NYC spends $47 MILLION in arts grants after closing down small businesses and slashing police budget

While culturally-focused non-profits in New York City will be receiving just under $50 million in grants, small businesses are shutting their doors city-wide and the New York Police Department's budget has been slashed by $1 billion.

Some $2 million of the grants will go to five local arts councils who will then distribute the money to individual artists and smaller non-profits, according to the NY Times.

Twenty five art-education originations will reportedly receive as much as $750,000 of the grant money.

The Apollo Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Chinese in America are three organizations of a group of 93 who will receive as much as $100,000 each from the grants.

Gonzalo Casals, the Cultural Affairs Commissioner, pointed out that smaller arts organizations have been hit the hardest by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic in a statement.

"We can’t address the enormous challenges that lie ahead alone, but we’ve focused on providing long-term stability to the smaller organizations that are most vulnerable to the impacts of Covid-19," he said.

A reported total of 1,032 art-related non-profits in the city will be the benefactors of the grant money.

Meanwhile, the NYPD's budget was cut by nearly $1 billion following demands from constituents and city officials to defund the police in New York following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Small businesses in the city are growing more and more desperate as shutdown measures and social distancing protocols make business operation extremely difficult. The New York Times previously reported on the permanently crippling effect the coronavirus has had on New York's small businesses.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo just announced Friday that all indoor restaurant dining will be restricted further as infections rates keep rising, Politico reports.