Officials of music organizations in La Jolla added their voices to the many in opposition around San Diego to Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed budget cuts.
As more than 300 arts supporters got together at Civic Center Plaza on April 20 — two hours before Gloria formally unveiled his plans to the City Council to cut arts funding along with millions of dollars in other city spending — Todd Schultz, president and chief executive of the La Jolla Music Society, stood in the middle of the throng.
“Every year it’s a huge process to try and match our expenses to our anticipated income, and a cut like this — approximately $300,000 for us — would be huge,” Schultz said. “And what we would end up doing is having to cut things that don’t generate income, and those would be the free programs. Free programs are a huge way that we serve the community, and we could try to fundraise to replace it, but $300,000 is not going to be covered.”
People from all corners of the arts community — actors, musicians, visual artists and poets — descended on the plaza next to City Hall to decry the proposed cuts for the coming 2026-27 fiscal year.
Hundreds of arts leaders and supporters participate in a demonstration protesting Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed arts funding cuts on April 20 at San Diego’s Civic Center Plaza. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Set against a backdrop of handmade signs — “Fund Art,” “Arts Matter,” “Cities Without Art Are Just Concrete!” — representatives of arts groups that also included the San Diego Symphony, Mingei International Museum and San Diego Youth Symphony stood shoulder to shoulder to listen as speakers took the microphone to demand that the mayor change course.
In his budget plan, Gloria is proposing to cut arts funding by $11.8 million — out of the original $13.8 million — to help close a projected $146 million deficit.
The proposal would eliminate all funds under the city’s two grant-making arms: the Organizational Support Program and Creative Communities San Diego.
Money received from those programs go directly to arts groups, which use it to drive matching grants they apply for from the private sector.
The cuts would leave just $2 million, enough to keep the city’s Cultural Affairs Department open. That agency oversees the city’s public art initiative and works closely with individual artists and incubator programs. Funding for grants out of that department comes from the state.
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“I can tell you, this decision [to cut $11.8 million] came as a complete surprise. It felt like a kick in the gut,” said Alessandra Moctezuma, chairwoman of the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture and an art professor at San Diego Mesa College who directs its art gallery.
“The timing could not have been worse,” she said. “We were in the middle of reviewing grant applications for what would have been our largest group of awardees ever: 229 organizations. These organizations — large and small — exist in every district in this city. Nearly half of the programs they provide are free and community-facing. For fiscal year 2025, they included 5.3 million free admissions. And beyond their cultural value, they are a powerful economic driver.”
Stephanie Weaver Yankee, executive director of the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus and a piano teacher with Villa Musica, said “Funds we received through both of those organizations [that are planned to be cut] represent between 8% and 15% of our respective budgets, and that’s going to mean we’re going to have to cut programming. For us, that will affect kids in schools and seniors in the community. And we’ll probably have to cut staff. We’re already running pretty lean. These potential cuts don’t help.”
For the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, the proposed cuts translate to $45,566.
Sameer Patel, LJS&C’s music director and orchestra conductor, said the proposed budget “deeply affects” everything the organization does, especially behind-the-scenes support.
“Everything it takes to put on any kind of musical event, that’s affected,” said Patel, who also is artistic director of the San Diego Youth Symphony, where cuts “directly impact the students.”
The Youth Symphony could lose $142,080 under the mayor’s proposed budget.
Doug Oliphant, chief operating officer of Coastal Nonprofit Consulting, said the Organizational Support Program provides an average of 7% to 8% of many San Diego nonprofits’ operating budgets.
“If you were to make a list of your top donors, just about every single organization in this city that receives funding from the city would put the city of San Diego among their top 10 donors,” Oliphant said. “That’s the equivalent of losing one of your most major pillars of support, which means you debate between cutting a program altogether, scaling back or laying off an employee.”
When Gloria first released his proposed budget April 15, La Jolla Historical Society Executive Director Lauren Lockhart, whose nonprofit received $111,578 from the city in the current fiscal year, said “Eliminating arts and culture funding will have a catastrophic impact on San Diego’s cultural infrastructure that serves residents and visitors to the region. This funding is vital to ensure that our exhibitions and programs remain accessible to all and that we can preserve and activate our historic campus.”
Gloria’s budget, which will be debated and adjusted by the mayor and City Council, also would merge three city departments into others and eliminate the Office of Child and Youth Success.
Other areas affected by the $76 million in cuts he proposes include city libraries, recreation centers, homeless services, facilities maintenance, zoning enforcement, park rangers, restroom closures at some parks and elimination of a team that adds bike lanes across the city.
During the City Council meeting April 20, hundreds of San Diego residents and community leaders criticized the proposed budget, saying the mayor’s plan would make devastating cuts to key programs while prioritizing the wrong things.
Gloria said at the hearing that his budget prioritizes public safety, roads and homelessness, based partly on surveys completed by 11,000 local residents.
San Diegans react to Mayor Todd Gloria as he appears at the San Diego City Council meeting April 20 to present his proposed budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
While the mayor said all city departments would suffer cuts in his proposal, he emphasized it is important to him to avoid closing police stations and taking fire engines offline.
“This budget invests in the basics,” he said.
The proposed $2.2 billion spending plan would close the projected $146 million deficit with $26 million from worker furloughs and $44 million in new revenue in addition to the $76 million in service cuts, which would come with about 130 layoffs.
The new fiscal year will begin July 1. The City Council will review Gloria’s proposal between now and June 9, when it is slated to adopt a final budget. The mayor is scheduled to release revisions to the plan Wednesday, May 13.
— San Diego Union-Tribune staff writer David Garrick contributed to this report. ♦