PRESENTER: Presenter
Matthew Schwarz, Assistant City Secretary
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SUBJECT: Title
Approval of the Heritage Commission recommendations for allocating hotel occupancy tax grant funds to community heritage organizations and authorizing the City Manager to execute related grant award contracts.
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DEPARTMENT: City Secretary
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COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City-Wide
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
From October 1, 2023, through October 31, 2023, the City Secretary’s Office made available, via the City’s website, the application, guidelines, and instructions for hotel occupancy tax (HOT) grants.
The commissioners reviewed and scored all applications for funding. Once the commission scores the applications, those scores are averaged together. That average is then applied to the requested amount. Finally, the new calculated amount is proportionally applied to the available amount of HOT funds per organization in order to create a starting budget.
The Heritage Commission met on December 7, 2023, to review qualified applications and, after careful deliberations, the commission has made the following recommendation for 2024 funding awards.
ISSUE:
Allocations require City Council approval.
FISCAL IMPACT:
City ordinance requires that 15% of Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) previous fiscal year collections be allocated to the “enhancement of arts and cultural organizations and programs”. Customarily these proceeds are divided equally between the Arts and Heritage Commissions, who then make recommendations to City Council on the disbursement of their respective halves of the funding. This year, $394,002 was made available to the Heritage Commission based on 2023 HOT collections along with half of the $56,635 overage from the last allocation period.
Recommendation
RECOMMENDATION:
Approval of the awards and utilization of the surplus funds as recommended by the Heritage Commission