Costa Mesa Arts Grants Cut by Half : Budget: The city will reduce its contributions to such groups as South Coast Repertory and Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse to a total of $87,500 in 1992-93.

Without fanfare or protests, the City Council voted Tuesday to cut grants to cultural arts groups by half beginning next fiscal year.

Arts groups will not feel the effects until July because they have already received their allocations for 1991-92. Other groups, such as those that receive advertising and promotional grants, will face cuts immediately to help balance the budget.

Expenses are being cut throughout Costa Mesa because of a drop in sales tax revenue that city officials have blamed on the recession. Besides the arts grant reduction, the council has cut the budgets of the city attorney, city manager, city clerk, finance and other departments within the city.

Costa Mesa gave $175,000 in arts grants this year to a dozen arts groups, from South Coast Repertory to the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse. The grant total will be reduced to $87,500 for next year.

“It’s a sense of values, (determining) what is mandatory, what is non-essential,” said Councilman Joe Erickson. “Most everyone in the city would agree that police and fire protection are absolutely necessary to city government. Other people in the city would disagree as far as the importance of cultural arts funding, so we have to rank each one and vote accordingly.”

The council will decide over the next five months how much each applicant will receive.

As the self-proclaimed City of the Arts, Costa Mesa, by cutting arts funding, is turning its back on an industry that has attracted people and business to the city, David Emmes, producing artistic director of South Coast Repertory, said Tuesday.

“I understand that the city has to make decisions regarding fiscal responsibility, but I don’t agree with their priority,” he said. SCR, whose 1991-92 annual budget is $5.8 million, received $28,000 from the city this year, part of an overall $1.6 million the troupe will raise this year in private and public contributions.

The slash in arts funding does not necessarily mean each grant recipient will receive half of what it received this year. Some might weather a larger cut, while others--those that the city determines would be drastically hurt by the cuts--could end up with smaller cuts.

But even with that prospect, arts groups have been bracing for smaller grants in light of the economic downturn and the dwindling revenue coming into the city.

“Those groups that depend so heavily on their funding (from the city) are the ones that will suffer the most,” said Irene Hajek, chairwoman of the city’s Cultural Arts Committee. “They depend so much on that.”

The cuts are likely to affect programs these groups put on for the community, said Eleanor Rey, president of the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, which received $14,800 this year for children’s and outreach activities.

“Once again, community services are threatened,” she said. “I can only hope that perhaps sometime people will have the vision to recognize the importance of these programs.”

Revised budget figures have shown the city will receive $3.7 million less in revenue this year than originally anticipated. But with a hiring freeze instituted last summer and other cuts in expenses, city officials project a year-end deficit of $850,275. Barring an upswing in the economy, the city will make additional cuts in operations and expenses this year to close that gap.