{"id":460945,"date":"2026-09-11T21:46:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T21:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/460945\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T21:46:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T21:46:21","slug":"san-diego-fcs-vision-goes-beyond-the-soccer-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/460945\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego FC\u2019s Vision Goes Beyond the Soccer Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III<\/a>. See Act I<\/a> and Act II<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

The Future<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been here before.<\/p>\n

In 2012, city funding for the arts and culture in San Diego<\/a> had eroded. As a corrective, the city council unanimously approved \u201cPenny for the Arts\u201d<\/a>\u2014a promise to dedicate roughly one penny of every dollar spent on hotel rooms (the Transient Occupancy Tax, or TOT).<\/p>\n

The logic was fair and sound: Cultural institutions and events help attract visitors. Those visitors pay hotel taxes. So, the people agreed, some of that hotel-tax revenue should go back into maintaining the cultural ecosystem that helps bring those visitors and that money.<\/p>\n

Projected as a five-year plan, the measure was supposed to increase funding to $17.9 million by 2017.<\/p>\n

It never did. The penny was never guaranteed, so each year the city used part of it for other priorities. By 2023, the money going to arts and culture was up to about a half a penny. Even as TOT revenue has gone up significantly.<\/p>\n

In 2019, TOT revenue was $245 million.<\/p>\n

In 2025: $325 million.<\/p>\n

One fix would be to guarantee the penny. Not simple, given San Diego\u2019s financial woes. But the alternative\u2014eroding the culture that makes San Diego San Diego, give it its identity\u2014also doesn\u2019t feel wise. Plus, even a locked percentage still rises and falls with tourism, which is why culture advocates want a guaranteed floor<\/a> on top of it.<\/p>\n

Another solution would be to give the arts commission actual authority.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an advisory body,\u201d says arts commissioner Kamaal Martin. \u201cYou\u2019d be hard-pressed to find anybody who takes our advice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Katie Gardner & Matt Furman<\/p>\n

He described the commissioners debating real, consequential questions this year, like whether and how to divide the cuts between funding pools. But those conversations \u201cdon\u2019t connect to whoever\u2019s actually deciding,\u201d Martin says. \u201cWe haven\u2019t been entrusted with decision-making about relevant things nearly enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christine Martinez is building political infrastructure<\/a> through her organization Arts+Culture:San Diego\u2014which is starting a 501(c)(4) lobbying structure not unlike police and fire unions. Martinez is also keeping her community actively engaged. \u201cWe won\u2019t be caught off guard next year like we were this year,\u201d she tells me.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the evergreen issue of affordability and accessibility. Kiplinger\u2019s most recent report<\/a> ranks San Diego as the 11th most expensive city in the US, based on cost of living. The average home value is $980,700 (the US median is $540,000), but San Diego\u2019s median household income is only one-third greater than the national level. Rent is also 66 percent higher than the national average ($2,716 vs. $1,636).<\/p>\n

This is why San Diego has long suffered from the creative brain drain\u2014creatives leaving for more affordable cities<\/a>. \u201cArtists are free to live wherever they want, and they will go where the rent is affordable,\u201d says Jennifer de Poyen of Space 4 Art. \u201cWhen they leave, they take their gifts with them, and their contributions, and their economic impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

One saving grace is the presence of Tijuana, where the cost of living is about 60 percent lower than San Diego, per Numbeo. Tijuana has long functioned as an affordable neighborhood for many in San Diego\u2019s creative culture. It\u2019s part of the reason why the binational identity<\/a> is such a constant in our galleries, music, theater, murals, and culture. While that cross-border blood flow is one of San Diego\u2019s most compelling attributes, few artists living that life would call it convenient or easy. A city is at a disadvantage when its culture creators have to cross a border to go home at night, and cross again the next morning to work.<\/p>\n

In May, San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved a $2.75 million arts initiative<\/a> of its own. It includes an Artist Space Grant Program aimed directly at the affordability crisis, as well as an artist-in-residence program, a dedicated Binational Creative Economy Investment, and a one-time investment in the Black Arts and Culture District in Encanto<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bob Lehman of San Diego Art Matters<\/a> has been doing county-level, binational organizing for years; in 2023, he helped get the county\u2019s arts commission reestablished after 30 years of defunctness. That\u2019s important because it gives arts and culture an official seat in county government, advising the County Board of Supervisors on arts and culture policy. He also brought in consultant Laura Zucker, who ran LA County\u2019s arts program for three decades, to build a real regional plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really believe we\u2019ll have something set up here that other communities come and look at,\u201d he told me. \u201cA national template other cities come to learn from.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked who decides which artists will get the new grant money, county arts commissioner and executive director of the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center Monica Delgadillo Hernandez doesn\u2019t hedge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s part of the infrastructure we\u2019re going to be building,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat should a panel of reviewers look like? Should it be the commissioners? Should it be other folks? A supervisor?\u201d She was just as candid that the commission itself doesn\u2019t reflect San Diego\u2019s population\u2014Chicano communities are roughly a third of the city, she tells me, \u201cand that\u2019s not represented at the table yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Katie Gardner & Matt Furman<\/p>\n

What Other Cities Prove Is Possible<\/p>\n

The great news is that none of these solutions have to be invented from scratch. Numerous cities serve as examples of what\u2019s possible\u2014if we have the will.<\/p>\n

Jonathon Glus\u2014Prebys Foundation Senior Fellow for Art & Design, the Executive Director of the Art + Design District, and board president for California for the Arts\u2014worked in Houston before coming to San Diego. The Texas city dedicates 74.5 percent of its hotel tax to arts grants by formula<\/a>, and that support is guaranteed. Washington, DC locked in dedicated arts funding in 2019. Salt Lake City, my hometown, has run a voter-approved arts tax for almost 30 years, most recently reauthorized through 2034<\/a>. And just this summer, New York City pushed cultural funding to a record $323.8 million<\/a>, even incorporating an emergency fund.<\/p>\n

Denver\u2019s model is interesting because instead of a city-dependent funding model, theirs is a 0.1 percent regional sales tax. In place since 1988 and renewed by voters three times, their Scientific & Cultural Facilities District<\/a> has distributed between $54 million and $85 million to arts, culture, and scientific orgs\u2014each of the last 12 years.<\/p>\n

This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III<\/a>. See Act I<\/a> and Act II<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

None of these cities got there by accident. They decided, on purpose, that arts and culture were worth protecting from politics\u2014and, in some cases, worth building an entire identity around.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how Miami has flipped the switch,\u201d says Glus. \u201cPeople go to Miami for culture as much as they do the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

San Diego has spent decades selling itself backward: Beach and weather first, culture as an afterthought you might stumble into. Glus would love to see the strategy flipped: Visitors should come for the art, \u201cand then, by the way, you\u2019re on the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo Credit: Katie Gardner & Matt Furman<\/p>\n

So What Happens From Here?<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think it was a wake-up call for the community,\u201d de Poyen says of the budget fight. \u201cPeople understand that our funding is vulnerable. It was a lesson in how much power people have when they coalesce. But wow, is it painful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glus says he\u2019s genuinely optimistic. \u201cThe players have all changed seats, but the work is moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe optimism is a moral duty,\u201d says Martin, who\u2019s both power-fist and polite.<\/p>\n

In eight months, there will be another budget fight. Everyone I talked to expects it will be worse. But something happened this spring that can\u2019t be undone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this rupture has brought us together in a moment of self-realization,\u201d says Leticia Gomez Franco of the Balboa Art Conservation Center. \u201cI hope we stop being so transactional; we begin to see ourselves and each other as partners in this work.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the whole ask, really. And it\u2019s on all of us.<\/p>\n

This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III<\/a>. See Act I<\/a> and Act II<\/a> here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III. See Act I and Act II here.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[6030,37725,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-460945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-arts-culture","tag-qa","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460945","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=460945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}