Think Out Loud

Portland will stop funding Regional Arts and Culture Council

By Sage Van Wing (OPB)
July 27, 2023 3:53 p.m. Updated: Aug. 2, 2023 8:19 p.m.

Broadcast: Thursday, July 27

Since 1995, Portland has funded the independent Regional Arts and Culture Council to provide arts education and advocacy, and to administer grant funding to local artists. Last week Commissioner Dan Ryan told RACC the city wants to do that work itself. The city provides over $6 million of RACC’s $7.5 million budget and will let that contract expire at the end of the year. Carol Tatch, one of the Co-Executive Directors of RACC, and Debby Garman, RACC Board Chair, join us to talk about what’s next for RACC, and what they think city arts funding should look like.

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Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to a seismic event in the Portland area arts community. Last week, Portland Commissioner Dan Ryan announced that the city was going to end its contract with RACC. That’s the Regional Arts and Culture Council. For nearly 30 years, Portland has been the main funder of the nonprofit, which in turn has been one of the main arts and culture grant makers in the region. Now it seems Portland is going to disperse arts tax money on its own. Where that leaves RACC remains to be seen. I’m joined now by Carol Tatch, who’s RACC’s co-executive director and the chief of external operations and Debby Garman, who is the treasurer and interim chair of the Board. Welcome to you both.

Carol Tatch: Hello, Dave.

Debby Garman: Thank you.

Miller: Carol Tatch, first. As Willamette Week wrote, the writing was on the wall for months. Some members of the Arts Council might argue for years that the city would pull its support from the Council. Did you basically know this was coming?

Tatch: I would say we have been aware of certain tensions with the Regional Arts and Culture Council in the city of Portland. And we have leaned into the limits of our ability to address them. Primarily, RACC sits in this space through an intergovernmental agreement, signed 28 years ago with various facets of the Portland metro government space. And since that time and through a contract, we have been leading this city and Multnomah County, Clackamas County, Washington County, Metro, in a space in the city of Portland, in a space of coming to understand what’s needed in the arts and culture landscape, how and what our artists and creatives need and literally have been doing this for nearly 30 years. That work has only gotten better. Many in the community come up to me and say how finally they have the RACC that they’ve always wanted, that they have an organization that is responsive to what’s happening out there. We center community in all of the work that we do, all of our decisions are made by community reviewers who are paid.

So we, really RACC is that space and is what the Intergovernmental Agreement relied on. At the same time, we’ve seen the city of Portland move into a space of increasing autonomy, primarily around how the dollars are spent and where they go. We continue to meet and exceed metrics through our contract with the city. So, again, we sit in the space of just, one not really understanding, since we are doing what we were lifted up to do, and have continued to do, in increasingly more valuable ways, that sit in the space of using private dollars and public dollars in ways that really support community the way it needs to be.

So, yeah, there’s some surprise. However, I would say because of the lessening of the attachments and the conversations, not really being able to have deep engagement with either Commissioner Rubio or Commissioner Ryan and their teams, to see us their space. We have not had a meeting with Commissioner Ryan, that we have set in his portfolio since January 1st…

Miller: And if I could just be clear, so you did request meetings?

Tatch: Yes. Oh yeah. January 1st, as soon as we found out that he was our new Arts Commissioner, I sent an email inviting that conversation, as we did with Commissioner Rubio. And again, there’s that ongoing effort to even be in a space where we can have collaboration and conversations.

Miller: Was there any reply?

Tatch: Just no meetings with the commissioner, the one our board requested from our May board meeting was the one that was on Friday, which was not a meeting with the commissioner. The commissioner read off a statement. There was very little engagement around why, our boards and RACCs placement and his space as the city Arts and Culture Commissioner. So no, we still need a space. We have not had that meeting, though asked for repeatedly.

Miller: Debby Garman, in announcing the break with RACC, after the end of the current fiscal year, meaning June 30th, 2024, Commissioner Dan Ryan said this: “This new model will enable the city to work with multiple service providers, establish stronger performance measures and reduce its investment in loosely defined administration and overhead expenses.” As the treasurer of the board, I’d like to give you a chance to respond to that.

Garman: Well, it seems to me that honestly, the city has gotten a major bargain from the work that RACC has done on its behalf. The team at RACC, who are in charge of public arts administration and grants dispersals are experts with a lot of years behind them in connections with the depth of the arts community in the Portland metro area. And I think they’re gonna be hard pressed to find people with that same skill set, and nobody at RACC has been paid luxurious wages. You can believe it, and the nature of the current contract that is finishing up has been a consistent sort of squeezing reduction of administrative monies available for the same work or more work being asked for in the projects.

So RACC, to my mind, has been a very thrifty investment, and a realm of treasure and expertise that the city may not be fully aware of.

Miller: So, when the commissioner says that RACC has loosely defined administrative and overhead expenses and implies that there is a lack of strong performance measures, you simply think he is off base?

Garman: I think that’s not correct, yes.

Miller: Carol Tatch, will this decision by the city of Portland have any impact on current recipients of RACC grants?

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Tatch: No, because we run two grant cycles per year. We just finished our last one and joyously let the community know that over the course of the year, we were able to put out 7.8 million. And again, this covers not just the city of Portland, but all of our IGA partners, in their spaces as well. So for FY 23, those grants have gone out. FY 24, we just opened up our Arts3C grant cycle. Those funds will be coming in to go back out. It only affects through June 30th of 2024 and still sits in a space of concern because we developed our grant making and awarding programs, awards through our public art program, grants through our grants program, over years.

We have, as Commissioner Ryan lifted up in the room on Friday, 11 months for the city to do this very same thing when they currently have no defined processes. We asked in the room, nothing’s been planned for how they are going to be doing this work. And RACC runs a spectrum of services for the city through our contract. So there’s concern in that space as well. It’s not, you can’t snap your fingers and get it done. The community invested in RACC in our now 28 year timeline. And really should be asking those questions of the ‘abracadabra-ness’ of what we’re looking at now.

Miller: I want to make sure that our audience understands exactly the impact of what you’re talking about because most of our listeners, we don’t live in the world of requests for proposals and grants but people do go to museums, go to concerts, go to galleries. Obviously, many people make art of various kinds themselves. But what are you saying that the potential impact could be for everyday Portlanders?

Tatch: What we can foresee and expect out of a process that is not fully formed is that there will be gaps and holes. The net that RACC has woven over time to ensure that artists and creatives from every aspect of the diaspora have an opportunity to be funded, to have their voices lifted, to participate, is at risk, because the city does not have that same overlay. If we’ve put out $7.8 million last fiscal year, those went specifically out to community selected organizations and individuals to do the work that they say they want to do, to ensure that community is imbued with arts and culture. That is at risk, right? The processes for making sure… RACC was brought in specifically, in the most recent years, to ensure that our work was done with equity at a level that the city cannot maintain. We were told that. Our standards are now ones that other organizations follow, rather than a step back in that is not going to deliver the same product or the same access and engagement, and community trust is the biggest thing that RACC has been able to garner over this time. And it’s very specific, there is a reason for RACCs purpose in the world and in this process, in the Pacific Northwest. We were brought into the space to do exactly what we’re doing.

Miller: What have you heard from arts organizations, from large or small ones, or individual artists in the last five days?

Tatch: Concern, a lot of concern over why this is happening, how this could happen. What can they do to stop it from happening? A lot of support from communities saying we don’t understand, how can we help you? What are some tools, what can you offer? How can we turn this boat because it’s not heading in the right direction? So a lot of love, quite frankly.

There are always these folks who and will be, because we are a funder, who said, well, I didn’t get funding, so tear it down. But that doesn’t speak to the larger voice of the community, which is, something’s wrong. What preceded this, what information? And we just don’t have it because we haven’t received it. We don’t know why. We don’t have a loose administration here. All of our dollars are accounted for in our reports to the city and our reports to the counties. And our overhead is disastrously low and I say, disastrously because we do not ask for the government limits on what we could. And we have, over the years, understood that we have short-shifted ourselves, right?

However, RACC sits as the regional Arts and Culture Council to uplift community and engage, and there’s an aspect of our ability as a nonprofit to raise dollars, to help shore that up, so that government entities that find themselves in strife still have an outlet for having their arts and culture work engaged on. That is the value of the public-private partnership that was started to create RACC in 1995.

Miller: Debby Garman, I want to turn to hard questions of money here. The city contributed more than 80% of your budget, most of that through the Portland Arts Tax. Can RACC survive as we know it without that city money?

Tatch: And may I answer this? Debby, I know you were asked, but if I could just pop this in Dave, the arts tax dollars do not support RACC. The dollars that come into our organization go right back out in grants. So that is not a source of income for us.

Miller: But it’s money that passes from taxpayers - if I understand it correctly, correct me if I’m wrong -  to the city of Portland. The city of Portland gives it to you and you give it out as grants, and doesn’t that make the lion’s share of the money that you give out?

Tatch: Oh, absolutely, yes.

Miller: So OK, and if you want you can set aside for a second the question about the arts tax itself as a particular pot of money. But how can an organization that loses 80% of the money that it spends, how can it survive?

Tatch: I will lean in to say it’s by being nimble, right? Our opportunity is that we currently function on a contract basis. We have contracts with all of our IGA partners. We have contracts with private organizations. And we lean into, what are the other ways that RACCs can meet its mission and goals? The city of Portland is one aspect of the IGA, not all four. It is the lion’s share, because we do the lion share of the work for the city of Portland. They have the dollars to put out, they pull them through us and we put them back out. What does it look like for RACC to find other contracted partners and really put pedal to the metal, for our work with and our fundraising space to ensure that we are still able to respond to the needs of our creatives in the community? So I would say a lot relies on nimbleness and also strategic planning and thinking, having our board’s guidance and leadership and leaning in on that along with I would say the whole RACC team and especially our leadership team to help refocus. I would sit more in the space of our community having the opportunity to lean in to demand a different outcome because of how they have been served in this time.

Miller: Debby Garman, as interim board chair of this nonprofit and treasurer, what do you think would be lost if RACC were dissolved, if RACC did not survive this hit?

Garman: I think that the vision and goals of elected city leadership and the bureaucracy is very different from the community engagement that RACC has offered. I think that the funding will flow differently. The texture and richness of the Portland Metro’s arts community will be diminished, honestly, because of the expertise and heart and vision that the RACC team has engaged in. I mean, the period of COVID was very challenging and huge new relationships were brokered during that time. Many, many people who hadn’t received funding, there were relationships created and small dollar amounts allowed artists to survive. I do not think that the vision of elected leadership in a city encompasses that sort of detailed, nuanced, community relationship. I think that the values of self promotion, visibility in the community may be substantially different.

So I think that the richness of engagement in arts and what Portland is able to bring forward may well be diminished unless RACC can figure out how to fill some of those gaps that Carol mentioned.

Miller: Debby Garman and Carol Tatch, thanks very much.

Tatch: Thank you.

Garman: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: Debby Garman is treasurer and interim board chair of the regional arts and culture council. Carol Tatch is its co-executive director, chief of external operations of RACC.

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