CITY & COUNTY
News from New Braunfels
New Braunfels grants funding to local arts and heritage organizations NEW BRAUNFELS The city approved the allo- cation of over $700,000 in grant awards from hotel occupancy tax funds to various arts and heritage BY SIERRA MARTIN Carter said the grant funding process could be improved by holding a meeting before the arts commission presents its recommendations to council and to advertise the grants more to obtain more potential applicants. FUNDING THE ARTS By utilizing a portion of the hotel occupancy tax fund, the city of New Braunfels was able to provide over $700,000 in grant funding to the New Braunfels Heritage and Arts commissions.
organizations during a Jan. 9 regular meeting. “Every year New Braunfels awards 15% of the previous year’s hotel occupancy tax collection, which is split 50/50 between the arts and heritage groups,” said Gayle Wilkinson, secretary for the city of New Braunfels. “The arts and heritage com- missioners meet, and they allocate grant funds to applicants based on applications.” Applicants went through a three-step process that launched Sept. 1 and included a review of guidelines, application and budget forms, and sub- mitting the application online. Applications closed Oct. 31, when members of the Arts and Heritage commissions were given three months to score applicants based on a predetermined matrix. “The matrix that we have is each board member rates everybody according to how they fulfill the requirements of the application, and based on that it comes up with a score that’s an average,” New Braunfels Arts Commissioner Crystal Carter said. “And we use that to allocate as much as we can based on a percentage of how much money we have.”
Around $994,000 was requested from the arts commission, and about $390,000 was allocated to 10 applicants, including the American Dance Com- pany, The Brauntex Theatre, Circle Arts Theatre and The Greater New Braunfels Arts Council. Around $340,000 was granted by the heritage commission to five organizations, including the Heritage Society of New Braunfels, the New Braunfels Conservation Society, and The Sophienburg Memorial Association. The commission was able to grant full funding to the applicants, and it has a surplus amount of around $56,000 that will be reallocated to next year’s fund, according to Wilkinson. Council members authorized the next steps in distributing the funding, which consists of execut- ing contracts with the organizations. Applications for the grants from either commis- sion were made available on the city secretary’s office website from Sept. 1-Oct. 31 for the hotel occupancy tax grants, and a similar time frame will be made available in 2023.
Heritage organization funding granted $342,098 $390,734 Arts organization funding granted
TOTAL $732,832
Some of the New Braunfels organizations that received grant funding include: Arts organizations recipients Heritage organization recipients • Brauntex Theatre • Mid-Texas Symphony • American Dance Company • Sophienburg Memorial Association • New Braunfels Conservation Society • Heritage Society of New Braunfels
SOURCE: CITY OF NEW BRAUNFELS/COMMUNITY IMPACT
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NEW BRAUNFELS EDITION • FEBRUARY 2023
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