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, September 12, 1986, at 4:00 p.m.

Commissioners Present:
Mike Reynolds, Co-chair, Laura Harper Lee, Co-chair, Earlene Chelf, Tommy Adams, Charles Hardcaastle, H.B. Clark

Also Present:
Julie Allen, Stan Reagan, Marcia Morehead, Fran Hayden, Elaine Walker, Belinda Salzman, James A. Dale, Jr., Scribe

MR. REYNOLDS: Go ahead and get started. Motion to approve the minutes, please.

ACTION: Motion by Romanza Johnson, second by Earlene Chelf to approve the minutes of the 9-5-96 Bicentennial Commission.

MR. REYNOLDS: Tommy, do you have an account opened up for us?

MR. ADAMS: The account is opened. They went ahead and opened it. I got the money from the county. The signature card is going around. When I get the money from the city I'll deposit it. That's 5,000 each to start.

MR. REYNOLDS: I guess we're looking at our committee persons' report.

MR. CLARK: Basically I've got two subcommittees. One of them will be reviewing the events that's coming to the Commission from the public. They're not having any meeting until they have events. The last one they approved was presented to you last week. You all concurred on it. Right now they're just holding.

The other committee, we're having numerous plans on the two major events, the Birthday Bash and the Mock Legislation.

MS. ALLEN: Yesterday we were out at the Convention Center making progress of putting together the budget and making good progress on corporate sponsorship. I talked with Romanza Johnson about helping to begin getting volunteers.

The Mock Legislation, Judge Buchanon is having a meeting very soon to go over this again with Jody Richards so that the Speaker can make personal phone calls. Judge Buchanon is making personal phone calls and letter. But also it helps if the Speaker makes those calls as well. So he's getting together with Speaker Richards again about doing so.

Steve and I have started getting together names of people that have called in to Judge Buchanon's office and offered to volunteer or names of people that we are interested in having to help with us on the events. If you all have any suggestions, feel free to let us know.

MR. CLARK: Thanks.

MR. REYNOLDS: Charles, do you want to bring us up on Promotion & Publications?

MR. HARDCASTLE: The logo is in process. We've had reasonably good response, I think. Lots of phone calls. We sent out a mailing out of the Judge's office as well. They're due back in October 1st, and we'll bring you a recommendation or two for your meeting on October 3rd for selection at that time. With the tentative unveiling on 10-7.

We sent out the news releases for the public meetings. The one tonight is at L.C. Curry and Potter-Gray. We called the television station and asked them which one they were going to cover. So they told us that they're going to cover the L.C. Curry one. We want to make sure that we are not there without people. I would encourage every one of you that can to go with special emphasis on L.C. Curry.

One of the things that our committee is wanting to start working on, we are anxious for some historical information of some sort so that we can start preparing some things and have them kindly on the burner and not for release. Dr. Jerry Martin is not here, but we need to have something, maybe not necessarily Bicentennial Minute for the media every day but to have certainly at least one a week.

MS. HARPER LEE: I talked to Dr. Martin this week. He has set up people to work on certain topics, and they have started. I will talk to him again this coming week. We need to get several of these things prepared in advance, and I'll talk to him about that.

MR. HARDCASTLE: Julie is being very helpful, and the judge told me that she would provide all of us -- whatever. The judge said he would provide her as much as we needed and that she would coordinate anything that we need to do. She and Stan will see that it gets done. Julie has been very helpful. The committee and I want to thank her publicly for it.

MS. ALLEN: Diane Howerton put that together on her computer at home for us. She's always my savior. But Judge Buchanon wanted to make sure we got information out to our school children to take home to their parents. Today we put together a flier that they can send home with their school children to take to their parents. I brought a stack of them here today.

MR. BARBER: I've talked to Laura a couple of times. I have a concern. We have a couple of businesses that are out doing their own thing on the Bicentennial. My fear is that -- and they're asking for participation from other companies to help pay for what they're doing. It's the Daily News with their 144 page picture book and they're asking for ads of close to $700 an ad. That's a pretty good chunk.

There's going to be a lot of companies that are going to say, "Well, I've done my part already by buying these ads. So I'm finished participating in the Bicentennial."

That was a concern I had. So I forwarded a copy of that request that I had received at the bank to Laura. It's just a fear. I don't know if it's founded or not. But there's an awful lot of people to participate in that.

MS. HARPER LEE: I'll pass it around so you can see it. I'm concerned, too.

MR. BARBER: How many do we have in the community that are doing things such as this that I don't know about?

MS. CHELF: We have a confession.

MS. HARPER LEE: We're our own competition. We have been granted some money and we're looking for some more money to fund our exhibit. That has been in the process for quite a while. And I don't really know how much longer we'll be looking.

MS. CHELF: What I did today, because I felt like in talking to some of the committees that there was misunderstanding about that. I did bring a completed form to pass to H.B. It's about our exhibit at the Kentucky Museum so you can look at it and do whatever you need to do. So all of you would be aware that we have funding.

MR. BARBER: So in your case you fill out the form and then where it says funding required, it would be zero, because you're not going to be asking anything of this Commission.

MS. CHELF: Possible not. We were successful in getting from First American National Bank $25,000 as title sponsor for our exhibit. That whole project carries a price tag of 50,000. They have given us half. We also have a proposal at Commonwealth Health for 12,500 which makes them one of two cosponsors. We have not heard back from them.

If we're successful with Commonwealth Health, we will then go to another underwriter for that remaining 12,500. If all of those efforts fall apart, we would probably be back to other businesses, other sectors for maybe $5,000, several at $5,000.

What I have done on that for explanation to you is suggested that if all our fund raising fails at some point we might come back to this Commission and see if they would be willing to give us maybe 5,000. But we will exhaust these other possibilities first.

MS. HARPER LEE: This is kind of standard procedure for us whether we're competing with something else or not. This is basically how we fund exhibits.

The exhibit is scheduled to open March 1st of 97. I don't really know other than right now to be aware of things like this when we know about them. I don't know of anything to do. Do you have a recommendation?

MR. BARBER: No. I just have the concern. Then several months ago, probably eight or nine months ago, we had a meeting out at the Plaza with some corporate types and the Walkers were present. There was discussion of making a film. And the price tag for that is considerable.

And I think that I would be willing to yield the floor to Ms. Walker if she wants to talk about her project.

MS. ELAINE WALKER: Yes. For those of you who don't know who I am, I'm Elaine Walker. We've got a company called Peridot Pictures. We did the Beauty Of The Southland, the L&N Depot project.

In conjunction with that last summer we developed the Bicentennial Film Project. It's largely based on the community enthusiasm, excitement for the project.

It's a one-hour docudrama that would cover the history of Bowling Green and Warren County and bring it to life through several reenactments similar to the reenactments that were done at the Depot in the 1920's and the 1940's.

The idea was to use this as one of the key events in celebrating the Bicentennial and using the reenactments as mini-events so that people could come down dressed in costume.

There was talk about possibly reconstructing the old log courthouse. Judge Buchanon was interested in establishing a Bicentennial Park. That could be constructed on a location be part of a permanent Bicentennial Park.

As a result of that we had meetings with the Judge, with the Mayor and meetings with corporate executives last summer. That's been put on hold. Basically the reason that I'm here today is that I wanted to talk with you all.

We had talked about going forward similar to the museum to seek corporate funding. The question came up; what if we to go to corporations and they say, "Well, we're already part of the film project. We have given to the Bicentennial."

So the question for us, we need the support of the Commission, the community; because what we're trying to do -- it's a considerable price tag. The budget is 120,000. What we're talking about is probably in the neighborhood of six to $800,000 for production value if you had to costume people, pay everybody.

Unless we've got that support it's not going to happen. We're excited about it. We think that it's a good project. But clearly it has to be something that the community gets behind for it to be successful.

We also believe that it's the kind of project that can generate national publicity; showing the community out and Fountain Square where the streets have been covered with sawdust and you've got the horse and buggies and everyone has come out.

Basically their price of admission was putting on a costume to reenact William Jennings Bryan's appearance at Fountain Square. It's filming as well as celebrating as well as being part of this project.

MR. BARBER: So we've got the film project that's 120,000 essentially. Some of the corporate members that were at that first meeting are the same people that you have asked. So three of the people that were there are already participating.

So those that showed enthusiasm toward your project have already committed or are already in the process of committing elsewhere.

This is the kind of thing we're going to run into. I don't have an answer. But we're going to have some overlap.

One of my thoughts was to get in touch with some of the larger corporations, because this is budget time. Anybody that formulates a budget is doing it now for next year or will be over the next month. Now is the time to ask.

We can't wait until we have projects and then go to them and say, "Can you contribute?" We have to ask now, as soon as possible for the larger corporations.

MS. CHELF: Do you see that as asking them maybe to give to the Bicentennial Commission and we have this corpus of money and then the projects come to us and we fund them? Is that what you see would be a good way maybe to approach it from here on out?

MR. BARBER: In our corporation, if someone were to come to me and say, "Eddie, I need $20,000," for me to just call up Trans Financial and say, "Vince, will you given $50,000 to the Commission," he's going to say, "Eddie, what for?" "I don't know Vince."

I'm going to ask him to earmark it in his budget, and hopefully he will do that. Somebody is going to have to go either around us, through us or something to make sure that that is tapped.

MS. ALLEN: We were talking about sponsorship for our kickoff celebrations. I totally agree from any experiences that I have had with fund raising that you really have to match up someone with something.

I know that we don't have all of our somethings planned at this time. But I think it would be of benefit to us to get the group of people together and make a presentation about our somethings, even though we know we want one of those somethings to be an outdoor event in the spring or summer but we don't know exactly what that something is. It could be open to the families and whatever.

Someone could identify with that and say, "I like doing family events." Someone could identify with this film project and say, "I like doing something like that because it's going to be a piece of history that's going to last forever."

We have about four or five something projects, and we see who wants to get on what band wagon. I've had some good progress this week on our kickoff celebrations.

But I think that they also need included in this meeting, because I am having another meeting tomorrow with a very, very good prospect. But that person doesn't need to be left out of this meeting, because this person has a lot of resources. He can really make something else happen, too.

I think that the idea of getting these people together, like Eddie was talking about a while ago going through this project, I'll be glad to work with Eddie and other people on putting together a presentation and let them decide what they want their projects to be.

MR. BARBER: Can we formulate some letter signed over the signature of the Judge and the Mayor and you, too, as cochairs of the Commission stating, "Keep us in mind during your budget process."

MR. REYNOLDS: Put that out for immediate release and at the time some kind of directory ought to be use to select those that we're going to target to send those to.

MR. BARBER: Your letter should say, "A phone call will be forthcoming," and then we call them and say, "What did you set aside?" And so that we can go on and get at least a verbal commitment from them.

MS. ALLEN: We've got a fund raising event that's maybe a $25 per person event later on, March or April. And then we've got some sort of outdoor family event. We've got the film project, education projects, some sort of closing ceremony.

We have sent a letter over Judge Buchanon's signature to all contact people or presidents of civic organizations in town. We've talked to them about the function of this Commission.

We asked them to consider a couple of things. We've asked them to consider volunteering for our events or serving on committees. We've included contact names and the name of those committees.

We asked them to submit ideas for projects or activities or events. We included one of our forms for them to fill out and complete. We asked them, we said, "We know many of you have annual activities throughout the year." We asked them to consider taking on a bicentennial theme for one of their major activities next year.

And we asked them to contact us if they should decide to do so and/or to fill out one of those forms.

Judge Buchanon sent a letter and an activity form to every single county employee asking for them to volunteer and to submit their ideas for problems and activities.

MS. HARPER LEE: We need to gather the list of activities that we have right now that are going to take money. When you filled out the form, did you ask for a certain amount?

MS. WALKER: That's one of the questions. What we were looking at doing is simply taking the project and going to major corporations and saying, "Would you like to be a title sponsor? For that you get X, Y and Z."

We would like to find out what the Commission would prefer for us to do. Our time line is that we need to begin. We need to have things in place the first part of November to begin production if we're looking to go into production in the spring of 97 with expected completion in the summer.

At one time there was talk about some celebration around the Fourth of July in 97. They also were interested in having outdoor events in the spring. That could be part of the celebration.

One thing that I did neglect to mention is that we are working in cooperation with the Landmark Association on this event. We're excited about that because of their interest in preserving history. So they are a partner on this.

Would you prefer for us to go ahead and take the project and seek our own funding? Again we would need to know that this Commission approves of the project, because we can't go forward and say this is a Bicentennial film and the Commission doesn't approve it.

MS. HARPER LEE: I think the first thing you would need if you want the Commission's approval would be to send that through H.B.'s committee. The Finance Committee needs to meet and work out how we're going to handle funding.

MR. BARBER: If they say they don't need funding, they're going to work out the project themselves and there's no funding; at least we know about the project.

Again I'm not trying to browbeat on the Daily News. They went into their thing. I don't think they submitted a form or contacted the Commission or anything. But at least we know about the project. We know what was going on. And if the collars are being pulled from the corporate side, we know who is doing it.

I don't want people to get off with $700. They're going to have to spend more than $700 to get through this thing.

MS. ALLEN: We just need to remember that when the Bicentennial Commission starts looking for our dollars we need to remember, okay, we already went to these people. These are already crossed off our list. We're not going get 20 or ten or $15,000 from these people.

MR. REYNOLDS: Every event needs to be brought through H.B.'s committee for approval and presentation to us. We've approved three programs so far. We may be funding some more. That's probably going to be one of them.

MR. CLARK: We need to understand we are all going to be competing for the same dollars. I don't think that is unhealthy. Somebody else may think, "I need to hang my hat on an event in this community." The major players are going to be looking for major events to put their name plate on.

MR. REYNOLDS: We're not necessarily licensing anybody to do anything, but we do have an approval process that we have in place. We'll continue it.

MR. HARDCASTLE: How much money does this Commission actually need? If we have all the major events sponsored, how much money do we need?

MS. HARPER LEE: I don't think we know that, do we?

MR. BARBER: I don't.

MS. HARPER LEE: I don't think we know that.

MR. HARDCASTLE: My thoughts are we're not going to need an awful lot.

MS. ALLEN: Maybe these two fund raisers that Julie talked about will be sufficient.

MR. HARDCASTLE: If we have one where we sell films like they do at the Kentucky Derby or somebody sponsors one of these posters like they had last week or sell the Bicentennial pins for $2.

MR. REYNOLDS: We're going to have a logo made. We ought to make that into a pin.

MR. REYNOLDS: Romanza, do you want to pick up with what the volunteers are doing?

MS. JOHNSON: I am collecting names. If each of you would listen to people telling you that they would like to help us some way, pick up their name and address so that when we have a need that we can quickly get some volunteers together.

MR. REYNOLDS: Any ideas or any new business or comments to add before we move on?

MS. SALTZMAN: My name is Belinda Saltzman. I am here because we received a letter from Stan Reagan that was about creating the logo and brochures, some print materials. And I'm sorry to say it's kind of the first time I had heard about the Bicentennial planning.

We made phone call and asked about the planning. I was told there would be a meeting today and that if I wanted to kind of understand what was happening to come to the meeting. This would be a good place to see the structure.

I am interested in being on a committee. I'm trying to figure out where I fit in.

MR. REYNOLDS: Belinda, thank you. You can work with Romanza on what committee you can be assigned. Charlie Hardcastle or Stan Reagan can give you details on how to get your logo process started.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you all for coming.

DR. ERSKINE: I'm Dr. Jim Erskine. I've been on other committees around, and I can be of assistance.

Mr. Clark has a bull by the horns. I'm on the board of the Glasgow Highland Games. One thing I can tell you, go up to Frankfort, the Tourism Commission, they will be interested in this because it will draw people here.

We went up three weeks ago because, not this coming year but the next one, we plan on having the Highland Games International which will embody all the different states.

They're going to give us the names of companies that none of us would ever think of that like to help just for the publicity they get. Just talking to them you can get an awful lot of names of people to contact, not necessarily in Bowling Green. But it will be a state-wide interest. I think that might be of help.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you, doctor, very much. We have people like Elaine Walker talking about her possible project. I think Bill Shumm was here last week talking about his poster project that his wife might could produce.

We get different things like that, people coming to individual meetings who have heard what we're trying to do and have a project possibly that could get approved or be sold to us or whatever.

I think at least if there are programs that are depicted, they ought to fill out the forms and send them through and let them all be processed. If somebody comes and they say, "Here's what I'd like to do," then they're gone, we're not going to vote them up or down that day. We're going to have them come through the process.

And if they do, fine. They're approved, fine. If they're not, they're not. And that's something I see we ought to stick to, at least one form of business.

MS. HARPER LEE: Julie, while I was gone did you talk about the mission statement that you formulated?

MS. ALLEN: I took four different mission statements and objectives, and a lot of mission statements for groups I've been involved with; I took theirs and tried to adapt ours to make ours look like a real mission statement.

MR. REYNOLDS: Each of our own commission members were to have turned in our own mission statement about three weeks ago. Julie, is this a combination or a conglomeration?

MS. ALLEN: It's a combination of four different ones that we received and Judge Buchanon's verbal one the other night that I took notes; so a combination of five different ones. I tried to make it into an actual mission statement form.

MS. HARPER LEE: Any comments?

MS. ALLEN: If you have any suggestions I'll be glad to make changes.

MR. REYNOLDS: Does anybody have anything they want to change or delete or add? Do I hear a motion for approval?

MS. CHELF: I see on here "commerical business." Should it say "commerce?" "Increase commerce, tourism and convention activities."

MS. ALLEN: Okay.

ACTION: Motion by H.B. Clark, second by Romanza Johnson and unanimously approved to adopt the mission statement by Julie Allen as amended.

MS. HARPER LEE: The other item of old business I'd like to talk about and hopefully reach a conclusion on is something we talked about for several weeks; is to officially name Julie as our coordinator. I think we all talked about this for a long time, and Judge Buchanon has pretty much agreed to that. Julie has agreed to it. Is that okay with everybody?

ACTION: Motion by Charles Hardcastle, second by Eddie Barber and unanimously approved to name Julie Allen as Coordinator.

MS. ALLEN: I do want to say I do have other roles and functions in Judge Buchanon's office as well, but I have time to dedicate to help coordinate this.

MR. REYNOLDS: Thank you.