, in that way. The last point that I'll make is, and this is really more of about, um, I'm concerned about the accuracy of place or AI. If the event is in a public location, let's just say it's on Clearwater beach and I'm just making that up hypothetically. How do we know that 50% of those people that are there with the phone pings aren't tourists that are there anyway for other reasons, but they just happen to be enjoying the boat races as an example, right? I think that's, that's something that you ought to look into. It's somewhat unrelated to this, but it does factor into the overall categorization of the attendees that are at these events. And so my comments are simply that I think we should massage it a little bit and take those things into consideration. And Mr. Chair, I appreciate you giving me a few minutes of the meeting's time today to make those points. Thank you for your comments, Steve. Kathy, I'm not sure what, uh, I don't want to take a stab at your name. So, uh, so you can do that when you get up there. Uh, welcome. Thank you. It's Kathy Hayduke, City of Treasure Island Parks and Recreation Director, and we do Sandy Novations. Now in our 17th annual event, however, 18 years we did have to cancel in 2024 due to the hurricanes. Um, I agree both with the gentleman to my right has said, and Dylan, we are an event that has been sponsored and a wonderful partner with Visit St. P. Clearwater for years. I do kind of question as well, the data from Placer AI, because, um, we were listed in 2025 as 29,800 visitors with approximately 14,000 tourists, but that was only our main weekend. We do have an encore weekend that we started in 2022, and I have hired destination analysts and Street One Level both years to give me additional numbers, and we have approximately another 20,000, but we're being played, we're being, um, looked at by the main weekend only. So, we are a free event. We are non-ticketed. We have been free for 17 years. We use tax dollars to pay for our events, so sponsorships are important to us. So, for us to lose 27,000 is a lot of money, so I would just hope that you would do something that has been suggested today by some of the members, um, to look in to help some of us events. I know I am equal with, um, the Bike Fest. We run the same weekend, so I understand where he's coming from as well. So, thank you for your consideration. Um, if you could do anything possible, we would appreciate it. Thank you, Kathy. That's all the comments, right, Tracy? Good. So, we'll reconvene the conversation. Um, anybody's thoughts? Dylan? Uh, based on the comments, uh, uh, Mr. Overton made a good point of, uh, so your concern, uh, Brian, about potentially if we did increase funding, potentially some of those events wouldn't get the increase in funding in time. But if that is something that looks like it's going to happen or being discussed, potentially we could reach out to those event coordinators and say, hey, this is a potential discussion. They could forecast and plan for that and then hope for, hopefully, uh, that increase of funding to come through and fund them in the rears. And then any events that haven't happened would receive their full event funding as well. So, I think that really was a great idea and another additional comment to the conversation. I think if we, if, if you all were to go that route, um, again, this will still need to go to the board of county commissioners. So, I think I would, I would still look for a funding recommendation, uh, with those comments that we would share with the, the BCC. Um, I don't know if, if, if, because if the BCC doesn't go with that, um, then we got to come back here. Sorry. I just, I ran out of time. Phew. I think we'd like a recommendation from this board and then we will add, if, if that's the direction, um, we will add that, um, notate that to the board of county commissioners, but I don't want, I don't want to go to the board of county commissioners and not saying they would, but if they went a different direction, we have to come back here and ask for a recommendation again. Uh, and to that point, if we could maybe get by category, um, the additional funds from what we're recommending versus what the ask was, um, I think you said it was three 55 for all of them. And that, did that include the, um, the last category as well, the 50% rule category? Yes, it is. So if, if you could break that down by category, that would be great just to see what that impact of the different levels is. Um, if we, to the ask of additional funds, that's Dylan, go ahead. Yeah. Just to Brian's point. I think we could structure, I don't know. This is a question for you, but could we structure our vote today, our recommendation today? Because I, I hear what you're saying. We don't want to go to the BCC, them not agree, and then have to come back and then everybody's in trouble. Uh, I, I, in my head, I think we could structure it as, Hey, we propose to fully fund these events without the reduction. So we would need an increase of funds of 355,000. If that wasn't, um, approved by the BCC, we would just simply communicate to them that, Hey, if you guys don't agree with this, we'll go with staff recommendation. That's already outlined here. So that way there's an automatic fallback and doesn't require it to come back. Um, is that possible? I think so. Yes, I think so. Yeah. And I don't know what our OMB analyst is hearing stuff. So I don't know what their thoughts might be in just a minute on that. Um, and the only category I just, and again, I'm, I conceptually, I'm understanding what we're talking about here. The category at the end, which is, um, if the, if you, if the premise is that they didn't qualify and we're trying to give them a kind of a gentle, gentle step out. Um, I mean, we may want to look at that a little differently than the other categories, but again, I'm not trying to parse things here, but the other categories, it wasn't about not qualifying. It was just about living within a budget. The last category was about not qualifying. And so maybe that's category we leave as recommended, just thinking through it, but we can talk further about that. Um, so any, any luck on that yet on the, you're almost there under the gun here. Um, I'm just trying to get a sense of what those different the category three, four, five, and, and then the, and then the last did not qualify category. Yes. So I'm showing forget category two. The only increase there would be for the Red Bull cliff diving. So that would take it to a hundred thousand even. So that's 2,500. Which one? I'm sorry, which one? Sorry. Number 12 in category two. So you would add the $2,300. $2,500. $2,500, excuse me. To get to their full request of a hundred thousand. Is that the only one in category two? It is. Okay. So that's the easy one. Yeah. Um, category three, Clearwater Offshore Nationals would increase by 12,500. The others would increase. You have a total? Apologies. I'm thinking out loud here. This is unfair. I know. No worries. I'm showing 147,500. Okay. For category three, there's six events in category. You can go keep working on that. We can maybe continue having some discussion here. Dylan, go ahead. Yeah. To your, your question, the category, um, the, the white category, the 50%, they're locked in. So I'm not suggesting changing that at all. So we're just talking three, four and five. Well, two, three, four and five. Yeah. That's half. Two has just one item. That's 175. Yes. And so I, I would propose a motion that we recommend to the BCC to fully fund those who are qualified. So the categories three, four, five, and the one in category two, and then add the caveat to that motion that if the BCC does not agree, go with the staff recommendation as a default. All right. And I just want to, before we, I'm proposing that motion, not making it. And I just really wanted to see what those, what that looked like by category. Uh, so that's what he's working on. Uh, motion. Is there a second? Second. Oh, I was proposing the motion because I didn't want to cut you off. Proposing the motion. Okay. Yes. Hold off then. But I will make that motion when you're ready. Okay. I just wanted one point of clarification that you're proposing the funding maximum, not the funding request. Yes. Okay. Yes. What they qualify for under the staff recommendations in our thing. So there's no, there's no disputing the category in which staff has placed any. I just want to make that exactly that out there that if we're going with that, then we're inherently not disputing the categories in which these events have fallen according to staff recommendations. Absolutely. And we're just looking at the funding max versus the funding recommendation, the funding maximum column, not the funding request column. Thank you, chair. Dylan, I I'm, I'm all for that motion, but can you, when you make it, can you take, can we make a separate motion on the backup rather than attach it? Because I think there's still conversation to be had to where might be able to make it a little bit better. I don't, I don't know, but I would prefer it be separate. And I think it's a little cleaner that way rather than attach the backup to that motion to ask BCC to increase the funding. I'm all for that. I would just prefer that it be detached rather than attached. Open to that friendly amendment. Hey, thank you, chair. Sorry. I think, uh, Amanda, sorry. I just want to jump in before we do anything. The, the tourist development plan currently limits us to $3 million, right? So the first motion should be, uh, a motion to amend the plan to increase it to whatever amount we want to make the new limit for this year. Then you vote on a $3 million and then you do the next step. So just want to make sure that we get that very important part of it done first. Okay. Thanks, Chuck. Go ahead, Chuck. Thank you, too. So we started this conversation back a few minutes ago when we were on, um, capital funding. First, Brian, thank you. The, the staff did an excellent job with this number of 63 applicants. That's a lot to process. So thank you. We at this board realized how much work that was. Secondly, you were tasked at the May meeting with a budget and you were tasked to keep a level budget as you were last year from County leadership. And we appreciate that, but our tourism keeps growing more events, more things. And, but we're not, we're tasked to spend this money on tourism and it's been proven over and over again. It's a great return on our investment. We collect bed tax. We take that bed tax. We reinvest in future tourists and we get the bed tax back plus in all kinds of areas. Um, and so with that, we're sitting on $178.2 million that we're not spending on marketing our destination, which will get us back a lot more than $178.2 million. Um, so we're missing arguably somewhere between 2 million, $112,500 out of this request because that's the funding requested or 300 and something thousand that we're trying to figure out of that we underfunded for recommendations because we had to stop at $3 million. Um, so I'm all in favor and I've said it since I've been on this board. Events are great marketing tools. People come to this destination for any number of these 63 events for whatever reasons are. And they spend money, they spend money on tickets, that event, they spend money on hotels, which is what we're here to talk about. They spend money on gas and, and rental cars and airplane tickets and foods in our restaurants and drinks at our bar. And it just, that's why we're here is to promote tourism. So to cut these folks off behind us that are trying to help us with this tourism. And how many of these 63 events that qualified, well, 63 applicants, where the number was that qualified are now not going to be able to have their events because, okay, well, you, you took a 20% haircut and it cost you $10,000 of your budget. They don't have $10,000. So they look at their little boards and say, what are we going to do? And they say, well, we'll, we just can't do it this year, folks. Sorry. So they just close it and they don't request your buddy. I don't want to see that happen. So I'm all in favor of Dylan's request, um, to fund these folks and make a one time, which I'm not ready to do yet, a proposed, um, uh, as Amanda, um, mentioned to do a one time requested amendment to our budget. Um, but of course we need a number and I'm waiting for more dialogue, um, from y'all. Why is it not 2 million, 112,000? Um, so Brian, I'm sure you'll weigh up very quickly on what, what, what are we not going to fund, um, of the 5 million, 112,500 requested with a cap of 3 million? Is it that number? Is it 350,000? And let's talk through that. Yeah, I think it'd be closer to that 350,000 number. The 5.1 million figure is simply what they requested. And you'll notice that I won't say many, but a number of events may have requested more than they qualify for. So that's why that number is so much higher. It also includes, um, funding for, uh, it also includes the requested funding for ineligible projects and projects that did, did not meet qualifications that we're not recommending any funding for. Makes sense. Okay. Um, I am going to make a motion if it's all right, um, to amend our budget. Um, as Amanda, uh, coffee suggested is the first thing we have to do, um, um, by the requested amount by the applicants that Craig is going to give us that number. Hold on. I want to make sure we're clear because you said requested. We talked about funding maximum. It's a different number, not, not the funding recommend date. There's three different numbers. One was a funding request. The second one was a funding maximum, which we've been talking about versus the recommendation. So we're, the discussion has been to go give people what they were the funding maximum. And that's what we talked about a minute ago. You're talking about a funding going to the funding request level. No, not the funding request level of 5 million, $112,500. No, because that's not either. It doesn't qualify as Brian just explained. So we're talking about funding maximum. I believe Mr. Prather was talking about the tourist development plan cap, correct? Correct. Increasing. Increasing. How much? And what's the basis? We're calculating still. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. So do we have the breakout finished yet on category? I think I'm ready. Yep. And, um, my initial estimate was, looks like it was slightly off. Uh, that was also a rough estimate. So I'm looking at category two would be an increase of 2,500. Category three would be an increase of 147,500. Category four, an increase of 100,000. And category five, an increase of 117,500. And that's a grand total of 367,500. Okay. And then they, we leave the DNQ group, uh, as, uh, rec recommended, uh, the 50, using the 50% rule. Uh, and this is all compared between the recommended amount and the, and the maximum funding or the funding maximum that's on this handout. That's what you're. There's a couple scenarios here. So for instance, number 13, holiday lights in the gardens, they requested 40,000, yet they qualify for up to 150,000. So our recommendation is to keep that at 40. Okay. So they would not get the full 150. Well, they're not yet. In other words, we're not going to give them what they didn't ask for. They asked for 40, they qualified for 150, but we're going to give them the 40 that they asked for. That makes sense, right? I mean, okay. All right. All right. So, uh, if you go to number 28, uh, the barbecue festival, um, they asked for 50 and right below it, they asked for 50. One was awarded 20 and one was awarded 12, five. Um, obviously they had a different weighting. Um, so if we're just going to give everybody in this category, the full 25, what's the point in scoring them individually? Uh, it's, it seems, uh, I'm, I'm trying to figure out is, is there a reason why we're, why they didn't, uh, or one qualified for more money than the other? Yeah. Great flag there. So 27 and 28 qualify at the category five level, but their 50% rule would be enforced there. Correct. So barbecue fest received 40,000 last year. So we would recommend 20,000. So I know we're trying to figure this out and I, I appreciate the public comments because I do think there's, and so I just did some math and I'm just throwing this out there and I'm not trying to throw another curve ball, but I do think there's some weight to events that have been here. Chuck, I think this is to your point and I'm not trying to take away from new events, but I think there is some, uh, there's some weight to events that have been a part of this program already in comparison to new. And so if you look in, um, sections three, four, and five, it's 282.5,000 of Delta between what, what the recommendation was and how they got lowered based on the percentage from staff. Okay. So 282.5. If you took away the new events, it's just taking away. Again, I'm not saying that's what we should do. I'm just giving you the example. You could blend it also, but if you took away the new events, it'd be 245,000. So you'd have a Delta of 37.5. So 30, 37,500, which essentially means if you spread that across all events, essentially $2,700 per event would, would be the Delta. If you gave the new funding, new event funding to the events that have already been a part of the program in categories three, four, and five, to me, that's the backup because if you get the funding, you don't have to worry about that new events. Come on. If we don't get the funding from VCC, we keep the events that have been here a part of it. And then next year we go and get the increase and we bring on the new events that that seems to me to be the most equitable way to do this that I've at least heard so far. That way there's a very small haircut to each event in categories two, three, four, and five, not two, three, four, and five. And we've got that as the backup because if you're, if Chuck's motion passes, then you don't even have to worry about that anymore. So I, again, I was doing Dias math. I think that all works out. I'm hoping somebody will back me up, but it just seems like a really easy way to say, let's go after all the funding. Everybody gets what, what they, uh, not applied for, but what they, uh, will qualify for. Thank you. Did it, did it. And then, uh, if not, then we prioritize events that have been a part of the program. Just an idea. Thanks. Sure. Short time. I've got one. You're going to be in charge here. Okay. Uh, I agree, uh, with, uh, Copley's suggestion and, uh, definitely, uh, hear the point. I hope it doesn't come to that. Hopefully I hope our original motion. So I'm going to go back to, uh, what Mr. Prather was trying to do and go ahead and make that motion. So I'd like to make a motion to amend our tourist development plan in one year to be 3,367,500. Second. Are we okay? I just have a question for you, Brian. Um, so, um, I think you had a concern if we didn't approve at least what was proposed today tentatively, then that could delay the funding for some, some events that would happen before the BOC considered this, uh, you know, our recommendation that we amend the plan. So does, does this motion now, are we going to have a follow-up to this to approve at least, at least what's been presented so that we don't delay funding for some events? I, I, I'd look to the county attorney on that. Yeah. I mean, when you make the motions, they don't have to be enacted chronologically. Um, so you can make the, your subsequent motions, um, contingent on the board approving the additional funding for the one year. So the plan will now have a line in it that says for 20, 27 fiscal year, we're authorizing this, but it'll remain a $3 million cap for the future. So just be aware of that. So next year in this discussion, we'll, we'll be back to 3 million. So no, you can, you just make your motions contingent on the availability of funds and what the board decides. You should be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I think you may have in order for us literally to do that for those steps to occur, because we're going to have to bring the plan here. We're going to have to take the plan to the BCC. Um, there may be an event or two that occurs before we have an agreement with them. So they would have to know that, that, um, I don't see why they, why they would have an issue with that, but that's just something I want to make clear going into it is that you may have events receiving our funds and we don't have an agreement with them prior to their event occurring one or two. That's the, that's my concern is that we don't do something here that jeopardizes some of these early events. Um, they need an answer. They need to know at least what they're going to get. So, uh, the request I support for the additional funding, but, uh, I think we should at least, um, approve what's been recommended here in addition to that, uh, with the request for the additional amounts, but at least approve this to give these events some certainty and, uh, that they know they will have at least the amount we approved today, uh, coming. Amanda, would, would this motion suffice as not, if we would not have to bring the plan back to this board, I'm hearing it right now, if this motion were to carry. Yes. So that would only require us to advertise and take that to the BCC. Correct. Okay. So that might shorten the timeline. We may be able to get on a second meeting in August potentially, and we'd have an answer then it's cutting it real close, but call for the vote. Although do we need them, uh, by person or do we, can we just call for the vote? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Do I have another motion we have to do on top of the one we just did? Excuse me, Mr. Chair? Can you clarify who the seconder was on that, that ultimate motion? Me. Okay. Thank you very much. Yes. So, so the motion that just passed was to increase the tourist development plan amount for elite events for one year. Um, so now we would need to take up the motion, uh, which I think was proposed previously to approve the staff's. Right. Right. Approve it to add the maximum funding amount available, assuming that the tourist development plan is amended, otherwise to approve staff's recommendation. Right. Dylan, first, you said something. I would like to make the motion that Amanda just stated. Second. Okay. Copley. Okay. So you're, we're going to go with staff recommendations and not what I was talking about. My intention is to fully fund these events, uh, with what they qualify for based on staff recommendations. And my understanding to your point was, we're going to try to attempt that. And then if BCC doesn't accept that, we can't get the plan amended, then we're going to fall back to your, uh, motion. And your suggestion was to keep them separate. So we just increased the plan. That's your, we just increased the plan. Now we need to make a motion to, uh, actually fund these events and then we'll follow up with your motion. So we're making three separate. Yes. Got it. I misunderstood. I apologize. Yeah. So I would just make clear that staff's recommendation is not part of any of those motions. So, okay. Yeah. Second. Dylan's motion. We're voting on number two of this motion. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed. Passes. Number three. Thank you. Thank you. Vice chair. Okay. So Bruce Rector, I'd like to know where you stand on my proposed changes to staff recommendations. If I could, vice chair, because I think you're the only one that I've heard not chime in and only stay on staff recommendations. And that's important to me. Yeah. I I'm okay. I really, I really agree with what Mr. Prather said, you know, that, you know, we've got plenty of money to be, to be spending, uh, for the reserves, what they are, uh, that, uh, you know, all these events, you know, I mean, we, I, I also compliment the staff this every year. This is a very difficult thing for all of us, but including them to go through and, and we've all been to many of these events. They're fantastic events, but you know, to try to figure out which ones actually impact tourists and not in the place or AI has been very helpful in kind of determining that we've learned a lot, um, perception versus what appears to be reality. Um, but, uh, I, I'm fine with what you opposed. I think that that's fine. Thank you. Okay. Oh, go ahead. Um, thank you chair, acting chair. Um, I am going to, um, also make a motion, um, in support of Copley's that if the new, um, plan is not approved by the BCC, which we just put forward, um, then we are not recommending any new events for this fiscal year, um, in the jeopardy of financial jeopardy of existing past previous elite events, because they're the ones that are suffering, taking this haircut, um, in favor of the new events on the board. Could I clarify before you do that? Um, any new events, there are category one events that are new and I believe he was suggest in category two, I believe he was suggesting lower. So I just want a clarification on that. Okay. So you want to withdraw your motion, Chuck? Thank you. Okay. Okay. So I'll, I'll, I'll move, uh, to move forward with a $3 million allocation and make, uh, amendment to staff recommendation that in categories three, four, and five, there are no new events and that we fund, uh, all current events to the levels and equally share the Delta, which is approximately $2,700 across. Is that clear enough legal? Okay. So I'm sorry. I don't quite understand. And I think it's going to conflict with the second vote we just took. So we might need to unwind. Friendly amendment. Yeah. Cause you, he was intended, if it doesn't, if it doesn't pass. So the second amendment that we just voted on was if it doesn't pass, we go with staff recommendations. So that is not what we want. That was my worry. We need to unwind that. And I apologize. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't catch you say that. Yeah. Yeah. So now I'm looking for you. So you're saying take the money from categories one and two. No, no categories one and two stay the same categories two, three, and four. There are no new additional events and that funding that staff recommendations for new events then goes to the current events, which then leaves a Delta of approximately $2,700 per event that had a decrease based on staff's recommendation. So rather than they're like, just, we'll just use Clearwater Offshore Nationals number 14, rather than there'd be a $262,500 decrease in funding. There would be a $2,700 decrease in funding. Because Haunted Fest and ABPA would not be funded. Correct. Okay. I think we have to unwind the second amendment to do that. I thought we had it right. That's my bad. It's okay. Yeah. I think, I think all of you voted in the affirmative. So I think any of you can make a motion to bring that back up. I would like to make a motion to bring back that amendment or that motion we just passed and reevaluate it. Does the second agree? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Now progress. All right. I would like to make a motion that based on our amended plan, our tourist development plan, we would like to fully fund the events based on their qualifications. I'm looking to Amanda. All right. That works? While, while excluding funding for new events in category three through five? No. My, my intention, because we adjusted the plan by making it $3,300,055,500 or whatever it was. And now I'm trying to make a motion to fund all these events at that level. And then if that is not accepted by the BCC, we're going to go with Copley's motion as a backup, which is not funding new events and making sure the events that are existing have very small haircuts. That's the intention. How we word that. I'm looking to you, Amanda. I think your wording initially was right. Approving the elite events to be funded at the funding maximum contingent on the TDC, uh, the TDP being amended. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So that's just, that's the, and then we'll hit that as a third. We'll make yours a third. Yeah. Motion. Okay. Yes. Second. Okay. First. And I got a second on the motion. Anything else? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes. Do I have to repeat mine all over again? Okay. Uh, I'll make a motion. Uh, do I need to state if BCC does not approve? So if BCC does not approve the plan change and the proposed funding to the plan change that we amend staff's current recommendations in categories three, four, and five, to not fund any new events and have that funding be then given to current events. So each current event that was taking a decrease only takes a decrease of approximately $2,700 and there's going to be some decimal points. Is that okay? That's a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Mr. Dillon. Comments? Mayor? No. Comment, Chuck? If we take, as the motion is stated, and put all of the past previous events at fully staff recommended funding. Eligible funding. Eligible funding. Eligible funding. Will there, will that take up all of the $3 million or will there be a surplus? So my question is, if there's a new event and you, and you've only spent $2,800,000 and there's $200,000 left over, my question is, are you spending all $3 million if you, if you get rid of all new events? Yes. Yes. Yeah. By my math. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Good question. All those, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes. That's my credit. No more. Thank you. I do that on city council. Excuse me. If we can, let's take five minutes and then we'll come back because we got a long agenda yet to go. Phil, Chuck, take care. We don't have any other votes. So noted that we don't have a quorum. I think we don't have one now. Let's go ahead and get started and we're going to go on to Eddie with the metrics. If we can, let's note also that there'll be no more votes today because we do not have a quorum, but we shouldn't have to have any votes. So we're fine. So we won't have to delay anything. Eddie, please go ahead. Great. Thank you. And hopefully there won't be as many questions as the previous couple of presentations. So because we didn't get a chance to meet the last month, we wanted to revisit some of the spring numbers that we shared in last month's kind of emailed report with you guys and take those a step deeper and try to really understand, you know, not just the impact that we saw, but also some of the reasons for the changes that we've seen this year compared to the previous couple of years. So to kind of recap through February, March, April, we saw over $36 million in TDT collections over that period. That marks a 7.7% increase above the previous year and nearly a 3.5% increase over fiscal year 2024. We really saw a strong April, which kind of helped really encapsulate our strong performance for February, March, and April. So, you know, kind of looking at some of the reasons for what happened and some other visitor trends that we saw during that time period, there's really kind of five remarks I'd like to make visitors in hotel revenue returned from a lot of the key markets that we saw. There's a couple of scales of hotel performance that we saw, whereas our upscale and our kind of mid-tier hotels really grew in different ways. Our vacation rental revenue, as well as the rates, increased compared to previous years. We also saw some changes in our travel party composition, as well as more visitors that traveled to our destination for special events. So what a timely topic that we just discussed. So as we kind of look at purely visitation from our top 10 markets this year, what we saw was nearly all markets grew compared to the previous year. That includes our Florida markets, such as Tampa, Orlando, Miami, as well as a number of our key out-of-state markets, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston. We did not see it grow compared to 2024, but we did see our Florida markets grow significantly compared to 2024. As we look at the hotel revenue from our top 10 markets this year, we saw, again, that same growth in contrast to fiscal year 2025, where nearly all markets grew except for Tampa, which is not surprising. We still had hotel displacement in a number of these months from Tampa Bay. But you'll note that even though we, you know, had some decreased visitation in places like New York City, as well as Detroit, we still saw a significant increase in the hotel revenue from those markets. And virtually, you know, all markets except for a couple, Atlanta and Chicago, saw year-over-year growth from fiscal year 2024 when it comes to the hotel revenue. So kind of explaining a little bit as to why that happened, there's really kind of two things. And as we looked at the data from kind of different levels of our hotels, kind of our upscale revenue, which is typically if you're paying about $350 a night, you're kind of in that upscale hotel for our destination. What we saw was those rates continue to increase over these past couple of years. And as a result, we've seen more hotel revenue from the upscale level of hotels that we have. A little bit of a different story is in the mid-tier. So you're, you know, this is closer to around $200 a night kind of rooms. And what we saw here was a supply that has gone up from the past couple of years, which has also brought up demand from the past couple of years. So while we didn't have an increase in rate in this level of hotel, we have seen an increase in demand, again, along with an increase in supply. The other thing that we've seen, and this is kind of interesting. So what we looked at was the largest sample of vacation rentals that we could get. And we can get some data from key data scraped off of Airbnb to see the number of active properties across Airbnb for our destination. What we've seen is the past couple of years, the actual number of active monthly properties on Airbnb has gone down in our destination. Yet we've had a greatly increased rate over the past couple of years, which has gone from nearly, you know, $300 in 2024 to over $380 in 2026. So we're definitely seeing a growth in vacation rental revenue because of that increased rate. Finally, just a couple of things that we've noticed in visitor trends that we're paying attention to. We've seen that couples are no longer traveling alone, or at least they're not traveling as much alone as the previous couple of years. So groups of friends and groups of couples, that has gone up compared to the past couple of years, whereas a percentage of couples has gone down. And we've seen a little bit of up and down from the immediate family. But, again, we've really seen this groups of people in our destination as a rising trend. The other thing that we've seen, which I think is significant, and obviously we saw for people's primary reason to visit a return, and that being vacations from the previous year. That's great to see. But a little bit more significant, even though it's a smaller statistic, is the special events and concerts, which is up to nearly 12% in 2026 over this time period. That's pretty significant. We've not, you know, seen that except for in 2019, in the past about eight years. So that's really an increase that we're paying attention to. And, again, as we've talked about how important these events are for our destination, it's no surprise to see that that percentage has actually gone up. So that was a little bit of a spring recap. Now, continuing on into May, our latest TDT data, we have seen a record this year of nine, I believe it's $9.5 million in TDT collections for the month of May. Our previous record was fiscal year 2024, which was $8.5 million. So we've seen a significant increase this year, continuing from the positive news that we saw over spring. And I believe, as Brian has remarked, if you look at the first five months of this calendar year, I believe four of those five have been record months for us. And looking at our area and the different communities, you know, compared to fiscal year 2025, we're virtually up in all of our communities, Indian Rocks Beach being the outlier, but still that's only a difference of about 1.75%. Compared to fiscal year 2024, we're also seeing sustained growth, especially in St. Petersburg and Clearwater and Clearwater Beach. You know, we are also paying attention to, of course, some of those areas where, you know, we've seen some growth compared to last year, but they're not quite what they were in fiscal year 2024, St. Pete Beach and Treasure Island being those significant contributors of TDT. In terms of some of the other visitor metrics to kind of color, the month of May, we've had just over 3 million visitors that have visited Pinellas County and stayed at least 90 minutes in our destination. That is up 9.7% from last year, essentially flat from the year before, an increase of 0.7%. Our hotel occupancy has remained very steady, hovering around 72%, small increases from the previous couple of years. Our hotel rate is right around $200 a night, which, again, is small increases from the past couple of years. Our vacation rental occupancy and our vacation rental ADR have had significant growth from those past couple of years. Again, we have had fewer listings in our area, so that does help with that occupancy level kind of increasing, but positive things to note. And then in terms of our visitor origin metrics, they remain consistent with the past couple of years, but in the month of May we really see our Florida markets kind of starting to make up some of the top markets in our area. Tampa Bay, Orlando, Miami are three of the top four of those markets. And then we continue to see, though, out-of-state markets here as well. New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, D.C., Dallas, those all remain in the top 10 for the month of May. I want to just point out that this is a small sample of direct data from our vacation rental providers that provide that data into key data. So kind of take this with a grain of salt. But what you'll notice here is a lot of our Midwest markets and Florida markets still choosing vacation rentals as, you know, some of the top places in the month of May. And, of course, you know, there's some anomalies here too. So someone in Palm Harbor must have been having a family reunion or something going on there. And then this is to just kind of encapsulate where we are from fiscal year to date. So it's been about eight months into our fiscal year. What we've seen is nearly 11.6, almost 11.7 million total visitors. Compared to fiscal year 2025, that's an increase of 11%. It's actually still a little lower than fiscal year 2024. But we've seen our TDT at reaching over 71.2 million, which is an increase from both years. So because of that increased rate that we've noted and seen from some areas, you know, we still have a kind of record number of TDT compared to our most recent years of data. Our hotel occupancy is good. It's hard to compare it against fiscal year 2025 because we had a lot of hurricane displacement. But when you look at it compared to a normal year, we're right there. You know, we're 1% over fiscal year 2024. Our ADR, again, is right almost where we were with fiscal year 2025, but an increase from 2024. Our vacation rental occupancy, an increase from both years. And our vacation rental ADR, again, an increase from both years. So as we kind of look towards the rest of the year and where we're going, noting that we've had a pretty good year so far, I think the momentum is going to continue. By all our data records, the month of June was a pretty strong month for us. We're in the middle of July. It also looks like it's going to be a pretty good month for us. April, September, October, and into November. Those are still a little, you know, too soon to tell. But in terms of pacing, it's right on with where we have been, right in between kind of fiscal year 2025 and 2024. I will note that we've seen a shorter booking window this year. So we do expect, you know, there to be room for greater numbers than what we're seeing from this early pacing data. And the story is much the same for our vacation rental data, too. We're seeing this pacing kind of match where we were with fiscal year 2024. Again, noting that there is a little bit of a shorter booking window this year compared to our previous couple of years. So it could be that, you know, this year surpasses 2024. It's within that realm of possibility. That's my presentation. Again, hopefully not as many questions as the lead events, but happy to take anything you guys have. So one question I had is you talked about the origin metrics, taking that with a grain of salt. What is the sample size, or do you have that? Yeah. So we have about 110 to 120 property managers for our vacation rental sample. And it feeds roughly about 2,300 properties themselves. So it's, again, when we're looking at our destination, which has, you know, anywhere between 15,000 to 19,000 vacation rentals, it's a smaller sample. But it is the sample that we can see for an origin market perspective. So we still want to look at that data. But we do have to kind of take it with a measured response. We're not, you know, for instance, marketing to Irvine, California, that is more likely sort of a data-protected kind of sample. So, you know. Understandable. Yeah. No, I would just say that I know we're dropping like flies, and we've got a bunch of friends in the audience that have come here this morning to present to you all. So I just want to assure them that those that were not in attendance today are watching online. They're just not physically located in Pinellas County right now. And I know that the public's watching as well. So with that, I would like to introduce our agency that is here today. I believe they're hooked. Are you hooked up on the laptop? No? Oh, I saw you over there with the laptop, so I figured the presentation. So maybe Vanessa will come up to the podium and drive. But, yeah, we've had the agency. We've had Envisionate on board now for almost a year. And so they've been working hard. And they're in town this week for a planning session. All of our agencies are. And we thought it was a great opportunity for them to get before you and talk a little beach culture. Okay, great. Good morning, almost afternoon, everyone. I'm Vanessa Garippo from Envisionate. I'm joined here by my colleagues Amber and Matt. I had the pleasure of meeting some of you back in October when our engagement started with the Visit St. Pete Clearwater team. Had some nice conversations with all of you. And since then, we've been working hand-in-hand with the Visit St. Pete Clearwater team, along with agency partners as well, on a lot of really fun and exciting things. I think that some of you might have heard murmurs. You've seen even on the screen something called beach culture around here. So some of you may know some of the – had some teasers on what we've been up to. And we're here to kind of share with you a little bit of update on what we're doing to help promote both the awareness and visitation to the county. So very excited to share with you kind of what we've been up to with the team, in addition to kind of grounding us on the why we've been doing this as well. Of course, the main why is to generate the awareness and visitation, but then also why what Amber is going to be showing you makes the most sense here. And that is the tourism marketing right now is – it's drowning, pun intended. Oh, sorry. Which way? Oh, sorry, everybody. I thought that was – it's drowning in a sea of sameness, right? You're going to see an ad for someone on a beach here, someone on a beach there, and you don't necessarily know where they are and what destination they're marketing. And I think that what we're trying to do here is that point of differentiation. What makes St. Pete Clearwater a destination worth visiting? And we all know – and I've stepped my bare feet on your beautiful sugar white sand, and that is amazing. But there's so much more to this community that is worth sharing with the world, and that's your point of differentiation. That is your culture. That is everything that makes people want to come here. And we want to share that secret with the world. So that's a really big part of why we're doing what we're doing and ensuring that we're sharing that messaging with the unique individuals that we want to target and then also sharing those messages with those interests and behaviors that make the most sense. So we've been up to a lot. And kind of – this is months of work. We've been doing media strategy and planning. We've done multiple shoots, video shoots, and photo shoots, along with taking those assets we've been doing and making those into the beautiful things that Amber will show you. We've been working with agency partner Miles Media on landing page development. We're not sending one person that clicks on an ad to the same landing page as another person because they have different travel interests and motivations. So a lot of work in collaboration with them as well because we want to make sure the story we're telling is relevant to the people that are seeing what it is that is unique about St. Pete and that is uniquely interesting to them as well. So I did reference those shoots. We've been to over 40 locations within the county. We've had some – this is just a small, small smattering of some of the imagery that we were able to capture. There's thousands of images. It's very exciting. And it's beautiful, and it makes it easier for Amber and the team to story tell. So it's wonderful. I believe I'm going to kick it over to Matt to talk about the rationale around how we're launching and why we're launching. And I'll give that over to you. So thank you. So as Vanessa alluded to, we've been working on this campaign for months. Ideally, we want to roll it out in two separate phases. The first, and what's going on right now, you may have already seen some activations in your day-to-day lives going through digital or at the airport. We saw some boards as well, is to cultivate local advocacy. A huge percentage of visitors to Pinellas County come from the surrounding area, from Tampa, from across Florida. We want to make sure that we are reaching those audiences first with this message, ensuring that the message is resonating, that people agree with it, and that we build that excitement for this campaign as we move forward to our second phase in scaling nationwide for a full launch. In September, we want to shift from targeting specifically local Florida residents into our very clear, personalized audiences. You know, affluent families, younger millennial or Gen Z couples, urban explorers, older couples, and, of course, meeting and event planners. And ideally, what we're going to do is start with a digital focus so that we're gaining learnings, understanding what works, and then transitioning into more bigger, more visible executions as well. And just to hit on that, we're going to have a really digital-first performance-based campaign here, gaining learnings from what we're able to measure on social and search, CTV integration, online video, and programmatic ads that are able to actually reach the intended audience that we have, measure what they're seeing, see what their conversion rates are, and then appending those digital learnings with more visible, memory-focused, everyday kind of activations. While people are listening to Spotify or their favorite podcasts, out and about with Out of Home and things like Gas Station TV, and really partnering with the rest of the VSPC team to make sure that we are working hand-in-hand with owned and earned media so that all of this works together towards driving more of that tax revenue. So, yeah, we've talked a lot about what beach culture is, but we'd love to share some examples of how it's coming to life. So, beach culture, as Vanessa mentioned, it is a campaign that we're launching, and, you know, while most beach destinations really focus on the beach with the side of culture, we want to put culture on equal footing with your beautiful beaches. And when we say culture, we don't mean, you know, just your art per square feet, which you do have a lot of amazing murals and art and hands-on experiences, but really it is the breadth of offerings that your destination has that showcases the culture, everything from the exciting sports events that you have, the unrivaled elite events that we talked about earlier, everything from your local fair to Michelin-recommended restaurants, all the family fun activities and things that people can do. So just really putting that on equal footing together as it relates to beach culture. So part of the campaign we're going forth with at launch is what we're at Connected TV. So we have three examples here to share with you, each focused on their own priorities as well. One thing to note about our audiences that we have mentioned, we have first here our mature couples. So they really prioritize both beach and culture. So we're making sure we're kind of majoring and minoring in messages that really resonate with them. So you'll see with this spot, we're putting those in equal footing. Our Gen Z audience, they understand the beach is here, so we've got to educate them about all the cultural things that there are to do here. So you'll see that come to life here. And then we have our affluent families. They're here for the beach, but they don't want to put their kids on an iPad after they've had a long day at the pool. They want to make sure they're culturally stimulated, they have things to do. So putting all the culture up at the forefront and letting them know about the offerings really is the priority. With our CTV spots, our concept is what we're calling Reels. So, again, taking that see or show-not-tell approach with our destination marketing, making sure we're kind of breaking the mold. We imagine this concept, it's as you're scrolling through someone's camera roll after they come back from vacation, it's really showcasing these memories and really showcasing the amazing experiences paired with a really catchy soundtrack that's going to be memorable. So I'll go ahead and play this for you. Discover your beach culture at visitspc.com. So, again, really leading with a strong call to action, really creating an inspirational experience for everybody here. We do have 30 and 15-second spots for all these audiences, so I'll go ahead and share the affluent family spot here. Making memories at visitspc.com. So, again, here leading with the beach and showcasing all the great cultural things to do in St. Pete Clearwater. One thing to note about the video photography style, we intentionally took a less traditional approach than other destination marketing places. In fact, that we are kind of showing these sort of in-between moments, like not the very polished, but the moments everybody can relate to more clearly. And last but not least, we have our mature couple. So, again, that split here. Even plan your perfect getaway at visitspc.com. So, yeah, again, Gen Z really leaning on that cultural experience where families is really leveraging the beach experience, and then we have our mature couples at 50-50 split. And this is something we are testing across the board to ensure that we are making the right messaging that's going to resonate with the right audiences. In addition to CTV, we have a host of other channels that we are launching in. This is an example of some of our interest and partner-based ads here. So, this is our food-focused ads that we've recently launched for some local publications, as well as our Tampa Bay Restaurant Months. You'll see that we are, again, majoring and minoring in certain messages here. So, when we're showcasing the culture, we're always hinting to the beach and vice versa. So, really showing these vibrant, beautiful food photography with fun lines, like our food is even finer than our sand, or pack your shades, our chefs really shine, again, to nod to the beach and the sunshine. Some examples of our digital ads we are running in programmatic and paid social across the board. These are very static, but it's taken a very motion-forward approach here. Again, driving those unique landing pages. These are the landing pages we've collaborated with with Miles. So, each of these targeted to each of the audiences to ensure they are creating inspiration and driving bookings. Also launching with some out-of-home and prints. So, again, carrying over those key messages into these ads as well. And then now we know that a lot of people are finding inspiration through social media channels. So, we are leaning on Influencer to really help us tell that story. So, not only are we able to leverage our own social media meeting followers, we're also leveraging these key followers with great followings as well. So, I'll play a couple of those. My dad's a professional fisherman. He's won endless tournaments and he even has a fishing show on Discovery Channel. But funny enough, it seems one of his favorite memories is growing up, waking up at the crack of dawn, and going on headboats to fish until sundown with his dad. So, for Father's Day, I decided to surprise him with a trip to St. Pete with a fishing day on a headboat. This is his favorite memory with his dad, so I want to experience it with mine. Even if I'm catching no fish. We're currently 5-0, but I'm going to change that at the next stop. Good luck. And the cards were in my favor because I absolutely did. It was so fun getting to do something new with my dad that we never would have really done. If you're in St. Pete, you have to go to Hubbard's Marina and hop on their party boat for some deep-sea fishing. So, again, our goal is to really showcase a wide range of local businesses and showcase a wide range of interests with a wide host of influencers across different demographics. This is St. Pete Clearwater in Florida. Fly into the Tampa airport and check into a beautiful Marriott with plenty of room. Visit some of the most beautiful beaches, restaurants, and don't forget those sunset strolls with your family. You will have the most amazing time by going to the Sunken Gardens, visiting the St. Pete Pier, and going ziplining. Of course, don't forget the wide sand beaches. Comment Clearwater for this itinerary. In addition to our more traditional channels, we're testing out some new ad formats in a couple of different areas. So, first off with ChatGPT ads, which we'll be running and testing and optimize accordingly. And then we have some TikTok travel ads that we'll be testing out. This is not ours, per se, but just an example of what this type of ad might look like as we start to run those. But, again, really meeting users where they are in terms of social media and finding that inspiration and driving bookings. This is an example of the TikTok. I don't think it has sound, but you'll see how it comes to life. And from there, you can click and start booking directly. So, again, creating that clear call to action and path to conversion. All right. I'm going to come back near the microphone this time. So, yeah, what's next? We are, as Matt alluded to, launching in the local in-state market right now. Next, phase two in September. This is blowing this out entirely across all market, all of our key markets, across all channels as well. And then, with that nod to meetings and conventions, too, that's just as important to us as the leisure focus. So, we want to make sure that that beach culture is really shining through with that relevant messaging to those persons and organizations. So, making sure that that's happening. Working very closely with agency partner Lou Hammond Group, also the VSPC team, organic team as well, to make sure that we're really integrating in a way to make sure that that storytelling is relevant across all touch points. And then, global expansion, too. What does beach culture look like internationally as well? So, all that is on our radar. All that is being taken into consideration. We're really pumped about it. I hope you are, too. Of course, the purpose of this local launch is to gain that excitement and that adaptation and making sure that you're all speaking the language as well. So, it's been a really great pleasure working with the team on this, and I can't wait to see all that we're going to be accomplishing together. So, thanks again for your time and your patience, and it's been a pleasure and honor to be here. Thanks. Great. Comments, questions? Anybody? Dylan? Just a comment. Great job. It looks awesome. Really love all the components. Dylan always says it the right way first. I agree 100%. It's great. Refreshing. Looks good. Thank you. Thanks, team. Next on the agenda, Brian. Yeah, I'm going to be quick. I've been crossing these off, but we are joined today. We have a new public relations agency, and so we asked them to come today and introduce themselves. You'll see some friendly and familiar faces, but please join me in welcoming Lou Hammond Group, and they can introduce themselves. Everyone, thanks so much for having us. We'll keep it short and sweet. I know everyone's ready for lunch. I'm Mackenzie Comer, Senior VP at Lou Hammond Group now, and I'm joined by Britt Chapman, Aaron Murphy, and Valentina Bigliarolo. To say we're honored is an understatement. As locals, we're passionate advocates for the destination, so we're thrilled to serve as your new PR agency of record. But beyond the Florida team that you'll have day-to-day, we have offices in New York, Charleston, Denver, and all throughout the United States, so you'll have the bench strength of our entire agency. So while we're locally connected, you have that national recognition. Happy to answer any questions, but we're just thrilled to be here. Mackenzie, welcome back. Thank you. Yes, it's been a few years. Happy to be back in this room. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, y'all. And then the last comment I would just have is, I can't let you leave. It's the month of July. That means it's our favorite holiday, 7-2-7-day, just around the corner. You'll see on your desk you've got a 7-2-7-day T-shirt, exclusive drop, one-of-a-kind. There's only about 1,500 of them in existence, so wear them proud, wear them often, wear them. Not only are we celebrating this year on the actual 7-2-7-day, because it's on a Monday, you know, so we want to celebrate all weekend. So we're kicking things off on Saturday, July 25th, that evening. We're going to be out at the Rays game. We're going to be handing out over 1,000 7-2-7-day T-shirts so folks can get them there. I recommend if you're going, do it early, because last year there was a frenzy out there. We ran out of T-shirts. On the actual 7-2-7-day, you can go into any Kawa coffee in Pinellas, and between the hour of 7.27 a.m. and 7.27 a.m., you can get a free coffee. And I'm willing to bet if you go in and ask for any free small drink, they're going to hook you up. So we're looking forward to celebrating this year, and I believe this weekend at the Tampa Bay Ice Cream Fest, we are going to be handing out tickets to the Rays game. I'm looking to the team. Yes, sorry. All my marketing folks are behind the pillar. So great. Thank you. So just a lot of great things going on this year for 7-2-7-day. This has grown over the years. This year, we've partnered with over 140 businesses locally to create 7-2-7-inspired deals. So you can go on your cell phone. Everyone's got one. Download the 7-2-7-day mobile passport. Go on there. Check out the deals. You check into two of those small businesses with those 7-2-7-day deals, you get a T-shirt. So you can be one of the few lucky ones. So thank you. Other comments? Anybody? Chuck? First. Thank you, Chair. Our Board of County Commission Vice Chair, Chris Latvala, and member of RTDC, lost his father last Wednesday, Jack Latvala. And if any of you ever went to Tallahassee when Senator Jack Latvala was in office, you could walk in his office, and he would fight for tourism. Whatever your issue was, he would listen, and then he would represent. So as a friend to tourism, a friend to hospitality, I just want to say he'll be sorely missed, and I think we'd be remiss by not just mentioning that at the end of today's meeting. Thank you. Well, earlier in the meeting I said I wouldn't be here next year because I'm coming up on the end of my 24 years of service on the TDC, not nearly as long as Russ has been here. I think we're both rolling out because we've, Commissioner Long, initiated term limits three terms ago, or a little over three terms ago. And I am not desirous of staying on. I'm not making a plea for that, but I think that we should have a conversation about the term limits. I think it's very important to have a few members on the Board that have longevity and history and can refer back to things that we've done in the past and know that, well, we tried that already, or whatever the case may be. Having that history on the Board, I think, makes a big difference. Russ and I are the two longest standing members. We're both rolling off, and there's some very good people that are around this room here and others that are not here currently that probably should stay on a little longer than just the three terms to keep that longevity. That's what I feel, but it's a conversation. Maybe we could have it in one of the next couple of meetings or so to address that and see if there's a pleasure of maybe extending the terms or eliminating that altogether. So just throwing it out there. All right. Other comments? If I may, Chuck and I both serve on the Board for Florida Restaurant and Lodging, and next, in 1st of September, actually, the 3rd of September are the Rose Awards, which is the recognition of service excellence, and it is open up to any one of the hospitality business. You don't have to be part of the FRLA, but it is a great night of recognizing those people that service our guests. Great program. Great program they can come up with. Anything else, Mayor? Anything else? I do not. All right, man. Brian, take your counsel. Thank you for everybody here, and we're looking forward to working with all of you. This is dismissed.