Llano County awards $500K in tourism grants

The Llano County Commissioners Court had tough decisions to make on Tuesday, Nov. 12, when it had to decide on how to divvy up $500,000 in grant money among 27 entities asking for a combined $964,000 in tourism dollars. Few got every dollar they asked for, and some received no funds at all.

Llano County held its annual hotel occupancy tax grant hearing on Tuesday, during which the Commissioners Court awarded grants to businesses, nonprofit organizations, or other entities that claim to bring in out-of-county visitors to stimulate the local economy. The grant funding comes from a 4 percent tax on short-term rental transactions in the county, like hotels, motels, and bed-and-breakfasts.

The 27 requests made ranged from $1,756 on the low end for insurance at the Lone Grove Community Club to the highest request of $222,250 from the Kingsland/Lake LBJ Chamber of Commerce for an assortment of signage, visitor center operations, and advertising.

Lone Grove was denied funding, and the Kingsland Chamber was only awarded $100,000.

Large, Llano-area events received mixed funding from the county. The popular Llano Crawfish Open received $75,000 out of $100,000 requested while the Llano Earth Art Festival received no money from its $40,000 request. 

The high-dollar requests and volume of requests for 2024 is far above normal, according to Llano County Treasurer Cheryl Regmund, who oversees hotel occupancy tax collection and management.

The county saw an enormous boost in short-term rental transactions during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which injected serious money into the HOT grant funds. The county typically saw approximately $250,000 or less collected annually prior to 2020. The number jumped in the $500,000s following the pandemic and got as high $741,000 in 2023. 

There were 21 requests for a total of $827,000 in 2023. No requester was completely denied that year.

According to Regmund, increased awareness of the grant application process and the large grant allotment from 2023 likely motivated more requesters and higher asks for tourism dollars from the county.

“The grant applicants were told…Llano County HOT Grants would probably be half the amount from previous years because we had used all of the taxes collected during COVID,” Regmund explained in an emailed response to questions from DailyTrib.com. “So, my guess, the applicants figured they would double their amount knowing we would probably half what they were asking for. Or they just knew how much we had given out in the past.”

Regmund waded through the mountain of requests and made recommendations to the Commissioners Court on where cuts could be made prior to Tuesday’s meeting.

“(It was) very challenging (making reduced recommendations) knowing that all of the events and requests for Historical buildings mean a lot to the Llano community,” she said. “I made recommendations to the judge and commissioners by reducing the amount requested in half for the grant applicants who have been receiving grants for several years now.”

The Castell General Store, a longtime HOT grant requester, had to go without. The store received $17,500 from its $35,000 request to support its wide assortment of annual events, including the Testicle Festival, chili cook-off, and White Trash Bash.

Llano County history preservation was a big winner with a $40,000 grant going to the Llano County Historical Society to redo the flooring of the Llano County Historical Museum.

According to Regmund, the county could have a lot more money coming in thanks to a new software that tracks short-term rentals. She said there are currently 223 short-term rental properties paying their hotel occupancy taxes in the county. She estimates there could be as many as 500 more short-term rental properties that are not paying and hopes they can be brought into compliance by 2026.

dakota@thepicayune.com