DOWNTOWN ASSOCIATION OF YAKIMA
14 South 1st Street, Yakima, WA 98901 downtownyakima.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: The Downtown Association of Yakima (DAY) exists to make the City of Yakima's urban core the premier place to live, work, and play. Primary activities are a facade restoration program, monthly educational breakfast meetings, free summer evening concerts, operation of a weekly Farmers' Market, maintenance of hanging flower baskets and street-level container plantings, removal of garbage and grafitti, and offering activities and advice to boost downtown's safety, appearance, economic activity, and appeal.

The Downtown Association of Yakima (DAY) is a certified National Main Street organization with the goal of making the urban core of the City of Yakima the premier place to live, work, and play.

Hanging Baskets & Flowers; The Association maintains 290 flower baskets which hang from the city-owned street-lamp poles. DAY owns the basket containers, the City of Yakima buys the flowers, and then DAY maintains each basket on a daily basis by monitoring and/or repairing irrigation lines, repairing vandalism, replacing plants that do not thrive, and fertilizing. DAY also plants and maintains (in a similar manner as with the hanging baskets) annuals and perennials in about 360 street-level concrete pots and planters permanently placed all around the downtown core. Expenses may seem low, but the bulk of cost for this program is in the staff labor, which is more accurately reported in the overall downtown maintenance progam described below. There is also a considerable amount of volunteer labor from adjacent business owners and other DAY volunteers.

Downtwon Maintenance: Under a contract awarded to DAY by the City of Yakima, business and propery owners in a downtown special assessment district pay mandated fees to the City of Yakima for extra services, which DAY provides and is reimbursed for by the City of Yakima from these specially collected fees. These extra services include a daily pick-up and removal of garbage from city-owned receptacles as well as directly off the sidewalks, streets, and gutters; the maintenance of permanent ground-level shubbery qnd plants; the removal of snow from sidewalk/street intersections; the monitoring an removal of all grafitti; assistance in managing issues of homelessness; the the pruning and lighting of street trees; advice to businesses on CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design; and works closely with the City of Yakima's Departments of Public Services and Parks in all ways which promote health, safety, and positive downtown experiences. NOTE: This program area typically reports more expenses than revenue as DAY subsidizes the work of the City contract with funds from other sources. However, 2020 was unusual in that the rolling quarantine lockdowns and guidelines instituted by the state & local governments greatly effected the hourly staffing due to issues related to child care when schools were closed, family illness, and other such pandemic challenges. This reduced hourly payroll, but the salaried staff and volunteers stepped up to maintain all the services by working increased hours.

Farmers' Market: DAY operated a Farmers' Market for 21 consecutive Sundays from May 24-October 11 (this was a shorter season than normal as directed by the State Department of Health due to the pandemic), The Market is certified by the Washington State Farmers' Market Association, which requires the inspection of farms to ensure the produce is grown locally with proper health and safety features. Normally, there are also vendors who sell their own handicrafts (i.e. no resale or mass-produced items are allowed), but this was not allowed in 2020. The Market is not yet self-sustaining financially (even though it was moving in that direction until the number of vendors and length of season were reduced in 2020); thus, it contains to be supported by DAY with funds from other sources because a functioning market is important to the health and appeal of downtown.

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