San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Breed proposes funding for arts to fill major gap
San Francisco Mayor London Breed has introduced a funding proposal to the Board of Supervisors to give onetime support of $16.3 million to arts companies that would have been affected by a more than 80% shortfall in hotel tax revenue.
In the current fiscal year, the city anticipated generating $25.9 million for the arts via the hotel tax but collected only $3.9 million, as tourism nosedived due to the COVID19 pandemic. The mayor’s proposed backfill, which is cosponsored by Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen, Shamann Walton, Matt Haney and Catherine Stefani, would make up for most but not all of the deficit, drawing its funds from other areas of the city budget that outperformed expectations, including property taxes and federal reimbursements.
From here, the proposal is scheduled to be reviewed by a board committee before a full board vote, a process that usually take weeks.
“As a former director of an arts and culture organization, I know how vital this funding is for our artists, our communities and our city,” Breed said in a statement, referring to her tenure as executive director of the African American Art and Culture Complex. “When we talk about our recovery from this pandemic, it’s essential that we include the arts, which supports jobs, draws visitors from all over and shapes our city’s very identity.”
The hotel tax is the primary funding mechanism by which Grants for the Arts and the San Francisco Arts Commission support arts organizations throughout the city — from giants such as the San Francisco Symphony to much smaller outfits such as Dance Mission Theater. The 2018 passage of Proposition E, which allotted 1.5% of the tax’s revenue to the arts, was widely viewed in the arts community as restoring a permanent funding source that had been whittled down following economic downturns.
San Francisco artist Debra Walker, a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission, praised the mayor’s proposal.
“I’m just excited that the mayor is funding our arts,” she says, pointing to how Bay Area artists have come through for the city during the pandemic, “doing a lot of the education pod assistance, helping merchant groups doing the open streets, providing billboards for Paint the Void to duet and quartet performances along with outside dining.
“The arts have been there because the city funded last year’s budget.”
For local arts groups, hotel tax funding is often one of the few reliable sources of contributed income that they can use for general operating expenses such as staff salaries, rent and more, as opposed to support that must be used for one particular project.
Grants for the Arts is one of only two sources of consistent general operations support for Golden Thread Productions, says Artistic Director Torange Yeghiazarian. The company, which specializes in theater with connections to the Middle East, builds the rest of its budget largely on how much it expects to receive from the city.
Grants for the Arts “supports us year after year; many other grants might be onetime support only or make you wait x number of years before applying again,” says Barbara Heroux, executive director of Volti, a chamber chorus. “It is a rare and precious thing.”
Richard Livingston, managing director of the Exit Theatre, adds that it “is also important validation within the arts funding community,” referring to how a grant from the city can give an organization more credibility when it applies for additional funding elsewhere.
With all this need, says Walker, the mayor’s proposal is “a relief.”
“Everybody’s hurting,” Walker says, “but our arts organizations are really maxed out.”