Arts Programs Fight a Quiet Battle : Some City-Funded Groups in O.C. That Have Already Cut Back Face More Trims

While the money woes of nonprofit museums and performing arts groups have been making headlines lately, municipally funded arts programs have been more quietly tightening their belts under the nation’s stubborn economic recession.

Newport Harbor Art Museum’s announcement last week that it is laying off nearly one-fifth of its staff demonstrated anew how a dismal fund-raising climate is hurting some private arts institutions. But last week’s vote by the Costa Mesa City Council to slash its arts-grant program in half shows that publicly funded programs are not immune to the effects of the economic downturn.

Administrators of city arts programs in Orange County, most of whom have already seen their budgets trimmed or frozen, are facing the prospect of further retrenchment as financially strapped cities begin to prepare budgets for the 1992-93 fiscal year.

Orange County cities subsidize everything from a weeklong arts festival in Cypress to art classes for adults in Irvine and performances of “The Nutcracker” ballet for fifth-graders in Newport Beach. Now, budgets for such programs are being reduced throughout the county, and there are no prospects that the situation will improve in the immediate future.

Worries over the future of city arts programs surfaced last week at a regional meeting in Huntington Beach of the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, a meeting that drew city arts officials from five counties.

“When I went around the room asking people what their major area of concern was, it came up money every time,” said Howard Spector, the assembly’s regional chairman. “We sort of jokingly titled the session, ‘The Politics of Money.’ ”

The arts are not alone in facing cuts. Cities, hit by declining revenue from sales tax and other sources, must decide where to make budget trims. The concern among many arts administrators, according to Spector, is that arts programs will take more than their share of the hit because they are viewed as less important than other city services.

“Funding is getting a little tighter out there, and I think people are going to look very carefully at their arts budgets,” said Spector, who is public arts administrator for Manhattan Beach. “The arts are perceived as ‘inessential’ in some circles, although we in the arts don’t believe that for one second.”

After the Costa Mesa City Council’s vote to cut its arts allocation from $175,000 to $87,500, Councilman Joe Erickson said, “It’s a sense of values, what is mandatory, what is non-essential. 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 accordingly,” Erickson said.

Not all cities have municipally funded arts programs. Of a dozen Orange County cities with active publicly funded agencies, some--such as Costa Mesa, Dana Point and Newport Beach--institute grant programs to help independent cultural groups. Others, such as Fullerton, Brea and Irvine, administer their own arts programs that may include municipal exhibition, studio and performance spaces, community-arts classes, local festivals and arts-education partnerships with local schools.

Irvine officials created a cultural-affairs division in 1989 as part of plans for an ambitious expansion of the city’s art program, hiring arts administrator Henry Korn away from Santa Monica the following year. Further expansion, however, has stalled under the recession.

According to estimates provided by Irvine cultural-affairs superintendent Toni MacDonald, the division’s budget has dropped 18% from the 1989-91 budget period to the 1991-93 period (the most recent cut, of 5%, was approved Jan. 14).

While the city has managed to keep the arts-in-education partnership with local schools off the chopping block, some programs have already been affected. Staff hours are down 17%, operating hours at the Irvine Fine Arts Center have been trimmed, there have been fewer special events, and there have been cutbacks in employee travel, overtime and special training along with trims in the advertising and printing budget.

Also, a new $15,000 grant program for local cultural groups was killed after its first year.

“Unless things improve, there are likely to be more cuts. Where those cuts are to be made, I don’t know,” MacDonald said. “The public is definitely going to feel it. We’ve really kind of gone to the bone now; we’re going to be sawing off limbs pretty soon.”

While the cultural-affairs division budget has dropped 18%, the budget of the community-services department as a whole rose 9%, according to MacDonald’s figures. Staff hours in her department, however, have been reduced by 4% since 1989. In addition to cultural affairs, other divisions in the department are parks and recreation, facilities maintenance and human services. The city’s general fund increased about 8% during the period, MacDonald said.

“I believe that we have taken a disproportionate hit already, if you compare our division budget to the department as a whole,” MacDonald said.

Fullerton’s cultural program has weathered 6% cuts in operating budget for each of the last two budget years, but so far the cuts are in line with other departments in the city, according to Fullerton Museum Center director Joe Felz. “Some people would consider us a luxury. We’re viewed (by Fullerton city officials) as an integral part of the city,” Felz said.

So far, the department has absorbed the cuts without cutting back on cultural offerings. “At this point, we’ve had a couple of positions that haven’t been filled, and we’ve cut back on supplies and other things,” Felz said. “It gets to be a complex formula. We’re trying not to impact the quality of the programs and at the same time be realistic about what we have to do.”

In addition to providing public money, Fullerton also relies on private fund-raising to support its arts program, primarily for exhibitions in the Fullerton Museum Center and the Muckenthaler Cultural Center. Like nonprofit groups, the city finds the fund-raising climate difficult, according to Felz. Although money from private sources was up slightly last year, corporate funding was harder to come by and museum memberships were down, Felz said.

The Brea City Council, meanwhile, voted last week to trim its arts budget by 3.75%. Cultural Arts manager Emily Sabin said the cut probably would affect morning gallery tours and grant research and probably stall efforts to develop a cultural-arts element of the city’s master plan.

While arts budgets in some other cities have escaped cuts so far, the lack of growth can cause problems of its own. Newport Beach administers an arts grant program that has remained mired at $55,000 for several years; in that time, the number of groups applying for help has grown steadily.

The next round of city budget sessions could have a significant impact on municipal arts programs, meanwhile, and several cities are playing wait-and-see.

“We’re just beginning the budget process,” said Michael Mudd, cultural affairs manager in Huntington Beach. “We’re willing to take the hits, but we hope that it’s not disproportionate.” Mudd said the $750,000 Huntington Beach Arts Center is still set to open in early 1993.

Buena Park is facing a $2-million budget reduction for the next fiscal year that could cause budgets cuts throughout the city, including the fine-arts program. While specific cuts have yet to be worked out, one Buena Park official said he feels that existing fine-arts programs will not be cut drastically, largely because of high attendance for the city’s theater and music offerings.

“It will not permit growth and will slow down facilities development, but it should not affect existing programs,” said Wes Morgan, Buena Park’s director of parks, recreation and community services. The city hopes to build a performing-arts center, he said, but plans have been stalled by the recession.

Local arts groups have had some good news recently. Leading the list is the first batch of grants announced recently by the Leo Freedman Foundation, including almost $400,000 to small-scale cultural groups and events in Anaheim (which does not have a city-administered arts program). The foundation plans to hand out about $500,000 in grants each year to Orange County arts organizations, although its emphasis will remain in Anaheim, foundation officials said.

Also, the California Arts Council hopes to institute a new state-city-county partnership program for the next fiscal year, which would make state arts grants available to city programs for the first time. In the first year, $600,000 would be available statewide.

Efforts to persuade Orange County to create a local agency to help administer such grants have been stalled for more than two years, largely because of the county’s own money woes. Fullerton Museum Center’s Felz, who also chairs the Committee to Form an Orange County Arts Council, said interest in a countywide agency remains, although ad hoc efforts to establish one may have to be abandoned temporarily if the committee does not meet with some success in the next few months.

Cities could apply directly for the state grants, but to be eligible they would have to show that they are participating in efforts to form a countywide agency, said Sally Davis, partnership program administrator for the CAC.

“There are a number of fine local arts agencies in Orange County that are showing real leadership on the local level,” Davis said. “We know that many people have spent considerable time” in the effort to form a countywide arts agency, and she added that she is “hopeful that continued efforts” will result in the formation of such an agency.

* HARD TIMES: Cuts in programs in Costa Mesa for the young and the old are listed. F3.