Picus Says Area Is Being Shortchanged on City Arts Funding

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus alleged Tuesday that the San Fernando Valley is not getting its fair share of cultural grants, and she introduced a motion to ask the city’s chief legislative analyst to investigate and report to the council.

Picus said “substantial evidence” exists that $2.7 million in grant funds was not equitably distributed, a charge disputed by Al Nodal, chief of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department.

Picus’ motion was referred to a committee chaired by Councilman Joel Wachs, who, like Picus, represents one of the council’s four districts located wholly within the Valley.

Asked by a reporter what evidence she had to justify her allegations, Picus said she was “suspicious” that the Valley was not getting its “fair share, not even its minuscule share,” because she had received complaints from several Valley arts groups, including the West Valley Symphony Orchestra and the Valley Cultural Center.

These groups, she said, got no grants, although they are well-qualified. “I want the CLA’s office to do a report, get me the data,” Picus said.

Nodal replied that his department has “taken great pains” to see that “all 15 council districts get roughly the same amount of money.”

Nodal said that since he became general manager in the late 1980s, the Cultural Affairs Department has been increasingly sensitive to the need to spread arts money around the city.

“We did a bunch of studies as part of our Cultural Master Plan and found that the bulk of the grant money had been going to downtown areas, the Wilshire corridor and Hollywood,” Nodal said, adding that he had made it a “big issue” to correct the imbalance.

Nodal supplied The Times with 1992-93 budget documents showing how the city’s $2.7 million in cultural grants was awarded by council district and how this money had been awarded in the past.

The documents appeared to support both Picus’ version and Nodal’s.

The records showed that, in fact, the department has in the past four years moved to equalize the distribution of grant funds.

However, they also indicate that Valley-based districts are still getting less than a proportional share of the funding.

With $2,725,000 in grants, the funding average for the 15 council districts is $181,666.

When the 15 council districts are ranked in order of the amount of funding they received, the all-Valley districts ranked 10th, 12th, 14th and 15th, all getting less money than the citywide average.

Organizations in Councilwoman Rita Walters’ district, which includes the downtown area and parts of South Los Angeles, got the most: $281,420.

Receiving the least money was Councilman Hal Bernson’s northwest Valley district, which got $129,622.

Jerry Domine, president of the Valley Arts Council, an arts advocacy group, met with Nodal Tuesday to complain.

Nodal did not promise any additional funds for the Valley but agreed that there was a need for a continuing dialogue between the council and the department, said Domine, a Woodland Hills-based management consultant.