I started researching CT Office of the Arts administration of Art grants and awards. I began by looking at FY26 Art Grant Recipients that can be found at: https://portal.ct.gov/decdartsportal/-/media/decd/arts_culture/supporting-arts/fy26-sap-grants.pdf?rev=d28740ff103e457d962eb18b9080adf0&hash=29193B075BDA2056D73E9B7D58F83AC0
The heading claims
that $950,000 has been awarded to 233 recipients.
I
decided to categorize how much each of the eight counties in CT
received to see if there was a pattern. In doing so, based strictly
on the information documented on the spreadsheet,
In my first back of a napkin attempt at accounting for where the money went I came up with a shortfall that I couldn't resolve and I think it was the result of attempting to resolve all the entries into their correct State county buckets with too little sleep.
Lately, I've gone back to the original spreadsheet and asked a number of AI agents to do that work for me.
Google Gemini proved to resist doing the actual math and analysis and essentially gave up any deep probing of the subject. I tried a second AI that had problems with the PDF formatting.
Finally DeepSeek provided a rich and thorough, step by step breakdown of the questions asked.
Here is the County by County results:
Based solely on the provided spreadsheet, the sum of grant awards by Connecticut county is as follows:
"- **Fairfield County**: $338,545
- **New Haven County**: $183,613
- **Hartford County**: $201,066
- **Litchfield County**: $65,253
- **Middlesex County**: $56,151
- **New London County**: $75,668
- **Tolland County**: $16,914
- **Windham County**: $12,797
*Note: The total of these county sums is $950,007, which is $7 more than the $950,000 total stated in the PDF. This discrepancy arises from the data as transcribed; the figures above reflect the exact sums from each individual grant entry.*"
The percentage totals are"
"Based solely on the grant award amounts listed in the spreadsheet (which sum to **$950,007** – $7 above the PDF’s stated total of $950,000), the percentage of funds allocated to each Connecticut county is:
| County | Total Grants | Percentage |
|--------|--------------|-------------|
| Fairfield | $338,545 | 35.6% |
| New Haven | $183,613 | 19.3% |
| Hartford | $201,066 | 21.2% |
| Litchfield | $65,253 | 6.9% |
| Middlesex | $56,151 | 5.9% |
| New London | $75,668 | 8.0% |
| Tolland | $16,914 | 1.8% |
| Windham | $12,797 | 1.3% |
*Percentages are rounded to one decimal place and sum to 100.0% due to rounding.*"
These percentages consistently indicate that taxpayer money that is and must be dedicated to promoting ART and ARTISTS STATEWIDE is being systemically funneled away from lower income, rural counties and regions into wealthier Western communities and the State Capital region.
Funding for the Arts is not a poverty program, It is not an education program. It is not a make-work program. It is not a health program. It is not a reparations program. It is not a feel good program. It is not a gambling honeypot lure. It is not an elite, obscenely endowed exclusive school student slush fund.
WHAT DOES THE Connecticut Office of the Arts DO FOR A
LIVING? HOW DO THESE MOFOs KEEP THEIR JOBS?
Why are Eastern CT taxpayers subsidizing wealthy counties who can well afford to pay for their own programs while counties whose cultural needs are many are ignored. If artists are looking for an erased and marginalized group to whine about look no further than Tolland and Windham counties.
see: https://artscrub.blogspot.com/2026/03/chro-ct-office-of-arts-complaint.html
No comments:
Post a Comment