Vision Fund Committee votes to forward draft 2025 guidelines to City Commission with updated contact info

Committee members reviewed both the 2020 Vision Fund guidelines and a draft 2025 version and voted on Jan. 22 to forward the 2025 guidelines to the City Commission for final approval, with edits to contact information.

Noah Roman of the Chamber/EDC told the committee he had both the 2020 and 2025 documents available and noted the draft 2025 guidelines may not have been formally date-stamped or previously approved by the city. He identified several substantive changes in the 2025 draft, most notably shortening the time projects have to access awarded funds from 18 months to 12 months and removing a two-step pre-application by using a new scoring matrix. Roman said the 2025 draft also changes how annual reviews are handled, moving from a required November review of all projects (2020 language) to a more flexible periodic update that staff or the Chamber/EDC can provide.

City administration staff recommended that the committee move the 2025 guidelines forward to the City Commission as drafted unless members requested further changes, and offered to apply city brand standards (fonts, logos) and to update the contact information. Committee members agreed to replace an individual Chamber contact with the city administration contact details to ensure continuity. The committee moved to send the 2025 Vision Fund guidelines to the City Commission for approval and to update contact information to the city administrator phone (701-355-1300) and the email Bismarckadmin@Bismarcknd.gov; the motion passed on a roll-call vote.

Staff said they would carry the recommendation to the next available City Commission meeting and be available to answer questions; no presentation from committee members or Vision Fund staff was anticipated at that Commission meeting.