Budget cuts to the pottery lab? Not in Boulder
During this record-setting recession, governments across the country have grappled with cutting costs while preserving basic services such as schools, police and fire protection.
In this famously liberal and disputatious college town, the battle has been over whether the city can continue to shell out $135,000 for its pottery lab.
FOR THE RECORD:
Pottery lab: An article in the Nov. 27 Section A about a controversy over a plan to contract out the pottery lab in Boulder, Colo., implied that Emilie Parker, who bid on the contract, referred to the city as the People’s Republic of Boulder. She did not. The article should have said that many people refer to the city by that nickname. —
For 50 years Boulder residents have decided that some of their tax money should be spent on teaching pottery to residents. At the lab, more than 700 students learn the intricacies of throwing pots, glazing ceramics and firing bowls.
This fall, the city’s new parks and recreation director, Kirk Kincannon, proposed contracting out the lab to a local arts group, but city lawyers said Boulder had to open bidding to all comers.
That led dozens of angry potters to swarm the City Council meeting last week, sparking a debate among deadlocked council members that ran past midnight. In the end, city officials backed down and said they’d try to come up with ways to save money on the lab without contracting it out.
“In my 30 years [in government], I’ve never seen folks react so strongly against trying to contract out a service,” Kincannon said. Often, he added, private vendors provide the same service to residents for less money. “It’s usually seen as a win-win.”
But residents drew a line in the clay.
Mayor Susan Osborne noted that privatization usually works because businesses can pay workers less than governments. “I’m sad it’s come to this in our town,” Osborne said. “This is how we save money as a local government.”
Emilie Parker, a former pottery lab student who bid on the contract, was at first startled to see the city reverse itself. But, upon reflection, she said it may just embody the personality of a place known to many as the People’s Republic of Boulder.
“Every city may have its certain thing that, if they try to cut it, really gets the ire of the citizens up,” Parker said.
This city of about 100,000 has weathered the economic downturn better than many, but it is still operating on an increasingly tight budget. Its budget has stayed flat over the last two years at $230 million, and it has cut nearly two dozen positions in each of the last two cycles.
A blue-ribbon task force singled out the pottery lab as an example of programs that Boulder could save money on by contracting with a private vendor, said Patrick von Keyserling, a city spokesman. “Pottery studios,” he observed, “are not something that the government is the sole provider of.”
The pottery lab sits in a converted firehouse, a two-story brick building on a street lined with stately, million-dollar, century-old homes just a few hundred yards from where the Rocky Mountains abruptly thrust upward from the plains.
On a recent afternoon, students of all ages, from young children to retirees, worked clay on wheels or stainless-steel tables. Alan Segal, 58, clad in a black T-shirt and a brown smock, led a visitor through the jam-packed space, lined with towering shelves holding handmade bowls, platters and cups.
Segal started coming to the lab about seven years ago in search of a hobby. He fell in love with pottery.
“There’s something about the act of creating something that’s going to be around forever,” Segal said.
Segal became a volunteer staffer at the lab, and began covering Monday afternoons when the city, during cuts several years ago, stopped paying an instructor to staff the lab during those hours. He also became co-chairman of Friends of the Pottery Lab, a group of like-minded potters. This year the lab became even more of a haven after he was laid off from his job as a computer programmer.
“It’s been a place of support,” he said. “A place to be useful and helpful and to create when the rest of my day was sitting in front of a computer looking for jobs.”
Segal said his group believes the lab needs more space and could benefit from working with private, nonprofit agencies. But potters’ hackles were raised by what they perceived to be the city’s single-minded focus on cost-cutting rather than helping the lab grow.
Last week, Boulder’s city manager decided to withdraw the request for bids. Instead, the city will try to find other ways to make the lab, which has a director and a full-time staff of three, more efficient and economical. Kincannon said the city would probably raise fees for classes, which can already cost more than $200.
“We have a community that loves the arts, and I don’t think they would be unwilling to support the program,” he said.
