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08/12/2025 Minutesma MINUTES OF THE MAIN STREET ADVISORY BOARD MEETING OF THE CITY OF PARIS, TEXAS AUGUST 12, 2025 The MAIN STREET ADVISORY BOARD (MSAB) of the City of Paris met for a regular session at 4:30 p.m. on TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2025, at the PARIS CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS, 107 E. KAUFMAN, PARIS, TX 75460. Present: Board Members: Kevin Moore, Glee Emmit, Tyrone Hayden, William Walker, Kim Kalina, Melissa Jones, Mary Hart City Representatives: Cheri Bedford, Main Street Manager Osei Amo-Mensah, Director of Planning and Community Development Absent: Board Members: NA Call meeting to order. Kevin Moore, president, called the meeting to order at 4:3 1 p.m. He read the vision and mission statements. Citizens' Forum. No citizens want to speak at this time. 2. Review and Approve minutes from July 8, 2025 meeting. A Motion to approve the minutes of July 8, 2025 was made by Board Member William Walker and seconded by Board Member Glee Emmit. Motion carried, 8 ayes — 0 nays, Minutes were approved. Committee Reports - Workplan Updates - A. William Walker- has nothing to report. Kim Kalina- shared about the project, "Women in Harmony", three glass on glass garden stakes created for the Parc de Arts, an art park near downtown. Four Members of the Main Street Paris Arts Movement (Mary Hart, Melissa Jones, Kim Kalina, and Suzanna Coyle) devoted time and effort to create beautiful glass art that will be donated to the park at a future date. Mary Hart- 1. Crosswalk art scheduled to begin this weekend. Friday, crosswalk will be blocked off for painting on Satuday and Sunday. It will be a sun, bluebonnets and a butterfly, very colorful crosswalk. The Artist Guild and Arts Alliance helped raise funds for the supplies of the crosswalk art. A total of $800.00 has been donated by these two organizations. 2. Worked on Festival of Pumpkins- planning new ideas with Cheri Bedford, a community member, Megan Glascock, and Kim Kalina. We are going to be adding a Battle of the Artists. We will have 3 rounds. 2 Artists will move on from each round for a final championship round. We have all artists except for 2 needed to make this happen. Paintings will be auctioned from the competition and that money will go back to the artists. 3. Paris Poetry Society met and participated in the last Friday Art show at the Gallery. Money collected from the community art show was donated to NIS Paris Art Movement (400.00) Finally, 4. Kim and I participated in the Tour de Paris bike race- 47 volunteer hours this month total for Mary Hart. Kevin Moore asked about putting out social media regarding the crosswalks, Mary Hart confirmed, that yes, we have a photographer and plan to do that. Melissa Jones- Melissa Jones participated with the Main Street Paris Arts Movement meeting at Bonfire, helped create part of the GOG Garden Stakes over 3 separate days, will be participating in Battle of the Artists, and has offered to take the lead in the Scarecrow Competition Idea. We are asking downtown businesses to create a scarecrow, put it on display, and ask the public to vote by putting pennies in a container for that particular scarecrow. A map would be available for all community members showing where scarecrows are located. All proceeds would go to the Art Festival planned for the Spring of 2026. Kevin Moore asked if this was a Paris Downtown Association(PDA) Initiative. Melissa said no, we are going to go to them to see if they want to participate. Cheri Bedford stated that she met with the president of PDA, Misti, and they are liking the idea. More info. to come. Glee Emmite, regarding arts and entertainment, was contacted by a community member about adding our events to a community calendar. This year, Halloween will be on a Friday evening. In the past, downtown merchants had given out candy. PDA has elected not to do candy because most churches do something, and it is a football night. PDA has elected to do a business of the month. They will vote and are presenting a beautiful sandwich board to be displayed in front of the recipient for that month. This month, Paris Brewery won. This will encourage people to come into the businesses. PDA will start info about the Christmas parade and events downtown. Tyrone Hayden- nothing to report. Kevin Moore- walked around downtown with Cheri Bedford to deliver a newsletter to vendors. We discussed trying to get vendors to do something in front of their shops during Festival of Pumpkins -like an adult open air market to encourage more people buying things in shops. A physical, perhaps quarterly, newsletter is important to encourage communication and collaboration. This newsletter should include PDA events. Kevin Moore suggested that building a strong foundation with our board is key. How do we ensure that the MSAB has a strong foundation that will set us up for the next 10 years? Policies are needed to have a smooth transition between board members leaving and entering office. We are currently not required to have a VCC rep, etc. In 3- 5-7 years, who will now be on our board? Kevin Moore suggested that we may need to consider designated members needed to ensure we are continuing to work with other organizations to advance our plan. Most of our plan includes Arts and Entertainment. Kevin Moore asked about the different art organizations in Paris. Mary Hart defined the different groups: Guild membership is to allow you to sell art in the gallery, provide workshops for the community, and participate in city events. The alliance is moving more towards offering big -named ballet or larger programs related to art to schools and children in the schools. When COVID shut everything down, they were then gifted the land for the Pare de Arts. Mary Hart shared that she is a member of both the Arts Alliance and the Guild at this time. Mary also stated that the MSPAM and Guild is there to support art in downtown. One of the things they did as a Guild was to provide nine murals for the Parc de Arts. Each group has a different mission. The Alliance would be better aligned with our Toole Plan at this tune. Melissa Jones agreed with that statement. Cheri Bedford stated that she thought we already had ordinances to include VCC. The Historic Preservation Committee does have an ordinance to have a MSAB member included. This is Glee Emmite, as a member of HPC and MSAB, for us. It is not on our ordinance, however. Most board members cannot serve on two boards, but this is an exception per Cheri Bedford. Karen Dougherty, Chamber/VCC, is here as an ex -officio member. Kevin asked, Which would be best to pull from someone to attend as an ex -officio for art? Kevin Moore suggested tabling the decision to invite other groups as ex -officio members at this time. Mary Hart offered to meet with all art organizations to see who aligns the most with our goals. Cheri Bedford stated that she really likes the way the chamber appoints ex -officio offices. She will meet with the city attorney to see if we can add more ex -officio seats on the board or if it needs to be in our ordinance. Kevin Moore suggests that we table this at this time and bring it to future agenda items. B. Paris Downtown Association Rep, Glee Emmite- big discussion for the entire meeting was regarding parking. The parking lot behind Paris Coffee is in disrepair. Wanting to find out who has a budget to repair the parking lots around downtown Paris. C. Historic Preservation Commission- Glee Emmite, Met on July 21. Taco Q is taking down the old garage sign and is putting in a new sign that was approved by the HPC; Mary Hart gave a presentation about the crosswalks. Downtown Asian restaurant rep did not show (out of the country) so the facade grant was tabled for now. Fitzhugh Home is looking at a facade grant. Pan's Lux moving from 221 Bonham to next door to SOHO and has applied for a facade grant. D. Chamber/VCC, Karen Dougherty reported- There were 724 registered riders for the Tour de Paris Bike Ride, 600 showed. Lake Crook Jet Ski Races were well attended, and had 425 riders. The Chamber sponsored the 66th Rodeo this year, which is new for them. Inked Tattoo Convention is at the Love Civic Center this weekend. Chapparel Square Dancing, now called Evening in Paris, is coming and coincides with the Hatch Chill Festival. We usually host 500-600 dancers. Karen is happy to advertise the Hatch Chili Festival at the dance event. 4. Coordinator's Report, Cheri Bedford- Invited us all to familiarize ourselves with not only the Toole plan, but attachment A of the Toole plan. Everything is online. They are both important to understand. So, I invite you to take a look at both of these and call me if you have any questions. Cheri met with Misti, president of the PDA, and had a good discussion about the Festival of Pumpkins. When we host events downtown, sometimes vendors down side streets, feel left out. This year we are trying some new things like, not having as many vendors, adding ambience and decor to encourage foot traffic in certain areas, and adding new events during the festival. Misti was really excited about the idea of the scarecrow contest. Last week, people were issued warnings about parking for more than 2 hours, and issued information. It is labeled as 2 -hour parking. 400 spots to park in downtown. We will be hosting the MS Design workshop on the 21 st from 9-4. Managers coming from around TX to our beautiful downtown. 15 reservations so far. It is an all day event. We will have a walking tour and see I st street. The design workshop talks about your downtown all the way to discuss architecture. This is the last workshop and they picked Paris. Chris Lampka, the guy who designed First St., is also coming to see its progress and the rest of downtown. The First Street paver project- we have had to cut down some of our design area to allow for the fire hydrants. We will have about 65 large bricks and 150 small bricks. We are only offering 8 x 8 or 4 x8 for 150.00 or 75.00. It is a bit higher if you want a logo included. The web -sit is almost ready to go. TX Downtown Associations has the TX Presidents Award. We are going to nominate 2 businesses: Cody Head of Bonfire for Best Commercial Interior. Pan's Brewing Company for Best Restoration Renovation. The Board will pay for their application. The businesses have to write their own narrative/story. It is reviewed by a panel from across the state and then the public will vote. Salsa on the Square coming end of September. Several businesses have sponsored the event. Tamales- $750.00, $1,000.00 from Richard Drake, Paris Regional $500.00, 24/7 Mesa $500.00, CUTX- expecting $1500.00. We will be getting around 4,000 total. Downtown Guide- Glee and Cheri have been working to update this guide together. It is with the design person right now. Downtown trash cans some were replaced with a smaller trash can. It can go up against the building better. It narrows down the look of all of the trash cans downtown. There is going to be a newsletter each month for vendors and shared at the Paris Downtown Association meetings each month. PDA meetings should be attended by one of our board members. Glee mentioned signage at Tacos Q. Those signs were from a product of the Texas Design Services. Festival of Pumpkins sponsor forms are completed.Megan Glascock, Kim Kalina, Mary Hart and Cheri Bedford met to gain insight and ideas for the 25th anniversary of the Festival. Megan wants to be involved and loves anything downtown. She met with others that had ideas and shared with us to make our festival as phenomenal as possible. The festival is done in downtown for a reason, to benefit our downtown. There are more sponsorship opportunities. We do have some obligations to pay for such as police services, advertising, and porta-potties. But we can give some people opportunities that are different than last year. Please spread the word and talk to others about sponsorship. 5. Future Agenda Items- Kevin Moore, president, asked that we take a moment to review our Toole plan, Annex A and B, and the city strategies, to become more knowledgeable about what it says relating to parking and traffic so that we can discuss and come up with recommendations, if any. Part of our role as members of the MSAB, per Kevin Moore, is to be the "subject matter" experts who advise the city council. How do we get the "subject matter" experts on our board, and keep them there, from these other organizations? How we can align together and work without competing our efforts? Kevin also asked that once the First Street Project is complete on Dec. 31, that we are ready to recommend, what, from the Toole plan, would be our next project. Kevin finally suggests that we review adding outside ex -officio members to include other organizations that would directly tie to our Toole plan. Adjournment. There being no further business, A Motion to adjourn was made by Board Member Mary Hart and seconded by Board Member Melissa Jones. Motion carried, 8 ayes - 0 nays. Kevin Moore, president, adjourned the meeting at 5:27 p.m. Chairman