STUDIES SET ON STATUS OF ART IN S.D.

San Diegans will soon be inundated with studies and reports on the local cultural arts scene.

The City Council is to appoint members to its own arts task force next month, and COMBO last week announced that it is launching a major study of its role in the arts community.

Additionally, COMBO--the Combined Arts and Education Council--has requested that The Tribune undertake a series of reports examining the region’s cultural arts. Already this year, The Times has published a special section devoted to the state of the arts in San Diego, and San Diegans Inc. has released the results of a three-year task force study that claims the city has habitually increased funding for other government services at the direct expense of arts funding.

The sudden focus on the arts, especially municipal support for them, is not a coincidence. There is a feeling in several quarters that growth in the arts has outstripped local governmental support and that the city government has avoided forming a single agency to oversee municipal arts programs.

“The city has money for the arts, but how it’s distributed is totally absurd, actually archaic,” said artist and arts activist Jennifer Spencer. Spencer referred to a system whereby the city finances the arts through three distinct channels.

The current municipal mechanisms for releasing money to the arts favor major organizations over individuals and emerging organizations, Spencer said. Groups may apply directly to the City Council, to the Public Arts Advisory Board (PAAB) or to COMBO, which receives hotel and motel tax money from the City Council.

The city also has a “percent for art” program that provides for public art--painting and sculptures. Administered by PAAB, the percent for art awards are funded through hotel and motel tax revenues equivalent to 1% of the city’s annual capital expenditures. Established a year ago, the program has not yet allocated any funds, although several projects have been identified by PAAB.

On Aug. 3, the City Council will consider a list of candidates prepared by city staff for membership on a cultural arts task force. The arts panel, created by the council’s Public Services and Safety Committee, is to develop a model for a city arts agency.

“The city has to look at its needs and develop its own models (for an arts agency); that’s why the task force is being established,” said Joyce Selber, the city’s arts coordinator.

Selber, the city’s first arts coordinator, has been in her position for less than a year. She said that for the city’s arts programs to be effective, such an agency must be adequately staffed by administrative personnel “at the proper level” in the government hierarchy.

Selber and the Public Arts Advisory Board function within the Park and Recreation Department.

The cultural arts task force membership will be representative of a number of interests, including the business community, charitable foundations, taxpayers, the Chamber of Commerce, arts patrons and a variety of arts disciplines.