The regularly scheduled meeting of the Bowling Green - Warren County Bicentennial Commission held in the offices of Planning & Zoning, 1141 State Street, Bowling Green, Warren County, Kentucky, on Thursday, October 3, 1986, at 4:00 p.m.

Commissioners Present:
Mike Reynolds, Co-chair, Gary P. West, Earlene Chelf, Herbert Oldham, Ray B. Buckberry, Jr., J. Eddy Barber, H.B. Clark, Charles Hardclastle

Also Present:
Julie Allen, Lena Sweeten, Stan Reagan, Alan Palmer, Joan Flora, Roger E. LaPointe, James A. Dale, Jr., Scribe

MR. REYNOLDS: I think we will go ahead and get started. Welcome, everybody, to our October 3rd meeting of the Bowling Green Warren County Bicentennial Commission.

I think all of you have a copy of the minutes in front of you and Earlene has mentioned one possible spelling change. But other than that everybody had a chance to look over the minutes of the 19th? Any questions or other changes? Do we have a motion to approve then?

MR. CLARK: So moved.

MR. BARBER: Second.

ACTION: Unanimously approved to accept the minutes of the September 19th meeting of the bicentennial Commission with one change in spelling.

MR. REYNOLDS: Tommy Adams gave me his Treasurer's Report and indicated in the account we have $10,000 and there are two bills for $25 apiece that need to be paid. Other than that he has no other money or no other bills on hand to pay. He expects some to come in and asks your approval to pay them. He didn't tell me who they were.

But so in any event that's his report with the balance of 10,000 on hand.

MR. CLARK: Program Committee report. Other than the number of commissions that have just come in and a couple that are in our pipeline, I think I have about six here and two others that you all probably have not seen. There's two that we are passing on or want to recommend for approval. One of them is the Kentucky Museum's exhibit. We discussed it at the last meeting. The only question as such is that they may be asking for $5,000 if they don't get all the fund raising.

Eddie and I haven't discussed that. But as far as an event it seems to be well funded already and looks like it will fit in real well with what we're trying to do. Eddie, you need to look at it or think about it?

MR. BARBER: Yes, sir.

MR. CLARK: I'll pass it on to you here, let you all look at it to make sure we can earmark that 5,000.

MR. BARBER: Which brings up a question. With the small committee I've got together, do I need minutes to get approval on all of this?

MR. CLARK: The first time we sat down and actually wrote an agenda/minutes/responsibilities out. Since then we just talk a lot, and we keep a running agenda. And as it runs a little better I'll update it and pass around to the rest of the Commission each of the projects and where they stand.

MR. BARBER: Okay I thought I would fax this to my committee. They can respond back to me.

MR. CLARK: That's the way I'm doing it. Most of our meetings are by phone.

MR. REYNOLDS: I had a lady call with the ABWA and ask for the forms. They want to submit a proposal for a program for their spring conference in Bowling Green. Have they already submitted a form?

MS. ALLEN: I got it to them. I got it yesterday from them and I gave it to H.B.

MR. CLARK: The other event that we are passing on again over to the finance committee from there to the publicity committee is the flags, street pole flag. That's already an event, project. So we had no problems within our own committee about it. We've just now given it to Eddy to look at it because it does have full funding from the Commission.

MR. BARBER: That's correct.

MR. REYNOLDS: H.B., are you wanting us to go ahead and approve those two events today?

MR. CLARK: I don't think we should really approval them until I get an okay from any other committee that definitely needs to look at them or have input. The flags, for instance, Publicity Committee is going to have to do some things. So I'd rather us all have other ducks in a row as committee.

MR. WEST: I'm just curious as to how the flag or something like that comes under Events and Programs. I thought it was all directed through Charlie's committee.

MR. CLARK: Other than a funnel, no, we don't do a lot with it. We look at it, make sure the form is complete, try to see what all she needed. Julie is the one that wrote it up. Basically she needs funding and publicity. So we're just passing it on. It keeps the other committees out of the front door, out of the revolving door.

MR. WEST: I'll keep my mouth shut for a change.

MR. CLARK: Any other suggestions? We're open to them. We're kind of learning as we go on these projects. That's it from the Program Committee.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you, H.B.

MR. HARDCASTLE: One of our big things that happened at our meeting yesterday involved; was the development of a logo and slogan.

And Mr. Palmer who is the chairman of that subcommittee is here to make the presentation and show you all the recommendation.

MR. PALMER: We had six submissions for the slogan and five for the logo. They range from a simple logo to one that was more complex.

What we were looking for is the ability of this logo to be placed just about everywhere and to be reduced to a size where you wouldn't lose the detail when you reduce it for a lapel pin or a button or put it on a banner or flag, something like that. That's why we chose the one we chose and I'll show you.

There were two forms that these were placed in. As you can see talking about the 200 years, of course, this is the arch, the limestone arch that's down on the fountain. You have two of the arches down there. Tobacco leaf here. Bowling Green Warren County, Pride, Promise, Progress. And this was submitted by Roger LaPointe from Bowling Green Printing.

The logo, the familiar archway indicates the entrance into areas or arenas yet unseen or experienced yet eagerly anticipated.

The slogan refers to a proud, hard working people striving towards the promise of progress and a brighter future.

You can see that these are reproducible on a reduced basis. Any thoughts or questions? I'll be glad to entertain questions.

Other logos had, for example, a fountain and a Corvette in front of it. Others were really rather simple. I think you've seen these foil stickers that go on envelopes when someone is celebrating their 25th anniversary; one that looked something like that.

MS. SWEETEN: What about the year 1998?

MR. PALMER: That's something we're going to ask the artist to remove.

MS. ALLEN: Is it difficult to come up with something 200 years.

MR. PALMER: Really on the arches down town one of them has Lampkin, and the other one has McLellan. They were built in honor of --

MR. BUCKBERRY: These are intended to be done either way?

MR. LAPOINTE: My biggest concern was to get it down to small pen size buttons that it would be legible. That was one of the reasons we went with the simple outline on one of them; just for the ability to do that if the need arose.

MR. PALMER: I'm sure the committee will probably be asking firms, organizations, industries, businesses, when they advertise, to perhaps include this logo in part of their advertising and in observation of the Bicentennial.

So you could probably do it a lot easier with the straight line art. The hardest thing you're going to have probably is trying to reproduce this in a light enough gray that's going through several press runs of the Daily News. That may end up a little dark. I don't know.

MR. BUCKBERRY: We could use both. Sure. You've got that flexibility to use either or.

MR. PALMER: You can start reducing it and it still gets very readable reproduction.

MR. BUCKBERRY: I like that.

MR. HARDCASTLE: I think this was an unanimous selection of the committee that was there and the professionals and all were there.

MR. BUCKBERRY: I think it's great.

MR. HARDCASTLE: Universal. My understanding was that this one jumped out over the others.

MS. CHELF: The statement of how you developed it was excellent, too. That ads a lot to it.

MR. LAPOINTE: Thank you.

MR. WEST: I'm really impressed with it.

MR. REYNOLDS: I think it's great.

MR. BUCKBERRY: I think the only question you might get is the tobacco leaf.

MR. LAPOINTE: That was something I struggled with in the politically correct 90's. We can't deny that heritage. I think it's important that we keep it in the logo.

MR. PALMER: The significance of the limestone quarries that we had during the early part.

MS. ALLEN: The people that were voting on this yesterday, every single one that voted on it loved having the tobacco leaf on there. When I called him today and I told him about that he said he was just really concerned about that. He didn't know if it was politically correct to put that in there or not. It's not the center point. It is small.

MR. LAPOINTE: Just a small leaf.

MR. WEST: We talked a little bit yesterday about Kentucky.

MR. PALMER: Not having the name Kentucky in there some way. As to the banner, we just needed to have the words spaced a little more clearly.

MS. ALLEN: By the press conference on Monday we're going to have color put to it and something with color for everyone to look at at the press conference.

MR. REYNOLDS: Why don't we make it official and let's have a motion to adopt and approve the logo and the slogan.

MR. BUCKBERRY: So move.

MR. WEST: Second.

ACTION: Unanimously passed to approve the logo and slogan.

MR. REYNOLDS: Very good. Thank you, Roger. It's very nice. Great job. It really is nice. When and where on Monday for the press conference and the logo unveiling?

MS. ALLEN: Monday morning 9:30 at the Chamber of Commerce. If you can maybe arrive about five minutes early or so, that would be nice. We would like to have all committee chairs, all Commission members and any friends, guests there.

We are going to be talking about the kickoff celebrations and revealing the logo and theme and they're going to be there to reveal it and to answer any questions about what went into designing this. So it's at the Chamber of Commerce at 9:30.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you. Charlie, do you want to go ahead with the rest of your committee report, please?

MR. HARDCASTLE: We went over the budget and that will be part of the press conference. Bicentennial Moments is under way.

MS. ALLEN: I sent out bid information last week regarding a production video that you'll see in the budget. We received three proposals, and TKR won that bid.

We've been talking about contacting all of these other publications. The judge sent out a packet of information.

I talked to the editor of Kentucky Living, and the judge sent out a packet of information to Kentucky Living inviting them to be a part and to feature our celebrations.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you. That's very good.

MR. HARDCASTLE: Julie is doing a good job. She's not full-time, just 23 and a half hours a day.

MR. REYNOLDS: Eddy Barber. We'll move back to you, sir, for the Funding & Finance report.

MR. BARBER: To follow up on Mr. Hardcastle's discussion about budgets, we met. We meaning Julie, Tommy and myself met. We were instructed to make up a budget for the total Commission.

We concluded that in order to do that we needed a budget from Publicity & Promotions itself. Gary, to your point in order to try to keep promotions and publicity from having to come to the trough so many ties to H.B.; that if we could approach this one budget that they present and include it on the total budget, then that would allow us to maybe circumvent H.B. every time and my committee every time.

So as long as they're within their promotion budget which is part of the general budget, then we shouldn't have to go back to the trough so many times.

So what you have is the promotions budget of 30,000 with the individual items there and then you have a general budget or overall budget for the 75,000, with expenses being 67,500. We're not sure about research. We just stuck a figure in there. Any questions?

MR. REYNOLDS: Eddy, from your standpoint this is what you think it will cost to move through the program and for these particular items.

MR. BARBER: Well, we couldn't budget more expenses than we currently had in income. This is what we think we've got an income to this point. Expenses will definitely increase. We've got the income. We want to spend it. We're not here to save it.

So as far as the Birthday Bash we're trying to get sponsors for that, and that will take in all the expenses so it will all be profit hopefully. And so the thought is to act on these two budgets. Therefore, the Publicity & Promotions group would not have to come back each time. So we'd like approval there, too.

MR. REYNOLDS: Very good. In most organizations or committees obviously planning a budget in advance of receiving all your income and making your expenditures is very important. And this looks very reasonable and conservative to me. Anybody else have any comments before we have a motion to approve Eddy's budget here?

MR. BARBER: Also given the fact that a majority of the people that have their own projects are being asked to find their own funding. That keeps this budget way down obviously.

MR. REYNOLDS: I really think that's an important decision that we've made along the way. I don't think we're totally a fund raising group or ought to be charged with going out and helping people produce their own assistance so to speak.

MS. ALLEN: If people do have a project and not funding, then we'll try to find funding for them.

MR. WEST: You're going to have a lot people going to the till for funds when you can do these things. We all know that. That's just the way it works in Bowling Green.

MR. BARBER: The only other things I have is during the budget discussion we had conversation about the lapel pins that we keep bringing up. Julie has brought in some samples that a company she's talked to. There's thoughts. One, we could do a hard pin such as this which would sell like $5.00. It would be a dollar or two profit in it.

The other thought is the Pegasus pins that you see so much of in the Louisville area during Derby, many of those are just the little plastic jobs. They're real colorful. A lot of people can buy those, because they're not but a couple of dollars.

But during the discussion it was thought that instead of us having to include it in our budget and use our funds and then be reimbursed from the sale of these pins and possibly be stuck with a thousand or 2,000 at the end, maybe we could find an entity that would do a whole package.

They would buy the pins and use it as an event. Then they would submit something to H.B. and say, "We want to do the pins. You would get 25 cents to 50 cents on each sale." It would be profitable for them and profitable for the Commission.

Tommy stepped up and since he was president of the a.m. Rotary Club and he has marched it through the a.m. Rotary Club and he's going to talk to the noon Rotary Club.

So it could be that with the Commission's permission that the two Rotary Clubs would do the pins and keep us out of the loop. But yet possibly we would receive benefit from it.

MR. REYNOLDS: Would you have the logo on the pins?

MR. BARBER: The discussion has been that the logo would be the pin. Whatever colors are chosen for the logo, then that would be, the pin would be the logo unless you all want something different.

MR. WEST: Are you familiar with the Corvette pins, metal pin? You can get these things at all prices, these pins. They are not that expensive to buy. You can sell them for what you want. I'm going to say that we buy ours like at $1.27 apiece. We get $5.00 for them. I think the Corvette Museum maybe gets $7.00. We sell ours. We sell them to the Corvette Museum. We sell them in the gift shop at the Plaza Hotel.

Since this is a 15 month project, you can order a few at a time and not have to and buy. But see how the sales are initially going and then reorder so that we don't get stuck with a whole bunch of these pins.

Also I really think, too, that these pins have the potential to have a little marketing value even after the Bicentennial is over. I think that you'll sell some of these as you go along. I really do.

MR. BARBER: Let me continue with the remaining thought. That is the Rotary Club would be the sponsor of this. And but if requested the financial institutions would be maybe the marketer of it on their behalf. You know, we would sell them over-the-counter, tellers, similar to what they do, again, with the Pegasus pin in the Louisville area.

Then we just hand over the funds back to the Rotary Club. But that was the thought. If the Commission chooses to hold on to the whole project, then we can do that, too.

Is this something we want to table now, Mike?

MR. REYNOLDS: We probably want to go ahead and approve the budget, at least have something to fall back on.

MR. BARBER: We need to let Tommy know whether or not to continue to proceed with the Rotary Clubs, or do we want to make this our problem?

MR. BUCKBERRY: I'd like to see the Rotary Club get involved myself. I think it would be great if they would undertake that.

MR. REYNOLDS: My comment is there are 180 members approximately at the noon club, 40 to 50 maybe in the morning club. That will get so many more people at least aware and possibly involved.

MR. BARBER: So we can tell Tommy it's okay. Do we leave it up to him whether he wants metal, gold or plastic?

MR. REYNOLDS: From a marketing standpoint, if they're going to pay for the cost of production, it's their decision.

MR. BARBER: I had mentioned something to Laura and I had said something to Julie, since you're here, the Tourist Commission in the state of Kentucky, do they have any funds or can they help us with brochures? Do they have any money at all to help with a Bicentennial such as this?

MR. WEST: If there's any money here marked for Bicentennial, Eddy, I'm not aware of it. The only monies that we get from the state for brochures and things like that are through the Matching Funds program that comes through our region. We submit all of our dollars that we spend on brochures. In other words we have to go ahead and do it. Then as their funds are available they give this money across the state.

I will check on that. As I sit here today I don't know of any money that's available for Bicentennial, but I'll certainly see what's there.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you for your report, Eddy. Would it be the Commission's pleasure to go ahead and adopt or approve his Commission budget as presented which also includes as a portion of it the publicity and promotions budget? Do we have a motion.

MS. CHELF: So move.

MR. CLARK: Second.

ACTION: Approved to accept the budget as presented.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you.

MS. ALLEN: We've been talking to Clark Bottling Company. They have given the Commission to use at any time we need a thousand dollars worth of Coca-Cola products and a thousand dollars worth of beer products.

(LAUGHTER).

MR. BUCKBERRY: Do we have an established mechanism in place to thank people like that who sent a letter from the Commission to the Clark people thanking them for their contribution to the Bicentennial?

MR. REYNOLDS: I think we should.

MR. BUCKBERRY: I think we need to get one in place so we can automatically roll those thank you's out.

MS. ALLEN: I always do one for everything I deal with with the judge. I always do a thank you or response letter. Another letter needs to come from the Commission.

MS. CHELF: That falls within my responsibility. I'll get the name and address and everything from you; be glad to do that.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you. Anybody got a Dr. Martin report?

MS. CHELF: I have a report from the last meeting about research being, done dividing it up among -- I don't know how many different topics.

MR. HARDCASTLE: We're needing some information pretty soon so that we could start developing some promotional sort of thing. Our brochure is in the process of now being done, the preliminary brochure. We are going to have another one later on. But we do need historical information just as quickly as we can to have some.

Off the top of my head if we started out with the Bicentennial metal and things like that, down to how the name was established in Warren County or Bowling Green or all of the things like that, general knowledge.

We'd like to have some public interest or human interest. We're wanting to work perhaps with the Daily News. They were talking about not necessarily doing a Bicentennial Moment every day or every week. But they were receptive perhaps to doing some features on some particular aspect.

MS. CHELF: Along with that members of the Publicity Committee are going to meet at the Kentucky Building next. We need to talk about some of the things, the information for those Bicentennial Moments, make sure they're visually appealing. Ray if you have any interest in participating, we'd love to have you.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Next Wednesday at 3:00.

MS. CHELF: Yes.

MR. REYNOLDS: But are people still applying through City Hall or the judge's office maybe to be placed on committees? Have you all had any rush on that?

MS. ALLEN: I have two names to give to H.B. today. I have a list right here of other people that have just called in since our last meeting, but they don't know what they want to do. So I send a letter to them, and I say, "This is what you could do. Give us a call back."

Also the newly named Warren County Junior Miss, the pageant, the new queen or whatever you call that person, called in, two individuals from all sorts of business. We've had a couple of people that have seen the replays of last Tuesday night on TV.

One man has sent me a whole documentation about this fountain that's in his front yard and historicalness of this fountain.

And then another man was so upset he had to miss that Tuesday night meeting. He wanted to come to City Hall so bad. I talked to him a good long time, and invited him to come to some of our meetings. So we're still getting calls.

MS. SWEETEN: I spoke with the Builders Association. They were real interested in the Bicentennial.

MR. REYNOLDS: If there are any organizations like the Builders Association or any others that want someone to come out and speak to them at a monthly meeting or at one of their get togethers, why, somebody let us know. And we'll find somebody to go out.

MS. ALLEN: This video that's in the promotion budget, we are going to work on making this a six to seven minute video that can be taken into schools and can be taken to the civic organizations.

I think that we can do a little dog and pony show here pretty soon after December once we get the video going we want to premiere the video at the Birthday Bash; and from there do a road show.

MR. REYNOLDS: Any new business that anyone would want to bring up today?

MR. BUCKBERRY: Are we going to move forward with letterhead for the Commission incorporating the logo so that will be available?

MR. CLARK: It's in the budget, in the office supplies. We budgeted that under general office supplies.

MR. REYNOLDS: J.C. Kirby & Son Funeral Home has donated a capsule for us. If we do a time capsule, they said they had small or large size. We could have one or both.

MR. HARDCASTLE: That should be a media event.

MR. BUCKBERRY: With video, pictures, if that's available so people can see it at the end somehow. The committee is going to have to work out -- bring in your picture of Aunt Susie or, no, or what can go in it, who is entitled to put something in it that size. Everything needs to be worked out.

MR. REYNOLDS: Kevin Kirby and Eddie Smith indicated they had donated one several years ago that's out in Municipal Park. They didn't even really know what the specific purpose was.

MR. BARBER: On the logo, are we going to have slicks made and try to get local business people to include it in their ads? Supply something like that to the newspaper. I don't know how you ask the individual businesses to include it in their ads. But if the newspaper has it, maybe they will just throw it on there.

MR. WEST: Maybe the Chamber could do a mass mailing.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Is there a possibility that his original work of art can be auctioned at the Birthday Bash? Somebody would own the original work of art for the logo.

MR. WEST: That's a great idea.

MS. ALLEN: Silent auction.

MR. REYNOLDS: I've got a similar question about the tobacco leaf. I have noticed in the center of the arch he's got just one year noted 1998. And I guess my question is Bowling Green may be 1998 but Warren County is '97 and we're starting in '96.

MR. HARDCASTLE: He's taking the year out.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Mike, I'll mention just a couple or three things. It seems to me as we are now finishing up the stage, I guess, of asking everybody, "What do you want?" They have had the opportunity to say what they want. I think we're now going to be looking at a situation where we have some projects suggested. Who is going to do it? So we may need to now be focusing back on here's some things we would like to see done.

Now let's see if we can find somebody that will hold their hand up and undertake to accomplish that. We might be thinking about those.

Along that line this video that TKR is doing is just as you described the little six, eight minute -- Sarah Glenn Grise mentioned to me that TKR wants to get involved with something additional in the Bicentennial.

Jean Prayther with Channel 13 called me and said they would like to have some suggestions. They would like to come up with how they could participate. I told her I would tell everybody and we would get back to her and say, "Here are some possibilities," whatever we can come up, let's say, next at the next Commission meeting.

Lois Talley called about the American Business Professional Women's Society. Again I told her if we come up with a project we think would be fun for you all to do and good to do, she said, "I think we can get interested in that. There's two clubs. We could get together." So another organization.

I told Lois, I said, "Well, we'll see what projects are out there the Commission has suggested that might be of interest to you. And encourage you to pick up something and go with it."

I have a meeting next Wednesday with three people to see if we can come up with a plan to submit into H.B. that would involve either a dinner or luncheon with all of the established literary clubs in the county over the years and get them all together at one time and have a luncheon and Bicentennial program and let them all see the membership of each. That was suggested earlier on.

I'll be meeting with John Grise and a couple others next week to see. We've got the information coming in from the University Plaza Hotel and see if we can submit a proposed thing on that. So that's another one that's at least under discussion.

MS. ALLEN: I think after the kick-off events have occurred there's going to be another trigger there at the first of the year. People are going to be seriously thinking about it.

Once we take this video and do our road show it will continue. So I think that we'll continue getting stuff in.

MR. BUCKBERRY: In the 1950's the Courier-Journal did an article, a spread called The Club City of Kentucky. They said, "What is this about Bowling Green and all of these clubs, not related to the campus of Western," but whatever. It's a little bit unusual.

MR. REYNOLDS: There are two organizations here that are having conventions here, the Kentucky Heritage Council in September with over 300 people coming. The local people are helping them put together a Bicentennial theme. They are expecting five to 700 ladies coming in.

MR. WEST: I'd like to be involved with maybe pursuing this logo as a print. I can't think of a business that would not pay $25 to buy one of the Bicentennial prints for their office or for their place of business. That has potential to be a real revenue producer.

I can envision some note cards being made out of that. That could be sold out of the shops and stuff with a percentage of it going to the Bicentennial Commission. I'd like to be involved with pursuing this print.

MS. ALLEN: It hasn't been voted on yet.

MR. HARDCASTLE: Don Stringer is going to get the print and logo copyrighted and everything for us.

MR. BARBER: Nobody can just turn around and copy it without us getting a piece of the pie.

MR. REYNOLDS: That's very important. Charlie, do you mind following up with Don?

MR. HARDCASTLE: Don Stringer said he would do it.

MR. REYNOLDS: Anything else officially before we adjourn?

MR. BUCKBERRY: I had seen some really nice things up in southern Indiana made out of Southern Indiana Limestone; everything from logos to this, that and the other. This has been quite sometime back. As you'll see they are college related, community related.

Naturally with the limestone we're featuring here and everything I called these people in Bedford, Indiana, and told them, of course, we had a heritage of limestone and we had a Bicentennial.

"Who does your work on this?"

The lady said, "We do all our own."

I said, "What about Warren County if we get in the Bicentennial, look for something."

She said, "Get me a slab of stone. It doesn't have to be very big. Get it up here. Let us test it. Let us look at it. We'll let you know what we could make for you out of Warren County stone and what the cost would be."

So I'll leave that with Eddy as a possibility.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Doesn't Buster Stewart own White Stone Quarry?

(MEETING ADJOURNED)