HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-09-04-ARTS-min
Lexington Council for the Arts Meeting
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
7:00 - 8:30 PM
Parker Room, Town Hall
Attendance
Present: Alix Fox, Lisa Herbert, Marie Hewes, David Hoose, Shalini Kakar, Claudia Lach, Steve
Poltorzycki, Ashley Rooney
Absent: Elsie Xu, Eric Hellweg
Call to order: 7:06pm
Meeting Notes
Shalini presented Steve with an orchid and a great chocolate and fruit repast to celebrate his tenure
with LCA.
Secretary’s Report: Lisa made a motion to approve our August meeting minutes, Steve seconded.
Minutes approved unanimously.
Treasurer’s Report: Town has us funded for $6000; State has us funded for $9286. Local account
balance is $7140. We also have $2645 from the MCC Festival grant that is budgeted for Porchfest 2024.
$145 of this amount is leftover from last year’s budget. The Cultural District has $15,000 grant money.
We would need to come up with a project; there’s no application process developed for that yet.
Grant Cycle Planning: The grant cycle for 2025 opens Sept 1 and ends Oct 16. Claudia and Marie will
cochair the grants committee, but Claudia will be traveling and needs help. We need to decide by Dec
1 who will not be getting grants. Those applicants have a month to appeal. Alix and Lisa joined the
committee. Shalini and Eric may join later. Tentative meeting is Saturday, Nov 16.
Last month Steve remarked that after Labor Day we should identify those 2024 grantees who have not
submitted their bills. We will then send reminders. Whatever was not used may be available for the
following year. If they ask us to extend their date, that may be possible. Marie will send a list of
grantees and Alix will annotate that with grantee liaisons, and send the annotated list to the
committee members to follow up.
Utility Box Unveiling: The Utility Box project is complete. We decided not to have an unveiling of one
of the boxes.
Porchfest Update: Our second Porchfest now has 78 bands and 53 porches according to Eric. He has
been handling fliers. Marie is handling information booth. Steve produced about 100 maps last year
and that wasn’t enough. Marie will organize the info booth and let committee volunteers know their
hours. Lisa will get 200 maps with parking lots marked, list of bands with genre and location, and finale
details.
Lex250 Update: We talked at length about the Lex250 horses and whether we should procure one that
we could share with another entity. Ashley moved that we get involved by having a horse in town, the
Council approved exploring this option. Ashley will talk to the library.
New Business: MCC has a new grant program to support programming and interpretation that tell the
stories of the American Revolution in Massachusetts and will increase tourism and travel to and within
Massachusetts. Shalini will explore an event with Native Americans.
The next meeting will be October 9. The meetings will be changed to the second Wednesday. Ashley
will act as secretary.
Meeting adjourned at 8:32pm.