Measure P arts grants for 2025 put in peril after key vote set for Monday is pulled from agenda
By Doug Hoagland
In what could foreshadow the collapse of Measure P arts grants in 2025, the city’s Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission will not vote next week on whether to approve $6.3 million for more than 130 artists and nonprofit arts organizations.
“No vote [next] Monday, and I don’t know about the future,” said Laura Ward, vice chair of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission. She told The Munro Review early on Friday, Sept. 26: “I very much want there to be funding released in 2025, but that appears to be in question.”
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The Commission was scheduled to vote on Monday, Sept. 29, on funding recommendations, but an agenda for that meeting – released by the city – has no action item for a vote. The grant program is designed to provide taxpayers’ dollars to grantees from July 1 to June 30, but already is three months behind schedule. Officials had hoped to get money to grantees – many of them counting on funds to cover operational expenses and finance specific projects – by October.
This latest development follows a demand by a group of grass-roots artists to halt the Sept. 29 vote by the Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission until “inconsistencies” in the grants process are addressed.
At a news conference on Thursday, Sept. 24, Ome Lopez, leader of the Coalition for Fresno Arts, charged that bias, lack of transparency and funding disparities that favor established arts organizations have marred the 2025 process.
Lopez said Measure P “must be carried out with transparency, fairness and equity.” She added: “Already we are seeing serious breakdowns that threaten the integrity and promise of the public investment.”
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Perhaps, most significant, Lopez said the Coalition has legal representation and sent a letter outlining its demands to the Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission and the City of Fresno. She said on Sept. 24 that the Commission and City Hall had not responded.
Fresno voters approved Measure P in 2018, increasing the city’s sales tax by ⅜ of a cent for 30 years to boost parks and arts in Fresno. Parks receive 88% of the funds, with arts getting the other 12%. The city contracts with the Fresno Arts Council to run the grants program.
The first arts grants were awarded in 2024.
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