Costa Mesa Is No ‘City of the Arts,’ Protesters Claim : Politics: A group of 50 accused the City Council of improper action in restricting the use of city funds for certain cultural programs.

Symbolically stripping Costa Mesa of its self-proclaimed status as “City of the Arts,” about 50 Orange County arts advocates protested recently adopted city arts grant restrictions by staging a guerrilla theater piece Monday at the council’s regular meeting--one that may go down as its most irregular.

Claiming that the City Council “demonstrated its hostility toward the arts by restricting freedom of expression,” activists held up a banner with a facsimile of the city’s official seal, then ripped away the part bearing the “City of the Arts” motto, leaving behind a section with the city’s name.

“We declare that the City of Costa Mesa is no longer the self-proclaimed ‘City of the Arts,’ ” said Costa Mesa performance artist Randy L. Pesqueira, reading a proclamation. “And by their recent actions that subversively try to destroy those very ideas and freedoms so dear to this country, we hereby seize that title from the city and the Chamber of Commerce.”

(At the suggestion of the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce, the City Council adopted the slogan “City of the Arts” in 1984, largely in response to the construction of the Orange County Performing Arts Center.)

The protesters, most of whom are members of a local committee formed to support the embattled National Endowment for the Arts, objected to a law passed last month barring the use of city money for “obscene matters” or for religious or political activity.

The law was in response to a complaint made by Costa Mesa resident John Feeney, whose concerns prompted the council in June to delay distribution of $175,000 in arts grants in order to investigate whether South Coast Repertory was using city money to produce flyers urging support of the NEA. The endowment had come under attack by conservative congressmen for funding a few artworks that some consider obscene or sacrilegious. Feeney said that SCR’s action in support of the NEA amounted to “religious bigotry.”

The council, satisfied that no public money had been used for the flyers, released the funds. But it adopted the new guidelines, with Mayor Peter F. Buffa saying he did not want to “replicate the disastrous incidents” of funding artworks such as the ones by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, which sparked the battle over the NEA. The NEA decided to require its 1990 grant recipients to sign an anti-obscenity oath.

Protesters charged that the restrictions constitute an unprovoked attack on the First Amendment, and they criticized the City Council for acting “on an unsubstantiated” accusation by only one person, according to a statement issued by the local committee of the Long Beach/Orange County Coalition for Freedom of Expression.

“There has been no legitimate public outcry of misuse of funds by arts groups in the city,” says the statement, which notes that no work by Mapplethorpe or Serrano is scheduled for display in Costa Mesa and that there are already obscenity standards under California law.

Further, the special treatment given Feeney imposes “homogeneous cultural standards upon the entire community,” Pesqueira said, reading from the proclamation. As he spoke, protesters seated in the audience rose silently and donned masks of Buffa to create a still sea of identical faces.

“In entering the national debate on censorship, the City of Costa Mesa has demonstrated their eagerness to create public policy that suppresses cultural, religious, sexual and ethnic diversity,” Pesqueira said.

Committee member Naida Osline said she hopes the restrictions will be rescinded. The sole object of the protest, Osline said, was “to make some kind of public statement. . . . The council didn’t need to (impose restrictions); there was no problem with arts grants.” Osline is director of the Huntington Beach Art Center, but she stressed that she was speaking as an individual.

Buffa, who along with other council members appeared to be smiling during parts of the demonstration, praised the activists but said that parts of the proclamation read by Pesqueira are erroneous.

“That was an impressive statement, but it was rife with inaccuracies,” Buffa said, warning the audience that remained after the artists had left the room that “most of the facts you heard are flagrantly untrue.”

Buffa said that the council decision to impose the restrictions was not made after a “closed-door” meeting. The proclamation states that the decision came after a “closed-door council break.”

“Nothing is done by the council behind closed doors,” Buffa said. He added that he would not take the time to address other inaccuracies in the proclamation.

Pesqueira and other committee members deemed the demonstration a success. He said afterward that the council had indeed made its decision “after a closed-door meeting.”

The city’s new grant restrictions have also drawn criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU general counsel Rebecca Jurado has said that the restrictions leave the door open for prior restraint of art and artists.