UCI’s 4-Concert Summer Series Canceled in University Spending Squeeze

A four-concert summer series to have been sponsored by UC Irvine has been canceled after UC President David P. Gardner ordered the university system’s nine chancellors to curtail “discretionary spending,” officials announced this week.

The series, to have been offered at Aldrich Park at UCI on successive Thursdays beginning July 14, would have replaced a more elaborate series canceled in 1986 for lack of money.

The new series would have featured local jazz, pop and chamber musicians, a UC Irvine spokeswoman, Kathy Jones, said Tuesday. The earlier series, Concerts Under the Stars, which had been underwritten by the Irvine Co., had featured such performers as Ray Charles and Tony Bennett.

Jones said the university had budgeted $25,000 to $30,000 for this year’s series from its discretionary accounts, which make up about $3 million of its $350 million budget. Normally, Jones said, UC campuses can spend that money as they choose, since it is collected from private donors and other sources instead of being provided by the Legislature.

But now the money is being kept in the university’s accounts while administrators await the outcome of this year’s budget squabbling in Sacramento.

Since a $3.9-billion state budget deficit was announced in January, Gov. George Deukmejian and the Legislature have been unable to agree on spending cuts. The Legislature gave final passage June 30 to a $44.2-billion budget. Deukmejian can use his line-item veto to make further cuts in the budget, which he needn’t sign until July 12.

With that uncertainty in the air, UC officials have been preparing for cuts, Jones said, noting that when UC’s Council of Chancellors met in Berkeley on June 29, Gardner told the campus heads to reduce discretionary spending.

All departments have been asked to make cuts, she continued. While she could name only the concert series as a casualty of the state’s fiscal problems, she warned: “This is not a solitary thing. I think you’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the next few months.”