By Ben Rodgers
Editor

SUAMICO – The village board moved ahead with an opportunity to show off Suamico at the Monday, June 18, meeting.

Trustees unanimously approved an agreement with Amenson Studio, a local company, to produce four videos for the village to use online.

“The main thing is to get them done and be efficient with it, and to do it at a high level of quality and at a good price gives you a return on your investment,” said Marc Amenson, owner of the studio.

Each video will last 90 seconds. There will be one video to highlight four different aspects, live, play, dine and shop.

The village will pay $6,000 to have the videos produced.

The village board did raise some concerns about the dine and shop videos.

“I’m hesitant about doing certain businesses,” said Trustee Michelle Eckert. “Just giving them free publicity and not giving some people any. You got to be fair.”

Amenson said videos that feature food will likely feature shots of food being brought to a table, or coming out of the oven, as to not promote any specific business.

“In regard to specific business, we don’t need to have the storefronts or any names,” he said. “Dining doesn’t have to be here’s where you dine, just visually filming shots of food.”

For the shop video, Amenson said he would likely shoot one-half to two-thirds of the Urban Edge Towne Centre.

Trustee Sky Van Rossum said he liked the idea as it wasn’t playing favorites with any specific business.

“You’re showing storefronts, you’re showing available businesses, but you’re not necessarily shooting a commercial for a business.”

Village President Laura Nelson agreed the videos would do a good job showcasing the community to attract people to relocate or to visit.

“I particularly like the idea,” Nelson said. “When my husband and I travel with our family… if we’re going to visit wherever we look ahead to the city, visit their website and click on the videos and whatnot.”

Village board members will send their ideas for each video to Trustee Dan Roddan, who will work with Amenson from the village perspective.

In other news, the reader board sign at the village hall will get an upgrade.

The board agreed to spend roughly $19,000 for a new digital color sign from Jones Sign, with the majority of funds coming from excess stadium tax dollars.

“If we’re going to do this, we want to do it right, because we’re going to have this thing for many years,” said Steve Kubacki, village administrator.

The sign is roughly 2 feet by 7 feet and will be able to be controlled remotely. The current sign is monochrome and has had programming issues as well.

“Its visuality, if that’s a real term, is significantly more prompt, it jumps at you, and we think it would do a better job of getting people’s attention,” Kubacki said. “Hopefully not too much, as they are driving down Velp.”

The village board also pulled an item from the agenda at the request of the village attorney.

The item was a possible reconsideration of a previous motion from June 4 regarding a conditional use permit for luxury condo storage buildings on the east side of East Deerfield Avenue.

At the last meeting the motion failed on 3-3 vote. Roddan abstained from the vote because he owns property near the proposed site.

Kubacki said due to legality, the issue should be brought back before the board as a new motion, not as a reconsideration.

At the end of the meeting, Van Rossum formally requested it be placed on the next meeting agenda for Monday, July 2.