Troupe hopeful after order signed

CARMEL, Ind. (WISH) - Carmel’s Mayor Jim Brainard signed an Executive Order worth half a million dollars. That’s money not spent by his city departments. The order “de-appropriated” $523,000 from their budgets. That could be good news to a local theater troupe.

Earlier this week , 24-Hour News 8 told viewers the Actors Theatre of Indiana fears “a significant cash flow crisis.” ATI blamed it on delayed delivery of a $75,000 arts grant from Carmel.

The de-appropriation could be the source of that grant, if the Carmel City Council approves it. ATI is one of several agencies hoping for help.

The theater company’s appeal – in an e-mail blast – drew objections from two council members. Eric Seidensticker criticized ATI for “blaming the City Council for your shortfall.” He said that was “at best unprofessional.” He also said the council had “asked the Mayor well over a month ago to calculate any funding that would be returned to the General Fund from each of his department heads. This money may be used to fund the additional requests by arts organizations.”

“The City Council has distributed 100 percent of the amount that was budgeted in this calendar year,” Seidensticker said. “The request by ATI (as well as others) for funding would be an additional appropriation to arts funding.”

Council President Rick Sharp chided ATI for thinking “a grant request equals a disbursement of funds and apparently based your business model on receipt of this grant.”

“We've been very grateful for the support of the City of Carmel,” said Don Farrell, a co-founder of ATI. He said the “the typical timeline, the chronology of that, we would apply for the grant and usually the arts disbursement monies happen a little bit sooner than what they have been this year." Now, without the grant, Farrell told 24-Hour News 8 his company had to seek help from its supporters.

The council, beginning with its Finance, Administration and Rules Committee, will decide what to do about the requests for the de-appropriated money.

Another council member said companies such as the Actors Theatre of Indiana need to raise their own money. We “don’t want to be the sole provider for any of these companies.”