City Council approved $25,000 funding request for summer concert series

Published 9:37 pm Monday, June 15, 2026

QUINCY — The Quincy City Council gave approval to a funding request from Gem City Concerts to help in the effort to bring more people to Quincy.

Kim Howard addressed the council as the principal investor in the event organized by Quincy businessman Scott Edlin. Howard told the council that past investors had made substantial demands on the event, leaving Gem City Concerts in a fiscal deficit each year.

Gem City Concerts requested $25,000 in funds from the council as the current grant program, the Legacy Events Grant Program, or LEGUP, operated by the city would only have allowed up to $10,000 since Gem City Concerts received a grant from the program previously.

In setting up the two event grant programs, the council set up the Bring Events to Quincy, or BET on Q, to allow grant funding for two years for organizers bringing new events to the city. The LEGUP program is also limited to two years, but organizations have the option of petitioning the council directly for additional funds.

Ald. Jeff Bergman, R-2, broke with usual protocol of the public comment portion of the council meeting to get clarification on the expected return on investment into the community. According to the information submitted to the council, Gem City Concerts expects anywhere from 5-7,000 people to attend the two-night event. Organizers expect somewhere between five-15% of attendees to stay in hotels for the shows.

Howard also noted that a portion of the $25,000 requested from the city would be used to cover the premiums for an insurance policy to protect in the event of rain. She said without that protection, a weekend rainout could lead to the closure of Gem City Concerts altogether.

An additional use for the funds, Howard said, was to be used for promotion of the events at a further range. She said organizers are hoping to attract audiences from both St. Louis and Iowa, giving a potential for even more hotel room occupancy.

The council approved the funding as requested as part of the meeting’s consent agenda rather than with an individual vote.

The council also approved two quotes totaling just over $340,000 from SHI International Corporation. The first contract for $312,837 will cover three years of secure system back-up storage, both on-site and using cloud-based systems. IT Director James Pioch said if the city’s system was subject to another data hijacking as happened in 2022, the back-up would allow his department to restore data in days rather than months or more.

The second part of the contract allows for 270 end-user licenses with SHI for a total of $27,555, or just over $100 per license.

Before the meeting wrapped up, Mayor Linda Moore updated the council on the search for the city’s next police chief. Moore told the council that the Board of Fire and Police Commissioners had conducted interviews with three candidates to serve as interim chief once Adam Yates steps down on July 20.

Moore said the commissioners are expecting to announce their selection for the interim chief in the next week after working through the candidates’ information with the city’s human resources department. The hope is to have the interim chief in place in early July so that they can work alongside Yates for a few weeks before taking over.

The currently timeline for the process would have the interim chief run the department through roughly October to allow commissioners time to conduct a thorough search for the next full-time chief for the department.