This story was originally published by Fresnoland.
Fresno city officials shared more details of their plans to make whole the Measure P arts grants recipients missing all or some of their grant money at a parks and arts commission meeting Monday night — and that will likely include temporarily reallocating general fund dollars from the city’s parks department.
Monday night marked the first meeting of the city’s nine-member Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission — responsible for approving Measure P arts grant recommendations each year — since the arts community was rocked earlier this month with news of an ex-Fresno Arts Council employee’s alleged embezzlement of at least $1.5 million in Measure P arts funds.
Fresnoland is choosing not to identify any suspect or suspects in the case until formal criminal charges are filed.
City Manager Georgeanne White told commissioners on Monday that if the city doesn’t recover any money from the Fresno Arts Council in a “reasonable amount of time,” it may opt to temporarily draw money from the Parks, After School, Recreation and Community Services Department. White didn’t give a specific timeline for when the city will pull that lever but told Fresnoland after Monday’s meeting that they’re “getting close.”
She added that the city would later repay that money to the parks department from what it recovers from the Fresno Arts Council, and/or future Measure P revenue. White also said the city is in the process of filing a claim with the Arts Council’s insurance — though the “problem,” she said, is that if someone is arrested and is found to have committed theft, “that’s going to be excluded from a lot of insurance coverages.”
That information came after a tense exchange between White and PRAC Chairperson Kimberly McCoy, who said some blame appears to lie with the city for not putting adequate guardrails in place to prevent the alleged theft.
“There were safeguards,” said White of the agreement with the Arts Council.
“Well then they were not followed,” McCoy responded.
“They were followed,” White fired back.
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if they were followed,” McCoy said, “because 1.5 million is missing.”
White went on to say the contract with the Arts Council required yearly audits, the first of which came due in September 2025 — a deadline the Arts Council failed to meet, after which the city opted to withhold further grant funding.
That was far from the only tense moment at City Hall on Monday night, where 19 local artists and nonprofit leaders aired out frustrations with the process and urged city leaders to take their concerns and recommendations seriously.
Artists reiterate longstanding transparency concerns
Multiple commenters reminded members of the PRAC and city staff that they’d sounded alarms over transparency concerns with the Fresno Arts Council last September.
“I’m not going to be told one more damn time that my observations and the community’s observations — that are valid — are not valid,” said Alicia Rodriguez, co-founder of Labyrinth Art Collective.
Some of the grantees that addressed the PRAC on Monday were among the approximately 33 that have yet to see a dime of the money they were promised by the Fresno Arts Council in the second round of Measure P arts grants last year.
In the case of Lori Hunter, an administrative officer with the Fresno City and County Historical Society who addressed the PRAC on Monday, her organization received a check from the Arts Council — only it bounced.
The 33 unpaid awards are based on data provided to the City of Fresno by the Fresno Arts Council, which White said city staff are still working to independently verify.
Those records suggest there’s also 98 awardees that have received partial awards from the Arts Council. The total amount left to be paid out to those 131 recipients adds up to just under $1.6 million as of Feb. 6, the Arts Council spreadsheet indicates.
Some of the commenters on Monday also came with suggestions for the city as it takes over the Measure P arts grants administration indefinitely.
Five speakers urged the city to create a Cultural Affairs Department to assist with the grant administration, following the lead of other major California cities like Los Angeles and San Diego that already have these departments.
“I think the city needs to create a Cultural Affairs Department that knows what it’s doing,” said Amy Kitchener, executive director of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, “and hire a professional Director of Cultural Affairs who can oversee this process.”
‘Any experience in judging artistic merit’
White had shared her own suggestions of how things might run in future grant cycles earlier in the meeting.
No clear timeline was shared for when the next grant cycle will begin, which in the past two years has kicked off in March. But part of why the city is looking to make artists and organizations whole with general fund parks money in the short-term, White said, is to avoid holding up the third grant cycle indefinitely.
White also reiterated on Monday that the city’s administration and the PARCS Department don’t “profess to have any experience in judging artistic merit.”
“We would be very interested in having somebody from outside the city be involved in that,” White added, saying that she personally is suggesting that the city turn to reviewers “outside of the area” but with expertise in arts and culture to help judge proposals while circumventing conflicts of interest for local experts who may also wish to apply for the funding.
As for the current grant cycle, White said the city administration hopes to extend recipients’ deadlines to extend one year from whatever date they receive their grant — rather than the original June 30 deadline — though she said no final decisions have been made on that yet.
What’s next for the PRAC?
McCoy said on Monday the commission will take back up the discussions of its Cultural Arts Subcommittee at the PRAC’s next meeting in March.
The subcommittee drew criticism from the arts community in the last grant cycle for meeting behind closed doors for most of its lifetime.
In response to the criticism, that committee volunteered to make its final meeting compliant with the Brown Act, California’s open meetings law.
But that committee dissolved after the grant cycle concluded, and now must be reappointed before it can resume work on guidelines for the next grant cycle — and confirm whether it will continue to meet and share its documents publicly.
At the PRAC’s January meeting, the commissioners directed staff with the Fresno City Attorney’s Office to draft a resolution allowing the subcommittee to remain “ad hoc” so that it can continue to meet as frequently as needed.
Though ad hoc subcommittees in the City of Fresno have previously eschewed Brown Act requirements — raising both ethical and legal questions among experts — commissioners with the PRAC have voiced support for the subcommittee to continue voluntarily opening meetings to and sharing documents with the public, as it did at the very end of the previous grant cycle.
“I’ve been asking for PRAC to appoint the Cultural Arts Subcommittee since December,” said PRAC Vice Chair Laura Ward, a proponent of making the subcommittee meetings public. “In December, many community members spent time and energy contributing their thoughts about improving the grant process. With no PRAC Cultural Arts Subcommittee, there’s no mechanism to propose updated grant guidelines for approval by the commission, and then recommendation to the city council.”
The next meeting of the PRAC is scheduled for March 16.
