"There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit." - Ronald Reagan
Nearly three and a half years after Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd first suggested it, the Chattanooga Tourism Co. has awarded its first 26 arts and cultural grants to local artists and programs.
In 2018, the District 8 commissioner suggested the then-Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau use a quarter of its expected $8.2 million in funding for capital and community projects and "be transparent and accountable for every dollar." He opined that such spending would be in keeping with what state legislators had in mind when they allowed local 4% hotel/motel taxes to be used for the tourism bureau.
Boyd had castigated the agency the previous year for what he said was its extravagant spending, lack of transparency and poor management, and a Tennessee Comptroller's Office investigation documented some of his concerns.
Since then, the group implemented some reforms, hired a new president and changed its name.
When the initial Cultural Tourism Advancement (CTA) grant recipients were announced Friday, no mention was made in the organization's news release of the suggestion by Boyd, who held two meetings with arts and cultural organizations in early 2018 before handing off the idea to the arts and cultural groups.
"As an elected official," he said at the time, "I think I've done as much as I'm charged to do. "I hope you guys [in the arts and cultural groups] come together as a coalition and get the CVB to reinvest in our in our community like many, many other communities do."
What was allotted for the first round of grants - $302,500 - didn't come anywhere close to a quarter of the Chattanooga Tourism Co.'s now-$8.5 million budget (which would have been around $2.13 million), but CEO Barry White says he hopes to double the grant total next year.
He said hotel/motel tax revenues were down about 30% during pandemic-ridden 2020 but are slowly bouncing back.
Times Free Press archives show that when White arrived in Chattanooga for the tourism job in 2018, he acknowledged the Augusta, Ga., tourist agency he previously headed funded tourism grants to allow local organizations to market themselves outside the region. His organization there also was funded on 33% of the local hotel/motel tax take rather than all of it as in Chattanooga.
Since the overwhelming majority of hotel/motel taxes are paid by out-of-town visitors, the grants are not funded with local taxpayer money. As important as the arts are, and as worthy as every applicant might be, the lodging taxes are a much more preferable way to fund such organizations than having some of their backing come out of Hamilton County's general budget.
The Chattanooga Tourism Co.'s news release says the grants - added to their strategic plan two years ago, pre-COVID-19 - should "increase brand awareness for Chattanooga, drive visitor demand, and support the Tourism Co.'s mission of developing visitor experiences that enhance the economic and social prosperity of Hamilton County."
Applying organizations could request up to 10% of their total operating budget, with a maximum of $50,000. In allotting grants, the greatest consideration was to be "given to a project/program's ability to attract diverse audiences, create economic impact, encourage visitors to travel to or extend their stay in Hamilton County, enhance the visitor experience, collaborate with other local organizations/artists, and improve our quality of life."
Of the 45 artists/organizations who requested $1.5 million in assistance, 26 were funded for a combined total of slightly more than a fifth of the total amount. They ranged from the downtown development agency River City Company to the Tennessee Aquarium to smaller initiatives such as The Chattery, a nonprofit learning collective, and the Chatt Taste Food Tour, which offers tours of culturally diverse dining and community insight.
White acknowledged that the arts and culture of a community draw visitors to Chattanooga, and the money those visitors spend here now will help back some of those artists and organizations in the future.
"Every community needs to compete with every other community for their share of the world's attention, customers, ideas, and investment," he said in the news release. "New and innovative experiences result in new opportunities for our residents and help keep our product fresh and our destination top of mind for visitors."
We applaud the tourism agency's start on helping fund local artists and organizations and hope it will increase the funds significantly and widen their range of distribution going forward.