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San Diego County supervisors on Wednesday unveiled a proposal for a new countywide arts and culture initiative designed to expand public investment as the city and the federal government reduce arts funding. The plan, announced by Board of Supervisors Chair Terra Lawson-Remer and Vice Chair Monica Montgomery Steppe, would spend up to $2.75 million in its first year and $2.25 million annually thereafter to support programs serving the county’s 3.3 million residents in both incorporated cities and unincorporated areas.
At a presentation at the San Diego County Administration Center at Waterfront Park, the supervisors’ announcement included performances by children from the Mainly Mozart Youth Orchestra and break dancers. Lawson-Remer said the county stepping forward would be “transformative,” and she said it marked “the first time the county is stepping forward to provide public investment in arts and culture for the entire county.”
Under the proposal, the initiative would include a $1 million grant program focused on individual artists in areas with limited cultural resources. The supervisors also outlined two $500,000 allocations: one to improve access to creative spaces and another to support an existing Black Arts and Culture District consisting of nine blocks in Encanto.
Montgomery Steppe and Lawson-Remer said the program would further direct funding toward regional and government integration. The plan would set aside $250,000 each for binational arts and cultural collaboration in the San Diego-Baja region, and it would create an artist-in-residence program that places local artists within county departments to help devise creative solutions to public challenges.
Lawson-Remer linked the proposal to underserved communities, saying that the effort would provide “support and resources” for areas where San Diegans have been “underserved” and “marginalized” in the arts “for too long.” She said the program would expand opportunities for artists, increase public access to cultural experiences, and strengthen connections across the county’s diverse region.
The county vote is scheduled for Tuesday, May 5, and supervisors said the proposal has been in development for a year. Montgomery Steppe said the county program is not intended as a response to city budget cuts, but she acknowledged the broader context as government agencies retreat from arts commitments, including federal steps that affected local nonprofits.
The staff report for the initiative ties the timing to federal and city changes. It says the Trump administration last year revoked money previously awarded to local nonprofits through the National Endowment for the Arts, and it argues that artists are also “pushed to the margins” by rising costs, limited access to capital, unstable income, and a lack of affordable work and living spaces.
Local arts leaders described the impact of the federal rescissions and the importance of new support. Jared Osoria, a principal dancer with San Diego Ballet, said the company lost $10,000 last year after the National Endowment for the Arts appropriated and then revoked funds, and he said the county’s program could help the ballet purchase rehearsal equipment, cover supplies, and offer free classes to students in San Ysidro and City Heights.
Osoria said the county initiative “puts shoes on our dancers feet” and gives the company “a better budget for props for our main stage productions,” adding that it would help ensure the “Nutcracker continues year after year.” Alex Villafuerte, executive director of the Pacific Arts Movement, said the federal endowment awarded his organization $25,000 last year and then clawed it back without explanation, and he also said the organization scaled back its festival activities after sponsors reversed grants they had previously given.
Villafuerte said the rescinded funding and sponsor pullbacks affected how many filmmakers the festival could bring and reduced its spring showcase from seven to three days. He suggested the endowment’s actions were driven by “executive orders around diversity,” and he said he assumed the rescissions came with no explanation and no chance for the organization to respond.
Ramel Wallace, founder and CEO of the Holyfield organization, said the county’s contribution is “a good start,” but he argued that artist communities also need to become more self-sufficient through grassroots financial structures such as rotating savings and credit associations and savings circles. He said communities would have to create “solidarity economics, microeconomics in our individual communities,” because “we can’t always look to the powers that be.”
Arts advocates who spoke at the announcement rejected the idea that art is a luxury, arguing that investment supports community well-being, tourism, and economic development. Gaidi Finnie, executive director of the San Diego African-American Museum of Fine Art, said, “The arts are not a luxury; they are a public good,” and she said arts funding supports jobs, small businesses, education, and “mental health.”