Arts Plan Relies Too Heavily on City Subsidies

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Editor,

My main concern with the proposed cultural arts plan is the almost total reliance in the plan on funding from the city.

I counted. The plan uses the term “fund” or “funding” 68 times. It is, in essence, a 41-page request for virtually unlimited funds to come almost entirely from the city, and from city bond financing, and for staff, and ongoing subsidies.

The National Endowment of the Arts, the source of the $25,000 grant that lead to the plan that has cost $100,000, has a document on its website titled “How The United States Funds The Arts.”  Page one of that document shows that local governments typically provide 3.3 percent of the revenue for not-for-profit arts groups and museums in the U.S.  With all that Laguna does to support the arts locally, the citizens of Laguna already far exceed that number.

The city does not have unlimited financial resources.  There are other needs that must be considered.

The plan also tries to say that the Vision Laguna 2030 process corroborates this desire for a new facility.  I’m familiar with the Vision Laguna 2030 final report.  I was one of the four editors that produced that report.  That report had 85 goals and actions, and only one of the 85 ideas was to establish a community arts center. It was not the main theme of Vision 2030 and it certainly did not say that the participants expected the city to pay for it.

Rather than focus on a new facility, why not use the creative talents of our arts community to focus on making better use of existing facilities?

Finally, much of the focus of the plan is on bringing more and more visitors to Laguna. Laguna already has more annual visitors than Yosemite National Park and more visitors than all but one national park in the country.  If our arts community is struggling to succeed with 6 million visitors, I don’t know why things would be better with 7 million.

John Thomas, Laguna Beach

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