The purpose of the Show Me Strong Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) Funding Program under section 601(a) of the Social Security Act, as added by section 5001 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), is to provide $15,000,000 in statewide grant funding to DMOs for the purposes of resuming normal business operations in the context of a public health emergency and to reimburse certain costs, to include tourism-related marketing focused on the resumption of tourism activities and the implementation of safety protocols, unanticipated costs associated with facility improvements and supply purchases directly related to the COVID-19 public health emergency, and expenses related to enhanced screening measures at events or event facilities.
The State of Missouri’s Division of Tourism is administering the program and has issued two grant application rounds. The amount of funding each DMO was eligible to receive in the first round was determined by an allocation formula previously used by the State to distribute funds through its Joint Cooperative Marketing Program. As such, the City of Independence was eligible to receive $55,998 in round one. Staff applied for and was awarded $51,000 for tourism-related marketing focused on the resumption of tourism activities (State referenced Attachment Round 1 A) and $4,998 for supply purchases directly related to the COVID-19 public health emergency (State referenced Attachment Round 1 C) for a total of $55,998.
The State allocated $13 million of the $15 million in round one and made the remaining $2 million available in round 2 for DMO’s to apply for without the funding restrictions applied to the first round. As such, Staff applied for and was awarded $1,000,000 for tourism-related marketing focused on the resumption of tourism activities (State referenced Attachment Round 2 A).
The staff received a proposal from the City’s Tourism Marketing Agency of Record to administer and implement the grants as an extension of their current Independence tourism-marketing contract. Madden Media is performing similar work for other DMO’s and is very familiar with the Show Me Strong Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) Funding Program.
This ordinance would authorize the City Manager to execute the grant agreement and the agreement for grant administration and implementation services.