Wild Rose Moon Artistic Director George Schricker
The Plymouth Common Council amended the previous approval of a Facade Grant for Wild Rose Moon to increase it to the full 20% of cost for eligible repairs. During the previous Common Council meeting the grant was approved for 20% of total cost of repairs; not including the amount covered by an OCRA grant. Upon further review of past approvals, it was discovered that The REES benefited from multiple grants for the roof. To maintain consistency and fairness; the Council revisited the issue at the recommendation of Councilman Duane Culp and approved the 20% match for the approximately $75,000 total project cost which included coverage from the OCRA grant.
Councilman Greg Compton illustrated that it was up to the discretion of the Council to approve, decline or limit the grant. Culp repeated that the Council needed to be fair. Compton said, “The REES and the Wild Rose Moon are similar in the way that they are both non-profits and I would lean toward accepting that because of that.” Compton added that the increased award would not result in extra cash to spend for items outside the project, and that the increased amount was still within the realm of maximum award.
The Facade Grant account holds approximately $1.5 million of foundation money which came from the sale of the hospital. It was determined at that point that the money be used in the form of grants to support the City of Plymouth. The base sum of the funding came from the sale of the hospital; leaving the interest accrued yearly to be invested. Compton illustrated that the foundation money is intended to remain even one hundred years from now; with the interest being used for revitalization.
Compton suggested that the Council establish a budget moving forward to specify the amounts to be used on an annual basis to ensure revitalization without over expenditure.
Culp clarified that the initiative started with the sale of the hospital in the amount of $1 million; and that the interest currently sits at approximately $500,000. Culp said that to change the utilized investment amount from interest off $1.5 million rather than the base of $1 million would require revisiting the ordinance and amending it.
Councilman Robert Listenberger, who spoke during the last meeting in favor of awarding the full 20%, agreed with Culp’s statement that the ordinance would need to be revisited to make that change and that the awarding process needed to be fair and consistent. “Everybody that’s ever requested has gotten 100% of their ask.”
City of Plymouth Mayor Mark Senter added, “As I look back on it now I apologize to George (Schricker, Artistic Director of Wild Rose Moon). I’ve talked many times about this downtown being an Arts Mecca where people from all over northern Indiana – wherever – can come. I did not present that well enough at the meeting two weeks ago. That’s probably my fault so I appreciate the fact that we are bringing this back up.”
Culp emphasized that he wanted to focus on making the current issue right; then the Council could move forward to address any changes they wanted to make to the ordinance at a later time.
Councilman Jeff Houin expressed that he understood the reasoning of both sides to review the funding opportunity in-depth; though he had also wanted to award the full 20% at the previous meeting. “The bottom line is, like Robert said, we need to be fair and consistent. So if we want to change how we award the grant we need to examine the ordinance and change the requirements not make arbitrary decisions during the process. We need to apply it consistently as we have always done and as Duane pointed out, we’ve done it in the past, we’ve awarded the full 20% regardless of other grant funding and that’s the right thing to do in this case.”
Compton repeated that the Council needed to establish a budget to award efficiently without depleting the foundation money.
Listenberger reminded Compton that the requests annually have fallen below that threshold; and that those requests are always within or below the maximum amount of $25,000 each. He said that he did not believe that the Council is overspending on the incentive plan; and hopes to see an increase in applicants moving forward.
The Council unanimously approved increasing the award amount to the full 20%.
In a follow-up interview with Artistic Director of Wild Rose Moon George Schricker, he expressed gratitude to the Council for their approval. The project will include (but is not limited to) removing paint from the brick on the front of the building, tuck pointing and sealing the joints, sealing the brick, new awnings, and painting the upper windows. All of the work is on the outside of the building as required by the grant stipulations and was presented in full detail to the Council at a previous meeting.
