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Meeting Minutes Chandler Museum Foundation Regular Meeting August 19, 2024| 5:30 p.m. Chandler Museum, Saguaro Room 300 S. Chandler Village Drive, Chandler, AZ Call to Order The meeting was called to order by Barbara Meyerson at 5:30 p.m. Roll Call Board Member Attendance Staff Attendance Barbara Meyerson, Chair Jody Crago, Museum Manager Joan Clark, Vice-Chair Kim Moyers, Director of Cultural Development Rich Feely, Treasurer Dawn Lang, Deputy City Manager & CFO Brenda Abney Tom Escobedo Calvenea Malloy Al Quihuis Jacki Ryan Martin Sepulveda Adam Turner Absent Joshua Askey Al Quihuis Unscheduled Public Appearances None. Consent Agenda 1. May Board Meeting Minutes • Jacki Ryan made a motion to approve the board meeting minutes of the Museum Foundation Board Meeting of June 17, 2024. • Joan Clark seconded the motion. Motion carried unanimously (9-0). The minutes were approved as written. Page 2 of 6 Action Agenda 2. Sunset the Strategic Planning Subcommittee • Joan Clark made a motion to approve sunsetting the Strategic Planning Subcommittee. • Rich Feely seconded the motion. Motion carried unanimously (9-0). Sunsetting the Strategic Planning Subcommittee meeting was approved. Briefing 3. Capital Project Funding/Bond Election Discussion • Dawn Lang, Deputy City Manager and CFO of the City of Chandler, briefed the Foundation about the capital funding project for the City of Chandler and the need for a bond election. Dawn asked for feedback after the presentation, on behalf of Mayor and Council. • The video “What is a Bond” from the 2021 Bond Election, was shown. • The presentation topics were: o 2025-2034 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) ▪ $2,488,884,031 - Total 10-year CIP is funded as follows: 68.4% Bond Funded; 22% Current Revenues/Fund Balance; 7% Grants; 1.9% System Development Fees. ▪ Council has a strategic framework and in order to put together a budget for next year, both operating and capital, every expenditure typically falls within one of the focus areas. The entire 10-year capital plan helps move our city forward in affordability, sustainability, economy, productivity, and neighborhood quality. These projects maintain our current infrastructure and adds new infrastructure. ▪ Out of the 10-year plan, we need to sell bond for 4% of the projects. These are projects that are long and very expensive, so we don't want to use the day-to-day revenue that comes in from sales tax and from state shared revenues, which is used to support City operations. To build something that's going to last over time, the use of property taxes is what makes sense. We have a low property tax rate that supports this particular interest that we pay off over time as well. The City of Chandler is AAA bond rated, so we get very inexpensive debt and very low interest rates. ▪ We also have pert revenues, which is cash or fund balance that's accumulated in our earnest construction funds. We use grants and system development fees, which used to be a much bigger funding source for us, but there are a lot of limits on what we can use system development fees for. Now that a lot of growth has already taken place, there's limited projects we can apply that to. o Capital Plan Inflation Impacts Page 3 of 6 ▪ The Mortenson Cost Index, showing inflation from 2009 to 2024, was shown. Inflation is one of the main reasons we need a Bond Election sooner. o General Obligation (GO) Bond Authorization Status ▪ GO Bonds cannot be issued without residents approving first. ▪ Bond authorization usage is higher than anticipated and will be exhausted by FY25-26 for Polic, 2026-27 for Streets and Parks, and FY2028-29 for Fire. Additional Bond Authorization needed to continue capital program. o Bond Election History and Timelines ▪ Bonds are common on elections every so often, because it's a plan, you're looking out to the future. We had bond elections in 2000, 2004, 2007 (one of our largest), and 2021. And then, we can have another one in 2025 to position us for making sure we can continue our cap. ▪ Previous 2021 Bond Election Results: a. Parks- $72,985,000 (68.24% Yes) b. Fire- $25,160,000 (73.22% Yes) c. Police- $55,190,000 (69.33% Yes) d. Facilities- $33,570,000 (65.69% Yes) e. Streets- $85,780,000 (73.14% Yes) o GO Bond Funded Projects ($626M) and Related Bond Authorization o Council Direction for Next Steps ▪ Begin outreach prior to formulation of a Citizen Bond Exploratory Committee ▪ Report back any feedback to Council decision on forming a Citizen Bond Exploratory Committee 4. Discussion of Museum Foundation Friends of the Chandler Museum Fundraising Initiative • Executive Subcommittee put this together after a year’s worth of work, including surveying local museums and other organizations in Chandler. The idea is to start small by engaging people with the museum through our existing infrastructure. We will try to solicit small one-time donations that would get them some level of benefit such as a sticker and name recognition. The idea with this is to get them into the culture of the museum and added to a mailing list. • The Executive Subcommittee would like for each Foundation member to raise $500. The way we do that is we would solicit each member to bring a list of 20 names with the potential of giving $50. If all donate $50, that would be $1,000. So half of your list would donate or join the group and then we would contact them in the fall with what the Friends of the Chandler Museum would be, and just what the benefits are. Then once these email addresses are contacted, we would send them a message in early October, and as we start getting responses back, it would be up to the Foundation members to provide some type of thank you message or response to whoever decides to become a friend of the museum. Page 4 of 6 • The individuals on the contact list, whether they donated or not, will be invited to attend a reception on November 9th with the Organic Architecture & Design group (OAD). This will help build some awareness for the Museum. There's also a book launch being held during that event. We would invite people to this reception as our guests and then we can begin the discussion around the museum and try and get more community engagement around the Foundation. • We would like to have one person responsible for the mailing list. The Executive Subcommittee discussed using a Chandler Museum email address to contact people. There have also been previous discussions about engaging someone to help us with these efforts related to this and administrative tasks. • When it comes to Museum special events, the goal for the Foundation is to enable the museum to sponsor either an opening reception or a closing reception around an exhibit was presented. That could be another good way to bring in some new people and mingle with them. • We do this type of activity in the Fall, then the strategic plan comes out, and we see how the museum fits in with the overall arts community, then present to our mailing list, some of the initiatives the museum will have in 2025 and whatever comes out of this plan. 5. Discussion of November 2024 Membership Event with Organic Architecture and Design Archives • The part that impacts the museum is on Saturday, November 9th. The Friday event is just registration. We are hoping to drive people that are not familiar with Chandler or the museum to be aware of it and to see the exhibit that will be a collaborative effort between Organic Architecture and Design in the Price Gallery. • On Saturday, November 9th there will be a whole day of speaking on different topics related to organic architecture and the last item on the agenda is a talk about David Dodge, who was one of the Taliesin Fellows, and his legacy. • Even though the event is a paid event for attendees, the Foundation members and their guests will not be paying. It is a nice opportunity. There will be an extended audience. We have invited 5,000 people all over the country. Our goal is 150 attendees. This is the first time OAD is doing such a huge event, typically they get 50 people at events. 6. Discussion of Next Steps Museum Foundation Marketing Plan Proposal [submitted by Idea Workgroup] • The Executive Subcommittee thanked Jackie and Calvenea for their work on the marketing plan. A decision has been made as to how the Foundation will take parts of the marketing plan and incorporate it into what the Foundation is currently doing. We are going to target a a target audience. And what Rich just spoke about is a piece of that starting small and growing and then item 5, which was marketing strategies. • And part of that is not just developing a mailing list, but developing the social media content for this Foundation and also with content. The current video is of Tiffani with a brief statement of our vision. And I think Jody had alluded in our executive committee Page 5 of 6 meeting that there are would be some city support to add some web pages. And then we would need to provide the content that would go on those pages. So that we can engage people in helping us, but also in learning about us and the museum. 7. Museum Director’s Report • Tiffani Egnor, who has been with the Museum for 12 years, has resigned and she and her family are moving to Idaho. You are invited to attend a farewell celebration on Friday, August 23rd. • There is new furniture in the History Center to make it more comfortable for staff, volunteers, and interns. We have also cleared another workspace for our researcher who works 19 hours a week. In the next couple of months, the Processing space will receive new furniture and the museum store will get a new front desk. • The Museum Foundation webpage has been revamped. The video is gone, the mission statements are on there and we will add things as they develop. There will be a button that leads to the membership page, and you can link right to the page. There will be a store button so that you can pay there. There will also be a link to a separate “Support Us” page that gives the opportunity to donate at different monetary levels. • The Museum has two new staff members, both full-time, starting on September 3rd. One position oversees programming, and the other position oversees marketing and volunteer coordination. The marketing person will do marketing for the Foundation too. This is a brand-new position. Additionally, City leadership provided some additional temporary funding that allowed us to take the programming position and make it full-time. • Every year during the fiscal year, we create a department work plan with Center for the Arts, Vision Gallery, Special Events, and Downtown Development. The work plan aligns with what the staff will be focusing on in the coming year. • We have several goals aligned with the Museum Foundation, the first of which is websites, which has already begun. We want to see that continue to grow throughout the year and develop those marketing materials. Also on our work plan for this coming year is the kiosk redesign. We are funded to redesign kiosks throughout the City's parks, so they all connect into one kind of universal history. The N.J. Harris Park kiosk, one of the earliest kiosks done, will get redesigned first and we're working with the community to update that. • Council approved the design contract for The Ranch at Tumbleweed Park. We will do both the design and phase one this coming fiscal year. We will begin meeting, and the design will be all eight phases of The Ranch. • We are funded for an outside group to do the strategic plan, so that will be completed this year. • We will be working on several collaborative efforts regarding exhibitions. The first is we are working with The Heard to bring the Heart of the Community Basket exhibit to the museum. It won't get here until late 2026 or early 2027, but the entire show will come, all 88 baskets. We are working with their staff to not only extend the interpretation, but also to put some general interpretation in conjunction with those Page 6 of 6 baskets. We will also work with The Heard on upgrading some of the mounts. The show will be at the museum for at least one year, based on our initial discussions. We are also working on our own internal Eddie Basha exhibit. This is a large exhibit focused on Eddie the man and the various facets of him. In conjunction with that, we are doing a massive oral history project connecting to virtually everybody that knew him or is willing to share a story of their interactions with him. Sarah Biggerstaff, our Storytelling Coordinator, is heading this up with help from the family, business associates and the gallery. We have done around five oral histories to this date. That's where some of those funds that we have set aside for oral histories will get continually spent on so that they get transcribed and brought up, and so they can be part of the exhibition as well. The exhibition will likely open in 2027. To hear a sneak peek, there's going to be a History Bite at the Museum on November 5. That's our 30-minute luncheon talks. • The last big focus will be the development of field trip curriculum. When a museum changes its exhibit content every six months, it's a little hard to write curriculum for a classroom, and so our new programming person will be working with teachers to develop classroom content, both for students to come to this facility, but also for content from this facility to go to the classrooms themselves. We are also developing that next generation of field trip experiences that will go on at The Ranch. Member Comments • A question about the status of Foundation member applications was asked. Museum staff did not have an update. • It was pointed out that the Executive Subcommittee will meet on September 3rd, instead of September 2nd, to observe the Labor Day holiday. Member Announcements None. Calendar Next Executive Subcommittee Meeting will be September 3, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. at the Chandler Museum. Next Museum Foundation Board Meeting will be September 16, 2024, at 5:30 p.m. at the Chandler Museum. Adjourn The meeting was adjourned at 6:42 p.m. ____________________________________ ______________________________________ Barbara Meyerson, Chair Jody Crago, Staff Liaison