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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > March > 23
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Arts groups rally to oppose changes in city arts funding guideliness
Representatives from several dozen arts groups gathered Tuesday to strategize how to challenge changes in the city’s arts funding guidelines that could leave many cultural organizations ineligible for municipal monies.
At issue is new language that requires groups applying for city arts funding to offer “public activities that directly support tourism,” according to a document produced by the city’s cultural arts funding program. The guidelines also require organizations to keep track of and report on how many out-of-town tourists attend arts events and programs.
The city funds its cultural contracts program principally through monies collected from the nine percent tax on hotel-motel occupancy. Cultural funding receives the smallest share — 12 percent — of the occupancy tax fund. For the current fiscal year, the cultural contracts program distributed $5.2 million to more than 200 arts groups and projects.
Arts groups were notified of the new guideline changes by the city’s cultural funding program office on March 12. The deadline to apply for city funding is May 1.
The Austin Convention Center is allocated 50 percent of the hotel-motel occupancy tax revenue while 16 percent is allocated to the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau. About 22 percent funds a bond redemption fund used to pay for the Convention Center expansion. And the remaining 12 percent goes to the local arts groups.
According to cultural arts program office, the current cultural contractors have combined cash budgets of nearly $65 million and reached 4.3 million individuals, including more than 1 million tourists in 2009.
At its Monday night meeting the Austin arts commission, which does not have the authority to change funding guidelines, voted unanimously to ask the City Council not to accept the changes.
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