Hi. I'm council member Justin Olsen with your April council update. Joining me this month my friend Jaime Mannfrom the city of Cottage Grove. Jamie is the assistant to the city administrator here in the city of Cottage Grove. And she also supports our Cottage Grove Convention and Visitors Bureau, which you might know better as Discover Cottage Grove. It's kind of neatthat here in the city of Cottage Grove, we have that unique element of a convention and visitors bureau, and we really like to use theconvention and visitors bureau as a way to help attractlocal business to the community and tell people more about all the fun things that you can do here in the city of Cottage Grove. Jaime'sgoing to answer a few questions for us today about some of the neat things we've got coming up this summer. Thank you for joining me, Jaime. Absolutely. Have you? as part of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, I've certainly learned a lot. I am the current chair, as you know. And, one of the things that I've learned is that we work very closely with a lot of our partners in the area to help people understand more about what you can do, what you can see, all of the neat things here in the city. I know we have some fun events coming up this summer with Discover Cottage Grove. I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about, first and foremost, the Saint Paul Saints game that's coming up? Absolutely. So we are hosting a Cottage Grove Community Night at the Saint Paul Saints game. it'll be June 8th. we will host, a tent there where we have giveaways, and we'll be talking to people trying to draw people to some of our larger events throughout the summer. in June, July and August. Okay, wonderful. Now, we've done this for the past couple of years, and I've been there for both. And I know that it's been a very popular thing. I think what we've done is, really help people understand about the strawberry fest, right? So we're handing out information, things of that nature. Have you noticed, has it improved the attendance at the Strawberry Fest? Well, I don't have cones. we have talked to many people because we have a booth at Strawberry Fest that heard about itthrough the Saints game as well. So there is some impact for us attending the game with the attendance at Strawberry Fest. And of course, what we're looking for is we're looking for people who may not really know about Cottage Grove, Strawberry Fest or the things that we have going on in the summer months and have them actually come visit our community, spend some time, hopefully also spend a little bit of money and, you know,improve the overall atmosphere at these events and also help support local businesses. Now we also have another event that's very special to you and I both. Last year was our first inaugural, Cottage Grove Food Truck Festival, if I have the name right. So obviously we'regoing to try it again this year. What can you tell us about that? So last year we had great attendance. We're estimating about 7,000 people attended the event. this yearwe're hoping to make it bigger. We're hoping for more food trucks. marketplace will be added this year as well. the Lions will be back with the beer tent as well. We have some great entertainment. We've also added, the Dowdle puzzle reveal at the Food Truck Festival. So we're hoping to make it a even bigger event this year than it was last year. Good. And I think that is the 14th of September. Is that rightthis year? Correct. From 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.. Wonderful. So for those of youwho didn't have the opportunity to come last year, we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 food trucks attend. How many will we have this year? Any idea? Our goal is about 40 and we're over halfway there. Wonderful news. So great opportunity to come visit Cottage Grove, get some great food to eat here. Some great music. You also talked a little bit about the Dowdle puzzle that we're going to be revealing at that time. For those who may not know about that, do you have just a couple of points you can share about thethe whole Dowdle puzzle project? Sure. So, Eric Dowdle has been commissioned by the city to do a painting of the city of Cottage Grove. everything from historic sites to current things that are in Cottage Grove. And at that time, he will reveal the paintingwill also have puzzles for sale because he is famous for his turning his paintings into puzzles. So at that point we will have them for sale for about a year in the city. How wonderful! I'm really looking forward to that opportunity as well. We had the chance to kind of pick out some prominent names from the past, and maybe somehistorical markers from the past that will be part of this whole puzzle. So that'll be a lot of fun. With regard to the Discover Cottage Grove team or, again, the Cottage GroveConvention and Visitors Bureau. You know, we're really looking to support local business. We want people to come in, enjoy our city, take advantage of the recreational opportunities that are here, some of the beautification of some of our parks, etc. so we certainly hope that you'll pay attention. If people want to learn more about Discover Cottage Grove or what's really going on, how would they best do that? Well, we have a Discover Cottage Grove social media presence, so Facebook is always a great option for people to visit our Facebook page. We will be giving away some Saints tickets coming up here soon on our Facebook page as well, to comejoin us at the game on June 8th. Otherwise, we have an events calendar on our Discover Cottage Grove website where they can find out everything happening in Cottage Grove. Outstanding. for this month's council update I am council member Justin Olsen. Thank you again Jamie for joining us today. We will see you next time.