Artless Changes

[January 24th, 2007] While City Hall wrestles with the wonderful "problem" of a $22.8 million budget surplus, Community Music Center's Gregory Dubay wonders how to raise cash to make up for new cuts from that same city government.

When budget times were tougher the past four years, Portland Parks and Recreation slashed its funding by 37 percent to the Southeast Portland music center. But even with city coffers seemingly flush this year, City Commissioner Dan Saltzman—who's in charge of Parks and Recreation—says the cuts must continue because of ongoing competition among all city bureaus for general-fund cash.

That's a tough conclusion for Dubay, executive director of a center that puts on community concerts with an annual budget of $550,000. (The city's current subsidy of $53,000 is about 10 percent of that budget.)

"In the last few years, my job has gone from about 20 percent fundraising to about 70 percent fundraising," says Dubay. "It's sad we've had to put off some of our plans to bring music back into the schools, but we've had to narrow our focus."

Dubay isn't alone. Community Music Center is one of nine city-owned community and cultural sites to which Parks and Rec has collectively reduced funding by 20 percent or more annually over several years.

The result: New community "Friends" groups must be formed to raise money for the sites and, in some cases, sites must hike admission or program fees.

Saltzman says he will consider reinstating some of the funding to Parks and Rec's cultural sites and arts programming, but believes this privatization process is "a healthy trend for these facilities."

"We can't assume today's financial scenarios will see us into the future," Saltzman says. "Garnering other support is necessary."

But to many arts leaders, it's a tough change for a Portland bureau that has long supported banner cultural programs in a city that styles itself as a cultural mecca, inspired in part by the trailblazing leadership of Dorothea Lensch, an early Parks director and founder of organizations like the Portland Opera and Portland Children's Museum.

Past budget shortfalls prompted the bureau's plan to make subsidy cuts. And those cuts landed on the nine community and cultural sites after a community meeting and surveys concluded that support for arts programs and cultural facilities was at the bottom of a long bureau list that included "asphalt patching" and "youth swimming lessons."

"I don't know who they surveyed, but they did not survey my community," says Adrienne Flagg, creative director of the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, one of the "transition" sites. "I'm turning away about half of the applicants to use the IFCC, so the need for arts and arts venues is there."

The North Portland center, which helps emerging and new artists, gets about 15,000 visitors a year. The IFCC has been able to fall back in the short term on its nonprofit organization and an $80,000 one-time "emergency" city grant this fiscal year to cover its annual budget of about $200,000.

Leo Franz, director of the Multnomah Arts Center, says his organization also has been working to raise more money, mostly through fundraising events and donations from its board members.

"Every site wonders why they're being picked on, and we're under the gun to do as much as we possibly can," said Franz, who ended the interview by saying: "Tell any corporation that wants to pay to put their name on anything of ours to give me a call."

Not every site is suffering. And at least one—Pittock Mansion—is thriving, thanks to aggressive fundraising and the decision by Parks to let the Mansion keep all of its admission proceeds, says Pittock Board President Barbara Dalbey-McKee.

That, of course, raises the question of why others can't replicate the Pittock Mansion's success.

"Being a public entity and growing up through the Parks bureau, we don't have that patronage base," Franz says. "Now that the general fund support is going away, we need to work harder to raise the difference. The Pittock Mansion has been supported in large part by the wealthy, whereas we have not."

Over at Sellwood Community Center, rental fees have been raised, revenue-generating programs added and staff trimmed to offset the city cuts.

"We're a little jewel in the community, and I don't want to lose that," says Kim Calame, the Sellwood Center director. "It's a tough thing to ask some communities to support more than others."

Parks and Recreation "Transition Sites"

Camp Ky-O-Wa* (Northeast)
Community Music Center (Southeast)
Fulton Park (Southwest)
Hillside Community Center (Northwest)
Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center* (North)
Multnomah Arts Center (Southwest)

Pittock Mansion* (Northwest)
Sellwood Community Center (Southeast)

Woodstock Community Center (Southeast)
* In the process of becoming 100% privatized (source: Portland Parks and Recreation memo, "Parameters, Obligations and Expectations of 'Transition Sites.")