Ad commission to consider budget, ’17 marketing plan
Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission will come to decisions on meeting policies and budgets at its final meeting of the year on Tuesday.
The meeting will take place at 2 p.m. Tuesday in Hot Springs Convention Center’s Wheeler Room. The meeting is open to the public and will feature a presentation of next year’s marketing plan as well as the standard passing of proposed motions.
Following the meeting’s preliminary orders of business, the commission will begin to make decisions on policy proposals. The agenda includes the commission’s 2017 budget and the ability to allow for board members to attend remotely through mediums such as Skype and FaceTime.
Though the budget numbers for the year of 2017 have not yet been given to The Sentinel-Record, Arrison did say that the budget for this coming year strives to fit the conservative pattern of years past.
“We try to project everything flat to the previous year,” Arrison said. “It’s a very achievable budget, and I think we’re gonna have a very good year.”
A more narrowly focused budget item that will be decided upon
Tuesday will be the upgrade of the audio/visual systems in the convention center. The approval of such upgrades would allow the ad commission to spend up to $1 million from its reserve fund, allowing the center to improve its video transport, exhibit hall sound and microphones.
Arrison said that such upgrades would help the convention center stay on par with their competition.
“We have an aging facility, and we want to keep it stateof-the-art and competitive,” Arrison said. “We’re spending a substantial amount of money on the convention center next year on our reserve funds.”
The commission will also decide upon the potential ability for members to participate in meetings with remote mediums going forward. The proposed policy would establish a quorum of four present board members per meeting, prohibit members from attending remotely more than two times in a calendar year, and prohibit members from participating from the same remote location.
Arrison said last month that the commission’s proposal for remote attendance was “a sign of our times.” He said he believes that the proposed policy contains “a lot of safeguards” that ensure fairness.
“It’s a very fair policy that allows our commissioners, if one of them has to be out of town, that they can participate in the meeting,” Arrison said.
Following these and other decisions, CJRW, which is in charge of designing the ad commission’s marketing program, will present new advertisements for the city of Hot Springs to the commission and the audience. Arrison mentioned that the presented mediums will include TV commercials, print ads and radio spots.
Arrison said that the ads will be in effect for the next two years and will be tweaked as necessary.
“We’re very anxious for the commission to see it,” Arrison said of the presentation.
Arrison stressed the significance of the ad commission’s final meeting of 2016, given the budget proposal and ad presentation.
“It’s an important meeting for us,” Arrison said. “The budget will be approved for the coming year, and then we see our ad presentation for the advertising that we’re gonna do for next year, which is very important.”