Lakeway council OKs funding for Lake Travis Film Festival in September

The Lakeway City Council on Tuesday approved funding for the annual Lake Travis Film Festival and heard that money has been set aside to give merit bonuses to 35 city employees who worked during the recent ice storm.

The council unanimously approved $57,820 in hotel occupancy tax funding for this year’s film festival, which is set to take place at six venues in Lakeway and Bee Cave from Sept. 14-17. Of that funding, $19,600 will go toward advertising. A report by Lakeway Finance Director Aaron Daigle states that the festival plans to reach 850,000 filmmakers and artists worldwide and attract over 2,000 visitors to the event with its marketing.

“This isn’t tax dollars that we’re paying for from our property taxes. This isn’t sales tax dollars from when you go to H-E-B. The only time you may have paid into (HOT funds) as a Lakeway citizen is if you stayed at a local hotel or resort,” Council Member Louis Mastrangelo said about approving funding for the festival. “With that in mind, it’s not like we’re taking money from building roads to pay for this.”

Kat Albert, executive director of the Lake Travis Film Festival, said a large portion of the marketing money will promote the city as a tourist destination.

“We need to tell people where is Lakeway (and) why should you come here, so when we’re doing our advertising, a lot of that is placemaking and encouraging tourism,” Albert said. “We want (visitors) to come to our festival, but we want them to also come to this area when there’s not a film festival.”

Last year the council approved $43,178 in hotel tax funds for the festival, which attracted 1,000 attendees and generated 173 room nights at local hotels, according to Daigle’s report.

In addition to attracting tourists, Albert said, the film festival brings together the community.

“We are Lake Travis. … We’re part of you,” Albert said. “We really appreciate that our communities come together. We like it when we have local businesses, we think we have a local identity and we also want to offer returns in value to the city and its citizens.”

At a recent meeting, council members approved merit bonuses for city employees who worked during the days-long ice storm to provide essential services and ordered City Manager Joseph Molis to find the funding to do so.

“Within the authority granted to me from our personnel policy code, I am going to implement a merit bonus for those employees who did a fantastic job during the ice storm,” Molis said Tuesday.

Molis said the city’s budget allows for around $80,000 that will be split between 35 employees who were vital to the city’s response to the ice storm.

“The things that were under our control were handled fantastically by city staff,” Molis said. “We had a core of volunteers from the Public Works Department and the Police Department that chose to stay at city facilities and make sure that all of our vital infrastructure was taken care of during that time period, even at the expense of going home to their families.”

The council members also met in executive session to deliberate pending litigation in a lawsuit filed against the city by a day care owner.

Bianca King, a Lakeway resident, sued the city last March after she was denied a permit to continue operating a small day care business out of her home. King's lawyers argued that Lakeway's 19 criteria for home businesses are unreasonably strict, so the city streamlined the requirements down to 10 and added a section that specifically addresses at-home day cares. However, King still needs a permit approved by the city to operate her business. With the lawsuit ongoing, King struck an agreement with the city in March to allow her to operate until the matter is resolved.

Mayor Tom Kilgore said no action was taken during the executive session and that no action needed to be taken in Tuesday's open session.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Lakeway City Council OKs $58,000 for Lake Travis Film Festival in September