HomeMy WebLinkAboutOCAC Minutes 05-13-2024 Orange County Arts Commission
May 13, 2024, Minutes
Attendees: Linda Williamson, Sec, Crystal Wu, Chair, Marc Miller, Katie Murray, Gideon Young, Wendy Smith, Josh
Rosenstein, Denise Duffy, Vice chair, Heather Washburn, Lindsay Metivier, Saba Jordan, Alexa Velez, Krista Bremmer
Absent: John Claude Bemis, Sadie Allen
Meeting Location: ArtsCenter
1. Call to Order at 6:35pm by Linda Williamson, Sec. Denise Duffy, V took over as chair at 6:45pm
2. Marc moved to approve the April 2024 Board Minutes with corrections reviewed at the May meeting and Gideon
seconded.All approved.
3. Board Updates:
a. The board welcomed Alexa Velez to the board as our new member.Alexa is a dancer and film maker. She is also
a teacher at Cary Academy.She works with Durham Arts Council as well as other arts organizations.
b. Remaining at-large vacant seat—we have one remaining opening. Katie asked for any suggestions for individuals
that would be good for our board.The board, as the official NC Arts funding organization, is supposed to be
representative of our community. However,we do not have representation from the African-American
community at this time.
c. FY25 UNC Student Liaison Celia Gibbs—Krista made the motion to approve Celia Gibb's application to be our
UNC student liaison board member and Josh seconded. She is a rising senior at UNC Chapel Hill. Katie will
present her application at the next county commissioner meeting.
4. Director's Report
a. FY25 Budget Update-The update has good and bad parts. Good,the County has agreed to add the funds to
Katie's budget for the additional %salary for one FTE. However, as a result the programming budget will stay
flat instead of applying the expected dollars targeted from increased County Occupation tax, which is typically
used for programming. The FY25 Programming budget is currently$16,469.This is a 58%decrease from FY24
and the lowest amount since it began in FY18-19.
OCAC Program Budget History (began in FY18-19):
FY18-19 FY19-20 FY20-21 FY21-22 FY22-23 FY23-24 FY24-25
18,306.44 34,366.55 53,482.37 22,814.21 42,407.80 38,787.50 16,469
The OCAC Programs budget funds the following established programs:
• First Fridays at the Mill $15,480/annual
• Piedmont Laureate contribution $1,500/annual
• Emerging Artist Grant Program $1,500/annual
• Arts Educator Grant Program $2,000/annual
• Monthly featured artist articles$6,000/annual
• Monthly featured artist videos$3,600/annual
• Honorariums for Coalesce$2,000/annual
• Honorarium for Weave &Spin $2,400/annual
TOTAL: $34,480/annual
Hopefully,the shortfall between established programming and the new budget can be addressed through other Orange
County budget options or grant funding. It will be very difficult to keep our current level of programming.
b. Eno Mill
i. June—volunteers needed for 2nd shift—NC Pastel Society show with the Triangle Jazz Orchestra
performing.
ii. August-an open call just went out for"Art of the Book" asking artist to submit work inspired by Daniel
Wallace's book"Big Fish. It closes the end of May.
iii. Juneteenth Celebration for the county on June 14th from 6-9pm will be held at the Mill. Katie's team will
be providing operational support for the event.
c. Arts Day 2024—Katie asked if other board members could attend Arts Day 2024 which is happening May 21 &
22. David Heinen, VP for Public Policy, and Advocacy at the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits will speak on
the impact of new rules around salary limits requiring overtime pay and the impact to arts organizations. On Day
2 of the event,the group will be meeting with legislators.
d. Grant Updates
i. Reviewed 24-25 OCAC Grants Program—
1. Reviewed Orange County Outside Agencies awards funding over the last few years, which has
dropped from $45000 down to $29,711 because last year the County earmarked $16,000 for
KidZu without adhering to the OCAC grant review process.This year we are still only seeing
$29,711, and not the original $45,000, even though the $16,000 is not being awarded directly.
Outside Agency funding for the Arts was just 3%of the total Outside Agency budget when it was
$45,000-- now it is only 2%.
2. Our available pool this year for grant funding is S24,000 less than last year and lower than pre-
Covid years.
3. Multicultural requirement for FY25 grassroot grants is 67%of the state allocation,which is
$31,572. It will be very hard to meet that with organizations requesting operations support vs
programming support where multicultural artists are hired.
a. Question discussed with the Board for Grassroots was should we alter our 2024
guidelines.The Board discussed funding programming vs operations and how we should
divide the Grass Roots dollars.
b. Last year,we had an $8K max for operations and $3K max for programming.
4. Katie presented survey results from the recently completed 2024 Artist Grant Survey. Summary
results attached to the minutes. Many of the results matched what we expected. However, we
did learn several key items. Katie is going to use this information to make the application
process better.
a. Board discussed funding available ($28,000) and what our guidelines should be this
year.The board discussed changing the max amount that can be requested.
b. $2K has been the max for the last three years.
• Heather made a motion that artist grant max request be increased this year to $3,000 and Marc seconded
• Josh made the motion to change the Grassroots Grant max to$5,000 for either operational or programming
requests and Krista second.
• Both motions were approved.
5. Crystal closed the meeting at 8:12pm