Fresno is the largest city in California without its own arts and culture department, office, or division at City Hall. With the City of Fresno taking\u00a0over administration of the annual Measure P competitive grants\u00a0following an\u00a0embezzlement scandal, some want the city to hire its own roster of arts professionals.<\/p>\n
This story was produced by Fresnoland<\/a> as part of Next City\u2019s Local Reporting Hub<\/a>, with funding from the Kresge Foundation.<\/p>\n Out of California\u2019s eight largest cities, Fresno is the only one that doesn\u2019t have a department or office focused on arts and cultural affairs.<\/p>\n Local arts advocate Amy Kitchener has been reminding people of that fact for months.<\/p>\n And now that the Fresno Arts Council is out of the picture<\/a> when it comes to administering the city\u2019s multimillion-dollar annual arts grant program funded by Measure P, Kitchener and others say it\u2019s high time for that to change.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is that there\u2019s personnel \u2014 senior personnel \u2014 at the city level who have a really deep understanding of the arts and cultural ecology of Fresno,\u201d said Kitchener, who leads the Alliance for California Traditional Arts<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s the missing piece here.\u201d<\/p>\n Though it looks different from city to city, introducing something like this in Fresno would transition the city from working with arts professionals outside of city government to administer arts and culture programs to actually hiring those arts professionals to oversee that work from inside City Hall.<\/p>\n The benefit of this model, versus outsourcing to an external agency like a local arts council, comes down to access, said California for the Arts Board President Jonathon Glus.<\/p>\n He\u2019s worked across both models and sees advantages to both.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you are outside of City Hall, you have more flexibility \u2014 especially in a state like California, where there\u2019s a lot of restrictions on municipal governance,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can respond to needs in the community relatively quickly, and if that outside organization is functioning well, then leadership can very easily have a seat at the table with other civic leaders.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you don\u2019t have,\u201d Glus added, \u201cthat you do have inside City Hall, is access to the many departments and the many, many, many fundings streams and mechanisms inside City Hall that can be leveraged to support the arts.\u201d<\/p>\n But can something that sounds good on paper actually make a difference? Or rebuild trust after the Fresno Arts Council\u2019s $1.82 million embezzlement scandal<\/a> shattered an already strained relationship<\/a> between the local arts community and the bureaucratic systems determining who among them gets taxpayer funding?<\/p>\n Others are open to the idea, but still have their reservations about City Hall\u2019s own track record when it comes to transparency. <\/p>\n For LAByrinth Art Collective<\/a> co-founder Alicia Rodriguez, it\u2019s not the concept of a dedicated department focused on arts and culture that gives her pause. It\u2019s the fact that it would run through the city.<\/p>\n The most recent blow to trust among Rodriguez and other members of a coalition demanding greater transparency around arts funding came at a city council meeting in June.<\/p>\n At that meeting, councilmembers voted 6-1 to place a $350,000 cap<\/a> on grant awards for larger-budget arts organizations in the next cycle of Measure P grants. <\/p>\n That decision defied a recommendation from the city\u2019s Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission to instead place that cap at $150,000 \u2014 which advocates for the city\u2019s most under-resourced arts organizations said would\u2019ve helped set aside more of the pot for them to expand access to arts and culture. The city\u2019s larger-budget arts and culture organizations, on the other hand, pushed for the higher cap<\/a>, saying that funding can help stabilize their operations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe city is hard to trust,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cIt\u2019s because specifically their actions don\u2019t match their words. We\u2019ve seen, time and again, power outweighing public desire. You\u2019ll have roomfuls of dissent or support for an action or a motion or an issue, and the city council will do whatever they like.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sounds great. Theoretically and conceptually, yeah,\u201d Rodriguez added regarding the Cultural Affairs Department idea. \u201cWe\u2019re one of the only cities that doesn\u2019t have one of these, and (if) other cities that do have these are seeing tangible results in their arts and culture landscapes, then that would be encouraging. Now, can Fresno do that? Only if the people are in charge of that process \u2014 not tokenized or used. In charge of,\u201d she emphasized.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also no cookie-cutter version of this kind of structure within a city \u2014 it looks different anywhere you go, appearing under different names with varying staff sizes and placement within a city\u2019s org chart.<\/p>\n But with Fresno City Hall holding the reins for the foreseeable future, and with decades left of the 30-year tax revenue funding the grants, there\u2019s a long runway to shape what the future of arts administration in Fresno could look like.<\/p>\n Most large cities in California have dedicated city staff on cultural affairs<\/p>\n Excluding Fresno, the state\u2019s seven other largest cities by population \u2014 Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento, Long Beach and Oakland \u2014 all have a city office, division or department focused on administering arts and cultural affairs.<\/p>\n But they come in all different shapes and sizes. Los Angeles\u2019 Department of Cultural Affairs<\/a> has almost 100 people on the payroll in the proposed budget<\/a> for 2026-2027. Oakland has a much smaller team<\/a> within the city\u2019s Economic & Workforce Development Department that\u2019s hovered around five people in recent years.<\/p>\n Some cities, like Oakland, similarly house their arts staff within economic development departments, like San Jose<\/a>. In Sacramento<\/a>, their Office of Arts and Culture is a division of their Department of Convention and Cultural Services. In Long Beach<\/a>, the Cultural Affairs Manager is located in the Department of Library, Arts, and Culture. <\/p>\n But the bottom line, says Roberto Bedoya \u2014 Oakland\u2019s former Cultural Affairs Manager \u2014 is that you have folks at City Hall who know their local arts and culture landscape inside and out and understand how to support it with city resources.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t have that expertise in City Hall,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s a deficiency that will come back to haunt you.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also not just the managers or directors of these programs themselves advocating to maintain arts and culture experts in-house. <\/p>\n In 2025, Oakland\u2019s arts community successfully fought<\/a> to resurrect the Cultural Affairs Manager position after the city council had previously moved to axe it<\/a> during an intense round of budget cuts.<\/p>\n Community members who protested Oakland\u2019s cuts to the Office of Cultural Affairs emphasized the importance of the external funding that Bedoya helped attract to the city in his role prior to his retirement, especially since the city was allocating less than 1% of its total budget to the department and its public art programs<\/a>. In Los Angeles, the local arts community also organized<\/a> a petition to protest cuts to the city\u2019s Department of Cultural Affairs, fearing impacts to programming at art centers around the city.<\/p>\n Bedoya was stunned to hear that a city like Fresno \u2014 with such a bounty of arts and culture \u2014 didn\u2019t already have a department like this at City Hall. <\/p>\n Bedoya was also skeptical about the decision for this grant cycle to task the city\u2019s PARCS Department (i.e. Parks, After School, Recreation and Community Services) with helping manage the grants in the immediate.<\/p>\n \u201cTo respect the cultural community you\u2019re meant to serve, I think it needs an individual that understands the diversity of that cultural community that you\u2019re supporting,\u201d he said, \u201cwhether it\u2019s large-budget institutions or neighborhood arts centers, individual artists, community members who are deeply invested in the cultural community, cultural expression.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe there\u2019s somebody in Parks and (Rec) that has that already,\u201d he added, \u201cbut their expertise is probably related to athletics and maintenance \u2026 rather than the cultural voice of the city. You need somebody that knows that.\u201d<\/p>\n Glus also emphasized the importance of having arts professionals run arts grantmaking \u2014 the same way a city would hire folks with expertise in the economy to run an economic development department.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not simply processing contracts or grants,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s about the long-term sustainability of a field. You have to have people who understand the health and vitality and the needs of the sector. If you\u2019re managing public funds and you don\u2019t have staff that understand that, then you\u2019re not managing your public funds well.\u201d<\/p>\n In Long Beach, the Cultural Affairs Officer position is a lot newer \u2014 going on seven months, to be exact.<\/p>\n Griselda Suarez was tapped to become the city\u2019s inaugural Cultural Affairs Officer in February 2026. Before that<\/a>, she led Long Beach\u2019s Arts Council for a decade. She\u2019s also a poet and writer.<\/p>\n The road to creating her position in the Department of Library, Arts, and Culture took a few years, Suarez said. A key part of that was a feasibility study<\/a> Long Beach\u2019s city council contracted with a consulting firm to conduct in December 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cI participated as a community member when the study was happening and was in the room with many of our cultural leaders, who were like: \u2018We\u2019ve been doing this work. \u2026 How are we going to continue, and what are you going to change?\u2019\u201d Suarez said. \u201cAnd so the concerns were there.\u201d<\/p>\n But following robust engagement with both community members and city leaders, the study established a \u201cclear path towards better coordination of arts and culture initiatives,\u201d said Cathy De Leon, who directs the Department of Library, Arts, and Culture, in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe study helped to inform budget development and organizational change, for example the addition of a Cultural Affairs Division to Library Services,\u201d De Leon added, \u201cand investments in staffing were able to be supported through the city\u2019s FY 26 budget.\u201d<\/p>\n The hope is that over the years, the Cultural Affairs Officer can shape policy to ensure \u201clongevity, equity, and growth for arts and culture in LB,\u201d De Leon said.<\/p>\n What could this look like in Fresno?<\/p>\n Kitchener has high hopes for what a department, division or office like this in Fresno could help deliver. <\/p>\n There\u2019s the Cultural Arts Plan<\/a> that the city is required to update every five years under the Measure P ordinance with an update due by 2028. But it\u2019s not just Measure P-related tasks she\u2019s hopeful a hypothetical department would help facilitate.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s an understanding that arts and culture isn\u2019t just kind of a nice-to-have luxury, but it can actually be a driver of social change. It can be a driver of economic development,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that\u2019s where the really exciting opportunities are for Fresno.<\/p>\n \u201cAnother big area that a lot of the Cultural Affairs Departments work in,\u201d she added, \u201cis downtown revitalization.\u201d<\/p>\n Glus said there\u2019s a growing trend among city arts and culture departments to \u201cfocus on the larger creative economy\u201d and \u201cthe small business of the arts\u201d in terms of the services offered.<\/p>\n Nikiko Masumoto, a Fowler-based artist and farmer who racked up hours of canvassing in support of Measure P before it passed in 2018, said she also sees great potential for what city administration of the arts grants can accomplish. <\/p>\n But if the city were to go for something like a new department, a lot of it would come down to getting the right person there \u2014 or, ideally, persons, plural, she said. She\u2019d also like to see that personnel hail from the multiple departments that arts and culture intersect with, from transportation to parks and recreation.<\/p>\n \u201cI tend to believe that some of the struggles in democracy are \u2026 we actually need more people involved,\u201d she said, \u201cnot less people.\u201d<\/p>\n