The Morgan County Board of Commissioners met to discuss multiple updates and business concerns on Sept. 2.
The meeting began with a presentation from the Morgan County Convention and Visitors Bureau to highlight the board’s 2024-25 report. Jennifer Rosa León, executive director of the CVB, presented the board of commissioners with updated statistics for the Bureau’s four methods of marketing.
“The mission of the Madison-Morgan CVB is to boost economic vitality and development by inspiring tourists to come, stay, and take part in the local tourism economy,” León said. “We serve as the official destination marketing organization for Morgan County.”
The CVB’s marketing strategies include paid advertising, earned media, social media marketing, and owned assets (PESO). León noted that the Bureau is currently more focused on its digital marketing efforts.”
“A few years back, we created a mobile-first website,” León said. “We completely overhauled it to be search-engine optimized and put a lot of commitment into getting potential travelers interested in what there is to do and just discovering more of what is on our website.”
According to the report, the bureau invested in both Google and National digital advertising campaigns to “direct traffic towards the [Madison, Georgia] website.” The paid Google ads “received 3,390,528 impressions, 83,887 clicks, and 9,002 tracked active user sessions.”
Google advertising received 22,263 sessions in the previous fiscal year, and the CVB faced a “significant drop” in recent numbers due to a “$20,000 shortfall in this fiscal year’s budget.”
León discussed that the CVB had a successful year in PR and earned efforts, claiming that the recent fiscal year was the best year for [their] PR efforts.”
“In FY25, our PR efforts generated 1.66 billion impressions, exceeding our goal by 1,109%,” León said. “We exceeded our goal by 1,109% — and delivered $943,410 in advertising equivalency value, overperforming our goal by 629% and yielding an exceptional 943:1 ROI.”
After the presentation, the BOC discussed a recommendation by the Farmland Protection Advisory Board for 72 acres of the Hayes Family Farm’s Madison portion. The recommendation would help third-party funding for the farm to gain an agricultural land easement from the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP).
The request listed the need for a funding commitment from the BOC in September of this year, with the funds required by the end of 2026. The Hayes Family Farm request was the third application request for funding under the Farmland Protection Advisory Board.
Approved funds from the BOC were listed as 25% of the Hayes Family Farm funding request, based on their appraisal easement value, totaling $1,100,000. The application mentions that the Natural Resources Conservation Services would contribute 50% of the funds at $550,000, and the Madison-Morgan Conservancy would contribute the remaining 25%.
“[The Advisory Board] is recommending that the Board of Commissioners fund the Hayes ACEP project for 25%; $275,000,” said Christine Watts, MMC director. “That money comes from PILOT payments from Meta and seems to be a very good farmland litigation program. It’s a good way to protect the rural nature of this county.”
The Morgan BOC listened to the matter for a large portion of the meeting, eventually discussing a notion to discuss funding 12.5% rather than the requested 25%. District 5 Commissioner Nathan Park mentioned that the previous two funding requests from the Farmland Protection Advisory Board were approved under the 12.5%.
He later included that he has “a hard time with the full 25%,” due to the BOC’s inability to fund some resources requested by the sheriff’s department earlier this year.
“[The land] is in my district, so I probably feel a little differently, but we have the appropriate amount of money sitting in fund equity,” said Ben Riden, District 3 commissioner. “I would like to go ahead and fund the request that they made, but if we don’t have enough support for it, I understand that, too.”
The board initially ended up tying 2-2, with Riden and District 4 Commissioner Philipp von Hanstein supporting the complete 25%, and Jones and Park supporting 12.5%. Chairman Blake McCormack broke the tie and voted for the 12.5%.