MEMBERS PRESENT: Mike Reynolds, Laura Harper Lee, Tommy Adams, Gary West, Danny Whittle, Lena Sweeten, Herbert Oldham, Earlene Chelf, Dr. Jerry Martin, Romanza Johnson, Ray Buckberry and Jim Erskine.

MR. REYNOLDS: Why don't we kick off today. Tommy, you passed out the treasurer's report. Go through that for us, please.

MR. ADAMS: Just a few expenses since the last meeting. We have some contract labor, of course. $500 payment for Landmark Christmas Home Tour. And then this payment for certificates of appreciation that Jim had printed.

MS. HARPER LEE: Do you want to show those for a second to see what those look like? Pass them around, have a display.

MR. ERSKINE: They will have the city seal and county seal on either side of the name down at the bottom, the embossed seal. They should look really nice.

MR. REYNOLDS: Anybody that has some names for Jim that they feel has done some special service or act or contribution of some nature that this would be meaningful to the organization, why, please turn those in.

MR. WEST: Jim, was TKR recognized?

MR. ERSKINE: Yes, they are.

MS. CHELF: If they have already been recognized, would they still get a certificate?

MR. ERSKINE: I've had 500 printed up. So we've got plenty.

MR. REYNOLDS: Any other questions or comments on Tommy's treasurer's report then? Gary, you're next on the agenda with the Civil War video.

MR. WEST: The video is 20 minutes long. It goes pretty quick, and it's already cued up here. Chris Bratton -- I think you'll admit when you see it -- did one heck of a job. He's a talented young man, what he did.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Will these videos be available for purchase?

MR. WEST: Yes, at $15 apiece.

(SHOWING OF CIVIL WAR VIDEO).

MR. BUCKBERRY: That is super.

MS. JOHNSON: That is great.

MR. WEST: We want to do a press conference. We want to get the school superintendents together of Bowling Green and Warren County and then provide them with a copy of this, all the schools in Bowling Green and Warren County. Hopefully we'll be able to announce at this press conference that this event will be held next year.

I'm waiting to hear back from Buddy Adams. Cornelius Martin is going to stay with us and maybe increase his support. Jim Myers is going to stay with us and increase his support so that next year we'll be able to maintain the same budget that we had without the Bicentennial. I'm really pleased with the way it's coming.

MR. WEST: Chris Bratton and TKR did a great job. He's a very talented young man.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you, Gary. Jim is working on the tape. But all of you that were here last meeting got to hear from Phil Henry. We had a lengthy discussion with Phil about his proposed book project.

The way we sort of left that, I hope that those of you that might not have been here could catch up a little bit on this, because it was a very interesting proposal. I think we left it as an idea that we would let Jim talk to him and further discuss with him his request or proposal to us and then we would come back today and discuss it and maybe come to some kind of decision.

MR. ERSKINE: Phil Henry had in mind a size of book like the old book that Nancy Baird and Carol Crow Carraco had put together with some color to it. It would be a popular history of Bowling Green written by an editorial team instead of one person; edited by a central historian person that's familiar with Bowling Green as a coffee table book.

He was talking about it being funded by the business community, sponsoring a page which would incorporate a history of their business for $1,500 apiece and then distributed by some bank or financial institution here in town.

What he wanted from us was basically a letter of endorsement that this was a Bicentennial project. He would then try to pull together an editorial team, and he would be depending on us to offer some names for that. He would basically test the waters to see if the business community would support this.

I talked to him by phone this week. He thought that his initial liability would be lower than what Mr. Hardcastle was trying to pin him down on last time. But he said that basically, if we give approval to do this, he would probably meet with Dr. Martin and Jim Richards to give him some leads on some businesses to call upon. Then it would be after Christmas before he would do that. Then within a few weeks he would know whether it would sink or float. That's his scheduling.

Given that he would start then, it would probably be August or September before he would have a book. But it would take a few weeks even after that before he knew indeed whether it would go or not.

MS. HARPER LEE: One thing that's important that he talked about is that he wanted to have 4,000 copies printed and sell them for 35 or $40 apiece.

MR. REYNOLDS: This gentleman did have a track record. He brought in a book from Owensboro and Daviess County that he had done. It was very nice. Russellville and Logan County he had done. Biloxi, Mississippi. So he was not a rookie at this.

MR. WHITTLE: We're not in for risking dollars. We're risking reputation. If he can do 4,000 more power to him. They will sell.

MS. CHELF: Once he decides if the project would fly, did he have a date when he thought he might conclude?

MR. ERSKINE: He said late summer, maybe early fall before he got it together. The people that he was naming in terms of coordinating this book are people that I don't think would be appropriate for us to ask to do it, which was Nancy Baird and Carol Crow Carraco. He said, well, he can find someone else to do that. And we do have a lot of raw data from Dr. Martin's committees.

DR. MARTIN: I hope.

MR. ERSKINE: Hopefully. He also said that he would require some help from us in providing some leads and some names that he could call upon. He also made a suggestion on the phone, he said, "Ask any of the business people on the Commission if they would be willing to support this as kind of a bell weather; whether they think the community would support it."

In other words if he came to you wanting $1,500 for a page, would your business support that or not? He was interested in knowing that. We talked about how tough a sale advertising and sponsorship is in Bowling Green. He said he wanted to sell $75,000 worth of sponsorships. That would be 50 pages.

MR. REYNOLDS: In the back section of his book, after the book has been completed, there were advertisements of local and area businesses that paid a thousand or $1,500 a page where they wrote their own history and had pictures of their founder or their product or their ad.

MR. WHITTLE: It wasn't a commercial advertisement.

MR. REYNOLDS: No.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Did he comment on the Turner project with the Daily News where they sold pages to businesses just recently?

MR. REYNOLDS: We brought that up.

MR. ERSKINE: He didn't seem to think that that would affect this project too much. But again he hasn't followed through on sponsorship.

MR. REYNOLDS: Essentially, if I understand it right, he was asking for our endorsement but not anything else other than -- the sad part is that we had to stake our reputation on something that would be ongoing and be either completed or maybe never completed several months after we're no longer in existence.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Could we condition our approval for a feasibility period and say, "You go test the water, and test it on the basis that we are encouraging the project and like the idea. And then come back to us before you say, 'It's a go, no go,' and let us look at it again." Would that serve his purpose?

MR. WHITTLE: He proposes to do that.

DR. MARTIN: When I talked to him a few weeks ago he said by the time he tested the waters and knew whether he had the support or not, he said that may scrap the whole thing and forget it and nobody's out anything and just don't do anything.

But if there's the money there to do it, then I think the quality of his work is something that we wouldn't have to worry about putting our endorsement on.

MS. HARPER LEE: If it's like his track record. The other one seems very well done in just my humble opinion.

MR. ERSKINE: Mike, after we talked with him -- I don't want to cloud this up terribly much, but I did have an alternative idea on a book. This is Arcadia Publishing Company that we looked at way back when. They were here before. These are their postcard books. I was thinking of this in terms of looking at the feasibility of actually getting this thing accomplished and what if it was or what if we decided to not go with this.

I came up with the little proposal about doing a postcard book which would basically be from the Kentucky Library collection, from Ray's collection and some other collectors here in town. We have enough materials to do this that would not involve our getting sponsors or approaching the business community.

Arcadia would handle the design, the publication, the marketing and distribution of this. We would really not have to worry about that.

I did a couple of preliminary conversations on this, and I think we would have an easy task pulling together materials. It would basically cost the time that it would take me to pull this together in the office. Right now I'm authorized 24 hours a week, and I'm really just putting in eight or ten. This would basically just bump me up to the full 24 for a few weeks to accomplish this. You see the estimated budget on it. I just present this as something that as an alternative that we would know would get done.

MS. SWEETEN: How many copies would they publish?

MR. ERSKINE: They publish in editions of 2,500 at a time and then reprint when necessary. This would be in the stores in early June. This was the company that paid royalties. My first thought on this would be that the royalties on project can be donated to the Kentucky Library, although that could be donated anywhere. I wouldn't want them because I'd be already paid for doing it. So it's nothing that I would be interested in.

This is kind of what I wanted to put on the table, the viability of Phil Henry's project. As the coordinator I would like to get a decision one way or another from us today which way we want to go with it.

MR. REYNOLDS: Are these in competition with each other, or would these be totally separate or different projects?

MR. BUCKBERRY: We might be able to consider doing them both.

MR. ERSKINE: Could be. I did not tell him this was an alternative.

MS. CHELF: The difference in production time, would there be a time lapse between the two coming out?

MR. REYNOLDS: His was more of a glossy written history with color photographs while this is a postcard type book.

MS. HARPER LEE: I really like the postcard idea. I like the turn-arrested time on it not to mention the fact that they're going to do it all plus get royalties.

Maybe it's possible with the difference in time span between the two we could do both. But I really like the idea of using those postcards to tell the history.

MR. ERSKINE: As a retail price they place it like in Winn-Dixie and Houchens and book stores and pharmacies. That's the way they market. They promote it big and apparently put on some commercials, have a book signing and things like that which we could assist with. But it's pretty much packaged in terms of our lack of having to do more than just prepare the manuscript.

MS. SWEETEN: The benefit is that if we wanted to foot everything ourselves in the community for a legacy project, there won't be $75,000 taken already for a book unless the book is the legacy project.

MR. REYNOLDS: Dr. Martin, you were introduced to Phil Henry, and he came up here with you at the last meeting. Do you have any feel one way or another about his project?

DR. MARTIN: I don't have any feeling about him particularly. I don't know him all that well except a little more than what we got to know him here. As a Bicentennial project, if he were able to pull it off, his project would certainly be a much classier project. It's something the community would be proud of.

The postcard book, you see these everywhere you go. I think that if it would fly I would prefer to see something really quality done. If it failed I'd be very much in favor of the other.

MS. CHELF: It would be, as you said, inappropriate to ask Nancy and Carol to work on this next book that he's proposing. Beyond that I don't know many people who are out there to help with that. They are the same people that do all of these things, and they have about 40 projects on the back burner.

MR. WHITTLE: He does have a budget for paying a stipend to his editor and his --

MR. ERSKINE: He wasn't specific on that, Danny.

DR. MARTIN: Yes, he was. He was specific he would pay the people to do it.

MS. HARPER LEE: We asked him directly about that.

MS. CHELF: That would change things, too, because they he might do it if they were paid.

MR. WHITTLE: I wouldn't want to mention any names to volunteer any time. But to be paid for it she may be very willing to do it. That's what she was going to get out of the original project. But they didn't have wherewithal to get to it.

DR. MARTIN: They were wanting 10,000 before, and he said he thought certainly 10,000 would be a reasonable amount to pay. And that would be budgeted. If he was able to sell 75,000, as he said, that would include 10,000 I think he said, to two different people which would pay the salaries.

I don't think he was asking for anybody to do it free. He said that the people that you -- I mentioned some of these. He said "You can always find someone to do this for a price. That's no problem."

MS. HARPER LEE: There are a couple in the room could help do it and Nancy and Carol, but I can't think of many beyond that.

MR. REYNOLDS: Here's the basic difference I see in what Carol and Nancy and Mike when they came up. They were hoping to do a similar thing to what this gentleman is going to do; only they needed the help in the production and the money grant from us and the sales, fund raising, the whole thing.

Whereas, as I understand it, this fellow probably couldn't write any better than me and he wouldn't do any writing. What he was was simply the overseer to be able to put the whole thing together and not ask any money from us.

I think where our leeriness was concerned was putting our name on a project that -- would it come out at all? Would it come out six months after we were done? And could it or would it sell enough copies for him to make 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000? Because as I understand it he stated that two of his four books that he showed us and had here lost money and he had lost money on them and two of them he had made a little money.

MS. HARPER LEE: Another part of his proposal was that he would produce something. Beyond a certain point he would produce something, and it would cut back. If he didn't reach his goal of raising so much money, he would cut back content and probably quality, too, in my opinion. That would be something I would be concerned about about his proposal.

MS. CHELF: So he would hire the photographer as well?

MS. HARPER LEE: The whole thing.

MS. SWEETEN: I would like to know about quality control or content.

MR. REYNOLDS: From what he said about a budget he had 30,000 proposed for the writers or the producers of the material. He had another 45,000 lined up for production; whether that be printing -- I don't know what all. But it was here. I'm sorry I didn't bring it back.

MR. BUCKBERRY: How much risk do we have on our reputation if we get out there and he actually does something and it has the quality that you all saw? Or if he doesn't do it, of course, the only thing is we've encouraged a man to try.

DR. MARTIN: Any of the four books that he brought, if it was as good as any of those four, we wouldn't have to worry.

MR. BUCKBERRY: How much risk do we have in our reputation to let the man try and try to help him?

MR. REYNOLDS: He had done it from the top before, and he said he was not a historian. He was not a writer. He was not anything in that nature. He was simply an organizer, promoter.

MR. BUCKBERRY: He's a businessman and has a project which is all right.

MS. JOHNSON: Because of the timing there could be room for both books.

DR. MARTIN: Probably so.

MR. BUCKBERRY: You could consider encouraging him to go forward during his feasibility study and advise him that this is something that's back in the wings and did he see that as a threat to his success? And he could express his opinion about that.

That's something, I assume, Arcadia, would allow to be done. Jim could drag the time out on that a little bit and sort of see how that goes, because that can obviously be done a lot quicker. They're estimating two to 300 postcards. I don't know how many the Kentucky Library has, but we have at home 700 on Bowling Green and Warren County. That could be on the table in two days. So that could move quickly if it were to be something to do. Give this guy a shot.

MR. ERSKINE: The thought occurs to me that that would not show up during the whole time he's trying to raise the support from the business community. The only question would be would it interfere with the size of the full size book.

MS. HARPER LEE: I don't think so.

MR. BUCKBERRY: They're different.

MS. HARPER LEE: A lot of people are going to want both of them.

MR. BUCKBERRY: That would, of course, continue on. The library hopefully over the years would get a little money for Christmas presents and things that are not as expensive. It might have a lasting kind of thing to it.

MR. WHITTLE: They history book would be at the next reenactment. The timing is going to be about right. Have the roll-out during the week of the reenactment next year.

MR. REYNOLDS: Could we entertain a motion to move forward on Jim's postcard book project?

MR. BUCKBERRY: Now, this seems to be the major thing to me, this man's beautiful book and then let him come back with this.

MR. REYNOLDS: I don't know how to decipher it, but there's a lot of us here who would like to see him try his feasibility study and say, "If you think you can pull this off, go for it." It's not going to cost us anything except our stamp of approval and our logo on the credits.

DR. MARTIN: After he sells this 75,000 or however much he's going to sell, he's got enough money to break even on the book if he didn't sell any. So then whatever he sold would be profit. So at that point, although I'm sure he wouldn't be too interested in a lot of competition, it wouldn't hurt him too much if this other book came out. I think he would be reluctant if he knew that we were going to tell him to go ahead and put our logo and our endorsement. If he knew that later we were going to put our logo and endorsement on this other, too, then that would -- if I were him, I would feel like this Commission undercut him. I wouldn't want us to do that. We ought to do one or the other with our logo. Then if he can't make a go of it, then we should go with this other one. I'd like to see both of them done.

MS. HARPER LEE: I don't think the timing of the two make them -- I don't think they cancel each other out.

DR. MARTIN: I don't either.

MS. HARPER LEE: My opinion is that this postcard collection is valuable enough to want some sort of publication like that.

MR. BUCKBERRY: That may be an editorial decision of these people. They're the pros, too.

MR. WHITTLE: Is there any difficulty getting permission to use your resources?

MS. CHELF: I've already made that inquiry. We'll make it available.

MR. BUCKBERRY: There are postcard books like this out in east Tennessee, Sevier County. There was one that sold for the Knoxville Public Library.

MS. HARPER LEE: What should we do first?

DR. MARTIN: For the sake of discussion I'll make a motion we go ahead and let this guy try and give him our endorsement. If he can't get the support, then we haven't lost anything.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Second.

MS. CHELF: We've only lost time, the time it will take to do his feasibility studies. It's so close to the end of your term of employment, would you be able to do the project?

MR. ERSKINE: He said it would be after the holidays he'd get out and do this. So I would say by the end of January we would know.

MR. REYNOLDS: We have a motion and second to identify and tell Phil Henry that we propose for him to go on with his feasibility study. If he finds it feasible, we'll put your endorsement on the project.

MR. ERSKINE: He is expecting our assistance pulling together some people for it, not necessarily us sitting down and doing it.

ACTION: (Unanimously passed).

MR. REYNOLDS: Now, the postcard book project; where are we?

MR. BUCKBERRY: I don't think he should be threatened by that or feel like it's going to endanger his project. If that's his attitude and he says, "Don't do that. You're going to cut my throat," or something, then he should have an opportunity to say that. If he says, "You're coming out later with it. Once I get my advertising in place -- you're not going to ask anybody for an ad anyway. It's no big deal."

He should be consulted about it before we do anything else.

MR. WHITTLE: Will we have a chance to see him before we get together again before our next meeting?

MR. ERSKINE: Yes. I can meet with him. I'll probably call him tomorrow.

MR. WHITTLE: If you could pursue that matter with him, then I'd like to say we authorize Jim at our next meeting, if it's not a killer for this project, I'd like to see the postcard book go ahead, too.

MR. REYNOLDS: At some date he will be invited back to tell us what he has done in the way of feasibility or viability to do his project.

MS. CHELF: Will you stipulate that date, like the end of January?

MR. ERSKINE: Right, end of January. Could I have some clear direction then on that? If he says that won't bother him, should I go ahead with this project?

MS. CHELF: I make a motion you do that.

MR. WHITTLE: Second.

MR. REYNOLDS: Motion for Jim to move forward with the postcard book and second by Danny. Any other discussion? All in favor.

ACTION: (Unanimously approved).

MR. REYNOLDS: Legacy project. I did have two numbers for you or lack of numbers. I think that anybody that was at the meeting we had at the Paxton House knows that we cut the number of projects from about a dozen down to about a half dozen that are currently on the board as potential legacy projects for us to finalize or go out with.

At the meeting subsequently to that I was asked to identify from David Hancock the potential sale price, purchase price for his lot at the corner of Park Row and College and 10th. And so we did. You heard from us at the last meeting that he would take 200,000 from whoever was the first person to give it to him, whether that be our agency or anybody else.

I had called and talked to Rick Wilson, president of Bowling Green Bank, regarding the Woolworth lot up on the corner of State and Park Row and 10th. At first he had not given me any idea of a number.

So Jim and I coordinated and wrote Rick a letter asking for a specific, "What would you take? But we'll offer you 5,000 and promise to do $45,000 worth of improvements. So what do you think?"

Rick responded to me yesterday. He said, "Mike, here's where we stand on that. I've talked to the people up the line from me. We're going to have a board meeting tomorrow, but this is the answer I've gotten from on high. And that is we appreciate the offer. We unfortunately have to reject your offer. We currently do not have the property on the market. And we choose not to give you a price we would take for it, because, quite frankly, we haven't decided what we would ever take. We do not have any offers other than yours. And we choose not to give you a number," like in the case of what Mr. Hancock did because, he said, "if we put a price out there, we're afraid that somebody else might come in and get it. We possibly could do a better deal for you than we could for somebody else." That's where that was left which is no answer, but it's the answer I got.

DR. MARTIN: What are we going to put on that lot if we purchased it? The point is we're not going to be able to afford to purchase something and then put something on it. If we're going to put something some place, why don't we put it on the lawn of the courthouse. The property is already owned by the county. We don't have to buy any property. If there's a monument or statue or fountain or anything, why not just put it on property that's already owned instead of wasting our money buying a lot somewhere?

MR. REYNOLDS: After talking to the owners of these two lots or their reps, I can assure you that they're all business people and they want full market value or whatever they think they can get. They do not wish to hand us a donation.

There are other projects in our legacy list, and that's where we are on asking for sale prices or donations to us.

MS. SWEETEN: Did anybody find out who owns the space next to National City, the courtyard area?

MR. REYNOLDS: It has some benches. It used to be the old Herman Lowe building on the corner that's torn down coming back towards National City where they have just put that sign up there that says LifeSkills underneath National City Bank.

MR. WHITTLE: I thought that was American National Bank's.

MR. REYNOLDS: They owned it when they tore the building down. Then they have subsequently sold the real estate to Tom Blair. He owns, I think, that court. Eddie was going to tell us for sure what that was.

MS. HARPER LEE: One thing we need a place for is the time capsule. Maybe that's something for the courthouse yard, or maybe that's something for that courtyard next to National City if it's going to be taken care of like it has been so far.

MR. ERSKINE: What about a park? There is a time capsule in Covington Woods. The time capsule is as big as we want it to be, from a cremation urn to a full-sized coffin.

MR. WHITTLE: Jim and I talked to Kevin Kirby. He suggested a steel vault and figured that we could get it painted and have our logo put on top of it so that it would be really attractive as it was put on display before it went in the ground.

Personally I think it needs to be in a downtown area either on the courthouse lawn or on Fountain Square Park if we don't own any other piece of downtown land.

MR. REYNOLDS: I just had a crazy brainstorm, and this is probably stupid. We've had some contests, three contests. Would it be beneath us to consider having a contest and publicize it to tell us what our legacy is? Put that out to the public? Or is that us not doing our job?

MR. BUCKBERRY: Any suggestion anybody would have would certainly be welcome.

MS. HARPER LEE: Even the things we don't select might be something we want to put in the time capsule.

MR. REYNOLDS: Selection of the judges is final, and we're the judges.

DR. MARTIN: I know I was in charge of the committee when we rebuilt our church. We had one about so big and this wide and this deep. They sealed it with copper after they put everything in it. And 3, $400. Then we put 270 I think some odd items in that space pertinent to the church's history.

But unless you're going to put a Corvette in it or something, you don't need one.

MS. HARPER LEE: The minutes from these meetings.

MR. REYNOLDS: I'm probably mixing apples with oranges. I know Laura is having discussions talking about the time capsule, and I'm kind of talking about back on the legacy project. I didn't mean to throw anybody by what I'm saying; not to give us ideas of what to put in a time capsule. I'm talking about an idea for a legacy project.

DR. MARTIN: My point was if we are going to build a big monument you could very easily put the time capsule at the base of that and mortar it into the base of a cornerstone in a building or something and have the time capsule in the Bicentennial monument as part of the legacy project.

MS. CHELF: I would comment that we open it up to the public, which I don't think is a bad idea. We need to be ready to consider maybe something in some of the outlying communities, maybe not necessarily in Bowling Green or downtown. We need to be really flexible for the legacy, be really receptive to those ideas. Because if something comes in that's good, Smiths Grove, I think we would need to act on it and we need to think about that, I think.

MR. REYNOLDS: I'm having trouble with the fact that we've had four or five or six or seven meetings where our legacy project was going to be our feature item to discuss and to talk about. In some of those meetings it was, and in other meetings it was pushed aside by individuals or films or whatever. But we really haven't -- I don't know. We just haven't.

MS. JOHNSON: I think I've said this before. Point that you made about uses of ground we already have, I think it would be nice if we did something in the lawn of the courthouse and something on the grounds of the city hall. And one or the other have the time capsule. If we did like a sculpture or monument, then have it on the other lawn; have something in each.

All along we have said the Bowling Green - Warren County Bicentennial. We would have ceremonies at both places perhaps and have something at both places.

DR. MARTIN: If you put it on the grounds of the courthouse or city hall, too, you wouldn't run into a problem of having to put something in Smiths Grove or Richpond or something, because there's no county seat in those places. So you wouldn't have to even consider it.

MS. JOHNSON: You wouldn't be selecting one community over another of our nearby communities. If you put it on the county seat lawn, I don't think anybody in the county could complain about that. It's their county seat just like it is ours. It's not just Bowling Green's.

MS. HARPER LEE: Wherever we put it, we need to give some thought to the fact that it's going to have to be maintained in an area that's going to have to be maintained. And that might be something we need to think about with that little area next to the bank. We don't know. They may want to make that a parking lot next year.

MS. JOHNSON: Our Garden Club put the dogwood trees that are in the lawn of the courthouse. Something there among the dogwood trees would look real nice.

MS. HARPER LEE: Have there been any other things mentioned for the legacy project that we haven't talked about?

MS. SWEETEN: We haven't discussed with the entire group somebody's idea. I have written down Hospital Hill Sculpture Garden.

MS. HARPER LEE: Gary asked me to check on the possibility of getting some funding from some sort of Civil War trust or something for something like that. What I found out from the people I asked; it was their feeling if we were going to ask for money to do something, it had to be related to the Civil War. They didn't want extraneous kinds of things done there. Not that they don't want it; they don't want to fund it unless it has some relationship to the Civil War which makes sense to me.

MS. SWEETEN: What about the plaza space at the Justice Center? Did everybody write that down?

MS. HARPER LEE: We didn't vote on that.

MR. REYNOLDS: I don't think that one got marked off.

MS. CHELF: We talked about that being off the beaten path, every four years to get your drivers license.

DR. MARTIN: We don't want to do anything for these attorneys.

MR. REYNOLDS: I like Romanza's location, something on the Warren County Courthouse and something on Bowling Green City Hall.

MS. HARPER LEE: The courthouse is big enough to put the time capsule there. At least for the foreseeable future those seats of government are going to be maintained.

MR. ERSKINE: If we're talking about putting something on these places, then we're narrowing down to a sculpture or monument. Is that correct? Do you think we should narrow it down to that and decide maybe it should be a sculpture or monument instead of buying property.

MS. SWEETEN: Maybe have another contest for the design of the monument.

MR. ERSKINE: Time wise do we want to have it up by March?

MR. REYNOLDS: This goes back to what Ray Buckberry said, Russell Faxon's sculpture. I don't know what he can do or what his possibilities are.

MS. JOHNSON: We need to decide so we can give the artist true time to work on it to get it finished.

MS. HARPER LEE: We've already passed that point. That's a year or maybe longer project.

MR. ERSKINE: I still have the catalog you gave me. He has some pieces that are like in editions of ten or eight and some that are in the 30 to 40,000 range. We were originally talking about a commissioned sculpture which that's way past.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Like the one the Willock's put on the square, you go out, "Well, I'd like one of those. I've got one. Write you a check and it's in the mail." So that's a possibility out there.

MR. ERSKINE: If we didn't go the sculpture route would be the route of a limestone thing, natural native limestone perhaps either/or type of thing. Then I don't know who would get to design something.

MR. REYNOLDS: Could we do it in conjunction with our logo, let our logo that Roger La Pointe, maybe a miniature of something over in the park?

MR. BUCKBERRY: These stone people can do amazing things, beautiful work.

DR. MARTIN: If you're going to put it on stone they could put the dates the Legislature designated the county. There's a lot of historical data you could put on a monument.

MS. HARPER LEE: What we could do for the next meeting is look at that catalog. I really like the idea of using something from the Warren Countian as a legacy project, if there's something in there we would like.

Another thing we need to do is check and see if it's okay for us to put this stuff in the courthouse yard and city hall yard. It probably is but I think we will need to ask the question, too.

MR. REYNOLDS: You or I give another report to each of the City Commission and the Fiscal Court as we wind down. We both made a visit in the fall. We told them we'd be back to update our progress or give them a financial or overview.

MR. BUCKBERRY: It's probably too late to commission a sculpture. Then if we had a Warren Countian like Russ or this fellow who did the stone piece up front of the old hospital. Thomas, is that correct? Is that his name? Now, he may be able to do something in stone as a Warren Countian, another possibility. I don't know him. Jerry Baker knows him because I asked Jerry to consider -- he's on the hospital whatever; that thing now is not our hospital and that piece of art doesn't get the exposure. I asked him, "Would you all consider relocating that to a place of more visibility and more traffic?"

He said, I'll bring that up at the hospital.

It was donated when it was the hospital and everybody coming in and out the front door. It seems to me like that might be a piece that we could use and relocate and already have it. I don't know if that's feasible or not. The hospital might cooperate with that. I'll call Jerry and ask him if that's feasible.

MR. BUCKBERRY: If you're picking out things, people in sculpture know what's out there and you can look. I don't know that you'll find something that says Warren County to you when you look at it like horses.

DR. MARTIN: A stone could be cut in the shape of Warren County. It wouldn't be very difficult.

MR. BUCKBERRY: I'll call Jerry and ask him who that is, and I will further call this guy and ask him, "Do you have any thoughts? What could you do, or what could an artist like you in your field do," and see what he says.

We talked at one time, those of us who have seen the horses in Lexington across from the Herald-Leader in this little Thoroughbred Park; which again, that doesn't just necessarily say Warren County to you. But they are so popular. I don't know how they put these things. Children will be sitting on a little colt's leg up in the air, and they get all over them.

Just to give you an idea of cost they have put two in the median going into Belle Meade down in Nashville, a mare and a colt. They are really beautiful. They ran an article in the Tennessean the other day that said something about the finances of Belle Meade. They showed these two pieces there and said they cost $87,000. They're really beautiful pieces. I enlarged it, Xeroxed it and mailed it to David Garvin and said, "Don't you think this is a neat idea?" I haven't heard back from David.

MS. HARPER LEE: Check with Jerry Baker. The photographs of the work of Russ Faxon is going around. Mike and I will get together, and one of us go to Fiscal Court the other one to City Commission and give them a report.

Should we also find out before we go if they would be interested in having something or if the mayor's office, the City Commission and Fiscal Court would be interested in having some sort of Bicentennial something in their yard?

MR. ERSKINE: I'll check on that and see if there's a location.

MR. BUCKBERRY: Earlene and I had talked about the beautiful job at Diddle Park. It is as nice as it can be, stone work, benches, landscaping and the whole thing. And Earlene got us some information that Stewart-Richey did the work, Mitchell Leichhardt did the design work. The total project was around $125,000 for Diddle Park. So that just gives an idea of what something like that would run in money.

MS. CHELF: They sold bricks like the Corvette Museum and others for a hundred bucks or whatever it was. You got a brick with your name on it in the walkway.

MR. ERSKINE: Bicentennial finale report. You have an outline that Lena pulled together about some proposed activities. We can incorporate around the premiere weekend. There's a long version on one side and a short version on another side depending on weather and what we want to do.

In terms of having an all-day event on Saturday we probably would need to authorize about $3,000. We're going to have entertainers and so on. We need to think about funding this or having these funds available. It's self explanatory.

I showed this to Gary West earlier, and he was a little concerned about the politicians speaking at noon there and wondered if we might want to steer away from that or at least have both sides represented.

MS. SWEETEN: Senator Ford is retiring, and other candidates will be running for his office next year. It's important to bring politicians to a crowd that doesn't necessarily pay $100 for a dinner so they can speak to them, get to know them. The candidates would appreciate the opportunity to be invited, because they did come to the Veteran's Day parade that was rained on.

MR. REYNOLDS: Officials should be there to head up the contingency. We're just the Commission. They run the show.

MR. ERSKINE: This is basically just an outline to show you that we can fill the day. We could have the Jonesville exhibit on display, a couple of other things that we've done in the past. I just wanted to do this specifically to see if we for sure are going to fund it.

MR. REYNOLDS: Maybe we could do something on a miniature version of First Night but make it historical and 200 years and have different pieces in different buildings, different pieces of art or acting or whether it's exhibits indoors. Maybe City Hall, the courthouse, a couple of churches, Capitol Arts, those kind of places.

MS. JOHNSON: Last weekend we had the State Arts meeting here in Bowling Green. On Friday night all the people attending were bussed downtown. Then in all the buildings and even including this building we had different activities going on. They went from one to another. It really works good like it does for the First Night. Well attended for the kind of event.

MR. ERSKINE: We could fill several venues with activities ranging from other videos being shown to some of these exhibits like Prince Hall Lodge's exhibit, the Jonesville exhibit, on and on and on. It could be Saturday and Sunday. Some of the faculty speakers could do their thing.

I'll just have something to go out to the schools right after Christmas concerning the time capsule, a call for entries.

MS. HARPER LEE: That's a good way to involve school children. What do we want, essays or art? Some of those could be displayed.

MR. WHITTLE: I would like to sit down with you and work up a program for filling the time capsule.

MS. JOHNSON: December is coming up and some of the Bicentennial activities that some of the ladies' groups are doing; one is during the month of December at the Houchens Center. There will be the Trees of Christmas. Twenty-two Christmas trees will be decorated by different civic groups. And that is the Bicentennial project for the Houchens Center. I hope all of you will go by and see those.

On December the 7th the Bowling Green Woman's Club is going to have their home tour which is another Bicentennial event. Some of the homes that will be included will be Jim Johnson's out in River Green, a couple of homes out on Greenhill Road near Alvaton and Hondo Pendleton's house in Hartland.

Then on December the 4th the Garden Club will be having a luncheon where they're selling tickets as a fund raiser.

MS. SWEETEN: Could you please start thinking about ideas for what we're going do with the plaques? We had about twelve or so that we need to do something with.

MR. REYNOLDS: Lena, you should take back to the Mayor, the Commission, the city manager, this finale really should feature the city some way or another, because the county was the feature at the kickoff. If you could take him this list from Jim and indicate that we're trying to finalize and put together what the finale week or weekend will be like. They need get it in here.

MR. BUCKBERRY: You might comment about the political comments, the makeup of that list.