Should Measure P reviewers be paid? Will scoring panels be open to the public? City needs answers before next cycle of grants begin.

The ideas come from both City bureaucrats who took over Measure P from the Arts Council and the City commission charged with overseeing that transfer. The Fresno City Council, which has fiduciary responsibility for Measure P’s millions, will get the final say in a vote now scheduled for late June.

Meanwhile, the City’s parks staff is previewing a proposed handbook to guide the review and scoring of grant applications. The staff’s idea to pay reviewers has drawn feedback from Kimberly McCoy, chair of both the City’s Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission and that commission’s Cultural Arts Subcommittee. (The Subcommittee next meets on Wednesday, May 13, at 5:30 p.m. at Fresno City Hall.)

“I might catch a lot of flak for saying it. [But] none of us serving on a commission or committee for the City of Fresno receives a stipend,” McCoy said at a Subcommittee meeting on April 29.

Aaron Aguirre, parks director, said the $500 per person stipend is under discussion among his staff. The City proposes to recruit 30 reviewers divided into five teams with each reviewer spending at least 38 hours scoring approximately 30 grant applications. Aguirre called that a “big commitment” and a “crucial component” in awarding the grants

Paying reviewers is not a new idea. Since 2024 – when the first arts grants were awarded – some community members have pushed for reviewers to receive stipends because of the amount of work required.

After hearing details from Aguirre, McCoy said of the $500 figure: “I think that’s fair.”

Asserting herself

McCoy said she would like to help interview potential reviewers so she could be assured of their cultural competency. They must understand what culture means to the diverse communities – Black, Hispanic, Hmong and more – that make up Fresno, she said.

Cultural competency emerged as an issue in 2025 when critics alleged that at least one official said hair braiding in the Black community is not art. It is art, and that kind of assessment cannot happen again, McCoy said: “I know I’m already spread thin, but I gotta have my foot in everything right now to make sure this process is transparent and that we’re accountable.”

In raising the culture competency issue, McCoy continued an assertiveness that she’s demonstrated since the City took over administration of Measure P from the Fresno Arts Council in February. That happened after a former employee of the Arts Council embezzled $1.8 million in taxpayer money.

Zoom it?

Stephen Wilson, president and chief executive officer of the Fresno Philharmonic, said the amount of detail in the proposed review/scoring handbook is good for grant applicants. He commended the parks staff for its work and said: “I know more about cycle three than I ever knew about cycles one and two.”

Shelby MacNab, assistant parks director, is leading the effort by the parks department. The Fresno Arts Council did that work in cycle one (2024-25) and cycle two (2025-26).

Among the details in the proposed handbook: How the public could observe reviewers gathering for the four-to-six-hour meetings to discuss how they individually scored the applications assigned to their team. With five teams of reviewers – as proposed by the parks department – there would be five separate discussion meetings.

The Arts Council held similar but shorter discussion meetings in 2025, and there are other differences. The Arts Council allowed in-person observation but only by grant applicants. The parks department would allow anyone to observe but only on Zoom.

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Meanwhile, Johannus Reijnders, a forceful critic of Measure P under the Arts Council, said Zoom is a bad idea for the meetings. He wants observers able to watch in person as a tangible sign of transparency. “The embezzlement and the bad actions of the Fresno Arts Council have done extreme harm to community trust,” Reijnders said in an interview after the Subcommittee’s April 29 meeting. He added that camera and audio problems on Zoom could become problems for observers.

Reijnders also wants the parks department to push back its proposed timeline for the 2026-27 grants. Based on a legal opinion from the City Attorney’s Office, the parks department proposes to accept grant applications in July and August, which already is a delayed schedule.

But Reijnders said small, so-called emerging arts organizations, need more time to navigate the process. McCoy also said on April 29 that the timeline proposed by the parks department creates a “rushed process,” and she favors a delay of one month.

Wilson of the Philharmonic voiced support for the July/August timeline proposed by the parks department. Should additional delays occur, it could result in arts organizations not receiving Measure P funding in the 2026-27 fiscal year, Wilson said in an interview. Measure P has paid for general operating expenses of organizations still recovering from financial problems related to the Covid pandemic, he added.

“Measure P is an absolutely crucial lifeline for us and for most of the organizations that received funding in the first two cycles,” Wilson said.