City Moves to Provide $300,000 for the Arts

With a unanimous 7-0 vote Monday, the San Diego City Council demonstrated its intention to match with $300,000 the city’s first National Endowment for the Arts grant of $150,000.

San Diego was the only California city and only one of 10 cities nationwide to receive a grant in November in the NEA’s Test Program for Local Arts Agencies.

Acting as a local arts agency, COMBO, the Combined Arts and Education Council, a private arts fund-raising organization, applied for the $150,000 federal grant last spring, even though the city had not agreed to match it. Monday’s action provided the city’s belated commitment to the grant.

By its vote, the council indicated its intent to commit $300,000 in city general funds over three years as part of the NEA’s required support for the matching grant. Through the grant, $322,340 will be made available to local artists and organizations “with limited access to regular NEA programs.” Individuals and groups will apply to a special advisory council that will be formed to supervise the grant.

Council member Mike Gotch, who offered the resolution for the NEA grant, said that legally the city can’t obligate itself to support the grant for three years. “You always have to leave the door open. But we wanted the (city) manager and the (city) attorney to clearly understand in the upcoming budget sessions that we would underscore our commitment to the arts.”

Monday’s vote overrode earlier recommendations from the city manager’s office that the hearings on the NEA grant be deferred until the city’s annual budget meetings later this year.

COMBO Executive Director Robert Arnhym requested that the city show good faith and act immediately by approving $31,773 to get the program rolling.

By directing the city manager and attorney to draw up papers to allocate city matching funds, the council gave the green light to three projects which the NEA grant will support.

Work can proceed immediately to establish a Spanish language arts hot line, which will receive $6,800.

A discount ticket booth, to be operated by the San Diego Theatre League, will receive $55,860. “We expect conservatively to generate $300,000 in ticket sales every year for theater producers,” said William Purvis, head of the Theatre League. Purvis said the league must still raise an additional $70,000 plus donated space. “The nice thing about this grant is that it leverages money,” said COMBO development director Sharon LeeMaster.

The third immediate beneficiary of the NEA grant is an arts “yellow pages” directory, LeeMaster said.

She said the next order of business was to form the community advisory council, a group of arts volunteers that will supervise policy during the grant’s three-year lifetime. The council will appoint peer panels to review grant applications.