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Hello out there in TV lands. Uh this is the River Cultural Council Committee meeting on July 9th calling to order at 6:02. We will begin with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the

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United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation >> under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Friends, I don't get nervous anywhere speaking in front of people, but every time I do that pledge of allegiance in

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front of y'all, I'm I'm waiting to mess it up. Uh, so we'll do a roll call before we get into the agenda. Rocky Graziano, chair, present. Hi Mayheime Menz, vice chair present. >> Debbie West present. >> And at this time we are missing council

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members Joe Hafitz and Lark Logan. All right friends, well happy World Cup. We got the game going on outside. We have so many exciting things happening. So friends, I I am multitasking. I'm going to try to move my all my stickers on my

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laptop here as I go through um what our agenda is for this meeting. We have some exciting things to share. Um today we're going to discuss our guidelines and priorities. We'll review what we've had for this year, uh sorry, last grant

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cycle. Um and then have an open discussion about what uh priorities we would like to have for grant cycle uh fiscal year 27. Then we will um review uh our final dates for an event that we plan to hold at um uh Cha Laf. Am I

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saying it correctly? um in August to recognize grant recipients. So, if you are a grant recipient from 2026 fiscal year, we will be sending out um an invitation to have you uh a representative come be recognized with a certificate uh have some snacks, get to

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meet the council and hear a little bit more about your project. So, look for that invitation to come out within the next week once I we finalize a date. Um after we are done with that, um there are some event reports I have on on the system that I just want to high level. uh thank you for sending your reports

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in. They're really really we're really grateful to see the great work that's coming as a result of the funds that the council is giving. And then um we'll reveal to everybody what the grant cycle dates are for fiscal year 27, which we

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just got today at 12:10 p.m. Yay. So, we'll be able to share that with all of you and then we'll have more detail coming up in the next uh couple of weeks. So, we're going to start off with our guidelines and priorities. So, what I'm going to do for everyone out there

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listening is just review what our priorities were for 2026. Um, we are going to give an opportunity through our Instagram page to get some community input. What do I mean? Well, I will put up some poll questions over the course of the next couple of days on our

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Instagram story. Uh, inviting community members to provide what they think our priority should be. Any submission that is sent in I will re I will read at the next meeting and we can discuss as a council um and then come up with what our guidelines and priorities will be for the cycle. So that will take place

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at the next meeting in August. Also if you want to come to the meeting and share your thoughts and ideas always welcome. Right now we have a soldout crowd of just the three of us. So um here were the priorities for last year.

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So there's priorities and then there's guidelines. Hi Joe. jump on and whenever whenever you're ready. Priority one, applicants or proposals must be from rever residents. They need to benefit underserved populations and lesser heard

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groups. It should involve rever youth including at risk youth could be about uh local history and or serve our community. These are all publicized. If you go to the mouse c masscultural.org find the rever cultural council page, they're there. So, if you want to follow

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along with me or see them afterwards, that's where you'll find them. Promote education and mitigation regarding local environmental issues. Involve new art forms or humanities programs that would be beneficial to the community from new applicants that are live events rather

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than virtual. So, those were the eight priorities that we published for 2026. The guidelines. All right. So, this is where we get more into the nitty-gritty about and there are 15 of them. So, I'll take a sip of my Gatorade after I'm done

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reading all of these. One, applicants must live in Rivier or be sponsored by an organization in Revier. Project must be in Revier about Revier or benefit Rivier residents. Applicant must document how granted funds will be used. So, I'm going to pause there and get on my soap box about this. So, a lot of you

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last year when you got your uh notifications that the that we did not move forward with your grant, a lot of them were because the funds that you were asking for one and now the council and I we all have to discuss this. Some of y'all we we get like $45,000.

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So, asking us for 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 grand, we're not going to be able to accommodate that when we only have $44,000. That's what we got the last two years. So, if you are asking for larger chunks of money, what do I think is a larger chunk of money? I would say anything really over, first of all, any proposal, but anything over like $1,000

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or $2,000 should be accurately documented in terms of what we're going to use. I think one of our best reports last year was for something that was $500 and change. Am I not mistaken? Was it not the painting the blocks, the cinder blocks? They like literally like itemized up to the penny. We I don't

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want to be like I'm not math isn't my thing, right? I I work in human resources in front of people. But the more the information you give us that we can see that will give us more consideration especially if the applicants applications increase >> often. Can I just say one other thing?

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>> We also understand that many of you are applying to many different Massachusetts cultural committees. So if you have this exact same proposal to Winthrop and you have it to Lynn and you have it to Beverly um we may or may not you know

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accept it depending on where you're performing. If you're in close proximity people in Revier could go to Winthrop if they want to see it. It's not necessarily a clo you know closed event. Cultural events are open to the general public. Um, and the same thing is if you

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have multiple proposals, one proposal may be a little bit more well suited for our um, community than others. We have some last year that submitted two or three different proposals and we took the best of the three sometimes or the

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best of the two. Um, so we try and fathom which one is going to be the best suited for the needs of the public. Um, >> thank you for that input, Joe. Um, very good point. Um, we're not discouraging you from applying from other places, but

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just keep in mind that that is something that will be considered. Um, applicant. So, this these next two points are very similar. Application must include a project timeline. Um, we don't expect that you have you might not have a venue yet. You might not have, but like when where are you when are you

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planning on doing this? What is the time frame um that we are looking at? Um timing timing is also essential. So every event will be different but like don't have it on thanks you know Thanksgiving sometimes unless it's

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Thanksgiving specific that might people might be away so they might not do it. So consider who is coming and when they might come um is is another consideration. Um, again, detailed budget. If equipment

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or capital improvements are part of a grant proposal, the grant must demonstrate a cultural purpose, be a one-time for a special need, and should be clearly justified by some longerterm public benefit. Again, friends, this is what we had last year. May not be what we have this year, but I'm reviewing

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them so we can have an open discussion as a council about some of the things that we might want to see change. Projects must be completed within one funding cycle. You generally have, and I got to look at the materials for 2027. You generally have up to six month. You have an 18-month period because the

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fiscal year for the state starts on July 1st if I'm not mistaken, and goes through June 30th, right? So, you have that additional six months within the calendar year, even though at this point next year, we'll be in fiscal year 28, right? Because we're in fiscal year now for the state of 27. Um, but you don't

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need to memorize that right now. Just know you got basically about 18 months from the time of of you got you have until the end of the calendar year. And then we want to also remind you that monies in rever come from different institutions. We are just one institution among many that exist in

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rever. Um different neighborhood um institutions exist in rever to support cultural uh organizations. Um the beach the MDC supports different organizations. So there's different ways to get that funding. So even if we turn you down there are other places you can

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apply also for that same amount of money. Not saying that we are going to turn you down um but that you can get additional funding from those organizations as well. So you might also do your homework and look into the other organizations that exist in rever.

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Um all right thanks Joe. Uh where am I? Okay. Applicants should be aware that our council makes reimbursement grants and they will they will not have the funding immediately up after being approved. This should be considered when planning the project timeline. That will let that will not change for 2027. So,

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just as a heads up, um, also friends out there, hi everyone. Um, there was a period where my email address I I couldn't access my email from reve.org. So, some of you were sending your your emails back. We love hearing from you. In your approval letter, it clearly states who to contact for the

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reimbursement as well as the links to the forms. So, please read your approval letter if you have questions. Um, I'm assuming that will be the case for 2027 as well. But all the materials that you need out there for, I think it was 24 grant recipients last year. um in that email that initial letter that I sent

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you when I sent you the congratulations if you click on that PDF it has all that info um also please feel free to reach out if you need to but I just want to make sure that when you're planning I understand that you know some people everyone's um resources are are different um I know that depends on the

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group as well as the individual but uh we are reimbursement that won't change so you will not receive the money until after the project is completed and all of the materials that you that are required which is W9 and I report I think there's a form I think there's just three documents if I'm not mistaken

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um that you and any receipts you must provide after >> um >> the one thing that we can say about that too is it might not be a reimbursement for the full amount if the event has already occurred but you're applying for money for it so >> we can we could we could have that for this year. Yeah, I think that's I think

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that's in here. Joe, I'm just review trying to review the 16 that we >> Yeah, like I said, I'm just trying to be you know clarify as we go along on this. >> No, good. Very good. Um, all programs must be held in locations that are accessible to people with all abilities. Funding of grants is

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contingent on both availability of sufficient funds and relative benefit to the community. Field trip applications um must include a statement that the project is not already funded by the school. This can be uh revised on a case-by case basis. I don't think we had

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that issue this year. Funds must not be used to substitute or replace existing publicly funded programs. Funds are not to be used as the sole means of support for programs of a continuing nature. Applicants may not be discriminated against the basis of including but not

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limited to race, sex, religion, creed, color, national origin, disability, or age. All advertisements, brochures, etc. must include a statement that the activity program is supported by a grant from the RCC, Rever Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the

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Mass Cultural Council. And I think a lot of I've seen the flyers um you know, we'll use the example of the Pride uh program that was a couple weeks ago. It had the Mass Cultural Council grant on there and then had a note about River Cultural Council and then it was announced during the programming. So uh

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I don't think we have an official logo necessarily. I think we have one on the Facebook page that some people are using. perfectly fine. If you use the Mass Cultural Council logo, which is available through their toolkit on their website, that is also acceptable. It's just again paying paying um giving

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credit to the organization that helped provide the programming. So, that was a lot, friends. We had eight priorities and then we had 15 guidelines. So, I want to open it up to the council. Um for those of you that when we did the roll call, Joe Hopitz is um is in

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attendance for us to um for us to discuss. I'm going to put myself on mute and um let's start with priorities first and have an open discussion for the next 10 minutes or so. Again, I want to set the expectation friends out there in TV land and for the council. We are not

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deciding the priorities today. We will vote and confirm the priorities and the guidelines at our August meeting. Debbie, keep me honest. I don't know what the date is. >> We'll we'll say it again. I got to look. >> It's August 13th. >> August 13th. That will be the day that

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we vote and we we um is codify the right word? I want to feel real real political today. Uh we will agree on the pri the priorities and guidelines and those will be posted. We will have some opportunity for you the community to respond. So

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over the course of the next couple weeks as we get up until August, you can email me rgraziano.org or any of the council members. our our information is all available on online I believe on the website or I will add prompts to the Instagram story which

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will say hey community something like that you have any thoughts about our priorities and guidelines we want to hear from you so this will be your opportunity to provide input also you are invited to our meeting on August 13th to come in and share what you think the priorities and guidelines should be

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that will be the first part of our August meeting um and then the rest of our meeting will be devoted to planning our event that's coming up. So, I'm saying that all up front now. It will be online. Again, I know not everyone is uh wants to go on to Instagram or social

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media. That's perfectly fine. You can send it to me in a in an email message or you can send it to us in Facebook or you can come in person. So, we're giving you three different ways to communicate with us. I said a lot. I'm tired of talking. I talk all day. Let's talk priorities first. So priorities are what

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are the applicants that we are going to look at and say meet what our council is looking to be I I don't even know what the right word is for for it. What are we looking for our reach to be in 2027? So I'm going to open up to the council to to chat a little bit about that for

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the next just so we know for the next 10 minutes we have to talk about our plan our meeting or our event coming up. So I will I will let the conversation happen until uh approximately 6:30. So, who wants to go first? I heard some things from Joe. So, Joe, do you want to recap some of the things

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that you were you were clarifying in the when we talked about just priorities? What were some of the things that you were saying as you were reiterating that were real important? I think I heard you say, you know, you might we might prioritize applicants that are just applying for one grant. Am I summarizing that correctly?

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It's it's not that we'll prioritize it, but also um other things that are happening in the area. So, if you are applying and you're going to have your program go, you know, September 18th in Winthrop, uh we're not planning on probably having it September 19th in

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Rever. Uh proximity is going to kind of play. Um feedback that we get on your program as well, some sort of feedback on prior prior things. History is always a good uh thing to have. The venue size

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too. You know, you're asking for a venue that you know, you want 250 people to be in a 50 person space. Uh the big thing is we need you to do your history. um or your kind of research a little bit on what spaces are available to the public

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in Revier, not just every every city has, you know, a hall that accommodates 300 people or whatever. So, kind of do that. That'll kind of direct it a little bit easier. Um, just as a means of

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information, Ravier just opened up a place called the AMP and it is it is located behind Suffach Downs. Its first program is going to be Friday, tomorrow. Uh, but it seats 600 people. Can it be

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used by a cultural organization to have a program in? Um, it's possib it's a possibility. That's a new possibility that opened up. So there are new venues also that open up to that or approach the council and say we would we would

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host a event in our spaces. Um a lot of the new apartment buildings and whatnot have community spaces uh outdoor and indoor that may or may not be open for events. Um so that's another thing that

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we might research. You can either ask us if they're available or you can approach those buildings um and centers directly, but that directs it too. We don't want you to say, "I'd like to hold it there." And they say, "What? We don't we don't hold events here." Um that only kind of

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is against the point. So to help us um to do an effective event, that's a good way of doing programming. Um so I think that's that's the big thing. And if you do do three or four proposals,

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it it depends on what else comes in. You know, like I said, we try to give everybody a fair shake at it. So, um it's not just, well, this person who submitted four proposals is going to get all four done. We might we might do one, we might do two, we might do four, we

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might not do any. Um it all depends if we funded you in the past um or who else is submitting. Um, so walk around Revier. We do invite you to come to Revier and look around our city and say, "hm, this might be a good

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place for an art installation. This might be a good place for a thing." It takes a day, you know, maybe 15 minutes, a half an hour to look around the city, see where you might like to host an event. Don't just say, "Well, River is good to host." Um, so come visit us. Uh,

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that's also a good thing and it makes our job a lot easier. Okay. And if you hear me clickity clicking, I'm just taking down some notes, friends, so that we can have a larger discussion. Um, so, uh, Haimey, Debbie, anything that you want to add and then I'll put my two cents in at the

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end. >> Yeah, I wanted to add I'm looking at the priorities as you stated from last year. Right. So, we we and there's a few that I'm that I'm hoping to tweak so we can streamline it a little bit better and if we can reduce the number of priorities, make it easier for our grant individuals

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to apply. Right. So there's a few one that talks about benefiting underserved populations and lesser groups and there's another one that talks about promote education and mitigation regarding local environmental issues which that one I'm hoping to to just

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strike down if if that's the right word and that that benefit underserved populations. I would love to talk more about inclusivity. So maybe something that promotes inclusivity for um underrepresented groups would be a good one. Um, and then there's an area that

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talks about from new applicants. I think over the last few years there's been some great events. So, I would love to not discourage people from applying again, but I think that we need to focus more more on having a form of measure.

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So if they're able to provide and demonstrate that there was a measurable impact and that could be via you know the quality of the project or the number of people that it reached when you had the event that could be a good one for the priorities. So when you're presenting and outlining the expense

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you're also outlining how it went the previous year so we can focused on that. I think there's some there's some really great events that have happened in the city of Riviera that we would love to to maintain and I and that would be my my two cents on those areas and maintaining from Riviera residents to you know that

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that needs to stay obviously. >> Thanks for that insight Debbie. >> All of those are good ideas. I mean I'm still big on the youth and elderly to get funding because schools can't ask for funding. So there's basically zero

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money for field trips. >> Thanks Debbie. Um so some of the things that I would is there anybody else before I go give my my little >> I have just one more thing. Yes. The big thing that's very important in this day and age this information age is promoting your event. You can have the

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best event possible and it's not promoted. >> We encourage you to promote it at as many social media and uh old school media as a newspaper. We do have the rever advocate here you know um and the

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like if you have holding it in an old age home through the old age home uh to promote your event on many plat many platforms um because sometimes you have a great event the word doesn't get out there. Um it's different if it's an

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exclusive event versus an inclusive. So there are two different types of events. one is like just one for the whole general public and one might be just for 300 students in a in a specific school. Um so the kind of ones that are open to the general public are the ones that I

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would advocate more you know marketing for. Um because the in-house ones like in a school they will advertise on their own. Thank you so much. I think all of that that we just received there's some really great feedback there. I want to

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get to more in the nitty-gritty. Um, so some things that I'm going to propose and we have a conversation. Um, so if you received a grant from us in 2026 and you I'm trying to be nice here. I'm going to use a term my mother would use. Couldn't be bothered to fill out the quick form

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and give us details on what your program how successful it was, then we're likely not going to consider it. Right? So that form is linked directly into your approval letter. I just pulled it up. The approval letter says who to respond to. It gives a link to the eligibility I'm sorry the the details of what you

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need to provide and a link to the reimbursement form and then there's a document a link there to fill out the form after your event. Um I'm happy to report that 12 I have 12 reports in. So that's about half of what we granted. So thank you out there. I know there are

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some projects that might have just completed or some projects that are in process. So um if if everyone completes the form that would be great. So that means that we will have an idea as Joe and Haime and I believe Debbie also u alluded to which is that if we're comparing next year and we say okay

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project A received money the last two years well we can see how it got a little bit better or how they improved upon that project or what they want to propose. So I think if you are going to re reapply and you did receive a grant, what I'd like to see is what is going to be different? Why is this still a need?

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Right? So if you've been doing something for multiple years um and it's the same kind of thing, you know, why is this year different? Why do you still continuously need the money from the cultural council? Not saying that we won't approve it, but why why are we still why are we still essential to that? So make that point within the

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application. So I so that's something that I will propose when we come together in August. The other thing um because I like to be to me fairness is um providing everyone equal access and ability to apply right. I don't look at

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like well we got to give every single you know different type of person that's not we're not going to be able to do that with the money that we have. So, but I do want to add that um potentially we should look at something like saying we will guarantee at least one approval per school or one

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approval per senior center. I'm not saying that that's the approach, but if we wanted to because we do receive I I would say the majority of our projects fall youth oriented elder services and then we got a bunch of really great things in the middle. Right. And when we were

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going through the grant cycle review, if those of you can recall, we we those were the ones that we kind of stood out to, right? We were like, okay, this is for the youth, this is for the elderly. And we were more likely as a council, we we try to do that. So >> each school, you know, pick something that would be a better project.

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>> So I think that >> potentially let's put that in the priorities. I'm not saying we have to, but maybe putting in a uh so again because I heard metrics from Haimey that we liter So I'm not saying that that doesn't mean that we won't approve every project from one school but saying upfront that it would be x amount. We would we will look at that many. The

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other thing that I would like us to consider team is do we say the max amount of approval is going to be x? I don't I'm I'm that's that could warrant a discussion. Do we say like we're we're not going to like if you're

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going to ask for $10,000 I mean I don't think we gave anybody $10,000. I think the most we gave anybody was six this year and I think the lowest we gave was what 400. I'd have to look at the measures. It >> there was one that was like 450. It was like the magician or something. >> We can't li it limit it till all the

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proposals like are in right. we can't capital >> I think we can we can we could provide in the guidance that we're likely looking at a range in the guideline >> and then said diversity too is the big thing we do encourage you to look at the diverse profile and demographic profile

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of reve before submitting um sometimes a program in which river does not have any of that demographic is good because we kind of we kind of give an education to those that may not know about that background and Other times what we're

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looking for is programs in which we have a huge demographic of that population. >> All right. So I [clears throat] think we discussed I mean and I said we were going to do this for 10 minutes and we're already there. Um so

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priorities we I think I think that if we could make that five or six. >> Yeah. I think everyone I think the call to action for the committee um of council would be come with three to five neck that we each are passionate about so we can discuss. We'll open it up to the group. Let's take a look at the

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guidance the guidelines because I think that's where we have we could we can chop some of this because this full disclosure I think last year because we were we were forming as a team, right? There were some of us that Joe and I had been on the count. Joe had been here longer than me. I had been here just been elected chair magically

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and then all of a sudden we had three new members. We kept everything the same. We didn't really make a lot of tweaks because we we all came together kind of right as the grant cycle was starting and we had to move. So there are some really good things here, but I think there is some redundancy. So we could probably I think

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as a as a team, let's each of us do kind of our own edits and see if we can kind of get this down to like maybe seven to 10 in terms of guidelines and maybe make them a little bit more robust. So like you know we like three, four, five are exactly kind of similar. Applicant must

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document how granted funds will be used. Application must include a timeline. Application must include a detailed pro budget. We can make that one bullet, right? Document how the funds will be used with a project timeline and a detailed budget. So if everyone on the council can kind of look at them, rework them, and we can come together. I would

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like to see that number smaller. It'll be easier for people when they open up grant cycling for people to say, "Oh, okay, this fits." versus looking at those. Haimey, I think you're right about the environmental, although I think it's really important for us to focus on that as a community. We have

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other um boards and commissions that focus on that a little bit more than we do. So, we can maybe look at maybe chopping that when we have the conversation in August. Um, some of these I think are gimmies. We're not going to discriminate against anybody based on who they are and what they represent. Uh, but there might be a way

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for us to say that in a little briefer uh term. And again um hammering home that you know Joe said it I think very well um and I heard others of us including myself mention that um promotion is important right not every

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project needs to serve thousands of people right some of them might be smaller groups of people but how are you uh how are you advertising it so I think I have said at multiple meetings in the past I said oh well I'll promote some things on socials I'm going to be frank with all of you I unless I have photo

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releases from children. I'm not posting anything about a school, right? Because I know some people are very sensitive about having their child's photos out into um social media land. So, if you send it to us, we'll look at it and we'll say, "Yay, great. Those are great." Um but I'm not going to necessarily put that on any of our

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socials without consent from parents and or or guardians. Um as I know that that is a sensitive topic. Um so, we can maybe add that next year that we have a media release form if we're going to use that. So, that might be something we add in. Um this is me thinking very corporate Rocky. And this this is this

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is for all all events too. Um technically the approval has to be given before you say oh they're going to promote our you know event. They might not they might have not had a great time >> or they just might not want their face on social media platforms.

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>> So friends the I think the call to action and I'm going to I'm going to put the first one up before I leave today is it's going to be on the Instagram story. It's going to say community input. Tell us what you think are priorities or guidelines. Well, we'll start with priorities. I think the priorities are

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more important uh to hear from all of you. Give us your input. You can email me again. R graziano reve.org. Debbie's d west.org. Hi is hi Jimenez.org and Joe is j heitzrave.org.

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Lark isl Logan.org. These are all available online. Message us um and tell us what you think. This is your opportunity from now until um uh uh August 13th when we reveal great discussion team. We're all passionate. I think this is going to be great. >> Do we also have a social media website?

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We have a Facebook's presence. >> Yep. >> That's where we're going to Yeah, it's going to pull I'm going to pull from that. >> You can also direct message us on Facebook if you don't want to go on Instagram. Friends, if you see me looking at my phone, it's not because I'm being rude. because I'm pulling up the next topic because I don't you can see I'm I'm I'm moving with multiple

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laptops and as I mentioned I need to fix my rever or email on my laptop. All right, so I want to go over the count the grant dates before we dive into talking about our event that we're hoping to hold the end of August. So this these are hot off the presses as of

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12:10 p.m. today. So for all of us before we submit the priorities on August 18th at 6 p.m. there'll be an LCC guidelines training webinar. So, um I think that that would be good for us. Basically, by having the the priorities, then we can maybe look at

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the guidelines. Um and then we can clarify that um on August 28th, I need to submit the um priorities and guidelines. On Tuesday, September 1st, 2026, friends, applications will open for the

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grant cycle 27 on Thursday, September 10th. This will also be recorded and available on the Mass Cultural Council um YouTube page. I will link it to our link tree on our Rever Cultural Council Instagram as well. There will be an info

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session for applicants, friends out there. If you're planning on applying, I strongly recommend that you go um to the website, I'm sorry, the webinar or you watch it. It gives you really great tips of how to navigate the platform and also some of the things that you should

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prepare. There will be something for us on September 15th for financials reporting like last year. Um October 15th, 2026 at 11:59 p.m.

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applications will close. So to summarize out there, friends, September 1st through October 15th, that is your opportunity to submit your application with all supporting materials. Everything needs to be in. We will have our meeting cadence August, September,

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and October. I believe all of our meetings will happen before that time if I'm not mistaken, Debbie. Um, so you will hear reminders from us. And then um I think I did this last year and I'll probably do it again is in the um in our

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portal that we look at, we can see anything in draft. I believe I sent notes to those of you that were in draft and said, "Hey, look y'all, 48 hours and then it closes." So, um, we'll send a reminder to anybody that's in draft mode at that point. Um, if you're in draft mode and you don't submit, then it

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doesn't count. So, please get them in, um, by the 15th of October. Then we have until January 15th to submit as a council our grant decisioning report. So, for those of you

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out there, just to give you the timeline again. So, if you're going to have a project that's going to happen in September, it still counts in the fiscal year. You can apply for it on September 1st through October 15th. There's no guarantee that's going to get approved, but again, once again, you can apply for projects within the fiscal year timeline. And then you have the

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additional six months of the calendar year. So, you have an 18-month window of July 1st through December 31st, 2027. Look at me with math today. He's good. He's done this in a while. He's got it. What will happen is we will have a meeting in November.

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We will we usually do this in two steps friends which is that we initially will have a scoring process probably again where we come to the table and come to a consensus on certain numbers of of what applications just don't meet the criteria based on what we submit. Then

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we will have a condition. We have to give a 30-day window for you to if you do not receive an approval for you to be able to um contest that with the mass cultural council. We have to give a 30-day window for that. So all that has to happen between October 15th and

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January 15th of us submitting the final report. So we're going to give you all the dates and deadlines of that coming up. But I just want to give that in terms of a timeline. If you're planning your project, remember we are a reimbursement committee, a council, which means that

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the earliest you could submit for um excuse me, [clears throat] the earliest you can submit for reimbursement will be after we submit our final report, which will be before January 15th. We're usually pretty on time with that >> and we are encouraging right now that you start the draft drafting process. So

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that's what you should be doing now. Like we said, we're not going to accept them to September 1st, but if you're a school or something like that, be looking into those programs. Be looking at the theater schedules or looking what Museum of Science might be offering in October, November, December, whatever, be thinking about that now. Draft

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something out now. The propos actual proposal doesn't have to be until later, but think about drafting it. Don't try and do it at the last minute. These proposals do take some time. Um, if you do do it at the last minute, some of those proposals are kind of thrown off

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the table because they do look last minute and we have a lot of questions that we need answering, too. So, we talked a lot about that. We only have a few more minutes left. So, one last thing that I want to I want to hear my home friends, we were just some stats

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because I love data. We were um 25% higher year-over-year in number of applications. Yay. And then we were 115%

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higher in terms of dollar amount asked for. So what does that mean, Rocky? Well, means this. If you submitted it uh incomplete application, you don't have the forms. We're probably if we go up even more this year, we're not going to be able to even look at it to be to be

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frank with you. So, like I think that happened last year when we were doing it. Some of the projects were good, but it didn't have a detailed budget. Okay. Um, and again, I want you all to be realistic. I hate to say that, but but but I don't want to discourage people from asking for lots of money, but if

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you're asking us for $50,000 that it counting on us to be the only funer for that, ain't going to happen. All right. So, so we will be able to give you a portion and be able to sponsor things. And what we try to do as a council, I think what we're really good at, Debbie especially, is we look at the budget and

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we say, "Well, if we give them $1,000, this is how much the bus is going to cost." So by us giving the $1,000, we're not telling you you have to use it for the bus, but it's our way of saying, "Well, if we give you $1,000 and you ask for 20, at least we know that $1,000 can can cross off a line item on something."

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Um, our overall budget is not um supposedly going to go down, you know, down. given given given world events or anything the population of river is expand is expanding so we don't anticipate it going

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>> down um but we would like to see the proposals that we get go up >> and again we don't have any control over the dollar amount and we won't know that until after I think even the grant cycle we we get that like in October I think October November so last this year it was4

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thou $44,500 the year before that it was about the same I think it 44 flat or it might have been 44 or $100. Um, and then we actually had carryover the year for that year from COVID where events weren't happening. So, we were able to grant more money than than normal. I think we

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were able to grant over $100,000. I don't think that that's going to happen again, but I just want us to be realistic there. Um, >> in general, it's based on the overall population of a community >> and the amount of funding they have like over overall. But yes. Um, all right

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friends, lots of chatter about that. Let's move forward with again, if you're having your project, I have 12 reports. Um, they're great. I will share them with the council. I'll do a summary of it and send it out. Um, I don't want to, we only have 20 minutes left and we're going to go towards um, we're going to

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probably uh, go through this time really quickly as we discuss our recognition event. So, Haime, do you want to kick off in terms of the location and then we'll talk through some date options and then um what our process will be for communicating that?

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>> Yeah. So, as a council, we decided it will be at Choco Laf, which is located on Sandler Square, 7 Dehon Street. Um, and we are currently looking at dates in August. And we were

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thinking either the 24th, 25th, or 26. Uh, this will be in the evening, probably around 6:00 p.m. Um, just need exact date so we can confirm with the um with the local with the place.

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>> So during the event, just to kind of give to jump in, thanks Haimey for that. uh and and Choco Laf. We're really excited. Thank you for opening up your space to us. Um there's also a really great park that we can take photos. Um so our next steps, Debbie is going to reach out to the mayor's I was going to

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say governor. Not yet, right? That's wishful thinking out there, Patrick. Um mayor's a mayor's office to see what the availability is of of our mayor and some of our city officials. Once we have a lockdown, I will send out an email to all grant recipients um and say you're

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invited to attend our event on the date and the time. Um if you can't make it and you want to send somebody um we will present you with certificate. So that would be great and we want to hear about you. We just want to we want to chitchat and hear and get to know you and hear about your events and and just uh provide some additional outreach. Um and

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additionally, you might have additional priorities and guidelines you want to give us. we we will have voted on them but we might be open to uh revising them if you come to the event. So once uh we get a confirmation on having an official with us uh we will I will send out an

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invitation to the email addresses of the applications that we sent grants to and then it'll have a quick little RSCP form um with an RSP date and then we'll have our we'll have our events and we're looking forward to seeing you at that time. Um just to divvy up the work here.

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Hi me, thank you for managing the location. High five there. Um, at our next meeting, we can talk about food and logistics because we have a little bit of budget to to uh handle that. Um, I will send out the RSVP forms uh once we have the date. Debbie is going to reach

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out to mayor's office. Um, Steve, you're also invited if you're watching. I know you usually are. You'll be also invited as well as some of our other officials. and then we can um send out a press release to the the papers and Revier TV, come hang out with us. We would love that. Are there any logistical things

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that I'm missing on this? >> Um no, we'll talk about like any refreshments at the next meeting. That's >> At the next meeting, we'll come up with them. We'll come up with the menu. Yeah, >> it'll be light refreshments, friends. But that everything is delicious there. So, Haime and I like going there. So,

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it's a it's if you haven't supported that business, all businesses in River are great, but please please shop local, especially right now while we're seeing um all this great attention uh in the game as I walked in here into city hall watching the game out there. >> All right. So, we covered

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>> Did we miss anything? >> There's just want to say there's still some events out there. Uh we as a council members try to participate in them. Uh the most recent one was the pride event. I was there. It was great great event. Um so if you want to meet us not just at Chaf but any of the other

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events we try to participate in them. So uh come join us. >> Come join us. Um and um I think I probably should disclose this now while we're on camera. Yes, I did MC the Pride event. I was not paid. I volunteered my services that day and it was fabulous.

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Thank you all for being out there. But just in case anyone's wondering, um it was a volunteer gig, which we're happy to come to your events and volunteer. Just let us know. Um so, all right, our next meeting is August 13th. We're going to have a lot to do, friends. Uh so, out

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there in the community, here's your call to action, right? We want to hear from you. This is our official call to the community to help us determine what our priorities are. Again, I'm going to post um a story on Instagram as soon as I hang up the gvel. So, it'll be up there

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in the next few minutes. It'll say, "What do you all think our priority should be?" Um please give us some feedback. You are welcome to come to the meeting on August 13th at 6 p.m. right here at the city council chambers. The first uh 30 minutes of the meeting will be devoted to us uh honing in on our

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guidelines and priorities. Um, really the priorities is where we want the most feedback from and we want feedback on the guidelines, but that's really the it's like the what and the how of if I'm speaking in HR speak here, like what what are we doing and how are we getting there? Um, and then we'll we'll devote

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the rest of that meeting to our planning for our events the week of August 24th. Are there any other items we should discuss before we adjourn? >> I just want to point out the cultural events. We're not backing them, but there are cultural events happening in

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Revier all summer long. Um there are the mayor's office um is sponsoring movies on the beach. Tonight is in front of the state police barracks are showing a movie. There are movies in the park in River all summer long. Uh we have the

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farmers markets. One exists in front of Amaya and one exists on the beach if I'm not mistaken. So, if you have not gone to one of the farmer markets, you can check out the farmers markets. Um, we have September 18th, Revers Live, which

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is going to be at the um museum. If you have not seen the local history museum, I know it its hours are not like a consistent thing, but you should drop in. They do have outstanding programs and they are looking for volunteers

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um for that. We do have the sand castle contest coming up which usually promotes itself that's in boston.com and everything like that. So we like to promote some of the smaller events that are happening in Rivier as well. As I mentioned earlier the AMP just opened

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up. They're going to be having concerts all summer long there. That is a 600 person uh amphitheater that's located behind Amaya. Um as well as I just saw it posted on social media today. They have a circus. It's a paranormal circus

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that's coming to Suffach Downs starting the last week in July and through, you know, August. If you're wondering what the tent is going up there sometimes, uh there are things that go on river that you do not know. We are also still looking for members to join us. Um I

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think the mayor's committee or whatever the committee said that there is suggested 20 people on the cultural committee. We do have a slightly smaller group, but we'd love to expand our group. So, if you'd like to join us in the fall, we'd love to have you.

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>> All right. Thanks for all that, Joe. And thanks again for um being so passionate about all the events going on. We wish we could go to all of them, but please invite us um to your events. We would, as we said, we would love to attend. Um and again, if you're interested in being

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part of the contract council, please reach out to us. All right, friends. I need a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> I need a second. >> Second. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I >> I >> All right. Cultural council meeting on July 9th. Um adjourned at 6:48 p.m.

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Thanks everyone.