Plan to slash budget for CityArts put on hold, mayor says

City Hall won’t slash spending for the CityArts gallery and art education program, as had been proposed in the city budget for next year, Mayor Jeff Longwell announced Thursday.

“We intend to have full funding for CityArts for the 2019 budget season,” Longwell announced in a news conference at the Advanced Learning Library downtown.

The change in the spending plan means CityArts won’t face a $290,000 cut that would have eliminated five of the six full-time city employees running the art space in Old Town Square.

Under the original proposal, the gallery and the gift shop at CityArts was slated to be privatized in some fashion. That part of the plan is on hold, too.

Longwell made it clear, however, that the one-year reprieve doesn’t mean there won’t have to be changes to make the facility more financially viable in the long term.

“The understanding (is) that we are still working towards a new model that we hope to develop prior to 2020,” Longwell said. “The vice mayor, along with the city manager and some others, met with some leaders from the Arts Council and they understand they’re getting full funding but that doesn’t eliminate the need to look at options.”

A shift of $1 million from a proposed increase in street maintenance will be used to provide funding to CityArts and other quality-of-life amenities that had been slated for cuts.

The news Thursday came as a relief to artists, who have been coordinating a campaign to advocate for CityArts.

Denise Irwin, who is not affiliated with the gallery, has been heading those efforts.

Irwin said despite the good news for 2019, the fight is not over at CityArts.

“It’s not over until the vote is taken,” she said. “But then we know that this is only for one year, and we still have a lot of work to do.”

At multiple galleries and businesses this Final Friday, groups of people plan to collect signatures on a petition in support of CityArts. In Old Town Square, volunteers plan to sell T-shirts that read “We Are City Arts.”

Irwin said the city and its arts community needs to look to the 2020 budget immediately.

“The mayor and city manager have said we’ve got to look at quality-of-life issues,” she said. “It does involve a new baseball stadium, but is also involves the visual arts, the dramatic arts. ... That’s what makes us a community. It’s all a part of what makes us who we are.”

This story was originally published July 26, 2018 at 1:06 PM.