Councilmen Bob Manning and Ryan Spain listened to ArtsPartners representatives make the case for continued public funding of their organization this morning at City Hall. Although the meeting was called by the mayor, he did not attend. Instead, Dr. Peter Couri led the meeting.
Couri gave a brief history of ArtsPartners and then turned it over to others in attendance to give their views on the importance of continued funding.
Julie Russell, past president of ArtsPartners, distributed an official statement (PDF) that answers many of the objections that have been raised. One point she stressed was that ArtsPartners relies largely on city subsidy so as not to compete for donations with other arts groups.
George Brown, Department of Theatre Arts Chair at Bradley University, stated that he believed the funding was not only necessary, it wasn’t enough. He cited a report released by Americans for the Arts in May of this year (titled “Arts and Economic Prosperity“) which states, “the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year — $63.1 billion in spending by organizations and an additional $103.1 billion in event-related spending by their audiences.” He argued that the arts don’t just provide “quality of life” in Peoria, but have economic impact as well.
Brent Lonteen, Executive Director of the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (PACVB), explained that PACVB does not rely exclusively on city funding, but is a member-based organization. Nevertheless, they allow any arts group affilitated with ArtsPartners to utilize PACVB services because they recognize the arts community is struggling financially. He said the suggestion to combine PACVB with ArtsPartners did not originate with the bureau, but that they are willing to help in any way the city and/or ArtsPartners would request.
Manning explained that the reason for the meeting was to explore whether giving $75,000 to ArtsPartners is the best way to leverage those funds, or if there might be a better way, such as giving funding to arts groups directly. He also said there was some confusion over whether this was originally meant to be a permanent subsidy or simply seed money to get ArtsPartners established.
Spain was a strong supporter of continued funding, saying he thought the work of ArtsPartners was critical to the economic health of the community.
Several different funding ideas were suggested. One was combining ArtsPartners with the PACVB; another was to bring it under the Heartland Partnership umbrella. Another attendee suggested establishing a Public Arts Commission and funding it directly from the city budget (similar to the way the Municipal Band is funded) instead of receiving funding through HRA taxes.
The meeting lasted about an hour. ArtsPartners Executive Director Suzette Boulais attended but did not speak during the meeting. The city council will decide whether and how to continue funding ArtsPartners at their October 9 meeting.