City stabilizes funding for arts, tourism, economic groups
Reporting on last night’s 2012 city budget hearing with them wacky cats over on Eau Claire’s City Council, the Leader-Telegram tells us arts, economic and tourism organizations will probably receive the same funding as they received in 2011’s budge*. 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 these organizations rely heavily on donations, membership fees, grants, and the like. Perusing that kind of funding is a relentless job to complete on top of your primary objectives of running a museum or a symphony orchestra or, you know, something very different than fundraising. So any help is welcome. Given the city’s overall budget concerns, stabilizing arts and tourism funding from this year to the next – offering as much financial help as possible – is a commendable feat. Hopefully, that help can increase in coming years.
To give you an idea of how much money we’re talking about, the L-T provides some some figures. Eau Claire uses hotel room taxes to provide the money for most of these organizations (eleven in all). For example, hotel room taxes go to:
Paul Bunyan Logging Camp Museum - $31,000
Chippewa Valley Museum - $61,900
Visit Eau Claire - appx. $688,800–756,000
Visit Eau Claire is a special case – it gets 56% of all hotel room taxes, whatever that ends up being. 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.
“The organizations are technically ‘competing’ for the funds, since there is a limited number of dollars, however there is nothing but support and respect among the organizations." – ECRAC director Ben Richgruber
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 about all this, 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.”
I wondered if there was an air of competition for these city dollars betwixt local organizations, to which Richgruber responded, “The organizations are technically ‘competing’ for the funds, since there is a limited number of dollars, however there is nothing but support and respect among the organizations in question. We’re all in the same boat. In fact, after many of the directors of these organizations spoke to the council (and we’re talking after 8pm in some cases) they were headed back to work. I’ll bet we were all awake at 3am, too.”
The City Council will vote Friday on approving the city's 2012 budget.
