EDITORIAL: Art law headed for oblivion EDITORIAL: Art law headed for oblivion (September 08, 2004)

When it comes to standing up for public art, the Menlo Park City Council is definitely in the "no backbone" camp.

That was made perfectly clear last week when Mayor Lee Duboc and council members Mickie Winkler and Paul Collacchi prevailed in a surprise vote against the current ordinance that requires developers to spend 1 percent of a new or remodeled commercial, industrial or municipal building's construction cost for public art. The decision is far from final, but with three seemingly firm votes, it looks as if the mayor's concern about saddling developers with a 1 percent fee for art on projects over $250,000 will trump council members Chuck Kinney and Nicholas Jellins, who support the current law.

Nancy Chillag, chair of the Arts Commission and a tireless proponent of the current ordinance, stood up immediately after the vote last Tuesday and resigned in disgust. She was not warned that a vote to kill the ordinance was even being considered. Instead, the council was scheduled to discuss adopting a measure that would have given developers a way to contribute to other public art if they did not wish to organize their own project.

In Ms. Duboc's opinion, published in a letter on the next page, the current art assessment puts an unfair burden on property owners who, she says, are already saddled with increasingly costly city fees. She suggests asking artists to donate works for display around the city, or allowing residents to vote on paying a small fee to support public art, rather than putting the entire burden on the "small businesses."

This reasoning has been a driving force for Ms. Duboc and Ms. Winkler, who both voted in April to make it easier for affected property owners to pay an in-lieu fee rather than install the art on their project -- a change to the ordinance yet to be finalized. They also voted to make the ordinance retroactive so that downtown Chevron station owner John Conway, whose project was already in the pipeline, could opt out and pay the in-lieu fee, which he immediately decided to do.

Mr. Conway was a strong supporter of the two council members in the 2002 election, and has been a vociferous opponent of the art ordinance ever since it was applied to his project. It is not clear if Mr. Conway's project would be covered under a new ordinance, which could be many months away.

While we can understand Ms. Duboc's concern for small business owners, it will be a shame if the City Council walks away from public art altogether, because there is support for the concept in town. Menlo Park developer David Bohannon gave cautious backing to enactment of the original ordinance in 2002, and public art has been installed without conflict in several locations since the law was adopted.

By dropping the ordinance, the council will negate years of work by the city's Arts Commission, particularly Ms. Chillag, and send a message that the present administration is not interested in devoting any resources to art. Menlo Park is not a poor community, and neither are most of its businesses. The council majority on this issue lacks the vision to see beyond the special pleading of a few property owners who easily could afford to add a fraction of their building cost to installing public artwork.

Rather than rescinding this ordinance, the council should be thinking about what Menlo Park will look like 20 or more years from now. What legacy will they leave? If we are to judge by last week's vote, there certainly won't be any art in the picture.

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