CULTURAL GROUPS
Non-profits hunkering down for tough year
Staying fiscally sound this year could be an even greater challenge than usual for hard-pressed cultural organizations.
Economic turbulence threatens to further undermine government support that has been declining for years and to also affect contributions from foundations, corporations and individuals who watched their investments tank in 2008.
The Erie County Legislature in December restored most cultural aid cut from the 2009 budget by County Executive Chris Collins, but the sides entered the New Year still divided over Collins’ proposed property tax increase, and no budget was in place.
The lack of certainty worries cultural leaders whose own ability to budget and program depends in part on whether public aid will be forthcoming.
“If the county budget is not balanced, then that piece starts to wobble. Cultural funding becomes a target yet again,” lamented Celeste M. Lawson, executive director of the Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County.
An even bigger concern for some groups is the dramatic reduction in funding for the New York State Council on the Arts, some of it retroactive to 2008, proposed by Gov. David A. Paterson to help offset multibillion- dollar state deficits now and in the future.
“That situation is the really dire one,” remarked Edmund Cardoni, executive director of Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center.
Once it became apparent that the state faced an unprecedented fiscal crisis, and Paterson moved to cut NYSCA’s 2008 funding by $7 million, the council abruptly canceled the last two of four 2008 peer review hearings where funding applications are considered.
Those hearings still have not been rescheduled.
This is an ominous sign, particularly for organizations that had not yet received money they had been allocated by the state pass-through agency.
Though Hallwalls had already been awarded state grants covering its visual and media arts programs for 2008, its application for music programming assistance was suddenly cast into doubt.
“That money could be on the chopping block right now,” Cardoni said. He compared Hallwalls’ predicament to that of someone who loses his job midyear after already spending the entire year’s food budget. “If he knew he was going to lose his job, he’d have budgeted differently,” Cardoni said.
More than two dozen other Western New York cultural organizations that were in line for state aid are in the same boat, according to a list supplied by the Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County.
Thus, less than two years after county officials briefly considered dedicating a portion of the sales tax revenue to arts and culture as a permanent hedge against the ups and downs of public funding, and mere months after the debut of two sparkling gems — the Buffalo Zoo’s M&T Bank Rainforest Falls exhibit and the new Burchfield-Penney Arts Center — the region’s vibrant cultural community is once more under stress.
Groups may simply have to hunker down and do what they’ve always done well — figure out how to survive with less assistance, said Randall Kramer, president of the Theatre Alliance of Buffalo and head of MusicalFare Theatre.
“It always comes back to how you’re doing you’re job, getting your message out,” Kramer said. “As far as I know, nobody’s closing his doors.”
“The sad thing,” Lawson said, “is that many of us felt we were turning a corner. Organizations were working together, and people were starting to understand culture’s impact on the community. Now were on our heels, and it feels like we’re tipping backward.”
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