Cultural institutions in Queens and throughout the city are fighting for their lives to stave off large-scale funding cuts that leaders say would devastate the organizations.
Eight cultural groups in Queens that are part of the 34-member Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) could see the funding they receive from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) slashed by roughly 42 percent if proposed cuts go through for the (FY) 2010 budget.
“The cuts that we are talking about with the city are so large and so quick that they are really crippling,” said Susan Lacerte, executive director of the Queens Botanical Garden. Her organization saw its DCA funding cut from $1.16 million in FY 08 to $953,094 in FY 09, and it is facing another cut in FY 10 that would bring its funding to $745,151.
In addition to the Queens Botanical Gardens, the other members of the CIG – Flushing Town Hall, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL), Museum of the Moving Image, New York Hall of Science, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens Museum of Art and Queens Theatre in the Park – are also facing severe cuts.
For the two years FY 09 and FY 10, the institutions would receive between 36 percent and 58 percent less in DCA funding. In FY 08, the eight institutions received roughly $8.4 million from the DCA, and that amount could be slashed by 42 percent to $4.86 million in FY 10.
Citywide, the 34 CIG members lost about $15 million in funding in FY 09, and they could lose another $18 million in FY 10 unless a budget agreement restores the funds to the institutions.
The FY 09 cuts caused the CIG members to lay off 500 employees – a number that could rise to 600 with frozen positions – and furlough another 1,000 positions, according to Arnold Lehman, President of the CIG and Director of the Brooklyn Museum. If the proposed budget cuts go through, the CIGs could lose an additional 500 jobs and have to put between 1,200 and 1,500 employees on furlough, according to Lehman.
“I think it’s very accurate to say that not only is this a potential cultural and artistic disaster for the city of New York, but it’s also a very, very serious economic threat,” Lehman said.
At the Queens Museum of Art (QMA), Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl said that if the proposed cuts go through for FY 2010, it would reduce the amount of funding the Queens Museum received from the DCA from $1,251,500 in FY 08 to $713,390 in FY 10. Finkelpearl said the reduction would cause the museum to cut about 25 percent of its staff, scrap programs for youth and seniors, change its hours and reduce security.
The CIGs are asking the Mayor and the City Council to restore the $18 million in cuts this year as well an additional $10 million from last year that would go towards a job restoration and rehiring program, according to Lehman.
Although some people have suggested that the institutions either begin charging or raise their predominantly modest fees to bring in additional revenue, Lehman said that charging community members who already pay taxes that help fund the institutions is not the answer.
“To me it’s counterproductive,” Lehman said. “We want everyone in the City of New York to use our facilities and to grow by using our facilities and to increase these to a level that would account for the displacement of these funds is so far beyond the reality that I don’t understand how one can have a conversation about that that really is effective.”
Meanwhile, the cuts are hitting Queens institutions even harder since the eight Queens CIG institutions, which serve more than the 2.28 million people in the borough, receive only roughly $2.88 per capita arts support – less than half of what any other borough receives. Brooklyn receives $6.35 per capita, Staten Island gets $8.73 per capita, the Bronx $9.73 and Manhattan $18.05
“That’s ridiculous,” said Queens City Councilmember Leroy Comrie. “That’s unfair balance due to some tricky or deliberate calculations being done by the DCA that doesn’t match the needs of the borough.”
Comrie said that he understands why Manhattan would be much higher with the different institutions that attract visitors from around the world, but he believes Queens is still on the short end of the stick.
“It’s still unfair to Queens that we are not getting equal or a fair share of the value for institutions that have been proven to work,” Comrie said.
