What's at stake?
The City of Fresno will administer the nearly $6.5 million pool of Measure P arts grant money this year after taking the reins from the Fresno Arts Council following the latter’s embezzlement scandal.
Fresno’s arts community got its first peek on Wednesday at what the next Measure P arts grant cycle will look like with the City of Fresno holding the reins.
City staffers with the parks department presented draft guidelines for the next cycle of funding at a meeting Wednesday night, which came with some proposed changes the arts community seemed to embrace, and others some staunchly opposed.
Staff shared these proposals at the first 2026 meeting of the Expanded Access to Arts and Culture Subcommittee, a subset of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission. The nine-member commission is in charge of approving the Measure P arts grant awards each year, among other tasks overseeing the program.
This next cycle consists of up to roughly $6.5 million in awards that artists and organizations will apply for, according to PARCS Department staff.
Some proposed changes to the grant guidelines were met with cautious optimism from members of the arts community that gave comments at Wednesday’s meeting. That included a proposal to begin paying the individuals who sign up to review grant applications and giving them rigorous training on unconscious bias and other aspects of grant review — which city staff said came from feedback from the arts community following the last grant cycle.
“It opens that door for more of a diverse panel,” said Alicia Rodriguez, co-founder of Labyrinth Art Collective, “because that’s what’s sorely needed.”
But there’s more debate coming on other suggested changes to the guidelines, including a proposal to have at least two of the 20 to 25 panelists reviewing grant applications come from outside the City of Fresno — a provision city staff said was an attempt to mitigate issues with conflicts of interest for panelists who may have ties to the Fresno organizations or artists whose applications they’re reviewing.
“I don’t like the one about members residing outside the City of Fresno,” said Kimberly McCoy, chair of both the subcommittee and of the larger Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission, “because they’re not going to know anything about those artists or the applicants.”
Multiple community members also pushed back on a controversial proposal to cap the number of Measure P projects that a nonprofit can agree to fiscally sponsor.
The controversy hearkens back to a longer-standing debate over who’s allowed to apply for Measure P arts funds. Per the language of the ordinance, only nonprofit organizations can apply for the arts grants, to the dismay of advocates who argue this provision creates hurdles for artists without previous ties to organizations to compete for the funding.
The grant guidelines, however, allow nonprofits to serve as fiscal sponsors for projects proposed by artists or groups without 501(c)3 status. In the wake of that, one organization, Dulce Upfront, has taken on large role sponsoring projects, including 21 in the second grant cycle — the most of any organization.
“It’s very unclear why you would want to limit that,” said Amy Kitchener, executive director of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, “unless you were trying to limit access to the expanding-access grants program.”
Wednesday marked only the first of multiple opportunities for the public to submit feedback on the draft guidelines over the next two weeks. An online comment portal went live Thursday morning and will accept submissions through 5 p.m. April 30.
The city will also host three in-person listening sessions: one on April 22 at the Ted C. Wills Community Center (770 N. San Pablo Ave.) at 5:30 p.m.; a second on April 25 at the Maxie L. Parks Community Center (1802 E. California Ave.) at 1 p.m. and a third on April 28 at the Mosqueda Community Center (4670 E. Butler Ave.) at 5:30 p.m.
The City of Fresno took over administering the multi-million-dollar, taxpayer-funded annual grant program in February after city officials learned an ex-employee of the Fresno Arts Council — the agency that ran the show for the first two grant cycles — embezzled at least $1.5 million dollars in Measure P funds.
Federal investigators have since charged the Fresno Arts Council’s ex-operations manager, Suliana Caldwell, with stealing a total of about $1.82 million from the organization over the span of three years and nine months. Caldwell is expected to plead guilty to one felony count of wire fraud at a hearing April 20.
Even while the city plans for the third grant cycle — with a hard deadline of June 30 to issue a “Notice of Funding Availability,” according to staff — there are still dozens of grant awardees that have yet to receive a dollar of their promised funding from the second grant cycle.
PARCS Assistant Director Shelby McNab didn’t take questions on Wednesday night regarding the status of those awards but said a more detailed update is planned for the next meeting of the full Parks, Recreation and Arts Commission on April 20.
Subcommittee meets publicly for the first time this year
Wednesday marked the first time that the Expanded Access to Arts and Culture Subcommittee met as a newly-minted standing committee, a status that requires it to meet publicly under California’s Brown Act.
Before, the subcommittee — responsible for making key decisions about grant guidelines and grant application scores — met behind closed doors, following a recommendation from the Fresno City Attorney’s Office.
The commission took action to change the subcommittee’s status in response to community backlash that critical decisions over grant money were being made privately.
The City of Fresno also now awaits a court ruling over whether its budget subcommittee can legally meet behind closed doors in the future, following a lawsuit from the ACLU of Northern California and First Amendment Coalition alleging that the practice violated state public meeting laws.
There were some minor hiccups at Wednesday night’s meeting. For instance, council chambers were occupied by other staff that had previously reserved it, so the subcommittee had to conduct its business in a smaller conference room. Partway through the meeting, staff had to retrieve more chairs to accommodate members of the public who attended the meeting.
PARCS Director Aaron Aguirre said the goal would be to reserve council chambers for the next PRAC subcommittee meeting on April 29.
