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The 2024 Christmas Parade lights up downtown San Angelo.
The city of San Angelo has awarded over $77,000 to San Angelo nonprofit organizations from hotel occupancy tax receipts.
The City Council approved the awards on its consent agenda in a meeting Tuesday.
In previous years, the San Angelo Cultural Affairs Council received hotel occupancy tax funds from the city as a subrecipient and distributed them to local nonprofit organizations based on established criteria.
After SACAC dissolved in 2024, the city developed a new program to administer and allocate these funds to the organizations.
“In July 2025, the City launched the HOT (hotel occupancy tax) Funds Program, designed to support arts nonprofit organizations in promoting art programs, enhancing tourism, and generating overnight hotel/motel stays,” according to council documents.
There were two categories applicants could apply for — core support and project support.
“Core Support was intended for established nonprofit arts organizations that provide year-round programming, while Project Support focused on special events, festivals, and arts-in-education programs,” the city documents stated.
The application period closed in August, with a total of six submissions, four for core support and two for project support.
Applications were reviewed by city staff for completeness and then taken to the local Public Art Commission, a city advisory board that evaluated, scored and ranked them according to the program’s established scoring criteria.
The commission had a total of $69,000 available for allocation, with funding for the project support category not to exceed $2,500 per item. The remaining $8,800 will be funded from the hotel occupancy tax fund balance via an internal budget amendment, the documents said.
The commission presented funding recommendations at the Nov. 18 City Council meeting. The measure was tabled since Mayor Tom Thompson called it a transition year, with him getting into his position earlier this year. Some organizations getting awarded less than the previous year.
“For this year, I would like to go through with no surprises and maintain what they (the organizations) got last year,” Thompson said in the Nov. 18 meeting.
The staff was directed to fund the nonprofit organizations based on whichever amount is greater: the 2025 fiscal year amount allocation or the amount recommended by the Public Art Commission.
Who got funding
Here are the amounts the city distributed, totaling $77,800:
Core support
- San Angelo Broadway Academy: $17,300
- San Angelo Symphony: $25,000
- Ballet San Angelo: $16,100
- Angelo Civic Theatre: $15,000
Project support
- Hispanic Heritage Museum & Cultural Center, Dia de los Muertos: $2,500
- Downtown San Angelo, Mini Miss Wool Pageant: $1,900