Parks, Arts, & Community Services Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the Arts Commission meeting of Thursday, 05/01/2025. I now call the meeting to order at 6PM. We will begin the Pledge of Allegiance with Commissioner Mann. Would you please lead us?

Our next order of business is roll call. Ms. Fetua?

Let the record reflect all commissioners are present.

Thank you. Our next order of business, we're going to open public comments. Each member of the public will be given a total of three minutes to speak. First, we will take comments from those in the council chambers, then on Zoom. We will only have one time period for each group. There will be no going back and forth. We will uphold the integrity of the meeting, so please keep your comments to three minutes. Thank you. You may begin, sir.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Commissioners. On a of a downer started a business. We had a great location here in Costa Mesa. And our capital needed to be cities to deliver the benefit of speed. And unfortunately, yesterday I had to take Costa Mesa out of that mix. It's really frustrating. Frustrating. Our city is broken. It took Matti's Patties on Newport Beach eighteen months to pull a permit and have their grand opening. Eighteen months while you're paying rent and money's falling. One of the guys at the chamber of commerce that runs a magazine on the East Side, I said, you gotta go get them as clients. He says, they were gonna be clients, but the city took too long. Now, have no money for marketing. Right? It's just it's a really sad state that's going on in our city.

Our city's broken and it needs to be fixed. So, on a good note, I've always liked the commission. I personally love the utility boxes. It's been one of the non controversial commissions throughout the years and done good. I think we do have a couple of still unresolved issues because when we came and started talking about the role in the municipal code that the arts commission does have the authority to make recommendations to city council, that it does have the ability to study, discuss, and make recommendations.

Then when we brought that to staff's attention, they went back and scrubbed the website, took that out, left the reference to the municipal code, but said that the arts commission is gonna instill creativity in the community. I just think that's wrong. So, staff recommended we go talk to the council members. I've talked to the council members. I can tell you the votes are there. They want to hear from you. They want to hear a recommendation from you. And we're headed into a budgetary time period. This is the time and place to be doing that. Other committees, not even commissions, are in active discussion with council.

We're in a structural budget deficit. Times are tough. Cuts need to be made. You need to stand up for this group really make your case as to why the city of arts should be funded to the level that you recommend. I think the other unresolved issue still is that Measure Q is the cannabis tax, In that, it said intentionally that the voters approved that half a percent of the cannabis tax was going to go to the arts.

It wasn't prescriptive to what's there. So, as you're making your deliberations, your discussions, recommendations, that tax was always supposed to be incremental. If you look at the you know, people are starting to realize who's on my email trail when the daily pilot picked up on the story and wrote the story about the wonderful job that you guys are doing. The mayor was like the mayor, the author of Measure Q, that wasn't his intent that it would fund. It was always supposed to be incremental in the city of arts. So, I just wanted to say, you guys are doing a great job. You've got some great leaders here that are shepherding this dialogue. And we need to make some changes in our city. Thank you.

Good evening, Arts Commission. My name is Angel Korea, and I'm here once again representing the Costa Mesa Playhouse. I'm a current board member of the Playhouse, and I'm joined by a few other board members tonight. Last time I spoke here, we gave you a little bit of the Playhouse's history and informed you of our upcoming sixteenth season, which was supposed to start this fall and wherein the mayor of the city was set to provide us with a certificate of recognition. Now here to provide, unfortunate update, the playhouse is about to lose its space.

Since 1984, we have been leasing a theater building from the Newport Mesa Unified School District located next to Raya Elementary. However, in mid April, we were informed by the district that our lease agreement was being terminated on June 29 even though we expected the lease to go through 2026. You can find more details, on today's edition of the daily pilot. Actually, we have made the front page. Our main reason for being here tonight actually is twofold.

We want to personally thank chairperson Alisa Ochoa and commissioner Charlene Ashendorf for the guidance and support that they have provided over the past two weeks. We are in the middle of talks with the school board, and they sort of have indicated they would assist us in finding a new space in one of their locations, but nothing really has been set in stone. We would also like to see if there is any additional help that the rest of the commission can provide, especially in communicating with the city council, so that we ensure that Costa Mesa keeps its last community theater alive. We are devastated by our current situation, and would appreciate any assistance that any of you can provide us. That's pretty much it for tonight.

Thank you so much.

If there are no further comments in the public chambers, is there anyone on Zoom, Ms. Patua?

There are no hands raised. Chair Ochoa.

Thank you. Public comments are now closed. We will now move to Commissioner comments. I will just kind of call Commissioners just to keep order. Commissioner Ashendorf, do you have comments?

Thank you very much, chair Ochoa. Just a couple of things. First of all, I'd like to remind everyone that on, Saturday, May 17 is Love Costa Mesa Day, so it'll be a great opportunity to get out into the community and volunteer, all hands on deck to make a difference. Visit lovecostamesa.org. I attended the Arts in the Park event, Fairview Park, last month, and they have another one coming up.

Go to Fairview Park. The next date is in June. Pick up trash, and they will be creating works of art all day long. I'd like to also share that for the last week, the Newport Mesa Unified School District Senior Art Show they just ended their run at Norma Herzog. And communication with Tamara from the Newport Mesa Unified said that more than 60 students participated with a maximum of three works of art.

It was a big success. And we're really so fortunate to be able to offer that space to the district for their art show. This is always my favorite. The spotlight. I know. But I'm so proud of the spotlight, and it keeps getting better. And in addition to all of the beautiful things that you can find out there, no one can say there's nothing to do in Costa Mesa. It's in the spotlight. But it's also exciting. This time, they have faces of staff, so the people behind the scenes are featured.

And that's really important, because they do all of the work for us. And I did want to just comment on the Costa Mesa Playhouse. I encourage all of the commissioners individually to please to read the article in the daily pilot and get engaged to try to support the efforts of Costa Mesa Playhouse so that they can continue in our city and celebrate their sixtieth anniversary. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Ashendorf. Commissioner Lucia?

So, I'm glad it already was brought up, but my public comments, I was going to bring up the article from the Daily Pilot today, and I really hope that Newport Mesa Unified School District is able to provide an alternative location for the Costa Mesa Playhouse, which I know is such an important fabric of the community, especially as it relates to performing arts. So if there's any discussion or anything that we want to have, I'm happy to lend some ideas and support.

Thank you. Commissioner Ford.

Yes. So for those of you we were all here at the last meeting, and we were talking about the budget shortfall for our funding for Arts Commission. We talked about the grants that were given to these amazing organizations that came before us. And I think I speak for everyone. We all wish that we could do more for these people.

And given that, imagine my dismay when we had our last city council meeting in which a gentleman who had spent $500,000 to get a cannabis shop built at the corner of 19th And Harbor, which my opinion is blighted right now, was going to be completely renovated with lighting, security, everything. And it was shot down five two at the city council. So one leads to the other, Shooting down cannabis when cannabis tax funds the Arts Commission doesn't one leads to the other. So I would encourage everyone who supports the arts to to speak out when when people are proposing to have cannabis shops. I I know it's a divisive issue and and so forth.

But if cannabis tax funds the arts and we all want more funding for the arts, then we necessarily want more people to sell more cannabis in order to get more tax. That's self evident. So I was very dismayed because unlike many of the other things, that has a direct palpable impact on our commission and our ability to do what we wanna do and our ability to support these unbelievable worthwhile causes. So I would ask that anybody who supports the arts it's easy to say. But in order to do it, we have to fund it. And in order to fund it, we need to support cannabis in Costa Mesa since that's our primary funding source. So with that, I'll stop. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Mann, do you have

comments? Hi. Sorry about wearing the glasses. I'm not trying to be weird. I don't have my regular glasses, so I'm not a diva. I just can't see without anyways, thank you so much for everything you guys said. I also saw this story in the daily pilot. Was wondering how we do we communicate with the city council on our own? Do I call the city council person who recommended me for this and talk to them? Do I show up at a city council meeting?

How exactly am I supposed to be able to try and enforce change? I know on this board we more so are presented with things, and then we help make decisions on art and this and that. But in order to do more than that, I know we show up for things and we help with things, but I'm a big believer in black box community theater. I got sick and I left town and I forgot about the Costa Mesa Playhouse, that they were having that big thing, and somebody told me about it recently. And that's my big thing is theater.

And my whole thing is I want the whole West Side Of Costa Mesa to be like black box theaters and galleries and everything all over the place, because that's a great area for it. It's industrial, music venues. It would just be a really cool place to put all of that stuff. And I don't know if I just go out on my own and just go meet people and say, hey, let's do this or that. And I'm not sure with the Brown Act and the other acts what I can and can't do.

So if you have any information you could give me later as to what I can and can't do, that would be awesome. And then the other thing is I think that is the other thing. Okay. I think I'm good. All right, everybody. Have a great week.

Thank you. Commissioner Wondrchuk.

Yeah. I think it's very what's happening with the Costa Mesa Playhouse. I believe this has happened before, like six years ago, something of this nature came up that I thought was taken care of at this point in time. I know as a commissioner and being an arts advocate myself, I believe in what the Playhouse stands for same thing as you mentioned with the black box theaters and all of that. That needs to remain in this city.

So I am going to reach out to them and see if there's a way I can assist. I know of another organization that has a theater space available, and so I will reach out to them as well. But we do need to get behind this theater, especially with this being year number 60, and it should be able to continue. So they have my vote of support. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Chair Dedarian.

Thank you, Chair Ochoa. Good evening, everyone. Following last month's meeting, should say, last month's meeting, I was invigorated. I was energized. I was excited and worked up and thinking about all the things that we could do or hopefully do. But I was also very curious as to what the founding I don't know. Legislation would probably be ordinance is more correct to say. But the founding ordinance was that established the Arts Commission. And so in the following days, or the days following our last meeting, I looked up just what that ordinance was, and I found just to raise it to fellow commissioners since I couldn't email it out due to Brown Act requirements and limitations. It is December.

So it's now available on the web page. If you go to the web page on your computer on the dais, you can hit that. Go to the Arts Commission landing page, and you can see there they have a link to the ordinances. But there were a couple that I wanted to point to just in light of our discussion and this question that we were all trying to, I think, think through and struggle with, which is what can we formally do as a body to to Commissioner Mann's points. And we had discussed the possibility of having things recommended down to us from city council or by city staff which is certainly this is a subsection a considering provide advice regarding matters that are referred to it, the commission by city council.

But what I found all the more interesting was that it says by our own motion, you know, in our own discretion that we are able to recommend to make motions to hold investigations and study sessions to provide recommendations and consider the efficacy of various programs, have study sessions to come up with new policies and proposals, review the annual budget as presented to the city council, and make formal advice, formal recommendations on current operational needs and long range plans for arts opportunities that is specifically in the code, and other things. So I encourage all commissioners to go and view that and read that. You might hear me say this a bit more and talk a bit more about it tonight as we go through various things. But in light of that, and then even going back to the arts and culture master plan, the the objective 3.3 about establishing a city arts commission, I was just curious again, what was the language around this? And I found city commissions are delegated legislative authority.

We're given the democratic power that city council has to consider these things and make recommendations to them. That doesn't mean it's necessarily binding for the city, at least by my understanding. And there's lawyers on on this board as well as staff who might better understand this. And I hope as I've I've raised the staff that we might have an agenda item in the future where the city clerk can come and fully discuss the municipal code with us. But I I think it's just important to consider that it says this, that it says a new commission would serve to attract those residents who are best qualified by virtue of knowledge and experience, and we could provide vigilant oversight and community investments in the arts or city investment, excuse me, and reflect the council's desire for an ongoing policy focus on the arts.

And so I just I took that as a very visionary, forward looking body that has power to consider things in our own volition and initiative, not necessarily a reactive one. And and that's not to say that what's been happening thus far has been bad. I mean, from six years ago, just listening to Commissioner Aschendorf in conversation privately, going from the cultural art committees to then getting the master plan to then getting a staff member fully dedicated to the arts and then getting the arts commission, it's been an incredible role. But I think as we go into this next year and especially tonight as we talk about budget and various things, there are just a lot of opportunities for us where we can step forward and start trying to lead and provide a vision. Because I I love what's in the master plan, but I just find it's a very sort of like piecemeal menu.

And I wanna have this big vision for what does it mean to be the city of the arts as Costa Mesa. And I fear that if we just kinda keep saying, okay, well, here's 20,000 there and here's 20,000 here, and we just kind of accept that, we're we're not going to try and have that larger vision. And that's something I would just love for us as a body to really step into and to ask these questions and actually make recommendations to counsel as a formal body. They can consider it. They can shoot us down. They can tell us no time and time again or whatever the various other procedural things that might come up. But I I just really wanna encourage us to think about that and think bigger and ask these larger questions of what does it mean to be the city of the arts? Because I've, for instance I'm sorry. Maybe I'm going on too long, so you'll have to cut me off if I am. But but spoke recently with the founder of a major art prize in late aughts.

$250,000 were being given to a publicly selected prize. So they had thousands of entries. Over 200,000 people showed up to this small Midwestern town, smallish, medium sized, probably similar to Costa Mesa. And over the two weeks, the businesses that were in the city ran out of food. The restaurants completely out.

And I'm like, that is the incredible sort of stuff that could put us on the map and say, this is the arts capital in Orange County, if not Southern California. And as we heard last month, those in Laguna Beach laugh at us when we say we're the city of the arts. So I just really want to say, what's this vision? How can we really achieve that visionary? And to the point that was raised about the Costa Mesa Playhouse, I wonder, staff, if we could agendize a discussion and perhaps a presentation from the Costa Mesa Playhouse in the next meeting to hear fully from them in a longer period what that situation is.

And perhaps even if there are certain facilities that are city owned that we might be able to just make a recommendation to the council on that formal level, I think that would be one way in which we as a body could actually step up and say, Okay, there might be other options or it sounds like there's another venue that might possibly house them. But if possible, why not make a recommendation to city council to say we'd love to see them be able to lease this space. If they say no, they say no. But at least we can step up and do something and offer that leadership. So thank you for listening to me. That's my time for now.

Thank you Vice Chair Jerry. And I'm glad to see you're very energized for this evening's meeting. We have lots of juicy things to discuss. Thank you commissioners for your comments. I would also like to thank Ms. Gardner and staff for supporting the Newport Mesa Unified Senior Showcase at the Norma Herzog Center. It was lovely and a great event. I appreciate seeing all of us to come together to support students in their area. I attended the last PACS meeting. I spoke during the public comment about the importance of collaboration and how having more parks art in our parks would be beneficial to our community.

And I hope we can find ways to work across departments and include art throughout the city. I think that's something that we're all pretty much aligned with. I also wrote a letter to Newport Mesa to advocate for the Costa Mesa Playhouse, and I'm encouraged to hear all of your comments this evening. I appreciate their update. A planning commissioner shared their concerns regarding the donated sculpture by the late artist James McDemis.

His mother is in her 90s and would like to see some of the previous concerns addressed. I would love to offer them an update if staff could share any information with me regarding the status. And finally, Earth Day had a great turnout despite the rain. Thank you, Commissioner Aschendorf, for attending to our booth. It was a great opportunity to speak briefly with three council members.

I spoke with Commissioner Pettis, Commissioner Reynolds or I'm sorry, council members Pettis, Reynolds, and Chavez. And it was encouraging to hear their interest and curiosity about the Arts Commission and what we're doing. And they do want to hear future recommendations and possibly a presentation of what we're doing here in the Commission. And I think that's it for now. Guess let's go to some let's see, what is next?

Next order of business is consent calendar. Should I read the blue text? Okay. All matters listed under the consent calendar are considered to be routine and will be acted upon in one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless members of the Arts Commission staff or public request specific items to be discussed and or removed from the consent calendar for discussion. Has an item been pulled? No. We have one item under consent calendar, and that is the approval of minutes for 04/03/2025, the Arts Commission meeting. Do we have a commissioner who would like to entertain a motion?

I'll second.

Commissioner Ford makes a motion. Commissioner Ochendorf seconds.

You may vote on your dice.

Thank you.

Oh, hold on one second. One second.

Not sure what's I'm gonna go ahead and do a manual. I'm not sure what's going on. Commissioner Mann? Yes. Commissioner Lucia? Aye. Commissioner Dordirian? Aye. Commissioner Aschendorf? Aye. Commissioner Wonderchuk? Aye. Commissioner Ford? Aye. Vice I mean, sorry, Chair Ochoa? Motion carries seven-zero to approve the minutes.

Next order of business is monthly reports, arts and Culture staff report from Ms. Gardner.

Thank you, Chair Ochoa, and good evening to the Costa Mesa Arts Commission. It's nice to see you all here on May 1. The first item on my report, the arts grant program. So, a little update here. I just wanted to let you all know that staff are working on an arts calendar that will feature all the City of Costa Mesa arts and culture programming, the Poet Laureate events that are coming up, any arts grants programming, art venture events, and Free Park performances, and other programs that we have.

We currently have an arts and culture calendar on the website that features programming throughout Costa Mesa, and I like to see that populated because I think it's great to see all the amazing things that go on in Costa Mesa. But what I'd like to do is we've created a Google Calendar that we kind of embed on the website, and so what I'll do is create categories so that I hope this is like a landing site for all of you when we're looking, you know, at all the events we do. I know there's a lot of information out there. So, you can kind of look by, you know, city events, or school events, or just events in Costa Mesa in general. So, I just wanted to kind of give you an update on that.

Because the arts grants, I started thinking about all the programs that are gonna start coming up with those, and then the poet laureate programs. And so, I know there's always questions we all want to be informed about when things happening. So, just to I'll definitely follow-up after this is completed and let you all know it's there for your reference. So, just a quick update on that. Quick update about ArtVenture.

We have just a little small reminder that the adult application for ArtVenture will open on June 2, and it's going to open on the website, which is for those of you who may not remember, it's artventurecm.com. So, it's a pretty easy one to remember. I will do all updates on that page so you can kind of reference that. And then, I'll have print flyers ready probably for the June Arts Commission. So, more on that in June. The exhibition spaces, again another friendly reminder that we have Charlie Grow, May 16, four to six p. M. He's been bringing in his work, I just wanted to let you all know it's really beautiful. He's a carpenter and makes all the frames, so those are really neat to see. Has such a wide array of photographs.

So, excited to kind of host him on May 16. Free Park performances. So, we are working on implementing in collaboration with Commissioner Wondercheck this is a lovely suggestion by her to host Make Music Day here in Costa Mesa. And so, this is a day of music, for those of you who don't know, that occurs every year on June 21, the summer solstice, to celebrate music and kind of ring in the summer. So, this was originally originated in France, and so, it's been going on for some years, and cities across the nation and the world will host music for free music for people to listen to, and also an opportunity for performers to perform.

So, I have the city is currently facilitating a venue, so we'll have offer a space for performers at the Lions Park Lawn And Stage. And there's a website that NAM is the foundation the group that puts this on, that they give kind of a template website, and they have a matchmaking site all online. So, people can access the website, and they can access the matchmaking, which they just fill out an account. Like, I'm a performer. I want to host a venue in the city.

And it'll match people to spaces. So, I know we're kind of starting small, it's meant to just be fee for everyone, and, you know, people to just kind of perform as they would like. But, just more on that as we kind of move forward on that. Free at Steigerstrom Center campus, we have four more shows to go for the year. So all the tickets have been claimed except for one show and a workshop at Aachma, the Orange County Museum of Art.

Information can be found on the webpage. And then once the new fiscal year begins, I'll start the process for purchasing tickets for new shows that will probably be in late fall and early winter. So, more on that as well. And then, the Poet Laureate program. This is kind of the same thing that I was mentioning before with the Arts Grants calendar. Same thing, I'll put the Poet Laureate events on there as well. And, that should do it for me for my May report. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ms. Gardner. Ms. Wondrichuck?

Just wanted to add that with the Make Music Day, it's for all ages. And so I am working alongside with Tamara Fairbanks with the Newport Mesa School District, as well as to speak with other musicians and artists. But this is a day for all ages. So we want high school rock bands, singers, dancers, just anything that's going to really show our support for the arts and music in general. You all need to be there. Thank you.

Can I just ask Ms? Gardner, the Mozart's Requiem show is all booked out?

It is not.

Oh fantastic.

I'm

abusing my privilege if you're okay. That's it.

I do have a question, Ms. Gardner. How are we getting the word out for this new event?

So we just kind of started the cool thing about this is that, you know, we're kind of just facilitating it. It's meant to kind of just bring people together for the day with music, And they give you a lot of like a toolkit. So, like I mentioned, there's like a website and some ways to do like the branded reels for social media and Instagram. So, have kind of made some of those things and we'll kind of progress and I'm sure we can make some printouts. And I know so far I've just kind of been working with Commissioner Wundercheck and I've sent things to Tamara and Scott for the school district. And I know they're interested but we can definitely kind of send out to emails and musicians and connections. I know Commissioner Wundercheck has a lot of great connections for that too.

Is this all kinds of music?

Yes.

Really, really like to thank you about this opportunity. Don't you think the commission should pull together and show our talents and sing or dance as a group. I'm just putting that up. Thank you very much. This is exciting. I think the only problem the first year is that school I mean, you've got a lot of planning to do, school is coming to an end shortly. But we'll do all we can to support this and push this out. And if anyone wants to sing or dance, let's all just do it.

I did ask mayor Stevens if he would see sing Funky Town. But he didn't sound too excited about it, but we'll see what we can get him to see. That

won't be a problem.

And one other question for you, Ms. Garner, is relative to the Poet Laureate program. I know this is getting a really slow start. I had hoped that we would have something to review from Danielle by now. So does it look like she'll be out in the public by July or June?

So, currently, we're trying to kind of schedule her out for events. And, the next large event we have her scheduled for is not till Oktoberfest, but we're planning some other programs like Poems in the Park that we're gonna meet about where she can kind of come together with a plan about poems in parks that people can use QR codes to kind of access at different places, and we kind of want to make like a way finding map for those. So, that is something that we're working on that we're meeting with. It's a new program, we got it, you know, including all the staff and making sure that, you know, it's the way we want it to be and it's presented well. So that is something that's currently in the works.

And we are working on a calendar. I have kind of tentatively planned things out for her, and I will definitely send that out to you soon.

Thank you.

Yeah, of course.

I was wondering in regards to the poet laureate, wouldn't it be great if there was

a

black box space somewhere where they could just have like a, what do do when you show up

and you just do

your poetry and your thing? I'm just wondering, do we have access to spaces maybe on the West Side, I don't know that we could utilize for things like theater or the poet laureate or all of these wonderful things? I know Lions Park is great, but I mean, as far as having specific spaces, I don't know, does the city council have they're the ones who have access to the spaces. Then we can say, hey, we need some spaces for a theater, for our poetry, for our this and that. That might not have to do necessarily with the cannabis tax.

But if it does, maybe instead of having more cannabis shops, we have an increase in the tax. I don't know. I'm just thinking outside the box.

I forgot to mention, we are talking about doing for ArtVenture. Have discussed tentatively still doing kind of all the background stuff for it, but doing like, poetry contest, like was mentioned, where people could submit poems on a wall or or, you know, present them on the stage during the ArtVenture Community Arts Day. And then I know Danielle wants to plan what she calls poetry okey for ArtVenture, which means people could come on stage and read famous poems as a performance piece for our Community Arts Day. So we are thinking that. So actually the first kind of big event is probably going to be ArtVenture with her, but then in the meantime we'll work on those smaller programs and parks.

Commissioner Mann, think about TeWinkle Park because it has a venue outside with seating made out of concrete. It would be another nice venue for an outdoor black box.

I just had one quick question. Lorette, when it comes to I know you have a calendar of all these events that people can come to the website, but do we have a way to do an e newsletter to send out to people who wouldn't necessarily come to the website? I don't know if we even have Z Trends or anything like that.

Yeah, we don't have anything currently. We have a city newsletter that I try to put arts things in. And, it is something that I've thought about. And, you know, I think it's a nice idea. So, I think for me, logistically starting with just online, but I think we could move into something like that in the future, absolutely. And, you know, another great place to spark OC too, but it would be nice to have a digital email, like constant contact thing, right?

Okay, if there are no further questions or comments. We'll go to the next order of business, which is old business, the arts grant program, and review of guidelines. Thank you, Ms. Gardner, your presentation.

Yes, thank you, Chair Ochoa. So, a quick kind of recap from our last meeting. So, for this agenda item, we're bringing back the arts grant program review of guidelines. The only changes I made to the physical document from the last meeting is the increase for the up to amount for arts grantees. We voted on that and increased that to $5,000, and then I also kind of added in some new dates for next year's cycle just to be aware of.

And as requested at the last month's meeting, I've brought back the most recent financial numbers for each arts grant grantee for the 2024 fiscal year. Some might go back earlier because some of them are still doing taxes and don't have all the paperwork complete, but I asked them to give most recent and then I also looked at you know IRS websites and GuideStar is a great resource as well. So, we can now open this back up for discussion and perhaps pick up where we left off with this discussion and some changes for this program. And, we can discuss how people can apply for Costa Mesa Arts grants and who can be eligible to apply. And I think just as a reminder, all new changes will need two motions and a vote to make happen for the new document. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Gardner. Think I'll leave. Go down the line. Commissioner Band, do you have any comments about the

And we'll open to the public comment next.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Can open it to public

Can I come back in?

Yes, you can.

Okay. I'm sorry. I do have a question. And the question is, with the AHRQ grants, and I know we came up with an amount that was we raised the amount. Is there a spot that says how many grants we are giving out per year?

Like, is there a limit? I know sometimes I feel like, just for me looking at the grants that have been given out, sometimes there are large amounts given to big institutions, and then there's a small amount given to a small institution or a person, which is fine. And I love the guy at the Gibson Foundation who's like, I will be the nonprofit for artists. If you need to ask for a grant, you can use me to facilitate that. So I was wondering, is there a certain amount of is there a number of grants, or is it just the amount of money and how we spread it out?

Yes. Thank you, Commissioner Mann. It's about the amount of money. So, last few years we've been able to gift all the applicants who are qualified based on the guidelines. So, everyone who applied this year did receive money. So, you know, as it grows and things change, obviously that would be an opportunity to change how we do that. But as of now, I think it's been nice that we've been able to gift everyone through the program.

So my recollection from the last meeting was that when we were talking and I think it was commissioner Duderian who brought it up, but we were talking about the possibility of having a cap for certain organizations and if they were to receive over a certain amount, and we were talking about whether it be $507.50, 1,000,000, whatever. And then my recollection again is that we were we said, you know, let's not do a shot in the dark. Let's have data so that we can make an intelligent decision. Is that one of the things that we're specifically doing this evening? It is. Okay. That answers my question.

If there are no further questions from the commission, we can move to public comment. Are there any public comments in the chambers? Thank you. Please limit three minutes. You may begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, I just think we're not utilizing enough funding here. When I would see our poet laureate leave with a check for $2.00 and then see the master plan recommendation that we hire a consultant for $30.00, what does that say to the starving arts community? I just don't think we have our priorities in the right spot. The guy came in and thanked you for the $2,000 or $2,500 thing and that went to porta potties for I don't get excited about anything like that.

When I look at one of these policies that's in there from 1991 that was on a typewriter, I'm allergic to that and compelled to update and refresh. I think staff's given me a couple of nice examples of other communities. But it compels me to make some changes here. One thing you might consider is, one of the commissioners was talking about how do I, you can have conversations, Nobody can stop you from coming to the podium on your own to address city council, whether it's publicly or privately. But I think you should be making recommendations as a body to the city.

One other option you could have is to have session. Study sessions are less formal than this. They'd probably go over to the community room, invite members of the community. And this one, when you're talking about budget things, don't do that, because you guys need to have speed. You have like six weeks to get something to counsel when they're going make their decision. You don't have enough time to do this, at least not for this budget cycle. But for something like this, you really could kind of have an informal conversation and a study session, really kind of mix it up. You don't have to get dressed up and wear cool shades. It's way more informal. And I think that outcome might be really beneficial for a couple of these topics where you just want to banter and what if.

And you know, if anyone tells you that I'm stubborn and don't change my mind, please prove them wrong. Remember the first time we met? I came here to recommend all of you be fired, because I didn't think you were doing your job. And now, I'm the biggest fan of each and every one of you, what you're doing and trying to do. So, I just wanted to say, great conversations. Good for you. And we need more money. This whole thing does need to be revamped. Thanks.

Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Nancy Warzer Brady. I'm the Education and Community Engagement Director for Backhouse Dance. I just wanted to say a couple of words of support for the arts grant process as it's been evolving. From my perspective, of being a resident of this area for thirty years, a New York City transplant, I see a real deepening of a culture.

Yeah, New York City. It's cold there now. And a few thoughts about visibility that might be helpful to shine the spotlight a little bit more is that with the new grantees that you have, or even prior grantors, bringing us together, or we're making presentations about where we are, or finished project in front of city council, just having more visibility I think would be helpful. Some data also that shows the number of residents or a non who attended these events. And I think also equating it to how it builds this creative economy.

How showing that arts jobs and careers that enrich contribute to the community in Costa Mesa. So, it's beyond the city of the arts. It's also creative economy. And I think that there are just another few other thoughts as you continue through the process of the grants as it evolves. I know in the last meeting, was some discussion about equity in terms of do the same organizations get funded?

I think it's something to consider. Sometimes there is a pause, you know, three years or two years, depending if it's a different project. The other thing is, I think, as just a suggestion in terms of looking at equity among arts disciplines and different audiences, different kinds of projects projects that I think would add a different positioning and just something to consider as you move forward. I've just seen nothing but real progress. And I am here to support in any way that I can. So, I want to thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone on Zoom?

There are no hands raised.

Thank you, Ms. Patua. Public comments are now closed. Are there any comments before a motion from the commissioners?

I'd like to make a comment. So I don't mean to throw a wrench in the process and cause a headache on this part. But just in reviewing and thinking over our discussion last time looking at the budget for the arts at large, one thing that struck me was that a large majority or at least a large portion of the funds that we have in our proposed budget even for this year from the master plan and from various discussions. Is that a lot of the money is going to arts education and accessibility already? And I know this is a part of further agenda items that are coming up even in this meeting for public art and various things.

But I just wonder, would it be better for us to even consider reframing the arts grants program not to be about our education because primarily that's what we funded this year. There are maybe one or two projects otherwise that weren't arts education. Really consider more of a focus on actual artists and art productions that are public facing, whether that means performance art in some sense or public visual art or even galleries or something of that sort. But things that are accessible to people, yes. But but actually supporting art being created.

And I think that was a a big comment that we received from the public last time and the community that that was here and presenting. Of course, think, as I mentioned last time, what Backhouse Dance is doing is great, and that certainly falls even within our municipal code. Subsection eight, solicit partnerships with senior organizations. So there are various emphases that we could have perhaps or I don't to say exceptions, but areas in which we say, okay, we're happy to consider this or that. Or even if you are doing an arts education project to consider it given the pool and everything else.

But it just strikes me that it would be, I think, more meaningful to make an arts grant first and foremost about supporting art in the city and the creation of art. And there could be, as has been discussed both this meeting and already in public comments on this item, a look towards how you diversify that. Are there various categories? Maybe we're too early for that. Maybe this is too small of a pool for that. I don't know. But I would certainly love the thoughts of of other commissioners on this subject just in in reviewing, you know, this documentation that's been provided and looking at the budget items and and things that are have been discussed and and will be discussed later. Are there any other thoughts on that?

Why, yes, there are, actually. No, in looking at the budget forecast also, I was looking at number four four point one, two, three, and four, which is reimagining the arts grants, need for creative spaces, keep creatives in Costa Mesa, and promote the creative sector. And I notice right now that we do have reimagined art grants, a budget for that, but we don't have anything for the others. And I know I'm sounding like a broken record in wanting spaces. But I do feel like if you get a space, and you have a space not an outdoor space, but like a space that people come, things happen.

Know if you build it, it will come. Know older people, I think don't get me wrong are more prone to funding or donating to things like this. Whereas younger people give them more sweat equity, and they show up and they do these things for free. I mean, I was theater brat forever, and I worked for nothing forever at a theater, because that's all I wanted to do. So I don't know.

I do know how to get one up and get one going, and I do know how to find the people. It's just where are we in this space right now? I know right now it's at a zero, so I guess I'm wondering, is this just for a later date when we have more money kind of a thing to look at?

I also just want to remind the Commission that we're speaking on the agenda items regarding the arts grant application and eligibility. No, we love you. It's good.

I do have one comment. First of all, thank you to our speakers today. It helps bring these points home when we constantly hear your support or recommendations. Ms. Wasser Brady, thank you also for sharing that you've seen the growth. You see us moving forward. And mister Fitzpatrick is pushing us to be bigger, better, and brighter. I appreciate that. I attended the school board meeting last last Tuesday, actually, in support of the Costa Mesa Playhouse. But it happened to be in an evening when they celebrated the arts in the school district.

And I would say they spent the better part of two hours featuring all of the things that are happening in Newport Mesa Unified in support of education and the arts. And so to your point, Commissioner Dardarian, this is a really important time to look at what do we do for education in the arts versus all of these categories that we want to make sure that we address. So I do support the direction where you're kind of pushing us with. And also let everyone know we support what's going on in school district. But they are on a path, a strong path.

Yeah. I was hoping we could come together and discuss what was brought up last meeting, examining the revenues of the organizations that have received arts grants funding in the past to see if we wanna put some sort of limit in place, or maybe we don't want to. But I did wanna call out all but two of organizations looked like their revenues were under 7 figures. So if that is some guiding point for our conversation, I did notice that that was there except for Pacific Symphony and Pacific Corral, which we all knew going into this.

That's a good point, Commissioner Lucia. And thank you, Lorette, for gathering all this information regarding the revenues of the tax revenues of the grant recipients. I had thought about it a little bit as well, and it might be a good practice to consider having a size limitation or a cap. Or if we don't want to be as structured and we want to be a little more flexible, maybe we could have tiers. Like let's say tier one, our budget is under $250,000 tier two might be $250,001 to $750 or tier three could be you know, etcetera.

And that could be grouped into their operating budget. Yeah, or there could be wording in there that says, you know, there would be a preference for tiers one and tiers two, but tier three could also be considered if they have a compelling application. I'm not sure if any commissioners have thoughts regarding that, just to make it fair.

I agree with Commissioner Ochoa's comments about the cap and the idea that they're released. You put $1,000,000 as the number. And I'm about impact. And that 2,500 and I say this as someone who goes all the time and loves the Pacific Symphony, and I love the Pacific Chorale. So I say this as a huge, huge fan of both organizations.

But $2,500 to a $23,000,000 budget, I mean, that's like a drop in the ocean kind of thing. Whereas some of these smaller groups that were put there, you know, if they have a $45,000 budget, I mean, that 25,000 2,500 goes considerably further. So, you know, I guess the the tier the tier might work, but I would also be in favor. I mean, I I love what Gibson is doing because they're not only doing what their own doing, but they're willing to sponsor other artists and kind of be a catchall. So I wouldn't I personally wouldn't wanna go below or any threshold where Gibson was not eligible.

But given what we've seen here, at least on the information that that staff has provided, you know, I would be comfortable having a a cap at a at a million dollars, personally. So I would invite comment and discussion from the other members.

I

appreciate the report. Lorette, you had created this for us with these numbers. And I agree with you, Commissioner, as well that a million dollar cap would be something that I would agree with based on knowing what you just shared with GIVSOM, the impact that they're making, and there would probably be others that could get up to that amount. But I think $1,000,000 is a good amount to have a cap personally. We'd love to hear from others as well.

I'll just say I'm not as personally concerned with the cap at this point. I don't think we're having enough applications to require that. And furthermore, just looking at these numbers with GIVSOM, they're already at 940,000. Consider a good year. Maybe they get bumped up to a million next year and then they're capped outright or they're on the tier.

And again, just to return to my original comment, I think it would be a welcome I would welcome it, so I'm gonna say it's a welcome thing. But it would be a different direction and a good direction, I think, in the contribution to the city to to consider or at least foreground within even the the application and the language around it actually, you know, producing art that is public facing, that does have some sort of public impact and is reaching people. And whether that is like a a public performance at the park that's free or, you know, a piece that's made available in one way or another, whatever that might look like as a sort of civic art piece. I think that is one way in we which can say, okay, either there is a direct kind of number impact or it's just publicly available for people to see, and that would be welcome. And then at that point too, when you get to questions about, say, GiveSum, they can actually be a fiscal sponsor.

And there's no issue if we have, say, five applications that mention Gibson, because they would be fiscally sponsoring several applications perhaps if it's to actually create art pieces. And if we're getting 50 applications, 100 applications, and either the committee that's reviewing these or the commission itself had to kind of sift through so many. At a certain point, you're like, yeah, okay, let's just kind of create even in this sense, and I do this as a nonprofit myself, sometimes you kind of introduce arbitrary guidelines where you say, alright, it's just gonna be too much of our time. We're not gonna be able to consider that over a certain amount or whatever it is. But right now, since we have, what is it, all of 10 or 11? How many was it eleven, ten, nine?

Nine.

Nine. Nine applicants who all received grants. I'm just not concerned about the number per se at this moment. I think it's certainly a conversation to continue to have. I would just love to see a re emphasis or reorganization around art production.

May I respond? So I agree with you. It's just that if we were to take even the amounts to Pacific Corral and Pacific Symphony, those can then be allocated to the other ones. And that again, I'm just focused on the fact that every dollar helps. And even a $500 increase to one of the other seven would be substantial.

I do agree with you, though, that the focus should be on performance and opportunity because so many artists are looking for that need that audience, whether it be people coming to their gallery or people watching their dance or people watching them sing or whatever it is. It's that break. And for some people, this may be their opportunity to show their talent to people and a free so I do agree with you that public facing performances should be a really important factor in allocating. So I agree with you wholeheartedly on that.

I agree with your point as well. Obviously, I feel these grants should be serving the public, their taxpayer money. And I think there be I think there already is language about that in the grant application, but it might be worth considering again. And I proposed the tier just as a happy medium between not putting caps and putting caps. So, you know, there is a little flexibility but a little structure there. I don't know how you guys feel about that, but it would be I would invite conversation regarding those tiers.

Can you say a little bit more, Charo Ochoa, just about the tiers again so I make sure I understand what is actually being suggested?

Yes, thank you. So the funding amounts would scaled according to a tier. And we could say priority would be given to maybe the smaller nonprofits that don't have large endowments or professional grant writers on staff. Tier one could be the lowest operating budget. Tier two could be under a certain amount. And Tier three could be these larger nonprofit organizations so that no one's excluded from this process at this early stage of our grant

program.

So just to clarify then in the idea of a tier, you have say an org from zero to 500,000, 500 to, I don't know, one and a half, and then one and a half up, right? Whatever the kind of numbers are, would the suggestion be that the lower numbers get more? Or is there just like a certain amount of grants that are appropriated or given to each tier? Is that kind of the idea behind it?

I think it would be a little more flexible. It could be wording in there that preference would be given to tiers one and tiers two. Commissioner Ford.

My recollection is that it's on a point system where there are a number of factors that get it. So perhaps that could be included as to one of them to say, you know, if you're a tier one, you know, maybe you get an extra point or two as opposed when allocating and just an idea.

One second, just if I can interject real quick. The rubric that we currently use has a financial need kind of point, a weight system in there. But we could, you know, make it bigger, let's say, to kind of address what you're all saying. Does that would that make sense? Like, if the points were higher for a financial need component for the rubric when the review panels look applications.

Or we could just define what financial need is and say organizations with revenues less than $2,000,000 That way we're not overly prescriptive with tiers since we're trying to do visioning and make this bigger. I think it's already existing in the rubric framework, just define it a little bit. I would move to do that.

Also, I think in the rubric you have, you also have a passion section, which is what I think that would be for. If I wanted to allocate more, that's where I would push for that.

Yes, absolutely. That's another component. Yeah, so I could definitely so what I'm hearing is that, let's say for the rubric, we were to put financial need, the definition of that is an organization under 1,000,000 or something like that. Or two, under 2,000,000. So, could do change rubric, financial need under 2,000,000, and then I could bump up the weight of it a little bit more points. Would that work? Okay.

Commissioner Lucia, would you mind repeating the motion? Sure.

I move that we incorporate into the definition of financial need organizations with revenues less than $2,000,000

Do we have a second? Commissioner Ford.

Everyone may vote on their dais. Motion carries seven zero.

Commissioner Ford? Oh, I'm sorry. I turned it to her hand.

It's okay. There we go. So I just want to return to my suggestion about making it arts focused. Is that something the commission commissioners appreciate? And perhaps what we could do is direct the art specialist to just bring together some other frameworks in which other cities do. I just did a quick look Pasadena, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Laguna Beach just looking at their grant programs and seeing what they're doing, and perhaps bringing back some examples of what that might look like. Again, this isn't binding yet, it's just a kind of recommendation to do research. But would that be of interest to everyone?

In regards to

what? Making the grant program more focused on art production rather than art education or kind of those opportunities. So encouraging things like to give some foundation and more public performances that are available to the public, art pieces that are made available to the public whether say on a side of business or if a business wants to create a sculpture or if they want to have something. I don't know, whatever it might be, This is up to the artist and these sorts of things. But actually encouraging artists to apply even through a fiscal sponsor like GIVESOME or another organization within our city.

But to encourage that as a part and thus do research as to how other cities are going about doing these art grant programs specifically focused on creating art across the various disciplines of course.

Okay, I do feel like also they've given us, and I don't know if a bunch of different I've read so many different cities samples of their arts grants, how they do it and what they request and all that stuff. So this is different. It would be just a different focus is what you're saying, as opposed to educational. The focus would be on the actual

Right. And maybe we can just have Ms. Garner or even some of us on the body do a little research and pull together what other cities are doing and have a couple of best practices for us to consider if there are ways in which we can change the art grant framework.

Vice Chair DeDarian, can I jump in real quick?

Please.

So, what I'm hearing is and tell me if this is correct, but more kind of artist grants is kind of what you're asking for versus like a, you know, a community arts grant program. So if artist grants are giving directly to artists, the only thing I would caution is that it does need to be public facing program, that it's not just an artist in a studio making art for themselves to sell. It would be something that has to benefit the community. And then the other thing I would say is that I I want us to take a look at the master plan as well and look at all the funding that goes towards paying artists for, you know, their work like in Free Park Performances. Or, you know, we do Art Venture too, where we support artists.

So, I'd love us to think about this kind of big picture and look at the money we're currently spending. And then where that gap is. I mean, as just a perspective, my admin perspective. But, I think it'd be nice to look at the whole picture and then kind of go from there, if that makes sense.

Sure. And that makes sense to me too. I want to make sure that we're opening up opportunities for the non major events that we're hosting, like the Free Park performances or Free at Segerstrom, where we're giving large amounts of money to particular organizations to host these things. Whereas we have groups like, say, Give Some or perhaps other upstart initiatives that want to host to a really cool art day at the park or want to host perhaps Teawinkle's was mentioned, maybe a group, the Costa Mesa Playhouse wants to host a performance there and we can give them a $5,000 grant to help make that possible. Think those are just cool opportunities that I would like to foreground more in the grant program rather than just saying, well, we want to continue doing more arts education because in particular a lot of these programs outside of the ones that are specifically mentioned within kind of the municipal code, think, like seniors and those groups that aren't already being addressed as it were in our master plan programming, they I just blanked, I'm sorry.

What was I saying?

Other than those that are specifically mentioned, education is already

taking place. Yes, thank you. Thank you commissioner Ford. I don't know where my mind went. Was like looking at it and then my train of thought went. That's why I just want to encourage that art creation because some of the grants that we gave out this is where I was going. Some of the grants that we gave out were programs maybe, of course, not major amounts, $500 isn't much, but programs that were going to serve like 10 people. Fine enough, there are good programs that are being done. I would just like to say, well, okay, what's the biggest kind of splash we can make with the $5,000 grant? And is that kind of mindfulness exercises in the park? Or are there other things in which we can encourage and live up to as the city of the arts outside of just arts education as it were.

Vice Chauditor Aaron, would it help if we I'm not looking at the document right now, so my apologies. But I think would it help if we changed the language for the qualifying audience of who we're going for. I'm not looking I

think it's listed in there

as artists, educators, arts organizations. Would it be helpful it was more specific if you wanted to tailor that language to what this program is for and the mission? Because that's up for, you know, discussion as well. So, if it's something that might make more clear for applicants. And the other thing I will say is, you know, it's when we advertise for the arts grants, it's not necessarily specifically the education, that's just kind of what who's applying. And so, and that's kind of what the community is showing that they need money for, you know, at this point. It doesn't mean it couldn't change, because I think it could for sure as we as the program gets bigger. But maybe an intentional language would be a suggestion.

Yeah, I certainly like the suggestion. I just think reading through the art grant guidelines and application, it certainly foregrounds accessibility and education. And this is what it harps on the whole time. So an artist, you're going look at it and you're going to say, is that really what I'm doing? These sorts of things. And I just want us to change the emphasis in some sense. I don't know what the best way to go about doing this, though. Should we make a motion to have you examine these things and come back? What would be the best?

Vice Chair?

Yes, please.

No motions needed. You can give guidance or direction to staff.

Okay.

Thank you. This is a possible place where the tiers might come in, is maybe the amount of people that are going to be offered art to. Like tier one is like zero to 25, tier two is like 25 to 100 or whatever. That might change the dynamic in how much you're offering. I like your tier idea. I just thought that would really work there.

I think it will be interesting to see when the grantees come and do their presentations and reports to see what kind of impact they've made. I would also like to say that sometimes our experiences are unintentionally educational or they just go hand in hand. So I wouldn't, you know, yeah, the languaging would be interesting.

Chair, yeah. Just wanted to point out, you know, bullet point number two in the mission does state arts education in school. So that really does come across very loud and clear. So I'd like to see us consider to move into your discussion, vice chair.

Ms. Garner, might we ask you to bring this back with some possible suggestions or ways in which we can reframe that language and consider how do we make it more art focused or art creation focused, at least as a part of the framework of the grant application itself?

Yes, I think I can do that. So what I'll do and let me know if you think this will be sufficient. But I can bring examples of artist centric grants. And then I can maybe give a few examples of maybe change that mission language a little bit, kind of change that and see. I'll give you like two or three examples, and then we can kind of work from there and look at that language and see if you want to change it from there.

Great. Okay. Thank you. I'll shut up now.

Just adding to your point, something I noticed from the grantees' presentations was that a barrier to them being able to bring art to the community oftentimes was venue access. And there was one grantee that had spent the whole grant on their rental of the community center. So I'm wondering if in the big visioning exercise, very similar to the Free Park performances, but more of a festival, would we do like an all call for artists, and then these bands or performers would be provided with the grant to perform. But we would provide the venue access to them. So we're lowering the barriers to entry.

And it could be a really cool annual thing. Something like that, just touching on what their needs were, hearing from the former grantees.

Commissioner, thank you for that suggestion. We took that public comment to heart. We actually had a very lengthy conversation on how to implement that in the future grant cycle. So, we'll be coming back to the Commission with more information on that.

Appreciate it.

Thank you. Okay, no further motions or comments at this moment. Okay, I guess we're on to new business. Okay, review of public art funding options. New business. Are there any questions from the commission?

Sure. We do have a staff presentation. Thank you.

My apologies. Staff presentation by Ms. Gardner. Yes,

thank you Chair Ochoa. Just a brief, you know, comment before we get started on this one. So our next item on the agenda, we're bringing material forward to have a discussion about the potential and suggested funding options for an art in public places program that was mentioned in the art in public places report that we brought to the commission, I think over a year ago at this point. So, are two attachments to consider for this item. A one sheet with funding mechanisms that other cities use to implement public art programs, and then a table of a few examples from other local cities of comparable size to Costa Mesa. So, as an arts commission, it would be good to know thoughts and preferences for what public art funding could look like in Costa Mesa. So, this will just be a discussion based item.

Thank you, Ms. Garner.

And Chair, we'll start with questions from the Commission.

Are we allowed to try and get money from every one of these?

Well, think at this point we're very early stages, so it's really kind of you know, we want to source the Commission for the preferences, things that you'd like to see in Costa Mesa. I think an opinion based discussion because there's many steps to this that would, you know, that we would have to consider before moving forward with any of them.

I did have a question. I was wondering if there had been a mandate in place before the Arts Commission?

Teroto, are you referencing like any public art? Currently, no. So, the only language we have in ordinance is regards to sign ordinances. There is a mention of bureau, but that's as far as it goes.

Thank you. Commissioner Ashendorf?

Yes. Thank you, Chair. Just a couple points of clarification, Ms. Garner. On the attachment that references percentage for public art examples, It is mentioned that the city of Newport Beach has $55,000 in a reserve fund. Is that a direct commitment by the city council annually for their art in public places?

As far as I understand it, yes. So I know that they have some library staff, I think, that work in the arts and kind of manage the ins and outs of the budget for them. But I know that their commission operates a little bit differently, and I think they do have a separate fund. Yes.

And then, if I may, an explanation on the QMB funds. Is that something it says restricted to parks and support the integration of public art into park enhancements. Isn't that something that we have attempted to do historically? I don't know if it comes from Quimby funding. But for example, when we did the Butterfly Park, Where did the funding come for that, for the butterfly sculptures in the park? For the

Butterfly Sculpture Park over by Marina View, That was already a capital improvement ongoing project. So there's a couple of those. So there's Westside Park development funds, but there's also the Butterfly Gardens project that was already established prior to any arts initiatives coming in place. Prior to the pandemic, I'm not sure if QMB funds were a thing in the city. I haven't heard of them being used for public art that way. So that would come maybe from public works to know that prior to me coming on board in the city or somebody that has a little bit more historical perspective on that.

Okay. And then my final question is on the Arts in Parks funding. And that's at a state level. Is that correct? And so is that something that staff is required to write a grant for them and participate at that level?

Commissioner Ashendorf, yes, that's correct. So, it is state funding, and it's project based. There's like two different stages. So, I'm trying to remember. Implementation and then what's the other one? I'm forgetting. There's two kind of project buckets for that. Different stages for your project. But, they have some things that are kind of like stipulations around Perfect.

You so much for providing these ideas. I love the private development fund. I think that's a really wonderful idea, and appreciate you providing the examples. I think what Dana Point and Laguna Beach are doing is really smart. They have flexibility. So for developments over a certain amount, you either have to contribute to the arts in public places, you know, physical art piece, or you provide that money to a separate fund to fund public artworks in the city. So I think that's something that we should really discuss and consider making a recommendation on.

So I'm just curious, we had this report in 2023. Have there been discussions with various departments in the city as to what here is actually possible. You know, these are all great lists, they're quite, I feel like, large insofar as we're talking about like taxing Airbnb's, we're talking about taxing private development, or telling the city they have to do x y z. Have we actually explored this beyond just having this report? Have there been any discussions? Do you know?

So we've met with some other department heads to talk about some of these options, not in length and not any realistic implementation, but of just a general conversation of what that would look like. We do realize that with the other department, the discussion with other department heads, it was prior to Director Gruner being here, but that these are much larger conversations across the board. You know, the TOT tax a lot with our finance department handles what those figures look like, development fees, and the percentage requirement. We've talked with our, you know, economic development and development services director, but then they also report to another group of developers, and they have their own kind of it's BIA, but it's not the BIA that funds events and programming. It's the it's another BIA regarding to developers.

And so, she has their own outside meetings with them. And it's much larger, and it would all come in the form of an ordinance that counsel would have to direct either this department or us to work with all the other departments to develop a draft ordinance. But that direction would have to come from the council.

That's all my questions for now.

I think the Laguna Beach is an interesting model. It was mentioned in public comments before. They were like a little jealous about them having more art than the City of Arts and I can totally relate to that. But it will take time. I've noticed here that Laguna Beach's ordinance was placed in 1986. And so it would be a great conversation to continue having with the department heads and possibly get the ear of counsel as well.

Excuse me, Chair? If we could go ahead and open it up to public comment before we start doing general comments.

Sorry, apologies. Thank you for keeping Any me on public comments regarding budget, please step to the podium and keep your comments under three minutes. Thank you. Sir you may begin.

Madam Chair thank you. Alright, now we're talking. The TOT, Travel Costa Mesa, they have big budgets. Would resist any temptations. We burden our developers already for school fees and park fees and everything else. To put another art fee on top of that, I wouldn't do. But, you know, Paulette over at Travel Costa Mesa loves the arts. Have you ever seen their website? Your stuff is all over it, right? Why not partner with them to figure out a way to the master plan says generates 1,700,000.0.

I think it could be triple that by partnering with Travel Costa Mesa. Right? How about when the city builds a new fire station? Why don't you make them put in public art? Right? We don't have a money problem. We have a spending problem where they're allocating it. Make your public works projects work harder for the arts. You don't have to shake down any. It's just to flow the money into the arts. Developers already pay park fees and stuff like that. We're not partnering with the parks and recs fellow commissioners and issue them a challenge that says we need to see more art in our parks here. Right? We have the money. Trust me.

You know, mandates versus incentives. Right? So, when I was chair of the planning commission, I was big into active transportation. But, I'm also fiscally conservative, I'm horrified when government cost and size of our government has just gotten too big at all levels. Cities most of the time want to mandate. You mandate things. You don't mandate the things you want. You mandate things like health and safety and you put it in a fire code. When you want something, you give an incentive. So maybe you can work with your planning commissioners to say, when a project comes forward so what I did as chairman of the planning commission for the bikes, if you put in a bike rack, you get credit for a parking spot.

I can't tell you how many parking issues have been solved by the like, oh, just put it in a bike rack and now we're parked to code. Be creative around that to incentivize people in both the public and private to be putting in art. Let's see. I just think that there's opportunities to work with some of these larger budgets to integrate art as a theme and a concept and you do it through an incentive. There's plenty of money out there. Again, we don't have enough money. We can talk about that in the next item. But this is a way to get really creative. I would not put that burden on the developers. Everyone wants to talk about affordable housing.

And every word coming out of government's mouth makes it less affordable. I want more trees. I want some of this. I want some of that. And so really, government is the solution to this. So, work with the public works and all these other departments to instill the concept of art. Thank you.

Any other public comments in the chambers? If there are none.

I do have a hand raised. One moment.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone. My name is Sipna Misra. I'm actually the CEO of VivaCha Designs. I was actually at your last commission meeting in person. Our company has done over 200 commissioned art pieces worldwide.

I just wanted to piggyback on both Jim and Fisher's comments about thinking more boldly and being creative and how you obtain the monies and actually conceptualizing your art strategy for this city. We really believe that your strategy ought to include, like, a substantial focus on art in public spaces as you all have been talking about to uphold that branding as the city of the arts. I'm also very encouraged and impressed with the market research that you've just done, that's gone into kind of understanding the existing landscape of funding more generally. As a part of this, though, I would ask that you consider creative resources for funding that straddle both public and private funding resources. And you can raise these funds in a variety of ways, public private partnerships, grants, and allocations from your private bills.

And I just wanna give you two tangible examples from our existing portfolio, which you can just draw from. The city of commerce, that we've been working with for about two and a half years, they won a $5,000,000 grant from Caltrans called the Pathways of Hope. The project outcomes were to uplift local park parks and adjacent freeways. The of that grant, though, was that there had to be murals as part of the redevelopment. We were the reason why our collaborators won that grant, and we have created and are now fabricating over 15,000 square feet of public artwork on pedestrian walkways and other passes.

In addition, the city of commerce is charged a 1% tax against any private build as your research suggests and created a fund for the arts over the past five years that is now in excess of $1,000,000 for public artwork. The vice mayor is an art advocate that has been behind this fundraising, and it has taken about five years to build that fund. So the next, example I'd like to give you is the city of Spokane, which we also just finished a project with. And it was under a different agenda, a sustainability agenda where a sorry. A public entity called the Spokane Conservation District that is funded by the state of Washington.

She literally straddles both public and private funding. So she was able to raise for the build from the state of Washington the entire structure, and then she went out to private resources and hustled to get donors, to give for the mural collection that we did. I think the important thing to consider, as Jim just mentioned, is that the money is there, especially in potential economic The irony is that there's no better time.

Thank you, Seema. Your three minutes are up.

Are there any other comments? Thank you, everyone, for your comments. Now we'll open it up to commissioners. Commissioner Ford?

I guess my comment is, have we looked I appreciated the online presentation about the examples. Have we looked to see if there are comparable DOT or County of Orange or state funds that could be used in an analogous situation for us? I I guess that's a comment and a question, but it's I guess I think well, I'll flip it as a comment. I think that we should look to see if there are county, state, and federal resources that are available that we could tap into along the lines of what the presenter stated.

I'll just chime in on that. We are continuously looking at different avenues to fund many different projects and not just arts projects and public art projects, but we are monitoring. We have somebody in our city manager's office that looks at a legislative affairs manager that helps look at grants, but also on our end, we subscribe to a number of newsletters. I know Lorette gets it, I also get it. The California Arts in the Park grant, that comes through in different arts newsletters that gives kind of a recommendation of look at what's available in your area.

So, we're constantly looking at those avenues to see if we're eligible, because sometimes there's eligibility requirement is different. Sometimes it requires a lot of public agencies to require them to partner with nonprofits to even apply. So, are I mean, me it goes without saying that we are constantly looking for anything that can help fund some of our initiatives in this city. By all means, if somebody outside of us were to find something, we get it. We've had it at council.

Somebody recommended, you know, something from the California Parks and Recreation Society. They sell a a grant available. They sent it this way our way, and we're gonna be attending an information session. It goes without saying that if you have some kind of available link or information that you want to send our way, we'll be happy to explore that.

And then I guess my second was along the lines of what Commissioner Ochoa said. I do like the idea of you know, maybe in lieu of attacks, having it where people who do who do developments would be, you know, as part of it, if it meets some kind of threshold, you know, to include some kind of art installation in connection. I I I do think that, ultimately, we have to do some kind of public private partnership because it it what if it's public only, it's not I don't think it's gonna work. So I do think that that finding public private where where development you know, we do wanna encourage development. And I think to Mr. Fitzpatrick's point, we do to create as many incentives as possible for people to include public art as part of their development process. So I'm in favor of that.

Also, I agree with you except for the part I just renovated my house. And they had put another tax on me, I think I would have died. So I know it may be a personal tax that we put on the people of Costa Mesa, but I do like the idea of when I go out of town or anywhere and there's taxes and fees and all that, I just pay it. Just go with the flow. That's just part of what it is.

So I think the TOT tax would be really great. And I do love the idea of if we build something for the city and I don't even know if it has to cost that much or have, but to have some kind of art implanted, integrated in with that so that it just starts showing up everywhere. Wherever we build, wherever we're doing something, freeway maintenance, okay there's a mural. And I know we have more than enough artists as well to do all that. Oh darn, she's gone.

Deborah and I, in Hermosa Beach, when we go down for our volleyball tournaments, there's just this long line of murals, and they're just so interesting and great. That's just something that her and I find very inspirational. I just want to say that.

So there's very good suggestions, I think, from both of our public comments about incentivizing through other commissions or in these sorts of processes. I mean, we were to seriously look at that, would that be a recommendation that we have to make to council to create an ordinance? Would that be simply us reaching out to the commission and saying, can we partner on this and figure out a way which to work? Like, what needs to happen in that sort of procedural way for that to become the process? Or even on these questions of like CIPs with various park projects.

How do we actually get requirements or have that be a part of the consideration? Because I know in past conversations when we talk about things like the skate park or various other things, the complaints that I've heard from staff is that they're always coming to arts too late at the point in which the budget's already been set. So how do we preempt that? Does that require an ordinance to have these things actually included?

So what we can do on our end is we can reengage our our department heads and ask some of these specific questions, you know, internal city internal city projects, would that require an ordinance, or can that be an internal city policy that we adopt? And same thing with our development services and Director Tai. We can reengage her. She was also not here the last time we had these conversations, so it would be a good conversation to have with her as well. And if that's something that we should have to bring to the commission or it's not needed, so we can reengage our department heads and then bring something back at the next commission as to further steps or kind of a direction of how some of these can get accomplished.

I'm sorry. I'll let other people if they have. Okay. Thanks. Kind of piggybacking on what Commissioner Dudarian said at the last meeting and what mister Fitzpatrick suggested, we do have a lot of public buildings.

And we do I live near a fire station, and it's just plain dull. That's a great opportunity to have public artists come and make art and make beautiful murals. And then to your specific point from the last meeting, I love the idea of incorporating the history of Costa Mesa as part of a theme that pulls all of these public projects together, particularly those that are of public works and so forth. I've lived here now for some time, but I'm learning every time the history why Goat Hill Tavern is called Goat Hill Tavern and just the history of going way back. And there's a fascinating history to this city.

And I think that we should celebrate it. And I think that incorporating public works and murals and art is a wonderful way to accomplish all of those things.

Madam Chair, if I can just add to that. So those discussions are already occurring internally. And I know that's on the forefront of future projects. And as Monique mentioned, that is something that we can look into incorporating into certain CIP projects. I just want to let the commission know that's already in the works. It's already happening internally, those discussions, and we need to start incorporating that.

Thank you, Director Greener. I guess where are we at with this? We're going to oh, you have further comments?

Hate to kick a hornet's nest here, but to do it anyways. There is in some aspect already, you know, a tax that's to fund the arts. I wonder, you know, if it would be something that we might suggest to city council in updating the ordinance or something of that sort to say that the tax revenue from the cannabis tax, the half percent go to funding public art rather than art at large. Because I think this has been the confusion over the past few months as to what exactly that is, which has been only added to by this pilot article and so on and so forth. There's many layers to it.

But that seems to me the exact thing that we're looking for insofar as adding on the tax. Some things there are already contributing to the arts. What if we were just to suggest and this is the commissioners too. But like what if we were just to suggest, which is within our formal duties within the municipal code, and make a policy recommendation to counsel that they consider adding such a stipulation or a clause within within the ordinance itself. A thought.

What my it's more of a just what how does that change? What what is it currently allocated toward? When it says art, what is in your mind, what is the difference between art generally and public art?

Well, so the the explanation that we've received is that the cannabis tax and staff can correct me if I'm wrong. The cannabis tax is offsetting the budget as proposed within the master plan rather than being incremental and adding on to and creating a new fund as it were to spend on art. And all these ideas are, I I guess, more in that. And, again, correct my language if I'm incorrect here. Adding that incremental funding so that there are more pots, as it were, of money to be able to spin on the art, on public art in particular within the city.

So that is an option on the table, think, just to put everything out there. What I would be interested in seeing, just because we aren't able to exactly look closely at every single proposal within this report, I would be curious if there would be perhaps three commissioners interested in forming a subcommittee of some sort and exploring this issue, these actual proposals, perhaps if there are staff members at the city level or other commissions to engage, being able to have those conversations and then bring back some sort of recommendation to the Arts Commission that we can then consider, maybe weighing on or not, and then actually make a formal recommendation to council to consider. Again, none of it's binding by any means, but these at least could be things that start conversations at the city council level rather than kind of sitting around saying, okay, do we do this? Can we get so and so to write it off? Because ultimately, city council has to approve of these things.

I would certainly participate in any subcommittee that you're proposing along those lines.

Vice chair, if I can interject real quickly. So, any subcommittees do require city manager approval. So, we could bring that suggestion forth and then get some feedback back from our city manager. But, thank you for the suggestion. We'll get back to the group.

I think something else to consider with that recommendation would be to look at incorporating that into the next master plan, and that would be a little bit more of a formal process, and that will definitely be sent up to the city council level for review and approval. So, I think that would be something a little bit more appropriate for bringing that into that picture.

And if for any reason there is an issue with the Brown Act in doing that, I was going to say maybe the idea of the study session to get some of us and some of the community in to give us more ideas on ways in which to have more pots in which to fill. Did you get my pun? I

was just going to say, I think we're moving in the right direction. When you look at this and say, okay, how do we do this? How do we do that? And we heard from, Chair Ochoa that she's had a conversation with the PACS commission. We know that they're they're very interested in in ensuring that arts are part of their parks. We've had previous, planning commissioners speak to us about projects, when one Metro West came about, about art within their development. So if we come together and move forward and have a better understanding, we will be able to have the ear of the city council as well. I'm really supportive of this idea.

Can I ask staff, what does it look like to host a study session? We just need to make a motion as to do so, then we can have an informal discussion? Public is still accessible to that study session? Is that all correct?

So, yeah, that's how a study session would work. But in order to have a study session, we also that's special meetings and subcommittees are by city manager approval process. So, we can take that to the city manager and ask and let you guys know an update. So, what we can do with the rest of the conversation here is come back to you with a progress report on any additional meetings and findings we've had for any further, you know, progress that we have and next steps, if that makes sense.

Would it be possible for us to make a motion to form a subcommittee that then is submitted to the city manager for them to review and to get back to us formally as to what that would look like and how we proceed? Or a study session?

That would be putting like the cart before the horse type of feel, I think.

We would have to connect with the seat manager first and have that discussion and dialogue and see what the directive would be from her.

Help me understand then. So with the municipal code, says by its own motion conduct studies investigations and hold public hearings. What exactly does that mean by its own motion in allowing us to be able to host these things outside of these specific meetings?

Yeah. That's a good question. And one of the things that we've been working with the city clerk on is developing a more detailed training protocol for the commission to kind of clarify what that exactly means. It's kind of up to interpretation. But I think having that clarification from the clerk is going to provide a lot more clarity and a better direction on how the commissions operate and what they can and can't do.

So there's no movement that we can make now, no motion or anything of the sort that would allow us to at least submit that to the city staff?

Not at this time, no.

Not at this time. Okay. Thank you.

But you can we direct staff to move forward?

Move forward into it. Yes. And that's what we will do.

Just so that's in the record. Okay. Since we're not making a motion.

You. Thank you, mister On

that

topic of asking staff if they can can staff also find out if we have any extra places around Westside Coast Of Mesa?

Or a block?

Commissioner Man? Commissioner Man, if there was extra places, believe me, we would be on it. That was so fast. If

somebody had private funds, would that be the only way really to get spaces and then have them possibly say, hey, I want to donate this, and make this theater thing. And the Arts Commission can come in and

help out and do whatever. If you know of anybody, please connect them with us, and we can definitely try to work something out. Definitely.

Okay, so we'll be hearing from staff regarding the funding options next meeting. Next order of business is new business to review the budget for year end. Ms. Villasenor?

Yeah, so we do have a presentation by our recreation manager, Mr. Villasenor. And I do just want to provide a quick review and overview of what we're presenting. So really, it's a historical master plan budget review starting from the very beginning to kind of where we are currently. And then we do have, obviously, the last fifth year fiscal year 'twenty 'twenty six coming up at the next budget study session on May 13.

So after this presentation, I think we'll provide some clarity of what was funded and how it was funded and how things were spent. And we do want to at the end of this, you would have an opportunity to provide some recommendations that we can certainly bring forward at the study session on May 13. And so we will have that dialogue tonight, Then looking forward to what the recommendations are from the commission so we can share that with the finance department and include that in the presentation part of the study session on May 13. So we're going to go ahead and kick it off with presentation at this point, and we'll be able to answer any questions you guys have at the end.

Good evening, Chair and Vice Chair and Commissioners. Thank you, Director Gruner, for giving that opening and Just starting again with the overview, it's the analysis of the city arts program budgets and how they align with the master plan. We started at the beginning of the master plan with fiscal year twenty one-twenty two, And, we're just going to take a brief overview of what it looked like, what the master plan looked like, and how what we actually requested and got funded for. Remind you that we were already fiscal year 2021 when in March 2021 when the master plan was adopted. So, the budget process for 2022 had already begun and basically been solidified.

So, the master plan came after the 2122. But, thankfully, the our city finance team and our council came through with, you know, some recommendations. So starting with just fiscal year twenty one-twenty two, at that time can just use that anyway. I'm sorry. At that time, Laurette was not on board.

We did not have an art specialist. You may or may not be aware, I think we've talked about it. Ashley right here was our single and sole arts staff member leading the Cultural Arts Committee at the time. And, it was about workload and capacity. While we do recognize that the master plan had a lot of great initiatives, it was in that first year, it was about what can we realistically accomplish without having a dedicated staff member on board.

So, this first year you're gonna see how the master plan called for some things and didn't call for some things, but we what we requested in that year was different based off of just workload and realistic goals that we can have as a city. So, it was only committee commissions didn't exist yet. So, ArtVenture was already an established program and event, and that's kind of where we landed on was what are our legacy and flagship programs that we already have the backing behind and the help and the volunteers, and we kind of already have a rubric on how it operates. Then, moving forward, one thing that was called out in the master plan that was already an established program was Smart Camp. So, we separate that out of the master plan category, because that historically has always been funded out of the general fund because it's always been a program in our department prior to arts master plan.

If you don't know what smart camp is, it's a summer camp a free summer camp. It serves you know, it has on record served over 500 kids free to Costa Mesa youth. But, it does also involve involves sports. So, sports, music, and art. So, smart. But, it it has always been an initiative that was established through a joint effort, but led by the school district, and then the city partnered on it. And, now we have an established MOU on that program. So, that's why we kind of call it out separately, because it's historically has been funded in the general fund. Fiscal year twenty two, twenty three, we start to make a little bit more progress. But, again, we had just brought Lorette on board.

So, again, what's realistic, you know I hate to to call out Lorette, but in her interview, we did say, like, hey, this is a one man show at this point. What you know? And so I think we we can all agree that she's done a wonderful job with just us her as the sole being here. I mean, we all establish support for her, but she's her her capabilities of what she's done so far are amazing and made her the perfect fit for this job in for the city of Costa Mesa. But, again, it was we didn't request everything.

We made the recommendation, you know, the Frias Eagerstrom event was a much larger dollar amount. What can we realistically accomplish? So, we were trying to be responsible in what we were requesting from during the budget process, especially because we knew after during the fiscal year twenty two-twenty three, the cannabis ordinance did come forward. And, if you were paying attention to counsel at the time, we knew that that was a shortfall with the cannabis tax. Also, we didn't want to just blindly request money without some kind of capacity and direction.

But, again, established programs. What can we do? What can we add on? And so, you can see kind of how we start to grow at that point. Again, everything we have requested, it may not always have been in this first two years, to the master plan.

But, what we have requested, we've received in our budget. So, which has always been a wonderful bonus, I think, during our budget process. Fiscal year twenty three-twenty four, we start to see our first fully funded master plan here, and not a lot of difference here. We did request certain areas of the initiatives that we were starting to see a little bit of cost increase. But, we did always get fully funded according to the master plan.

So, it was never less than that. The master plan also, you know, touching on Smart Camp called for an increase. However, Smart Camp, when you look at our expenditures in our general fund, was never really needed more than what was initially funded. So, we've never requested more than what Smart Camp actually expense. And now we're in our current year twenty four-twenty five, again pretty much in line with what our master plan calls out, except for our arts grant program.

If you look at what our final budget for arts grant was, if you may have remembered that we got the 10 extra thousand dollars for arts grants that the council made the recommendation during the budget process. And so, as we head into the twenty five-twenty six, it's currently in development. As Director Gruner said, that budget process is still going on, and they'll look to have a study session, and they'll give more input I mean, more information on, you know, cannabis tax, where those funds are at, you know, balances. More in-depth on then in terms of finances of where we're at with funding, than what we can realistically give as the Parks and Community Services Department. But, it does show right here the master plan calls out, and I think that you guys talked about this at a prior meeting, but we did ask for everything in year five.

In addition, I think we had mentioned that we asked for an additional 35,000 to update the master plan because we are in the final year. And so, this is the last slide that just kind of this graph kind of shows where we were at historically during with funding trends. You can see the red is what we got budgeted. The orange is requested. The master plan is the yellow line.

Now, there's the outlier in fiscal year twenty two, twenty three. The reason why that's an outlier is because we didn't request the show mobile in that year, which it called out for a $150,000. And I think we've given you guys a couple updates on that that we decided not to pursue that as a city after researching multiple other cities, and the cost, and the time, and what it takes to manage a show mobile is a lot of resources in a lot of different areas that we just were not prepared to to do right now. So, that's why that's the outlier. But, this just goes to show that we've always they've always fully funded if above our request and along with the master plan, which I think shows positive good trends, and that it shows the city's commitment to this to the arts, which I know historically when we look at, you know, what we can and can't do, this actually proves that there is a there is a willingness and a commitment for the arts.

Know that we're heading into a different kind of budget cycle, and how long that lasts, we don't know. But, there is that commitment that we will try and see what we can do, whether that's through processes or policies or ordinances. So, that's kind of the end of the presentation, and if you guys have any questions, we're here to answer.

The large scale installations, I know we have the butterfly one. We had budgeted for other years, large scale installations. Is there anything else that was in that? So,

were, if you remember a few meetings back, we brought the proposal for the Sculpture Park. Yes. Yeah, that, so that would, that kind of was intended to be our kickoff point with art, right? Sculptures in general, you need infrastructure, right? You need a place to put it.

So, we did submit it for a future CIP project to prep site. We just just started with that one. Any site would need infrastructure, so it would need to be part of capital improvement projects to establish. If you've been watching the council meetings, the CIPs recently were looked at to see what, you know, in a smaller capacity what we could do considering the economic climate. So but if you do see it in the five year, you do see it in a future year at this point, and it's called NEFPARC, if you look at it.

So, it is in a it made the CIP list, just not for immediate funding. So but this kind of large scale art we can repurpose maybe at a later day or continue to build that fund. So that way, when our infrastructure and the project comes along, we're ready to fund art and installations and everything that goes along with a project like that.

I have a question. This may be silly, so I apologize. I'm still getting my sea legs as to how this whole process works. How do how does it go from where I understand where master plan is, but how does it go from master plan to budget request to final? Like, where do those variances come from?

So really outside of I always look at the first two years of the master plan as outliers, because that was just us trying to figure out what we could and couldn't do internally without a formal commission, without any kind of it was just a capacity issue. After that, really, it's looking at historical data of what we've spent on ArtVenture. We know that ArtVenture we've switched up the program format, whereas ArtVenture used to be held internally. It was always at the I don't know as furniture shop before, and at different places, right? Now we pay for a rental at OCMA for our award ceremony, and prices are different.

So, we look at the cost of certain events that we have historically done, and outside of what the master plan calls for, we look at is that meeting the cost? And so let's ask for a little bit extra because we know there's rising costs. So that's kind of where the requests differ. It's not a matter of what we think, we're just looking at historical numbers.

Okay, and then I guess for the twenty five-twenty six proposed budget, the master plan has the arts grants at $12,500 How does that translate to what we're going to request for budget or what's final?

So, that's currently in development. So, we historically just say, hey, we would like you to fully fund the current year, the next year's master plan. How council did it on the dais last year is with the extra $10,000 I believe there was some public comment and some input from commissioners in various methods that the council decided to take action on the diets during budget.

I see. So our request or it would be limited to the council approving this master plan twelve five absent input from other people to get them to raise it higher. Right? Okay. That makes sense. Thank you.

I have a question. Could we, in the budget line for the arts grant, could we at the very bare minimum keep the $20,000 Like at least propose? I know city council could say no, but is that a possibility? Especially in regards to us increasing the award amount to $5,000 per recipient this year?

What we can do as staff, we can put in that recommendation to finance, but ultimately, it would be up to them to take it to counsel and see if they would approve that. But we can put in that note for finance.

Would we have to offset the 7,500 elsewhere in terms of our recommendations? Or can we just say we want $7,500 more?

It happened last year, it was just an additional $10,000 that council appropriated. So I'm assuming I know if you have to offset, if that would be a requirement. Nobody's ever told us that. But to request it, I don't think that there's a direction to find it somewhere else.

Okay. Yeah, that would not have to be an offset.

For the public's sake, could you explain the $10,000 for Action Arts?

So, Action Arts was previously, and I'm going to look to Ashley to jump in too, because I think she actually did this event at one point. It was more of towards the action arts industry, where it was like an arts action sports collaborative, I think held over by the skate park, to bring together the two, because it's a unique opportunity. And there's unique artwork that kind of coincides with that kind of industry and that recreational activity to bring them together. Because we had Action Arts company and industries here located in the city of Costa Mesa, I think it was just a really good fit. But, any more information, I think Ms. Thomas can answer.

So, is budgeted? That Is there an action art event then for twenty five-twenty six?

Commissioner Ash North, the way we've utilized that funding has been for the expansion of ArtVenture at this time. So, we've merged it into an event bucket at this point due to the costs required to operate Art venture. So it's been utilized fully. That full $10,000 has been utilized. So that will be something when we update the master plan to make sure we bring forth those numbers so they can understand the true cost of our venture at this time.

I have a more hypothetical but still budget related. I have other questions, but it's not directly related on the information that's been presented to us. So with the smart camp, we're requesting $100,000 In our wildest imaginations, cannabis tax makes $500,000 for the arts. Right? Would that be included within that offsetting cost? Like, how does that kind of fit in within this larger way in which we understand what the arts budget actually is for the city?

Okay. So let me address the smart camp issue. The master plan calls out $100,000 but we realistically know that smart camp doesn't cost $100,000 so we only request the repeat $60 we historically know how that city operates. Do we utilize, if you're asking, would we ask for $40,000 somewhere else, if that's what you're asking at this time because of how the funding stream is and how there's not enough cannabis tax. And I think that that might be like a larger discussion at the study session, right?

We're not requesting any additional funding. So, if we don't need that 40,000, they're they're going to say, but that funding, since it's not available in the cannabis tax, so if you don't need it, then we're not funding it and pulling it from somewhere else. If that makes sense.

I think all my other questions are regarding programs that are listed here and aren't necessarily germane to this specific thing. So I'll wait for the discussion period on that.

I'd like to go to the action arts. I'm a big fan of that. So how much does ArtVenture actually cost? Or has it typically cost in the past the $20,000 plus then the $10,000 and then from other areas in this budget to pay for ArtVenture?

Historical wise, I think ArtVenture has always been within the $20,000 budget. I'm not sure. Because we separate now Community Arts Day, and we have the whole week now. Right? Yeah. Of this community gallery and open to the public, and then we do a day full of activities. So, there's an expansion of the ArtVenture along with the now the award ceremony where we do the rental. So, it's evolved. Right? And, now, ArtVenture where we're at has ranged differently, but depending on pricing that we get.

So, it's always dependent upon quotes that we get for performers for the rental facility. So, what we get deals on, know, what we negotiate in terms of different pricing options, Right? We also tend to sometimes get assistance if we need additional funding through the BIA, which is taken to City Council for approval. And, our City Manager office takes a handful of events that are available to be attributed to the BIA through various methods. Our venture has always been historically one of them, but it's not a guaranteed every year.

So, you know, we look for other revenue streams. So, some years it could be $20,000 Sometimes, it can be 40,045 thousand dollars So it just really depends on some quotes and then what other funding streams outside of the master plan that we look for.

So with the action arts, is there going to be a plan for something for this year? Or something is you guys have to find or somebody has to come up with and say, oh, I want to do this?

Definitely Action Arts is something that we've definitely talked about and considering that the skate park is going through an expansion in the next year. We hope to I think the breaking crown sometime later this year. And once that's completed, I think we'll definitely be looking at this action arts event and what that looks like. And, that will probably come before commission to be like, what do you guys envision for this event to be impactful for both the action arts in the action sports industry, and the art component of what that looks like to fuse fuse those together. And that may be different than what it looked like in the past.

And then, the other thing was, you said that sometimes if we don't use all the money, they might be like, okay, well, we're not going to fund that. Can we have, like, some backup so that they could never do that, so that we can

always have something that No. It's not if we're not gonna we're not gonna use it. It's about upfront what we know our costs are. Yeah. The thing with the master plan and and the initiatives in it out, you know, outside of smart camp, we've been doing for a long time. Mhmm. We've been completing those and fully exhausting all of those all of those that budget outside of the large scale installations that we've been rolling over.

Okay. So there's no money that's like going back or anything like that? Correct.

Lara Lara is good at accomplishing all the goals. Thank you. One

more question on that. With the skate park, do we expect that the the park I mean, I know this is beyond our scope, particularly in this commission, but would the park be completed within fiscal year twenty five, twenty six? Is that the expectation?

That is the expectation. Okay. Now now timelines and construction schedules can always be up in the air, but we would hope for it to be completed in twenty five-twenty six.

Okay. Thank you.

Are there other areas like sports, action sports areas that you guys would consider until that area is available?

In terms of action sports, the skate park is the only kind of area that has action sports. I mean to be relevant and not at a private company or business in terms of parks, that's kind of the epitome of action sports. Any

further comments on the budget? No? Okay, thank you Ms. Museignor and Director Gruner. This is very informative.

Sure. Yes. Go Can ahead and open up public comments, please? Thank you.

Any public comment? Mr. Fitzpatrick, come on up.

All right, sorry. I'm a little bit mad at this discussion. Because I knew when you guys really worked hard to get a discussion on the budget, I predicted the staff recommendation was going to be receive and file. You know what receive and file is? Receive it, file it.

When I look by the staff's own presentation, the council intentionally moved it from a committee to a commission. Very very different. Commission is a decision making body. And it did so prior to cannabis ever being voted by the voters. This was always general fund, it was always intended.

I'm telling you, you have the votes at city council. You gotta get it at city council. So here, I'm being asked not to believe my lying eyes. I wanna read you from the municipal code. By its own motion, conduct studies, investigations, hold public hearings as it may deem necessary for the formulation of policies and plans and procedures relating to the arts or to determine the wisdom and efficacy of such policies, plans, procedures, or to determine an action plan to pursue and implement the city's arts and culture master plan and report the findings and recommendations to the city council, the city manager, the director of community service and or public works.

I'm being asked not to believe my lying eyes. Plain language. Okay? And staff and when I say staff, I have nothing against staff. Lots of wonderful people here as there are in other place. But this process is broken. Staff is managing you, especially during this budgetary process because they've got a nice little shiny thing with a bow on it, put it in the pocket, and move it forward. They don't want anyone interrupting their narrative. You have to interrupt their narrative. Goes on. Recommend to the city council approval of concept plans for development blah blah blah. Why is the five pack presenting to city council as a committee? Why is the act of transportation presenting to city council as a committee? And a council is being denied. Here's what kills me.

At its discretion, review the annual budget as presented to the city council and advise it on the current operational needs and long range plans of it. Says it right there. I'd be looking at staff right now and flip the script on them and say, no. No. No. No. Take it back to city council and modify the plan because their intent was clearly that we could make recommendations. They can't stop you. Please make the recommendation. Force their hand. I guarantee this has been discussed and it's coming from the city manager. If you're being managed inappropriately, you have the authority within the municipal code. We need your leadership. This is the time and the place to do it. The city council wants it.

I'm telling you the votes are there. This is just this is why my city is broken. They've had the time to do it. They're giving you bad answers. Cannabis was always incremental. You can make decisions and recommendations.

Any other public comments in the chambers? Thank you. Ms. Patuo, anyone on Zoom?

Not at this time.

Okay. If there are no additional comments, we will close public comment.

Madam Chair, if I can just add to that real quick. As I indicated earlier, we are looking for recommendations. We are looking for suggestions. So, it's at your discretion of what you want to review and what recommendations that we can present forward to the council.

Can I ask a couple of questions? Programming, looking at ArtCrawl, I'm curious from your perspective, how much time do you think you spend planning these events, hosting those programs, if you could give an estimation, just loosely?

I'd say for the whole thing, like, maybe like a forty hour thing for the

year. Okay. Yeah.

Alright. That's not too bad. I I just asked because I'm I mean, it's $3,000, so it's not the biggest drop in the bucket by any means. We have 457,000. But just looking at it, it kind of strikes me as one of those programs that I think is noble in intent, but I don't know if it's kind of full efficacy.

And I don't want to waste your time, miss Garner, in kind of having you kind of chase these things because we have this plan that's been in place when we as a body have ability to make these recommendations. So that's good to know. One question, I guess, perhaps to raise to the commission itself, looking or kind of a point, and I don't know if there's much of a question in it. But but looking at the actual proposed budget, obviously, we have 457,000. We've discussed this smart camp.

We're requesting a 100,000, maybe closer to 60 or 40 or whatever that might look like. There's the art specialist salary that's considered in there, and there's other various things. In reality, by my tally, I think we're really requesting maybe like 55 to $60,000 with regards well, did I count ActionArts? I might not count ActionArts in that, but regardless, around 60,000, we'll say, in public facing programming that we're speaking into or helping lead. There's obviously Free Park performances.

There's obviously the Costa Mesa free at Siegerstrom. But those are things largely, I think, not even beyond our control, but beyond our purview insofar as we go to Siegerstrom and say, hey, can we get discount tickets at whatever shows you're going to offer? Then we give them $60,000 or whatever the exact amount is. And same with Free Park performances. That seems if if I'm understanding correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong, miss Garner or others, the way in which that works is that we we give that money to is it the Costa Mesa Foundation to on like, to host that? What does that actually look like when we talk about the Free Park performances?

So Free Park performances are where I hire and pay artists to perform in different places around Costa Mesa. So because I'm one person, I integrate those into current events that we already do to kind of help with the workload. But, it's like a fund to pay performing artists. And that's when we were talking about arts grants, was kind of mentioning we do have a fund that pays people to perform at different events. And so, you know, for the Community Arts Day, we're this, you know, we add we give money for performers for that.

Symphony on the Go, we've done. And then, I think this year, we're trying to incorporate more arts kind of performances in, like, Scarecrow Fest or July 3 or things like that. So, it's kind of for those opportunities and they can be kind of anywhere in Costa Mesa and because of capacity I've just tried to kind of keep them in things that we are already kind of doing and then with a few additions here and there.

And because of that initiative, we were able to have the Pacific Symphony perform in the park for the first time last year. We're bringing them again this year, which is a huge thing for concerts in the park. That doesn't go to the foundation. We work directly with the symphony to come out to our park.

Awesome. That's great. I'm so glad to hear that. I just wasn't sure, and so that's why I was asking more directly about that. The one thing and I know I've mentioned this before in a meeting without everyone there, but I'm still just wondering at the necessity, I'll say, and I know there'll be disagreements about this, but I welcome it and actually want to have a full discussion about this, For the need to hire ArtsOC to do a full master plan revamp, I think just given the purview and the charge of this body as a sort of legislative delegation from city council to lead the question on the arts, it would be more fitting and appropriate even for us to lead that process.

I understand that there's need for expert opinion and expert weighing in, why not say request 10,000 for hiring a consultant in that fashion in which we can have them help us draft certain things if we need that help. Have them do surveys if that's beyond the capacity of this commissioner staff or to have them do research for us to help inform that. Getting back to what I said at the very beginning, I would love to see this body really take hold of that vision. Like I said, think these are a lot of great programs, but as we've already heard discussions around the budget, there are just a lot of things that were inefficient. And I imagine staff was involved, as was the Cultural Art Committee, in discussing things like the Showmobile or whatever it was called, and other things like that.

So I don't think it's necessarily legally binding in that way. And we can certainly, as a body, make recommendations if I'm understanding the municipal code correctly on policy and on proposals for ideas surrounding the arts. And I would love to see this body own that vision and lead that process. So I don't mean to to push back and cause frustration, but I I would love to hear just like a fuller kind of thinking through and reasoning as to why that in particular is beneficial when the city council, the democratically elected body of this city, has appointed us to actually lead that process and and be the kind of authoritative body as it were from the public perspective on what we should do with the arts.

Vice chair, just a point of clarification. It it's not set in stone that we would hire arts OC, just for clarification. That's our purchasing policy at that amount. It says we have to go out to informal bid for something like that, so we can't dictate a certain organization would get a contract or not. So I just wanted to make that clarification.

Sure. So given any consulting firm then, what what would the case be? Why why wouldn't it be more appropriate for the Arts Commission? Alongside city staff, by all means, I actually would love to see and hear and all of us to get together in study sessions, say, or even at these meetings, but really say, what does it look like for Costa Mesa to be the city of the arts? How do we actually achieve that?

And let's break that down and make that policy proposals to city council because we do have that power as a commission, and we can say, go crazy and say, hey, we want to get to a million dollars. Let's figure it out. And the city council can, of course, bat us down, or we can say, well, let's come up with creative solutions like public private partnerships or these other various things, adding whatever else it might be. But I think that lies in the proper power and responsibility of this body. So again, I'm just trying to ask that question to understand whatever the consulting firm is. If it's Arts OC, if it's Ms. Mishra who keeps joining us, which I very much so appreciate, if it's any sort of consulting firm, what would the argument be that we need them to lead that process and actually develop that document for us in lieu of the commission?

Vice Chair DeJurian, I would like to respond to that quickly. As we I was a big part of the last master plan, and I think anyone who's been a part of any type of master planning, it's a rigorous, very long, drawn out process in some senses, right, as far as community outreach and the surveying. And it's not that we're not capable, but the bandwidth, of course. They interviewed stakeholders. I think we were close to like 80 stakeholders that they pulled in from different parts of the community, brought in to interview.

So, as you know, it's very timely experience going through that planning process. So, I think it's something to really take into consideration. I'm sure you've been through many master plans as well. The intensity and the depth that they go into. And then, yes, they do bring in professionals all through the arts, different arts organizations that are specialized whether it's in public art or if it's I mean, they brought in like probably five or six different people who specialize in certain parts of the arts to come in to speak on behalf of that during the master plan process and with these community forums.

So, it's not that I don't think that this group cannot do it. And, the group itself, even the way we had the committee, played a huge role in this process. They were interviewed on multiple occasions. We had a group. We had a subcommittee that was specific to that. And so that's something that I think would absolutely make sense. And I'm sure that's something that we considered as a subcommittee of some sort to ensure that this body is being heard out on what this vision looks like and to make sure it's grand enough for this body. Right? So, your input will definitely be heard, it's really the facilitation of this plan and the depth that they go into and the surveying that they go into, I think that would be the challenge of this group by taking it on themselves. I'll let my director manager also chime in.

Let me also chime in. Since it's such a comprehensive document, right, and then as you're looking at, like Ms. Thomas said, like the bandwidth, right? But it's also something that as we would head into this kind of project. Right? We would develop a scope with before we release something and we start solicit bids, and we would bring that scope before the commission say, hey, what do you guys want to see out of the next master plan? And that scope can have a higher role for commission than the committee ever had. You know, and say, like, hey, the commission should be involved at every single step, and you can we can write that into the scope. So, you guys can be a main player in how dictating, you know, along with staff of how the process goes. They just compile and comprehensible comprehensive report into this one document.

So, that's presentable. So, that, you know, it just takes everything that you wanna say, and they put it together. And so, and definitely, when we are getting ready, if we get funded. Right? We put together scope, bring it before you guys as as a as a body, and you guys determine that scope looks like and what you want in it.

Can I oh, that sounds a little like chat GBT, too? If we can get it all condensed into one little thing. But God, what were we talking with the ArtCrawl, just so Commissioner Dodarian knows, it's awesome. It might be small, it's very mighty. It's one of the best times I've had.

And it's shown me places in Costa Mesa where there's art and where there's other things that I had no idea, and I've lived out here for a while. So I'm a big proponent of that, as well as having an art specialist. Because I've run a bunch of theaters, and you've probably run things. And if you don't have somebody in charge, it's really hard. It's really hard.

So I commend you and all of you for the work that you're doing. And the other thing that I think I've had an issue with, and I think somebody else on this panel did as well, is the Seekerstrom Center. It's just that because they have so much money, I just feel like they should be donating the tickets as opposed to giving us discounted tickets. It's like, donate some tickets to the city for the people. I know they're also nonprofit, but they're a very wealthy nonprofit.

So I just thought that was a lot of money. I love their campus. I love what they do. I love the show that we got to go see during the art crawl. The whole thing is I mean, that's one of the things that makes us on our way to becoming the city of the arts. Thank God that's in Costa Mesa. It's a huge, beautiful thing. But that would be nice to see them, if possible, if anyone can wheel and deal with them so we could free up some of that money maybe for, I don't know, black box theater. No, I'm just kidding. Sorry. I will let that go eventually. Okay.

Commissioner Mann, those are all good suggestions where you say if we during the master plan update, right, you guys would, as a body of this commission, heavily involved in say like, hey, we've gone through policy recommendations. We've seen some of these initiatives that maybe we have some changes or maybe don't necessarily work for the city. That that's all part of a process that we've gone through that this trial and error period with a first master plan ever. Right? And so, how do we build upon that and make it better? And that's would be kind of this body's recommendation to work with somebody to like, hey, this is what we should do now.

The expert. I know you need that, because making this right from foundation up is ideal and important. And I think, though, the rest of it, like you said, I agree that if we can do it within the city of Costa Mesa, within the body of Costa Mesa, I know the lady, like you said, who came in and did the presentation for putting all the artwork in Spokane and all these other places. That's awesome. But I really want to utilize our city to do those things personally.

So I'm looking at this bottom part of page seven of the presentation. It says the total funding for Arts Master Fund is $457,300 But if I understood the presentation before that, that includes a 100,000 for Smart Camp, but really we know that it's 60. So really the master funding is is $4.17. Correct?

But because the the $25.26 is just proposed at this point, this is there's no that's an a process that's still in development.

Got

it. So there's it's not yes or no. It's right now, it's being developed.

Got it. Is there anything that precludes us from recommending, as we're we're allowed to do, that the funding be set at the master fund level, at that 457,300, meaning that 40 in other words, I know $40,000 is not there and so forth. And I understood everything that you said before. But is there anything that precludes us from asking for that $40,000

No.

Okay. Does any I invite further comment. Would anybody else on the commission want that $40,000 for the arts? I would

like $100,000 extra art. Yes. Can we please have that?

No. I guess I'm asking if anybody else agrees that we should ask for the full amount that's been budgeted to the and if they've been able to achieve cost savings that get 40,000 away from one of the categories rather than just losing that money in the budgetary process, I would certainly prefer that that 40,000 go to other things. And I would encourage us, I think, to recommend that.

How do you feel about

If I can just jump in real quick. So that's exactly kind of the direction that we're looking for. So as things like that, the commission would feel, you know what, this money should stay in here and it would be appropriated to a certain line item, great.

Do we have to have it as a line item? Ideally it

should be tied to something. Okay.

About when we consider moving it over to the arts grants line item because that's all we've talked about for the past few meetings is we want more money for the arts grants.

I would agree with that.

Yeah, if we can just get a consensus from the commission as a whole, then we can move that forward.

Okay. Then I'll make the motion that we move the 40,000 into the arts grants line item in our budget request.

I second.

I pressed the wrong button.

Now it's

here for Ford.

You may vote on your dice. Motion carries six zero to move the 40,000 from the smart camp to the arts grant funds.

Great.

Great. If I can jump in. You know, one of the things that I spoke about last meeting, and I'd certainly like to pursue, and I think there's no reason in which why we couldn't, is trying to do some major art project for the city going forward into this next fiscal year. And I'd suggest, and I still think it's a good idea, and we'll talk more about it, doing some sort of major mural project that would actually be structured as a public private partnership. I think for this discussion, can kind of keep it very simple, and I have a motion I can make for it.

But my idea is this. We do have that funding from the large scale installations from both this year and last year, as well as the included 60,000 that we're requesting for this year, which would equal 180,000 if I have that correct. I would like to see us put out some sort of request, and the idea would be to encourage private businesses to request these funds to actually hire artists to do murals relating to Costa Mesa's history, to its civic identity, to various figures and whatnot within what makes Costa Mesa Costa Mesa. And perhaps that would require I mean, it would require because it would be a grant that would require a nonprofit partner. I did, just on my own volition, call up the Historical society and talk to some of the people there.

And they said, well, this sounds amazing. We'd love to do something like that. Of course, we need board approval. But at least in the starting phase of the idea, it seems like there is interest. And it would be structured as thus any private business, and maybe we would restrict it to major throughways along the lines of the measure that passed in the most recent election or something of that sort. But they could come and partner. They would have to submit an application through, say, the historical society or some other Costa Mesa nonprofit. Maybe that would be Love Costa Mesa or there's a handful of them available to do such a thing. They could request that. They would help them kind of create some sort of a proposal that we then as a body could then approve.

And I think we even pursue funding. If it's a long celebration of our history, that ties in perfectly with America two fifty, which I've harped on before. That's next year, the two hundred and fiftieth celebration of seventeen seventy six, in which the Declaration of Independence was signed. The NEA is funding projects specifically on this topic. As much consternation as that might cause in other ways, they at least are offering that. So why not try and take that up on an offer? But even more so, it's Costa Mesa's Sixtieth Anniversary next year. This is what the historical society told me. They're like, actually, we're celebrating a big milestone ourselves. So why wouldn't we want to try and do something like that?

And I think it would just be so fantastic. And maybe we can find ways in which we can private fund raise as well to add on to the idea. But I I would be interested in input from other commissioners in in making a suggestion or making a motion rather than a formal recommendation to the council that we consider setting aside the large scale installation budget, all of $180,000 with this year's request, into a program like this.

What about incentivizing as opposed to taking out of the budget, like offering incentivizing, like you said, all these businesses to do that. I don't know exactly what that would be, but because I still want large scale artwork all over the place.

Yeah. I mean, ideally, of course, love But this is at least one way can I respond? Is that okay? Yeah. This is at least one way we can make it happen. Because I fear, just with the state of our finances in the city, who knows how long this park will take? I mean, have any estimation staff as to when, in an ideal world, we'd actually get to this? The sculpture part.

We don't. And just for clarification, we have remaining about 100,000 because we did use some for the conceptual plan that we presented to you guys for the North Park. So we have that plan. It was hopes that we can use that plan because oftentimes for grant projects, need to have some kind of project ready, submittal ready. And so that was one step to submitting for grant funding. And sometimes those require matches. So if we were to have those concepts and we use those concepts to apply for a grant and it requires a matching fund, do we have those matching funds in place for that project? Who knows? But I just wanted to clarify that. How much remaining is roughly 100, not the 120.

Great. Well, can I ask then, like, what again, in an ideal world, given everything that's actually on the table and given the actual projections of deficit and what that will mean for delays year upon year, when do we actually expect we'd be able to get to a a park build out?

In an ideal world, say the economic this only lasts this year. Next year, we put it back into the budget and move it up, and they say yes.

Okay.

Hopefully. I mean, that would be the ideal right after this. This is our one time hopefully economic downturn in the economic climate of the you know, even the nation, right, that everybody's experiencing. And, hopefully, that would be ideal for it across the board, not to last that long, and then come budget cycle next year that we're able to move that project up.

Vice Chair Duderian, I love your ambition. I love your enthusiasm and your passion. Can you tell me is if part of this plan includes the artist identifying the location to ensure that there would be a mural, at least from the beginning, in each district so that it would go throughout the city? Is that part of part of how you see this?

I I think we could structure it in any which way. My my initial thought was, you know, there are plenty of good private businesses, private owners of property, and whatnot among along these major three ways. They could say, well, know, I would love to use my beautiful wall here for a mural. How do we make that happen? And my thought was these grant monies specifically would go to pay the artist. This isn't money for the business to pocket, but for them to say, and us to say, like, we value the arts. We actually want to see art created tomorrow, not in two or five or ten years. But we actually want to make this happen, and we have resources available to us. So let's pursue it and also make a big celebration out of it. Because I think honestly, the big question that we're all circling around is like, well, how do we convince counsel that the arts matter?

And I know they think that and I know they care. But they or the public will kind of say, okay, this is great and all. We're giving nearly half 1,000,000 to the arts, and we get a couple concerts. And, you know, where is the city of the arts? I know that's a very simplistic view. Right? And I don't mean that to to be a negative attack on the work the wonderful work that we're doing here and and staff is doing on this on all these projects. But I just think we have to be ambitious in that way. And we have to have that sort of vision that says, Okay, let's actually get art out there tomorrow, if at all possible. And I think that would be a fairly quick thing.

I mean, obviously, there would have to be legal and the structuring of a grant project itself and then figuring out, like, how, say, the historical society would be able to manage that. But but certainly, if we have, say, a 100,000 with the $60,000 request there, a 160,000, maybe a 150 of that is for grants themselves, and then 10,000 goes to the nonprofit to be able to hire an attorney to be able to manage that and create create contracts and everything like that that they wouldn't need so they don't have to pay out of pocket to see these things. And they were just so excited. They're like, anything that we can do to add history to the city would be incredible. So I I think it would be foolish of us not to take advantage of this two hundred and fiftieth opportunity, the sixtieth anniversary opportunity, and to do something like that.

Can I chime in real quick? I know that I think we discussed this before, or it's in the master plan, or it's in the framework we set up, where private businesses have a particular way they set up murals. So we, in your vision, I believe, would be looking at more public walls and spaces to do it correctly, right?

I Because we

couldn't do it on the

think private businesses have to pay for their own murals, correct? And we have to approve what they put up. Yes, yes. I just want to let you know that public walls.

And again, this is just a very loose structure. But I think that's one way to do it. If there are better ways in which you say, okay. You know, we might want to solicit certain businesses to do this. We might wanna think in this way.

We might just wanna open it up and say we have to have a business from each district. Or we might just say, well, we want it among the major three ways because that's where people drive. I'm I'm kind of open to those ideas, and I think that would be something that we'd have to, like, actually think through when we construct this program. But but I I just wanna see, like, something that's Costa Mesa focused, that's history inspired, and that really tries to affirm, I think, the best of what public public art does, which is kind of inspire and aspire for a civic identity and add to that feeling of community and actually create beauty within our city. And I think this is a kind of no brainer way in which we kind of sit here and, you know, hope I mean, God willing, things will go much better in the next year or couple years within the economy.

But hope for the possibility that once we get through the $6,000,000 deficit, we'll be able to be next in the line of park projects. Whereas we've heard from last month I'm sorry, I'm going on so long, but I'm just you can tell I'm impassioned. We heard last month from the community that so many artists wanna see art made here. So many people and members of our community would like to see more art added to our city and actually start to reflect and invoke that spirit of the city of the arts rather than just say, like, gosh, I I hope we can get to a master plan that has a good vision for this in five years' time so that we can, you know, convince council to make this happen at a certain point. Why not convince them to make it happen tomorrow?

You know, we we have to make some sort of recommendation. I don't think we're gonna be able to meet again before there's a a budget meeting at the city council level if I have that understanding correct. So I would just love to see that kind of be a repurposed line item for us to move forward and recommend to council. Whether or not they take it, whether or not it goes on, who knows? But at least we can make that formal recommendation. Have I convinced anyone?

I just have a question of staff. Can you tell me how many people are served with that $60,000 to the free events at? Do we have any idea?

Commissioner Ashnor, I will be bringing a report in August for this year, like how many tickets we gave out. It just depends on I don't have a number in my head right now, but I can definitely bring that back. Each price point is different for each organization, so I can just kinda put numbers together for you to bring back.

I I just have to agree with you, vice chair. That's a lot of money for Sagerstrom concerts concerts when we could be putting it out into the community. But I don't know if that's if that's the demand and you say that we're giving, you know, giving a lot of tickets away. But I'd like to have some more data on that as

I would just add that I like the idea. I'm just concerned that we're at a 100,000 foot level. And I don't know how the timing works, there may be time constraints. But I would love to have requests that the city manager allow a study session or something like that where we can present a more specific thing, where we identify potential sources of funding, potential locations, potential artists, so that there's something a little bit more concrete than because I love the idea of saying, yes, let's celebrate Costa Mesa two fifty. I think everyone agrees that that's great. But what does that really look like? And I don't know that we have anything really concrete, so I think we should spend the time to put a little bit more meat on the bones before we present something.

I agree with you Commissioner Ford. And I think these are all great ideas. I love murals. I would love to see more murals in Costa Mesa, both in public and private spaces. But I think this might be part of a larger conversation during the master plan budget for our master plan amendment.

Are we supposed to show up to the next city council meeting and ask them for more money? I'll show up in shades. Sorry. But yes, so just every month show up and say, hi, I'm on the arts commission and we need more money. Do you think that would work? Anybody? Yes? No? Okay. All right. Just checking.

Just to respond to the two previous comments. I mean, I fully agree. I'd love to really flesh it out. But I think at this point, you know, what we can do is just make a line item. Mean, I look at the master plan and please staff again or whoever's been involved since the beginning, correct me if I'm wrong. But there are various projects that literally had an objective and then a line item. And we continue to give that to the finance department year after year. And obviously, five years on, it's been built out. Like, we know what these programs are or what they're supposed to be. But I don't think there's any reason why we couldn't at least propose this as a part of the budget.

And then if it gets approved, really flesh out what the idea would be. Because we certainly have time. Just because we get 150 or whatever might be approved, if we get that at all, doesn't mean that come the new fiscal year in start July 1, is that correct? Yeah. July 1, we have to then put out a RFP.

We can take six months to think through it. And obviously, the difficulty and the time constraint is that there's not going to be any further meetings for us to have and make these recommendations about the budget. And furthermore, we can't even host a study session in the meantime because we have to wait for city manager approval. So I think it could be as simple something as simple as and and if you'll forgive me, I'm just going make the motion. I move that commission propose the creation of a public private mural initiative for fiscal year 2025 to 2026, and request that $160,000 be allocated to this purpose.

I'll second it.

Clarifying question, is that a new 160,000 or a repurposed 100

From the large scale installations.

So current 100,000 give or take that we currently have for large scale sculptures. Then if granted another 60,000 then that as well to repurpose it into this new program.

Correct. Yeah. Sorry.

So that is an amended motion to the original motion?

Yes. So I should move

So is that a substitute motion?

No. He's the maker of the motion.

Okay. Can I amend it then? Yes. Is that okay?

Would you like to repeat your motion, Vice Yes, please.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

So I move that the commission repurpose the $100,000 in large scale installations and request an additional $60,000 that would have been for large scale installations this year to fund the creation of a public private mural initiative for fiscal year 2025 to 2026.

Should we specify there would be for historical? Does it matter?

I think at this point it's

just Okay. Then I second Is

that correct? Yep.

Chair? We could go ahead and make any final comments before we vote. My

concern is a large sum of money for this pilot program, and that has been earmarked for large scale installations. I do like to think long term while I do sense the urgency to kind of make a big impression for all the celebrations for next year. I just think it's a large sum of money for that program.

Would the maker of the motion like to speak on it any further?

Yeah. I mean, think with $150,000 if we could raise private funds to match it or even ask businesses to match you know, this is a very general motion. So we really have full latitude to structure this in any which way we'd like. And it can be that there is matching funds required from private businesses or something of that sort. But I would love to see anywhere from five to 10 new murals up in our city by the end of, say, 2026. If not, by summer twenty twenty six. And I think that's fully reasonable and possible if we're able to kind of mobilize in that way. I understand it is a big jump, but I think this is my charge. Should be visionary, we should kind of charge in and make these decisions rather than kind of sitting around and waiting for another cycle to then kind of say, Okay, well maybe next time around we can propose something. And we'll see how it goes from there and there and there.

Does the second have a comment? Yes. I was

just going to say that I imagine that if we find out that five to 10 murals or whatever is done, it costs much less than 150,000 or $160,000 that those funds can then be either reduced or reallocated or what have you. As you said, we still have latitude with them. It's not as though it's, to pardon the pun, etched in stone. But yeah, go ahead.

Now we can open to any commissioners at this time for a comment.

I think it would be great to put up some art right away. I know we've been doing a lot of stuff. And I know that things take time, and there's red tape, and we're at this municipality and everything. But it would be wonderful to like when you guys did the butterfly area, I love that. I feel like we're stuck kind of in a money thing of, Okay, collecting money, making rules, and doing all that. And I'm excited just to get smart out there and do that. I think that I'm totally in.

Any final comments?

I have a question for staff. Just based on your expertise in a time of a significant budget constraint, is the council apt to approve significant new money for something that we don't have a lot of details about. Like, this is not part of the master plan. Not making any comments about the efficacy of it or obviously a wonderful idea, but really thinking about the fiscal constraints that the city faces, what would council's response be to us putting this as a recommendation for the budget?

Well, technically it's not new money. And the money that's being requested is $60,000 for next year is just in addition to what's already existing to the base for large scale installations. I guess a thought would be you can ask counsel to just change the recommendation right now. As according to the master plans for large scale installations, you can make a recommendation to say that can be used for public art as approved by commission. As simple as that.

And then as projects come up, we can bring them forward to you if you like. Or mean, I know Commissioner, Chair Dodarian's motion has been made. But that's new money. I don't know if it was technically be classified as new money as just a request to fund the master plan. It's about the initiative of which that money goes towards.

So, it could still be classified under the same initiative? My reference to new money just means stepping away from something that was already in the master plan and we already started and already had expended $20,000 on, what would counsel's appetite be to abandon that and replace it with something else that would it be categorized in the same way?

How the motion was framed was specifically for a new public private mural program, but that technically does change that initiative in the master plan that you would have to weigh counsel's I don't know what the appetite from counsel would be on that. And it's at the leisure of the commission and what recommendation they want to make to counsel.

I think also the thing is that the money oh, Oh, sorry. There we go. We still are waiting on the park and everything. So this money, I believe, is for the large scale whatever the stuff is allocated. It's there. It's just not being used right now, right? So in essence, we could get more money in the future for these things that we have allocated money for and not lose those things, correct? Lose the projects that we have funded that we're saying we're going to repurpose or take that money and use that now for large scale

structures.

Murals. Murals, thank you, or whatever it is. We can still do all the other things we want to do, probably. It's just we're having to hold on. We're waiting right now, aren't we? Because we can't do anything with those large scale funds at the moment because we're being held back by red tape. Is that correct?

Yes. The funding right now is not sufficient enough to move forward with that project. But the initiative, because it's specific in the master plan, is more of a title change than actual money change. The motion is technically clarifying a switch of an initiative, from what I understand.

Can I ask staff, how would you envision, from what you've heard right now, how this kind of initiative will impact not only our art specialist and what she does, in addition to working with planning and other departments, I mean, that's a whole ball of risk with staff time and money?

It's definitely a capacity workload discussion to be had, I think. And, if that was recommendation

of the commission, we would definitely dive deep into an analysis

think. Of what that would look like for her workload, and the processes and policies that would need to accompany that. And we'd have to do more of an analysis on what that looks like for her, and if that might be something where if she had to undertake that kind of program, would something else have to give? Just not to overwhelm her. She'll sit there and she'll say she won't complain about a thing, and she loves her job, but we just want to be mindful of definitely that and the capacity of that work.

I just might weigh in and say, you know, obviously, there's the procedural question that I think is certainly in the minds of the staff approach, like how do you actually make these things happen, of course, what time will it take, what's the precedent in the way in which But again, we, I think as a body, should kind of keep in mind that we're also the delegated legislative authority on this. And in fact, we can talk to our council members that appointed us. And if this is a successful project, and they like it, and they approve it in the first place, maybe there would actually be much higher appetite for more public art projects. And they would say, we really should prioritize, say, a sculpture garden park or something of this sort. Because this is just my fear with all these conversations, is that it's it's so piecemeal and so kind of focused on, okay, here's this piece and here's this piece, it's kind of package it together in a nice way that looks looks appropriate to counsel given, you know, kind of operational precedence and so on and so forth, that we're not actually making larger vision case and actually showing what's possible with the arts in the city.

And this is a sort of thing that in the large scheme of things, 1 and 60,000 is not major within a city budget. It is a significant amount. I'm not dismissing that by any means. But it can also have a huge outsized impact, especially in, you know, the middle of perhaps an economic downturn year, then a celebratory year. I think there is that kind of added, to use the very frank word, political benefit that anyone who serves in public life would say, yeah, I actually do want to improve the city, and I do want to see its beautification and be a part of the body that allowed that to happen or encouraged that.

So I I don't want us to be so limited in that way to say, well, we really have to take into consideration every other department and really trying to understand. As a commission, staff by all means, I understand, and and that will be real restraints that we have to deal with if if we move forward with this. But we have the the power as both the commission and as individual members appointed by by council members to lobby them both as a group by making recommendations and policy proposals as is laid out in municipal code, but also as individuals to say, like, look, if we make this successful, who knows where we could go next? Maybe we could actually get private funds. Maybe we could then really get some excitement in the city, either in the council level or in the public level to come out and say, wow, this is wonderful.

Why haven't we done this before? Where's the more art? How do we make this happen? And so I just want us to think, this is that first initiative step. Yes, we will eat into money perhaps set aside for a sculpture garden park, but I don't think that's the biggest question at this moment. Because at best, in the best possible circumstance, we're not getting into to that until '27 '26, '27, if not later. I mean, frankly, would be quite a procedure, I think, to start a new park in the first place. I have no idea what that looks like. So so that's my kind of urging. Let's let's be a little bold. Let's take on a new initiative and actually, champion being the city of the arts and see what we can do in the next year.

If there's no further questions, we can go ahead and call for the question.

I did have a question. So, if monies aren't spent for a particular line item, is that carried over to the following fiscal year? Like for the large scale installation? And is there a possibility of earmarking a percentage of that towards a mural program?

So anything that's left now, so roughly 100,000, it's a little like $99,000 We request specifically for items that roll over, especially in terms of funds like that, we request it through procedures that we have internally to roll those over like we did this with the previous year. And then next year sorry, repeat the second part of the question.

Is there a possibility to earmark a percentage of the large scale fund towards public mural program?

So that would have to be part of the motion. As it's stated right now, the motion, that's not included.

You had a great way of putting the motion, like a general can you repeat it? This is a suggestion.

I do also want to add that you can always add another motion after this vote. But what I have right now is the large scale installations, the 100,000 funds, be repurposed to public private mural art program, and request an additional 60,000 to fund and expand the publicprivate mural art program.

Chair, would you like us to call for the question? Or is there substitute motion on the table? Okay. Call for the question, Chair?

Yes,

please. Okay. You may vote on your dice. Motion carries four two. So to clarify, Motion to approve. It passes.

If there's any further comments on this item or recommendations that you can suggest otherwise.

Okay. Thank you, everyone.

We move

on to the next item?

Okay. Are there any closing comments from commissioner staff?

I do want to thank the commissioners who attended the Earth Day event last Saturday. It was just a great event. It was nice to see a lot of you being out there and being supportive and and doing some outreach and interacting with the community. I do wanna also just quickly mention in regards to the sculpture move or the sculpture that we have over here at City Hall, we are looking to relocate that to a a more prominent location as discussed, with the mother of the artists. And that is in the works, and we are looking to make that relocation. And we've also kind of reached out to the school district and get some more information on the playhouse issue. So, we can provide an update later. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Gruner. Any other comments? Okay. Well, thank you everyone for an enlightening evening. I will now adjourn our meeting at I have 08:57PM. 09:02. Well, my

clock's off.

09:02. We'll meet at our next regularly scheduled meeting at 06/05/2025. Thank you, everyone.