THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603300107
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JO-ANN CLEGG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
The City Council last week agreed to dip into a tourism fund to find an additional $41,000 for this summer's Boardwalk International Arts Festival.
That brings to $100,000 the amount of money the city will contribute to expanding the recently renamed, widely acclaimed Boardwalk Art Show. Sponsored by the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, the event has brought artists from across the nation to Virginia Beach for more than 40 years.
The council approved the additional funding on a 9-2 vote, with Nancy K. Parker and Robert K. Dean opposing it. They expressed concern over the manner in which the funding request was made rather than any lack of support for the event itself.
``We can't pick and choose who can come directly to council (with funding requests),'' Parker said, explaining her vote.
At issue are two major questions: how and if the city will fund festivals run by private nonprofit organizations and how requests for funds from all private organizations are to be channeled.
For the past several years, funding requests by charitable organizations have been made through Community Organization Incentive Grants (COIG). An 11-member review and allocation committee appointed by the City Council decides which programs to fund.
Requests from arts groups go through the Arts and Humanities Commission, which also consists of 11 members appointed by the council.
Although supportive of the festival, the Arts and Humanities Commission, which gave the festival a one-time $25,000 grant last year, did not provide any funding this year.
``We've never made it a practice to fund the Boardwalk Art Show,'' commission chair Flo McDaniel told council members three weeks ago. ``It's just that we see our mission as funding arts groups and classes as opposed to festivals.''
One purpose for channeling requests through COIG and the Arts and Humanities Commission was to shorten City Council agendas by reducing the number of individual groups that would approach council directly for funding.
Dean, a member of the COIG committee, was especially vocal in his concerns over the arts festival funding requests.
``Are we now supposed to tell other organizations (who ask for additional funding) to go directly to council?'' he asked.
For at least the third time in recent weeks, Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf explained patiently that the timing of the June festival and confusion over whether the funds were included in the 1995-96 budget contributed to the Arts Center's need to go directly to the council.
``It's like they come between budget years,'' the visibly tired mayor explained. ``We're winding up one year's budget and haven't started on the next yet.'' The city's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.
The additional funds for this year's show will come from the Tourism Growth and Investment Fund, which is fed by special hotel, restaurant and amusement taxes citywide to fund tourism projects such as the Virginia Marine Science Museum expansion.
In approving the motion, the council made clear that several issues need to be clarified before money is appropriated for next year's festival. Among those are the impact of this year's event on city revenues, the path that future funding requests will take and how the arts festival should be funded. by CNB