001it's 5 37 p.m and september 17th and 2020 and that's called to order the uh city of ann arbor public market advisory commission um so stephanie can you do the roll call yes peter wolf here lisa young here helen chandler here all right and we've got jeff namath we see him but we can't hear him so i would assume that that is here then holly parker i'm here and then we have our guest from ctn that is recording us all right [Laughter] um item c you should have received the agenda um from for this agenda and so i i request a motion to approve the agenda motion to approve is there a second all in favor say aye hi hi all right hi jeff we can see you but we can't hear you he looks
002like he can't hear us yet either yeah let's see oh here he comes he's connecting to audio yep oh i gotta can you hear us are you there jeff might not be working we'll just do hand signs okay all right all right um so we'll move on to item d first public commentary agenda items only are there any public members in the audience no no they're not all right well seeing none we'll move on item e approval of previous minutes of the previous meeting so you should receive the minutes from the previous meeting any changes additions people have um do i hear a motion to approve a motion to approve is there a second second all in favor say aye aye aye then it passes all right uh now moving on to the the main
003event for today regular business items item g so stephanie all right well i just was gonna you know continue our conversation that we were having previously not really much has changed um we've had a one customer who was sending us photos um that they felt that there was a vendor that didn't have their mask on uh satisfactorily so we had to follow up with them um that is resolved now but they actually uh contacted the mayor so they did feel that strongly about it um yeah so that's pretty much the only thing that's been different in terms of people reacting to our changes um but nothing major beyond that so sorry one second jeff can you hear us i don't have any capacity to turn his mic on so i don't know if he actually
004has a mic and whatever he's using oh now it looks like he's got it muted all right jeff can you unmute your mic unmute yourself can you do it hi hey can we hear you jeff oh no [Laughter] can we can you hear us now can we hear you can you hear me yeah oh no yes okay what did i miss a ladder no nope no i was having technical difficulties getting everyone's video to work so we're all in the same boat with technical difficulties today all right yeah we're just doing the uh agenda and minutes approval good deal all right all right so that's for the covid related changes and follow-ups anything else with the covet stuff um not really we just have still like we've been bringing on just very few vendors based
005on need we did have a new mushroom vendor start on saturday um the reason we brought them on is that was a big need that we had um the great continuity there is they were actually a close family friend with chris wright who was our former mushroom bender who has passed um so that was really great that it was you know very close friends with that person so you know it's i think it's the perfect person to take their space and you know we're still fitting everyone we haven't turned anyone away yet um we've been averaging between you know 68 and 70 vendors per saturday market we've been hovering between 28 and 32 on a wednesday market um the food trucks have been back on wednesdays yesterday we had hero or villain um next week
006we're gonna have simply spanish and we've been alternating those two uh we did try to reach out to some of our regular food trucks that do the rallies um but there's not as much interest as we thought that there would be but obviously that's cobit specific um but yeah so that's that's pretty much what's been going on in our wednesday markets um yeah so i don't know if anyone wanted to chime in any vendors wanted to add with their experiences um about that how things are going with the market changes not yeah i just really wanted to update you all just keep keep the conversation going um about what we've been doing so yeah i don't have anything really to say other than uh we're glad we're still open and doing it and it's working
007pretty good under the circumstances and all the students coming back you know which i think we're doing um yeah good jeff do you have any feedback about how things have been going um we've been going pretty good i feel like the crowds are still down a little bit but i mean that's probably you know to be you know expected with everything going on right well from the some customers they think the crowds are out of control somebody compared it to out to art fair crowds so it's all about people's perception i guess yeah it was nice to see all the students last weekend i was i was pleased to see um that everybody was back and most people seemed like they were being pretty respectful of the rules yeah i mean the vast majority of
008people are uh definitely wearing masks the only difficulty we have had a little bit is people trying to bring dogs but we did step up our amount of signage about that and i think ever since we put more signs up that really has not been an issue because we had to originally sacrifice some of our signs to turn them over into mask signs and copied uh signs but that's pretty much been the major things other than that yeah most feedback has been very positive helen quick question how does the crowds compare to what's happening at eastern market um i think so this is just perception and also i don't personally attend um ann arbor or eastern but i talk to all the people that are doing it so that's the uh to say first but
009um like eastern is at the capacity for how many people they're allowed to let into the market at any given time so they have had to like regulate how many people can come in you know um and i mean i would say all of our markets the crowds are depressed slightly so um the other thing about eastern market i mean actually both of those markets ann arbor and eastern very long so there's like lots of opportunity for customers to spread themselves out um yeah that's all i really got great thank you yeah yeah uh with that said this is not specific to cobin but i just spoke with some researchers from michigan state earlier this afternoon and they are starting a farmers market study which they do want to talk to some vendors about experiences
010between different markets and obviously covet is come into play and there's going to be some questions so there will be more information forthcoming about that but they want to do specific interviews and compensate each vendor for that interview too so more info forthcoming great all right um so should we move on to winterization yep that's all i have for that i end up with the agenda item so winterization so i've been trying to do a little bit more research the last few times i'm getting seasick watching jeff move around sorry it's okay it's out of the corner of my eye i'll just have to like cover that channel um yeah so anyway winterization of the market i have spoken with josh he has referred me to hillary who was the point person previously on this
011we're going to have an official meeting with her and colin sometime later this month but i do have a quick update where they're saying um it's probably going to be on pause for now because turning it into an indoor space could bring in a lot of other issues that we're not prepared to deal with in terms of having to reduce the amount of people per time obviously it's winter crowds aren't as large but i think that's part of it and then secondly the budget right now is not necessarily favorable to taking on a big project that doesn't mean that we can't move forward in conceptualizing and continuing to discuss um but i hate to be the the one to bring this news i know you all got so close to completing it um previously but
012again more specific info forthcoming but that's the only update i really have is that you know it doesn't look good to make it indoors and i'm not sure the budget can support the project at this time sorry i guess one thing i might advocate for is trying to make sure to track down all the records for what we did before too because i i just to make sure because it may it sounds like it's going to get punted to the future but if we can ideally use that information that we had from the previous stuff there's a lot of information that was gathered and i i have parts and pieces but ideally it should reside within the market and to make sure we've got a big pretty well documented folder of all that stuff so
013that when we do come back to it it's like plans on the shelf i think that would be a valuable thing yeah we do and that's what the meeting with hillary will be about because she was the one that was taking the lead in terms of contacting the architect for mock-ups and things like that so that's what my meeting that is upcoming will be about and once i have that meeting i will definitely report back to you all um with the details well the other thing too with that is making sure that we keep it a record of that for uh posterity in terms of there's turnover and so that when people new people come in it's like did we ever talk about this and then it will be like let's let's restart over there
014well it is in our record it's not that we don't have a copy it's just a question of where right now and plus there's so many other things going on yeah it might be a winter project to organize that but yeah don't worry there's records somewhere somewhere whether we can leverage them right now i think is really the problem i know everyone was really looking forward to it someone was asking me oh we're gonna do this this this winter right and i don't know holly do you have a question um yeah i think i have a comment on the question so just i you this is you probably know this stephanie it's probably super obvious but one point on the latest plans for winterization that i think actually um are helpful it's a helpful part
015of the plans for dealing with any winterization that might be possible during covid which is that the structure that we were looking at was um movable right it was like things pieces that could be rolled up and down so that you know i think the idea was that it could still be open air um and it would still allow for a lot of of air flow and ventilation and i actually think if there were ever a winterization project that was made for covid circumstances this was it um so i might just encourage you to push back a little bit on the idea that moving anything to and uh it's not like it's not actually moving to indoor it's just moving to protecting from the elements and it allow it would still allow for complete open
016air or at least a great deal of ventilation um so that was just the point and the encouragement that i want to make because um you know just would hate for this to completely derail that potential and the other thing is i wonder about this budget issue and i don't know but i was under the impression that there was funding that was raised specifically for the winterization and so i guess i'm just curious about i've never quite understood the budget implications and how that works and certainly understand that other things might take precedence and or take priority and it but it um i guess i'm wondering what the it what and if any of the funding is actually set aside specifically for winterization or if now it's just like back into the city pool and
017so it can be repurposed and i just feel like um i as the commission we should be aware of that and and keeping an eye on on what the funding is and if there are any boundaries around it and if not where it goes um because i think part of our job is to advocate for the market and so um i guess any information you have or can get about the reality of what the budget for the winterization is and and what that means i it would be really helpful yeah and i'm just sharing what they told me um specifically when i taught when i just got a quick email from hillary who had been the point person before she was the one that brought up um being worried about making anything in enclosed space
018i mean i don't know if she used the word indoor if i just substituted that um but so that was yeah so that's just me passing along what they were saying but i completely hear what you were talking about and we want to make sure that you know it stays at the top of our list um but in all reality it's probably not going to be occurring in the next couple months but again i'm having a meeting with them coming up and i'll have more specific information to share at that time that sounds good thank you yep and i appreciate holly's uh comments about the budget because we've been given figures in the past but um it was always unclear how the funds would be be allocated and um also i know peter asked about
019in the past if there was a mechanism for fundraising for the farmers market too um so when you're talking to the folks at city parks is your possibility you know like a friends of the farmers market um sort of uh i don't know if it's an actual non-profit peer probably knows more but but uh a place to create things where people might be able to donate and how that might be able to happen if that was something that the city wanted to follow up on gotcha i can speak to that a little bit too because i know that for the two things with the funding i know is that when the market went from uh its own organization to the parks then it ended up bringing in with it a budget that a balance it
020was like i don't know 300k something like that um and that was to be allocated exclusively for the market stuff by by the market and the rest of the budget would come from the general parks fund and so that but that was always very mushy as to exactly how much that would be or where that would come from or how much was available the other part of it too is that we did go through an exercise a couple of years ago about trying to figure out how to if people want to donate to this or you know to make the winterization happen how could they do that or could they do that if the public the people of ann arbor want to do that and that it was uh one other markets have done this
021where they have a not-for-profit that's associated with it which collects funds for this it's like a building endowment kind of and then they shuttle it over once the things come through and i looked into that about the establishment of that and there are ways to do it but it was it was a very at least i we couldn't find an easy structure within the city that was a parallel for that and maybe that that's i think still valuable because there were definitely people who were interested in kicking in a chunk of change um and if it was something we actually made and asked for we we might be able to get something there but it's it that infrastructure still isn't in place but it definitely other markets have used that very successfully and for as
022a fundraising mechanism so yeah and i know that josh did say you know he thought that the quote that you all were working with before was very reasonable and was doable so i know that's not the issue it's just that it's covet specific uh budget constraints and again i don't know what that looks like yet but i will have more information forthcoming and as you're talking i'm trying to look through our files to see if i can find anything else that's got more details but not at the moment so i guess i have a question yep okay you guys can hear me yes okay um so i guess that raises a good question that i guess i always had and i never asked does the market have its own bank account so to speak does
023it have its own money or is it just part of the parks um i would say it's both it is part of the parks but we do have our own budget yes okay all right understanding with that is too that the account that we have can't ever grow it can only shrink um was the agreement that somehow or that so we can't put more into that somehow because they it's like just un-centered out i guess i'm not sure at least that was what was told to me a couple years ago which okay well this year is probably you know very different in terms of because we have been actively giving refunds to people for the days that market has been closed um they have also been doing um attendance waivers for people that might not
024be able to do covet so i know that in terms of our take this year obviously we're bringing in a lot less income um people are paying less install fees because they're not using as much space in addition to that so and of course we don't really have many special events that are happening because ordinarily the market is rented out um for a lot of different things that revenue is not coming in this year um the revenue we do have coming in is the artisan market in addition to our you know vendor fees and stuff like that so yeah so it's not necessarily that it's being taken into another place within the city is that our own budget is not being uh replenished at the same level as it as it is ordinarily but again
025that's not to say that there isn't a designated fund there may be um and that is something i'm hoping to learn when i meet with hillary um in the next couple weeks any other comments on winterization all right um item three comments questions general comments general questions i figured i would throw that out there in case people wanted to raise something i know it's not in the usual format but well then actually end the related note then moving on to new business any non-agenda items that anyone has seeing none we will move on to item j second public comment are there any members of the public i see none on my interfaces so yeah i don't see anyone all right well then we'll do item l adjournment so we're here by adjourning at 5 59.
026thank you all record thank you all for participating and i'm sorry i didn't have more information i was hoping to have it in time um for this meeting but that just did not work out that way that's good that's good much appreciate that thanks everyone you