Art grants key to SM status, backers say
By DIDIER DIELS Special to the Daily Press
CITY HALL — While officials here express caution as they prepare next year’s budget, dozens of community members lined up in City Hall Tuesday looking for money to fund their projects.
Residents and commission members appealed to the City Council to fund everything from the arts to a handicapped bathroom in City Hall as budget talks for the 2005-2006 fiscal year got underway.
A projected $1.1 million gap in the general fund budget has shrunk and may be eliminated all together because of larger-than anticipated city revenue through sales and hotel bed taxes, officials said. The new revenue, increased by both increased business and higher taxes, will likely prevent the $350,000 cuts anticipated for both the police department and community and cultural services budgets, officials added.
However, despite the Nov-ember passage of Proposition 1A, intended to protect municipalities from the state government, Santa Monica officials urged restraint when considering new spending in light of the state’s untenable position.
“Past history suggests when things get hot and heavy, the legislature is innovative at finding ways to tap local revenue,” said City Manager Susan McCarthy.
Budget talks remain at the most preliminary stage — City Hall’s finance department just last week asked individual department heads to start preparing their budgets, said Finance Director Steve Stark. The finance department will make its assessment of available funds on May 24.
In the meantime, the City Council is looking to establish priorities through a series of discussions and a phone survey of the community. The results of that survey will be presented to the City Council on Jan. 25.
Among Tuesday’s most vocal contingents were members of the art commission, who called for more funds to sponsor the arts and education programs and, especially, money to preserve the city’s art collection, including outdoor murals and those intended for the new main library currently under construction.
“A community that thinks without the arts thinks without any sense of life,” said commission member Julian Brawn Kessler. Kessler added that on a budget of $17,000, preserving all the city’s aging murals has become increasingly difficult. Only about three murals can be worked on at one time, he said.
Commission member Donna Sternberg also noted that Santa Monica could lose its status as an artistic hub if more, and larger, grants for local artists were not given. Sternberg said that since City Hall established the arts grant program in 1987, which range up to $5,000, have never been adjusted for inflation and should now exceed $8,000.
Beyond increasing funds in the general operating budget, City Hall also has a long, and expensive list of large-scale projects slated for the next three years, including $30 million for proposed land acquisitions, $30 million for affordable housing to accompany the redesigned Civic Center, and up to $250 million for parking structure renovation and construction.
Art commission chairwoman Phyllis Green stressed that the need to replace the more than decade-old cultural plan with new a framework is necessary to guide the look and feel of the city’s many development projects and the displaying of art around the community.
In keeping with a Tuesday resolution supporting preschool for all California 4-year-olds, City Hall also has plans to devote roughly $8.1 million over the next three years to an Early Childhood Development Center, also connected to the Civic Center.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 13, 2005. Read the original PDF.