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CREATE director asks Greene County to restore pre-pandemic administrative funding as regrant program grows
Summary
CREATE (the regional arts council) told the County Resources Committee it has more applicants and a larger state allocation this year and asked the county to consider restoring prior administrative support to help administer regranting and local programming.
Aristella (executive director of CREATE) told the Greene County Resources Committee on Feb. 5 that the regional arts regrant program grew this year and that CREATE is asking the county to consider restoring previous administrative support to run local regranting and county-focused programming.
Aristella said the statewide community regrant program managed in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts increased from $160,000 to $208,000 this year across the three-county region. That increase raised Greene County’s share from about $52,000 last year to an expected $74,000 this year, she said. Applications across the three counties rose from 84 last year to 105 this year; individual-artist applications for Greene County rose from about seven or eight last year to 22 this year.
“We’re trying to sustain our capacity in a sustainable way,” Aristella said, describing new staffing hires and plans to digitize the application process, expand marketing and continue free professional-development workshops for artists. She noted partnerships with Cornell Cooperative Extension and Siena College’s pilot survey project on sustaining artists' communities.
County board members asked for clarity on how additional county funds would be used. Committee members recalled that Greene County had previously provided an administrative stipend (historically cited as roughly $40,000) that was later reduced to align with other counties; CREATE is requesting the county consider restoring administrative support to run the regrant program and to expand Greene County–focused activities. Aristella said state funds pay the regrant coordinator position but that operational hours and other administrative work remain constrained.
Committee members asked CREATE to provide a proposed budget or breakdown showing how restored county funds would be used for administration versus direct county programming, and several members signaled preliminary support for increased funding contingent on receiving that detail. The committee took no formal vote on funding at the meeting.
