Painting a Bleak Picture : With One Exception, Arts Programs in O.C. Continue to Suffer

Today, as groundbreaking for the new Huntington Beach Art Center is scheduled to take place, the city is considering eliminating its entire Cultural Services Division.

And compared to what’s going on at many cities in Orange County--indeed, throughout the country--that’s the good news.

Why?

For one thing, putting shovels to pavement will at long last launch a renovation to convert a nondescript downtown building into the multifaceted center, slated to open next spring.

Further, for now at least, it’s only a contingency plan, not an official recommendation, to eliminate the city’s Cultural Services Division, whose job it will be to help administer the center just as it has nursed its prenatal development.

Elsewhere, cutbacks are closer to reality.

The Fullerton Museum Center is bracing for a 20% reduction in the funds it receives from the city. Irvine, which has already made deep cuts in its cultural affairs departments, is recommending eliminating the head of that department. In Newport Beach, municipal arts grants have been slashed by more than half.

So the good news in Huntington Beach is that the elimination of its Cultural Services Division will be officially proposed only if the state decides to divert up to $5 million in property-tax revenues to the school district instead of to the city, where it has gone in the past, according to Huntington Beach assistant city administrator Robert J. Franz.

Even if the cultural services division is axed, it would likely mean problems for the planned art center, not its demise.

In contrast, many other Orange County municipalities have officially recommended yet another round of painful budget reductions that stand to further curtail city-funded arts programs.

Such programs have already been pared down--or abolished--after three recessionary years of cutbacks throughout the state to a variety of municipally supported activities.

All of that has increasingly sent arts administrators searching for likewise diminishing private dollars.

“It’s definitely been moving that way for us and for everyone,” said Joe Felz, director of the city-supported Fullerton Museum Center.

For fiscal year 1993-94, Fullerton city officials are expecting a budget deficit of about $4.2 million, nearly 9% of the city’s $47-million budget. Largely as a result, the officials have proposed cutting the museum center’s allotment for the year by a whopping 20%--its biggest cut ever--to roughly $240,000, Felz said. City money provides about 70% of Fullerton Museum Center’s 1993-94 budget of $340,000.

That could mean the loss of one full-time and one part-time clerical employee, a reduction in operating hours and the number of music, drama and other adjunct programs offered. Additionally, admission may be upped by 50 cents (to $2.50 for adults) to help make up the difference, Felz said.

“It’s a pretty dire situation,” Felz said, “and it’s similar from city to city.”

Previous cuts totaling about $20,000 during the past two years have forced the museum center to close on Tuesdays, cancel its annual Lively Arts Festival and limit other activities, Felz said.

Other budget cuts recommended by officials in cities around Orange County with prominent arts programs would:

* Reduce Muckenthaler Cultural Center’s allotment from the city of Fullerton by 20% to roughly $235,000. City community services superintendent Kay Miller said the cut would primarily result in the loss of two clerical employees, one full time, one part time.

The center’s municipal support has declined by about 25% during the past few years, which led to the cancellation of an exhibit planned for this spring.

* Eliminate Henry Korn’s job as cultural affairs manager for Irvine, saving roughly $100,000 in salary and benefits.

Past cuts in Irvine killed a $15,000 cultural grant program after its first year, reduced operating hours and exhibition funding at the Irvine Fine Arts Center by 50%, and prompted a reduction in staff hours at the city’s cultural-affairs division.

* Cut in half the municipal arts grants budget in Newport Beach, leaving it at $25,000. Two years ago, the grants budget totaled $55,000. Typically, some eight arts groups receive grants.

Stepped-up local efforts to seek support from foundations, corporations or individuals as public funding continues to dwindle are mirrored by the California Arts Council, and by other struggling state arts agencies across the country.

Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed trimming the council’s $12.6-million budget by 20% in 1993-94 and continue reducing it in succeeding years so that the CAC eventually is left with a budget of about $5 million.

Faced with this, the council recently followed Tennessee’s lead by launching a program with which it hopes to generate thousands of dollars through the sale of artist-designed vanity license plates.

“Historically, the arts have been very successful at establishing public-private partnerships,” said council director Joanne C. Kozberg. “What we’re now doing is broadening that kind of support.”

Courting private support is nothing new to arts organizations that also rely on public funds. Locally, Fullerton Museum Center reopened after remodeling five years ago with a mandate to raise more private dollars, which made up 12% ($57,000) of its total budget in 1987. That figure is projected to reach 30% ($100,000) this year, Felz said.

Facing the museum’s largest budget reduction ever, center trustees have “committed to generate more private money” this year through fund-raiser events and other means, as well as consider raising admission and membership fees, Felz said.

Likewise, Muckenthaler Cultural Center trustees earlier this year sent to Fullerton city officials a plan to eventually become independent of municipal support.

Felz believes greater reliance on the private sector is a must as public dollars shrink.

The alternative, he said, is basically “closing your doors. . . . Across the country, arts organizations are dying out.”

Since the Costa Mesa City Council killed its entire $87,500 arts grants allocation in February, members of the city’s 10-member Cultural Arts Advisory Committee reorganized into a loosely knit, private Citizens Council for the Arts.

“We as a group want everyone to know that we are not rolling over,” said Irene Hajak, who is spearheading the new group. “We’re trying to support the arts, even if we (have to) do it on our own.”

The city committee, which awarded the city grants, hasn’t been officially disbanded, but has not been meeting. Its fate will be determined in a month or so, city officials said.

Mayor Mary Hornbuckle, however, predicts the arts grants will not be reinstated this year, given a projected city budget deficit of at least $4.5 million.

“Not only are arts groups (increasingly turning to the private sector), but many social service groups are doing it too,” Hornbuckle said. “I wish them well. It’s a sad time.”

So far, Hajak’s private group has raised $300 from the South Coast Metro Rotary Club in Costa Mesa to continue an annual award ceremony recognizing outstanding local teachers and students working in the arts. It may also helping Cal Trans with a freeway-beautification project, Hajak said.

Irvine arts officials have been raising private money to supplement city-funded programs for many years.

But the city’s Community Services Commission--at the urging of local arts supporters--recently voted unanimously to recommend to the City Council that it allocate $60,000 for the formation of a new nonprofit, public-private arts agency that would gradually rely less and less on city funding and perhaps eventually exist on private money only. The council is scheduled to decide the matter on June 22.

The new agency would have to report directly to the City Council--unlike the current cultural department, which communicates through the Community Services Department--and thus have a stronger identity.

Korn warns against a wholly independent organization, however.

“The success of a new, nonprofit structure would depend on the degree of commitment of city funding,” Korn said.

“We’ve looked at examples of local arts agencies all over the country that were public and went private,” he said, “and found no examples of agencies that were successful absent continued substantial financial support from local government.”

Huntington Beach officials echo Korn’s concern.

So far, the private nonprofit Huntington Beach Art Center Foundation has raised $550,000 in private funds toward roughly $865,000 needed to renovate a 1950s-era building that will house the new art center, city cultural services manager Michael Mudd said.

Furthermore, the foundation is planning to raise $3 million for an endowment to support programming, Mudd said. While he and other local arts leaders predict the city’s Cultural Services Division will remain intact, its elimination would severely hamper efforts to get the art center up and running, he said.

“Without the division staff (which administers the volunteer foundation’s fund-raising), the foundation would have to hire a full staff,” he said, which would require money that otherwise could be used for the art center’s renovation or programming.

“It would stall, delay and complicate things and it’s possible the foundation may not be able to continue,” Mudd said.

The city’s Cultural Services Division, which has a budget of about $270,000, also sponsors summer concerts, a community band, playhouse productions, a sister-city program and other activities.

Susan Hoffman, director of the California Confederation of the Arts, an arts-advocacy organization, believes increased reliance on the private sector, whether by the California Arts Council or municipalities, is “a dangerous road for us to go.”

For starters, public funds provide a ‘catalytic imprimatur” that attracts private dollars, she said. She also cited findings of a report issued by the New York-based Foundation Center, a national nonprofit organization that acts as a clearinghouse for grant-makers and -seekers.

The report, titled “Arts Funding: A Report on Foundation and Corporate Grant Making Trends,” found that “there is no indication whatsoever that there will be an increase in private funding for the arts” during the next five years, Hoffman said.

Beyond all that, she added, “You lose an amazing institution when you lose public funding” of the arts. “You lose (the idea that) arts are like libraries and roads and post offices--all the things that should be (publicly supported as) part of everyday life and civilized society.”