Item 05 - HOT Leftovers Responses.pdf — original pdf

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Questions from the Arts Commission on HOT funded grant contracts Submitted by Commissioner Sharon Anderson, via email on Friday June 6 1. How many total HOT-funded grants (i.e., Arts/Culture [Nexus, Elevate, Thrive], Live Music, Heritage, CSAP) from the 2022/2023 cycle (which should have been closed out in calendar year 2024) are incomplete as of today (no final report/last 10% went unpaid)? [complete tally of programs, divided by grant category] Status of final payments for active contracts for all ACME Funding programs Key terms for this matrix on contracting: 1. Forfeited: Grantee proactively gave up award; Unresponsive 2. Open Contracts: Granted an extension; Still within their new terms 3. Noncompliant: Not submitted Final Report; Noncompliant, Responsive; Noncompliant, Unresponsive; Noncompliant, Extension Expired 2. Leftovers: Those 12 total unsatisfied contracts equal how many total dollars of unclaimed HOT funds (i.e., the 10% left in the funding buckets by all HOT grantees who abandoned their final reports in breach of contract)? - Total cost of leftover funds as of June 9, for awardees who have been marked as “forfeiting” their funds is $100,000 total. (*$70,000 is for Live Music Fund, and cannot be used for Cultural Arts) - Contracts actively being worked with to move towards final report compliance (but currently marked as noncompliant) is $847,500 total (*$550,000 is specific to Live Music Fund, and cannot be used for Cultural Arts) 3. Please clarify where these leftover dollars are located? Some of the funds are with The Long Center, and some are still within the ACME division budgets. We typically send money over as we are getting ready to distribute funds (communicating within Department level finance, City of Austin corporate level budget office, and The Long Center finance team). Funding that is “left over” in one fiscal year is typically incorporated into the following fiscal year for use. For the question of “can we pull the funds together and create a new funding program”: Not if it’s already been encumbered for another use; other funds could possibly be pulled and reassigned in our budget, but it would not be a quick process and would require program development, vetting, and contract development/management to ensure compliance as with all other funding mechanisms. Additionally, we fully expect Final Reports to be successfully submitted. It is an extreme rarity in our funding history that we can’t work with awardees to ensure contract compliance. 4. How is the City setting about to retrieve refunds for the 90% furnished to grantees who did not complete their contracts? The City of Austin does not typically claw back funding for money/awards previously distributed, and any provision would have to be written directly into the contract. A best practice for contracting (including for grant contracts) is to deny payments as milestones are not met, potentially resulting in a cancelled contract and contractor not receiving final payments. The goal of the Department has been to work with contractors to meet achieve compliance, supporting overall program goals. 5. What are the consequences for not completing the final report? Awardee will not receive their final 10% payment and cannot receive future grants until their final report is complete, and will be put into “bad standing” with the City preventing them from applying for additional funding opportunities if they fail to file the final report. 6. If the grantees with delinquent final reports had been under fiscal sponsorship, the fiscal sponsor would be on the hook for repaying the 90%, correct? This has not happened to us before, and we have not historically clawed back funds for previous awards. 7. Were any of the grantees who did not file a final report (for the 2023 cycle) granted funds again in the 2024 or 2025 cycle? If so, please provide a complete list of those grantees. We had one outstanding organization that was offerend an award for FY25 who had an open contract, but it has since been closed today.