October 22, 2025 – Cultural Council – Video & Transcript
October 22, 2025 - Cultural Council
meeting today so it is nine oh four i'm calling the meeting to order and i will take a quick roll
call um nourish my sore president mustafa head president charles bent president murray eisenberg
present mariam libdi present and i'm pallavina gesh i'm also present absent are um indian gandhi
who's also a student liaison donna um and we're also missing kevin kevin and donna are missing
um so we need to make sure that they're here next time when they actually vote um i hope
they're able to attend so that will be our regularly scheduled november meeting which is in this on the
second of wednesday of of november and i do need everybody to be present at that meeting and um
right after this this meeting i will send out a um a reminder that everybody needs to be present and
i'll send the date out as well and um i actually have um already asked for our agenda to be posted
because it's going to be simple we're just going to go over grants for the november and the december
meeting because it is going to take us to to um goes at least to decide by december i'm hopeful i'm
hoping that we'll be able to decide who is not getting the grants because i need to put that into the
system um by the end of december and we can take the january meeting to decide the allocations themselves
all right so um let's let's go according to the agenda i did a roll call um i sent out the august 13th
meeting notes and that was auto generated for us and so will this um which is fantastic all i did was i
took it and um i just um basically i i just added a structure around it that's all i did it took me five
minutes so which is great um hopefully it's not missing anything and i read through it made sure that
my notes and what it gave matched so um anyway so do i have a motion do you have any questions about it
sorry marie august 13th august 13th uh my name is myself i think i corrected it
okay i don't have it corrected here so it'd be you rg yeah yeah yeah okay okay yeah i do have
okay i have it corrected in the in the um in the version that i i will i haven't submitted it
i will take one more look at it to make sure that it is corrected and then i will submit that
and can you send it to us too yes yeah uh yeah so i have it corrected
um i will i will send it to you guys first today and take a look at it and by tomorrow evening if
everybody's okay i will have them post it yeah i think you can say that along with the changes
we'll we'll approve it contingent on the changes and you can just make the changes if you're very specific
okay okay okay okay um so the last time we met um remind me nourish did we vote on how much we're
going to withhold for our purposes i'm looking at the meeting minutes no it did not so it did not so
that should be added um what meeting was that sorry on the 24th we were planning to when we met on not
the 20th yeah on on um in september when we when we were planning to meet and that meeting never
happened because we didn't have a quorum we were supposed to vote on um the amount that was going to
be withheld for valent cultural council purposes from from the total allocation uh we will add that
to this meet to this agenda as an extra item because i haven't added it but um let's go over the meeting
minutes approval so are we saying that contingent on me correcting murray's spelling are we are we voting to
pass it is there a motion to pass i shall move murray has moved to vote for the with contingency to
pass and i need a second i second that thanks mariam nourish do you agree yes charles do you agree
i do thank you mr do you agree yes and i agree as well so it passes unanimously thank you everybody
i will send the corrected one out to you after the meeting today and um have it posted okay um
so quickly grant i want to go over um the grant rules i hope all of you have access to the grants
portal if you don't i need your valent dot ma.us email address and i can add you to it
um so if you don't have access to the portal just email me with your valent.ma.us address and i will
add you to the portal um because that is where we will be looking at everything you don't necessarily
need it because i do have the pdf printed um downloaded and i sent it to all of you if you haven't
received it ping me again and i will send it talk to all of you so the rules are that um we have
we have a certain amount allocated and nourish will go over those numbers in a bit um and and we will
also vote how much we are withholding before deciding on that final number of what that number is going
to be and we have to try and allocate all of it um we vote on it first so basically uh uh go through
all the applications if you can before you come to the meeting for next time so that you have an idea
of how you're leaning beforehand um so the idea is that it should fulfill our community needs and our
community needs and i sent out a write-up of our purpose statement a while ago but it is very broad
right like we we are talking about anything that serves the needs of this very diverse community
so um it can be very broad so um if you have any confusion after the meeting today i've along with
the um minutes for august 13th um i will send out that purpose statement so you can take a look at it
as you're reviewing the new the new um applications i confirm that it is the statement that is on the mcc website
now under correct as correct so it is i will also send that link out so that you can look at it on
the mcc website if you if you look up valent cultural council on the mass cultural council website you will
see our purpose statement because that was something we had to give out in the summer and i had it
voted on by by the members that were there at that time um but basically i want you to keep that in
mind as you're reviewing each application of how it's going to help our community um so typically
we do extend it a little bit based on how much we have uh given that we currently have 22 applicants
and uh with the total requests i believe close to 18 000 um i don't think we can actually process
everybody even if we like really slash how much we're giving them so we really have to um this is
the first time i find myself in this in this place where we have to be brutal and cut out applications
refuse applications i'm sad about that but unfortunately the political situation is such that
we can't do much about it we don't have enough um and then the next rule is that we we we respond to
people who have not received by the end of december those should be in so which is why um our first
step would be to say that we will definitely look at this category of people to grant to their requests
and we will not look at these people so that way i can enter that into the portal and say hey we're
sorry but your application is not um accepted and then we will take us the second part will be to take
that list of people we have looked at and that will be in early december the second week of december
and if we need to further cut we will do that at that time but by that meeting we should have the final
list of people that we are definitely going to allocate to and hopefully in that december meeting
we will also look at how much we can give them so like if if the total is coming out to something and
we have to slash that you know by a certain percentage because that that's the only that's the
amount of money we have to work with then we will look at all those numbers in that december meeting
and um when we meet in january that's when we'll finalize everything and i'll have to put it into
the system by the second week of january so i will also send out those dates um in the email afterwards
and um we can go from there any questions palavi do you know if there's a explicit or like a explicit rule or a precedent about like if there were someone who was applying for a grant that received one previously that is no explicit rule about that okay yeah got it um a lot of times we do have repeat people um but these are organizations or in the mostly organizations that are valent based and and are doing a lot for the valent community so we will definitely take them under consideration individuals we may be a little bit more um mercenary about but organizations like i will give you an example the library we will try to fund them as much as we can yeah right council on aging we will try to find them okay so any of the valent organizations who have applied um okay right thank you both both government and non-profits that are that are around in valent like the valent arts sounds good so we will try to fund them okay that's that and the other rule is that on the list if there are people that you know
we should recuse ourselves from the voting oh right okay um and one example in in this yours list is women of valent podcast the person who runs it is a good friend of mine so i will not be voting on on that um the other thing is my own um dance company mommy gods has applied for a thing so i will definitely not be voting and neither will nourish okay so great okay any questions okay you want me to go over the um budget stuff yes if there are no other questions um nourish will move to the financial aspects okay all right share my screen um are you guys seeing it um not yet it's coming up okay yes now i can see it yeah okay so uh as treasurer i can log into the mass culture council i think um marie is vice president and balavi as president can also and uh here they tell you the uh amount available for granting okay so uh we were allocated uh just like every other culture council uh six thousand nine hundred dollars and then we had some funds left over and we are allowed to allocate eleven thousand eight hundred and sixty okay so this is according to the mass cultural council now uh we we have kept this uh administrative funds we always keep like three hundred and forty five dollars which is the max amount for um administrative funds such as uh hosting a uh get together for grantee exception you know who have been granted and things like that that we want to do with several people these are not um art um art exhibits but administrative events that we want to sponsor okay it's it's it's a very modest amount so it's it's not i can't see it very well that's my eyesight okay 345 yes thank you thank you so again uh for the year um it's six thousand nine hundred uh as the usual amount and because of uh funds that were uh not uh not uh not claimed right people who didn't claim funds from previous years uh from we got a total of eleven thousand eight hundred and sixty right so that's about five thousand more than we normally should have okay so um of the six thousand nine hundred uh we can keep up to one thousand and thirty five for our own project and so last year uh it's not last year two years ago uh we had a bunch of people paint mailboxes right and uh we gave them uh 500 each or something like that and so that's an example of uh an event that we we want to do right and host and we want to sponsor um directly with our involvement right so uh that's not part of the grant cycle right so uh if we subtract that amount then we won't be able to give it to the people who are applying for a grant so this will be something separate for us if we want to do it and uh so that is basically the bottom line right so um any questions so um naresh what happens if between now and december people do submit for people do uh giving their receipts this amount will go down so uh once uh the weyland town treasurer processes it and you get notified to the mass cultural council and this amount will go down by that amount right so i just want to uh show you is this uh come through hopefully yes so this was a list of all the uh people we granted last year okay these are all the grantees for last year of which uh the ones that are not claimed were the singing seniors barber barbershop style interpretive signs for dudley woods open door connection oh that was claim sorry uh classical concert series and the diwali festival right so these people have not claimed right if they happen to uh claim let's say the diwali festival claims then our total will go down by 700 if they do claim right okay well do we set that money aside in case or when do we don't know when do we account for that so we can only account so i would suggest that we start thinking about the available funds is 6 500 right like so that's what we have minus the 300 and whatever or how much ever we decide we're going to withhold okay um and then go from there in the meantime i'm going to reach out to these people um nourish if you can just send me yeah just one yeah one second just want to clarify so the people who haven't claimed from last year right right amounts to two four two five not 6 900 minus everything else it's just not that amount it's only it's only 2425 so if you want to say i want to give these people more time right and give them whatever uh keep them until next year even right until i think they have to december 31st is there correct the rule so if you say well i'll give them until december 31st i won't allocate this amount of funds we can do that okay we don't have to but we can now right it's not so it's basically uh 11 860 minus the 2825 i'll give you the number if you want again we'll have to vote on it and say we'll withhold that right and even though mass cultural council won't deduct that number right they won't deduct that number uh we will when we are allocating right so we can uh we can yeah yeah so basically um think about what we have as 9 000 for now right so some of these guys forgot which one actually didn't hold their event so they can't claim right i forgot which one that was um i think the diwali didn't hold that event yet they didn't hold their event okay so they i mean when they do hold they will claim the concert cds didn't happen no so that's what i was saying sorry about you not i was not saying uh someone who had supposed to have held the event right that schedule they did not hold it at all and they were not going to do it um so uh you i think it's a good idea to reach out to them i will reach out to them um if you can send me this list or at least a list of people who haven't claimed i can send you and it's be color coded and you can just see yeah that's perfect you'll be blank here yeah yeah and we can get in touch with them um the veterans day concert um that's something that we have to because veterans day
it's yeah yeah yeah that sounds good so um those are kind of the numbers okay uh so um i'm just gonna see if i can do the math here so um one one eight six oh you already did it someone already okay okay eight six zero right so if i do um here equals this number minus this number so we have nine thousand four hundred and thirty five to give right to allocate for 2026 right and we can if we choose to withhold uh one thousand dollars for our own stuff right according to mass culture council we can withhold one thousand and thirty five dollars if we want right that's the amount that they've told us we can do it if you want but we'll have to vote on it it has to be a separate vote and you know it kind of has to pass okay um once we are clear with all the financial stuff we can put that up to vote um the other question i have is that is the 6900 that you're showing the total without the 325 taken out 345 taken out correct that's the total allocation and uh we took out the 345 and if we choose to take out the 1035 it'll be come from this number right not from this number yeah yeah and then um and but it'll affect this number but it'll come from yeah both of these are coming from this number so we're not allowed to um keep money from last year's funds right we're only allowed to keep money from this year's allocated okay all right so um again before we put it to vote i want to remind everybody is that a question before i move on just wondering what was um i'm just wondering how the allocated amount was affected from last year to this year well it was the same 6 900 okay so nothing changed i i couldn't see any difference here nothing changed uh i can go look at the last years and just to make sure but as far as you know nothing yeah um if we can if we can do that um naresh that'll be great because i'd remember that there was a little bit of confusion last year because of that that final amount available for granting versus allocation um we had to kind of backtrack a little bit and adjust in the last minute so um double checking will not be will definitely be useful so if you can do so last year's uh yeah numbers won't affect us here this number is no no i didn't talk about last year's numbers affecting us i just spoke i was talking about the confusion we had last year so i don't want the same thing to happen this year so um if you can just double check and make sure that that's the amount we really do have okay okay and the other thing is that i want us all to start thinking about the valent 365 event that's going to be happening
and whether we want to set aside money to do anything special for that or are we going to just say that um whatever is not given will roll over into next year and people can apply for grants for valent 365 so um that's that's something that we need to consider as we are voting okay uh should i stop sharing anybody have uh questions on the numbers well i just want to ask about the williams 365 is that for a different fiscal year now are we talking fyi uh 26 or 27 for the williams 365 i think it's 27 okay right okay can someone tell us what's the williams 365 i feel clueless so it's uh the 365th year of valent okay yeah um i don't know it's 360 it's some number i'm sorry i don't remember the number i think it's 375 no uh no actually no it's not so there's going to be like an anniversary that we may be a part of yes okay yeah um i will i'll definitely i mean i should i should look it up right now because um okay so you can put it to um vote i'll need somebody i can propose that we put it to vote whether we should hold hold back um 1035 dollars or our usual 345 dollars so the vote is to approve 1045 dollars thousand um and 35 yeah 35 dollars yeah so uh i'd like to advocate that we don't withhold it unless we plan to spend it on something right so um you know we shouldn't withhold it if we say well we'll decide later what to do with it right i think we should have some plan to say all right i'm going to do mailboxes or i'm going to do uh the whalen path or whatever right some plan and then ownership right so let's say miriam says okay i i will actively participate in spending this one thousand 35 you know provide leadership for that or something like that i think we should um in my opinion um we shouldn't withhold it and have no plans i think using it for grants is the most um most prudent thing we will be doing and we have in in the past we have shown that 345 we also don't end up using all of it um in general even for the even for the um reception we hold so um may i clarify is it the 1035 or the 345 is that how it is did i hear that right or not so right so it is definitely going to be 345 because we will withholds hey kevin hi sorry i'm late i had trouble trying to find a kind of trying to call in and stuff so okay sorry go ahead so can somebody catch me up on what we what i missed uh or will we do the go ahead so just answer marie's question is that okay just one second yeah so answer marie's question and then i'll catch you up kevin so yeah marie it's it's not either or they're completely different okay so the administrative funds are already withheld right they are every council withholds them but the 1035 not everyone does it you know if you have a plan you do it if you don't have a plan you don't with okay thank you
so um kevin to catch you up we started talking about the grant process um you've already been part of it so if you have any questions or you need any refresher uh please go ahead and ask but i went over um all the grant information with everybody and then um afterwards nourish presented the finances that we have um we have um the exact amount is 11 850 is that right okay yeah um that's how much we have to allocate this this year and right now we are putting up to a vote whether we should withhold a thousand and thirty five dollars um for our right what do you what do you want to withhold that what exactly so we need to have a plan to withhold it if we have any special projects that we want to work on if somebody is going to propose a special project that we want to work on we can withhold it um but um nourish's recommendation which i second is that we don't because it's always most prudent to use it to give grants we will have more in our in our pockets to to give out as opposed to um doing any special projects which we may decide to do um but we still have time to think about it and get that done one of the special projects that i was mentioning is the valent anniversary celebrations and i'm trying to find the exact date i believe it's 2027 well and what so we have a a big anniversary celebration that's coming up for valent um did you say animal anniversary oh anniversary yeah okay i need to vote on this today and when that anniversary is supposed to happen i am looking for the exact dates um we don't have to vote on it today to answer mariam's question um but we need to definitely vote in it um next meeting before we start looking at at the um at the grants so but do we have the date for the anniversary or no um we do i'm just looking for it i have it in my email somewhere um okay i will find it i'm trying to catch up here right no worries no worries um i should have had this had this uh had those dates set before i came to the meeting but i apologize for that well it's not having it so we can definitely like i said um postpone a meeting uh voting on it until next time but that needs to be the first thing we do before we start looking at grants okay sounds good okay so um do i have somebody propose that we wait for it uh i will make a motion that we wait to um vote on what are we voting on whether we're going to withhold a thousand and thirty five dollars or not okay i then i then i make a motion that we wait to withhold the one thousand thirty five dollars and how many ever since so next so we decide next meeting what's going to go on okay perfect do i have a second i second that thank you
and um naresh how do you vote on it i vote yes and murray how do you vote on it yes mariam how do you vote on it yes mustafa how do you vote on it yes and i vote yes too so the vote is withheld we will do this before we start looking at grants you mr charles charles proposed it i did not but i also vote yes okay yeah uh charles how do you vote i did i didn't vote can a person that made the motion vote as well or no yeah yeah so kevin do you how do you vote oh i'm saying yes with okay perfect so unanimously this passes we will withhold the voting until the beginning of next meeting um and we will start with this and continue with the grant um excuse me i have a question yes uh i thought you said i couldn't vote on things that affected the culture council itself does this count as one no so you can't um you can't vote well there are some things i'm going to look at the uh rules there are some things like um voting on how the funds are used that student liaisons cannot do isn't that isn't that the grants though that you said that i can vote for grants you can because they're not um they are the usual things that we do so the other grant the other part of it which is um using our discretionary funds for things okay all right um next um i have emailed all of you with a with a pdf of of the grantee uh grant applications um do you want to have a preliminary look at it um we have 22 applicants i believe yeah um
and so we have a total requested about um let me look it up because i'm not great at math i did it on a spreadsheet and i have 14 985 okay so it's not too bad given that we have about 9 000 or so to to allocate so we are about 5 000 short which is much better than what the situation we were last year so hopefully um it won't be too traumatic but um i would like all of you to go through all the applications and um have a sense i i'll create a um voting board of some sort on mentee meter or or something so we can do that i forget what i did last time but i'll do something similar so we can um vote on it and um mostly once we vote on it we will each talk about the people we didn't vote on and why we think they don't deserve um the grant and then we'll take it from there um be prepared to stay a little late next week i'm um this week is is ending soon um which is nice but be prepared to stay a little late next week because until we have voted and um kind of pared down the number and everybody's heard um we should not leave it because otherwise we'll get late allocating i'll have to add another meeting in november which is not great because it's the holiday time and it's going to get crazy so the first round should be complete by the end of the day next next time we meet um any questions or concerns about that um do you know that our november meeting date or is it yes i was just about to um announce that um i'm looking at i think it's the 17th isn't it um no uh 17th is not a uh wednesday 12th it's the 12th okay so the 12th okay we're meeting the 12th of november yes okay that's right all right you know i just want to mention that my numbers are direct exports from the state site so i didn't create a web sheet i i i i downloaded a web sheet a spreadsheet excuse me i just want you to know that okay perfect perfect um and next week when we meet we will also i mean we can do that now if somebody wants to be our scribe and take down all the results of the voting of course yeah i will do that as well but i do need a spreadsheet um i'm confused what day are we meeting next week not next week next time sorry the november 12th okay um so on november 12th when we meet uh can i have a volunteer to take all the results down in a spreadsheet that's shareable do you want me to do it sure marie that'll be great a couple of columns to it i guess and just we'll just make sure i get the right information down right yeah so when naresh sends out the current spreadsheet that he has you can just copy the columns that that's there so okay so i essentially did the same thing i downloaded a spreadsheet from their site and i added a couple columns that said that how much are we i look so the two two things are how much are we allocating and then um column that says did we um contact them and let them know the results especially the people who we um decided not to fund well does naresh want to do this anyway since does naresh want to do the spreadsheet for the uh for the uh awards then so um i do the spreadsheet for the uh people that have been granted but if you want me to do the ones that are not granted to be um i can do that but i normally only do the ones that are granted okay okay and then or all right whatever it is yeah okay yeah so just a list it doesn't even have to be a spreadsheet it's just a list of people that we we decided not to grant that way i can um get in the system and tell no send the sorry letters that's all i need okay um any other questions yeah just as we're as we're reviewing this am i correct in understanding that it's logical to assume that we're working towards an allocation budget of like 9 400 bucks yes okay great and in what in the event that so there there were there was great money that we gave last year some of which has not been claimed in the event that we do not vote to re-appropriate that or whatever the term is and the funds are still not claimed do they roll over to 2026 okay great they do they do okay so uh typically it's 2400 right like narrations that in his spreadsheet as well so thank you it's it's we will work with the 900 and whatever dollars for now um and and then yeah i just want to clarify it's uh the 2400 if something doesn't get claimed uh by december 31st it actually goes to the 27 budget okay okay yeah the 26 budget is the 9000 floor okay okay that's that's good to know thank you so we don't have access all right one more question uh not to hold us up but i'm just looking at like the um the spreadsheet of the grant applicants some of the project like are are you looking at all between the project budget and the requested amount in terms of its like proportionality and how should i think about that i calculated the percentage of their total budget and i put it on my spreadsheet yeah okay yeah so basically what we're looking at is that if they're asking for a large portion of their budget those are the people we will um start to remove some amount from when we when we grant it oh i see okay so um we want to make it as equitable as possible right like obviously we can't say okay everybody across the board gets 50 percent of what they've asked for which is not which is not practical because if you have a large budget there are chances that you are going to other sources for um like a smaller budget they're probably not applying to great many places um okay so and there's a question also in the thing that have you applied to any other cities so you can take a look at that suit they've applied to other cities for grants um you know there's a greater chance that they'll get some money from some people got it okay thank you for that so i have a question as a follow-up to that how have you dealt in in the past with people who are requesting who are presenting their programming outside the city is there a priority for in city applicant yeah so like i said i'm going to send around um it's it's on the website but i'm going to send around our purpose statement um which is quite broad right like we're trying to do things that will um benefit our community and by our community being the valent community so we're going to take a look at the programming and see if um they are saying that valent residents will participate or valent residents will um perform or whatever right like are they part of the artist package or the doer package or are they observer slash audience package um that definitely is there however like there are things like um to give you an example the discovery museum right like it it operates in a completely different city but it does cater to kids of valent so how are we going to kind of weigh that against say something like the children's um our library's children's section that's also applying so um this is unfortunately it's not black and white right i wish there were like uh boxes we could put people in and say yes granting no we are not granting it's all discretionary and that is why we have this panel it's like all of us can bring in our sensibilities and we will listen to everybody and we'll make the most informed decision we can does that help yeah yeah thank you yeah it does thank you which is why you know we have to abstain from voting for things that are close to us um we don't want to be influencing the rest of the panel about things that we are a either passionate about or b have some personal connection to okay any other questions last minute comments um i'm assuming all of you have access to the grants portal except mustafa and probably union i do yes okay so um you're welcome to go in there and take a look at it there's also a lot of things on that portal which will give you information about what what you should be looking for and how should you be thinking about allocation of funds um and so on i will send a link when i send out uh follow up after the meeting um but any questions if you can't find an answer send me a note i will try to find an answer if i don't know already i found one other thing on the state site that um and the uh communities things where the whaling they still list rachel as the contact person i don't know there's anything you can do about yeah yeah um i have been telling them to change that but they haven't so yeah um uh you know it does list that i am the chair and you're the vice chair and nourish is the treasurer but the contact person is still listed rachel which is fine because it's it says rachel but when they click to email it comes to the council anyway it comes to the council email okay which is why you see a lot of emails going that say um dear rachel so it's but it comes to all of us anyway that's okay yep okay i suppose there's no budget for them to hire somebody a web designer to fix all of those things oh that's sad i'm sorry i shouldn't be saying anything any other questions concerns uh i have a quick question so we can uh in order for us to have a successful vote on the 1300 something next um month uh if any members here would like to discuss uh an idea of something presented to the rest of the team can we do that uh or is there something so you can present the idea by email to us but we still have to vote on it at the meeting yeah and when you do email email it to the whole group um i know that charles sometimes doesn't get emails so you can cc his personal email like i do sometimes um same thing with mustafa and union right like they may or may not be getting the town email they may not be part of the list so cc them but send it to the valent cultural council email list yes please anything else all right um it's 7 54 do i have a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion that we adjourn thank you kevin do i have a second i'll say thanks marie i vote yes charles uh yes thank you mariam yes mustafa i vote yes kevin yes marie yes and i vote to adjourn as well so as of 7 54 we are adjourned and we will meet next to november 12th
and um we can go from there any questions palavi do you know if there's a explicit or like a explicit rule or a precedent about like if there were someone who was applying for a grant that received one previously that is no explicit rule about that okay yeah got it um a lot of times we do have repeat people um but these are organizations or in the mostly organizations that are valent based and and are doing a lot for the valent community so we will definitely take them under consideration individuals we may be a little bit more um mercenary about but organizations like i will give you an example the library we will try to fund them as much as we can yeah right council on aging we will try to find them okay so any of the valent organizations who have applied um okay right thank you both both government and non-profits that are that are around in valent like the valent arts sounds good so we will try to fund them okay that's that and the other rule is that on the list if there are people that you know
we should recuse ourselves from the voting oh right okay um and one example in in this yours list is women of valent podcast the person who runs it is a good friend of mine so i will not be voting on on that um the other thing is my own um dance company mommy gods has applied for a thing so i will definitely not be voting and neither will nourish okay so great okay any questions okay you want me to go over the um budget stuff yes if there are no other questions um nourish will move to the financial aspects okay all right share my screen um are you guys seeing it um not yet it's coming up okay yes now i can see it yeah okay so uh as treasurer i can log into the mass culture council i think um marie is vice president and balavi as president can also and uh here they tell you the uh amount available for granting okay so uh we were allocated uh just like every other culture council uh six thousand nine hundred dollars and then we had some funds left over and we are allowed to allocate eleven thousand eight hundred and sixty okay so this is according to the mass cultural council now uh we we have kept this uh administrative funds we always keep like three hundred and forty five dollars which is the max amount for um administrative funds such as uh hosting a uh get together for grantee exception you know who have been granted and things like that that we want to do with several people these are not um art um art exhibits but administrative events that we want to sponsor okay it's it's it's a very modest amount so it's it's not i can't see it very well that's my eyesight okay 345 yes thank you thank you so again uh for the year um it's six thousand nine hundred uh as the usual amount and because of uh funds that were uh not uh not uh not claimed right people who didn't claim funds from previous years uh from we got a total of eleven thousand eight hundred and sixty right so that's about five thousand more than we normally should have okay so um of the six thousand nine hundred uh we can keep up to one thousand and thirty five for our own project and so last year uh it's not last year two years ago uh we had a bunch of people paint mailboxes right and uh we gave them uh 500 each or something like that and so that's an example of uh an event that we we want to do right and host and we want to sponsor um directly with our involvement right so uh that's not part of the grant cycle right so uh if we subtract that amount then we won't be able to give it to the people who are applying for a grant so this will be something separate for us if we want to do it and uh so that is basically the bottom line right so um any questions so um naresh what happens if between now and december people do submit for people do uh giving their receipts this amount will go down so uh once uh the weyland town treasurer processes it and you get notified to the mass cultural council and this amount will go down by that amount right so i just want to uh show you is this uh come through hopefully yes so this was a list of all the uh people we granted last year okay these are all the grantees for last year of which uh the ones that are not claimed were the singing seniors barber barbershop style interpretive signs for dudley woods open door connection oh that was claim sorry uh classical concert series and the diwali festival right so these people have not claimed right if they happen to uh claim let's say the diwali festival claims then our total will go down by 700 if they do claim right okay well do we set that money aside in case or when do we don't know when do we account for that so we can only account so i would suggest that we start thinking about the available funds is 6 500 right like so that's what we have minus the 300 and whatever or how much ever we decide we're going to withhold okay um and then go from there in the meantime i'm going to reach out to these people um nourish if you can just send me yeah just one yeah one second just want to clarify so the people who haven't claimed from last year right right amounts to two four two five not 6 900 minus everything else it's just not that amount it's only it's only 2425 so if you want to say i want to give these people more time right and give them whatever uh keep them until next year even right until i think they have to december 31st is there correct the rule so if you say well i'll give them until december 31st i won't allocate this amount of funds we can do that okay we don't have to but we can now right it's not so it's basically uh 11 860 minus the 2825 i'll give you the number if you want again we'll have to vote on it and say we'll withhold that right and even though mass cultural council won't deduct that number right they won't deduct that number uh we will when we are allocating right so we can uh we can yeah yeah so basically um think about what we have as 9 000 for now right so some of these guys forgot which one actually didn't hold their event so they can't claim right i forgot which one that was um i think the diwali didn't hold that event yet they didn't hold their event okay so they i mean when they do hold they will claim the concert cds didn't happen no so that's what i was saying sorry about you not i was not saying uh someone who had supposed to have held the event right that schedule they did not hold it at all and they were not going to do it um so uh you i think it's a good idea to reach out to them i will reach out to them um if you can send me this list or at least a list of people who haven't claimed i can send you and it's be color coded and you can just see yeah that's perfect you'll be blank here yeah yeah and we can get in touch with them um the veterans day concert um that's something that we have to because veterans day
it's yeah yeah yeah that sounds good so um those are kind of the numbers okay uh so um i'm just gonna see if i can do the math here so um one one eight six oh you already did it someone already okay okay eight six zero right so if i do um here equals this number minus this number so we have nine thousand four hundred and thirty five to give right to allocate for 2026 right and we can if we choose to withhold uh one thousand dollars for our own stuff right according to mass culture council we can withhold one thousand and thirty five dollars if we want right that's the amount that they've told us we can do it if you want but we'll have to vote on it it has to be a separate vote and you know it kind of has to pass okay um once we are clear with all the financial stuff we can put that up to vote um the other question i have is that is the 6900 that you're showing the total without the 325 taken out 345 taken out correct that's the total allocation and uh we took out the 345 and if we choose to take out the 1035 it'll be come from this number right not from this number yeah yeah and then um and but it'll affect this number but it'll come from yeah both of these are coming from this number so we're not allowed to um keep money from last year's funds right we're only allowed to keep money from this year's allocated okay all right so um again before we put it to vote i want to remind everybody is that a question before i move on just wondering what was um i'm just wondering how the allocated amount was affected from last year to this year well it was the same 6 900 okay so nothing changed i i couldn't see any difference here nothing changed uh i can go look at the last years and just to make sure but as far as you know nothing yeah um if we can if we can do that um naresh that'll be great because i'd remember that there was a little bit of confusion last year because of that that final amount available for granting versus allocation um we had to kind of backtrack a little bit and adjust in the last minute so um double checking will not be will definitely be useful so if you can do so last year's uh yeah numbers won't affect us here this number is no no i didn't talk about last year's numbers affecting us i just spoke i was talking about the confusion we had last year so i don't want the same thing to happen this year so um if you can just double check and make sure that that's the amount we really do have okay okay and the other thing is that i want us all to start thinking about the valent 365 event that's going to be happening
and whether we want to set aside money to do anything special for that or are we going to just say that um whatever is not given will roll over into next year and people can apply for grants for valent 365 so um that's that's something that we need to consider as we are voting okay uh should i stop sharing anybody have uh questions on the numbers well i just want to ask about the williams 365 is that for a different fiscal year now are we talking fyi uh 26 or 27 for the williams 365 i think it's 27 okay right okay can someone tell us what's the williams 365 i feel clueless so it's uh the 365th year of valent okay yeah um i don't know it's 360 it's some number i'm sorry i don't remember the number i think it's 375 no uh no actually no it's not so there's going to be like an anniversary that we may be a part of yes okay yeah um i will i'll definitely i mean i should i should look it up right now because um okay so you can put it to um vote i'll need somebody i can propose that we put it to vote whether we should hold hold back um 1035 dollars or our usual 345 dollars so the vote is to approve 1045 dollars thousand um and 35 yeah 35 dollars yeah so uh i'd like to advocate that we don't withhold it unless we plan to spend it on something right so um you know we shouldn't withhold it if we say well we'll decide later what to do with it right i think we should have some plan to say all right i'm going to do mailboxes or i'm going to do uh the whalen path or whatever right some plan and then ownership right so let's say miriam says okay i i will actively participate in spending this one thousand 35 you know provide leadership for that or something like that i think we should um in my opinion um we shouldn't withhold it and have no plans i think using it for grants is the most um most prudent thing we will be doing and we have in in the past we have shown that 345 we also don't end up using all of it um in general even for the even for the um reception we hold so um may i clarify is it the 1035 or the 345 is that how it is did i hear that right or not so right so it is definitely going to be 345 because we will withholds hey kevin hi sorry i'm late i had trouble trying to find a kind of trying to call in and stuff so okay sorry go ahead so can somebody catch me up on what we what i missed uh or will we do the go ahead so just answer marie's question is that okay just one second yeah so answer marie's question and then i'll catch you up kevin so yeah marie it's it's not either or they're completely different okay so the administrative funds are already withheld right they are every council withholds them but the 1035 not everyone does it you know if you have a plan you do it if you don't have a plan you don't with okay thank you
so um kevin to catch you up we started talking about the grant process um you've already been part of it so if you have any questions or you need any refresher uh please go ahead and ask but i went over um all the grant information with everybody and then um afterwards nourish presented the finances that we have um we have um the exact amount is 11 850 is that right okay yeah um that's how much we have to allocate this this year and right now we are putting up to a vote whether we should withhold a thousand and thirty five dollars um for our right what do you what do you want to withhold that what exactly so we need to have a plan to withhold it if we have any special projects that we want to work on if somebody is going to propose a special project that we want to work on we can withhold it um but um nourish's recommendation which i second is that we don't because it's always most prudent to use it to give grants we will have more in our in our pockets to to give out as opposed to um doing any special projects which we may decide to do um but we still have time to think about it and get that done one of the special projects that i was mentioning is the valent anniversary celebrations and i'm trying to find the exact date i believe it's 2027 well and what so we have a a big anniversary celebration that's coming up for valent um did you say animal anniversary oh anniversary yeah okay i need to vote on this today and when that anniversary is supposed to happen i am looking for the exact dates um we don't have to vote on it today to answer mariam's question um but we need to definitely vote in it um next meeting before we start looking at at the um at the grants so but do we have the date for the anniversary or no um we do i'm just looking for it i have it in my email somewhere um okay i will find it i'm trying to catch up here right no worries no worries um i should have had this had this uh had those dates set before i came to the meeting but i apologize for that well it's not having it so we can definitely like i said um postpone a meeting uh voting on it until next time but that needs to be the first thing we do before we start looking at grants okay sounds good okay so um do i have somebody propose that we wait for it uh i will make a motion that we wait to um vote on what are we voting on whether we're going to withhold a thousand and thirty five dollars or not okay i then i then i make a motion that we wait to withhold the one thousand thirty five dollars and how many ever since so next so we decide next meeting what's going to go on okay perfect do i have a second i second that thank you
and um naresh how do you vote on it i vote yes and murray how do you vote on it yes mariam how do you vote on it yes mustafa how do you vote on it yes and i vote yes too so the vote is withheld we will do this before we start looking at grants you mr charles charles proposed it i did not but i also vote yes okay yeah uh charles how do you vote i did i didn't vote can a person that made the motion vote as well or no yeah yeah so kevin do you how do you vote oh i'm saying yes with okay perfect so unanimously this passes we will withhold the voting until the beginning of next meeting um and we will start with this and continue with the grant um excuse me i have a question yes uh i thought you said i couldn't vote on things that affected the culture council itself does this count as one no so you can't um you can't vote well there are some things i'm going to look at the uh rules there are some things like um voting on how the funds are used that student liaisons cannot do isn't that isn't that the grants though that you said that i can vote for grants you can because they're not um they are the usual things that we do so the other grant the other part of it which is um using our discretionary funds for things okay all right um next um i have emailed all of you with a with a pdf of of the grantee uh grant applications um do you want to have a preliminary look at it um we have 22 applicants i believe yeah um
and so we have a total requested about um let me look it up because i'm not great at math i did it on a spreadsheet and i have 14 985 okay so it's not too bad given that we have about 9 000 or so to to allocate so we are about 5 000 short which is much better than what the situation we were last year so hopefully um it won't be too traumatic but um i would like all of you to go through all the applications and um have a sense i i'll create a um voting board of some sort on mentee meter or or something so we can do that i forget what i did last time but i'll do something similar so we can um vote on it and um mostly once we vote on it we will each talk about the people we didn't vote on and why we think they don't deserve um the grant and then we'll take it from there um be prepared to stay a little late next week i'm um this week is is ending soon um which is nice but be prepared to stay a little late next week because until we have voted and um kind of pared down the number and everybody's heard um we should not leave it because otherwise we'll get late allocating i'll have to add another meeting in november which is not great because it's the holiday time and it's going to get crazy so the first round should be complete by the end of the day next next time we meet um any questions or concerns about that um do you know that our november meeting date or is it yes i was just about to um announce that um i'm looking at i think it's the 17th isn't it um no uh 17th is not a uh wednesday 12th it's the 12th okay so the 12th okay we're meeting the 12th of november yes okay that's right all right you know i just want to mention that my numbers are direct exports from the state site so i didn't create a web sheet i i i i downloaded a web sheet a spreadsheet excuse me i just want you to know that okay perfect perfect um and next week when we meet we will also i mean we can do that now if somebody wants to be our scribe and take down all the results of the voting of course yeah i will do that as well but i do need a spreadsheet um i'm confused what day are we meeting next week not next week next time sorry the november 12th okay um so on november 12th when we meet uh can i have a volunteer to take all the results down in a spreadsheet that's shareable do you want me to do it sure marie that'll be great a couple of columns to it i guess and just we'll just make sure i get the right information down right yeah so when naresh sends out the current spreadsheet that he has you can just copy the columns that that's there so okay so i essentially did the same thing i downloaded a spreadsheet from their site and i added a couple columns that said that how much are we i look so the two two things are how much are we allocating and then um column that says did we um contact them and let them know the results especially the people who we um decided not to fund well does naresh want to do this anyway since does naresh want to do the spreadsheet for the uh for the uh awards then so um i do the spreadsheet for the uh people that have been granted but if you want me to do the ones that are not granted to be um i can do that but i normally only do the ones that are granted okay okay and then or all right whatever it is yeah okay yeah so just a list it doesn't even have to be a spreadsheet it's just a list of people that we we decided not to grant that way i can um get in the system and tell no send the sorry letters that's all i need okay um any other questions yeah just as we're as we're reviewing this am i correct in understanding that it's logical to assume that we're working towards an allocation budget of like 9 400 bucks yes okay great and in what in the event that so there there were there was great money that we gave last year some of which has not been claimed in the event that we do not vote to re-appropriate that or whatever the term is and the funds are still not claimed do they roll over to 2026 okay great they do they do okay so uh typically it's 2400 right like narrations that in his spreadsheet as well so thank you it's it's we will work with the 900 and whatever dollars for now um and and then yeah i just want to clarify it's uh the 2400 if something doesn't get claimed uh by december 31st it actually goes to the 27 budget okay okay yeah the 26 budget is the 9000 floor okay okay that's that's good to know thank you so we don't have access all right one more question uh not to hold us up but i'm just looking at like the um the spreadsheet of the grant applicants some of the project like are are you looking at all between the project budget and the requested amount in terms of its like proportionality and how should i think about that i calculated the percentage of their total budget and i put it on my spreadsheet yeah okay yeah so basically what we're looking at is that if they're asking for a large portion of their budget those are the people we will um start to remove some amount from when we when we grant it oh i see okay so um we want to make it as equitable as possible right like obviously we can't say okay everybody across the board gets 50 percent of what they've asked for which is not which is not practical because if you have a large budget there are chances that you are going to other sources for um like a smaller budget they're probably not applying to great many places um okay so and there's a question also in the thing that have you applied to any other cities so you can take a look at that suit they've applied to other cities for grants um you know there's a greater chance that they'll get some money from some people got it okay thank you for that so i have a question as a follow-up to that how have you dealt in in the past with people who are requesting who are presenting their programming outside the city is there a priority for in city applicant yeah so like i said i'm going to send around um it's it's on the website but i'm going to send around our purpose statement um which is quite broad right like we're trying to do things that will um benefit our community and by our community being the valent community so we're going to take a look at the programming and see if um they are saying that valent residents will participate or valent residents will um perform or whatever right like are they part of the artist package or the doer package or are they observer slash audience package um that definitely is there however like there are things like um to give you an example the discovery museum right like it it operates in a completely different city but it does cater to kids of valent so how are we going to kind of weigh that against say something like the children's um our library's children's section that's also applying so um this is unfortunately it's not black and white right i wish there were like uh boxes we could put people in and say yes granting no we are not granting it's all discretionary and that is why we have this panel it's like all of us can bring in our sensibilities and we will listen to everybody and we'll make the most informed decision we can does that help yeah yeah thank you yeah it does thank you which is why you know we have to abstain from voting for things that are close to us um we don't want to be influencing the rest of the panel about things that we are a either passionate about or b have some personal connection to okay any other questions last minute comments um i'm assuming all of you have access to the grants portal except mustafa and probably union i do yes okay so um you're welcome to go in there and take a look at it there's also a lot of things on that portal which will give you information about what what you should be looking for and how should you be thinking about allocation of funds um and so on i will send a link when i send out uh follow up after the meeting um but any questions if you can't find an answer send me a note i will try to find an answer if i don't know already i found one other thing on the state site that um and the uh communities things where the whaling they still list rachel as the contact person i don't know there's anything you can do about yeah yeah um i have been telling them to change that but they haven't so yeah um uh you know it does list that i am the chair and you're the vice chair and nourish is the treasurer but the contact person is still listed rachel which is fine because it's it says rachel but when they click to email it comes to the council anyway it comes to the council email okay which is why you see a lot of emails going that say um dear rachel so it's but it comes to all of us anyway that's okay yep okay i suppose there's no budget for them to hire somebody a web designer to fix all of those things oh that's sad i'm sorry i shouldn't be saying anything any other questions concerns uh i have a quick question so we can uh in order for us to have a successful vote on the 1300 something next um month uh if any members here would like to discuss uh an idea of something presented to the rest of the team can we do that uh or is there something so you can present the idea by email to us but we still have to vote on it at the meeting yeah and when you do email email it to the whole group um i know that charles sometimes doesn't get emails so you can cc his personal email like i do sometimes um same thing with mustafa and union right like they may or may not be getting the town email they may not be part of the list so cc them but send it to the valent cultural council email list yes please anything else all right um it's 7 54 do i have a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion that we adjourn thank you kevin do i have a second i'll say thanks marie i vote yes charles uh yes thank you mariam yes mustafa i vote yes kevin yes marie yes and i vote to adjourn as well so as of 7 54 we are adjourned and we will meet next to november 12th