The city of New Braunfels approved the allocation of over $700,000 in grant awards from hotel occupancy tax to various arts and heritage organizations during a Jan. 9 regular meeting.
“Every year New Braunfels awards 15% of the previous year's hotel occupancy tax collection, which is split 50/50 between the arts and heritage groups,” said Gayle Wilkinson, New Braunfels City Secretary. “The arts and heritage commissioners meet and they allocate grant funds to applicants based on applications.”
Applicants went through a three-step process that launched Sept. 1 and included a review of guidelines, completed application and budget forms, and submission of the application online. Applications closed on Oct. 31, when members of the Arts and Heritage Commission were given three months to score applicants based on a predetermined matrix.
“The matrix that we have is each board member rates everybody according to how they fulfill the requirements of the application, and based on that it comes up with a score that's an average,” New Braunfels Arts Commissioner Crystal Carter said. “And we use that to allocate as much as we can based on a percentage of how much money we have.”
