Cultural arts grants awarded: Council makes changes to how major events receive in-kind donations

More than $940,000 in cultural arts grants were handed out Wednesday by the Plano City Council.

The largest recipients were the Plano Symphony Orchestra ($253,142) and the Plano Balloon Festival ($157,168), but smaller organizations such as Theatre Britain ($5,308) and the Dallas Chinese Choral ($1,000) also received funds.

Marilyn Mahoney, chairwoman of the Cultural Affairs Commission that oversees the grant process, said committee members took a hard line this year on determining grant recipients, making no exceptions to rules such as minimum application score and filling the application out completely.

Groups whose grant request was turned down were able to appeal to the city council. Two groups chose to do that at Wednesday's meeting; one group was successful and will receive $10,000 in in-kind services.

The Historical Downtown Plano Association's grant for in-kind police protection at its annual Feastival was initially denied because Mahoney said the group didn't attend the quarterly committee meetings, as required.

However, Bonnie Shea, the association's president, said a representative was in attendance and asked the council to reconsider the application, which missed approval by three points. Shea added that without the grant, the future of the Feastival, which is held in downtown Plano each fall, would be in doubt.

"We have obviously spent a lot of time and money on downtown Plano in trying to make it a success, and boy there is more than a glimmer of success down there," Plano Mayor Phil Dyer said. "Downtown Plano is doing great. It seems to me that they missed the magic number by three points out of 100, and the more we get people to come to downtown Plano and see what is going on, the better it is for our community."

Dyer noted that there was $22,600 remaining in the grant budget, so funding the Feastival at $10,000 seemed appropriate, a move other council members agreed with.

This year's Feastival is scheduled for Oct. 27, and Shea said about 7,000 patrons are expected.

Prior to approving the grant money, the council tackled a question posed to them by City Manager Bruce Glasscock, who said he felt events of great importance to the city, such as Feastival or the Balloon Festival, should not have to go through the Cultural Affairs Commission grant process if they are only requesting in-kind services.

"If it is a sanctioned event and you feel it is important to the downtown community, we accept that and we determine how we will fund that in the general fund," Glasscock said.

Councilwoman André Davidson said she had no problem with automatically granting funding to certain events, but cautioned that events such as homeowner's association parades were not important enough to receive the automatic funding. She said there needed to be some sort of vetting process to determine the importance of each event.

Glasscock agreed, saying he felt he and his staff had enough experience to make that decision, a statement the council members agreed with.

While Shea won her appeal, Jamey Jamison and the Art & Drama Centre Theatre were not as fortunate. The group missed on its application score by less than one point, but other concerns raised by Mahoney convinced a majority of the council members to uphold the committee's decision to deny the request for $33,000.

"Before we recommend that we give someone money, we want them to be sound [financially] and we didn't see that," Mahoney told the council, while adding that the group was not able to furnish the required two years of tax returns.

Jamison was complimentary to the city staff and the committee, but said he felt two committee members scored the group unreasonably low on artistic and cultural merit. He said he feels the group's financial mistakes were held against it artistically, and prevented the group from receiving the needed 75 points.

"We did apply and went through the process of asking for city money," Jamison said while asking the council for leniency. "It was our first time and we did probably make quite a few mistakes, but we did only fall seven-tenths of a point short for qualifying."

While Dyer and Councilman Jim Duggan expressed support in giving the group a grant, several other council members were not convinced.

"I think that the process has worked in this case," said Councilman Lee Dunlap. "This is a situation where an entity has applied for their first grant and they have a learning curve. ... It is a fairly simple process since it is cut-and-dry and the questions are all clear-cut and can easily be answered. All the other applicants got it done."

Davidson said she wanted to see a long-term track record of financial responsibility, while Councilman Pat Gallagher said he supported the theater organization and felt their problems were "fixable," but that overturning the committee's decision would not be justifiable at this time.

After being turned down, Jamison thanked the council and said the group would work to correct the problems it had during the application process and looked forward to applying for grants in the future.

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