The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Deadline Sept. 5. Consider a sustainability component and avoid peak tourist dates
By Kendra Walker
If you plan to apply for the Mt. Crested Butte Admissions Tax Grant for the Winter 2019/2020 cycle, take note. The admissions tax board has revised its grant application in an effort to realign with Mt. Crested Butte’s changing tourism landscape and to bring more clarity to the application process.
“We’ve tried to be very explicit with people reading this,” said councilmember Roman Kolodziej as he discussed the proposed modifications with Town Council at the July 16 meeting.
The grant comes from an admissions tax that collects 4 percent from any event that starts, finishes or enters Mt. Crested Butte town limits. Twenty-five percent of the revenues from the tax is allocated for transportation, and the remaining revenues are then utilized as grant money for marketing and event sponsorship. The admissions tax committee is responsible for creating the annual grant budget, reviewing and screening each application before making recommendations to Town Council for a final decision.
The intent of the grant is to help attract new visitors to Mt. Crested Butte, to help jumpstart new groups or events demonstrating financial need and to increase sales tax revenue for the town with the events supported.
Included in previous application criteria, council agreed they would continue to give higher priority and consideration to events falling outside of peak tourist season times. With input from Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce executive director Ashley UpChurch, council agreed to use the Tourism and Prosperity Partnership’s (TAPP)’s summer peak date range of July 1 to August 16 as a guideline.
“As someone writing the grants, I appreciate specific dates that I can say ‘Nope, my event does or does not fall on these specific dates every year,’ just to be able to budget and plan ahead,” said UpChurch.
This doesn’t mean council couldn’t take applications between July 1 and August 16, said Kolodziej. “We’re just saying the priority would be to exclude those dates.”
Recognizing that dates, holidays and schedules often fluctuate from year to year, council determined the date range would be adjusted each year as needed.
“That’s something the admissions tax committee could do … and then they would take into consideration when Texas and Oklahoma go on spring break and when Bike Week falls,” said councilman Nicholas Kempin. “This is something that we could tweak from year to year as those dates change.”
Councilmember Lauren Daniel also stressed a recommendation that applicants research the grant criteria ahead of time. “It seems that the person requesting the grant should do their homework and say ‘Okay, this is the same weekend as Arts Festival Weekend, it’s probably a bad time to plan an event,’” said Daniel. “If you didn’t bother to look up when spring break was, I don’t think you’re very in tune with the community.”
Additional consideration will also be given to events that make an effort to market environmentally sustainable tourism or have a sustainability component/plan as part of the event. “We have identified sustainability as one of our Town Council goals…” said Daniel. “This is where that could actually happen, at least a little bit.”
Another change: There will no longer be any application presentations to Town Council. Candidates may contact the committee to discuss their potential application prior to submission, and are expected to be present at the council meeting discussing their application to answer any questions. Applicants will also be required to disclose any other outside funding they’ve received for the said event. “That is typical in a lot of other grant applications,” said town clerk Tiffany O’Connell.
There will also be a new reporting template with council’s desired return on investment metrics in order to streamline the reporting process for grantees. UpChurch shared how she would have found that helpful when she first joined the chamber. “I will say for someone who’s new to the cycle it would be really helpful to have something that outlines exactly what you want and then I could just list exactly how I met it.”
Council also shortened the final report presentation time limit to five minutes.
The deadline for Winter 2019/2020 submissions is Sept. 5 at 5 p.m.
