February 2014 Minuts

Great Meeting!

• ExperienceMeadville.com is now going live. Lou Baxter, from JET TV has sent a letter to his tech staff to work on linking the ExperienceMeadville.com calendar page to their YourErie.com web site. and we have linked YourErie.com weather to ours. This is very exciting. We will be promoting ExperienceMeadville.com to every outlet we can. It is our hope that this will also generate new members and expand our customer base.

• Isaac Pineo talked about what we need to do to get a 501c3 status. There are a lot of steps to go through. Some more complicated than others. Our main concern was by-laws. We are going to tackle this first. A sub-committee will look at different by-laws from other organizations and we will pick and choose what we like and don’t like about them.

• Second Saturday. This is very exciting. There were a lot of great ideas going around the room.
   -  Art being created each week by the students that go to Second Saturday and have it displayed in each store during the last Second Saturday. A Hay Ride that would take people around to each of the stores to show off the art.
   –  Closing off Chestnut between Market and Park to expand the festivities into the downtown.
   -  An Art Walk that would go along with each theme of Second Saturday.
   -  Creating Second Saturday Banners to be placed throughout the downtown.
   -  Creating Painted Rain Barrels to be placed throughout the downtown.

• We talked about the businesses that are moving in, out and around, in the downtown. The desire to have coffee and ice cream up by the Diamond, and what we can do to help fill the empty store fronts, like the Eldred Building.

• 15 Minute Free parking meters. The city has several parking meters that, if you give them a crank, you get 15 minutes of free parking. It cost $105.00 to switch out the guts on an existing meter to put in these special meters. We talked about the DMBA finding sponsors to fund the change to these meters, with a sticker placed along the top that would read. 15 Minutes Free Parking / Sponsored By: Name Of Business. The business would pay for 1 or more meters plus the cost of the sticker. Isaac Pineo will be presenting this to council along with several other parking issues. That date has yet to be determined.

• Park and Ride. Tim, from CATA, suggested two possibilities.  (1) A bus could be chartered at $40.00/hr.  If we chose to operated the bus one day/week for 6 hours that would be $12,480/year.  That, of course, would only work if a grant were provided.  The second option would be establishing it as a regular route.  A fare would have to be charged although seniors and handicapped persons would ride free.  The fare, for example, might be 50 cents each way.  The fares might also be handled by some kind of grant.  In any event, it is nothing we could do in the short term.  Tim is checking with PennDot.

Great Meeting Everyone!

After meeting developments:

• We are looking into a Food Drive for the end of May. ‘Comic Walk’. We are hoping to partner with the Chamber of Commerce for the Food Drives. This would expand our reach and give us an opportunity to work on a project together. We are also looking into the possibility of having a central location for all the organizations that need food, to be able to go. Our job would be to keep those shelves full.

• We are moving forward, with the Second Saturday leaders, to have a Second Saturday Art Walk throughout the downtown. We will be meeting with Steven Prince, an art professor from Allegheny, to enlist his help and also to involve Allegheny College.