FRESNO COUNTY \u2013 In the fallout of Former Operations Manager Suliana Caldwell\u2019s $1.8 million embezzlement scheme, the Fresno Arts Council has been granted a platform to continue its support of local art.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On April 21, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution to designate the Fresno Arts Council as the county\u2019s local partner with the California Arts Council for the next fiscal year. As the designated state-local partner (SLP), the FAC will continue to be the county\u2019s main line of communication with the CAC, representing the region and seeking grants for local art through the statewide network.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Interim Executive Director Andrea Mele gave a presentation to assure the board, and the larger public, that corrective action is being taken to reinstill trust within the community following the news of Caldwell\u2019s embezzlement.<\/p>\n
\u201cFresno Arts Council is committed to earning back your trust through vigilance, transparency and tireless dedication to the grants and programs we manage,\u201d said Mele to the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Early in the presentation, Mele gave an overview of organizational changes that aim to prevent future funding misuse. Some of these changes include: looking to hire an outside accounting firm to oversee payroll, bills and other transactions, daily tracking of banking activity, approval of all credit card expenses before processing and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mele then gave a recap on some of the grant-funded arts programs that FAC has been able to support over the years, including arts education in Selma Unified School District, the foundation of the City of Fresno Poet Laureate Program, the Poetry Out Loud program in county schools and many others.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most recently, FAC re-granted funds from the National Endowment for the Arts to nine projects in Sanger, Selma, Kingsburg, Firebaugh, Del Rey, Coalinga, Auberry and Yokuts Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mele also noted in the presentation that FAC mentors Kings County as it works to develop its own arts council. Without the SLP designation, Fresno County would risk being the only county in the state without a CAC partner, she warned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Unfavorable reports\u2019<\/p>\n
As the item opened up to supervisor comments, the main point of concern was around how the FAC will prevent future misconduct, and if any of the lost funds can be recovered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The embezzlement saga was first broken by Fresnoland in February, who reported that the Fresno Police Department and the FBI were investigating the FAC, and that the city would terminate its contract with the organization to administer Measure P grants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Court documents from the U.S. District Court Eastern District of California later charged Caldwell with embezzling more than $1.8 million across more than 300 unauthorized transactions. The lost funds resulted in some projects experiencing significant funding delays, and others being cancelled.<\/p>\n
On April 20, the U.S. District Court announced that Caldwell had pleaded guilty, and an attached plea agreement requires that she pay the full amount of restitution to the victims of her crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the April 21 meeting, Supervisor Luis Chavez first thanked the FAC for its service to the community, and for addressing the situation head-on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI, for one, am not gonna let one individual tarnish the decades-old tradition of the Fresno Arts Council and the work that you guys have been doing,\u201d said Chavez.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chavez followed up by reaffirming the need to rebuild trust within the community, and asked for further detail on FAC\u2019s new protocols. FAC Board Member Karen Simpson took to the podium to give some insight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition to the changes that Mele had previously mentioned, Simpson added that FAC is currently looking to rebuild its staff. She said that the organization\u2019s leadership team is gone, and that only three staff members remain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In response to additional questioning from Chavez, Simpson said that all electronic payment sources have been cut off, with payments being opened by one person and deposited by another. Furthermore, cancelled checks will be regularly inspected to ensure that no one is signing checks over to themselves, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Later in the discussion, Board Chairman Garry Bredefeld asked if any of the embezzled funds could be recovered. Simpson referenced the court documents which state that full restitution is ordered, but said that is all currently known by the FAC.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bredefeld then asked about the fates of the former paid leadership team, to which Simpson said that \u201cone was fired,\u201d and the other she would \u201crather not comment\u201d on.<\/p>\n
Public support<\/p>\n
After the board\u2019s comments and questions, a handful of public commenters spoke up to voice their support for FAC, and to emphasize the importance of the organization within their communities. One such commenter was Megan Anderson Bohigian, city of Fresno poet laureate from 2021-2023.<\/p>\n
She made reference to the FAC\u2019s consistent provision of venues for reading events, the Poetry Out Loud program and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cFresno is known internationally as a poetry center, and it\u2019s partly that way because the arts council has continued to create programs which bring art \u2014 bring poetry \u2014 into our county schools\u201d said Anderson Bohigian.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tony Sanders was another public commenter, speaking on his experience with FAC as the founder and artistic director of Shine! Theatre, an artist, and as someone who works with youth in Selma.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m stumped for words to describe what it means to have that support as an artist, to know that there\u2019s an entity that you don\u2019t have to explain what it is that you do, or why you do what it is you do,\u201d said Sanders. \u201cThey get it, they get you, and that means the world to us as artists, to know that we have that support here in Fresno.\u201d<\/p>\n
After closing the public comment, the board took their vote to keep the FAC on as the county\u2019s local CAC partner. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO COUNTY \u2013 In the fallout of Former Operations Manager Suliana Caldwell\u2019s $1.8 million embezzlement scheme, the Fresno…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[2308,6702,53107,112,14447,114,113],"class_list":["post-279707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-art","tag-board-of-supervisors","tag-embezzlement","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}