ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Arts Council Complaints Off-Key

Looking at the record, it’s fair to ask by what criterion the California Arts Council decided to reduce significantly its award this year to the Orange County Philharmonic Society. The organization has just received an 18% reduction in its grant from last year.

The answer, on the surface at least, is that an advisory panel found fault with the Philharmonic Society’s efforts to reach out to the community through various programs, and the council agreed with that finding.

In particular, the review panel significantly reduced the council’s more favorable assessments of previous years, saying the organization’s community outreach programs were “insular” and questioning whether the programs were reaching a wide ethnic diversity of school populations.

But that assessment doesn’t square at all with the reality of the situation. The Philharmonic Society is well known locally for having among the best such community outreach programs in Orange County.

It annually reaches roughly 300,000 people through 13 programs that involve more than 400 schools in every school district in the county. If anything, the Philharmonic Society is due special recognition for going above and beyond the call of duty.

So this was an unfair assessment at best. And the answer to the question--by what standard are such decisions made?--is not at all satisfactory. The council, it turns out, has no objective yardstick for evaluating community outreach programs. Rather, the decision rests with the impressions of particular panel members.

That practice ought to change in favor of more measurable standards. Indeed, council director Joanne C. Kozberg has acknowledged that “it certainly sounds” as if the organization had solid grounds for appealing its reduced award.

No wonder the Philharmonic Society immediately faxed the council a letter of protest. An unfair assessment hurts hard-pressed organizations like the Philharmonic Society in the pocketbook, especially when they already are feeling the pinch of the recession. The reduction of more than $4,000 from last year’s $23,665 council award ought to be restored.