00:00:03,170	Yeah I guess we’ll call this a meeting of the Vision Fund Committee to order on January 22, 2026. Um the first item on the agenda, I guess would be a roll call for uh tenants. share Yeah Member Peterson here Member Selmeyer Chair Freelich, here.

00:00:39,800	All right, um, first item on the agenda would be a public comment if we have any, anybody interested in any public comment period. Seeing none, I guess we will move on to the second item on the agenda is approval of the minutes. I’m, I’m assuming everybody got minutes to the meeting and that’s check them out, so. any discussion of the minutes.

00:01:00,870	A motion to approve Second. We have a motion in a second to approve the meeting minutes, um, um, any discussion? seeing none, uh, all, all in favor say aye. I I To Sam, motion passes. um we receive uh the Vision Fund Financial statements. I, I believe Eric is here for that.

00:01:31,870	Good afternoon. Um with it being so close to the beginning of the year, um, not much has changed since our last meeting. Um, there’s a couple of things that I do want to point out.

00:01:52,730	Um, you’ll notice the, the balance is up um, about 187,500, and that’s in recognition of the sales tax funding, um, at being added to the vision fund at the first of the year to help support our economic development partnerships that we have with uh Chamber EDC in the Downtowners, um, those are paid out quarterly.

00:02:10,900	Um, we’ve made the first quarter payments already and so the 187 is what’s left from the $250,000 of funding from sales tax um, the other thing you’ll notice, the number of projects that are left at the bottom. I looked at our outstanding, um loans receivable that we have, and went and looked at an average historically what we have on the books, um, previously we’re looking at about $134,000 of uh a project spend our actual average is

00:02:38,100	about 104,500 and so I actually decreased that average, um, project depletion to 110. So we actually saw a little bit uptick, um, to about 5.6 projects that we could do now.

00:02:58,370	Um, I can continue to do that as we put more loans out there, um, just to kind of hone in a little bit more on what we’re able to to offer, um, to applicants. I think that’s great. um but other than that, uh, the only real updates as far as the notes receivable, um, at the end of the year, we were able to fund the new family, new Freedom Family Center, and so they actually

00:03:17,170	that process is being done with BND and then um early part of January. we funded the payment for Syria, which is late spring, and so both of those have come off, leaving us only with two applicants that are approved but not yet drawn. All right.

00:03:38,000	One question I had on the back is like starting repayment date. I know Laughing So, we start in June, but there’s a Cloverdale project that’s supposed to start in repayment on 21, but I know those that took a long time to get approved and whether that’s even functioning now, is that repayment date starting on February or My understanding is,

00:03:55,270	yes. So what ends up happening is we contract with Lewis and Clark Development in Mandan. And so they’ll be making the repayments to Lewis and Clark and then um they keep 1% of it and then they’ll start remitting payments back to us, so I would expect to see that maybe towards the end of February, um,

00:04:12,270	early part of March we’re gonna start to see those, I just wasn’t sure if that was actually a payment date was real because I know that we extended that project over a year and that they didn’t hadn’t drawn on it, so I was curious if that was actually starting repayment already. So.

00:04:25,530	Yeah, uh, that’s my understanding is, is we’re expecting that. I mean, have you heard anything different, Noah, or Yeah. All right. Thank you. OK, perfect. Thank you. Anybody have any questions No, I would entertain a motion to receive the financials. Motion I second We have a motion and a second on the financials.

00:04:53,100	Do you have any discussion further? Seeing none, I would ask for, uh, just a vote of a if you approve, all in favor say aye. I, I I Seeing non descent, um, motion passes, motion passes, excuse me, um, review, uh, next item on the agenda, Review Vi fun guidelines, and, and we were attached uh 2025 and a 2020

00:05:21,000	guidelines to the meeting minutes or links, so I’m assuming everybody got a chance to review those and also attached here so Noah, you’d like to discuss Yeah, Noah Roman Chamber EDC. uh right here.

00:05:45,630	Sheriff Fehlich, we went and got both of the 2020 and the 2025 guidelines in front of you, um, 2020 we noticed was date stamped, um. by the city. The 2025, I don’t know if we ever got properly date stamped and approved by the city. OK. So I have them both in front of you. You could choose to just go with 2020. or move forward with moving the 251, um, there were a few things that I noticed that were changed, um.

00:06:08,470	notably the amount of time projects have to access the money down from 18 months to 12, but we, we just, I think last year we had a discussion about not accessing projects and wanting them if you don’t have it by a year, then you’re done.

00:06:27,170	You have an initial notice at 9 months instead of 12, um, so, that made sense, um. would open it to you guys. if you guys want to compare the two or have any questions for me, I ran through and actually found the language that was different in each.

00:06:48,100	So anybody have any questions on that? Um, maybe you covered this and I missed it. So, our, we’re not formally following the 2025 ones or I don’t think it’s been a formally approved by the Bismarck City Commission. It would be my guess as how that is. So it’s, it’s technically a guideline that we don’t have stamped as like official.

00:07:05,170	So, if we would like to move with those 2025 guidelines, I would just say then we would direct the to move that and and direct this to the city commission to approve, is that right, Noah? Yeah. I got not my Mr. Chair, and Vi fun committee members. Correct.

00:07:25,430	So changes were talked about, they were never solidified, there’s been some transition staff, uh, transition in staff with the Chamber EDC Nathan, or I’m sorry, NOA has been doing a, a great job pulling all this together and it’s been a kind of a learning experience for both of us, and I agree with you, uh, Chair Frelick These were reviewed, but I think there was a drop in the

00:07:40,900	next step in the process and so what that next step would be, the vision fund committee would move forward with a recommendation to support the 2025 guidelines as drafted unless there are changes that you would recommend.

00:08:00,530	as staff as uh city administration staff, we would carry that forward to the next available commission meeting with that recommendation, there would be no expectation of a presentation from Vision Fund Committee staff or members, um, we as staff would be there to answer any questions that you may have, OK? So. Any, yeah, question.

00:08:18,270	I guess the only thing I’d have is the contact information on the 2025, the like the last thing is Nathan’s contact information, would we want to get that updated before we’d get it approved? Absolutely. And would you want your name to be on there or do we have like a general catch-all at the EDC that this goes to, so that if you move on, that someone else is there, or our general contact is.

00:08:38,970	inundated usually with certain spams and junk mails, so probably just put mine down and change it. We could take it out all together as well, committee members, or another alternative would be the Bismarck City Administration Department has a general email inbox as well that is monitored regularly by city staff, and so if we are

00:08:58,170	looking for a means of communication, um, we could certainly do that, um, just looking at it one more time, recognizing we as an organization, we do have brand standards, which means font styles, logos, things like that, so we would apply those, it wouldn’t change the content substantively, just the physical appearance, so you

00:09:17,270	know this is the city of Bismarck document and it looks like some like the rest of our stuff, so we would add that, uh, if you’re OK with that, we would add that as part of the formatting before we forward this to the city commissioners for final review. Agreed Yeah, I think that makes sense.

00:09:32,000	Um, you had mentioned, Noah, that you had kind of mapped out the changes between the two. Yes. Would you be willing, since we’re here talking about them, to just kind of run through that quick? There was nothing major that I saw, not that I don’t know if like not

00:09:46,800	air being the right word, but there’s nothing concerning on it. Um, there were changes over those five years and how the vision fund addresses these projects, um, the scoring matrix that’s now used eliminated the need for pre-application and a full appli like a first and a second step applications so that wording was all changed,

00:10:07,170	um, like I said, the, uh, the time periods and how those are accessed, that one makes sense. Um, that was one, and then annual reviews and how you guys want to address that. In the 2020 reviewed um it required a November review of all projects, so kind of like how Eric brings the monthly of just financials.

00:10:33,270	I think it almost would call on the 2020 version to have all the projects come back and update you all on where they were at. I think we were talking about like, is this like are we hiring a firm to do all the review of these, and I didn’t think we decided to 202 just requires

00:10:49,730	you guys, I think to be given some sort of review of where everything’s at, not necessarily by them and not necessarily at a set time in the year that would maybe be. more of a Chamber EDC slash C giving you guys an update rather than bring them in for a set-long meeting.

00:11:07,370	And I think that the only other thing was there wasn’t accountability section. um, on the 2020. document, um, that was not the 2025. I think I would ask the city administrator if that was necessary to be in a a document approved by the city talking about uh North Dakota Century code.

00:11:42,100	All right, any further questions for Noah? Amanda Oh, I guess with that, um, you don’t have to stand up there. No, I guess we can discuss how we want to go from here. Unless we have any more further questions. So um, does anybody have any thought about how you’d like to proceed on, on the guidelines.

00:12:08,800	I obviously haven’t been on the committee nearly as much as like you have been, but from my, I’ve been kind of going off of this as the reference and I feel like we all have, so in my mind, it makes sense to move that forward to the City Commission with a recommendation to actually follow them.

00:12:24,870	I would agree. I mean, this seems like we, we, we did spend some time doing this last time, and Nathan was helpful. So, um, and, and changing some of that thing and then the reasons were like, I don’t know how we’re doing the reviews anyway and having the projects more timely than having 18 months out, I

00:12:40,530	think we’re the couple of the bigger things, um, definitely agree about changing the contact information. So would we rather change it or move it to a city contact to have that? Anybody have any, uh, preference on that What would the, like, standard be? It would city be kind of standard in this instance or?

00:13:00,070	Jason, you want to answer that? Yeah, thanks for the question. So historically, we have partnered with the Bismarckandan Chamber EDC to be our economic development liaison. I’m comfortable with the contact being either or, but hearing where Noah’s at saying that their general inboxes inundated with a lot of stuff.

00:13:23,000	Uh, we get a lot of stuff too, but probably not nearly as many general inquiries, and it is something that we monitor regularly, so I think for us to just start out with the city administration phone number 701-355-1300 and then for the email address, it’s just simply Bismarck admin at bizarndd.gov.

00:13:42,270	It’s going to come to one of us and we’re gonna have a direct contact with NOA or whomever at the chamber needs to be brought in, so I have no problem leaving it as city administration, it’s quite likely that our email address won’t change anytime soon. We’re not going anywhere, um.

00:13:58,730	so I think just for for ease of for the user’s perspective, if it comes to us, we’re going to reach out as soon as we need to to to bring the chamber into the conversation. Yeah, I think that makes sense.

00:14:14,470	I agreed, so anybody else have comments on that or anything else they would like to see changed in that or updated or? assuming we’ll need a motion to send that to the city too? Please. OK. Um, I will motion that we send the 2025 um Vision Fund guidelines to the city, um, for, for their approval, um, and with that, uh, we’ll update the contact information to be the city administrator.

00:14:46,330	Second up All right, we have a motion in a second to to send this on to the city. Any further discussion? All right, then I guess we’ll take a roll call vote on this, um. Remer Sugelmeyer I share I, Peterson Yes and Chair Frelich, yes. Motion passes. Um. All right.

00:15:24,800	So, thank you, city administration for carrying that to the city commission for us. Um, I guess I would ask if anybody has any further discussion or any further business. I’m seeing none, I guess we will call this meeting Adjourned.