Could Measure P funding have kept Fresno’s popular downtown monthly event from breaking into separate nights? Two leading players suggest that could be the case.
By Doug Hoagland
ArtHop might not have split into two events if a downtown agency had won a $200,000 Measure P grant to manage the street fair that grew up around the monthly downtown gathering, two key people have told The Munro Review. The Fresno City Council Member who pushed for the split strongly disagrees.
Despite the opposing views, the result is the same: Measure P, a taxpayer-approved initiative to boost arts and culture in Fresno, was not used to support ArtHop, one of the city’s most popular cultural events held downtown – a part of the city officials keep working to revitalize, in part, by attracting crowds to cultural events.
The story of how and why this happened – and the disputed implications for ArtHop – is one more example of the difficulty in rolling out the first-ever Measure P arts grants. On Aug. 19, the city’s Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission – empowered by Measure P to approve grants – took a vote that finalized 112 applicants that will receive $9.4 million. But the Commission never considered the $200,000 grant application from the Downtown Partnership because the Fresno Arts Council did not accept it in a dispute that kept it from being evaluated and moved along in the funding process.
Two days after the Commission finished its work, city officials held a news conference to announce a new name and a new day for the street fair, finalizing the split.
Before and after that announcement, the assessment that Measure P could have prevented the split came from Mike Osegueda and Elliott Balch. Osegueda is president and founder of Fresno Street Eats, which organizes food trucks in the south Fulton brewery district during the street fair. Balch is president and chief executive officer of the Downtown Fresno Partnership, a nonprofit that promotes the economic well-being of the city’s core. Osegueda is on the board of a foundation connected to the Downtown Partnership.
With the $200,000 grant, Balch said, “We would have been able to essentially allow ArtHop to continue as we’ve come to know it, but with more structure following all the rules and procedures for public events.”
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City Council Member Miguel Arias disagreed. “To suggest that (the) grant could have staved off the split is “completely inaccurate,” and furthermore it’s “completely unfair and irresponsible to suggest that one grant would have avoided the situation of the street fair growing exponentially out of control,” he said.
An average of 15,000 people each month attended ArtHop before the split, according to the Downtown Partnership. Many were attracted to the street fair that grew up around the original ArtHop, which was – and remains – open indoor art galleries for the public to explore. To many people, the galleries and street fair became one entity with one name.
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The street fair will now take place on Fulton from Fresno to Mono streets on the third Wednesday of each month and will be known as Why Not Wednesday. The first one is scheduled for Sept. 18. ArtHop, which will continue to feature open art galleries, will remain on the first Thursday of each month.
Osegueda worries that the split will set back years of convincing people to come downtown. “It’s a very, very Fresno tale. Fresno blows itself up sometimes,” he said, adding it could take time to build attendance on Wednesdays. “I don’t think 15,000 people are going to show up for the first one or even the second or third, and maybe not for a year. My gut is it’s going to be a lot of work and is going to be an uphill battle at times. I don’t love the situation, but I want it to succeed because I think for downtown to succeed, an event like this has to succeed.”
Balch sounded a more optimistic note. “It’s been a hell of a convoluted process, but we’re excited what the street fair on Wednesdays could become,” he said.
City officials publicly pushed for the split, saying they wanted to forestall potential public safety problems among the large ArtHop crowds and vendors. An adequate police presence at ArtHop on Thursdays meant paying officers overtime or drawing them from other parts of the city. Wednesdays offered the city a better option because a union-negotiated work schedule made more police officers available – and already budgeted – on that day. Fifteen to 25 officers will patrol the Wednesday street fair, Arias said.
But the Downtown Partnership could have used the $200,000 grant to cover the cost of police officers on Thursdays, Osegueda said. “If the Downtown Partnership had gotten the Measure P money, we wouldn’t be in this position of splitting.” Balch agreed.
Arias also agreed, saying the $200,000 could have covered the cost of police on Thursdays. But, he added, other changes needed to improve the street fair – including street closure, trash pickup, and restrooms now planned for Why Not Wednesday – also require money. “Without seeing [the Downtown Partnership’s grant] application, I don’t know what it would have covered,” Arias said. Balch said cost sharing with the city was a possibility, adding: “I feel confident we could have worked it out.”
Ironically, Balch and the Downtown Fresno Partnership will play much the same role in organizing the new Wednesday street fair that they proposed for the Thursday street fair using the Measure P grant. The Downtown Partnership also proposed to expand the artistic footprint on Thursday by finding space where new artists could show their work and where music and performing arts could be added to the mix.
Earlier this year, Balch saw an opportunity with Measure P to finance several downtown projects. On March 25 – the deadline for grant applications to reach the Fresno Arts Council – Balch used an online portal to submit six applications. Combined, the applications sought nearly $900,000 for downtown projects that ranged from installing a holiday ice rink to starting new festivals centered on field workers and the Black community to managing the Thursday street fair.
What followed was the dispute with Lilia Gonzáles Chávez, executive director of the Arts Council. She maintained that Measure P applicants could only submit one project application. In fact, the Downtown Partnership was the only applicant to do so. Balch took the position that Measure P’s grant guidelines placed no limit on the number of project applications. (Gonzáles Chávez later told The Munro Review that the guidelines “are silent” on that point.)
Gonzáles Chávez gave Balch the option of submitting one grant application and finding other applicants to submit the other five. Balch said he tried to comply but was unable due to lack of time and the complexity of the task.
In the end, Gonzáles Chávez accepted the first application that Balch sent through the online portal. It was for a project to paint a mural on a downtown parking garage. Gonzáles Chávez declined this week to comment on why she accepted the application for the mural – and not one of the other applications.
But Balch didn’t accept her decision. He appealed the rejection of the five grant applications to the city’s Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission, asking that the applications be accepted and the projects be considered for funding. But mired in its own bureaucratic issues, the Commission delayed hearing all appeals.
In the meantime, city officials went public with their desire to make changes to ArtHop, and key stakeholders – including Arias, Osegueda and Balch – began meeting to figure out a way forward. Osegueda said he pointed out at several of those meetings that the Downtown Partnership had tried for the $200,000 Measure P grant to manage the street fair. “The response from the people with authority was, ‘Well, maybe that’s something that could happen in the future, but there doesn’t seem to be any ability to do anything about it right now.”
In reality, there was time, and there was available money if the $200,000 grant application had been accepted, scored and considered for funding.
From June 17 to Aug. 19, the Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission held four public meetings trying to finalize awarding of the $9.4 million in Measure P grants. On Aug. 19, the Commission decided to give almost $846,000 in additional Measure P money to 13 applicants that weren’t recommended for funding because of lower-scoring applications.
Balch ultimately opted not to pursue his appeal to the Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission because, he said, Commissioners didn’t seem interested in his position and he didn’t want to delay successful applicants from getting their Measure P money. Delays happened anyway, in part, because the Fresno Arts Council did not initially provide the Commission with all the necessary information on grantees required by its contract with the city to run the grants program. July 1 was the first target date for grantees to receive money but that’s now been pushed back to Sept. 1.
dkzody
Fresno’s administrative elements do not work well together and the whole city suffers because of poor leadership cooperation.
…perhaps a class like kindergarten where we are taught to play well with others.
Keith Foster
Elliott Balch is shocked to learn, for the first time in his life, that he’s not going to get everything he wants. The unelected business lobbyist who no regular person in the city has even seen or spoken to and who somehow gets to single-handedly keep making key decisions is finally facing some pushback.
This is the first time I’ve read even a hint of critical coverage for the person powerful enough to kill both the Fulton Mall and Art Hop and decide how Fresno spends its $250m Downtown grant. Please keep up this experiment in journalism where you quote diverse viewpoints rather than just your same group of insider friends over and over.
Keith Seaman
This is a very informative article with details missing from other stories about this unfortunate fracturing of Art Hop. Elliot Balch and the rest of the Downtown Fresno Partnership are to be commended for their commitment to Fresno’s downtown in the face of sometimes formidable obstacles. It’s unfortunate that the nascent Measure P funding process has failed Downtown Fresno, at least for now.
Mando
Whats odd and a total conflict of interest is both Miguel Arias and Mayor Dyer are on the board of the Downtown Fresno Partnership. As well as many other landlords from Downtown steering this split because of their elitist mentality. The owner of the One Putt Broadcasting John Ostlund called the vendors and artist of the now Arthop, Trinket and Tacos sellers which in my opinion as well as many others is just the racist dog whistles and narcissistic behavior that a Good Ole Boy mentality and rhetoric love to use in enuendos.