Artists decry delay in city grant payments, putting some projects and events at risk

Arts commissioners have joined local artists in criticizing the city for the prolonged rollout of one of its newer grant programs, which has left some recipients without funding ahead of events they’d organized with expectations of using the city funds.

Last week’s Arts Commission meeting in some ways resembled this month’s Music Commission meeting, where recipients of Live Music Fund grants said they were at risk of not being able to put on their events because of a delay and a lack of communication from the Long Center for the Performing Arts, which is administering a handful of programs overseen by the Economic Development Department.

At issue is the Cultural Arts Division program known as Elevate, which is one of three new grant programs created recently.

City staff said work was progressing with the Long Center to have award contracts completed and payments made in September and early October. A late amendment to the vendor contract with the Long Center by the city’s purchasing department added several weeks to the process, delaying the outreach and collection of applicants’ information needed to send out contracts for the 200 grant recipients.

The delay has strained artists and organizations who have said they’ve used all the money and resources available to them to prepare events scheduled for the next few weeks with no updates or timelines on when to expect payments.

As of last week, the program had made just over $1 million in payments from its $6.25 million budget.

“So many of us currently right now are in the situation where we’re two and a half weeks away from a contracted activity, and we still have not received funding, not even an agreement,” said Luis Ordaz, executive director of Proyecto Teatro. “We are very frustrated at the lack of communication from the Long Center, specifically with concrete timeframes and timelines so that we can figure out, shift, pivot and save our contracted activities.”

EDD staff said they are meeting regularly with the Long Center to track the status of recipients’ contract times and the turnaround on payments, which is typically completed in one business day after all paperwork is completed.

Sylnovia Holt-Rabb, director of EDD, said the city has reached out to Business & Community Lenders of Texas to arrange emergency gap loans to award recipients who are at risk due to the payment delays. The department also expects to release a memo this Friday detailing plans for how to improve the three grant programs: Elevate, Thrive and Nexus. Areas of concern include the user experience for the application portal and language access to the program for non-English speakers.

“As the director, I take full responsibility, but we are trying to move this process forward and correct any mistakes that have happened,” Holt-Rabb said. “I have received my own emails, met with several community members, and so it is my word to try to make this user experience better.”

The commission took no action related to the program problems, though individual members chastised staff for the delays and the lack of communication once it was apparent that recipients would not receive their money when they expected.

“If there was time to notify the 200 applicants that their payment was gonna be delayed, that would’ve alleviated a lot of the issues that we’re hearing in the community,” Commissioner Faiza Kracheni said. “It’s really important to be transparent about this is because the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division has put an explicit focus on racial equity. Groups that are underserved and historically underrepresented don’t have board members that can give them a $25,000 bridge loan.”

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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