New Proposed Budget Would Give Cultural Affairs a Reprieve

While the $3.8-billion budget approved Monday by the Los Angeles City Council is being described by some council members as dangerously austere, the new spending plan offers a reprieve for the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

If the plan is approved by Mayor Tom Bradley, it will restore $2.25 million to Cultural Affairs--out of the $3-million cut originally proposed for the department by Bradley’s 1993-94 city budget plan, unveiled in late April.

While the department will still have to tighten its belt, Cultural Affairs manager Adolfo V. Nodal said Tuesday that the new plan will prevent imperiling cuts to the department’s grants and special projects departments.

“I feel very confident that the department is going to survive,” Nodal said. “The council came up with a way of preserving us that he (Bradley) was not able to do; I would hope that the mayor would not veto . . . our restoration. He has always been supportive, and he made the original ($3-million) cut under the supreme stress of incredible budget and deficit woes.”

A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said that as a matter of policy he does not comment on proposed revisions until “the final budget package has been reviewed.”

Under the mayor’s original proposal, Cultural Affairs would have lost revenues from the so-called “bed tax,” which provides the department with 1% of the city’s Transient Occupancy Tax, as well as lost the Arts Development Fund, which collects fees on new commercial development over $500,000, and another tax, which provides a portion of 1% of all construction improvement or remodeling for public works capital improvement undertaken by the city.

Nodal said that, under the council’s new proposal, the 1994 budget will be $750,000 less than the 1993 budget. The cut will prevent the department from filling three positions within its community arts division that were lost through attrition or remained unfilled in 1993. Nodal said filling those positions would have cost $150,000. The community arts program, which operates facilities such as the Barnsdall Arts Center, Tujunga’s McGroarty Arts Center and the Watts Towers Arts Center, has already suffered massive cuts over the past three years, with 24 positions lost.

The rest of the $750,000 will come from a 9% across-the-board cut to grants and special projects, which includes festivals and murals, Nodal said. Nodal added the department still faces the threat of a state budget cut for 1994.