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Tourism staff add event manager, roll out new analytics and propose tighter grant rules
Summary
Okeechobee County tourism staff introduced a new tourism and event center manager, described a switch to Placer AI for attendance analytics and a $5,000 virtual-tour contract, and discussed possible caps and a tiered structure for event-funding grants as applications grew.
Okeechobee County tourism staff introduced Jacqueline Schooley as the new tourism and event center manager and laid out recent marketing investments and data upgrades aimed at improving how the county markets venues and evaluates event impact.
Jacqueline Schooley, the new tourism and event center manager, attended her first meeting and said she looks forward to working with staff and promoters. "I look forward to working with everybody," Schooley said.
Denise (tourism staff) described a quarterly advertising spend of just over $21,000 and noted an annual contract of $5,000 with a company identified in the record as Threshold 360 to produce 360-degree virtual tours of up to five facilities, including the Agri Civic Center. Denise said the county now uses a new analytics provider, Placer AI, replacing DataFi for foot-traffic and visitor-origin data. Denise said Placer AI produced a report showing 5,900 attendees at a Cattlemen's Arena event, of whom 5,400 were visitors from outside the immediate area.
Staff and board members spent substantial time discussing the grant-application process and whether to set caps or a tiered funding system. Denise said the council typically budgets about $150,000 for promotions but staff had received roughly $280,000 in funding requests this cycle. Board members proposed options including per-event caps, per-promoter limits and a separate path for large, special-request events such as nationally televised fishing tournaments. The council did not adopt a new policy at the meeting but directed staff to return with options for application caps, evaluation tiers and possibly splitting grant-review items across multiple meetings to avoid lengthy agendas.
Staff also previewed travel-show participation (Chicago and Fort Lauderdale) and noted the Agri Civic Center's event calendar is largely booked through December 2026, with parks-and-rec and library events also expected to draw visitors in the coming months. The board set its 2026 meeting calendar (tentatively: Jan. 14, April 8, Aug. 19, Sept. 9 and Oct. 14) and accepted the reassignment of Monica Clark and Bob Jarrell as city designees to the council for two years.
What this means: The county is investing in digital marketing tools and data to better quantify visitor origin and event value while staff and the board weigh more structured rules for allocating limited promotion funds.
