Staff of the City Advertising and Promotion Commission presented a draft of an edited application for marketing support funds at the Aug. 13 workshop, the first part of the process for an event organizer to ask for up to $5,000 for marketing support. The commission has mentioned in several meetings of finding ways to more efficiently explain guidelines of how marketing support may be used and how to handle the approval process. Currently marketing support is approved on a meeting-to-meeting basis.
Commissioners zeroed in on the change for 2026 that rather than funding requests being done meeting-to-meeting that, instead, there would be four meetings a year where marketing support would be evaluated. Previously, commissioners have had concern that the funding requests take up a chunk of meeting time. Commissioners also discussed supplemental workshops where those making funding requests could present their request and commissioners could ask questions before the time of funding requests.
Tangentially, commissioners also had back-and-forth on how to handle the money allocated for funding requests in the budget. Funding requests are all under a single line item in the budget, but commissioners discussed whether to have funding allocated separately for “legacy events” that the commission is aware will be asking for funding each year. Legacy events are not a hard-defined type of event, but the commission is playing with the idea of defining them for events that have been held in Eureka Springs for some amount of years and have proven to be a boon for tax collections.
Legacy event marketing support could be set up as a separate line item in the budget and while they would still require funding approval, it would earmark money for events the CAPC are aware will happen year-over-year and avoid the problem of marketing support funding being used before these events ask for their funding.
Also, on the commissions agenda for the workshop was discussing the funding of the ES Historical Museum. The museum receives a monthly $600 stipend from the CAPC to function as a visitor’s center, as well as requesting marketing support for Voices from the Silent City and other events.