How a massive outcry and a 15% compromise saved Santa Cruz County arts funding

Members of the arts community are breathing a sigh of relief as Santa Cruz County staff have found a way to preserve most of the funding for the local Arts Council and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. 

Last week, they showed up in droves to the county board of supervisors chambers protesting a proposal to cut a $170,000 contract with the Arts Council and reduce funding for the Santa Cruz MAH in order to patch a hole in the parks department budget. 

Supervisors were clear that cutting arts funding was not an option, and had tasked the county parks department to come back with a final budget plan at Tuesday’s meeting that maintains the county’s respective contracts with both organizations. 

Ahead of that meeting, county staff are proposing a smaller 15% reduction to the Arts Council and MAH contracts. 

County parks director Jeff Gaffney told Lookout that following last week’s budget hearing, both Jim Brown and Ginger Shulick Porcella, executive directors of the Arts Council and Santa Cruz MAH, respectively, came to him wanting to help fill the nearly $590,000 budget gap the department faced. 

Brown said he and Porcella offered the reduction in funding to demonstrate that the arts community is collaborative and could be part of the solution. 

“Fifteen percent cut is hard to absorb in challenging budget times altogether, but we do want to be partners with the county in addressing the budget challenges that they have,” Brown said. 

Brown and Porcella say they feel relieved that there will just be a 15% reduction in funding as opposed to what was originally proposed by Gaffney. 

“Fifteen percent is better than 50%,” Porcella told Lookout. “It was really hard to try and cut $80,000 out of our already bare bones budget, but $25,000 is easier.” 

Brown added that the small reduction will still affect the Arts Council’s budget, as the organization will most likely need to reduce how much money it can give away in grants to other organizations and artists. 

“We’re hoping that given the incredible community support that we saw advocating for sustained funding for the arts, that we can leverage that to bring the community together to raise additional dollars to help fill that gap,” Brown said. 

The reduction in funding restored nearly $48,100 to the county parks department, and to fill the rest of the budget gap, Gaffney leaned on other departments for help. 

“I have great relationships with all the departments, and we started asking about opportunities to find one-time monies, or does anybody have anything they can hold off that we can use,” Gaffney said. 

He told Lookout that soon after last week’s discussion, he and deputy parks director Rebecca Hurley began figuring out how they were going to solve their budget hole. 

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office deferred an equipment purchase to help reallocate $15,000 from its funds to the parks budget, said Gaffney. Other departments, such as planning and general services, contributed one-time funds as well. 

Gaffney said the county’s planning department contributed $68,400 to help support a volunteer coordinator position for a portion of the year. Since that department was planning to have a coordinator, Gaffney offered to support those efforts through the parks’ own position, he said. 

He also managed to decrease the amount of fees from the county’s information-technology department, since many of the park’s department employees are primarily out in the field, and not using computers as much. 

Gaffney told Lookout that he feels confident in his new proposal and is hopeful that the five-member board of supervisors will approve it on Tuesday. 

“We followed their clear direction,” he said. “Both Jim Brown and Ginger from the MAH were both good with where we are. We kept the arts contributions as whole as we could.” 

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