Garden Grove to Phase Out Troupe’s Subsidy : But $18,000 Is Voted After Acrimonious Debate to Finish Out the Current Year’s Theater Season

City funding for the Grove Theatre Company will end over the next three years, the Garden Grove City Council decided Monday following an acrimonious debate.

On the same 3-2 vote, however, the council also decided to extend $18,000 to the theater company, which produces the annual Grove Shakespeare Festival, to allow it to complete its 1988-89 season.

Councilmen Milton Krieger and W.E. (Walt) Donovan, staunch supporters of the Grove, went along with Mayor J. Tilman Williams’ two-part motion as the only way to help resolve the theater company’s immediate cash crisis.

Unanswered Questions

Councilman Raymond T. Littrell, who said he wanted to support the Grove, voted against the motion because, he said, he still had unanswered questions about the theater company’s finances. Littrell had previously voted to grant the company $35,000.

Councilman Robert F. Dinsen, who opposes governmental subsidies for all the arts, joined Littrell.

Katherine McKey, president of the theater company’s board of directors, tried to clarify the Grove’s projected budget to the council. She said $170,000 was budgeted for contributory income from the city and private and corporate donations. So far, $102,350 of that has come in.

Previously, the theater company had proposed a five-year phase-out of city support. But the council rejected the idea.

Under Williams’ motion, the city would reduce its subsidy to the Grove by one-third over each of the following three years. While no dollar figures for such a subsidy were specified, the theater company has sought $83,000 for this year.

Krieger sought to have the phase-out provision dropped from the motion, noting that future councils would not necessarily be bound by that decision. He pointedly noted that city elections are coming up in November that could alter the makeup of the council.

Krieger, Donovan and Williams all face reelection in the fall.

Krieger, Donovan and Dinsen are considered potential mayoral opponents of Williams, who has acknowledged taking political heat for his position on the Grove subsidy this year.

Role of Cultural Arts

Since their June vote that rejected the Grove’s subsidy request of $83,000, the councilmen have been caught up in a fierce debate over the role of cultural arts in their city, with many residents attending council meetings and writing letters in support of subsidizing the theater from Garden Grove’s $47.7 million municipal budget.

Williams and Littrell had earlier proposed several ways of disposing of the Shakespeare controversy, from leasing the Grove’s city-owned theaters on Main Street to private entrepreneurs to placing the issue before Garden Grove voters in November.

Since the uproar began last month, theater company officials report receiving more than $60,000 in private donations, including an unexpected $30,000 gift last week from the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival Assn.