Tucson-Pima Arts Council Executive Director Roberto Bedoya called it a “budget nightmare.”
He was talking about a proposal from Tucson City Manager Richard Miranda to reduce funding for his non-profit agency from roughly $400,000 a year to just $100,000.
“I was not expecting this at all,” Bedoya said. “I knew it would be difficult for us to hold the line but I was shocked when I went online and saw the news.”
TPAC is just one agency that is looking at deep cuts as Miranda attempts to bridge an estimated $27 million budget shortfall in the next fiscal year.
Miranda shared the broad outlines of his budget plan at last week’s City Council meeting. The proposal includes laying off 29 permanent employees, eliminating 35 vacant positions, cutting 75 percent of the TPAC budget, raising bus fares, and eliminating funding for Access Tucson, the YMCA, and outside agencies involved in economic and workforce development.
Bedoya argued that cutting TPAC’s funding is short-sighted, especially since the agency has already seen its funding slashed by 45 percent in recent years as the city faced a series of budget crises. He said the city’s funding—which is about 40 percent of his million-dollar annual budget—helps him find matching grants from private foundations and the state and federal government. It supports an $87 million local economic sector that helps increase tax revenues because people tend to spend money on food and drink when they attend a performance. And he pointed out that the city’s 63 cents per capita funding for the arts is far behind the national average of roughly $5 per capita in major metropolitan areas.
“This recommendation betrays the legacy of the city’s role in leading and supporting this cultural community,” Bedoya said. “It’s tiring that every year we have to justify ourselves. After 30 years were still on this merry-go-round and we keep falling behind.”
Tucson City Council members appear to be on his side. Earlier this week, Councilwoman Regina Romero said that the arts dollars not only enrich the city’s cultural landscape but also provide a return on investment by bringing in matching grants from outside the community.
“Funding of the arts is something that’s important to the quality of life in our community,” Romero said.
Three other council members—Karin Uhlich, Paul Cunningham and Steve Kozachik—agreed with Romero’s sentiment, with Kozachik saying he planned to release his own budget recommendations in the coming days that would “restore funding to almost all” of the outside agencies targeted for cuts.
If there’s an outside agency that may face problems, it’s Access Tucson, the public-access television station that airs programming for Tucsonans on cable channels and provides training, video equipment and studio space for locals to create TV shows. Miranda has proposed cutting all funding for Access Tucson and selling the downtown building, on Broadway near Sixth Avenue, that houses its studio and production facilities.
Last week, Access Tucson Executive Director Lisa Horner got a notice in the mail that the city planned to end its lease with the non-profit organization in 90 days.
“It was a surprise,” Horner said.
Horner, whose agency has seen its city funding drop from $800,000 to $300,000 in recent years, said that losing the remaining funding would be devastating to Access Tucson.
“That would leave us with very little,” Horner said.
Romero said she thought Access Tucson would face some kind of funding hit this year but she didn’t want to eliminate all funding for the agency.
“This year, maybe cut them by 50 percent and maybe next year, they don’t get anything at all, but we should give them a chance to find a new finance model,” Romero said. “We should not say, ‘In the next three months, Access Tucson, you’re gone.’ It’s not fair.”
Romero said she was open to examining the sale of the building sometime in the next fiscal year, but added that she didn’t want the non-profit evicted in just three months.
Kozachik was also critical of the city’s move to evict Access Tucson.
“I think we need to at least explore the appraisal of the building but frankly, I don’t think you tell somebody you have just three months left,” Kozachik said. “You don’t pull the rug out from under them.”
But Kozachik warned that Access Tucson needed to rethink its mission, given that YouTube allows people to post videos that they can make on their smart phones.
“Honestly, they need to retool their mission,” Kozachik said. “The First Amendment pitch will only go so far in an age of YouTube.”
Horner says Access Tucson still has a vital purpose, including inexpensive video-training classes and a studio facility that can’t easily be replicated.
“It is a 30-year-old community resource for not only media education, which is one of the most important services that we provide,” Horner said. “We have a 30-year archive of Tucson history by Tucsonans. We love YouTube and we love the Internet and the digital revolution that is made communication available, but it is still practical to have a place where people get together face-to-face and learn things.”
This article appears in Apr 3-9, 2014.
* 67% reduction in the city’s Housing and Community Development Department (cut from $5 million to $1.6 million) — virtually wiping out the department.
* $1 million dollar budgetary reduction in Mass Transit funds.
* 45% cut in the City’s “General Services”
But a $2.8 million INCREASE for the Tucson Police Department…
… Yet the Weekly’s only concern in the city budget is for the arts?
Ok, we got what your priorities are. Shouldn’t be surprised, I guess.
It may not be that the arts is the Weekly’s priority. They write about education quite a lot. The Arts Council budget is small by comparison, and the arts funding generally flies under the radar until there are severe cuts. The fact is that the arts enhance a community’s profile in so many ways. The arts are a classic example of trickle down economy (and I am no expert in the field of economics) at it’s best. Support an art event, or artist, writer, musician, playwright or theater, and individuals in those communities, purchase materials, rent studios, sell tickets to crowds, bring in audiences to a variety of neighborhoods and downtown, attract tourism, and as has been proven time and again, renovate and improve derelict neighborhoods to the point that the artist is often forced out by gentrifying neighborhoods, higher rents or property values.
Generally our culture sees the arts as a negotiable fragment of what they need in their lives. However for many it is an important and integral ingredient to a cultural, informed and enlightened life on this earth. Budget wrangling periods always seem to put the most vulnerable agencies on the block pitting one need against another. The fact is that we need all of these things in our lives. We need good roads, police and fire protection, strong schools (and art/music/theater, as well as science in those schools), a park system, bike and walking paths, as well as other amenities if we want to be take seriously as a world class city.
Tucson is a city that prides itself like no other about supporting local businesses. Supporting your local arts council is directly and indirectly supporting your local businesses.
But we can’t touch funding for the Folleycar, can we…
Doesn’t the funding for Access Tucson come from the cable companies that are awarded franchises (monopolies) to operate in the City? If so, this money should continue to support Access instead of being diverted into the general fund. I may be making some assumptions here, but that is my recollection of the funding model for this type of entity.
Access Tucson is like a branch of the library. There’s a big difference between an iphone video on youtube and what you can do at Access Tucson with their cameras, lights, microphones and editing equipment.
I wonder how much it costs to run a branch library? No one is suggesting shutting any of them down? Access Tucson also has several public access computers.
Channel 12 currently shares the building, they were previously in the Pioneer Building at great expense in rent. If COT sells the building, and destroys all the work Access Tucson has done to the building in 30-years, where will Channel 12 go, how much will their rent be?
The Tucson Pima Arts Council should be the first to be cut. We have all seen how they waste money. Hate to bring this one up again but how about the $180,000 for the abortion “Sonora: in front of the Downtown Library.
Given the choice of a cop to get to my house or another piece of crap public artwork I will take the cop.
Artsy fartsy Progressives gone crazy with public money.
67% reduction in the city’s Housing and Community Development Department (cut from $5 million to $1.6 million) — virtually wiping out the department.
That’s because the inspection is being moved to Development Services which does building code inspections-not because the departments other missions (which are almost all federally funded) are being cut.
In regards to Fraser’s comment, Sonora may not be my favorite sculpture either. However if one looks at the career of the artist David Black, who created the work, he has been vetted by some of the most prestigious art institutions nationally and internationally. He was a professor of art at a major university in our country. Now truthfully, these credentials do not necessarily make a good sculpture or work of art. When the famous Picasso sculpture was unveiled in the Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago back in the 60’s, the reaction in all the papers was as visceral as Fraser’s comment above. People thought it was a hunk of scrap metal. (By the way, I loved then as a teenager, and continue to love that sculpture into my 60s) Now that sculpture practically serves as an official symbol of the city of Chicago, it is so broadly accepted. I am not saying this will happen with “Sonora”, but public art, art divined by committee is often watered down by budgets, uninformed committees, and city planners with short sighted vision. What happened in Chicago, a world class city, is that civic leaders had vision, took risks, and surrounded themselves with arts council advisors who were equally fearless of the uninformed public vitriol. What you have in Chicago is a city that is internationally regarded for it’s art and architecture. Visual art is so very multi faceted and complex. Art possesses the power to educate if one’s mind is open to studying a bit. It’s history dates back to the first marks made on cliff walls or caves. The only thing that annoys me is how folks with little or no art background, education, or experience publish, yell, and share their opinions about art. Pick up an art history book, make an investment in your culture, attempt to educate and understand where art has come from, and where it may be going. Visual art affects your life more than you may know. To cut the Pima County Arts Council just because one person has a knee jerk reaction lacking any vision toward the arts in a vibrant community, due to one public sculpture, is as myopic as cutting the fire departments budget just because my house has never had a fire.
It isn’t just one person and a knee jerk reaction. It is a whole lot of us who have had it up to here. The arts community can look down on us as Philistines, quite unable to grasp the fine art only the elite are capable of appreciating, but the fact is we are the ones paying for it. Considering the horrible stuff that the Tucson Pima Arts Council has foisted on us via public art, they should not get a dime of my hard earned tax money, and I do mean hard earned.
Start with the $180,000 red Sonoran plop by the downtown library, but there was also the rendition of brown water flowing (for a mere $143,000) that was so bad the Hedrick Acres Neighborhood Association voted to have it taken to the dump. You may remember that was the one with planned benches that looked like cut sewer pipes with brown stuff on them. And this is what the arts community wants us to “celebrate.”
There is a lot that I do not like about government (big and small) like what it spends excessively on bombs, cuts in education and other social services, or how the rich seem to get better tax incentives than the needy. Yet I pay my fair share of taxes. Similar to art defined by committee, democracy in a capitalist system often leaves a bitter taste.
I have been professionally involved in the art community for more than 40 years and I never look down on a potential audience as Philistines (your choice of words). I hope to see it as an opportunity to educate. Over the years I’ve learned it is impossible to please everyone, or be pleased by everyone.
Tucson City Manager Richard Miranda is the most incompetent mgr. but the Mayor and council keeps him on. Many budget problems are because of his not being bright enough. He needs to be sent back the the police dept.
Where’s the money going? On Friday afternoons around 2pm, I’ve seen (on more than one occasion) a couple of official city owned pick-ups parked in front of a Carcinera and the city workers with their city employee shirts unbuttoned all the way, picking up “cervesas y comidas” for the Friday night cook out. Oh, and don’t forget to check out all the city vehicles sitting around in various spots in Randolph Park on Friday afternoons waiting for the time clock to run out. “La Buena Vida” on our dime!
Your just going to have to adapt Roberto.
Try the “Pima Bar Council.” As in the Bourbon Street Circus district they’ve created downtown.
To AZRLS and Ronco:
Typical comment by the arts Ronco looking down at the tax paying public. And no Ronco doesn’t know me or what “art” background I have.
“Sonora” cost a lot. If you remember the artist tried to sell that piece of crap to a city back east and Japanese city. They both turned it down. So he named it Sonora! How cute.
I remember the artist saying that there was a Kiva designed in the artwork. Guess what the Hohokams never used a “kiva” in their architecture. Guess he pulled that one out of his posterior.
And yes there are way too many orange metal sculptures in downtowns in the USA. Must have been a fad.
I was involved in the development and the fund raising of a major bronze here in Tucson that is on public view. We made sure that the Tucson Pima Arts Council was NOT involved. And we raised the $75,000 needed. It was a long time ago so the amout today would probably be three times of what Mr. Ronco would love to spend. Nt a cent was tax money. Let me repeat that. NOT a frigging cent was paid by the public.
When the government pays for art for the public you start looking like the Germans in the 1930’s to 1945. The artists come out of the woodwork.to sell their stuff. Same as in the Soviet Union. Name a dozen more countries. The Progressives are in charge of these “Arts” councils and their selections will show through.
Dear Fraser,
In many regards there is not a lot that I disagree with you about…I am proud of you, and no irony intended, that you worked to raise money for the arts that did not dip into taxpayer pockets. You are a rare breed. If I made some generalizations in my comments that offended you, please accept my apology. It has been my experience as an art professor and artist that a large percentage ( and I do not know that exact percentage) of our culture does not care about art or so called high culture. Government supported art sometimes does look watered down, distilled or just plain boring. Personally I like art that is confrontational in some way, but I expect very few to subscribe to my own taste. I am fine with that. All I am complaining about is that so many (again I don’t know the exact number) jump on the anti art band wagon that have had little or no exposure or education regarding their opinions.
Now I firmly disagree with you that I am looking down on the taxpaying public. I have always paid my taxes, never once cheated on my tax form, and believe paying taxes is a civic and patriotic duty. I love my country, but I reserve the right to be critical about what happens with my tax dollar, and little good that does. I look down on no one. I taught art in a major state university for 26 years. Students that were brilliant and not so brilliant crossed my path. I treated each equally, with respect, and looked down on none of them. Their parents tax dollars (about 13-20%) over the years I taught put food on my table. I never missed a day of work, I worked committees, I served on arts council panels. I enjoy ranting in the comments section on issues I am passionate about. But I do not look down on anyone, particularly you or other commenters who I have never met.
One last thing, that you overlooked….it’s RONKO with a “K”.
“Retrorv”‘s comment that it is ok to decimate the city housing budget because building code inspections will cover it is, frankly, ludicrous. The issue of housing — including subsidies for the poor — has nothing to do with code inspectors. You made the same dumb comment in the Tucson Sentinel.
And my first post still stands — the proposed city budget gives millions more to cops while wiping out housing, stripping parks to the bone, implementing massive cuts to general services, and cutting over a million from mass transit (buses) while pumping zillions into Farley’s Trolley Folly. But all the Weekly (and some of the commentators here) is concerned about is the arts. It is all about priorities — not if one likes art or the dumb decisions TPAC has made over the years — but what is more important? Housing, parks, and transit for our people, or another public art piece (which is generally subsidized by a percentage of the construction costs of the project requiring art)?
And the Star had an article this morning that the city wants to use COPs — certificates of participation — which is a tricky way to impose more debt on us without voter approval which bonds normally require. This is what happens because of stupid decisions — like giving across the board raises to all city employees (including those making six figures) and new paid holidays for Cesar Chavez. But hey, I’m sure all the farmworkers will sleep well tonight out in thee fields knowing that city employees have a new vacation day.