I'd like to call to order. I'd like to call to, oh, that's nice and loud. I'd like to call to order the July 1st, 2024, Ashland Public Arts Commission meeting. Thank you, citizens, for joining us this evening. Thank you, Arts Commission members, council member, and Martha Miller. Thank you. I'd like to open up the meeting for citizen input. If there are any citizens who'd like to say something please step to the microphone, state your name and your address. Hi, my name is Pamela Soapal, 311 North Sneat Street, Ashland, Virginia. Thank you. I don't have my glasses and a reading from a telephone. When I see this sculpture, I think diversity. That is what first came to my mind. I see diverse cultures, faces, beliefs, homes, incomes, methods of transportation. I see one community intertwined. Methods of transportation. I see one community intertwined. We all eat drink, laugh, cry, use the bathroom, love, etc. We all do the same things But the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the sculpture was intertwined We're all in it together to achieve a safe community and all of Ashland's goals. As the sculpture points upward before it curves, I see the town going to new heights. This is a beautiful piece of art to represent our town. Interpretation of it is whatever is in your imagination. It doesn't show what it is, but it lets you imagine. I think art is imagination. I think a lot of us can look at a piece and not everyone is going to have the same thought about it. Imagination is unlimited. It just keeps going and probably varies from day to day. What someone thought it was yesterday might not be the same thing that it is today. I wanna thank you our professionals for making this selection. I am terribly excited about it. Thank you. Thank you, thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else who would like to have a moment? Okay, with that we'll move on to the first action item which is the Gateway Public Art Revise Proposal presented by Mr. Harry McDaniel. Ms. Miller, would you do your staff report about that? Sure, thank you, Ms. Bax. So here we are again. It's great to see everyone and thank you to Mr. McDaniel for making the journey again from Asheville. So just a quick recap if this is anyone's first time joining us in February of 2024. The Public Art Commission issued a request for qualifications from artist and artist teams for a new public artwork to welcome residents and visitors to the entrance of downtown Ashland at the intersection of US Route 1 and England Street. In March of 2024, a subcommittee which consisted of missbacks, our chair and Mr. Bill Brill, the vice chair and council member Barnhart, met to select three finalists to proceed in the process. Staff subsequently issued a RFP request for proposals to those three artists for consideration at a meeting of the Public Art Commission on May 20th and the concept presented by Mr. McDaniel was selected by a vote of three to two to proceed in the process with revisions. In the meantime, staff shared revision suggestions collected from members of the commission directly with Mr. McDaniel for his consideration, as well as publicize the concept selection on all of our town channels encouraging public input and community feedback on the design. All the feedback that has been collected has been included in the agenda for the Public Art Commission's consideration. And as of today, we have received one email comment that I wanted to share from Ms. Bethany Matheson, who is a resident of the town of Ashland Living in the Carter's Hill neighborhood. And I will read this so it can be entered into the minutes. Hello, I love the Gateway Art proposal, but was curious about the location and scale. Additionally, is this tall enough? Twenty feet seems not tall enough. Has the town slash artists considered a modified design that is 30 or 40 feet? Has there been any research into what is actually visible from a distance? I'm not sure this long-term investment will meet the needs. The duration of this installation should be a primary consideration when considering the scale and location. Thank you, Bethany Matheson. I responded to Ms. Matheson thanking her for her comments and let her know that I would make sure that that was shared for your consideration at this meeting. And then not a public comment but I didn't want to share feedback that I received from Ms. Ball who as you all know was unable to attend the meeting here this evening. That's why there's only four of you present which still represents a quorum but I wanted to make sure that her input was incorporated for your consideration as well. So when I shared the agenda packet she replied, I read through all the documents. My only question is about the wording on the pedestals. Is the plan to have center of the universe spelled out or just the initials co2, COTU? If it's the initials alone, I'd worry that the meaning would be lost on folks who aren't from the area. I love the comeback around. And then she finished with, I love the lights exclamation point. So that's all I have for the staff report. So without kind of further delay, I would like to invite Mr. McDaniel to come up and present his revised design. And I believe he also mentioned he's going to give kind of a quick overview of kind of where we started for those that may not have been present prior. Mr. McDaniel. Hello again. Let's see. I'd like to just make one comment on the first person who spoke. It's as an artist, especially putting works in public spaces. It's really wonderful to hear people interpret a piece in different ways. I tend to have specific ideas that I'm working toward in developing designs. In this case, really working with the center of the universe idea, the idea of orbits. And she kind of took it into some different directions, which I thought were really interesting, and they fit with the design. So that's one thing that I think can be interesting with abstract artists, is that people can take it in different directions. Let's see. So to just give a little bit of an overview for anybody who may not be familiar with the project. As I just said, the basic concept that I was working with in this design was the idea of an orbital path. If can you scroll that page up just a little? Okay, the lower illustration there shows an elliptical shape that I developed the design around. So the two sections of the sculpture on either side of the road imply an arch going across the road and the intertwined strands of each section kind of suggest like rotating orbits of planets or asteroids, comets or whatever. So I was going with that as the basic theme driving the design. So those, the two sections will be approximately 20 feet tall. There's sort of depends on where you're measuring from, but approximately 20 feet tall. And since the previous meeting, after that meeting I got the feedback that, or during that meeting also I got feedback that it might be nice to set the two sections up on pedestals. And so I spent quite a bit of time playing with different options on that. And, um, the F and the scrolled animal further to the next image. I, in trying different heights for pedestals, it seemed like anything over about a foot and a half or two feet would begin to obstruct the sightline through the sculpture for traffic, in particular, traffic pulling out of the, is it Walgreens? Walgreens, yeah. Walgreens looking west. So it seemed like the 18 inch to 2 foot range was about the ideal height for the pedals, so anything lower, and it's hard to have room for a sign in there. And originally I had some hesitations about the idea of adding a petal, but when I tried it out, visually I just really liked the way it worked. I feel like it really kind of anchors the sculpture and I really like the bricks. They're a great contrast with the aluminum, both the color textures, and I like it that relates to the history of the town, or just even broadly, just a general sense of history. So I feel like that helps to tie very modern sort of design into a historic area. And I felt like lighted signage would work really well on the pedestal. It would sort of draw attention down to the sign a little bit at night and also relate to the lights within the sculpture. And I'm thinking using aluminum for the backlit letters, again, will tie on with the aluminum of the sculpture. So for me, that all works really well, and I hope that works well for other people. Let's see. A month ago, after the last meeting, when Martha and I first began to talk about this meeting coming up. She informed me, you know, a month from now, the committee would meet again and I thought a month. I don't need a month to get everything together. I just need to research lights a little bit and send a few more rendering to that sort of thing. Turned out that one question led to another which led to five more. And as the month went on, it just kept seeming like I had more questions to answer. So a lot of logistical issues with the lighting. And I looked into issues around having subcontractors and doing the installation, that sort of thing, and discovered that there's some Virginia requirements in terms of contractors that could make things complicated. And Martha and I talked to some about the city actually taking on the footing and the electrical work and I just do the sculpture. And I think that that is probably going to be the smoothest way to get through the whole process rather than me trying to do areas where I have less expertise I can focus on what I do well. So, and there are some details, some logistical things that are still kind of open into questions, but I've resolved as much as I could and I hope I can answer whatever questions you may have this evening. Let's see. So I did bring along a small sculpture in progress tonight to give you a little better idea of the types of finishes that are possible in the aluminum. And the lights that I have in this are the brand of lighting which I plan to use. Although this is the retail version of that lighting. There's a commercial grade, which is what I would be using. They basically look the same, but the commercial grade is, I guess, a little bit more heavy-duty and the controller units for the lights, I think, are a little, a little more advanced. But this gives you an idea of the range of effects that you can get from the lights, twinkling and fading and, you know, a huge variety of color. The app that works with the lights has all sorts of presets, which is mostly what I have going here. I have spent a little bit of time experimenting with making custom programs to run the lights. And it's not terribly hard to do that, and it's fun. And that's something I look forward to sort of getting more into the subtleties on that. But the way I've illustrated the lights in the revised proposal, with the way of illustrated the lights in the revised proposal. What I have in mind is to do sort of a predominant color in each strand with some little variation and kind of subtle fading, kind of subtle sparkles within it. I would not be aiming for a Las Vegas strip show kind of look. Definitely pleasing colors and kind of some subtle movement and that sort of thing. So that's where things stand with the lighting. Let's see. I think if there's something else I should cover here. As far as the signage, I struggled a bit in thinking about, since there are four opportunities for science, I struggled a bit to think about what would be most appropriate. It seemed clear to have Ashland on one side. And I like the idea of come back around sort of referencing the elliptical orbits. I wasn't sure if people would quite make sense of that, but basically the signage is all open to some discussion as far as I'm concerned. And in the revised proposal, I put COTU for two of the signs. And I actually think it would be more interesting to have a fourth sign rather than repeating one. But the options I was thinking of, I wasn't really thrilled with. interesting to have a fourth sign rather than repeating one. But the options I was thinking of I wasn't really thrilled with this. So I went with that as a placeholder. But anyway, there's room for discussion on that. The length of phrase I think is limited just in terms of readability, getting in, you know, since the limited amount of space that the sign has to fit into a long phrase, we'll get into such small letters that I think people will end up missing it. So that would be my only reservation about going wild with any kind of phrases. Let's see. And since you mentioned the size question. The size that I have proposed kind of maxes out what I can easily do in my studio, what I can easily transport on my truck, and what I can easily install with the crane that I have on my truck. So going to a larger size, sort of, even going a little bit larger, kind of throws in a number of complications pretty quickly. And I like working, I like creating large sculptures. I would be happy to make a larger sculpture, but there would be a bit of a price jump going a little bit larger. And let's see. I guess also just logistically, there may be more issues with permits in terms of kind of taking up more of the street for the installation and that sort of thing. It might be a matter of, well, a larger piece would probably involve hiring a crane. It might involve hiring a truck to bring it up here. I could probably make it work in my studio, it would be very crowded in there. Let's see. And also just like in terms of permitting issues and that kind of thing, there could be some additional complications. If I were to make the design larger, it wouldn't be a matter of just exactly enlarging the shape as it is because the I'm assuming that the six foot by six foot dimensions for the footing are pretty firm because otherwise you have problems with placing the sidewalk and that sort of thing. Yes and that footing size is in the easement agreements we have with the property owners. So yeah we're pretty locked into that. So, so in enlarging it, I would basically have to keep the bottom the same size and kind of stretch the sculpture. And there would be some, okay, and I've done a couple of renderings just kind of giving a sense of proportion for larger pieces. And this one on the, this is, okay, on this one, on the right is the size that I have proposed, and then on the left is a larger version, which I have labeled as 150% because that's the way it came up in my CAD program, but looking at it, it does not look like 150% to me, so I'm a little confused about that. But for the discussion of scale, it gives a good visual reference anyway. And so I feel like this larger scale visually works well. I did another rendering a little larger, okay, this is, so that's what my CAD program was telling me is 200%. To me, this seems maybe a little excessive. Another thing in going larger with either of these larger versions, it means they're coming way out over the road, which when you look at an individual section as opposed to looking at the two sides of the implied arch, it has a less balanced feeling than the original proposal, which that design could actually just sit on the pedestal without falling over without being bolted down, whereas the bigger ones, if you've said it on the pedestal without falling over without being bolted down, whereas the bigger ones, if you've said it on the pedestal without bolting it, it would fall down. And that's a... I feel like that has a subtle aesthetic effect on people that... That's something I would have to think about in... tweaking the design to make it larger, to perhaps bringing the outside of it out a little bit or something to give a little more sense of weight on the outside so it didn't feel off balance. Let's see. And I guess another thought in terms of going larger would be the footing would have to be deeper. And I'm not even sure exactly how deep it needs to be for the proposed size. I have guistimated about four feet deep and having a piece that is cantilever that's actually one thing to lean as opposed to just sitting on the pedestal. It's going to need an even bigger footing. So, just going bigger kind of affects every step of the chain. I guess that's my point there. So, I think, let's say I guess do. I can't remember if I said this. In bringing up my sample piece, this is an unfinished sculpture, so I did want to emphasize as you look at it, some of the lights are not quite in place. The backside of it is not yet finished. It gives the general idea of the effect that we can get with lights. It gives a general idea what this type of light will do, but don't look too closely. So if people have questions, I will do, but don't look too closely. So if people have questions, I'm happy to answer questions. I'd like to open up the floor for about the next three or four, five minutes at the most to public questions. If the public has any questions, please feel free to ask those of the artist. I would just ask that you step up to the microphone and state your name and address. If there are no public, please. I'm Gary Robertson 707 South Center Street. As I hear the artist, I think we don't want to mess with the aesthetic. We don't want to mess with the aesthetic. We don't want to do that. I don't think. I believe the lights will then wait and size to the sculpture. I think that will do it. But if your artist tells you you have a problem with the ascetic, all the radar shouldn't go up. That's what I think, anyway. Thank you. If there are no additional public questions for the artist, I would like to have been up the questions for the art commissioners. If anyone has a question? I'll just start by saying I just did math on my calculator. So the 21 versus 26 feet would be the square footage profile of it. So it is 150% more square footage. And it's probably quite a bit more that in volume if it goes bare the other way. Mr. McDaniel, I have a question. So in your opinion, what would you say your recommended size is that the original size that you created the illustrations and the proposal of the 21 feet, or do you have a different feeling now that you've explored different heights? I feel like it would work well at the size that I labeled as 150%. I feel like it works well at the original size. That's, I feel like that's just kind of the range where it works. The bigger one I thought seemed a little too big. I don't know if I exactly have sort of an ideal size in mind, but it would be right in that range. Can you estimate the cost differential? Is it twice as much? Is it? It probably runs somewhat close to the percentage I gave. So yeah, probably half again as much to go that much bigger. And I'll just add a little caveat about budget so you all know kind of what numbers you're working with here. So we have a 60,000 set aside for this project with a combination of the capital projects fund of the town has annually and then 30,000 of that is also American Rescue Plan Act funding. And as you can see the proposed budget at this high current height is at that budget. This does not include the pedestal or the site work, but in talking with the town manager, all the costs associated with that would be kind of handled by other budget pockets within the town. So, so basically you have just enough money right now to get it at its existing height and the way it is now. This fiscal year, which we just started this week, there is $50,000 set aside for public art for this fiscal year. You, if you felt strongly about using some of that additional budget or all of that additional budget, to make this sculpture taller, you have the access to do that and make that recommendation to council, that being said, that would leave you with less or no money to work with for this fiscal year. So you wouldn't have any projects or anything unless you were interested in pursuing grant funding later on the line. So just keep that in mind as you're thinking about your recommendation. Thank you. I just make one comment on that. In talking about making it bigger, it might be a little bit confusing to refer to making it taller because the examples I show are a little bit taller but not very much taller but since it stretches more through that elliptical shape it's significantly bigger but a lot of the bigger aspect is just going more out over the street. I have a question about the letters on the, for the sign portion. Okay. I guess two questions. One is that included in this budget that we're looking at. That is not. Okay, so that would be a deal. Those letters, those are commercially available. I mean, they're custom made, but they're commonly used like for restaurant science and kind of. And that was my next question. What are they made out of? Are they aluminum letters? Are they some kind of public? They're called channel letters. They, I'm not sure. I think aluminum might be the primary material they use. They shape the sides and then sort of snap in a sheep for the front edge. And with the lighter ones, the lights are fastened inside, and then there's plexiglass on the back. And the whole thing stands off a little bit from a wall and the light shines against the background without actually you seeing the bulb out the front. Go ahead. Also this is just to clarify, since it's part of the pedestal, the town that would kind of be included in the cost to construct the pedestal. And I asked Mr. McDaniel to kind of mimic the look of the lettering we already kind of have on town signage, the Ashland Town Hall and the pavilion lettering that was recently put in. And the pavilion lettering that was recently put in, and the pavilion lettering that was recently put in while much larger than what this would be, was done by a local company that does all of our wayfinding signage. So my guess is we would just work with him to also do this signage since he's really familiar with town processes and things. So great, thank you. And if Mr. McDaniel, you would be able to give us like a character count for those signs, like a maximum character count. I work a lot with signage. I work with, for the college and we just went through assigning a sign rebranding. So I'm pretty familiar with that. So at some point as we move forward, you'd be able to give us a character account for how many letters we could fit on that sign, and we could figure out the wording appropriately. Let's see. So the longest phrase I gave was come around again. So I think somewhere in the range of 15 letters is probably the, about the most you can do with individual letters. And if you wanted to have a longer phrase, it would probably have to be something like a sheet of aluminum with the letters cut out and then the light shining through the cutouts. There would be another way to go with smaller letters. But with the channel letters, there's a limit to how small they can get before they just can't fit the lights inside them. Thank you. All right. I have a question just to get it visual in my head. So this example that you brought which is beautiful. How does that compare in scale to one of the strands of your sculpture? In terms of how big around is bigger is this about the same as like a base? I Realize that's a question. I should have an answer to I should have looked at that in my CAD program and known the exact dimensions of the top triangle. I to that in my CAD program and known the exact dimensions of the top triangle. I feel like the tips of the sculpture are probably a few inches larger than the largest dimension on this. This is a very narrow triangle so it's not a real exact comparison, the way that I've represented the gateway sculpture. It's not quite an equilateral triangle, but it's closer to that than this one is. So I guess the bottom line of all that is that the tips on the gateway sculpture would be a little bigger than the top of this one. And the bottom would be considerably bigger. Oh yeah. Okay. I'm just... Okay. I think it's beautiful. Thank you. How tall is that one that you brought? I haven't measured it. It must be a seven and a half feet, something like that. Okay. So we can guess that the one that we would get as is well 21 feet does that include is that increased because of the pedestal that's underneath it? Let's see I think 21 feet includes the pedestal yeah I think I figured 19 feet high for the sculpture, two feet for the pedestal. I believe that's the way. I'm just trying to visualize it. So if I imagine that the full height would probably come up to the bottoms of those things coming. Yeah, every time it's tired. Right. Maybe the speakers hanging down or somewhere in that range. I do have a question. You know what I'm gonna ask. It's probably for you Martha. It's gonna be about our dark sky and the lighty and how we can address that. So Mr. do you wanna to speak to that first? Yeah I can go for it. Yeah. I have exchanged a couple of emails with Clayton I forget his last name about that and I need to do more research but he said that, well my assumption going into it was that string lights are sort of exempt from that because they're everywhere and people put them up at holidays, they must be okay. Turns out that when they're used permanently, that's not the case. And Clayton suggested if I can inset the bulbs a little bit and do some angling of the bulbs and obviously not have any on the top just pointing straight up that can probably comply with that. So that's something I'll have to think about more about details to making that work but I think I can make that work. Thank you. Hello, I have a question. Thanks so much for bringing in the piece. I think it looks really great to him. I'm excited about it when I saw it when I walked in. Thank you. I love the brush look, so I just wanted to let everyone know that I really enjoy that. Is that what it will be on the final piece or is that just an option for? This is the finish I had in my experience. Oh, okay. I'm really excited about it. I like it a lot. And I have two questions. Who will, will you decide the lights ultimately forever or will the town then be in charge of the app or how will that work? That is kind of an open question. I have some discomfort with the idea of letting anyone do anything with the lights. But I also feel like if I definitely can turn over the app or, you know, the password for the app, that sort of thing so that other people can control it. And I would want the town to have that in case I die or something. But I guess my thought is I would carefully think through a few different patterns that could be loaded to the controller when I deliver it and there would be the option of perhaps changing lighting for holidays or that sort of thing, which I think could sort of keep some ongoing interest in the sculpture. So open for discussion. Yeah, that's great. That's really, I love the lights too. And then my other question was, as far as the holes for the lights, are they going to be random or, you know, it seems random, but I didn't know if you had any thought to like the constellations or is that, you know? I have thought about that idea of doing something with constellations. And my feeling is that from the distance people will be seeing them at, they will seem so small that no one would actually see that it was a constellation. So I think a more random pattern is really just gonna work better. Okay. Yeah, I think it looks great as it is. Thank you. And this one probably looks a little more random than it is. There are some kind of distinct lines to this one, but since it's missing some of the bulbs right now, it's a little harder to see the patterns in this one. One constraint in terms of laying out the patterns is the bulbs come for the type of strings that are planted to use, they come at four inch intervals. And for reasons that I don't understand, the company doesn't make them available in other sizes. And so I would be sort of working or pattern around four inch spacing. Okay, that's great. Thank you so much. All right. Any other questions? Any other questions? I'll just add one more note just for the record for scale. I also think obviously when you see the rendering here that Mr. McDaniel has provided, you know, the site work is not in place in this rendering, right? So I also feel that once the sidewalk has moved around, and it's got a little bit more of a landscape presence at the base there, that the scale of it will also, it'll stick out more. It'll be a little more visually prominent once the sidewalk is going around it and that kind of thing. So it won't kind of blend in as much as I think maybe some folks have expressed concern about. So just think about that. And you're confident that the large sicklemore trees at the wild are not going to impede with the viewing of this sculpture on the right hand side. We'll do everything in our power to control the trees. the trees. Are we going to continue to discuss among the cells or do we? I have some thoughts about scale. Okay. Please go forward. So, when I picked this back in 2017, but I was on a panel called Complete Streets. And was it 2017 when we did that, Josh? Somewhere around there. And we walked around town, and it was really to really talk about the walkability of Ashland or particularly not only downtown, but over on 54 on the east side of Route 1 and I had to we were all given little assignments. I had a role play as a parent with a stroller and so I was walking at that pace and I could not cross all seven lanes before the light changed you know was one of the things. But there was discussion that we really needed two pieces. One, right when people came off of I-95, just sort of like take advantage of all the traffic, so that immediately when you come off I-95, just if it's to get gas, to have something that says, hey, you are somewhere, we are a place, we're a destination. And then the other one was exactly at the gateway on the west side of Route 1 to let people know that there is a downtown. There's something, you know, there's something happening. There's something, look further. You've arrived, it's the entrance to the Arts and Cultural District that was created in 2012. And in order to attract that traffic to capture the attention of that traffic that's going up and down Route 1, that's on the east side of Route 1 on 54, that something needed to be there. And so from that perspective alone, I'm excited that we're doing this. So as the email comments suggested, you know, is this the right scale? And I've had conversations with our town manager and with town council that, you know, where we've arrived at is amazing. Considering the fact that, you know, we were given a fixed budget and that council said, you know, this is what we would like you to start with is this location. It's been a fantastic result. The question really is, if going to this from a blank slate, if we were saying yes we want to do a gateway project is $60,000, the budget we would have started out with. And from that perspective, I would be open to using this coming years budget part of it to make this thing larger. So I'm not saying that we necessarily should do that, but if there was, you know, other council members, commission members felt like that. I would, you know, lean in that direction. So just want to put that out there. Does anyone have any feelings about that? What was the budget for next year? It's $50,000. So if we took half of that, $25,000, what that would take away from the future projects. But would that actually give us the impact that we want for this project? Like, would that be enough? That's a hairy question. I think that's a good point. Yeah. I don't think that that would be nearly enough for the impact that if we were to make it bigger we would want to make it you know bigger 50% vice is bigger something right and I don't think that we have the budget for that for next year but I understand what you mean. I like hearing your thoughts, Mr. Brill. I agree with Michelle that I would like to see the budget for next year allocated to other projects, but I mean, I think it's good to consider. But I'm leaning towards keeping it as it is, I think. Thank you. Anything else that we should discuss, consider? Do we have any, is anyone interested in making a motion? On this? in making a motion on this. So we have the options of moving for approving the design concept by Mr. Harry McDaniel. And we can initiate a contract execution and budget approval by the town council. We can make a motion to approve with revisions of the design, or we could move for denial of the design concept. I just want to confirm there's no more public input, or is there? I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the I move to approve it as of with Harry's revisions that he presents. So no revisions from you but this proposal just to clarify. Second. Mr. Brill. Aye. Ms. Bax. Aye. Ms. Hollander. Aye. Ms. Severin. Aye. All right, motion passes. You all have just commissioned pending town council approval. Your first major piece of public artwork with Mr. McDaniel. And from here on out, yes, congratulations. This is a major accomplishment. Congratulations Mr. McDaniel. We look forward to continuing to work with you. And just a little programming notes since this is our first rodeo on something like this as a commission. So the next steps will be I will work with our attorneys, our legal counsel to bring up a contract to initiate that with Mr. McDaniel and pinning me come to some satisfactory agreements here in the next week or so no rush but we'll be in touch for sure. My hope is to take the contract and the concept to town council at their upcoming meeting in July so that we can get something signed and executed with Mr. McDaniel so that he can receive initial payment from the town and begin fabrication and all the work that he needs to do to start this project underway. And Mr. McDaniel, if you don't mind, could you remind us kind of on your estimated timeline? And we'll hammer out those details in the contract, but just to kind of let the public know kind of what we're looking at in terms of start to finish. Okay. Yeah, what I specified in the proposal was about one year from the time a contract is signed. So I think that's still the case. I guess I might have said a little bit longer with light. But roughly a year is what I expect. OK. And then one of the advantages of the town taking on the kind of site work component is that work can happen concurrently. So while he's fabricating, I've already consulted with the town engineer. She's familiar with the project. So once contract is executed, we can start working with our subcontractors on getting the site work done and making sure the pedestals constructed in place and just waiting for the sculptures to arrive when they're finished. So, okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to thank our citizens for being here this evening and participating in this discussion. I value your input that you've shared with us. I'd also like to thank Mr. McDaniel for not only bringing that lovely sample with him tonight, but also making the drive up here and answering our questions in person. Thank you. At this time we'd like to move on to the second action item which is the Public Art Master Plan and I'm going to throw this over to Ms. Miller. Right, here we are again. Public Art Master Plan. Hopefully you all have had an opportunity to review this latest draft, which I feel like it's in pretty good shape. I didn't receive any kind of additional comments. I'm open to those. But just as in the way of history, so this kind of came about as your first kind of bureaucratic process, your vision setting exercise for the Public Art Commission. Once adopted, this master plan will represent the town's first ever Public Art Master Plan, and it's really a five-year vision for what this commission would like to accomplish, and the guidance the commission is providing to town council and to staff on kind of the opportunities that they would like to see made available to advance public art in the town of Ashland. So it does set the stage for public art to be an important tool, a more formal and important tool in the town to grow and nurture our existing arts and culture assets, but also to attract new opportunities in the future. And as I said before, it provides a five-year roadmap for making public art an integral part of Ashland's built environment and part of our civic identity in the years ahead. Just as a reminder in terms of public input, we have put the draft master plan out at least two or three times for public input and then prior to that in the before the Pant Plan was even drafted or created. We issued a public survey that went out and received great responses. Those are all incorporated in the appendix. We had a focus group which was open to anyone but was well attended I think by working artists and people very familiar with the arts. As well as staff have kind of gone around to different departments and town councils to kind of collect their feedback as well as to what is possible within the town. So with that I'm happy to answer any questions and provide any additional kind of edits. You do have motion options, there's no pressure to do anything this evening if you don't see fit But you do have the option the next step if you wanted to move in that direction Would be to refer this for adoption to town council either as is or with any edits we discuss tonight And then once that happens once adopted by town council this would go into our library of right alongside all of our other town plans and in terms of the parks and rec master plan, the bicycle and pedestrian plan that we have going on. So it would become a formally adopted town plan that we would look to for guidance. So with that said, happy to answer questions. Thank you. I have a question. So in 2029 we will then create a new mess. How does that work as far as is this literally from 2024 to 2029? Yeah so this sets the vision but prior to 2029 we would start the process so that it was ready to go in 2030 your next iteration and that wouldn't be necessarily a wholesale new plan. It would be an update. So based on what has been accomplished over the past five years, changes in Ashland's economic situation, population development, so it would just be an update. Okay. Changes in arts council members as well. Hopefully not, but. Yeah. And I have another question. Oh, sorry. Along those same lines, what does the process look like as far as if we wanted to add next year or something? You know, is that a louder? Is it once it's in, it's in. So the idea is that this is focused enough that it gives you a roadmap, but not so general that it isn't applicable. So the idea is that this plan is not, it is supposed to kind of keep things on track with the vision. So to kind of prevent scope creep. But what you do have a lot of flexibility over is, once this is adopted, our next step will be developing an annual work plan. So we'll sit in your October meeting and talk through, okay, what does the commission in line with the master plan want to accomplish for the next year? And that's will you get a little bit more granular about projects and budget and talking about kind of what your major initiatives are. So that's where you get that wiggle to talk about ideas. Okay, thank you. And I like the layout and the way it looks. I think it looks really nice. Good. My, it's a feeling as much as I thought I guess, is I just kind of like to take a breather. I feel like we've been on rocket sleds since we started and we've, what we've accomplished has really, really been amazing. But I mean, I honestly haven't had time to look over this with a thoroughness that I would like to and would, you know, like to defer voting on this until our next meeting so that we just have a little bit more time. Again, I think what we've been focusing on our attention on has been pressing from all sorts of outside forces and I just think it would be nice for us to just take a little pause. Are you making a motion to refer this? What are our motion options? We can refer it for adoption by town council at a future meeting. We can refer it for adoption with revisions or we can move for denial of the master plan. I feel like we did. I'm sorry to clarify. You don't have to follow these motions. I would like to hear what other people think. Sure, there is the option to defer a decision to your next meeting. So not to not, you can deny, but you can also defer if you want. That would be the language to, if you wanted to defer, making a decision until October, which is your next meeting. What is the timeline as far as, you know, what's the downside for not approving it tonight? Is there any really? There's no real downside to it. It is possible if you all were comfortable, if we wanted to, based on, I might take me a minute to find the page in here. But there are roughly agreed upon goals for that kind of short term that I had planned as your staff liaison to start kind of drafting potential work plan for the year, options. And you know, one of those is to develop an annual work plan. So I had kind of targeted the October meeting as being let's start having a conversation about what might be of interest for the next year, given the budget that you have available to you. And so if you wanted to defer, we could take up both at the next meeting. That's not a completely, it would just take, we'll just have to wait to refer to council at that point. And sometime, maybe sometime in November, because I believe your October meeting is like towards the end of October if I'm not mistaken. I'd like to make a motion to defer voting until next meeting. Is there a second? I second that motion. Mr. Brill. Aye. Ms. Beck's. Aye. Ms. Hollander. Aye. Ms. Everton. Aye. OK. We will defer. And just to, for my clarification Mr. Bell, you're just looking for more time to look at it personally. No more kind of public action necessarily in line with this. Just more time to digest and provide more thoughtful comments. Yes. Okay. No problem. Okay. Our next action item is our staff report is Miller I Don't really have a staff report because we just met not too long ago, but I'm really proud of you guys good job This was a lot of work to do There's a lot of arts and culture fun going on in the town of Ashland. I'll just add We just had Ashland forth Fridays. I would encourage you to continue to check that out. Programs at the theater, all of our kind of arts and culture resources. And when you, one quick thing on the master plan, what I would ask of you all is your assistance specifically with the online public art map that I is kind of still a work in progress. I hopefully will have a part-time staffer here soon and one of the things that I'm hoping to attask them with is to going out and getting some good photographs of the existing public art, making sure the credits on that map are accurate. So if there are pieces that in kind of my original scan that you don't see in that, I would welcome that. It's not a requirement to finalize the plan since it's an online living thing, which is kind of the beauty of it. But I'm only one person. So if there are pieces out there that are public, please let me know so that they can be added to that list. And I know we have quite a few pieces in this town that are on private property and there was conversation previously about making sure those are captured. That's a bit of a stickier wicket, right? Because we don't want to publicly list someone's home address on a tour. So I think legally we probably can't necessarily like some of the wooden sculptures that in front of people's homes of that nature unless those people agreed to have their addresses on that and if that's if that is something that is of interest to the commission, we can certainly pursue that option with our legal counsel and see what's possible. But looking for mostly stuff that is accessible and visible from public property, even if it's on a private business, if it's adjacent to public right away, that's different than a private residence. So that's all. Thank you. Do any arts commissioners have any other information or any other comments for this evening? Ms. Barnhart? Would you like? No? Good job, everyone. With that, we will adjourn our meeting. Thank you.