Eau Claire’s arts, economic, and tourism organizations will probably receive the same funding as they received in 2011’s budget. And that’s good news. As city money for arts and tourism has been scaled back in years past, I’m assuming these groups are about as happy as they could hope to be given the circumstances. Most of them rely heavily on donations, membership fees, grants, and the like. Perusing that kind of funding is a relentless job to complete on top of primary objectives of running a museum or symphony orchestra. So any help is welcome. Given the city’s overall budget concerns, stabilizing funding from this year to the next is a commendable feat. Hopefully, that help can increase in coming years. To give you an idea of how much we’re talking,  the Paul Bunyan Logging museum gets $31,000, the Chippewa Valley Museum about double that, and Visit Eau Claire about $700,000. Eau Claire uses hotel room taxes to provide the money for most of these organizations (11 in all). Visit Eau Claire is a special case – it gets 56% of all hotel room taxes. The total amount is projected to be $1.35 million by the end of 2011 (it was budgeted for $1.23 million). Downtown Eau Claire, Inc., on the other hand, gets $80,000 from the city’s economic development fund. It’s important to remember the city money accounts for only a fraction of these organizations’ revenues. I talked with Ben Richgruber, executive director of the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center, and he said ECRAC would receive $95,200, the same as in 2011, and this represents just over 12% of their budgeted revenue. Of the city using hotel room taxes to help fund arts organizations, Richgruber says, “If we all do our job, and the room tax dollars go up, it’s in the best interest of the city to continue to invest in those things that bring people to town.”