Council OKs L.A. Arts Endowment Plan

In a historic step for the local arts community, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to create a new program to shape cultural policy and to generate up to $20 million annually for the arts.

In a 12-1 vote, the council formed the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts, to be administered by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Ernani Bernardi cast the lone vote against the endowment.

The endowment will raise money through a mix of fees on municipal and private development projects and a share of revenues from the city’s hotel bed tax.

Although it is the nation’s second most-populous city behind New York, Los Angeles this fiscal year will spend $4.4 million on the arts. New York will spend $62 million, Pittsburgh $6.6 million and San Francisco $9.5 million, according to Opinion Research Associates of Madison, Wis., and figures provided by various city agencies nationwide.

“This will propel Los Angeles into the forefront of our nation’s cultural capitals,” said City Councilman Joel Wachs, who first proposed the program in 1985 and has spearheaded efforts for its passage.

The endowment will benefit all arts disciplines through grants to individuals and organizations, Wachs said. It will support arts education, help provide performance and studio spaces, help preserve the city’s cultural heritage, commission artworks--performing and visual--promote the arts and benefit every segment of the city’s population, particularly its emerging and avant-garde artists, Wachs said.

“This will make the arts accessible to all the people in this city, in every neighborhood, and recognize the multicultural diversity of Los Angeles that is at the heart of this proposal,” Wachs said.

“In all of the years that I have been here, there has never been a city validation of the arts,” said Bella Lewitzky, the director of a prominent local dance company that bears her name and who was one of about 300 artists gathered at City Hall to show support for the endowment. “This was for me, then, unbelievably historic, for the city has at last said, ‘Yes, the arts is a city issue.’ ”

Money for the new program will be generated in three ways: by imposing a 1% fee on all future city capital improvements, by drawing from the city’s general fund an amount equal to 1% of the city’s 12% hotel bed tax and through a 1% fee on all future private development projects of more than $500,000, excluding residential housing.

The private development fee will not go into effect until the Department of Cultural Affairs conducts a state-mandated study--to take six months--of the new fee’s impact. However, private builders will be notified if their projects are subject to the fee.

The capital improvement fee and hotel tax each are expected to generate about $5 million annually. The private development fee is expected to bring in about $10 million.

The endowment will give Los Angeles “the cultural distinction of a stature that matches its dominance as an economic force in the West and on the Pacific Rim,” said Robert F. Maguire III, co-managing partner of Maguire Thomas Partners, one of the city’s largest commercial builders. He chaired a task force of 50 public and private sector individuals appointed in 1986 by Mayor Tom Bradley to develop the endowment.

After a final City Council vote, scheduled for next Tuesday, funds from the capital improvement fee may be available by the first of the year and the hotel tax funds would be available after July 1, 1989, said Mark Siegal, Wachs’ legislative deputy.

Sixty percent of revenues raised by the endowment from public and private development fees must go toward arts projects at those development sites. The remaining 40% may be used for art to be created elsewhere in the city.

Details about how and to whom the funds will be dispersed must be worked out by the Department of Cultural Affairs, subject to council approval. However its new general manager, Adolfo V. (Al) Nodal, pledged that the money will be distributed fairly.

“I pledge this will be a consensus process and all the artists of L.A. will be heard in the planning process” and benefit from the program, said Nodal, chief planner of the MacArthur Park Public Art Program, a revitalization project.

In opposing the council decision, Bernardi said the city should raise the money through fees on entertainment events, rather than fees on development or through the hotel tax.

Several City Council members had concerns about the endowment, including questions about the fair distribution of funds and whether the arts funding was at the expense of programs for the homeless and underprivileged.

Some unsuccessfully fought to exclude city proprietary departments, such as the Department of Water and Power, from the 1% private development fee.

Private developers testified against the private development fee as well and were successful in excluding residential housing from the endowment plan.

Another critical part of the initial plan was to create a private, nonprofit foundation to help the Department of Cultural Affairs administer endowment funds. That was voted down. However, Wachs said the proposal may be introduced later.