Irvine to Create Arts Coordination Panel

The Irvine City Council has voted to create an arts commission to oversee public grants to arts groups and coordinate city cultural groups, a proponent of the panel said.

The City Council voted Tuesday night, 3 to 2, to appropriate money for the commission in the 1989-90 budget, including about $80,000 to hire a cultural arts manager within the city’s community services department.

“This represents a stepping up of the commitment of the city to its arts,” said Donald Rickner, an Irvine Valley College administrator and chairman of a council-appointed committee that recommended the move.

“The expectation is that it will stimulate more cultural-arts activities to cover the broad range of potential participants--the young, the old, different races, those who have just arrived . . . all the arts for all the people.”

Sally Anne Sheridan, one of the two council members who opposed creating a commission--Paula Werner was the other--said Irvine’s cultural community does not need another layer of bureaucracy.

“I’m an arts person . . . and it’s remarkable that I’d vote against something like this, but I had my reasons,” Sheridan said. “My feeling quite frankly is not to set up a greater bureaucracy to get money to programs.”