At the City Council’s April meeting, Main Street Advisory Board Chair Brandi Bollinger presented the Board’s evolution since their restart in December. "I want you to know that we are a Board of driven individuals that are complicated and are unpaid but are willing to make sacrifices to see success," she said.
Per City Code, the purpose of the Board is to strengthen the economic potential of the walkable business district. The six-member board is made up of representatives of six different subcommittees: design, promotion, economic vitality, organization, arts and entertainment, and clean-green and safe.
Bollinger said it took her some time to determine where each subcommittee was in their evolution. Her biggest struggle as chair has been how to help each group succeed where they are and not where someone else thought they should be. She described the different stages that the six subcommittees fall into.
Some of the subcommittees are in the "founding" stage, where they are just beginning. She explained the need for support at this stage to form effective forward thinking partnerships to progress and gain confidence in their objectives.
The second stage is "organization" where processes are documented, goals are created, financial requests are made and movement towards adopting bylaws begins. Bollinger said that the process to adopt bylaws has been made much easier with the City attorney rejoining town staff.
According to Bollinger, most of the subcommittees are in stage three, the "double hatter" stage. In this stage members are responsible for different roles or "wearing more than one hat," she explained. The work at this stage is still being done by the subcommittee members and not volunteers making this a big challenge for them to commit to a scheduled timeline of events outside of larger scale community events i.e. cleanups, because they have so few volunteers.
Stage four is "transitional" which is where the Promotions subcommittee thrives. "They are great at asking questions such as what are you doing? What is working? What isn't working? Why do we do that? and what is the perception of this?" said Bollinger. These questions are key in aiding each subcommittee in achieving their goals.
The last stage is "Visions" where, "as chair I see possibilities to connect each of my committees to one another," said Bollinger. She said she looks at the connections between each committee, common events, goals, collaborations with the police department, parks and recreation and civic groups so everyone has the opportunities to be involved and share ideas in town.
"We are a Main Street advisory board not a Taneytown advisory board so our biggest struggle so far is what falls into our job description," said Bollinger. "We don’t want it to always be about money or businesses but about people coming out to enjoy their Main Street."
