Deficit Looms Over Gallery at Saddleback : Arts: The proposed elimination of $9,600 in funds from the Mission Viejo college would cost the facility its curator and its social and political focus.

Several weeks ago, producers of Saddleback College’s Summerstock Co., which has staged Broadway musicals every summer since 1978--learned that its annual $51,000 subsidy from the college is threatened.

Now it appears that the campus art gallery--which receives only $9,600 annually from the college--also is in jeopardy.

In its 25th anniversary year, Saddleback College is frantically trying to meet a projected $2.8-million deficit for 1993-94 school year--and the arts seem particularly vulnerable. Eliminating gallery support is among nearly three dozen proposed budget cuts. Without that money, which represents about 18% of this year’s budget, the gallery would lose its curator--and its focus on exhibiting social and politically relevant work by emerging artists in Southern California.

A preliminary budget approved by the Saddleback Community College District trustees must be drawn up by May 10, and the final budget is due for final approval June 30.

Gallery director Patricia Boutelle says her program “takes risks other places don’t.” Further, she said, “We are not an elitist institute focused on research. We have programs specifically addressed on bringing in our community.”

That community includes not just Saddleback students, but the general public, particularly residents of South Orange County, where the only other professionally run visual-arts facilities are the Laguna Art Museum and the Irvine Fine Arts Center.

For that reason, Mission Viejo Mayor Robert D. Breton recently added his voice to Boutelle’s in letters he sent to the seven trustees, urging them to spare Summerstock and the gallery.

“I think it is an issue of utmost concern and important to every citizen in the South County, not only Mission Viejo,” he said.

The proposed cuts, Breton said, “would be a tragic loss for the entire community and a terrible blow to . . . all of the communities. . . .

“It’s 180 degrees in the wrong direction from what I am trying to carry out: the design and construction of a new performing (and visual) arts center at Saddleback College,” Breton said. (The 2,000-seat center, which was have been a joint project of the city and the college, was in the planning stages for several years before being set aside because of budget woes.)

According to college president Calvin Nelson, however, there are no easy choices. “We are not prepared to say what (programs) will go first,” he said.

“A lot of people say you can’t just explain things with numbers,” he added. “But there has to be some kind of systematic way to do it. . . . This whole issue is a balancing of numbers. . . . Although (the arts) are part of the educational institution, we also have to have the proper number of classes to reach same number of students with a lot less money.”

Nelson said he tries “to be unbiased on all the areas. . . . Forensics, summer stock, the art gallery, the athletic programs--personally I’m not (allowing) one to take precedence over the other.

“The art gallery is superb. Pat does a marvelous job in there. What we’re doing (in proposing cuts) has nothing to do with the individuals or their capabilities or what they’ve built up.”

Nelson noted that the college library is losing personnel and probably will have to reduce its hours. “Now, what would you do: leave the gallery open or library open? They are tough, tough questions.”

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Boutelle argues that the art gallery--like Summerstock and the college forensics program--are unique in the Saddleback college district, which also includes Irvine Valley College. (Although Irvine Valley does mount art exhibitions, they are hung in a hallway because the college has no art gallery.)

Such special programs ought to be showcased, Boutelle said, even if it means dipping into the $3-million reserve fund allocated to the district.

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Gregory Bishopp, dean of fine arts and communications--one of 10 academic divisions at Saddleback--calls the gallery “a lone outpost in South Orange County for trying to bring non-traditional art and ideas into the community.”

Bishopp cited the Stephen de Staebler exhibition in 1989 as an example of a show originated by the college that was supported by major grants and traveled to other institutions, notably, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution.

“I’m not saying every one of our exhibitions warrants that much energy and attention,” Bishopp said, “But overall I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in the art gallery.”

No matter what happens to the budget, Bishopp said, the gallery will continue to be an exhibition space.

“At the most minimal level,” he said, “we would always do student shows in the gallery, if I have to hang them myself.” He suggests faculty members might curate exhibitions on a voluntary basis, but he says the best-case scenario would be to retain “professionally curated exhibitions by a paid academic such as Pat.

The gallery’s annual budget--about $55,000 this year--also depends on a varying annual allocation from the Associated Student Government ($45,000 for 1992-93) and private donations. Boutelle says she has raised about $35,000 during the five years of her tenure as gallery director, but she hasn’t had time to raise outside money this academic year.

Funding from the community college--a fraction of Boutelle’s salary as an art-history professor--represents “reassigned time.” This is time she otherwise would use to teach two more classes each semester, bringing her course load up to five (the standard community-college requirement).

The gallery is never mentioned by name on the 35-item draft copy of the budget proposal drawn up by college president Nelson. (“Reduce Summerstock” appears as No. 15 on the list.)

Instead, it is lumped in under the umbrella of item Nos. 18 and 19, which propose eliminating or reducing such “reassigned time” (for a potential savings of $238,461) and hourly “non-contract” employees (saving $389,500). These part-timers teach classes the “reassigned” faculty are allowed to drop in order to attend to other campus duties,such as running the gallery.

Boutelle says no one has been able to explain what criteria were used to formulate the budget-cutting list, and she accuses Nelson, a mathematician, of focusing exclusively on numbers to the detriment of qualitative issues. Beyond the strapped state budget and the woes of a depressed economy, other problems--specific to community colleges--make the gallery issue even more murky.

Traditionally, Bishopp explains, community-college enrollments have been extremely diverse, comprising remedial students, people holding down day jobs and raising families and older people returning for avocational pursuits or retraining.

Now that the UC and Cal State systems are radically increasing tuition and freezing the numbers of undergraduate admissions, however, more “traditional” students are seeking their first two years of college education at community colleges. The influx of these students--who normally intend to transfer to four-year colleges--has obliged Saddleback to gear up to meet their needs.

But with a frozen college budget, there are fewer resources to satisfy the “traditional” students’ meat-and-potatoes educational requirements, Bishopp explained.

“I like the arts,” said Saddleback College District chancellor Richard Sneed, who will make the final recommendation of cuts to the board. “I try to understand the arts. These activities are both for the student and for the community. Our primary mission under the law is to provide university transfer education and vocational education. These (arts) activities are very closely allied.”

But, Sneed added, “There is no way we can offer everything we have in the past.”