00:00:07,000	Special meeting of the Bismarck Event Center Authority Board. It’s 1:30 on the 27th of May. We’ll call the meeting to order. If we can call. Roll. Members. Gardner here. Grossman. Here. Kostelecky here. Tomanek here. Mayor Schmitz here. Is there anyone online? Okay.

00:00:34,770	First item is public comment restricted to this agenda or the prior meeting? Anyone here wish to speak to any topic? A second call, a third and final call. Public comment period is closed. So item agenda item three is to receive the Event Center financial report, which they were emailed out or attached to the agenda. But Eric, go ahead.

00:01:01,170	Um, this is you can tell us how complete this is through April 30th. I guess. Thank you. Mayor. Um, good afternoon. Mayor. Board members, um, through April 30th. Um, this is fairly complete.

00:01:23,570	There are still some expenses with May dates that are coming through based on timing of invoices that are, um, you know, mid-month, um, early part of the month that the city is still taking care of. But this, by and large, covers everything. Um, on the city’s books through April 30th. Those expenses, I would estimate, are probably like 12 to 15,000 in total. That’s remaining. That would not be inclusive. Of this. Items that are really occurring in May or were that occurred in April.

00:01:44,100	They would have been occurring, um, the majority of it in April. So typically how we we pay the bills, the timing of of when we receive them. But typically like an MDU bill or a basin electric or something like that.

00:02:01,300	When we look at crossing months, we look at the majority of days served and so on. A 30 month bill, if 15 or more of those days would have been April service dates, the city has taken care of those bills without handing them off to OVC. And anything that’s starting May 1st has been handed off to OPG for them to start incorporating into their financial. Um, so we have processes. A few trailing.

00:02:23,630	A few, a few things that are that are taking place. But I would say it’s like I said, it’s probably 12 to 15,000 is all. It’s it’s mainly utilities. Um, natural gas. Um, those types of things that are still outstanding.

00:02:48,130	Um, so really what’s new in this, uh, April 30th information that I provided to you is sort of a an abbreviated balance sheet, if you will. Um, what I did to try to give you guys some more information is look at our current assets, our cash, our accounts receivable, and our accounts payable, um, that are on the city books.

00:03:06,370	The things that I omitted, um, in this to keep it simple is like our long term lease obligations, our capital assets, the things that are not readily available for us to serve. The purposes of the event center, like on a day to day operations type basis, um, and so looking at this. The event center as of April 30th has just under $1.

00:03:31,600	5 million of cash. But when you look at that number of cash, about 740,000 of it is related to ongoing bond reserves for our debt payments on the exhibit hall expansion that took place 2013, 2014 or so time frame, um, those things will start to come off in the next couple of years when that bond is retired. Um.

00:03:52,800	The other thing. The restricted reserve for the bond. Yes, for the bond. We’re, we’re we’re legally obligated to withhold certain reserves of cash to meet the requirements of the municipal debt. Um, and they are typically like, um, one sixth of a interest payment and then, um, excuse me.

00:04:16,870	Then probably about like half of a bond payment. A principal payment is typically what we have to to hold for those, um, the other restricted cash is customer deposits.

00:04:38,370	Those are, excuse me, things like ticket sales, rental deposits that we have collected on behalf of somebody that’s coming into our building. But we can’t legally, um, recognize the revenue until the event takes place, until we have that exchange like transaction. So we’re holding all of this money until that event takes place, and then we’re able to consume that into the city and use it towards operations.

00:04:55,800	Once the the event has taken place. So after you take out those two restrictions of our cash, which totaled just over 1.2 million, it leaves us about $275,000 of operating cash today. Um, in looking at this, this would be inclusive of the $750,000 that was received by the city to help with the transition to the third party operator in 2025.

00:05:23,600	Um, we would expect to see, uh, another cash contribution in 26 and 27 as a part of that agreement, though not at the $750,000 level. So the only comment I would have, and it doesn’t really matter here, but the the customer deposits technically probably aren’t restricted cash to really an unearned income

00:05:48,130	could fall to the liabilities section of the balance sheet or statement of net assets. Sure, but it gets to the same. We’re getting to the same spot, right? I wanted to present it into a sort of a means where we we’re keeping the cash together and what it what it sort of means.

00:06:06,800	Um, us accountants look at things a little bit different than everybody else, generally speaking. So, um, and then accounts receivable is about 380,000. This is reflective of money that’s owed to the event center for event settlements that took place January, February, March and into April. Um, that we have yet to collect on.

00:06:30,330	My understanding is we have now built out all of those things to the end of April. So that would be inclusive of that number. We expect accounts receivable generally to convert to cash in a short term period within 30 to 60 days.

00:06:49,530	And then our current liabilities, you can see there’s no accounts payable as of the April 30th reporting date. We’ve paid all of our obligations for operations at that point. And then there’s just a few small, um, payroll related liabilities, um, that are owed to the IRS or the federal government or, um, one of our elective benefit plans that the city has.

00:07:11,630	So all in all, it gets us to a bottom number of about $621,000 of current assets. That would be available for the operations of the Event center. Um, looking at the summary information, um, on the income statement part of it, the only real big changes we’ve obviously recognized the end of the month screwing up all of

00:07:35,130	our activity from the operations accounts. Um, you will note that the event revenue is up about $370,000. The cost of, um, expenses to produce. That is up about 158,000, giving us a total increase at about $209,000.

00:08:02,270	Um, for looking at net event revenue, um, through the end of April. And then we have the operating, um, expenses that no real significant change. You will note that because of month end, the transfer for the debt service payment did take place on April 30th, increasing that. Uh, non-operating revenue, if you will, from the lodging, liquor, food.

00:08:29,900	And it gets us to a grand total of $444,000 thereabouts, through the first four months of operating income or operating profit. Excuse me. So, generally speaking, the first four months of the year, we’ve performed very well. Any questions? Anyone have questions of Eric? Doesn’t look like it at this point in time.

00:09:07,800	Um, Brad, do you have anything you want to add related to the financials? I mean, you really didn’t have anything to do with April, but no, not not at this point. Okay, perfect. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Um, we should have a motion to accept the financial statements, I believe. Move to accept the financials. Second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. We’ll call roll. Members. Grossmann. Yes. Costello. Yes. Tomanek. Wachter.

00:09:39,800	Wilson. Yes. Gardner. Yes. Mayor Schmitz. Yes. The next item is key performance indicators. Discussion. Um. This is we as a holdover from our regular meeting. So I don’t know if we’ve had any further.

00:10:10,800	Anybody’s had any further thoughts? Um, and this would be, you know, Brad would look to you also for whatever input you have. Around the document that’s that was published. Anyway. And if we want to weight these or how we want to wait them. Mr. Mayor, if I may. So this draft document was developed by, um, our consultants at JLL. And to help guide the conversation. This was done, um, with input and feedback from representatives of OPG.

00:10:43,430	I believe Matt Lakoff was part of this conversation with Dan Fenton as this document came forward. Uh, the last time I spoke with Dan, I had asked him to add that final column where there’s a way to percentage, uh, if we do land on five KPIs, I thought it would be at least a good conversation to have to

00:11:02,970	see if everyone thought that there were higher priorities, or if everything should be weighted equally. Um, I guess if we do end up with some sort of a weighted score on the on the last column, I might suggest that we evaluate that on an annual basis as well.

00:11:20,930	So we’re not continuously locked into the same formula year over year. Um, but I think this is a good conversation starter to at least get ideas on paper. Get us to think about what these, uh, key performance indicators, what they mean, how we measure them, how frequently are we going to be looking at these things, um, and recognizing

00:11:41,000	that, um, we still have time to work through this because I don’t think we would look to be implementing this immediately, given this year. I think we’re targeting a full year of 2027, but then going forward, it’s going to be very important to be able to look back on, um, past, um, performance

00:11:58,670	indicators. And maybe some of these things change over the years as well. We may not be locked into these five. Maybe we expand, maybe we reduce it. I guess we we as the group will have that opportunity to have the conversation.

00:12:16,270	So, um, I don’t have any, uh, specific thoughts related to any of the, the definitions or the measurements or the, the frequency. Um, but I’m certainly open to others ideas, comments, suggestions. If Brad’s got comments from the perspective, certainly we’d love to hear those too.

00:12:37,630	So one thing I mean, I get I want to have the monthly reporting, I think from a weighting standpoint, that can only be done on an annualized basis for especially on the financial performance. The two financial performance ones, because we’re going to have volatility, so to speak, or seasonality.

00:13:03,430	And we could have really good performance in February, but not very good performance in July, which would be normal. Um I, I, I, we don’t have to pick the weightings today because actually it probably would be best if everybody put your own thoughts to it. And we do that sometime between now and, and to September. I think it would be good to have it at least in place by then.

00:13:22,500	Um, but I, I think that there are three that come out to me as higher weighting than the other two. Um, the, their we need to have them in here, but I think, you know, the two financial performance items are, are heavily, more heavily weighted in my opinion. Um, and then.

00:13:46,500	The, um, the economic impact, I think I also think the event mix is going to drive the economic impact and vice versa. So between those two, I’d rate one of those higher than the other and the next one next.

00:14:07,800	And obviously the customer surveys I think are a lower rating. I will say that, um, one of our commissioners happened to talk to Ron Ness, uh, after the Williston Basin event, and he got glowing remarks. Um, about how things went from, from Ron. So that’s a good thing, because that was a big one. And a in our first one, under the new structure.

00:14:33,500	So those are my thoughts. I, you know, I think sometime between now and September, we should formalize the weighting. But that’s how I view it. And please do not take me as the that’s my opinion. Only everybody else might have different opinions. You know, I agree on the impact and the mix.

00:15:00,800	They’re going to go hand in hand on it. If we have the impact, the mix is going to come there. And I just since you mentioned the conference, I just do want to mention to I heard nothing but great things.

00:15:16,730	And one thing that I really liked is I heard so much about the professionalism of the staff already and the difference that they noticed. And I think that, you know, that’s really important. You just had two weeks in there, and I heard from a variety of people about that. So good job. Take that back to the team. Thank you.

00:15:37,030	Maybe a question if I may, for a question for Sherry under the estimate, estimated economic impact row, uh, the column where it says how to measure it, it references an EIC calculator. Is that something the CVB is using currently? It is something that we just purchased. And so I’m I’m in the process of working with Destinations International on that.

00:16:01,630	It’s a process because every city is unique, because I have to enter in all our, our taxes and everything so they can really get a true picture. And it’s specific to each community. So we should be online with that next week and start our training. And we can go back, you know, to any time.

00:16:16,000	But I wanted to get that in right away so we could get a real accurate Williston Basin. But yeah, we will have that. We’ll have a form that we’ll be getting, um, to Brad, and they will fill out all the information that they know, and then we’ll fill out all the information that we know,

00:16:31,000	because the more you know, the the more accurate it is. So I it’ll take both of our teams to get the information in there. But yeah, we will have it very soon. I’m sorry. Did you say that was destination. Destination International. So it’s like the national group that we belong to.

00:16:45,400	So that was the one that I happened to read up on when I wasn’t quite exactly sure what an EIC calculator was. So event impact calculator. Yep. Basically what it’s, uh, it does what it says. Um, he’s done attendance and how long people are here where they’re spending their money, that sort of thing. Okay.

00:17:06,700	Yeah. And it takes into consideration the food and beverage, um, of what they’ve done at the event center. And then when you put that in there, then they’ll realize what other meals they had to have in our community. And then taxes are weighed in there. So it gives a pretty accurate picture.

00:17:29,630	I guess if, uh, if we’re tasked with an action item and with an end goal of having this kind of all buttoned up by September. Um, Mr.

00:17:47,630	Mayor, would you like us, charge us with coming back with some recommended weighted ranking scores at the next regular meeting? I think we’d start that for the next meeting. And, you know, maybe we’ll all come to kind of a consensus by then. And if that’s the case, then we can do that.

00:18:05,000	I, I guess I do want to hear as part of that from, of what, what they feel are how they would rank, how you would rank them as well for waiting on those five to get to 100% total. And you don’t have to do it today if you’re not ready. No, we’re. Not okay. Not at all. Um, I would say that. Am I allowed to address? Yes. But come to the mic then.

00:18:24,700	The folks at home can hear as well. Yeah. Mr. mayor, uh, board authority, board members. Um, yeah. When we originally put all together proposal going through all our negotiations, um, the one thing that we really wanted to stress was that it was a collaborative effort in putting these KPIs together.

00:18:47,530	So, yeah, as long as we’re involved moving forward, I think that’s great. I mean, we got June, July, August, you know, part of September to kind of hash this out. Um, right now we’re just really trying to gather history and get an understanding of where we’re at.

00:19:04,300	Um, and we’ll have a better idea as we get into that more in the next few months. I mean, it’s real preliminary right now. Um, we don’t have a really great track record of history. And so trying to gauge upon what we’ve done before is a little bit challenging. Now that we’ve had a month under our belts, it’ll help a little bit.

00:19:22,330	But again, you know, how are we going to track and where we’re at? Um, we just got to get that information put together. Okay. Okay. I don’t have any questions or comments right now on the waiting.

00:19:39,330	I agree, we can think about that on our own and come to I’m sure we’ll be able to come to an agreement on that. Um, I think we all know also that in this stub year, it’s more of a learning process than saying, hey, you got to be held accountable to this number on this date.

00:19:53,670	But if we’re looking at the stub as a learning period, let’s make sure we can learn as much as we can. And so so for example, on customer service, does he have a system in place or how do you do you have a way that you’re thinking about. You’re going to measure that going into the future, or what are your thoughts on that? Just as an example, yeah.

00:20:08,170	Commissioner Garner yeah, um, we are working on that. Um, again, uh, it’s been a fast track process, so we’re trying to get that information back out to, to our clients. Um, we’re that’s still a work in progress, but that is high on the on the list. Do you have a system for measuring customer satisfaction? Yeah. We do.

00:20:25,870	We do. Yeah. We will Rob from Peter and Paul. I believe. I’m just looking forward to seeing some of those then. Thank you. Absolutely. And I know we realize that meetings and conventions book years out.

00:20:44,130	So we’ll kind of have to take into consideration, even though we don’t have the impact on it, what’s been booked, you know, for the future too. So that’ll kind of have to come into the mix because you’re not going to get a lot of new ones. And we all know that in 2027, it’s going to be further out. So we’ll have to think about that as we look at it.

00:20:56,170	Yeah. Which is why the 26 is not really counting 27 realistically probably becomes I won’t say the base year, but it’s it’s kind of a carryover year from, let’s say, 25. I mean, hopefully 27 is better than 25, but it’s not going to be a measurably different bottom line result.

00:21:20,230	Yeah. And that that event mix, I mean, we’re kind of at the mercy of where we’re at as far as routes and what’s going on. So we’re just trying to hone in on that right now. And so that’ll come into clearer picture as we get into 27.

00:21:35,270	A little bit of a challenge right now to know exactly what we’re going to have for an event mix moving in until we start getting these things booked. Okay. Okay. I gave you my comments already.

00:21:51,970	I probably could drop my numbers in and be ready to roll, but I will let everybody else do their thoughts. And I again, I just think we need to we don’t have to finalize it this next month, but I think by September. So we know going into 2027, we have a plan already laid out.

00:22:12,370	And you know, honestly, part of what the budgeting process you’re going to have to go through, Brad, will help, maybe fine tune some of those for year one. And year two might be a whole different. We may just wait them all equally for year one, because we don’t have a great measuring stick, I don’t know.

00:22:27,170	Well, going back to your comment that that your one will kind of be the the measuring stick. I do agree with that. I mean, we just got to get to the stub year, get some history, then we create, you know, that first year and then by the years two, three, four moving forward, that’s where we where

00:22:39,800	we can hone in and really look at how we’re going to achieve these. And we’re not going to have the kitchen in for all. I don’t know. Hopefully we get going sooner than that. But yeah. And that’s a that’s a whole. Different plans too. So okay. Anything else members.

00:23:00,630	Uh, housekeeping item. Did you guys do the oath of office? The last meeting? Yes. I missed that meeting. Is that stuff that I should take care of today? I can do it after the meeting. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anything else? Okay. Those are our agenda items.

00:23:19,400	And since this is a special meeting, we just have to adjourn at that, um, because we can’t cover anything that’s not on the agenda. So thank you. Eric. Thank you for getting that financial information pulled together. I think this is this is helpful, but I know it’s going to be look different again when we have over these methodology and combining with you.

00:23:40,730	So yeah. So I guess one point of clarification for myself going forward, um, is the expectation that we will prevent present. Excuse me, financial information to you all from strictly and operations type event standpoint, are you looking for the both of us to put together because we’re going to take their information that they

00:24:04,730	provide to us on a monthly basis and, and entered into our, our software. And so, so my expectation would be is it’s going to be a combination. We want to hear about the more detailed stuff around the events and that kind of activity, probably from from Brad. Okay.

00:24:22,870	But their information has to get summed up into ours because we still have to look at the complete package. The complete package for the whole year. They’re they’re not going to be able to provide that for you. So yeah. And even maybe it’s not monthly. That may be quarterly. We can talk about that after we get through the next couple of meetings here.

00:24:38,870	As to when that’s all rolled up, okay. Versus the more month monthly operating, because that’s going to give us a sense. Right? Okay. And I and I know for the next three months it’s not going to be rosy. We’re in our slow part of the year for them. Yeah.

00:24:56,430	So perfect. And ultimately what I would love to see going forward at some point in time is year over year comparisons. We will get there. Because that’s how we’re going to be able to measure. Absolutely. Okay okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Thanks everybody. We