Lots of talk about Grove Bucks; who controls them?

There was talk at last night's Chamber of Commerce board meeting about Grove Bucks. They want to possibly use them during Taste of the Grove in April. The BID is also considering using them as prizes on their new website which is still in the works.

The Chamber wants to make money from the deal. The Chamber wants to make money from every deal, rather than try to promote the Grove businesses, the Chamber is constantly on the prowl for ways to make money, which could make sense since they do need to support themselves. But they have a staff of one, so that should not be a hard thing to do. One successful Taste of the Grove should be able to pay their bills for the year.

Grove Bucks was thought up and used by the Merchants Group. It's their thing. They have tried to get funding from the BID, but that never really came to a proper presentation, so nothing has been done so far. But I do think that the Merchants Group should be in charge of Grove Bucks because it is the merchants in town who benefit from the bucks. It's not about making money from the actual bucks, it's about bringing people into the Grove to spend the bucks.

The BID of course, should be involved if they are to fund the bucks, that only makes sense. In the past, merchants paid into the promotion and those who paid in would benefit from the bucks, but the plan would be to have all merchants accept them and have them funded by the BID or some other way (advertising)?

It might not be a bad idea for the Grapevine to do the Grove Bucks and make it our thing and fund them through ad bartering or something like that, you know, take the money from ads and turn it into Grove Bucks, put an ad for the Grapevine on the back of the buck and be done with it.