A tight Multnomah County budget and moves by its board to trim it could cost the Regional Arts & Culture Council $300,000, crippling its support of arts organizations, RACC declared in an email blast sent out late Wednesday morning, June 4.
“We are writing to you with urgency: two proposed amendments (#10 and #11) to Multnomah County’s FY25 budget as currently written would eliminate $300,000 in general funding support for your Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC),” the email reads.
“These dollars matter. This core funding fuels community-based, arts and culture programming and career development throughout Multnomah County.”
The email put out an urgent plea for immediate community support.
“Put simply: Continued County support for RACC is essential to supporting the arts and culture sector, which is an economic engine and a critical source of community well-being,” the email continues. “The County’s $300,000 investment yields outsized returns — returns that cannot be replaced if these funds are cut.”
RACC’s email calls for a couple of public actions:
1. “Email your County Commissioner TODAY and tell them to vote NO on cutting funding to RACC as part of Amendments #10 and #11 to protect arts and culture in Multnomah County. Don’t know who your Commissioner is? Find your district here. Want to know who’s on the Board? Meet the Commissioners.“
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2. “Submit written testimony or sign up to speak. Your voice is important. Testify and share how RACC has impacted you or your community. Use this form to submit a comment or sign up to testify (in person or virtually).”
The Regional Arts & Cultural Council supports arts activities in Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties and is funded primarily by those counties’ boards as well as cities including Portland, which has radically slashed the amount of money it allocates to RACC.
In 2023 Portland, which had been RACC’s major funder, withdrew its support and set up its own City Arts Program. In fiscal year 2022-23 the city had paid $7.4 million of RACC’s $10.6 million budget, with most of that city money flowing back in the form of grants to Portland-based arts groups.
Some of the city money has since come back to RACC in the form of smaller grants which the regional agency in turn uses to disseminate small grants to a variety of arts groups. RACC’s current budget — a little more than half what it had been — is $5.4 million, which includes $1.3 million earmarked for grant awards to other organizations. Multnomah County’s slashing of another $300,000 would further reduce RACC’s ability to financially support the region’s arts and cultural sector.
In mid-May RACC announced that Patricia Rojas, most recently leader of strategic housing initiatives for the greater Portland area’s Metro Regional Government, will take over as its new executive director, effective Aug. 1.