Cultural organizations throughout Queens and the city are breathing a little sigh of relief as the drastic budget cuts that threatened to wipe out almost half of some organizations’ operating budgets were averted.
The City Council and the Mayor restored nearly $21 million of the proposed $30 million in cuts to the city’s Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), averting – at least for now – widespread layoffs and program cuts.
“Everyone realizes that in times like these everyone needs to share the burden, but I’m pleased we were able to restore the vast majority of the cuts across the city, and I think it’s a good budget in such a difficult climate for our cultural institutions,” said City Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer, who chairs the Council’s committee on cultural affairs, libraries and international intergroup relations.
Locally, the Queens Museum of Art (QMA) received more than $300,000 in one-time restorations, putting this year’s operating funding from the city at $884,000 – a slight increase from what it received this year, according to Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the QMA.
“Clearly this is going to save some people’s jobs, allow us to do more programming and keep the place open and clean,” Finkelpearl said.
At the Queens Botanical Garden (QBG), the restoration meant that the cuts originally pegged for nearly $400,000 will materialize into about $103,000 worth of cuts, according to Tim Heimerle, director of development and marketing at the QBG.
“This has saved a chunk, but there is still a chunk that we have to figure out,” said Heimerle.
Both organizations are in the process of determining how the restoration will affect their plans moving forward in terms of staffing and programming.
Although the institutions were happy that the proposed cuts were averted, they are taking a conservative approach based on a number of variables including the yet-to-be-finalized state budget and possible mid-year gap closings.
In addition, they are already looking at next year, which will be starting out with significantly less funding in the executive budget because the restorations were one-time only.
Dr. Arnold Lehman, who is the President of the CIG and Director of the Brooklyn Museum, said the CIG has engaged in and will continue to engage in discussions with city leaders to try to come up with a formula where the baseline budgets don’t fluctuate as much.
“We have to come to some intelligent, appropriate and workable resolutions because cultural organizations don’t work on a year-to-year program budget,” Lehman said.
