Vetoes hurt local art venue, more

When Gov. Rick Scott vetoed more than $400 million in local projects this month, the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts lost millions in long-term funding.

The governor eliminated a $3.9 million annual payment to the University of Central Florida, most of which would have been shared with the downtown performing arts center.

“The money is gone and will not be coming back,” said UCF spokeswoman Heather Gibson. “It’s disappointing. We were very hopeful it would come through. We believe the arts are critical to a community, and we want to see support of them.”

Other cultural organizations affected by Scott’s vetoes: the Orlando Science Center and an educational program at Bok Tower Gardens in Polk County.

But the cut to the Dr. Phillips Center runs the deepest.

In February, university and

arts center officials were full of praise for the allocation as a way to provide a source of consistent, stable funding for the venue, which is still under construction.

Of the annual $3.9 million payment, $900,000 would have been used by UCF for community outreach programs and UCF Celebrates the Arts, an annual performance-driven festival that is mostly free to the public. The remaining $3 million would have gone to the arts center.

Kathy Ramsberger, president of the Dr. Phillips Center, said the cuts should not affect work on the center’s final theater, which broke ground in March and is scheduled for completion in 2020.

“Our Phase 2 construction has started, and will continue,” she wrote in an email. “Our funding partners will be looking at ways to address the state-related funding cuts, as we’ll continue to work to raise the private philanthropy needed for the project.”

UCF also will look for more private and corporate financial support. But UCF Celebrates the Arts could see changes, Gibson said, such as charging for reserved seats. She stressed, however, that the university is “still committed to keeping it affordable.”

Like UCF and the arts center, Bok Tower Gardens will look to fundraising to mitigate the loss of $2 million vetoed by Scott. That money funded a partnership between the Lake Wales attraction and the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Without the funding, an educational garden program that served more than 6,000 students in four counties will be lost, a spokeswoman said. Children were given hands-on experiences with growing fruit and vegetables as they learned about nutrition, self-sufficiency and Central Florida’s hunger problem.

In a statement, a spokeswoman called the veto “a disappointment to the Gardens and Polk County” but said “Bok Tower Gardens resolves to focus on the future.”

The Orlando Science Center also will keep looking forward as it continues work on its STEM Discovery project, spokesman Jeff Stanford said. The governor vetoed $250,000 that would have helped fund a $30 million expansion of the center in Loch Haven Park, north of downtown.

The center is working on the expansion’s second phase, which will modernize facilities for children’s camps and field trips.

The first phase, an activity-based area for its youngest visitors called Kids Town, opened last year. The center had hoped to wrap up the project by early 2018.

“We know the state budget is a complicated animal,” Stanford said. “This won’t stop our effort, though it may delay the ultimate completion date. Like Ellen DeGeneres said in ‘Finding Nemo,’ we just keep swimming.”