Symphony Leaders, Their Crisis Over, Vow Fiscal Prudence

Now that the San Diego Symphony has a future, orchestra leaders say, the time has come to plan for it.

“I’ll be doing virtually everything differently,” Richard Bass, the symphony’s executive director, said Sunday. “The first 18 months I’ve been here I’ve just been putting out fires. I haven’t been actually able to manage the orchestra.”

The symphony’s last-ditch drive to avoid bankruptcy went over its $2 million-plus top Saturday with an outpouring of individual community contributions and a pair of major donations--$250,000 from the family of Judson and Rachel Grosvenor and $100,000 from Roger and Ellen Revelle.

Bass and Symphony President M.B. (Det) Merryman brushed aside allegations that the symphony’s board or its staff has mismanaged the organization. Merryman said the success of the crash fund-raising drive that headed off bankruptcy was a communitywide “vote of confidence” in his leadership and the symphony itself.

“We’ve reorganized the Summer Pops and gone from a half-million loss to a surplus, acquired Symphony Hall, then got it renovated and opened, and now the ($1.9 million) deficit has been eliminated, and we’ve just mismanaged the hell out of it,” Merryman said facetiously.

But he acknowledged that changes can be made now that the symphony’s debts will be cleared from the books.

“There are a lot of things we haven’t been able to do as a direct result of a lack of cash,” Merryman said at a midday press conference in the Symphony Hall lobby. “When you can’t afford to print brochures, it’s hard to send four of them to every household in the community.”

Board member Irwin Jacobs, a former UC San Diego professor and now president of Qualcomm Inc., said the symphony is in a “normal situation” now that the debt has been retired. He said the board will have to do a better job of ensuring that the symphony’s income is enough to meet its relatively rigid expenses.

The key now is for the board to develop a long-range budget with an eye toward more conservative income projections, he said.

Jacobs, who has been a board member since 1982, said he believes the symphony will have to work harder at improving ticket sales.

“We have not done as good a job in the past,” Jacobs said. “But we have built up a sense of community (in the last week). It’s a good start. We just have to keep that going.”

While ticket income is already up more than $300,000 above all of 1985, the number of tickets sold, as of the season’s 14-week mark, is up only 3.5%, according to symphony figures.

Merryman said more money will go into marketing in the months ahead as the symphony tries to turn its new-found friends into lifelong supporters.

But he said he had no other changes in mind, because he and the symphony’s paid managers have been too busy keeping the organization afloat to map its future.

At meetings today of the symphony’s executive committee and Wednesday of the full board of directors, the orchestra’s management will present the latest financial projections and begin to form a plan for ensuring future stability.

Merryman said the board will decide whether the symphony can now afford to rescind the 10% retroactive pay cut put in place as an emergency measure two weeks ago. The issue was put on hold when the symphony missed its payroll completely Feb. 27. Merryman said the orchestra’s 90 musicians were given checks Saturday night to tide them over until they receive their back pay.

The board approved a proposal Saturday to allow the city manager or his representative to sit as a member of the symphony’s finance committee, Merryman said. He said the Chamber of Commerce is free to nominate other members to the committee, but the business organization has been given no official role as overseer.

Max Schetter, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, said he is confident that the symphony will avoid piling up more debt.

“If they continue to run the thing the way they ran it in the past and there are no changes at all, they’ll be right back in the hole in a few years,” Schetter said. “There have to be changes. They realize those changes have to be made, and they’re working on it.”

Like the monetary contributions that flowed to the symphony over the last 10 days, advice for its managers continued to be offered by critics and interested observers.

Robert Arnhym, executive director of COMBO, a private fund-raising organization for the arts, said the symphony’s $2.1-million campaign was the first step toward solvency.

Now, he said, the orchestra can set its sights on establishing cash reserves large enough so that money from advance ticket sales can be banked rather than spent when it comes in. Once that is accomplished, an endowment to provide a cushion for operations would be the third and final step.

“The community has stepped forward and done as they were asked. They have provided funds to resolve the crisis,” Arnhym said. “Now the burden of proof is on the symphony. Part of it has to be the imposition of strong fiscal controls. They need to put forth each year a realistic balanced budget. I believe they can do that.”

Jack Morse, corporate and community affairs representative for San Diego Gas & Electric, cautioned symphony officials at a luncheon Friday not to assume that they can continue to rely on contributors to bail them out in a time of crisis.

“This is a one-time grass-roots support, and I don’t think you’re going to get it again,” Morse said. “Why are you better off today than a month ago? I see the same kind of trend coming up. It’s inevitable.”

Morse suggested that the symphony needs to develop better strategies for tapping San Diego’s major industries as a source of income.

“When you list what major firms and industries are in San Diego and you want an endowment, that is where you have to go,” Morse told Ken Overstreet, the symphony’s development director. “You’re going to have to become more innovative.”

Louis Cumming, former symphony president and a Bank of San Diego executive, said the orchestra needs a full-time paid president and chief executive officer. He suggested that the salary be paid by the city.

“A lot of people have the perception that the symphony is a superficial kind of a community activity,” Cumming said. “What it is in reality is a business. It’s got a budget of $8 million. To ask anybody to take that job as president and chief executive officer of a business that size on a voluntary basis is not being fair to the individual. It just can’t be done.”