Mayor McBrayer Releases Statement Regarding Tuesday’s City Council Vote
Mayor Mark McBrayer shared a statement regarding the vote to not award grant funding for the First Friday Art Trail:
“Thank you all for taking the time to express your concern over the City Council’s vote to not provide a grant to the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA) for the First Friday Art Trail (FFAT) this upcoming year. As you may be aware, the City of Lubbock, through the auspices of Civic Lubbock, Inc.’s (CLI) Cultural Arts Grant Awards program, supports approximately 30 different events annually in Lubbock. The money for these grants come from the Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT tax) the city collects on each hotel stay. So, it is a tax-payer funded program, and the City Council is responsible for approving each grant.
“I appreciate your commitment and enthusiasm towards LHUCA. I, like you, enjoy the FFAT and generally think it is worthy of support from our HOT tax. Importantly, not every cultural arts event that applies for the grant gets awarded, nor could the grant program provide substantial funds to all the events that happen within the city. Not all requests get funded for the full amount of the request, either. Choices regarding worthy recipients must be made. CLI conducts the initial review and then presents their recommendations to the City Council for final approval.
“A common concern that many of you shared in your phone calls and email was that CLI and LHUCA were not made aware in advance that the vote to defund would occur and were not provided an opportunity to respond with additional information and specifics regarding LHUCA’s request and CLI’s recommendation. City Staff and I have since reached out to representatives of CLI and LHUCA to allow them to respond, and they have done so by providing additional facts and specificity, which I believe may have impacted the Council’s analysis. Although I cannot speak for anyone else on the City Council, with the additional information received, I’m hopeful we will come to an arrangement regarding funding the grant with LHUCA and FFAT for the coming year.
“With that, I simply ask that you give the City Council an opportunity to work through this in a way that provides support for the arts in Lubbock in a manner that is beneficial for our entire community.
“I appreciate your phone calls and emails. As always, please do not hesitate to reach out to me on any item that is of concern to you.”