More than a decade after Spokane’s city arts department was dismantled by former Mayor David Condon, Mayor Lisa Brown has announced that she plans to rebuild it in partnership with the independent nonprofit created in 2012 from the ashes of the former department.
“We’re excited about this collaboration with the mayor’s office and the opportunity to spend more time to think about how we’ll support the creative economy, and more importantly how to make Spokane a city where artists can retire comfortably from being artists,” Skyler Oberst, executive director of Spokane Arts, said in an interview.
Brown has characterized the move as a sort of homecoming that could re-energize the city’s commitment to the arts and the people who create the kind of art that could boost the local economy. She has argued it can be done without impacting the city’s strained budget by moving around existing funding streams, including the 5% tax on admissions prices for concerts and other entertainment venues in the city.
Oberst is expected to take over as director of the new department when it is created. Elisebet Edwards, who serves as constituent services coordinator and arts liaison in the mayor’s office, will also be moved into the department.
Some amount, but not all, of Spokane Arts would be absorbed into the city through this transition.
But what functions and staff will remain within the nonprofit, what opportunities for grants or other funding streams the new arts department will have that were not previously available, and much more will need to be hashed out over the next six months during a “discernment period” before any formal consolidation is approved. It also remains unclear whether the transition would entail cuts in the staff or programming of Spokane Arts if the city takes funding going to the nonprofit and keeps it in the new department, particularly as Brown has said the action will be “budget neutral.”
This commitment could be important to maintain public support, as the announcement that Brown intends to create a new city department was made less than 24 hours after voters approved a tax increase to pay for a number of Brown’s other initiatives because the city was otherwise strapped for cash.
Oberst said Wednesday that he hopes the transition does not negatively impact existing staff and projects.
“Inevitably, there will be twists and turns, as there always is in partnerships and building something new,” Oberst said. “We’re going to do our best.”
He said he also hopes new funding sources could be identified during the upcoming six months so the people and mission of Spokane Arts can be maintained, if not expanded, during the transition.
City Administrator Alex Scott emphasized Wednesday that finding more money, whether by lobbying the state, aggressively pursuing grants or possibly at some point asking voters for another tax increase, will all be considered by the Brown administration.
He also acknowledged that it may be “premature” to say whether creating a new department would have zero impact on the budget, although he argued it would not be a significant burden in any case.
“At a high level, it is accurate that there is existing arts funding paying for personnel and programming and some amount of that funding would be coming along for these activities and personnel,” Scott said. “Will it be dollar for dollar exactly the same? I don’t know, and that’s part of what we have to figure out.”
