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Committee approves recommendations to council for Ability Festival support and marketing
Summary
The Mayor's Committee for People with Disabilities approved several recommendations Sept. 12 asking City Council to allocate modest funds and to support marketing for the Ability Festival; the committee also approved honoring three awardees and directed staff on next steps for outreach and Eventbrite registration.
The Mayor's Committee for People with Disabilities on Sept. 12 voted to recommend that City Council allocate modest funds to support the upcoming Ability Festival, to assist with city marketing and to recognize three community awardees.
Committee members discussed logistics, fundraising and timeline during a longer working-group update. Commissioner Arellano, who leads the festival working group, told members they are seeking city, council and corporate sponsorship; the working group is also pursuing in-kind donations and registration tools to estimate attendance.
During the meeting the committee approved recommendations to council related to the festival. Members discussed an approximate internal figure of $1,200 to cover selected festival costs and said three awardees would each receive $200; the committee voted to recommend that council allocate those funds and to request city marketing support. The committee also approved a recommendation to recognize and reward the three awardees at the festival. A separate request for the city's financial-services team to verify an EIN was withdrawn after staff reported having received the needed information.
Members discussed registration and fundraising mechanics. The working group plans to use a free Eventbrite page to collect RSVPs and explore whether donation links or tiered “sponsor-level” tickets could be used without creating access barriers. Commissioners raised ethics and finance questions about collecting and managing donations; the committee said it will seek written guidance from the city legal and finance departments before accepting or holding funds.
The working group reported it had secured interpreting services through a partnership described as the governor's committee and identified three awardees: Travis County Services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (listed as an awardee in the working group's materials), ADAPT of Texas and Haley Bradshaw, an interpreter and educator at Austin Community College focused on tactile sign interpreting. Commissioners encouraged a mix of free public access and optional paid sponsorships for revenue, and recommended collecting attendance data to support future corporate fundraising.
The committee set the festival for Oct. 10 from 5 to 7 p.m. and discussed moving its regular monthly meeting (normally the second Friday) because committee members may want to attend. Committee members moved several administrative steps forward, including approving working-group memberships and voting to request council marketing support; the committee did not finalize any permanent funding allocations at the meeting — the motions were recommendations to City Council.
