5 Festival of Arts Trustees Recalled

In the fierce battle to keep the famed Laguna Beach Festival of Arts from moving to San Clemente, a majority of five board members has been recalled, officials announced Monday.

“Naturally, I’m disappointed,” said festival President Sherri M. Butterfield, one of those recalled. “We brought the message to the city, the members and the artists that the Laguna Beach site needs about $10 million to $30 million in renovations, but no one seemed to care about that.”

Many Laguna Beach residents rejoiced at the news, expressing hope that a new board will be committed to keeping the festival in town.

“This is wonderful. I’m smiling,” said Donna Bader, a Laguna Beach lawyer who has been working without pay for Keep the Festival in Laguna Beach Inc. “San Clemente would be crazy to enter into a contract with the festival. The majority of the voting members don’t want to go to San Clemente.”

San Clemente officials conceded Monday that the move probably will not happen now.

“We’re obviously disappointed,” said David Lund, San Clemente’s director of public works and economic development. “The likelihood of a move is now highly questionable. We thought it was a very exciting plan. Now we’ll have to stand by and take a wait-and-see attitude.”

The festival’s 2,700 Orange County members--exhibitors and patrons--were eligible to vote on the recall. Of those, 1,831 did so, with 65% of them supporting the ouster of the board members.

The recall vote followed nearly four years of negotiations between the festival and Laguna Beach over how much rent the nonprofit organization should pay.

The festival board said in April that it could not agree on a new lease arrangement with Laguna Beach, which charged it $585,000 in rent for 1999. In June, the San Clemente City Council offered the festival a lease for a site to be ready by May 2003. Annual rent would begin at $1 and increase to at least $150,000 by 2014.

The festival board accepted that offer tentatively and in August signed a nonbinding lease agreement with San Clemente to move the festival from its 5.6-acre site in Laguna Beach to a 41-acre hilltop near the Talega residential development.

Plans included a 3,000-seat amphitheater with a retractable roof, an upscale restaurant, an art institute and a three-story, 15,000-square-foot museum.

Meanwhile, festival exhibitors set in motion the recall campaign.

The festival board has nine seats. Of those, two were vacant because of resignations this year. Two others were filled by appointment after earlier resignations. Those two trustees--Kerry Smith, a Dana Point festival exhibitor, and Ronald T. Perrella, a Laguna Niguel business owner--will keep their seats.

Of the seven seats open after the recall, three will be filled during the festival’s annual fall election, now in progress. The remaining four may be filled by appointment of the board or election by the membership, Butterfield said.

The festival, a Laguna Beach summer institution for 68 years, draws about 160 artists each year to exhibit their work at its booths. It includes the Pageant of the Masters, in which performers portray famous works of art. Each year, the festival draws an estimated 225,000 visitors who spend about $6 million on food, parking and merchandise.