GARDEN GROVE : City to Continue Cultural Funding

A proposal to cut off city funding of cultural activities was rejected this week on a 3-2 vote of the City Council.

Councilman Robert F. Dinsen had sought a one-year moratorium on fees that the city imposes on developers to help finance cultural activities. He said the fees should be relaxed to help attract businesses.

“We have quite a few chunks of vacant land, and we should ease things on developers and get something done,” Dinsen said.

Councilman Bruce A. Broadwater joined Dinsen in voting for the moratorium. Broadwater claimed that cultural groups have not been spending money wisely and that officials should cut off their funding source.

Mayor Frank Kessler and Councilmen Ho Chung and Mark Leyes voted to keep the cultural arts spending alive.

Kessler said the city’s policy has been effective and that it would be a mistake to discontinue a program that is “something other than asphalt, fire and police.”

Since the mid-1980s, the city has imposed a fee on commercial and industrial projects with an assessed valuation of $500,000 or higher. The fee, one-fourth of 1% of the assessed valuation, went for public artworks.

Later, the City Council imposed a separate fee on all types of development, with part of the money going to other cultural activities, including the GroveShakespeare Assn., which manages the city-owned Gem Theatre and Festival Amphitheatre, and the Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove.

Because of business slowdowns, development fees have dwindled to only about $1,000 a month, according to Cal Rietzel, manager of the city’s Cultural Arts Division.

In a related action, Broadwater won unanimous support for his motion to require audits every 90 days of the GroveShakespeare Assn., which canceled its season amid financial collapse earlier this year.

Broadwater said the audits might head off financial pitfalls before they become major problems.