LOCAL : Costa Mesa Arts Panel Advances

The Costa Mesa City Council took a major step today to create a new agency intended to provide continuous, stable funding for the arts and tourism that city officials say could substantially increase cultural subsidies.

At a regular meeting, the City Council voted unanimously to establish the Costa Mesa Tourism, Arts and Promotion Council, a nonprofit public corporation to be run by a five-member volunteer board of Costa Mesa residents yet to be named.

“The whole intent of this was not to have arts grants dependent on what we can squeeze out of the general fund and to increase arts funding,” Mayor Peter F. Buffa said in an interview.

The agency, initially designed to address a rise in requests for arts subsidies and more efficiently handle an ever-increasing number of cultural grant requests, “will amount to substantially more for the arts,” even while sharing funds with the tourism industry, Buffa said.