Aspen City Council members said they were surprised by the scale and cost of a proposed public art program presented during a work session on Monday.
The proposed plan, prepared by two arts consulting firms hired by the city this spring, calls for the city to hire a new full-time employee (salary and overhead costs equalling $148,000) and appropriate an additional $187,000 in funds to administrate the new program in 2024.
The plan results from months of work toward establishing a formalized public arts program in Aspen. Aspen is currently one of the only communities in the Roaring Fork Valley that does not have a public arts plan. Basalt, Carbondale and Glenwood Springs all have either standing public arts committees or plans of their own.
“Arts and culture are a part of Aspen’s DNA. When I found out that Aspen didn’t have a public art program, I think I was really surprised and a lot of other people were very surprised,” said Kendall Peterson, creative project manager at Denver-based Theresquared LLC, one of the consulting firms that helped prepare the plan.
The council first directed staff to explore options for a formal public arts program in 2020 in response to requests from community members. From May to October of this year, the city contracted with two arts and culture consulting firms, Theresquared and Stilwell Cultural Consulting, to complete a series of public outreach efforts and begin designing a public art plan for the city. Monday’s presentation included a draft framework and goals for that plan, along with figures for a future supplemental budget request to get the program off the ground in 2024.
The proposed plan would establish a city-led process to approve and implement public art projects in a formal, codified way. The plan calls for the ultimate creation of a “Public Art Advisory Committee” and a new full-time position to guide and coordinate future projects.
Public art is any kind of art that is free and accessible to all members of a community, often funded or coordinated by a government entity.
Mayor Torre and Councilmen John Doyle and Ward Hauenstein, all of whom sat on council when it voted to hire the consultants in March, said the program was more expensive and more involved than they had anticipated.
“I think all of us are experiencing a little sticker shock up here,” Doyle said.
Torre said he had never envisioned hiring a new full-time employee and that the program was “more process-heavy” than he had imagined. Torre said he did not expect a program in which the city would conceive, fund and implement public art projects. Instead, he had imagined a more “grassroots” approach by which community members could bring proposals for public art to the city, and the city could help coordinate them.
Torre requested further information on the nature of the proposed full-time position, the budget breakdown for additional funds to be requested, and a comparison with public art plans in other, less resource-rich communities. He said he was not currently in support of the plan.
While Hauenstein and Doyle were surprised by the proposed costs associated with the plan, they said they supported it. Hauenstein said the cost gave him a little “heartburn” but that he believed the city could afford it. Doyle, who is a designer and artist, said he had concerns about the cost and the new full-time position, but that he was interested in moving forward with the program.
Councilman Bill Guth supported the plan, though he requested options for a more streamlined approach. Guth said he was concerned about bureaucratic red tape and long wait times for completing projects. He also suggested that the proposed full-time position could potentially be replaced by consultant work, which the city would hire for large projects.
Guth said he was very enthusiastic about public art in Aspen and supported permanent installations in the future.
“I want our world-class city to continue having more world-class art,” Guth said.
Both Guth and Councilman Sam Rose said they supported the program in part because it would put the city’s real estate transfer tax fund to work for arts and culture programs. Historically, that fund had been limited for expenditures specifically related to the city-owned Wheeler Opera House. Aspenites voted to expand the fund for broader arts and culture spending in 2021. As of August this year, the fund balance was around $40 million.
“For many years, that money has been restricted to use inside the Wheeler,” Guth said. “And it’s been accruing to unreasonable levels, in my opinion. I’m super appreciative that the past council tweaked it so that these funds could be used for something like this.”
Sarah Roy, executive director of the city’s Red Brick Center for the Arts, told council that the program was designed to be robust and expansive so it could handle a wide range of different art projects the community may desire in the future. She said the recommendation of a full-time employee came directly from the arts consultants’ past professional experiences directing public art programs in Colorado municipalities, including Denver and Fort Collins. Roy said the position was important to communicate with community stakeholders and coordinate the complexities of public art projects. If the council decided to reduce that position to part time, Roy said, it may lengthen the time it takes to complete public art projects.
Generally, Torre told Roy he thought some of the language in the program’s proposed mission statement and guiding principles was too strong. He particularly mentioned a part of the plan’s proposed guiding principles calling for the program to “present artistic excellence and the most dynamic, innovative, unique projects possible.”
“These guiding principles are a little much for me,” Torre said.
Roy said the guidelines were meant to be aspirational.
Rose said he understood Torre’s concerns, but that appreciated the aspirational nature of the guiding principles.
“I think you will get a lot of applications that are striving to be the best,” Rose said.