The Mayor's Advisory Commission on Arts met on August 27, 2026, in an informational session due to the lack of a quorum. The primary focus was the review and explanation of the 2027 Arts Grant application timeline and process, presented by the Mayor. No votes were taken.
I'm calling to order the August 27th, 2026 meeting of the Mayor's Advisory Commission on Arts. We do not have a quorum today, so this will be strictly an informational meeting. So I will turn it over to the mayor to discuss the 2027 Art Carmel Arts Grant application and process. Mayor. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for having this meeting. And I don't think it's a big deal that we have an informational meeting only because this isn't anything you need to vote on. But we thought just with us soon opening the window for the arts grants, we'd explain the process so the arts organizations would know what we're doing and would then have an opportunity to ask questions either of the arts commission or the city should they have any. So what I wanted to review today is is the arts grants timeline proposal. The grant application window this year will be September 1 to September 30. It's a little earlier than normally normal. Same process as last year with the online application. I think we just removed a question. So the applications will be very, very similar. The staff will be reviewing on a rolling basis as applications come in. Last year there was a couple things where we're like, hey, you forgot this, or can you have a little more clarity there? So again, probably a light touch there. Uh we're giving uh staff till October 7th to get that done. This year we're inserting with the with the help of the Hamilton County Community Foundation a little bit of an elevated review on the financials. Um we're ever so thankful to Danielle and her team. She'll they'll be looking at these on an ongoing basis, a rolling basis as well. But we'll give them till October 30th to do that. The arts commission, you can tell me later, but we can either give these to you on our on a rolling basis as we're done with them, or we can give them to you all at the same time. But we'll give you until November 13th to do your review. Then I'll have a couple weeks after you get done until November 24th with my review, which at that point having staff reviewed it and Hamilton County Community Foundation experts review it, and you guys review it and provide recommendations. Uh, you're gonna make my job super easy, so thank you in advance for that. And you have in the past years as well. Um, and then notification letters, the document collection for any new grantees and uh grant agreements will all be generated and out the door by December 9th. Excuse me, 8th. Then the BPW meets at December 9th. So any, if you recall any grants larger than $50,000 go to the BPW. Same practice this year. Um we have to then generate within the city the approval to pay. So insert a claim to the um finance team. That deadline will be January 7th. This is nothing that the arts organizations have to do, it's something we do internally. But if that doesn't happen, it doesn't get on the council meeting agenda. So we need the claim to be entered. The council will approve it on January 21. It's a claims only meeting. The only business they do is to approve checks that are gonna be cut, and then right after that. And so what they usually do is the checks are actually cut before that meeting. So when that meeting happens and they approve the claims, the checks are out the door. So that's the process this year. Very similar to last year, we're just opening up a little bit earlier and having Hamilton County Community Foundation in there. They have a different way with their experience and you know, looking at um nonprofit organizations and their financial uh situation, so I thought, why not avail ourselves of them? They've been super helpful this year. I also want to revisit the fact that we put in a process this year led by them to help our nonprofits better understand how to be more financially sustainable, and so they put together the program, and uh so I'm really looking forward to getting feedback from them on how that went. Um, and we made it a requirement of the arts grants as well because we wanted unless it's a new grantee that didn't have the opportunity, that's a different issue. But for those existing grantees, our goal, since we're using taxpayer dollars, is to make sure that we have a good investment for our taxpayers.