Should city take over Maitland Art Center?

The next workshop with the City Council and Art & History Museums — Maitland will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 10, in the Maitland City Council Chambers.

Community members weighed in Monday on how Maitland should work to cut costs, but keep culture in as it moves forward with talks of who should manage the Maitland Art Center.

On March 13, there was a workshop between the Maitland City Council and Art & History Museums — Maitland (A&H) to address concerns raised by Councilman Phil Bonus as to the cost effectiveness of A&H’s management. At the March 26 City Council meeting, community members provided their thoughts on the issue.

Sixteen speakers — taking up more than an hour of meeting time — spoke about what they want to see happen regarding the management of A&H.

“I’m trying to stir a dialogue with MAHA (A&H’s previous name) and the community at large as of how to best run and preserve the gem that it is,” Bonus said.

Citizens reacted to Bonus’ initial proposal of taking the Maitland Art Center under control of the city’s Leisure Services Department. This, he said, would give the city the ability to run the center in a more revenue-neutral manner to help balance the city’s budget, instead of spending $425,000 to fund A&H and seeing no direct return on investment.

“I haven’t heard an idea that bad in a long time,” resident Gus Bobes said, on the government getting involved with running the arts center. He said that arts and the city should always operate as separate entities.

Others offered similar sentiments, saying that Maitland Art Center founder Andre Smith always intended for the center to be run for the art community by artists, not by city officials.

“Andre Smith believed that art should be free and be explored; my concern is that if we gave control to the city, would we lose the elements of the arts that Andre Smith lived and died for?” said Daniel Van Horn, a historian of Andre Smith.

Before the government offers to take the center over, one resident said Council members should instead pinpoint problems and allow A&H an opportunity to fix them.

“If the financial situation is as bad as it is, maybe it’s time to hand the keys over to the artists that have it… maybe its time for the art community to manage it to get rid of the financial burden on the city,” resident Butch Charlan said.

A&H Director Andrea Bailey Cox said being financially independent is the organization’s ultimate goal.

“We are on this path toward financial independence as we worked out in our initial lease with the city, but now with all of this, we are trying to be innovative to get to that path even quicker than we anticipated,” she said.

A&H’s lease agreement with the city, if no change is made, is set to automatically renew for 51 years on Oct. 1.

The last scheduled workshop regarding the creation and standards of the Downtown Maitland Zoning District will be held at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, March 30, in the Maitland City Council Chambers. The public is encouraged to attend to have their voices heard in what could be the final work session on the issue. The zoning plans are slated to be voted on by the Council at its next meeting, April 9.

Other citizens said that the community should hear out Bonus’ proposal and realize that he is offering it up with the best intentions.

“I think efficiency is a big issue, and that’s what we need to look into,” resident John Peele said, “and the city could be very helpful.”

At the Council and A&H’s second workshop, scheduled for April 10, both sides hope to come in with more financial figures to help sort out the best way to proceed. Councilwoman Bev Reponen said the Council needs more numbers and less emotion to make a sound decision.

Mayor Howard Schieferdecker said he hopes the city and A&H will be able to reach a compromise that will make both sides happy.

“We want to preserve them and have them flourish, but we need to be able to afford it,” he said. “… It’s going to be a hard year, but we’re going to be successful and we’re going to make it work.”