ARTS UPDATE 1/15/2010
by Chris Van Vechten
It’s been a long time since my last arts update. In that time, the Pierce County Arts Commission held its annual Margret K Williams awards and doled out around $30,000 worth of community grants. Among the many programs we supported I was particularly proud to have played a leading role in securing funding for both Lincoln Center and First Creek Middle School to provide in-depth personalized arts education to underprivileged youth – but I failed to deprive the Pierce County Library System of funding for a short story contest. The library wanted the money to hire professional judges to select winning short stories and poems which the gifted authors could then purchase in published book form for a fee. I don’t recall how much exactly said fee was but it was considerable and led me to believe that this was more about securing business for vanity presses than anything else.
And so, I heroically – and publicly – declared to my fellow commissioners that the Pierce County Library was out to screw us and the children we support. Ironically, though in hind-sight predictably, I was met with extreme hostility and when the votes were tallied – it was 9 to 1 in favor of giving the Pierce County Library System the maximum allocation allowed. In the future, when I’m against something, I’ll just keep my mouth shut and emphasize the greatness of other programs so that non-priorities like poetry contests will walk away with a $500 pat on the back and nothing more.
The consultants from Wolf Brown that were hired some months back have developed an outline of Findings and Questions as part of their cultural planning process which has been in effect since October of 2009.
Of all these questions, the one that sticks out to me the most appears in Sec 4, paragraph D, line 3. It reads: “Are there particular approaches that can bolster vibrant but fragile entrepreneurial efforts or small arts and heritage groups?”
January 19th, 2010 at 5:38 am
Saying no, with cause, is a risky thing in public funding. That is understandable, but very inappropriate. We need to figure out ways to protect those who are brave enough to do so.
The work of Brian Sonntag in Olympia with performance audits and whistleblower defense has done much to raise these standards and they will likely continue in these budgetary challenging times.
Still we need more. I’d urge you to stick with it, though perhaps hold the fire and brimstone for those that commit fraud, etc.
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Chris Van Vechten Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
It wasn’t fraud. Simply a dispute about how to best use public dollars. They had very good arguments too.
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