Trenton Redux

Public Subsidies for the Arts

The City of Trenton's subsidy of the Artworks building is a major expenditure for a city of 85,000 souls. In "Economics are a Bummer" we estimated the direct cost to Trenton taxpayers of $170,000 a year. That worked out to $467 per student in the latest spring term.

Even a die hard advocate of public arts subsidies should recognize that this is a shaky value proposition for the taxpayers of Trenton. I am, and I do.

By this analysis, I do not intend to dismiss the real benefits of the college’s presence it Trenton. I also respect the contributions of people like Lisa Levine and Lisa Kasabach, who invest enormous energy and skill into this community. But it does point to the current arrangement’s absurdly inefficient use of public resources. In the end, this should be about programs, not buildings.

HHG is working with the city and county to find alternative spaces for the college and community groups that would allow the existing programs to continue at a much lower cost to the taxpayers. If the Artworks board would stop the political fight to save their tenancy in a specific building, and instead focused on the public dialog around how to save the programs, by helping find alternative, more-cost effective spaces, this process would move much more quickly.

Indeed, if you favor arts funding you should oppose the current subsidy of Artworks as bad public policy. At the heart of the rationale for public arts funding is the idea that it catalyzes additional funding from corporations, foundations, and individual contributors.

For example, the NJ State Council of the Arts (NJSCA) web site proclaims: “Historically, grant recipients over-match the Council's funding nearly 15:1.” NJSCA sets a limit on operating grant requests at 25% of an organization’s total operating budget. Operating grant awards are rarely more than half that, around 12.5%.

If we take the Artworks board’s request at face value, the City of Trenton is being asked to provide an operating grant to the Artworks organization.

But where's the match? For a public grant of $170,000, you’d expect to see an arts organization with an ongoing annual operating budget of approximately $1.36 million. If Artworks had such a budget, and devoted even a small fraction of it to directly serving the Trenton community, the City wouldn't be looking to develop the site. Certainly HHG wouldn't be engaged in redeveloping the building.

However, Artworks won’t be able to show even a tiny fraction of this activity, because the organization effectively ceased operations in 2002. This is the uncomfortable reality of the situation.

If the Artworks board made the same demands in a grant application as they’re making on the City of Trenton, it would be rejected out of hand.

posted by Michael @ 5:39 PM