HomeMy WebLinkAboutSS3 - Master Arts & Culture Plan - Written CommentsReceived After Agenda Printed
November 25, 2014
Agenda Item No. SS3
November 25, 2014, City Council Agenda Item Comments
The following comments on items on the Newport Beach City Council agenda are submitted by:
Jim Mosher ( iimmosher(a)yahoo.com ), 2210 Private Road, Newport Beach 92660 (949- 548 -6229)
Item SS3. Arts and Culture Master Plan
As of Friday, there were no handouts or links to additional information available to help either
the Council or the public prepare to comment on this presentation.
That seems characteristic of the way in which this plan has been largely developed in private
and sprung on an unprepared public. One might think that before launching on a plan, the
process would have profited from a preliminary attempt to reach a public consensus on what the
City is attempting to accomplish in the arts, and why, and only then would a plan have been
developed and offered as a way of achieving those goals.
By way of background, on March 2013, in adopting Policy 1 -13, also without preliminary
discussion, the City Council created a dedicated "Public Arts and Cultural Facilities Fund"
funded by developer fees for purchasing permanent art and art facilities. Shortly thereafter,
$100,000 from the General Fund was transferred into the Capital Improvement Program budget
as project C8002036 ( "Arts and Culture Master Plan "), and later rebudgeted into the FY2014 -15
CIP with the description "A consultant will retained to create a master plan for arts and culture in
Newport Beach. The plan will include a comprehensive review of potential and existing facilities,
development of collections, possible governance structures, and financial requirements to
support plan elements."
$40,000 of the project budget was allocated towards a six -month contract, C -5829, issued as
the result of the direction given by the City Council at its April 8, 2014, Study Session, in which
the same consultant who had been retained to coordinate the Sculpture in the Civic Center Park
project (also with minimal public input) seems to have been chosen without benefit of a request
for proposals.
Since the present agenda mentions the City Arts Commission's meeting "earlier in November,"
and since copies of an "Master Arts and Culture Plan" were distributed there as part of Item
V.B.1, I assume the subject of the present meeting will be the same document, which seems to
be the culmination of contract C -5829 even though the Scope of Services seemed considerably
broader, including a Phase 2 which has been relegated to "Next Steps."
Although called a "Master Plan," that document does not seem to me to be plan, at least not of
the same sort as the Balboa Village Master Plan or more recently the Bicycle Master Plan, both
facilitated by outside consultants, but both developed and refined through a series of open
public meetings. The present "plan" seems to me to be more of a paid outside "evaluation,"
more like the Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel's study of Balboa Village or the
recent "planning charrette' of Mariners Mile conducted by the Congress for the New Urbanism's
California Chapter. As such, it is ideas, which may or may not be of interest, being imposed on
the city rather than something addressing wants arising organically from the residents. And
having the evaluation privately conducted by a past and possible future beneficiary of the City's
arts largesse, based on private consultation with other past and potential future beneficiaries
does not seem like a proper use of public resources to me.