Budget Breakdown

Tucson arts groups, development organizations and social service agencies were just handed a new job: figuring out how to continue operating now that the flow of money has slowed or, for some, effectively stopped.

The Tucson City Council voted Jan. 12 to cut about a quarter, or $3 million, of the money pledged to those organizations in July, the beginning of the fiscal year. Six months ago, the $12 million line item represented a substantial cut for the 64 organizations on the list.

Some groups took as much as a 60-percent cut.

Though not unexpected, the recent council vote has left these groups in a quandary. For many, the pressing decisions center on which programs to cut or scale back. For others, the question is more fundamental: Can we even keep the lights on?

Access Tucson is facing perhaps the most severe consequences of the vote. It had been counting on five more months of checks, worth almost $380,000, nearly half its yearly budget. Without those payments, the public access television channel may have to close down.

"We'll be out of money in two to three months," Executive Director Sam Behrend said.

The channel's board is scheduled to meet at 5 p.m. Jan. 14 to discuss options including potential lawsuits, Behrend said.

Public-access supporters say cutting Access Tucson's budget so drastically raises legal questions because the city would continue receiving money cable customers see itemized on their bill as designated for public access purposes. The $1.38 per customer levy nets the city about $5 million a year, according to budget documents.

There is a precedent for a temporary shutdown. Access Tucson was closed for June 2009 for budgetary reasons.

But Behrend said that shuttering the operation until July might make restarting it impossible. The group's 11 full-time and three part-time employees would likely have to find other work, and the destiny of the Access Tucson building and equipment is unclear.

At the Jan. 12 meeting, Ward 6 Councilman Steve Kozachik suggested selling Access Tucson's downtown building as a way to help fill the lingering multi-million dollar budget gap. Despite successive rounds of budget cuts, the city government is still looking at a deficit of about $20 million for the fiscal year beginning in July.

Local public-access television has only one potential savior left - a consolidation with Channel 12, the city-run television station. A plan was mentioned Jan. 12, but even the next morning, Behrend had not been contacted about how that might work. The council is slated to consider a plan in February.

"I'm just not sure whether they're disingenuous," Behrend said of city officials, who proposed the consolidation. "I'm not optimistic."

Access Tucson's budget has been on a downward slide for five years, since the groups was added to the list of outside agencies, Behrend said. For the previous 20 years of the group's existence, its funding was decided by formula.

Over five years, the number of Access Tucson employees halved, from 23 to the current 11 full-timers. The employees teach production classes, consult on projects and offer marketing help for about 100 local nonprofits.

Channel 12 is no more clued into the consolidation plan than Access Tucson is, said Ann Strine, director of the city's Information Technology Department, which oversees the channel. The budget for that operation was cut more than 30 percent in the past year and a half, she said.

While facing perhaps less devastating cuts, other groups are struggling to calculate the implications of the council's vote, implications that go beyond money.

The Tucson-Pima Arts Council, which lost $157,659 in the Jan. 12 sweep of yeas, also received the new responsibility of doling out funds to arts agencies that previously were on the outside agency list.

Roberto Bedoya, the organization's executive director, said that could cut all sorts of ways.

"The detail's still out there," he said. "If (the vote) is a 'relief,' it's because we're still being talked about as an agency that the city wants to fund."

Bedoya said which programs would be reduced or cut entirely still was not worked out. Neither would the process for distributing money to other arts groups, a task that overlaps with the group's current charge.

Other groups that got the less-than-60-percent reduction had similar responses. They lamented having to cut programs but sighed in relief at the realization that it could have been worse.

Cara Rene, vice president for marketing and communications at the Downtown Tucson Partnership, saw the 20-percent cut the group received as a kind of gesture of approval.

"The unanimous vote by the city council to reduce our funding cut shows its confidence in the Downtown Partnership as an economic development organization," she wrote in an e-mail.

"The city is facing critical and substantial budget challenges. Because of this, we expected to have a cut in funding along with everyone else. But the fact that they voted to reduce our cut from 60 percent to 20 percent indicates their support for the work we are doing to revitalize downtown."

Rene had no details about the effects of the cut on the partnership, whose budget has historically relied heavily on the city.