Proposed Layoff Decried : Budget: Arts supporters are protesting an Irvine plan to eliminate cultural affairs chief Henry Korn’s job.

Arts supporters here are up in arms over a cost-cutting recommendation to eliminate Henry Korn’s job as city cultural affairs manager.

Korn’s is one of five full-time city positions (and three management level posts) in a variety of departments that City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. has recommended for elimination in order to balance the 1993-94 budget. An additional 28 full-time positions now unoccupied also are on the chopping block as yet another year of economic hard times strains cities statewide.

Korn’s layoff would save the city about $100,000 in salary and benefits, Brady said. The city’s total proposed budget is $444 million.

Korn was hired in 1990, in part to manage the city’s five-member Cultural Affairs Commission. But the commission was eliminated last fall by the City Council, for savings of $11,768. .

Korn refused to comment on the most recent proposal.

“It’s not that we’re doing away with cultural affairs in the city of Irvine,” Brady said, noting that, should the City Council accept his recommendations, Korn’s responsibilities would be carried out by a manager in the Community Services Department.

The manager of that department, Deanna Manning, said no other cuts have been recommended that involve city arts activities and that the overall proposed arts budget of $800,000 is roughly the same as last year’s. (The Irvine Fine Arts Center’s budget would increase from $577,000 to $610,000 for 1993-94, Manning said.)

Manning, Korn’s boss, said she’s the one who recommended to Brady that Korn’s position be eliminated, although she conceded that community arts groups would suffer without his leadership.

“Henry has spent substantial time and (has shown) expertise in cultural outreach, fund raising” and public relations for the city and the arts, she said. “Without him, that will be diminished.”

Local arts activists describe the potential loss in more dire terms.

Michael D. Ray, president of Art Spaces Irvine, an 8-year-old nonprofit group working in partnership with the city to raise funds for public art works, said losing Korn would be a “tragedy.” “If you look at the trajectory of activities we’ve done prior to Korn’s (hiring) and after, the things we’ve accomplished have gone up by 400% to 500%,” Ray said. Korn was recently able to persuade a collector to donate a Fletcher Benton sculpture worth roughly $120,000, group officials added.

Donald L. Rickner, Irvine Valley College dean of community relations and a member of Culture & Arts R Essential 4 Irvine (CARE), an arts advocacy group, agreed that laying off Korn would be a “backward” step for culture in Irvine. Ricker was chairman during the late ‘80s of Arts Irvine 1990, the group whose efforts resulted in the creation of the Cultural Affairs Commission.

Rickner thinks it would be unwise to replace Korn with a manager from the Community Services Department who does not have arts expertise. Korn, who was Santa Monica’s arts administrator for five years before coming to Irvine, “is a professional with many years of experience in the arts and brings that wide and deep range of knowledge” to the job, Rickner said.

Geoffrey Le Plastrier, Art Spaces Irvine trustee and founding chairman, said he believes the proposal to eliminate Korn’s position reflects a City Council majority philosophy against public funding of the arts.

“The perspective of the council has been that art and culture are not a priority for the use of tax dollars,” Le Plastrier said. “That’s not to say they are not in favor of the arts. The issue is the use of taxpayer money in tight fiscal times.”

City Councilwoman Christina L. Shea said the arts are an important part of community life but that “I do philosophically believe that (in times of budgetary constraints) it’s easier to raise money from the private sector for the arts than for child care or senior citizens or for infrastructure improvement.”

Shea said she believes that transferring Korn’s responsibilities to the Community Services Department may be a “very reasonable” idea but that she has “been working to see if we can keep (Korn) on in a less expensive position.”

In line with a growing local trend, Rickner said he has suggested that city officials consider creating a new arts commission that would become progressively more reliant on private funds. The Muckenthaler Cultural Center recently sent Fullerton city officials a plan to wean itself from city support.

If municipal “budgets are going to continue to shrink, then we probably need to move from a public arts agency to public-private arts agency,” Rickner said.

Korn and other cultural affairs officials said that grants secured under Korn’s administration have included $20,000 from Kaiser-Permanente for multicultural understanding programs. In addition, the Irvine Co. donated exhibit space in the Irvine Marketplace worth an estimated $30,000 annually for a project in which artists interact with the public. Korn also created the Irvine Arts Festival, whose third incarnation on April 24 drew at least 4,000 people to some 25 events, organizers said.

The other four positions recommended for elimination are a manager in the Public Works Department, an engineer in the Community Development Department, an associate planner in the Community Services Department and a support services supervisor in the Public Safety Department.