Oh, great.

Everyone can follow directions.

So hello, good afternoon.

My name's Ben Weber.

I am the Boston City Councilor for District Six, and I'm the chair of the Ways and Means Committee.

I see we have a lot of folks here for this afternoon's hearing.

Just to give you a sense of what we're going to do.

So I believe almost everyone here, if not everyone here, is for arts.

We're going to first hear the we're going to get to the boring part first.

We're going to hear from the consumer affairs and licensing and the Office of Tourism.

We're going to relatively short, shorter than we usually do for questions.

But we're going to start for with the uh the opening act is going to be uh the licensing followed by the Office of Tourism.

Okay.

And then we will get to our crickets.

Do we hear in crickets?

Okay.

Great.

So my colleagues, everybody, did I do that right?

Okay.

Um, so uh Donald, you you were here this morning.

Do you have a you have a presentation?

Uh again, just save the arts for uh the main part of the show.

All right.

Oh, sorry, just I apologize.

I have to, there's some preliminaries here.

Uh so this is a hearing.

We're having a hearing, uh I I believe.

Uh and uh this is a hearing before the Ways and Means Committee.

Today's April thirtieth, two thousand twenty-six, and is now two fourteen PM.

This hearing is being recorded.

It's also being live streamed at Boston.gov slash city dash dash council dash TV and broadcast on Xfinity Channel eight, RCN, channel eighty-two, and file channel nine sixty-four.

People can participate in our budget hearings, which run from April through to June in one of several ways.

You can give testimony, which it appears like many of you are on the uh cusp of about to do.

You can give testimony at a hearing in person to do so.

Sign up on the sign-in sheet over here.

I already have one sign-in sheet uh full.

There'll there'll be others, and I'll call on you in the order in which you've signed up.

You can also testify virtually at our hearings.

Uh to do so, please email uh the our this uh committee, which is ccc.wm at boston.gov, or you can email our uh our our chief budget analyst Chris Machon at K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A dot C H O U H A N at Boston.gov.

You can also come to the last or fourth of four listening sessions, which we have held uh in the evenings here at City Hall.

Our last listening session will be on Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m.

where the counselors will be here to take testimony.

We'll also have interpreters uh here available in Spanish, Haitian Creole and Cantonese.

Um again, you can you can show up at a hearing and testify.

You can uh watch a hearing online and testify virtually.

You can also submit written testimony uh to the committee at ccc.wm at Boston.gov.

Lastly, uh you can submit a two-minute video of your testimony through the form on our website.

Again, the website is Boston.gov slash council dash budget.

Some folks in here may make some great two-minute videos.

Uh look forward to seeing those.

Um again, folks will uh have two minutes to testify.

Um, and uh we will do so uh I'm gonna hold public testimony till uh after we hear we have a presentation from from arts and then we'll hear some questions from my colleagues and then we'll we'll we'll go to public testimony.

Um again if you uh want to testify today's hearing.

Uh when you get up there, tell us your name.

Uh if you're with an organization, tell us the organization.

If you uh uh you also tell us where you live in Boston, uh, and then you'll have two minutes to uh just tell us what's on your mind.

Um today's or this afternoon's hearing is on docket numbers 0733 to 0740 and 0751 to 0753.

An overview of the FY27 operating um budgets for consumer affairs and licensing, the Office of Tourism, Sports and Entertainment, and the Office of Arts and Culture.

This hearing will also cover the Public Art Revolving Fund and Strand Theater Revolving Fund, managed by the Office of Arts and Culture and the City Hall Plaza Revolving Fund, managed by the Office of Tourism, Sports and Entertainment.

This is one of a series of hearings on the fiscal year 2027 budget.

These matters were sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu and were referred to the committee on April 8th, 2026.

I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, councillor Ed Flynn from District 2, Councilor Couie Gen, who's an at-large counselor from District 8, Councilor Sharon Durkin, uh from uh district nine, uh uh Liz Braden, and the vice chair of the uh ways and means committee, uh uh John Fitzgerald.

There he is.

Um I'm just gonna introduce our panelists.

We have uh from uh tourism and licensing.

We've got interim chief of economic opportunity inclusion, Donald Wright.

We've got director of special events, Amy Yandel, uh, and executive director of the consumer affairs and licensing Kathleen Joyce.

Um we're also joined by uh Chief of Arts and Culture, Joseph Henry, and senior advisor of creative creative economy for the Office of Arts and Culture, uh Kenny Muscari.

Um I guess uh Donald, Amy, and Kathleen, uh the floor is yours.

Great, thank you, counselor.

Good afternoon, Chair, Councilor Weber, and members of the committee on ways and means.

It is my pleasure to come before you in a capacity of interim chief of economic opportunity and inclusion to discuss our budget for the fiscal year 2027.

I thought there was another slide.

All right, great.

I'm gonna turn it over to Amy to go over our our work and in our mission.

Good afternoon, Chioaba, members of the council.

My name's Amy Yandel, and I'm the director of special events.

Uh the mission of our department is to advance tourism and promote public participation in celebrations from both residents and visitors to our city.

We do this by producing and supporting events across the city, by supporting film and TV production, and by marketing the city to conventions and visitors.

Our office produces annual public celebrations that include our our Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Day.

We partner with the Boston University, where Dr.

King was a student.

One Boston Day, Donna Summer Disco Party, Gospel Fest, Open Streets, just to name a few.

Oh shoot.

Sorry.

We also provide tech support to neighborhood events throughout the city.

I'm not going to read all of them to you, but annually we probably do well over 100 tech supports.

And we touch almost every, I would say every neighborhood in the city of Boston.

Now we'll get to the meet.

Summer of 2026 is going to be an incredible summer for the City of Boston for both residents and visitors.

We'll stop by the uh talking about the 250th anniversary of our country will continue this summer.

Boston 250 has been working diligently with our partners at Mass 250, Rev 250, the Freedom Trail, National Parks, and local historic organizations, and our partners in the private sector to produce events that are worthy of this commemoration.

Some highlights include last year's last April's ride of Paul Rivia that included a drone show and a row across the Boston Harbor, evacuation day festivities, and most recently celebrating the Henry Knox Trail at First Church in Roxbury.

This year's Independence Day Parade, reading of the Declaration of Independence, and the Fannual Holleration will be bigger and better than ever.

Additionally, we have some soccer matches, some little soccer games come into our uh to our area.

In June of 2022, Boston was selected as one of the 10 North American cities to host the 2026 World Cup.

Really exciting news for our city.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the largest to date, with 80 matches featuring 48 national teams slated to take place 60 in the United States, 10 in Canada, 10 in Mexico.

We are excited to work with our partners at Boston Soccer 2026 to ensure that the event in FanFest on City Hall Plaza is an experience that both residents and visitors will be talking about for years to come.

And right after Soccer Leaves, we have some ships coming in.

So the international tall ships from around the world will be in Boston from July 11th through the 16th.

We expect 28 Class A vessels from 29 nations and 50 smaller sailing ships.

And another major program that I want to touch upon is Open Streets.

We're happy to partner again with Shauna Bryant, a woman founder of Manifested Events to help lead in planning this momentous event with the Office of Economic Opportunity Inclusion and the Office of Tourism, Sports and Entertainment.

Open Streets will return to Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, and Alston Brighton, and we are expanding to Rosalindale for the first time this year.

Over the first five years of the Open Streets program, over 2.8 million has been reinvested back into Boston neighborhoods, with local businesses boasting as much as a 300% increase in sales at Open Streets events.

Over 800 community partners and 60,000 attendees join us each year.

And that's just an overview of some of the work our department does.

Oh for the uh for the panelists, don't press the buttons like uh no, our our uh central staff can turn them on and off, and so every hearing ends up turning into a comedy of errors where people are.

You would think I hadn't done this before.

Good afternoon, Chair.

My name is Kathleen Joyce.

I am the executive director of the mayor's office of consumer affairs and licensing.

I want to thank you for inviting us to participate in this hearing today.

The Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing supports and regulates Boston's hospitality and cannabis industries.

The office licenses and coordinates all outdoor public events citywide, advancing public safety, mitigating neighborhood impacts, and supporting the successful execution of events ranging from local gatherings to major international activations.

The office also educates and mediates on behalf of Boston area consumers in order to facilitate successful resolution of consumer related complaints.

Before I move on, I just want to take a moment to highlight how we're approaching this upcoming summer.

As we look ahead to summer 2026 with major events and increased activity across the city, we are taking a proactive approach to support our hospitality sector while maintaining strong public safety standards.

What we've done already, we have launched hospitality office hours.

They are biweekly on Wednesdays from three to five, where anyone has direct access to our city staff with real-time guidance and problem solving.

Our goal with these hospitality office hours is to reduce barriers and to help businesses move faster through our processes.

We've also done extensive community outreach.

We've added dedicated outreach staff going into neighborhoods, educating businesses on liquor licenses and opportunities, the application process, and we've focused on small and unrepresented businesses.

We've also had additional public safety meetings.

We've already convened these meetings in South Boston, the Seaport, and the Theater District.

I want to acknowledge the council officials that were not included in our most recent invites.

This was a breakdown in our internal communications, and we've corrected that and will be sure to include all of you moving forward.

We're continuing to expand these meetings across additional neighborhoods, focusing on the needs of the licensees, feedback from Boston police, and help from our city staff.

Those meetings are focused on crowd management at dispersal times, responsible service, operational readiness with the influx of our international visitors this summer, and public safety awareness, and I'll give you two examples.

We're increasing public safety awareness specifically around drink spiking and human trafficking.

The Office of Neighborhood, the Office of Nightlife Economy is leading the charge on this while working with the Boston Public Health Commission and Women's Advancement.

There'll be more neighborhoods to come, and we'll be keeping you posted.

Our work is our focus is on working together in prevention, making sure expectations are clear for the busy summer and not after issues arise.

Wait.

Sorry.

One second.

Wait.

Donald.

Okay, here we go.

So this is what our office is made up of the licensing board, the cannabis board, the entertainment division, consumer affairs, and the public events that are take place outdoors.

The licensing board is a three-member mayoral appointed board that issues and regulates the following categories of licenses common victualer licenses, alcoholic beverage licenses, inholder licenses, dormitories, lodging houses, billiards and bowling, and fortune tellers.

Very important.

To date, the licensing board has granted 75 new alcohol licenses from the 225 newly available licenses that were created in the legislation that was passed in 2024.

At least one license has been granted in each of the 13 eligible zip codes.

The licensing board passed regulations in January 2026 to allow beer and wine licensees to upgrade to an all-alcohol license.

To date, the board has approved 31 upgrades pursuant to these new regulations.

We've partnered with the Boston Police Department and the Office of Nightlife Economy to proactively offer the public safety trainings I just discussed in licensed premises all across our city.

We've processed and approved over 720 special one-day all-alcohol licenses for July between July 1st, 2025 and April 23rd, 2026.

Bless you.

The licensing board engaged in significant community outreach to raise awareness of the new licenses that we received and to educate potential applications about the process and timeline.

In FY26, the licensing board hired its first ever outreach coordinator.

Thanks to this additional investment from the City Council.

This new outreach included neighborhood business walks, informational webinars, presentation to main street directors, neighborhood information sessions, multilingual FAQs on our website, postcard campaign, and bi weekly office hours, things we could have never done before at our capacity.

The Boston Cannabis Board was established in 2020.

It's a mayoral appointed seven-member board tasked with citing cannabis establishments within the city of Boston.

The BCB's duty is to ensure equity in the issuance of cannabis licenses.

Its enabling ordinance mandates that at least 50% of all cannabis establishments within the city have been certified as equity applicants by OEOI.

This slide shows you that the BCB issued seven cannabis licenses in FY26.

Four of them were equity, three non-equity.

We executed six host agreements, five equity, one non-equity.

Currently there are 39 cannabis establishments open and operating, 33 marijuana retail only establishments, five co-located marijuana retail and medical treatment centers, one marijuana delivery operator.

And the chart at the bottom breaks it down by neighborhood, the number of open establishments.

Annual live entertainment, which would be a DJ or a band, a one-time entertainment, which is a temporary license for non-live and live entertainment, which is useful when an establishment doesn't have the current zoning and the correct zoning in place.

A one-time carnival license, which is temporary for carnival games and rides.

The entertainment division approved 50 new non-live entertainment licenses in FY26 to date.

They approved 13 new live entertainment licenses, including Swingers, an indoor mini golf establishment, activate games and immersive games and puzzle place, Don't Tell Auntie, Rosa E.

Marigold, Cactus Club, and Park City.

This was all FY26 to date.

The entertainment division approved 1,664 one-time entertainment licenses for indoor and outdoor entertainment, which are public events, including Fenway Park, the stage at Suffolk Downs, and the Pavilion.

And we renewed over 1,200 annual licenses.

And then the other part of our office that works very hard is the Consumer Affairs Division, which works directly with the Massachusetts Attorney General's office to educate consumers and help fight deceptive business practices within the city of Boston.

The most frequent consumer complaints that our advocates mediate include housing, which housing landlord tenant disputes, whether it be over a security deposit or a code violation, online shopping scams, scams including finance and leasing issues with related to automobiles, the lemon law, extended warranties, repossession of cars, billing issues, repair failures with repair repair shops, and billing issues with car rental companies.

The consumer affairs office received a $97,000 grant from the Attorney General's office for the local consumer aid fund.

With that grant, we helped recover over 214,000 in 2025.

Our consumer outreach staff completed seven consumer events, including tabling and presentations on identity theft and youth online safety.

We already have three more events scheduled.

Another part of our office, a very important part is our special events office.

MOCAL regularly convenes a committee to assist applicants through the process of permitting an outdoor event across the city.

The special events committee includes the Boston Police Department, representatives from the Boston Police Department, inspectional services, fire, EMS, Boston Transportation Department, Department of Public Works, Office of Neighborhood Services, Boston Parks and Recreation, and other departments depending on the detail and location of the event.

So far, we've processed over 780 special event applications in over 1,000 applications in 2025, which is 200 more than last year due to more events.

We continue to work to update our online public event application to obtain more information from applicants at the beginning of the process, which will reduce the number of committee meetings required by staff and the applicant on the other end of the process.

We've implemented a process for repeat applicants with similar events to obtain a seasonal license, which reduces the number of applications that need to be processed that need to be submitted.

We continue to fine-tune these processes to improve the experience with our office.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Uh just for my colleagues, we're gonna have a brief round of questioning uh with these panelists, and then we're gonna go to arts and culture uh and hear uh from the panelists, and then um well questioning and public testimony, which I think everyone is here for for that.

So, Counselor Flynn, we're gonna go with five minutes uh for this round, and again, arts and culture will answer questions in the second round.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and all my questions will be related to um the um executive director of licensing and to Amy as well at tourism, but I do want to recognize and say welcome to Chief Henry.

I had an opportunity to meet and say hello to him.

Um, and just wanted to welcome to his new position.

I think he's gonna do an outstanding job um Kathleen, it's good to be with you, and I talked to Donald earlier and talked to um in AMI as well.

But Kathleen, the the governor is going to come out with some guidelines of recommendations on using marijuana on site at a particular place where you where you buy it.

I don't I'm not sure if it's like a marijuana or a cannabis cafe.

Um is that something that Boston would offer guidelines on or um make recommendations or would they be involved in that type of a discussion?

We're following we're following it very closely at the state level.

Um I'd like to introduce Jasmine Wynn, our cannabis manager.

Um we have a very small but mighty staff on the cannabis side, but Jasmine is plugged into what's going on at the CCC, and we've been talking about this so that we are prepared when the state comes up with the regulations.

We'll take their regulations, we might decide that we want to um layer on additional res regulations.

Um, and if that's what we do, we will work closely to get those up and running.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you, Kathleen.

Um other issue, and I know it's been discussed is uh the upcoming FIFA, the of the the World Cup, but also the the sale Boston, um, a lot of tourist related events.

I know your team um Kathleen is working with the Boston police on human trafficking related issues.

Um I know it's a priority for the city.

Um, and Amy's been working on that issue as well as as as well as as well as Donald.

But do you have any feedback or any information you you're able to provide, any public information just on how important it is to deal with human trafficking, especially with so many tourists in Boston?

What I can say is that the city is looking at this from many angles.

I think Boston Police is taking the lead on that.

Um Boston Public Health is also working on it, and I know they're working directly with Korean, um, our Office of Nightlife Economy.

I can tell you what I've heard is we're also trying to get the message out to our licensees.

We had a very um productive conversation with the theater district licensees earlier this week, and we asked them what do you want to see in your license premises to get the message out to our visitors to our patrons.

And I don't want to speak for Kareen because she's uh already running with the this information, but I believe we're coming up with some as she said collateral that will be in our licensed premises.

So should there be um so that anyone who needs help um can reach out to I guess a certain number?

Um I don't want to speak for Corinne, but I think they're gonna be creating some sort of a sticker campaign for our license premises.

So, counselor, it would look uh as if you know when folks are using restrooms, trying to find ways or places where the offender may not be.

So if a woman went to a restroom, um there would be some sort of QR code of some sort of identifier that you could go to any event that that you're going through a challenging time.

Thank you.

And maybe my my last point on my last question with with all of these tourist-related events taking place in the city, and I speak with um Commissioner Krista McCosh frequently about access for persons with disabilities.

Um what are you specifically doing or recommending, or how are you working to ensure all spaces are accessible to persons with disabilities?

Um ventures is actually running the the tall ships program, and I know that they are working closely with Kristen and her team on that.

I can get you more information, counselor.

Yeah, that would that would be helpful.

Um my last point.

Well, I'm actually out of time.

Um I'm in respectful to my colleagues, I'm not gonna ask another question.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Okay, thank you, Councillor Flynn.

Uh sorry, I think Councillor Louie Jim, you're next.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you to the panel, and thank you to everyone um and community who is out here uh it for this budget hearing.

Uh we have a lot of events coming up this summer, um, as has already been talked about, and we're hoping that it can be a really great summer, and that we're expanding opportunity and access across the city.

We know when it comes to licensing that uh we've expanded outreach through webinars, office hours, and multilingual materials, which is important, but what is the current average processing time for licenses and event permits, and what how what are we doing differently this year to streamline and uh quick up the pace and pick up the pace on issuing licenses and permits for activities related to the World Cup and summer activities?

Like, is there anything that we are sort of being more you know lenient about or make it you know doing things differently?

Well, I want to tip my hat to our special events committee, which is uh led by today Baker, who does a phenomenal job with these meetings.

We have been lucky enough to add one staff member.

Um I am able to say there were we're moving through these applications as quickly as possible, keeping in mind public safety um issues and not trying to cut any corners.

I don't this is our busy time now getting ready for these events, and she's been working on this for over a year.

Yeah, it's a busy time naturally, and now you layer on the world cup, you layer on celebrate 250, you layer on so just do we have the capacity and I'll be meeting that.

I mean, we could always use additional staff, I'll say that, but she is doing an excellent job.

I don't think there's a backlog.

She's added additional meetings, we've had smaller subcommittees looking at things.

We've actually gone out and done site visits to try to figure out can we avoid the actual committee meeting process if necessary if possible.

Um we've been able to incorporate um just regular technologies helped help us include that.

She's uh a pro at what she does, so she's able to identify issues before they even come to the committee meeting and troubleshoot those.

Um, and I think we're in really great shape.

And and if I if I can add to that, I think I want to acknowledge Danny Green.

The uh importance of those office hours that Kathleen mentioned earlier is the opportunity.

You know, it's it's it's an opportunity for folks to ask those uh challenging questions, um, find out what they can do on their premises or not.

Um it's the go-to location right now.

I would tell folks that anyone that wants to do something, join one of those uh those our office hours, and we want to thank Danny for that work.

Yes.

Can I just add one more thing to that?

Um I walked in this morning, and so Danny had office hours yesterday, and I walked in this morning and he said he had you know some really good outreach.

Um, I think it was uh I don't know if it's just a constituent or a business person, basically said, like I this I'm doing this as a volunteer for an organization I'm involved in.

The language of the some of these applications are so technical, the average person has a really hard time understanding this.

So Danny reassured the person, broke down some of those silos and helped them explain like this is what you need to do, this is the office you need to go to.

People who do special events all the time that are hired professional special event people or professional event people, it's second nature.

But someone who's trying to put on a community event for the first time to tie it into World Cup, we we appreciate the fact that it may not be intuitive to go get you know a site plan here or what this means, an insurance binder.

So they're able to come to us in these additional open office hour meeting, hospitality meetings, and whether it's Danny or someone else on our team, they can kind of like hold their hand to the next step so that they're in the best position possible when they get to the special event committee meeting.

Thank you.

Um and I'll continue to give feedback that my office hears, especially around the World Cup in terms of permitting and licensing, because we've we've seen some robots, but I I do know about the office hours, and we've been uplifting those, especially to uh communities that often run into those technical obstacles.

So Donald, you're gonna hear me until I'm blue in the face on this, and Amy, thank you for being here.

I have two questions actually.

Now that there's there's no longer anyone in the there's no longer a person in the director of tourism position.

Are we planning to hire for that?

What does that look like?

The second question is you know, there's a lot of economic opportunity, uh, especially uh, and we want to make sure that's spread around the city from all the events that are happening, uh, especially for our black and brown-owned businesses and our small businesses in the city of Boston.

And so what are we doing to ensure that these opportunities, whether it's right here in Fanfest or across the city, that we are expanding opportunities for small these small businesses, black and brown businesses given the scale of economic activity that's going to be happening here this summer.

Right, and so I can uh kind of answer those for you.

Um yes, um looking for uh uh a new director of tourism.

Um not we're just putting the internal and it's it's tourism sporting events and tourism, sports, and entertainment.

Yeah, yeah.

So we're putting uh together some internal, you know, sort of working documents on what type of uh position or what type of uh candidate we would be looking for.

So pulling that that insight and uh information together.

Okay, sorry.

Um and then a second second part about supporting black and brown.

So I mentioned this earlier.

Um I know this is our second time at it today, yes.

So right, is we're hosting um an event on May 4th at 6.

Um and the city is partnering with Boston 26 to host the Get Ready uh for Summer 26 uh business forum.

Um as you know, we've we've done a lot um up uh to date.

Um we sent out a uh a small business survey um to uh you know, I want to say as many as 3,500 small businesses, um, really in this survey is is is going to allow for us to put some information together um to create a guide, and what we're going to be doing is using that guide um at um and in collaboration with say like Meet Boston hotels and places like that, our libraries, what we want to do is use those as guides to get folks uh tourists uh in the communities, but also letting folks know what's happening in and around the city.

And those meetings are virtual, just again going to encourage for in-person meetings, maybe Nubian Square bowling somewhere, because I think it's important for people to be able to.

Understood, Council.

Thank you.

You know, I'm listening.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much, uh, Councillor Dirkins.

You're up next.

Thank you so much.

And so funny, you're looking for someone for that job because when the mayor got elected, that was the job I wanted.

And then they picked, and then they picked um John Borders, and he was he was a much better fit than me, but I'm really proud to get to work with um.

I mean, now in my job, I'm really proud to get to work um on a lot of those events.

So I'm hoping that we pick a really great person for that role, but um in the meantime we have Amy, so thank you for all that you do, and thank you for all that you've done over so many years.

Um I I wanted to ask some questions about licensing.

How many dispensaries were permitted in 2026?

I know it was expected to be 10.

Is that how many were permitted?

Yeah, I had on my slide.

I'm sorry, I just closed my folder.

Sorry, I might have missed that.

Um we issued seven cannabis licenses in FY26.

Four of them were equity and three were non-equity.

Um, and this is for some of my constituents.

What is the average processing time for a one-time entertainment license?

Um, well, we request that the entertainment license comes into our office two weeks before your event, and we process them on a rolling basis.

And before we get the application, we asked the applicant to go speak to the district captain first.

So there's some time leading up to when we receive the application.

I'd say two weeks.

And I know um there New York has been the news for trying to be a loader uh leader on consumer affairs.

Some of the um things that they're putting in place around getting w rid of citywide junk fees, they're doing a hotel pricing ban where you have to know you know how when you're going into a hotel, how much have you looked into some of those things?

Do we have the same authority as New York?

Our office doesn't do the policy on the consumer affairs side.

We receive complaints from the attorney general's office and work to mitigate the results of those complaints.

So we're not a policy advocate for consumer affairs, yeah.

Yeah, so I guess we'll um I I was curious because that has been in the news a lot, and I'm just curious if we even have the same authority as the city.

I guess I should have asked that in the law hearing.

Our office doesn't have that authority.

Yeah, thank you.

Um so um I know that we um are often appearing before before you, and I just wanted to ask sort of a very basic question.

Um I I find that when I weigh in on things um generally my voice is is heard and um and is definitely weighed.

I'm curious, um what is the is it best for us to submit?

Um, and for I I have a lot of constituents who weigh in on different licensing matters and don't get their desired results, and I'm just curious, um is it best to weigh in ahead of time?

Is it best to weigh in on the meeting?

Like, you know, how does that sort of factor into decision making?

So you're asking ahead of time is always best because we can then review the record before the actual hearing.

That's one of the most difficult things is that in real time we'll be getting new information out of hearing.

Are you saying after the fact if there's a result that you are unhappy with you about it?

Oh no, I mean I I think that's a separate question.

Okay.

Yeah, I just meant for constituents who um you know want to weigh in, what's the best way for them to join our hearing anytime they want.

Um not everyone has available at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday, but um written testimony holds the same weight as um testifying on a hearing.

Okay, perfect.

Um, and I'm really excited for all the events this summer.

I think um it's it's incredible to see our city getting ready for for these incredible events.

Um and I know there's a lot of work that goes in with public safety and other um just sort of bringing everything together.

So I just want to thank you for all that work that's going on.

I know we're all gonna be enjoying it when it's when it's all taking place.

Um and I'm grateful uh for the work to make the uh fanfest free.

I think that is difficult, but I think it's really important that um you know people around the city have access to events.

Um I think those are that's all of my questions today, and I just want to thank you for all your collaboration all throughout the year.

I think um I I talk to you all a lot in different settings, and I think it's really um incredible that we have leaders like you leading our city in in a really positive direction.

So grateful for the chances that we get to interact throughout the year.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um Madam President Braden, five minutes.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I I've been told to wish uh Joseph Henry a very happy birthday.

I think you maybe maybe got that message earlier, but but anyway, happy birthday.

Thank you.

Um let's see.

Uh the the planning and uh department is currently leading an Alston Brighton community plan process, and uh given Altson Brighton history is history as a cultural hub.

Um I believe that it's uh that it's an essential part of uh some sort of essential for some sort of cultural zoning to be part of the plan.

Um and the city's anti-displacement action plan also specifically recommends the implementation of affirmative cultural zoning in Alston Brighton.

So has MOAC been coordinating with the planning department um to develop proposed cultural zoning for Alston Brighton and and what progress has been made in that matter?

I think they're gonna come after us.

They're gonna come after, so I have to get in line and talk to you later.

So will you be in the next round then?

Okay.

Uh let's jump to um and so then investment in the arts, is that there's just and you folks are licensing?

All right, jump to licensing.

And special events.

Um I'm delighted to hear that Alston Brighton is going to get uh open streets again.

I wasn't aware that that was on the books.

I thought we had bagged it for this year, but not might have been last year.

Um licensing.

Um I was wondering in terms of uh do uh I asked this question this morning about the um the the mass conventions uh center.

Uh do we partner with Mass Convention Center on you know attracting events and yes, we're we're yeah, we're okay.

Well um that's been a partner of ours for you know quite some time.

We've been in conversations with the new executive director, uh Mr.

Barrows.

And we work with Meet Boston as well and the local sports teams to attract you know NCAAs or others, you know, Army Navy game.

Well, the the sports piece is sort of a no-brainer, but um the other uh other important thing is other like arts and cultural events, and and I'm a I'm a family historian, and and one organization that I've tapped into is it used to be the New England Historic Genealogy Society, it's now American Ancestors is the oldest and largest genealogy organization in in the United States, and it's in it's in Councillor Durkin's district, I think, on Newbury Street.

Um do we focus on do we partner with other like big nonprofits like the genealogy?

I mean you may not have known that, but when you go online, the two the two most frequent subjects for research online uh uh are uh pornography and genealogy, so go figure.

in in the United States and it's in it's in Councillor Durkin's district I think on Newbury Street um do we focus on do we partner with other like big nonprofits like the genealogy I mean you may not have known that but when when you go online the two the two most frequent subjects for research online are um pornography and genealogy so go figure um do uh and I know folks come to Boston to take in the historic nature of the city and all that but do um do we do we work with those sort of organizations and sort of spr spread our view of beyond just sports events do we know we work with uh with with the MCCA to attract all kinds of events yeah um you know local events probably might get overlooked a little bit because we're going after national you know national organizations but we can talk more about that and we have the Kennedy the Kennedy Library and all of that of course and and our own Boston public library is the uh it's essentially a presidential library for the Adams papers so do um and just in terms of cross cross departmental cooperation in the city like do we do we work on uh generating ideas for events and and there's there's quite a bit of RDATing that happens internally um it might be a member of our team you know talking about event and we might might pull them in they will do the same um it's I I think we're right now it's it's ideal for us to work uh cross departmentally yeah and we've had quite a bit of success in doing that you know every I think we all have bucket lists of cities we want to visit and I think a lot of people have Boston on their bucket list so wanna make sure that there's um plenty to do when the folks get here um I'd also got a question for um Catherine about you know do we do we do how how how are we have we uh allocated all the the the the the liquor license the beer and the beer and wine licenses that we were the extra licenses that we got approved for no we haven't but I will say we have allocated all of the Oak Square ones.

There was only three of them in the last legislation if you're asking about your district.

Well outside of Oak Square which is just one little corner are there are there other licenses for the rest of Alston Brighton?

No they were not included in the legislation.

Okay that's fine.

And do we have such a thing as a bring your own bottle license?

Yes we do we do and is that commonly permitted given or is that we don't have an awful lot of applications for them.

Okay.

I think it's expensive insurance wise for an establishment to add BYOB.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay and just in in the folks that have a restaurant and they can't have a get a beer and wine license the BYOB might be a sort of interim approach or does that rule them out of getting a beer and wine license later.

No it doesn't rule them out there's some guidelines around BYOB it has to be I think under 19 seats of 30 seats and then so it's a very small place.

Yeah and we're hearing we've asked people why why haven't you tried to do BYOB and the common answer is that it it's just it's burdensome to them financially because it requires additional insurance and additional layers of and you only get a limited Corkage price price as well.

Okay and my time's up I'll come back thank you.

Okay have the fortune tellers told you what Counselor Fitzgerald's gonna ask their licenses on the Councillor Fitzgerald you have five minutes.

Thank you counselor I I'm still trying to get over the fact that uh counselor Braden might have just rebranded the adult film industry as genealogy enthusiasts it's a much more politically correct way to say that.

However to business uh typically what I ask so far over these budget hearings of having each department in front of us uh we know it's a tough year uh we know everyone's taking a hit um if you guys could each uh just sort of describe you know what you're losing and where you feel and how you feel you're gonna make up or backfill it um whether it's uh the dollar amount or uh just the services that you're sort of finding yourself taking a hit on and um and the plan to sort of adjust to that um so that could be to to either towards I know our next panel so yeah we had we had a 262000 dollar reduction approximately um largest one was in um open streets um 1500 was was cut from that budget so so the result of that is we're doing four instead of five this year okay um you know contracted services you know we're just gonna have to streamline operations a little bit more um you know maybe cut a few elements of an event but you know we're we're pretty creative and we we we're used to doing more with less um and I mean I I think those are the major major hits that we're taking Kathy uh sure I'll tell you um I am concerned because a lot of what we do is mandated by the state the number of licenses that were given to us our staff has not grown we were able to add one additional licensing person thanks to all of you we received a hundred thousand dollars last year for two temporary positions and we need them to be renewed one of them is doing outreach um going out into the communities and literally going um door to door and asking people would they want to have an alcohol license and this is how you would do it we can't lose them the other person is working on our um internal systems and um

We received 100,000 last year for two temporary positions, and we need them to be renewed.

One of them is doing outreach, um, going out into the communities and literally going um door to door and asking people would they want to have an alcohol license?

And this is how you would do it.

We can't lose them.

The other person is working on our um internal systems, and um I don't know what we would do without them.

Again, we're not in control of the the number of applications that come before us, but I will tell you our staffing model has not changed much over the last 25 years.

We are at the brink, and we cannot continue to do the same work we do unless we have additional staff.

Thank you.

Don, I don't know if you have good, yep.

Um thank you for those answers.

It's nice to just sort of level set of where the hits are coming from and and what it's really going to affect in terms of services for our constituents.

Um Kathleen, well, uh the cannabis licenses.

I know uh previously we used to have a uh a cannabis equity fund that we no longer appropriate from.

Uh what's happened to those introductory funds that were originally there?

Do we know is that a fairly we don't run that funding?

Okay.

It's it's Chief.

I'll give you some insight on that.

Yeah, all right.

No, thank you.

Just so I I knew it had existed, and then I'm I'm not the foremost expert on it either.

So I'll get you sort of the the most latest update on the.

Yeah, that's all I'm looking for.

Thank you, sir.

Um the special events, uh, we had a hearing here a couple of weeks ago that I convened around the uh security and special events, just for the folks that are in the room and maybe listening in.

Could you just sort of touch upon I know you are not uh the police to fire EMS, but uh it's certainly the one thing well, there's a lot to be excited about, there's also a lot to be nervous about.

We're having that many people here over the summer.

Could you just give a brief explanation of sort of the coordination that goes on between all departments uh to make sure that we're all gonna be safe here this summer?

Sure.

Um you know, public safety is always at the forefront of any decision that we make, uh, especially in our department.

Um we work closely with Boston Police.

Um Boston 26 um is working close, they have a public safety working group, and that's not bringing only in Boston.

That's regional, that's MBTA, that's state, so everybody's coordinating together on a regular cadence.

Um internally, we we we've done you know, multi-department working with OEM and everybody meetings on a regular cadence to um to make sure that we're all aligned and that you know and we even have a regional approach, I understand, right?

Even neighboring towns, we're all everyone's coordinating together.

Yeah, and you know, the MBTA is a big part of this too.

Great, thank you.

Um I'll just finish one last question, Amy will go uh to you as well.

Um in special events, thinking large or small, right?

And maybe there is a difference between this, but I was just sort of thinking what do we take in financially from some of these versus the cost it takes uh on other city resources to put it out, right?

I think of even if the small, like I went we want to do something in town field uh around FIFA, right?

And it's like the cost to uh you know uh get get the police, get the TV, get the security, get everything set up, and then uh you know, but what you also can pull in from that in terms of local the gathering people around and frequenting the small businesses and things like that.

So I really don't have a comparison yet because it hasn't happened, but like I know that our office has been preparing that for this for a couple for a couple of years, so we've been securing funds so that we know that we can make these events happen.

Um you know you know sometimes it's through private sponsorship.

Um FIFA's interesting because you can't use any competitive, you know, it's not even worth it really to try to do that on a large scale.

Um, but we have been planning to make sure that we can make sure these events are safe, fun, and expenses are covered.

Great.

Thank you so much.

I know it's my time.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

I just one one quick question for me.

Uh, open streets, uh, you know, Jamaica Plain.

I see it's it's on the list.

Do you know when uh I think we had it like November first?

I can get to those dates, counselor, and have them right in front of me.

I've just I've had businesses reach out.

Yep.

What?

No, yeah, they I thought I I heard Jamaica Plane in the presentation.

Oh, you want me to repeat them?

Sure.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, it's in the slides.

Um one moment, please.

So we are going to be in Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, Alston Brighton, and Roslandale is new this year.

Okay, but the schedule is to TV D.

I'll get to the dates.

Okay.

Um so I we we have a a good problem, uh, which is that we have too many people who came to today's hearing that our capacity can hold.

We do have a fire safety issue.

So uh for anyone who does not have a seat if you're sitting in the aisle, if you're standing.

We have a overflow we have a TV set up or something like that.

Uh which is is just outside.

We're gonna direct you to where it is.

If you're sitting down, stay where you are or scoot over.

Uh uh just if something happened in here and we all needed to leave.

Like, you know, I think I might be the only person who could get out of here.

Uh so uh we do have a whole we we do have a uh there's a TV you can watch live.

You'll have an opportunity to testify if you signed up.

Um minute while we uh uh get here and if you if you need to head out.

Thank you very much.

So we're gonna recess her.

Two minutes.

I think I didn't know that now with uh I guess we have to have anything.

Okay.

Good afternoon.

Can they can they hear me out in the mezzanine?

They just left.

Okay, well, uh there.

Okay, well, uh, they they they can come back.

It looks like we'll be here a while.

Um, so what we're gonna do now is, and again, I thank everyone for an orderly, you know, uh, seating here.

It is it's not really up to me.

It's a it's a fire safety issue, and don't want to see anyone get hurt.

Um, we're gonna hear uh from from Arts and Culture.

Uh, you're gonna give a presentation.

Uh, we're then usually we wait till the first round of questions to go to public testimony.

We're just gonna go through the first ten people.

I've got three sheets here.

Uh we'll we're gonna go through the first ten folks who've signed up.

Some may have left.

Uh and so that'll two minutes each, about a twenty minutes of public testimony.

Then we will go to the first round of questions.

Uh all my colleagues can ask.

We'll then go to more public testimony.

Uh and and then we'll sort of mix and match, and and we'll be getting people through here.

Uh and you know, if there are people waiting outside, I think after your public testimony is over, it might be good to just check out there, and you can go watch on TV, tell somebody to come up and and take your seat.

Uh so uh hold hold on a second, let me make sure I've got everything.

Um we have uh Joseph Henry, okay, and uh Kenny Muscary.

So the floor is yours.

You have a presentation.

Uh and then when you're done, we'll again we'll I'll call out the first ten people on the sheet.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you.

Um City Councilors, Chair Weber, um well, President Braden when she returns.

Um, just want to say to start off what I can honor it is to do this job.

I think I don't take it for granted.

And this is a photo of the Mowak team.

We don't have a team photo yet, but this is a photo of the MOAC team with the artists from the AMAP crew for AMAP from Dave and Sea Chandler Day we celebrated earlier.

And in this photo, you have our team, you have artists, you have advocates, tourists who got swept up in the moment, um, museum directors, chairs of funding organizations, and I think I'm very proud to run a team that is an arts department full of cultural workers.

And like our team see themselves as cultural and creative workers, like everyone else that we represent, and that's a really important ethos of our department.

Um arts and culture plays a critical economic and social role in Boston and will continue into the future.

Uh since 2021, the creative workforce has grown by 5.2%, and it's projected to grow another 12% in the next decade.

This is an economic share, but workforce, which is a critical distinction.

Our creative industries already support the employment of 70,000 workers in Boston.

35,000 are jobs directly related to creative industries, and 34,000 are indirectly related to their jobs in the supply chain.

The creative industries contribute 15 billion a year to Boston's economy, and just the income tax of Boston's creatives is almost half a billion interstate coffers.

Um then, furthermore, we all know that arts jobs are not traditional federal industry jobs.

So a lot of them are hidden in the data.

When we surveyed Bostonians directly through our research team, twice now because we didn't believe the data when we first got it back.

Um 18.6% of Bostonians surveyed of a sample of 1,500 said that the creative industries was their primary source of income, and another 9% said it was their secondary source.

We didn't believe that I didn't believe those numbers when we first got them, so I ran it again this early this year, and it was almost exactly the same result.

18% of Bostonian surveys said the creative economy was their primary source of income, and another 7.54% said it was their secondary source.

And these are a relative sample size of Bostonians that we use.

Every quarter we go out and survey people about their views of the library system, their views of public safety.

So this was just a question added to that central sample representative size of the city.

Um however, the space needs of the creative economy haven't kept up with the growth of the sector, and addressing this through strategic cultural planning will be a certificate significant priority for Moac this year and throughout this Meryl term.

I'm trying to focus this presentation on what we'll be doing moving forwards.

Um we'll talk a little bit about successes of 2026, but this is primarily focused on what we're going to be doing, what our work plan is as a department.

Um through a mission-led approach, which is a sort of a way of aligning people through uh shared sort of priorities.

We will hardwire arts and culture in the creative economy into the future of Boston to deliver culture as an essential city service.

And I think we still have some work to do to get there.

Um we'll be working to three core missions and six submissions as a department.

You want to grow and retain Boston's creative workforce, make space for the creative economy to strengthen Boston's global relevance and expand expand equitable participation in cultural life.

So mission one, she's I actually changed the order last night.

I'm glad I'm glad actually the slides updated, that doesn't usually happen.

So mission two, but one, well, a mission is to grow and retain Boston's creative workforce.

You don't have a cultural sector without cultural workers.

Um, and everyone's work is equally important in a delivery of culture.

It's not just the artists.

So your experience of going to the theater is determined by the usher that takes you to your seat, to the train driver that gets you there, to the person who lit the stage, to the stage hand who makes sure that people know where to stand, all of these people are equally important in cultures.

We don't just represent the creatives, you represent all the workers who uphold the creative sector.

So we want to build more pathways into creative careers, and then make Boston more affordable for creatives and cultural workers.

Um then this is some slides.

No, art can do a lot to push different agendas.

All work is, you know, all art is like I remember there was an interview with I Wei Wei where he was introduced as an artist and an activist, and he said, what's the difference between the two?

Um so this is a work, this is a piece of work from uh the trianal.

Very glad to have Kate Gilbert, the uh director of the Boston Public Art Chanel here today.

Patrick Martinez talking about affordable housing.

Like artists are also people.

They're the needs, this is the important needs of everyone, are important needs of artists.

This is 290 North Beacon, the site where we'll be bringing forward as Moak in collaboration with the Boston Housing Authority, 40,000 square foot of music rehearsal, affordable music rehearsal space, and if the plans pad out over 100 units of deeply affordable social housing.

I'm very proud to be leading our art department to be leading a public housing scheme.

Training young people with the new technology that is going to shape our creative futures.

This is work collaboration with Artists for Humanities, very nicely Jason up there.

What's up?

And then this year, Samantha Rose and our team has created the Arts Action Consortium, which is a group of really important arts organizations coming together to give very tangible creative workforce development support to artists.

These are some of the artists being supported in that work.

And then also working with young people, so Boston Family Days program, really deepening the creative workforce support of that program.

Another mission is to make space for the creative economy, to strengthen Boston's global relevance.

If you don't have space, you can't compete.

You don't just play, you have to practice.

Art is the same.

I'm still not used to Americans clapping public officials.

I can't.

It's very nice of you.

I'm British.

Like you get rude.

But you've been very nice.

I always always laugh when I say how nice people in Boston are, but you are very nice people.

We want to support the cultural infrastructure of the city, specifically production and consumption.

You know, people don't respect consumer culture in arts.

You have to make culture.

You have to be product, we have to be producers of it.

So we want to support more cultural production space.

And we really want to position Boston as a global creative city.

So work in this year, we opened a John Apollon space in Nubian Square.

We are bringing forward, we're working with Black Market Nubian on this temporary Nubian Ascens Pavilion.

Working with Exit Gallery and Ulston on a DIY social space, who are also working with New Urban Mechanics on some permitting challenges.

We were able to bring pre shadows into downtown Boston.

We supported the creation of Artisans Asylum in Austin and Brighton, which is a major co-working space for co-trip production.

And we're working with the planning department and some architects on design guidance to actually help people design cultural spaces that actually work.

This is a diagram of what does it take to make a multi-purpose art studio.

These are technically challenging uses, and we want to make sure that when we are talking about delivering cultural infrastructure, we're doing it with technical expertise.

So every single type of creative typological use will have a specific piece of guidance to help developers, architects, users deliver cultural space, which is focusing on end users.

This was a design showette we had yesterday on this project.

Really making sure, you know, that we tie arts and culture to our forefront, our future as a city.

This is an article that Forbes did when we joined the World Cities Culture Forum.

We were invited to join.

It's a form of 50 global cities.

It's really important.

I think that the, you know, at some point, you know, like the selling of like gold was really important.

The selling of like, you know, other materials is really important.

I really believe the 21st century precious commodities creativity.

And then, you know, we often know of our work gets misappropriated.

This is Whoop.

Whoop launched.

This is often seen as a tech company.

They launched their fashion brand in Vogue.

Their creative director, Samuel Ross.

These are arts and creative businesses.

And then the third mission is to expand expo participation in cultural life.

We want to enable everyone to shape cultural life.

This is not just the reserve of a few.

This is a be a mass movement.

And we want to advance culture for the common good.

I think as someone who works in government, specifically arts and government, you know, we're not a museum, we're not an art gallery.

For us, culture has to be useful.

It has to be speaking to other shared agendas that we have in the city, whether that's public safety, affordable housing, I've spoken about, public health, these are all things that we know culture has a role to play in supporting.

Lots of stuff of young people, you know, bringing public art to people's neighborhoods.

So making sure that young people feel that this is a right, not a privilege to access creative education.

Supporting people's participation, social practice, you know, not just art as a thing that you look at, but something that you participate in.

We have a really, really vibrant performing art sector in Boston.

That is something that is a priority for me as chief to make sure that performing arts and music are seen as equally as important as other forms of expression.

And then really activating our municipal spaces.

And then just to talk about some goals for 2027.

This is not the most exciting slide.

But we're going to support cross-partmental efforts, demonstrating our value in delivering common good for place-based work in Nubian Square, downtown crossing, and policy areas such as public safety, economic development, climate action, and public health.

Kenny has been in some great work with the footwear collective looking at how you can use creativity and culture to reduce waste in the footwear industry.

Continue to do that work.

Positioning Boston's a global creative city for the work for our work of the World Cities Culture Forum.

We just secured funding from Bluebird Philanthropies to send a delegation to Sao Paulo to look at creative workforce development and a delegation from Sao Paulo will be coming to Boston in September to see all the amazing work that we do around creative workforce development in the city, building on the Worker Plan Downtown to build more Austin culture zoning into city planning and also providing technical support to help that implementation.

Expanding our percent for art program to deliver world class artworks to embed local supply chain production and fabrication clauses to ensure tangible economic benefits for our capital investment, ensuring the 219 of Beacon program continues to move forward for pre-development while exploring the potential to deliver meaningwhile cultural space on the site and evolving BAM Family Days to provide more learning and educational opportunities for young people in collaboration with our major institutions and our local nonprofit organizations.

Okay.

Yeah, uh thank you.

Uh before we uh we have been joined by District 7 Councillor Mineyard Culpepper and District 4 uh Councillor Brian Morrell.

Uh before we get to councillor questions, we're gonna start with uh just a uh a brief amount of public testimony.

I will say, as a district six counselor, I have the uh African American Masters Artists and Residence uh program in my district, and I I went to the ICA and went to the exhibit and uh after Reggie Jackson asked me if I had been to the exhibit, but uh uh uh I mean just to see like the the scope of the range of just ideas and thinking and effort that goes into that.

And I was, you know, I I trying to get Northeastern to keep that facility open.

I hope it's on your on your list of priorities because uh it's incredibly important.

And yeah, um anyway, okay.

So I I'm just gonna go down the list here.

We're gonna go 10 people uh first.

And uh I have to apologize to everyone about my lack of pronunciation skills here, but I have uh Moussao Debinga, Jay Padgett, Kim Dawson, Ohi uh MOBA, Elizabeth Yvette Ramirez, and Shira Helena Gitlin.

That's we're gonna start there.

So uh you can yeah, you again you have this microphone where that's perfect.

You can also go to this microphone.

I'm gonna put two minutes up on the clock again.

Uh you'll hear a beep.

Uh I'm not, you know, I I will cut you, try to wrap up when you hear the beep.

Not just for me, for everyone else.

You know, if we if everyone goes over, then uh nobody, you know, not everyone gets to speak.

So uh uh this is uh yeah, whenever you're ready.

Good afternoon.

My name is Moose Al Debinga, executive director of the origination of cultural arts center, founded in Roxbury in 1994.

We are now based in Jamaica Plain, and I reside in Rosendale, and I am a proud immigrant born in the Congo to parents who came to this country as refugees.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak about why arts funding matters, not just to me, but to the youth we serve.

Growing up in Cambridge and later Roxbury, my siblings and I were constant targets of bullying.

For example, I was pushed down a flight of stairs for no reason.

It was a difficult childhood.

What helped us find our place was dance.

Through dance, we found our voice and a sense of belonging.

That experience inspired the founding of origination to give other young people that same lifeline.

For 32 years, we have provided a safe space where young people can grow, lead, and dream bigger.

Our students have traveled the world, engaging in community services and projects and performing at prestigious venues such as the Kennedy Center in DC before the name changed.

The impact of the arts is not anecdotal.

It's proven.

Research shows that students engage in the arts, have better academic outcomes, fewer disciplinary issues, and stronger social emotional development.

The arts are also a major economic driver, contributing over one trillion dollars to the US economy, but most importantly, the arts saves lives.

Origination strongly opposes the proposed cuts to arts funding.

Grants such as SuccessLink and the Boston Cultural Council allow us to employ teens and college students, many of whom use this income to help pay rent, utilities, groceries, and school expenses.

These are not extras, they are essential supports for families.

When you cut arts and youth employment funding, you are not just cutting programs.

You are removing safe spaces, opportunity, and income.

So I ask, where are our young people supposed to go?

I urge you to go back to the drawing board and find a way to restore the one million dollar cut to the Office of Arts and Culture's FY27 budget.

Our young people are counting on you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

For everyone, there is I and I don't know if it's a rule or just a rule of decorum that there is no clapping in here.

You know, from from feeling like you're not supporting other people enough.

Uh but you know, of course, you if you feel the need to clap, go ahead.

But uh just if it's taking longer, we're not able to hear people, you know.

It's uh so just maybe uh we'll see how this goes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh my name is Jay Padgett.

I'm a resident of Hyde Park, and I've put on uh cultural programming and arts program in in Hyde Park for the past 23 years.

I am also the program director of the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, which is a program between the Mass Cultural Council and Mass Development.

So very attuned to cultural and creative space, but also the content that happens in neighborhoods and how important arts and culture is to our neighborhoods and to our commonwealth.

So on the infrastructure question, you have in infrastructure of creative content, which is individuals, culture, music, dance, and these are all the things that when people show up in our neighborhoods.

This is the best of life.

This is the time we come together, and this is the time we get to to bring our best selves to the community and show it off.

But behind that, there's years of practice, there's classes, there's infrastructure, there is spaces, right?

We don't question the fact that sports teams need spaces to practice and improve, but we don't have that same mindset when it comes to music, dance, and the creative sector.

We want these spaces to be baked into our cultural identity, and budget cuts will not do that.

As a part of the state's infrastructure for creative space, I very much look forward to working with our colleagues in the city to think through creatively how we can create safe, affordable, creative spaces for everyone in our community.

And so I encourage you to reject these cuts.

They they they almost seem pejorative because I think they're at a scale different than other state um city agencies.

So uh please reconsider and thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Uh Kim and then uh Elizabeth, Sheera, uh, and then I'll call the next five.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, counselors, and thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'm Kim Dawson O'Hilmova, and I'm a resident and property owner in East Boston.

I'm also the executive director of Grub Street in the Seaport and a professor at Berkeley College of Music.

I'm here today because the proposed one million dollar cut in arts funding is not just a cultural decision, it's an economic one.

In Boston, we know that the arts are a powerful driver of local economic activity.

According to Americans for the arts, for every one dollar invested in the arts, commute communities generate roughly three to ten dollars in economic activity.

That means a one million dollar cut is not a one million dollar savings, it's a three to ten million dollar loss for our local economy.

That loss shows up in very real ways.

It shows up in fewer customers at neighborhood restaurants before and after performances, and it shows up in fewer dollars circulating through small businesses in neighborhoods like East Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester.

Community communities where arts organizations often serve as economic anchors.

Arts organizations employ local residents, contract with local vendors, and bring people into commercial districts.

When we invest in them, we're not just supporting creativity, we're fueling net a network of economic activity that benefits the entire city.

So the question before us is not whether we can afford to fund the arts, it's whether we can afford not to.

Because when we cut arts funding, it's not just reducing programming, we're shrinking Boston's economy, weakening our neighborhoods, and losing one of the most effective tools we have for driving local local economic vitality.

I urge you to reconsider this cut, not just as an investment in culture, but as an investment in Boston's economic health.

Thank you, and happy birthday, Joseph.

Thank you very much.

Uh Elizabeth and Shira.

Hello, my name is Elizabeth Yvette Rumieris They them.

I live in East Boston, and I have been a stage manager in Boston for more than a decade.

I'm also a national counselor for the Actors Equity Association and chair of the New England Area Theater Committee.

I am here today to speak against the one million dollar cut to the arts budget for the city.

I know intimately the struggle of artists living and working in Boston.

I also know the struggle of the nonprofit companies that I work with every day, many of which are here in this room.

Hey.

The way that they are busting their butts to keep their doors open and pay their people to pay us fairly is beyond the pale.

So I am going to tell you the same thing that I tell them when I have to sit down across the table in a negotiation.

A budget is a moral document.

It tells us more clearly than anything else where our priorities lie.

It is literally putting your money where your mouth is.

It is incredibly disheartening to learn that the arts are not a priority in the city of Boston.

How can we be with a 27% cut, especially when we have already faced federal cuts and sensorial pressure from the FASOS government?

The reduction in funding means smaller productions, fewer shows, and a cancellation of special projects.

That means smaller casts, smaller crews, and fewer jobs across the board.

We are already struggling to stay afloat, and please don't blow a hole in our boat.

The arts is my livelihood.

It's how I pay my rent, it's how I buy my groceries, it's how my friends raise their children.

I never thought I'd be able to work in the arts.

It is an incredible privilege.

And in my time working here, I've seen companies die.

I've seen our venues turned into apartment buildings and luxury gyms.

The budget, well, this budget will push us further into a spiral that I fear we cannot recover from.

I work with students constantly who think that they cannot live and work here, they move to New York.

People graduate and assume that this is not a place that they can make their living in the arts, and we are proving them right by passing this budget.

When jobs disappear, people will leave.

Myself included, if I can't work, please don't make me move to New York.

Art is not a luxury, it's not expendable, and we are certainly not going down without a fight.

Thank you.

Okay, Shira.

Yeah.

Hi, my name is Shira Helena Gitlin.

I use they them pronouns, and I am a freelance director, associate member of the stage directors and choreographers union, and co-producer of the Boston Area Theater Auditions or BADA.

I've been a part of the Boston Theater scene for the past seven years.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak on the importance of this funding.

The Boston Theater Scene is a tight-knit, small but mighty community.

We are the few who have chosen to make art here instead of New York City, and I'm proud to see so many familiar faces in this room today.

Our community is scrappy, but if we want to create accessible art, we need external funding to survive.

Theaters are still struggling with recovery post-COVID, and the federal deterioration of the arts has put an even bigger strain on our funding.

Amidst this, the city has been instrumental in helping bridge these gaps thus far.

Bada is a primarily volunteer-run organization attempting to bring resources to Boston theater makers, which includes annual auditions attended by over 50 theater companies and a weekly resource roundup that serves over 3,500 freelance theater director artists in the greater Boston area.

Bada was a 2025 grantee of city funding, just one of the many arts organizations here today that would be directly affected by these cuts.

Small organizations like Bada are essential to rebuilding the Boston arts scene, and we would not exist without city funding.

On a personal note, as a freelance director and theater artist, I can also speak to the uniqueness and importance of every theater in Boston, big or small.

Many of these organizations rely on city funding, and without it, we'll have to cut their seasons short or eliminate them entirely.

This would be a huge loss to our community, but especially freelance artists who make their livelihood by hopping from theater to theater.

Fewer theaters and fewer theater spaces means fewer opportunities.

These cuts will disproportionately affect theater artists of color, emerging artists, and transgender theater artists like myself who already face massive roadblocks in this industry.

With all of this in mind, I kindly ask that you reinstate the one million in proposed cuts to the Office of Arts and Cultures F 27 budget line.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Just for my colleagues, we're gonna hear five five more folks for public testimony, and then we're gonna go to questions.

So the next five are uh Camilla Rojas uh Pagan, Jesse Baxter, uh I think it's Neil, uh Poole, Christine uh Valencourt, and then uh let's say one, two, three, four, and then Libby Bollinger Snyder.

So I'm going first, okay.

Good afternoon.

My name is Camila Mandarrojas Pinheiro Pagan.

I am one of the co-founders and CEO of Beat the Odds, a creative youth uh a creative youth development organization uh in Boston, specifically Dorchester.

I am someone who live, grew up, born, raised in Boston, Roxbury, now residing in Rosendale.

I thank you today for the opportunity to speak and share why city funding for arts, culture, and creativity matter, not just for me, but for the residents of Boston.

Arts are essential to the city.

They bring people together across cultures, backgrounds, and neighborhoods.

In a city as diverse as Boston, the arts create connections where uh they might otherwise create division.

Divisions that create no, I'm sorry, the spray spaces where young people are seen, heard, and where stories are shared, where communities can celebrate who they are.

Art also brings joy, and that matters, especially in communities that are often under resourced and facing challenges.

Creative expression gives people something to look forward to and something to belong to.

And during times like these, where everything can feel super dark, the art brings light and hope.

And beyond joy, arts bring healing.

Through music, dance, and storytelling, we've seen young people process trauma, build confidence, and find their voice.

At Beat the Odds, we work with hundreds of youth and young people across Boston.

Many come to us struggling, and through the access to the arts, they grow, not just as artists, but as students, as community members, and as future leaders of this city.

We are also proud, a proud recipient of the Boston City uh cultural investment grant.

Because of that support, we were able to expand our programming, reach more young people, and deepen our impact in this community.

That funding directly translates into our safe spaces, mentorship, and real life opportunities for our young people.

Cuts to the arts and culture budget don't reduce funding.

They take us 10 steps back from all the progress that we've worked so hard to build over these past four years.

This is why funding for the arts and culture is not optional.

It is necessary.

It is an investment in the well-being, identity, and the future of our of our city.

I respectfully urge you to reinstate the one million proposed cut to the Office of Arts and Culture, FY27 budget.

These cuts are will make real consequences for organizations like ours at Beat the Odds and for the young people and the community that we serve.

Boston's creativity is one of the greatest strengths, and we should be investing in it and not taking it away.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Okay, thank you.

Um Jesse, the Neil, Christine, and Libby.

Okay.

Hello, my name is Jesse Baxter.

I'm from Hyde Park, and I'm a staff member at Company One Theater in Boston.

I am here because the proposed cuts to the Office of the Arts and Culture Budget would be a huge blow to the progress that this uh creative industry has made toward achieving the mayoral administration and council's goals for equity, belonging, and social connection and resilience in Boston.

Since 2017, Company One Theater has partnered directly with the city to produce 10 productions at the BPL and at the Strand Theater.

We've hired over 500 artists.

We've served more than 25,000 audience members because of the city arts funding.

Company one has also produced smaller community events like the Recent Better Future series.

This is a curated series of creative placemaking events right here down the street, Suddy Hall Plaza.

Uh, and they bring artists, local residents, and community organizers together to creatively explore some of the city's most pressing concerns, things like immigration, food justice, climate change, and more.

Through this series alone, we've brought together residents from over 15 neighborhoods and connected them with 59 community organizations over the past two years.

I see a lot of folks who have participated in the series here in this room.

Nearly 90% of those attendees leave with concrete resources and action steps to engage in these issues with their communities.

Things like voter registration deadlines, maps to their local food bank, info about summer education programs for youth, and more.

As artists, we are supporting civic infrastructure with programs like this one.

We are creating a network of mission-driven partners and residents from across Boston who are dedicated to making the city a more vibrant and healthy place to live.

These cuts will have consequences, not just for organizations like ours, but for the future of Boston as a city where neighborhoods flourish and communities can see themselves reflected and supported.

The arts are a crucial social, educational, and economic driver in our city.

And if Boston claims to value equity, innovation, and community, it cannot cut back on one of the most effective tools that it has to sustain these standards.

I respectfully urge you to reconsider these proposed budget cuts, and thank you for your time.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm Christine Valencourt.

I'm a painter, and I live at the Artist Building at 300 Summer Street.

And I've been in Boston since 87 and in Fort Point since 92.

I'm also the president of the Fort Point Arts community, a 46-year-old visual and performing artists nonprofit, the only organization of its kind in the seaport.

And Fort Point.

From our gallery at the FPAC Arts Space, located in one of the most economically powerful districts in the nation, we offer free programming that showcases artists from every corner of Boston.

We are connecting diverse creative communities to one of the city's most viable visible neighborhoods, ensuring that culture remains accessible to the public, not just the privileged.

From an economic and civic standpoint, this is not just a side effect.

It's an essential asset.

Arts and culture drive foot traffic, support local businesses, foster the vibrancy that makes Boston a world class city.

But organizations like ours, which sustain this ecosystem, are consistently underfunded and increasingly strained.

We are expected to deliver significant public value while operating with limited and unstable resources.

If Boston aspires to lead, we must treat arts funding as core infrastructure, as vital as public health and municipal services, rather than an optional luxury.

My request today is twofold.

Please restore the 27% reduction to the arts budget and begin an inquiry into developing uh inquiry into establishing a dedicated sustainable revenue stream, such as the Denver, Houston, or Seattle models, not just for public art.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Sorry, Neil, if I skipped over you, and then uh Libby.

Good afternoon, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.

My name is Neil Poole, Artistic Director of Verbal Fabric, a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering, educating, and preserving hip hop culture through community programming.

The reason I came here today to speak, because many of the people that's in this room know me as DJO Nil, um, whether from business owner, DJing radio personality, and AV professional.

Um, but today I'm here to represent an organization actively building pathways for artists, youth, creatives, all across the city of Boston.

We're developing programs in hip hop education in other culture disciplines.

Along with community activations like All City Park Jam and ongoing initiatives that create both creative creative outlets and economic opportunities, we recognize the financial challenges the city is currently facing.

But with that being said, at the same time, arts and culture are not extras.

They are essential infrastructures for community health, engagement, and opportunity.

So my question is this.

If funding reduction, if funded reductions are the reality now and potentially in the future, what is the city's long-term strategy to sustain grassroots organizations such as beat the odds, such as um everyone in this room, too many people to name.

That's that's the real question that I want to know.

What is the long term strategy to sustain grassroots organizations doing the groundwork?

And even more of a bigger question is how can all these organizations in this room, including verbal fabric, be included as part of the collective solution moving forward.

Thank you for your time.

Okay, thank you.

Uh Libby.

Hello.

Um, my name is Libby Bullinger Snyder, and I'm a resident of Boston and a dance educator, choreographer, and arts administrator.

I am here today in opposition of cuts to arts and culture funding.

One of my many jobs here in Boston in the arts industry is at Boston Dance Alliance, a service organization that creates opportunities for community members to experience dance, many of them for the first time, and chances for professional dancers to obtain work.

A 2024 study by the Mass Cultural Council on the income of artists in our state found that dancers earn an average of just $7,074 per year for their work.

The lowest of all creative workers.

That's not sustainable and it's not acceptable.

Dancers, just like any other resident of this city, deserve to make a living wage through their work.

In a time where arts and culture is already underfunded, we cannot afford to see anything less than the current level of support from Boston's budget.

Please reinstate the one million dollar proposed cuts to the Office of Arts and Culture Budget for the fiscal year 2027.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No, four minutes.

You want four minutes.

We'll give you, I'll give you four minutes, and then we will uh go to another uh round of uh in-person testimony, and then uh we'll keep going back and forth.

So uh Councillor Louis Jen.

Thank you, and I want to say thank you to everyone who testify.

It is um in it is just incredibly important that we make sure that artists are able to be artists as your full-time job.

And I think we need to have an economy that recognizes that.

That's something that Chief Henry and I have already started talking about, and I look forward to doing more work alongside you to make that a reality.

So wanna say welcome in your new role as chief and happy birthday.

Double wear me today.

Um, but so these cuts, I I was I was very disappointed at a budget that reduced uh the arts and culture uh office uh so much.

I was wondering from your perspective, Chief, and also Kenny, it's always good to be in company with you as well.

Thank you for all that you have done for this city and for the culture in the city of Boston.

Um, how does this level a 27% reduction, what does it fundamentally change about the nature and the capacity of the office?

And I'd love to hear from you, Chief, and I'd also love to hear from you, Kenny, on that question.

Um I think from the presentation, there's a lot of strategic policy work that we're gonna end up inevitably doing.

Because the the cuts are fundamentally grant reductions.

Um, and this is sort of work that has to happen anyway, like we have to have more presence in zoning.

Like you like, it's so hard just to open art spaces because you have to go through the ZBA, which is an additional expense, takes longer.

So it's actually the conditions of bringing forward cultural like infrastructure need to be improved.

So that is like one sort of um major priority, and I think just the reason why moving the department to mission-led approach where we have like shared work, so rather than being like this is the work of cultural planning, this is the work of public art, this is the work of the grants team, but having shared agendas is that the resources we have, we have to make them work harder.

So, for example, with percent, it is no longer acceptable to me that we are commissioning fabricators in California to make work, which is gonna end up in Roxbury.

Like that is us benefiting the California's cultural sector rather than our own.

So we're gonna have to like localize and basically flip the resources we do have into more social value.

Um, and that is something that we need to do, and this is like long overdue work actually.

Like, we should have had that dealt with arts zoning previously.

Um we do need to work much more with our regional partners, municipal partners, on looking at the role of the state in arts funding.

Like uh it's funny to go from one country where cities don't have much power to do things to another city in America in a commonwealth where we don't have that many tools at our disposal.

So I think you know, people talk about other cities, you know, the lots of American cities don't have to go through home home rule petitions to raise dedicated funding for culture.

We do.

So these these problems we have will not be solved as a city alone.

We're going to have to work regionally in collaboration with municipal partners.

So that partnership work, convening work, mission-led approach will be, I guess, how we move.

And my hope is that that makes us more robust in our ability to just disperse funding and impacts in the long in the longer term.

Thank you.

And Kenny wants to answer that question, but I also want to get in my second question before my time runs out.

Um, we as a city council, we have the you know, uh a limited power, but an ability to see how we can move things around if this council is able to, where would you prioritize us investing money in this department?

You've been cut by 27%.

What is the most important thing for us to be considering?

We hear from community, want to hear from you, what is the most important thing for us to be considering?

I think for me, and I mentioned in the presentation, any investment that goes as far down the supply chain as possible, the better.

So individual artists, small grassroots organizations, they're really the backbone of the creative sector, and that's really where I want to focus investment.

And um, in addition to hard wiring culture and the way that city, I mean, that the we build the city and policy, and it's an opportunity for us to really create a system that serves us, and I think the collective power of their creatives here is when we have systems and opportunities that no longer represents all of us, it's an opportunity for us to present and create new ones.

So, even though you know, with all the things that we're facing, it's an opportunity for us to establish Boston's cultural sector so that it can be future proof, so that we don't have to deal with hopefully the same amount of um funding impacts that we're facing right now.

Okay, thank you.

Uh Councillor Durham, I think you're thank you, Chair.

We are coming off of a really inspiring year for arts in Boston.

Um, I don't know if any of you got to see Adela Gold Gold Bards um invader on Poor Mar on the I actually was shocked.

I walked past it, a flaming ship on City Hall Plaza.

I mean, if anyone, it was exploding, it was magnificent.

Um, and then there were works across the city.

And um, so to see this room filled with folks upset at the budget is like it's palpable for me because I've just had the best arts here I've ever had in Boston.

Um I have gone to the Theater Offensive, I've seen um talks they've put together, I've been on the Common for Commonwealth Shakespeare.

I've um I was just with Boston Lyric Opera with our daughter of the regiment this weekend.

Um I went to a Boston Music Project event.

I um got to see um I got to go to the Roxbury International Film Festival and meet one of their founders.

Um I see Fenway Memory Project is in the house that um has doing work, and I see our Fenway Alliance cultural leaders and mass art here.

So it's like the cultural like network that we have in Boston, I believe if we invest in it can be unmatched, and I think we have a mayor that cares about the arts.

So what do we do here?

Like, where do we go from here?

How do we invest in this community?

How do we build on the momentum that we have and the energy in this room to really deliver a world-class art city?

Um, and and I think I I saw on the slides that the goal here is to be world renowned.

I think what we just did this year, we are on the map.

The the folks in this room are the reason that we are on the map, but we have so much more work to do.

And um, you know, I have I'm you know, I was on the phone with arts organizations this morning that are making decisions about whether they're gonna do performances next year, and it makes me really emotional because I think that Boston is a really special place, but only if we can truly harness all of this energy and all of this work and all this creativity, and so um, what is the vision?

And so if we are cutting a million dollars from grants, how what is sort of what is the agenda and how do we like how do we how do we make sure that this community knows that we care and where who makes up the gap?

Because there's actually no way to make up in a weird way.

Um these groups are doing everything they can to go to private philanthropy.

So the question is like I was just in another thing saying, oh, maybe we could get private philanthropy to invest in this.

All of these creators and all of these leaders, they're they're like talking to everyone they possibly can to get funding, and I I feel that.

So it's what is the vision?

How do we move forward from here?

Um, and really like how do we give people trust that we can be world class, that we can be a destination, um, and also that we care about their creativity and their work.

I think this is a real moment to advocate for the creative industries at large, and to really think about how the creative industries are like the sort of reference point for lots of other industries.

You know, like human creativity is the thing that binds like bio think of biotech as a creative sector, it really is is human ingenuity.

This year, the World Economics Forum, so for the first time, creative skills are the most desirable in the economy.

So we really and I think that sort of like really just being honest about how important this is, and then really like building out the data.

So since I I came before I was the chief, I was the director of cultural planning.

We did surveys, we started building the data.

Because if you don't know what you have, you can't value it.

And I think one of the things I say this with with care, we spend, I hear a lot about what the things we don't have in Boston.

We need to talk a lot more about what we do have.

Because, you know, we are a city that invented high fidelity sound.

Like you don't have audio sector in the world about Boston.

You know, they're there were like and one of the challenges that Boston has is when you look at the data is a lot of our human creativity goes elsewhere.

You know, you end up um you redesign buildings that are built in North Carolina.

The constituents don't see that labor because it's it has happening quietly in an office, and the beneficial beneficiaries of that culture is elsewhere.

Or we have people developing stage productions here, they then go to New York or go to London.

And I think we need to basically accept the fact that we have a really amazing applied, useful, civically minded mutual art sector, and we really need to play up the busterness of it rather than worrying about what New York is doing or what I don't know when we move to New York.

I think these are the things that we have to really value what we have and find our ways of articulating the shared or common ground between the things that we have.

Yeah, and that's what I'm saying is everyone in this room knows what we have and knows what we're trying to build, and can't see a future without there being those resources, and like at least for the next year.

Um so I I think we have to we have to continue to talk, we have to continue to work on this.

I don't think there's there's not an easy solution, and it's hard even on this council to get to seven on any issue.

But the reality is that like $50,000, $25,000 means a lot to every single one of these groups.

So it it seems small in the scope of the entire budget, but it's actually really big.

I think it's okay if I so I just yes, uh please.

Moac has many different pots of funding, so it is a strange department in that way.

One of the things I've been doing is I'm picking various mitigation and Chapter 91 license pots of funding, which are actually held by the planning department.

So working very closely with the planning department to unlock mitigation funds that some of them date back to like 2004 that haven't been spent, so we're really trying to like do that work.

Um, and then that's one of the reasons I talked about percent for art, although that's a capital budget and isn't discussed right now.

If we are going to be building public art, we have to be making sure there's education, apprenticeships, training attached to that capital investment.

So how we make art is as important as what we make.

So we that's one of the reasons that those that percent for art capital allocation we have is still substantial.

It needs to work much harder than it historically has worked.

Okay, thank you.

Um President Braden.

Oh, thank you.

Get to ask the question again.

Did you get it the first time?

I did, I'm ready.

Uh, the planning department uh was really um um talking about um the planning department is currently leading the Alston Brighton um community plan process, and given Alton Brighton's history as a cultural hub, um uh I believe that it's essential that we have some cultural zoning.

I think you spoke something about that already.

Um the city's anti-displacement action plan.

I know from um a lot of the conversations around new building in Alston, Brighton, there's always an ask for developers to include uh artist housing that is more affordable than the market rate housing.

Uh and we've been successful to some extent in that.

Um sadly, if some of our buildings haven't been built, they've been approved a long time ago, but they haven't been built.

But um, I'd love to hear your thoughts on on that, the zoning piece of it and how we uh might develop an arts um and cultural zone in in Alston Brighton, but um, and also then just how how successful have we been in building uh artist housing that is that to to address some of the concerns we've already heard about displacement.

And the other piece was uh I'll jump on just to give you another piece.

I'm thinking about very often um across the city, I think we're all in agreement.

We had a hearing here about displacement of artists a couple maybe a year, Councillor Coletta Zapata and I co-sponsored it, and it was about you know sort of light industrial spaces, uh storage units in Alston Brighton.

We lost 155 North Beacon Street.

Um just in terms of how do we uh address this uh displacement of artists' creative spaces across the city.

I think we're fortunate in the sense that we lost 155 North Beacon, but we did get 219 North Beacon down the street.

Um but I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of that because I think we don't we we want our artists and our creative community to stay here.

We don't want them to have to move somewhere else.

For sure.

I think um the one of the reasons we've commissioned this creative space is creative, it's not very good title, but creative space typology guidance is to make it easier for people to bring forward this work.

There are certain volumetric and technical things you have to do to deliver art workspace, and lots of art practices are not conducive to live work spaces.

If you're doing like ceramics, you can't really do that in your house, no matter how nice your studio is, or if you're a dancer, your floor to ceiling high is probably on high enough to do that collectively.

So we don't we can't rely on artists' live work housing to deliver our cultural infrastructure needs.

We are kicking off a cultural infrastructure planning framework, which has been inspired by the Article AT modernization work to make sure we have proper policy in place for this, and then proper guidance for this.

Because one of the things we do have is sometimes we secure certain types of creative space, they're actually not designed with the end user in mind, and it makes it very difficult to make to make it work.

So I think providing technical guidance as government is like really important, and also getting people to understand that creative spaces are not just easy flexible boxes you just build and people can use them.

There's that you know people don't expect, like again, use an analogy like certain labs need certain ventilation.

Everyone understands that laboratories have certain conditions that allow you to do your work.

That's the same as creative space.

You need to have like 17 foot floor to ceiling heights that have professional grade dance rehearsal spaces.

That is really important that people who are building our buildings know how to meet that.

So we have to build the capacity of our development sector to and bring them along for the ride.

When it comes to displacement, um I was I spent, for those who don't know, I spent seven years working for the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

In that time, we did a culture infrastructure plan.

We set up a culture risk office specifically to do with displacement.

So my team is working on the moment on a culture of risk office and culture risk support.

So people have a proper front of house.

So they can come, they we can start building casework.

Because in Moach, we rely on other city services to deliver needs for artists.

You know, we we manage the artist certification program, but we don't we're not a uh compliance team for housing.

So we need to work with the Office of Housing on stability for artists, but we do have a lot of trust and a lot of connections with the community, so we want to make it easier for people to come to us.

We have concerns, and equip them with the different tools at their disposal, and then also build case work to other departments to help them out.

You know, and I think that is something I've I in our in London, the Culture Risk Office was very successful in keeping more people in London, and I want to have the same sort of support here in Boston because not everything is I mean, I say this and I'm aware that not everything is always about money.

A lot of things are about like having a front door that you can go to, get support and get the technical guidance, or get support from other departments who actually are dealing with compliance or dealing with other situations you have.

So that is something we're working on right now.

It'll be both for organizations and individual artists who have housing challenges.

So we can build much more um support that way.

And I'll add in terms of displacement, we really want to have like long-term strategies.

I know you mentioned um the Sound Museum when they were displaced, so we were able to create that swing space with the record core at 55 Morrissey, but they're also now potentially at risk of the space being redeveloped, furthermore displacing artists.

So when we think about our displacement strategy, we should really think as we think about our zoning, what our long-term um intervention is so that we don't just keep doing short measures that needs to be revisited every five to ten years.

You have to be more proactive rather than reactive.

Correct.

And I really appreciate your point about the technical guidance on on because we've had so-called artists, uh units being built, and they're that don't meet the needs of the artists.

So I appreciate all of that.

Thank you so much.

Okay, thank you, uh, Councillor Fitzgerald.

Thank you, Chair.

Um I appreciate the way you're looking at development and helping the art economy.

That was a I've never thought about it that way, and that's a real interesting way to look at it.

Um, so I appreciate that perspective.

Um I've said this several times before, but I I believe the city has a triple A bond rating, right?

Uh and I think each individual as well has a triple A bond rating, except the triple A stands for academics, athletics, and the arts to me, right?

And if you if you can succeed in all three or take part in all three, that you you will be a good person, you will raise a good kid.

This is what I think for my kids.

Um and so I think it is one of the three great pillars in standing up at the societal infrastructure, right?

Um so it's important to support that.

I actually just went to a play this morning.

Uh yes, it was the BPS third grade rendition of Peter Pan from my son.

Uh but it was it was arts, right?

And it was the first play that he was in.

And we got to ask questions of the class afterwards, and I said, who would do this again?

And the whole class enthusiastic.

Ah, that was a great, you know, it's and it brought joy to my heart to see people wanting to do that.

Um that being said, uh, we we know what we're losing.

We have the the one million dollars cut that we heard from testimony and yourself about what that's going to affect and how we're gonna pull.

I'd rather throw out some ideas at you of how to think uh going forward.

Um in District Three, where I represent Dorchester South End, uh cultural districts.

Uh I have a the Polish triangle that has a large Polish community.

We have uh Little Saigon in Fields Corner, right with Vietnamese, uh, and actually working with the state now to get Adams Village uh dedicated as the like the Irish heart, right?

The Irish cultural center of of the city of Boston.

When you're in the North End, when you're in Chinatown, you know you're in Little Little, you know you're in Chinatown, right?

Because the aesthetic, the art, the culture that is surrounding uh physically around you.

I'm trying to do that in Dorchester.

I would love to do like an around the world in District Three type thing, where we bring more of that physical aesthetic to the street uh so that people know.

And when people come in here, uh, if you're visiting from Vietnam, you can say, let's go check out.

I heard they got this great little Vietnamese center.

Let's go to Fields Core.

So it's that tourism dollars again to the folks that you're paired with uh on today's panel.

How to bring more people, not just downtown, but into the neighborhoods, right?

To focus that.

So I know that's more for uh you know tourism, but at the same time, I think you play a huge role in that in helping really bring that to life uh and making it visually uh the the aesthetics there.

Um so just wanted to put that on your radar.

Happy to work me in the future with that.

Um speaking of BPS productions, have you guys have we worked with or thought of doing I have the Strand Theater uh in the district in Upham's corner as well.

Working with BPS and the Strand Theater and trying to get right rather the play the play that took place today for my son was at the Adam Street Library, which is right next to the school that they go to.

Um and that's great.

But as they get older and as these things progress, right?

Uh having the pipeline from school BPS type uh productions like that uh to go to the strand.

Um I don't know if that's anything else, if that's something that's been on your radar.

I know I'm sure there's been stuff in the past as well, but like your thoughts around that.

Yeah, I think the strand is a massive priority.

It's uh uh amazing institution, and we have the honor of stewarding.

Um the strand is not managed, how may most other publicly owned theaters are managed.

So right now we're working on a report that looks at better governance of the strand.

How should we manage it?

How should we look after it?

And also looking at what sort of technical upgrades will have the biggest paternal investment.

So you know, it's a very big theater.

Is there a way of it hosting less people in a more comfortable way?

So people don't have to feel like they have to sell out a thousand seats in order to um use it.

Um the lighting is uh antiquated at best.

Um we've I mean we've been kind of working with arts organizations, and please it's an invitation for more people to get involved in this.

But this idea of the strand is like a teaching theater in the same way you have like teaching hospitals, and what would it be for it to be like a much more of an educational?

It's like a theater plus model.

Um that is like a uh because it it has to like and in this idea of like things doing more, all our infrastructure has to wear like many hats.

It's like how everyone is now as a multi-hyphen, you know, you are a producer, everything has to have like multiple facets to survive.

Um spaces have to do the same.

It cut like single use spaces are not something that we can sustain in a city like Boston, where you're penned in by like Brookline and you know Quincy and the C.

In London, we could invent new city, we could just keep going out.

You can't do that in Boston.

So we're gonna have to make what we have work much harder and the strand.

We're working on with architects and uh governance people to think about how we can make these assets work much harder than they currently are.

One thing too for us, tourism starts locally.

So, in order for us to build a strong, you know, tourist economy, we need to have a strong local economy because our artists and our creative workers are the ones who invite people to come to visit our story.

So tourism is something that we're uniquely invested in, but it's with the people in this room that we're gonna build it.

Awesome.

Uh thank you, Chair, and Joseph.

I don't I hope you don't take our uh 250 celebrations this summer too too uh too hard.

Thank you.

I heard the king is here, so you know I think on the special measures right now.

Thank you for what you guys do.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay.

Uh I'm sorry, Councillor Culpepper has a just uh as a case of laryngitis and won't be able to speak today, but uh no, uh you're here.

You got four minutes.

Thank you, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

My voice just came back.

Let me just say this, because for me, the arts is everything.

I remember as a young person going to the MLO School of Fine Arts, and I remember uh being Alan and the babes in Toyland, and uh I remember them trying to get me to kiss this girl in the plate.

I think I lost that part because when I think about the significance of the arts and culture, and I think about what it did for me.

I think about black nativity.

Every year we still have black nativity.

That's about left what's left of the legacy for Elma Lewis, but it's it's still a big thing.

And and and you know, it's interesting that we're dealing with budget cuts now because we been able to preserve all that Elma Lewis was teaching.

I mean, they wanted me to do ballet, I didn't want to do ballet.

They I did African dance, she bought me a saxophone for doing that.

And so when you look at the way the arts and culture rounds out the lives of young folks, you gotta have it.

You can't do without it.

In fact, there's a young man named EJ.

Uh EJ's 11 years old, and I heard you're talking about New York and trying to keep the young folks here.

Uh in Boston.

EJ is 11 years old.

He's starring in the bodyguard in New York now, and the last day of Saturday, hopefully I can make it to see him.

He's been in other plays in New York, 11 years old, because they didn't have what he needed at the time.

He was third in Lion King.

The only reason they didn't choose the Lion King is because the girl was taller than he was.

Nala was taller than he was.

But my point is we need to do everything we can to restore this 1.25 million dollars because I know the impact that it's gonna have.

Some young folks are gonna lose out on some of the things that they're being blessed with today.

And so when we look at funding, and I've been hearing other options, what are you looking at in terms of other partnerships, whether it's private funding, whether what are you being told that you will be able to will come your way to offset the 1.25 million dollars?

I mean, there's a we are we still have our appropriation for the revolving fund, which is 800,000 this year, of the authorized.

We have just looking at various um mitigation funds, maybe a couple of million additional dollars that we can draw upon if we can unlock them.

There's also sort of as of the ESCO agent licenses have expired, we have to get those back in place.

Um and there are also funders who aren't active in Boston, arts funders.

Do we and I don't want to raise necessarily I don't I'm not here to raise money for myself.

It's I want to make sure that we are a uh the uh city where funders are active so that we can pass the funding through to the organizations.

No, our budget isn't for us necessarily, it's for the people that we represent.

And so as if so, for example, like the Knight Foundation, who is a major arts funder, Massachusetts isn't one of their communities.

We need to work with them, but actually we need to work with so we're working very closely with Steven, China Chief of Partnerships on a plan.

So let me break my question down because I only got 24 seconds, and he will cut me off.

You really need us to fight hard to restore that 1.25 million dollars.

Is that what you're saying?

Yes.

I mean I mean, look, I've been here over a hundred days.

That's my first ovation, so you know I'm gonna fight for you.

It's a good note to end on.

Uh thank you, Councillor Culpepper.

Uh just just for me, you know, uh I you don't have to sell me on the arts.

My son graduated from Boston Arts Academy.

He's now wrapping up his freshman year at Pratt Art Institute in Brooklyn.

Uh and you know, I will also say I know New York sort of got beaten up in here a little bit uh as somebody born and raised in New York.

I mean, I do feel like New York has turned out a uh you know fair amount of interesting art and music over the years.

Uh no, but it's so in terms of New York.

I mean, there like I I guess you know, I think about like you know, growing up ABC no Rio is like a sort of you know famous place, and you you had you know people coming, you know, you just squatting in apartments and uh you know very aggressive.

I don't know if people do that anymore, um, and just sort of taking over whole sections of the city uh to produce this.

And I don't know London, I feel like is probably the same.

Um, you know, how do we and you're saying like we should be focusing on facilities and not housing, is that what I'm hearing?

Uh both, it's always both.

Um it's just that there's some some creative uses are not you just can't do at home, you know.

So you have to have specific infrastructure, you know, very hard to be a glassware artist in your house.

Very hard to do very complex stage productions or being a musician.

Very hard to be a musician, live work unless you massively acoustically upgrade artist housing.

So there's some specialized facilities that we need more of in the city, and that's why we have this infrastructure plan coming down the line to help because you have to help people do it.

And I think we have to also build the conditions where art can be easy.

Like there were like, you know, we then the mayor said a lot about permitting reform.

Is this something our team spends a lot of our time doing because that's about the conditions that of like making it easier to do arts and culture?

Okay.

And we're gonna go to public testimony in just one second.

Um I guess you know, like thinking about uh a couple of like Boston I I mean, I maybe I I'm missing some periods, but I feel like in the in the 80s, you had just music coming out of here, the Pixies, Amy Man, you know, Guru, the new edition, uh, you know, Ed OG, like you had all the like how do we sort of like I it seems like it's not here right now, and uh and like how do we go about um sort of moving the front, you know, Jonathan Richmond, you know, who I saw in New York of all places, um uh, you know, anyway, but uh the the music scene or things that make noise, shall we say um that is like a massive challenge.

We've been collecting some data that shows that the set the sound industries are the most displaced or most heavily hit in the last like 20 years in Boston.

We need to build things like 290 because that would be the first publicly owned music rehearsal space that's affordable in perpetuity, and this idea of like affordable in perpetuity is really important.

Um I was lucky enough in London to be involved in setting up our creative land trust there.

And that was really about making space affordable in perpetuity.

So we that's why the infrastructure is important, because you need the space for it.

And I think the music sector just needs a lot of specific work because we have to deal with noise mitigation, you have to deal with uh technical equipment that these are hard things and expensive things to build.

Um so there is a gonna be a big push on music as a as in in Moac.

Um so many of the people that I work with in Moac have music.

I build sound systems.

Um Kenny is a DJ, Tom used to manage bands like the Lemon Heads who works with us.

We have a very music focused department, and I think you're gonna see a lot of advocacy and support for music specifically coming out of our department.

Okay, that's great.

Um and um I guess any conversations with Northeastern about the artists in residence uh studios and in GP.

Yeah, I mean, the AMA finding a long-term stable home for AMAP is like one of the most important things.

Um we are specifically working through the planning department, the mayor's partnerships team on how do we engage Northeastern.

I meet with Dr.

Jackson very regularly about the future of AMORP.

They have a plan that they want to sort of find space as an organization and build that capacity to take a long-term, make a long-term home or find a long-term home for themselves.

We are supporting them on that.

And then we're also working with Northeastern around access and how do they lots of the AMAP artists are also public school teachers.

So they need to have access to the building beyond that they're teaching during the day, the studio closes late, closes early, they can't get from school into then practice their art.

So we are actively working with them on finding solutions both for their short-term needs and their long-term needs.

Okay, and we we heard a little bit about dance when when I I think about um uh there's a Vim vendors film about Pina Bausch and like somewhere in Germany, uh, you know, and there was a dance company in the city, and they're doing they I mean, I I don't know how what are we doing to support dance here?

Um, so we've invested in um organizations, so John Apollon space, that was a space that we invested in for our cultural space fund.

Uh this is one of those situations where Boston has to work with regional partners.

We have to work with Cambridge, we have to work with Somerville.

We just released it released a joint report on how you make space for art with our neighboring cities.

A lot of these uses will be ones that we have to think regionally through, but dawn specifically again require very challenging that they're like difficult projects being forwards.

I think I'm a big believer in like how do we use spaces like for example in London, every community center.

We guide our guidance in London is if you build a community center, you should build six meter floor to ceiling high as opposed to being loaded floor in.

So the community center doesn't just become a community center, it becomes a dance rehearsal space.

We need strategies like that.

So we are invested.

The merits to investing significant amounts of capital into new public schools, BCYFs, libraries, those are also facilities that need to make space for culture.

So we're working with the BPO on Upland's Corner Library, making sure that's fitted out for performing arts.

We are working with uh we'll be continuing these are all the techniques we have to make everything work hard and make sure that we sort of understand that this civic infrastructure also has an arts and culture role to play, and we're providing guidance and support to make sure that we make all those investments do more for the art sector.

Okay, okay.

Well that's it.

Thank you.

We're so we're gonna go to a second round of questions, but first we're gonna I we're gonna call on 15 folks here and and then we'll go for if anyone has any follow-up.

So next up for public testimony would be Genevieve Day, Don Simmons, uh Kate, I'm sorry, Gilbert, uh Michaela, uh not sure what that says.

Cat Cowley, maybe, and then Michelle Stevens.

Mike first.

Uh yes.

Okay.

Gotta wear my old curly K through eight arts advocacy shirt.

Okay.

Um, my name is Genevieve Day.

I'm the co-executive director of the Fenway Alliance.

I am also a longtime resident of Jamaica Plain and a founding member of the Curly K-8 Arts Committee.

I'm also a proud parent of uh a Boston Arts uh Academy Senior in Theater.

Um the Fenway Alliance produces one of the longest-running and largest free art and culture festivals in the city of Boston.

Opening our doors is celebrating a terrific milestone of 25 years in 2026.

Mayor Wu has called opening our doors a precursor and inspiration for Boston Family Days, the transformative initiative that Mayor Wu, her team, and Moac brought to Boston families.

Opening the doors of Boston's museums to all families.

We salute the administration for this incredible accomplishment.

OOD is a day we welcome the entire Boston community into their own cultural heritage in the Fenway, and we are really proud of the work that we do in partnership with our historic cultural and academic institutions, our many community partners, and Boston artists, artists, and creatives, some of whom I see here in this room today.

Opening our doors has been supported by the mayor's Office of Art and Culture in many ways, from promotion to securing the Boston Poet Laureate or the Youth Poet Laureate working with Tom.

Shout out to Tom, thank you for your efforts over the years.

Um for our kickoff celebration.

We receive funding through MOAC and BCC, and this funding goes exclusively to paying Boston artists, performers, creatives that make up Boston's creative ecosystem.

We are incredibly grateful for this support.

We are a small organization, and with this financial support, we are able to produce this flagship festival year after year, now in its 25th year.

We understand that the city is facing significant financial pressures.

We understand that difficult decisions need to be made in FY27 City of Boston budget.

However, we don't believe that the arts are the place to cut.

We are here in solidarity with all arts organizations working across the city of Boston.

We have worked with many of them in different capacities.

It is an amazing, resilient, creative and artistic community that is an economic engine for our city.

We are strongly advocating for the city to at the very least restore funding for the critical work that Moac does in support of the arts and the arts community of our city.

And I just want to say that listening to what uh Chief Henry has to say today in the vision for the future, we should be funding uh Moac even more.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Uh next up is Don Simmons.

I just say if anyone's out in the mezzanine watching on TV, there's seems to be plenty of room uh in here.

So you can come in.

Don't worry about the name is Dawn Simmons, and I serve as artistic director of Speakeasy Stage.

I'm speaking in response to the proposed FY27 operating budget and its impact on the arts and culture in Boston.

A roughly 27% reduction, roughly one million to arts and culture funding, will be felt immediately and deeply across the sector.

For many organizations, it's the difference between maintaining programs and cutting them, between employing artists and losing them.

My organization employs eight full-time and part-time staff and approximately 100 people seasonally.

While we do not receive funding directly from the city, its support is vital to keeping top-tier talent in Boston.

What is equally concerning is that the budget signals beyond the numbers.

In a year of difficult choices, stability in core services is being prioritized, and that's important.

But investment in our civic life and quality of life is not keeping pace.

We need the city to protect the sector that makes Boston an exciting place to live, work, and call home.

These experiences make Boston more attractive, which in turn supports population growth, jobs, and local economies.

In short, the more people we attract to our city, the stronger our economy becomes.

Please stop positioning the arts as nice to have and speak honestly about their role in making Boston a place where people choose to build their lives.

The arts make the city more marketable, and that marketability has a cost.

While I do not expect the city of Boston to fully meet that cost, I ask you to recognize that the city benefits greatly from our labor.

We are a marketing campaign, you do not invest in.

The arts are a necessity for Boston.

Please reinstate that one million.

Please.

Thank you very much.

So Kate Gilbert, Michaela, I think it says Cowie.

Cowie.

Cowie, okay, thank you.

Thank you for helping me out.

Uh, and then Michelle Stevens, and then uh I'll call some more people.

Thank you.

It's an honor to be here.

I'm Kate Gilbert.

I'm a resident of the Leather District.

Um, I am also the executive director and founder of the Boston Public Art Triennial.

Also based in the Leather District.

I employ 13 um young people and uh somewhat young people.

Um I am here as the employer of the these folks, but also as a painter.

I've been in the city for 25 years.

I've had over 13 studios.

Every time I think I found my secure place, I get moved again.

Um I started this organization with 1100,000 in the bank account.

We are now putting on and just finished the Boston Public Art Triennial.

We brought in 20 projects from East Boston to downtown to Mattapan.

We had 2.7 million views.

We had uh 2 billion impressions, 9.5 million in economic impact, 80% of the money that we spent stayed in greater Boston.

For me, and this was all free.

This is the artwork that I would have seen as a young child and made me want to be a crazy painter.

Um, important to me was that one in three people went to a new place in Boston.

For those of us who've been here for a long time, we know it's really hard to move move people around.

And they were moving because they were interested in art, because they wanted to see something new.

They want to see themselves reflected in the work and Boston.

I think that all eyes are on Boston right now for reasons other than the 250 and sports.

City funding signals that art arts matters.

I don't get funding to do something like this to bring the city together without your support because you guys, as leaders, signal to the other funders that this matters.

Every time I go to a new foundation, a new donor, and they're really excited about public art, they say, is the city funding you?

And I have to say, yeah, they are, they are.

I don't want to go to them and say the city just reduced the budget for a million dollars.

Not just for me, but for everyone in this room that is doing the important cultural work.

So, culture connects, it brings us together.

I ask you to reinstate the one million.

I also ask you to give these fine gentlemen here the opportunity to make new investments in our culture.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Michaela Cowie, and I serve as the director of theater arts at Boston Center for the Arts, located in the South End in one of the city's cultural assets.

I'm also a freelance producer and equity stage manager and have worked in the Boston areas for the last 10 years.

I am here to urge you in the strongest possible terms not to cut funding for the arts in our city on behalf of the board and staff at BCA.

Many of our artists and campus partners are also here with us.

At the BCA, we support interdisciplinary artists at every stage of their careers.

We sub we provide support across multiple different streams, including workforce development, professional training, production opportunities, free and subsidized space, and more to support artists to build sustainable livelihoods.

These programs are not luxuries, they are essential infrastructure that equips creative professionals with the tools to contribute meaningful to Boston meaningfully to Boston's economy.

We have benefited directly from the city's strong investment in the arts.

Most recently, their support of BCA's signature program, Hella Black, which is an interdisciplinary performance event that is curated by and for black artists to amplify their artistry and voices.

With their support, we have been able to shift to make this program free to the public, expanding accessible opportunities to the community to engage.

The arts are often framed as an added benefit to a city, but in reality, they are a core economic driver.

Creative industries generate jobs, attract tourism, activate neighborhoods, and support small businesses.

From technicians and designers to educators and administrators, the ecosystem surrounding the arts sustains a wide and diverse workforce.

Cutting funding would not simply reduce programming, it would directly impact employment, economic activity, and Boston's cultural vitality.

The arts foster innovation, collaboration, and community engagement.

All qualities that define Boston as a global leader in education, technology, and culture.

Our city's identity is deeply tied to its creative sector, and continued investment ensures that Boston remains a place where artists can live, work, and thrive.

I hope that you see by the amount of people in this room who are using their voices and energy to fight back, proves just how pivotal the arts and culture sector is.

Thank you.

Okay, Michelle Stevens, uh, maybe not here.

Lauren uh Elias, uh Steven uh I think it's La Fame, uh Jerry, uh Jari, sorry, uh Alexandra, Alexander, uh Alex Lonati, and then Andrea uh Blesso.

Okay.

Um every ready.

Uh hi, my name is Lauren Elias, and I'm the producing artistic director of Hub Theater Company of Boston.

We are 501c3 that has been producing pay what you can theater in Boston for the last 12 years.

Thank you for giving me the chance to monologue at you.

And first of all, I want to second everything that my amazing colleagues have said, but I also want to implore you to remember that the arts here, the arts scene here is not just big organizations.

It is the small ones, the tiny ones, the young and scrappy ones working from seven to ten at night.

We are the ones who hire young people right out of school and keep and convince them they can build a life as an artist in Boston here.

We are what keeps them here as tax-paying citizens, and this budget cut will be devastating to those organizations.

You have colleges here that are some offer some of the best arts educations in the world.

Emerson, BOCO, and you have students coming in who know day one freshman year that they will not be able to make a life here, that they will be moving in four years.

You are losing citizens.

You are losing taxpayer dollars.

And Mr.

Webb, I hate to say this.

I would not advise your son to come back here with this budget cut once he finishes degree in New York.

I am sorry to say it.

And I also want to urge you, while we desperately need the money.

I want to tag team on what our chief said about making our resources work harder.

I know I speak on behalf of pretty much every theater company in Boston when I say it would be life-changing for us to be able to just rehearse in this building after business hours.

It would save us tremendous amount of money, which we could then pass on to our employees to keep them here in Boston.

Oh gosh, now my phone falls us fall asleep at the worst time.

Please remember our artists pay rent, buy food, pay taxes, support other local businesses.

And most importantly, they live here.

And so supporting them is supporting Boston.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Okay, thank you very much.

Yep, thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Stefan Lafume.

I'm a 27-year-old Haitian American, Mattapan Native and current Rock Roxbury resident in by way of Nubian Square.

My claim to fame is being the co-founder of Thrill.

We are a movement, a culture, and a mindset.

In 2020, we took a shed with a speaker with a mic and a couple of speakers and turned it into a hub and home for countless BIPOC artists here in Boston's underground.

Since then, we have hosted 30 plus concerts, events, and initiatives here in Boston and redistributed $30,000 to artists from our city.

In addition to that, I'm a current worker owner of the Dorchester Art Project Cooperative working to on creating infrastructure and opportunity so artists can live, work, and play in Dorchester.

I put this city's arts and culture on my back because I know that artists that live in Boston are world class and worthy of investment.

The work the city has been doing the past few years funding individual artists and organizations has been beautiful and imperative to reversing a legacy of institutional and vi environmental racism.

There were countless black owned venues and creative spaces in the 80s and 90s, and now you can count them on one hand.

If you defund the arts, you are reversing the countless hours, dollars, and strides made in arts and culture, and continuing Boston's legacy of cultural racial and racism and telling artists that they do not matter, BIPOC artists that their culture and their livelihood does not matter.

And Boston is not a home for the arts.

Not only that, you are telling the powers that be, the pedophilic capital fascist class that we will fold under pressure, that we are flippant, and that we do not stand with the values of justice in the people of the city.

I know your job is hard, balancing the budget, but it is your job to do.

You wouldn't be in these seats if you weren't fit for the job.

And so, by any means necessary, amend veto, find the money and restore arts and cultures one million dollars.

Good afternoon, y'all.

My name is Joy Alexand.

I'm a local entrepreneur and artist with the creative signature ethereal visions.

Y'all may have heard of us as EV.

We are a few of many performing artists, designers, and visual artists that live and contribute to the city of Boston almost exclusively.

The arts are important to me as a way to communicate our cultural rights in the city as constituents who deserve the right to create, but also appreciate art in the form of activations, live shows, community cafe programming.

Shout out Ujima, and so much more.

The project's ongoing and yet to be created show a successful result of city programming, which I am.

I've been a part of many programs.

I graduated from the Johnny O'Brien School of Math and Science.

I've had most of my accomplishments in the city.

I mean, in the neighborhood of Roxbury.

My first shows were thrown there.

My next 10 shows were thrown there.

This is something that other people in the community have invested in as well.

Please reinstate the one million dollar proposed cut to the Office of Arts and Culture.

Thank you for the opportunity to represent why city funding is important, but also I look forward and am open to creative solutions to ways that we can continue stimulating the growth of the arts and culture section in Boston.

Thank you.

Hi there.

My name is Alex Lanati.

I live in Dorchester, and I am the director of artistic and community programs at Speakeasy Stage Company, and I'm also the president of the Theater Community Benevolent Fund, or TCBF, from whom I'd like to address you today.

We are an organization that exists to help greater Boston-based artists in times of need through individual grassroots funded grants.

We're a community resource that helps our fellow artists financially in their darkest times.

I fear that with cuts of this magnitude, times are only going to get darker.

I am so proud to be a part of a community that supports each other, that takes care of its own.

But I'd really love to also live in a community where our government takes care of us too.

There is only so much that the little guys like TCBF can sustain.

The arts need your support.

The artists need your support.

Thank you so much for reconsidering the cut.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh yeah.

Hi.

Hi, I'm Andrea Bleso.

I am the director of dance and interdisciplinary arts at Boston Center for the Arts.

Um, I'm also a freelance dancer and producer.

I have built my practice in Boston for more than 25 years.

And not only do I see a lot of art makers in the room, I see a lot of folks that have been creative and created an infrastructure to allow arts to be made.

We see the gaps and we're helping fill them.

Please help us do that.

We are an organization that uplifts and incubates Boston based artists of all kinds.

In fact, I see many of our alumni in this room dancers, musicians, painters, filmmakers, actors, and directors.

During my 18-year tenure at BCA, I myself have supported more than 800 individual artists and over 200 art collectives and arts adjacent organizations.

That's just one person under an umbrella of something bigger.

Those are pretty real numbers.

BCA programs invite artists of Boston to create new work, which often addresses urgent issues of humanity.

We believe that the arts is an industry, and we believe in paying artists for their work.

Please re reevaluate this budget cut.

Oftentimes the weight of change rests on the shoulders of artists, as that is where truth is told first.

Thank you.

Okay.

Where is the love?

Okay.

So uh Jason Talbot, Julian uh Gao, Giselle Bird, uh Akiba Abaca, and Kevin Pisera, maybe, uh I'm not quite sure.

Uh, from Huntington Theater.

So Jason.

Okay.

Uh okay, uh, Jason stepped out.

Julian.

Um, then Giselle, Lakiva, and Kevin.

Okay.

Hi, my name is Julian Gell.

I live in Fenway, District 8, Ward 5.

I serve as artistic director of the Horizon Ensemble, an orchestra on Back Bay that plays music by friends.

That means music, classical music by young composers, people who are students, they're in the early parts of their careers.

It's very hard for these people to get a whole orchestra to want to play their music, and here we are, we're giving them that opportunity.

We also play music from history, but not just you know, the Mozarts and the Beethovens, but the stuff by people like Florence Price or like Ulysses K, people who like says Lucia Minud, people who during their lives, because of their race or their gender or whatever, we're not given those opportunities.

So we're doing that equity work, we're doing that cultural work, and I am the son of Taiwanese immigrants and a pianist, like Michelle Wu, who's the mayor of the city, and you know, we all saw her play Rhapsody and Blue with the Boston Symphony.

It was pretty cool.

But, you know, I work in orchestra and an opera, and a lot of my colleagues were just told how much nobody cares about our work.

A lot of our ballet colleagues were just told how much no one cares about our work.

Why is our mayor not proving him wrong?

Why are we not, you know, why is the city not showing us that our work does matter?

All of these people have come here today to tell us why it economically matters, it's sociolog at societally matters, and you know, I just think that there is so much we can be asking, not just how can we do less, how can we do more with less resources?

You know, I don't want to the questions to be how if we have this, what are we gonna do about this one million dollar cut?

What are we gonna do with less resources?

I want the questions to be why are we doing this one million dollar cut and where is the money gonna come from to reinstate that?

Um so on behalf of all the artists here who work so hard to create community, to create spaces where we see each other in our scene, where we hear each other and are here, our heard.

That's why arts education and language education is important, sorry.

And you know, have understanding and empathy for each other.

This funding is so important to all of us, and I call on the city to reinstate the 1 million dollar cut to the mayor's office of arts and culture.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak here and have a good day, everyone.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, Giselle.

Good afternoon, y'all.

My name is Giselle Bird, pronouns she her, and I am the executive and artistic director of the Theatre Offensive, a 37-year-old theater company, a little bit older than me, which presents liberating art by for and about queer and trans people of color.

I am a resident of Boston, but a Georgia girl born and raised.

Now, once again, our labor and humanity have been viewed as disposable.

As many of the departments across the city of Boston are being stripped of the essential funding for communities to thrive.

In particular, we cannot forsake the truth that art and culture made by multicultural, intergenerational, immigrant, disabled, queer, and trans communities, is the through line to justice, health, and wellness.

And in today's climate, compromise cannot be the answer.

Compromise for some can be a fatality for many.

Now, the budget cuts to the arts and culture sector are devastating.

And simultaneously, we must recognize how all of these budget revisions work in tandem.

They excessively affect all of our people on the margins, especially our youth, from being able to lead and create enriched lives and make strides in a time where many are being stripped of the very ability to do so.

This is not the revolution that Boston promised to be.

In fact, it is a regression.

This is not by circumstance, it is by design, and it signals that Boston's commitment to art does not extend beyond white walls.

Arts and culture leaders, where y'all at?

We are gonna show up and testify for as many of these hearings as we can, because we have to care for the humanity of the communities that we serve, the same way that they care for our art.

Counselors, do not set Chief Henry and senior advisor Masquery or any of us up for failure.

Our vision is what helped makes this city great, and it is far beyond time that this city recognize that art is not a tool for clout.

That is what will make us world class.

Thank you.

Okay, uh, Kiva.

Good afternoon.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over like syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load, or does it explode?

I open my statement with that poem by Langston Hughes.

My name is Akiba Abaka.

I am the interim executive director of the National Center of Afro American Artists.

I am also vice president of the Roxbury Cultural District, a theater teacher at BPS, and an artist entrepreneur, who, by the way, was able to create the first bi-directional theater residency in the English speaking Caribbean in 2020, funded by the Opportunity Fund, the only grant program that would fund and see my vision in Jamaica.

I come to Boston from Kingston, Jamaica, home of reggae music and everything nice.

Now, um Councilman uh Culpepper talked about the great shoulders on which I stand, which is the legacy of our great mother Elma Ina, Dr.

Elma Ina Lewis.

Pretty much every organization in this room has a dotted line to the National Center of Afro American Artists.

And I think the most important reason why this money needs to be reinstated.

My colleague, there's nothing I can say that's better than my colleagues.

But Dr.

King said when in speaking to Barry Gordy in 1964, he said that the arts, the work that you are doing, creates the emotional integration of America.

What you have seen in this room today, exhibited by the diversity and representation of my colleagues in the arts, says that Boston has the opportunity to lead in that emotional integration that is much needed in the United States right now.

Let's go, y'all.

Come on.

Boston Strong, find the money, run it.

This is what it is.

Let's go.

Okay, uh, just uh we'll do uh get to a few more people.

Kevin, and I'm sorry, what's your last name?

Bessera.

Okay, it was close.

Bessera, uh, John Kind, Steph Davis, uh, Kiana Richardson, and Audrey Sarrison.

Thank you.

I just want to start by saying it's my nightmare to speak after Giselle and Dakiva.

So thank you for what we're doing today.

My name is Kevin Becerra.

I live in Jamaica Plain and I work in the South End for the Huntington Theater.

The Huntington has always been grateful for our partnership with the city.

This relationship helps secure our home on Huntington Avenue, which, by the way, if you'd like to talk about renovating historic theaters, we've been through it quite recently.

And in more recent years, supported the Ufhat cycle traveling from Hyde Park to Roxbury to East Boston.

In our support of the Ufot cycle and our decades-long stewardship of the Calderwood Pavilion, we've learned time and time again the importance of a thriving arts ecosystem.

As we expand our programming to include more visual art and performance, we see how vast and mighty that system is here.

To continue to thrive, there is a required surrounding ecosystem of support that cannot be left to institutions alone.

It demands a web of individuals, institutions, foundations, federal funding, and municipal funding.

The latter being so important as it's rooted here, led and stewarded by our neighbors to serve our fellow artists and audiences.

I sincerely hope the city reexamines its financial commitment to Boston's art sector and that we all may continue to make Boston a more connected and vibrant city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I saw Leopold Stad at the Huntington Theater.

I don't know if you were part of that production, but uh anyway, okay.

Uh John.

My name is John Kind.

Um I grew up in Roxbury, and I'm also a Matipan resident.

Um I'm just gonna tell my story.

Um, so when I was a kid, I grew up in a rough environment.

There was a lot of gang violence.

I was a part of some of those gangs.

Um what I found to be the most um thing that helped me out of that situation was music.

And I was the guy who pretty much people went to to do their studio recording because I didn't like to wait on nobody.

And um later, that eventually that passion turned into something more professional.

Well, I went to production school and I learned how to actually write contracts and work work in freelance and learn um photography and videography.

And then I end up becoming the executive project manager for um Boston Center for the Arts, and I helped led their DEI project with YW Boston.

And so I built a lot of experiences through a lot of challenges.

You know, um, my father was an artist, but he's very like narcissistic, you know.

He's just all about himself.

He never let me touch his equipment, but I still learn how to use it anyway.

So um now that I have a company as a creative agency called John Con Studios, and I lead freelancers that are audio engineers, photographers, videographers, project managers, graphic designers, um, AV instructors, and all of it's built from my um unconventional experience.

So growing up in Roxbury and Matipan, I didn't get no handouts, you know, like my mom was chased home by dogs, you know, when she was a kid trying to learn in this city, so I never looked to the city for anything.

But when I learned about grants last year, I applied for the uh Mass Cultural Council and I won that.

And so that helped me be able to take that money and launch the business and do a lot more.

So my plan is to do a lot more this year, because um, you know, like I'm I'm expanding and um and then next year I want to expand more.

But I'm fearful that if you cut this money, it's gonna get in the way of me doing the teaching aspect, which I want more kids in my neighborhood to do what I do, to know how to freelance, to run their own business, to know how to do production without having to go through a lottery or something like that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Steph Davis, then uh Kiana, sorry, just going in order.

Steph Davis, uh Kiana Richardson, then Audrey Seraf.

Good afternoon.

My name is Steph Davis.

I am an independent artist, a musician.

I'm also a professor at Boston Conservatory at Berkeley on the board of Castle of Our Skins and a teaching artist with Castle of our skins as well.

Um, when speaking about arts funding, it's sometimes degrading to reference all the other sectors that the arts impacts, but in a governmental department, since that seems to be what speaks, I will happily provide some examples of all the different areas that art supports.

But the performing arts are the infrastructure for civic life.

From town halls to theaters, they provide the scaffolding for engagement, resilience, exploration, and transforming disconnection into belonging.

Investing in the arts is investing in civic stability and local belonging.

The performing arts are local engines that generate national solutions from health and well-being to education and workforce.

Performing arts professionals create solutions that build trust across differences and model collaboration that can scale nationally and globally.

The performing arts, investing in the performing arts multiplies.

A single grant becomes jobs, better health, youth development, and local business growth.

Every dollar pays dividends and community value, proving that arts are essential infrastructure, not a luxury.

I was fortunate to achieve um to receive the Boston Opportunity Fund last year, and in my performance, I happily thanked the city for their support.

Now, when I thank them, I was like with the caveat of this might not last.

So it's very disappointing to see that that caveat was needed.

The future demands that the performing arts teach creativity, adaptability, and human connection or survival skills in an uncertain world.

Supporting the arts equips communities with the skills and imagination needed to navigate change and build shared prosperity.

When you have the conversations and renegotiate that change, I invite you to include an artist at that table.

And if you need help to start, you may start with a 40 44 443,000 that was added to the Boston police budget.

Okay.

Hey y'all.

Um my name is Kiana Andrea Richardson, but most people know me as Key.

I am a performing and recording artist and also a program coordinator for an artist development program at a nonprofit youth organization called Beat the Odds.

Um I live in Boston.

I work in Boston.

I'm from Boston, Dorchester, born and raised.

This year actually marks five years of pursuing my music and being an independent artist and entrepreneur.

Uh art and expression has always been a big part of my life, and it's also an integral part of our city's culture.

Um in communities where we've historically been shut out.

Creativity has always been a way for us to tell our stories and share our experiences and be seen on our own terms.

Um over the years, we've seen funding for the arts continue to decline.

And with that, we lose programs in our schools, uh, spaces in our communities, and jobs for creatives across the city.

It's already hard to survive in Boston with the rising cost of living, and it's even harder when you're pursuing your artistry full time.

Um, funding helps us pay our rent, afford our groceries and sustain our lives while also allowing us to build our opportunities and invest back into our work.

Um, through my role with working with the youth, I see every day how important it is for young people to not only have access to the arts, um, but to see that it's possible to build a real sustainable career here in Boston, not somewhere else like New York or LA, and not eventually, but right here and right now.

With this budget cut, so many of our youth participants will be out of jobs, uh jobs that allow them to take care of themselves and in some cases even support their families, and they'll also miss out on opportunities and to have spaces to grow the artistry and stay connected with their community.

Boston's art is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

It ensures our voices are heard, our gifts are seen, and our stories are felt.

I kindly ask you to reconsider and reinstate the one million dollar proposed budget cut to the Office of Arts and Culture because it's our city and it's our future.

It depends on it.

Thank you, and God bless you all.

Okay.

Uh Audrey, and then we're I I do my colleagues have other questions because I'd like to do yet one more round uh of questions, so stick around.

Well, not yet.

We're gonna uh yeah, okay.

Um, Audrey.

Great.

My name is Audrey Serafin.

I've been a theater artist and arts administrator in Boston since 2012 when I arrived here to attend Emerson College.

I've spent the last 11 years in Alston, the only neighborhood in the country named after a visual artist.

Both my husband and I are among the one in four Bostonians Joseph named who make a portion of their income and not an insignificant portion of their income from the creative economy, which brings billions of dollars to the city of Boston annually.

I'm here between my day job at the New England Foundation for the Arts and my evening rehearsal for Boston's New Work Festival in Harvard Square because this matters.

And now I gotta pay 30 bucks in parking because this took over three hours.

The mayor's office of arts and culture represents less than 0.7% of the city's budget.

Yeah, they're being asked to take a 27% budget cut this year, the largest reported FY27 budget cut of any city department that I've seen.

It's an especially insidious decision given this current state of arts funding.

The arts are at a precipice of a steep five fiscal cliff created by seismic shifts in private foundations, the decimation of state and federal arts funding, and the close of a transformational funding period brought about by the American Rescue Plan.

Mayor Wu's cut is just enough to push Boston's arts community right off the edge of that cliff.

We're asking for a lifeline for the recipients of the grants programs that will be slashed in the new budget.

I'm a proud member of the Boston Cultural Council, and our organizational grant program will be heavily impacted by this decision.

In 2025, we gave out over $800,000 to Boston arts and cultural organizations with under $2 million in annual operating expenses.

In grant amounts between $5 and $10,000, we've received over $2.2 million in requests.

74% of our two 2025 grantees have an annual operating budget under $500,000 annually, with some relying on their $10,000 BCC grant for nearly a year's worth of work.

This cut targets artists, volunteers, and community-led initiatives.

Organizations will shudder, creatives will be pushed out of the city.

The quality of life the mayor claims is reflected in this year's budget will not be the same for our grantees.

I beg this council to reinstate my wax funding.

In my time in Boston, we have only seen one small budget cut of 2.9% in 2017.

This is unprecedented, unacceptable, and unreasonable.

I am ashamed that our first artist mayor would make such a decision, but you have the power to correct it.

Remember, artists vote, artists organize.

Look at everyone here today that you pushed out by wasting time.

All these arts and culture warriors have long punched above their weight.

Don't kneecap us when we're just getting started again.

Thank you.

So we're gonna go to a short round of questions.

I have to step out for five minutes, so I'm gonna hand things over to Russi Louis Gen, uh, who can knows how to operate this.

And uh I don't I I guess you can do you want to do the time?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, you have to uh very much time.

I'll be like five minutes.

Thank you again to all the members of community who have passionately uh given testimony and who have taken up time and now have to pay that expensive parking um because it's no joke.

Um, and so I really appreciate all of you for coming out, um, especially as a chair of arts, culture, special events.

This is really important to me that we try to get this right.

Um I'm a boring lawyer, and I always think about my parents who came here with nothing from Haiti, and how growing up it was really two options that they knew of trying to create a better life for me and my three sisters.

You're either a lawyer or a doctor.

And I'm glad their work and their persistence in school, that I am who I am today.

But I always think about what could have been possible if there were if I was exposed to the panoply of options that are available in the arts in other fields for our for our kids.

And so I want to make sure that our young kids especially have access to the arts, especially our low-income, our poor black and brown kids, so that they can envision a future for themselves that is outside of a binary or what their parents may or may not know.

And so I just know that the collective advocacy of this council will be to do what we can in a very difficult financial environment to help support the work that all of you are doing.

So I just want to say thank you again to all of the members of community who are here.

Um I wanted to ask about capital investment that we're seeing in this budget.

So while operating support has been reduced both internally and externally, uh, we do see continued investments in the amount of 23 million dollars in arts and culture capital projects over the next several years.

Some of those projects being um the Chinatown Worker Statues bookmarked in Mattapan and the Frederick Douglass Memorial.

I was wondering, Chief Henry, if you could talk a little bit about the capital investments that are being made in art.

Yeah, so the percent for art budget is an allocation, not a budget.

So we still have to get approval to spend the allocation down.

The percent for art was uh executive essentially an executive order, and therefore we are working right now with OBM on expanding the ability to use that money in a more flexible way.

Um, because we need to be able to we're funding like objects of art rather than the like facilitation of it, um, which is fundamentally a bit of like a um uh what's the word, oxymoronic thing to do.

Um that's one of our priorities.

Um, and we are also securing investment in the strand to do new marquee.

We've got an appropriation of just over 1.5 million dollars to do that.

That's we're working with architects right now on that.

Um, and I and uh I'm gonna be very busy fundraising um for capital in the next term because 290 North Beacon is a project that's a 35 to 50 million dollar capital expenditure to get that built.

We're gonna have to be very naughty fundraisers in this.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah.

Thank you.

Um, second question, well, related, you know, at the Strand Theater matters a lot.

I know there are a lot of folks in here who have events at the Strand Theater, in addition to getting the liquor license for Jazz Urbane.

I got the liquor license for the Strand Theater, and that's something that we want to see really expanded.

Talk to people, I was thinking of talking about to the Boston Symphony Orchestra about to to the BSYO, youth orchestra, about possibly having events at the Strand Theater.

Where are we sort of in man in in helping to really enlarge the vision for the Strand Theater and the shows that can be produced there?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

So there is a there was a conditions report a few years ago that was done that said that was a 150 million million dollar deferred maintenance on the strand.

What we're trying to do is figure out what technical upgrades can be done specifically to make it easier for people to use it.

So, for example, I met recently with the chair of the arts department, the theater department, MIT, who's currently somewhat strangely making a show about Midi Vanilli and Boney M.

He really wants to do the premiere at the Strand.

It'll be very but the technical requirements he has, the strand conquest.

So we're working to think about how do we upgrade.

That's a report that's been worked on right now as we speak by architects Charcoal Bloom Arts Consulting Group.

We are aiming to get that report hopefully by the end of summer and have some sort of sense of what are the key investments.

Like we're not not every investment in sort of physical upgrades will make a big response to the technical upgrades, the technical ability to do shows at the Strand, and that's something we're trying to figure out is what are our investments in the strand will actually make it easier for people to do work there.

So it might not look necessarily better immediately, but it will hopefully be like a more plug-in-play situation than we have now.

Okay.

Oh, absolutely.

I was gonna say in the immediate, we are investing into um the marquee that's in the front that will be operational that hasn't been working in some time, and also a loading dock that facilitates easier access and storage to the strand that um staff and community have been asking for years.

Thank you.

I have two quite two more questions, and then I realize I didn't start the timer, and then I'll just go to my colleague.

Um is uh Chief, can you talk about like you've talked about it a bit before, but you know, I heard you speak at the triennial um 20 over 2025, and you talked about how London really uh invested in the creative economy because it understood that it would have it is part of the economy and um has a substantial impact.

Can you talk about what we need, what like what are you what have you what are you bringing over from that experience to Boston uh in terms of and how are you advocating in this administration to invest more in the arts given the impact economically on the city as an important one?

And the second question is, and I think you talked about this when it comes to the Knight Foundation, um, and I will continue, and one of my colleagues said that she wasn't, but I will continue to push for us to partner with foundations to help us fill gaps.

And so, do you see this as an opportunity to work with the foundation to help fill gaps specifically on the grants that we're trying to that we've been able to make historically?

So those two questions.

So on the philanthropic position.

We did a lot of work in London with philanthropic partners.

It's challenging to raise money from philanthropy if the city isn't seed investors.

What we have seen with things like the Midway studios, is that we were the first people to invest.

And that helps unlock additional funding.

It will I most philanthropic organizations, at least the ones I've worked with, want to support winning or far like want to support like what they think has momentum.

So we're gonna have to show momentum and build confidence with reduced resources.

That's a challenge I see.

Some luckily by the new director of the Knight Foundation is from Boston.

That helps for that specifically.

But there's a lot of work we need to do to maintain that sort of sense of momentum.

I think we need to think one of the big things we did in London is you know, um, is really understand that arts is a capital investment.

It unlocks capital investment.

And this wasn't necessarily something that we as City Hall, it was obvious that we had to invest, it's obvious for us as a culture and creative industry unit to advocate for it.

What's really powerful in arts when people who aren't artists or work in arts advocate for arts.

You know, King's Cross, which is a major regeneration project in London, the Google just moved their global headquarters or partly their global headquarters there.

The first thing that we built there was a Central School of St.

Martins and Art School.

Without CSM, you don't have Google.

The investment in the early investment in capital in arts unlocks other investments.

The shed wasn't built in New York as altruism.

That was a leasing strategy for related bill to secure all the tenants or the rest of the building.

We need to stop thinking about art as a subsidy, but as an investment that unlocks greater investment elsewhere.

You know, Richard Upton, who's a very famous British developer, always puts arts first in developments that isn't out of charity, it's out of business acumen.

That is something that I just fundamentally never want to be.

I feel like I'm always playing defense here, and I want to play offense to be like, no, this actually is something that we is and you know, like when you have Deloitte, and then Deloitte did a report a few years ago talking about how the creative industries is the industry of the 21st century.

If Deloitte are advocating for this.

Is like the 21st century industry.

They did this report for Netflix, and like looking at how government.

So I think we just need to like join the prevailing wind of where 21st century economy is going, and then make it specifically and unique to our ecosystem.

You know, like we you can't, you know, London has a specific physical manifestation which allows us to do like mass fashion production or mass film production.

We have a different physicality, a different manifestation.

So what we really need to do is when we talk about the creative economy or arts, we're really specific about what specific what sectors, what infrastructure, what has the best, the greatest support.

Um, and I think that that from a at least my that's my job in government.

Because the tools at my disposal are different to the tools of other people in this room, and really like understanding that and saying that we have like a shared agenda here is really important.

And if I can add part of my role to would be to like demystify and understand the creative ecosystem and all the different um the stries' roles that make up our strong creative ecosystem and also prioritize creative RD to make sure that we bring back manufacturing and also based on the assets that we have here in Boston.

Um I've been saying uh to my close people, but I think that like we're the footwear design capital of America, but a lot of us don't know that.

A lot of the infrastructure, a lot of the messaging isn't rooted in that.

So once we're able to have data and talking points, that brings all of us together.

I think we'll be able to unlock even more football.

Footware capital.

I'm sorry, the footwear capital.

What did you say with capital?

Oh, the footwear design, the footback.

Correct.

We have more headquarters companies headquartered here in footwear than anywhere else in Portland currently claims that moniker only because of their production.

But we're not going to talk about their stocks and what's happening to them.

Okay, thank you so much.

I'm uh going to next we have Councillor Braden.

You have the floor in five minutes, five ish minutes, because I know I probably went over.

Thank you.

Um I I really uh get excited when I hear you're talking about how we use our publicly owned buildings.

Uh we we spend billions of dollars building buildings and then we close them.

We only have use them for thinking schools, and we use them.

We should be using them 18 hours a day and for 12 months, 365 days a year practically.

Um, because that's money that we invested, and then we lock the door and keep people out.

It doesn't really work on any on any level, both from an educational point of view, but from also arts and culture.

Um I you mentioned earlier about mitigation funds, I think that live at the BRA that are sitting in a nice little escrow count from 2020, did you mention?

Uh something like that.

That's a lot is how much is there, and can we get our mitts on it?

We are working on it.

It's it's that it's something that the planning department have brought to me as a priority.

Um these are all agreements that were all negotiated separately.

Some of them have arrangements where a license fee payer is paying in a certain amount of money until 2065, at which point the like fund matures.

There are others where there are grants we've already previously distributed to arts organizations in the four-point South Boston neighborhood.

Each one, so we're actually currently mapping that out with the idea of is there a place to put all of this money collectively that allows us to make it a bit more sort of like impactful.

So that's us all that's a project we're working on, but it has a lot of legal and financial uh hurdles still have things to do.

And and and putting it into centralized trust fund and then being able to spend out 5% of the income of it every every year, it would be good.

Um in terms of I really like the idea of seeing art as an investment because I think uh you have to prime the pumps and you have to invest to to reap the benefits of that.

And if we cut back, it's like um it's it's moving everything in a backward direction.

So uh I really appreciate the incredible amount of advocacy that we've had in here this afternoon, all the energy.

Um in terms of um going back to the um the North Beacon Street project.

Um you said you're we're gonna have to do a lot of philanthropic work to try and get some investment um in there.

Um how is that goal?

Are we just at the edge?

We're we're just really getting just got control of the building.

So um what what's going on, what what's the next steps?

We're currently figuring out the best strategic option.

You know, the site is a essentially a scrub site, so we can do build a lot of different options.

We're trying to figure out which one makes the most commercial financial sense because every strategic option, either you know, you can stack the buildings horizontally, vertically, you can spread them out.

They will have different housing square footage implications.

We're trying to build a um criteria for making those decisions and then work with community, yourself, the mayor's team on how we make the best decision to move forwards on that.

We have had we have had conversations about using our pre-development funds to hire the fundraiser, and also thinking about if we are raising money for this music rehearsal space, is there a sort of like wider fundraising effort that supports other music rehearsal spaces at the same time or other community spaces in the in the thannual gardens neighborhood at large.

You know, the master plan has an idea for community center as part of this.

Do we fundraise for both at the same time?

So we're really in a stage of figuring out the best path forwards for that.

But it's a about everyone loves the project.

It's such an amazing example.

And that is something.

And you know, there's like anecdotally, because we build building the building from scratch.

There's also things we can do that we couldn't, you couldn't usually do in traditional music rehearsal spaces.

We've surveying the musicians, we realize how many musicians earn money by teaching.

There's a whole education component that's come out of the engagement that we didn't necessarily expect.

There's a big desire, as you can imagine, for like a music venue that wasn't necessarily part of the original brief.

So we're trying to also be responsive to the needs of the musicians.

Um as we develop the project.

So the brief is elastic and the fun is the fun is elastic.

The more we can start making decisions and have a strong criteria the better.

So we will follow up with your team on that.

I think just in terms of mitigation, it's I'm just amazed that okay.

We we're really sorry to lose this 155 North Beacon Street was hundreds of musicians that use that space.

And then to get the lab developer who's since left time because labs are yesterday's news, arts and culture, tomorrow's news, um, to to buy a building and get and gift it to the city for um to mitigate the displacement of those musicians is I don't know if that's happened before, but it's certainly it's very, very encouraging that we were able to do that.

Yeah, I think this is a moment where every tool or every like thing I can do at my disposal, we're gonna have to deploy um in response to the fiscal headwinds of the city.

Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you for all you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, clear.

Okay.

Um, seeing as there are no other counselors who have questions at this moment, I'm going to turn it back to public testimony.

Uh, some of these folks I know personally, and some of them have left.

Um, you can take over.

Is I don't see Duncan here from Embrace.

Tom O'Singh is Tom O'Singh here.

Terland Luisa, I know Teland has left.

Karen Crowak.

Yeah.

Karen Karlac.

Thank you.

You have the floor in two minutes.

Just a second for me to get situated here.

Hi, my name is Karen Crowlock.

I am one of the co-artistic directors of Monkey House, uh nonprofit that's been in Boston for 26 years, uh, connecting communities through choreography.

I am also on the board of the Boston Dance Alliance, The Flavor Continues, an advisor for the Boston Center for the Arts for Sub Circle in Maine, Rossick, the Black Arc Sanctuary, a dramaturg for Jessica Roseman, Laura Sanchez, um Simon Montalvo, Human Movement Project.

The number of shows and uh events that I go to in a year is well over a hundred.

In one weekend alone recently, I went to 11 shows at the Boston Center for the Arts.

And I say this because I don't think we're talking enough in this about the impact of accessibility for people with disabilities within our spaces, and with the difference of what happens when we start having people who are really active within the arts community as performers and collaborators trying to get into spaces to get people to take action.

And I can say for a fact that Human Movement Lab immediately put into practice a number of things to be able to make it possible when they opened in Hyde Park a few years ago, so that I would be able to get there, which has now made it easier for other artists to be able to use that space.

Two things that I want to say that were not for mine before I launch into something else.

Um Marisa Molinar was just here.

She is one of my collaborators.

We have worked together on a number of things.

She does midday movement series.

She wanted to point out not only our small organizations like hers and mine where the artistic directors are being paid less than $30,000 a year, able to help raise over several hundred thousands of dollars for other artists, but we are struggling ourselves to be able to find ways to pay our collaborators.

Twenty to twenty-five dollars less per hour than people would make in other cities around the country or in other art forms.

The dance world is severely underfunded.

And the reason that we need so much of dance in our communities is because I know personally that it has saved my life.

I live with a very rare condition, and I have been told by a thoracic surgeon at Mass General Hospital that if it was not for my ability to keep trying to dance, I would have been bedridden over a decade ago.

This is why it's important.

It is a public health matter.

And I can also say, just on a very personal level, that a show at the Emerson Majestic Theater changed my life out of one of the worst days I've ever had when I had to go meet the man who killed my mother, father, and brother, and speak to him in court.

The only thing that gave me any kind of roadmap on how to be able to do that was a project that Emerson Majestic brought in that was about people from South Africa during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, being able to set a model that is not based on vengeance, that is not based on incarceration, but it's based on mutual sharing of stories.

This is why we need the arts in this community.

Because if we want to be a powerhouse leader around the world for biotech and other things, we need to show it not just by the wealthiest people in our communities being able to take part in the arts, but being able to show that the health and well-being of even the most vulnerable, most marginalized people in our areas is improved by the ways that we are integrating creative solutions into well-being.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, next up, um, let me grab my glasses.

Uh sorry.

X-ray aims, followed by Marissa Molinar.

She's not here.

Uh I have Umpa and then Timothy Nay.

Uh anyone?

Oh, you're good, okay.

Um I'm just gonna go down to Timothy Nay.

Umpa's here.

Okay, UMA, great.

Hello, everybody.

Um, my name is Lakira Williams, strange enough.

Um, most people know me as UMPA.

I'm a 10-year artist, creative, culture worker, independent, full-time, nothing else on the side.

Um, I founded Outlawed, which is developing the supply side of the culture workforce through cultural production and economic and workforce development.

And now Culture X, which is the culture economy's economic ledger, turn in creative participation into verifiable financial metrics, credentials, and such that'll grant access to capital that every other legitimate industry has access to.

Um, but more importantly than that, I'm a Roxbury girl.

I'm a mentor, former teacher.

Um, and yeah, we've already talked about how much the investment in arts and culture generates for the GDP.

That's roughly 4% of our GDP, which is um in alignment with the the technology and science science industries.

Um, and so uh yeah, I'm I'm rambling.

I'm nervous, surprisingly enough.

Um, global brands, elected officials, small businesses, when they want to multiply their impact and they want people to act and believe on behalf of them, they call us.

I know because I performed at Governor Mara Haley's inauguration, countless mayor woo events, etc.

And the research is also clear that one of the strongest indicators of whether an economy recovers after upheaval is how strong as arts and culture sector is.

But the people who produce value, the culture workers, the movement makers, the moment makers see no upside to that reality.

There's nothing that compounds in favor of culture creators outside of that, and that lives in our minds and our hearts.

When we need economic mobility and infrastructure, what we get is a 1.25 million dollar budget cut.

Early investment in me first as an artist and then a movement maker on behalf of Moac and a business owner is a large part of why I have a career.

Though I've through that, I've provided mentorship, funding, friendship, access.

Uh, because of those investments, I've been able to build a brand in a company that's generated millions of dollars in revenue for the creative economy.

I've moved half a million dollars of public funding directly into the hands of neighborhoods in Boston's cultural uh community.

I've served 10,000 Bostonians as either the face, the person behind it or as infrastructure.

30% to 40% of any of my annual revenue that I generate is paid directly to culture workers.

I got receipts through MOAC and uh through Moac and resources ranging from the opportunity grant when I first got into this 10 years ago all the way to the neighborhood activation and development grant that I received last year.

I've been able to provide multiple sold-out shows through the city, create programming workforce development access, cultural assets uh for black, queer, and hood communities that get overlooked by traditional grant and funding systems.

And when I was ready to move beyond this philanthropic ask and receive model, and when I was finally positioned to build something sustainable, there was no way for me to turn.

What we have right now is a fully labor-dependent industry with no ownership structure, cultural producers work and work and see no upside.

They return every year hoping for the kindness of these grants of the funding of philanthropy, often forced to sanitize message to impact and their impact to qualify.

We've seen an industry structured this way before, and we spent 400 years advancing and agreeing that that was not the way to go.

Let's not do it again.

The problem isn't just tight budgets.

I'm from Academy Homes Projects in Roxbury, and I was raised by a single mother who made 10,883 every year.

I know what it means to choose between food and fun.

The problem isn't that budgets, it's not budgets, it's that arts and culture have never been proven essential.

It's treated as decoration, something you add when you can afford it and cut it when you can't.

But if culture by definition is the shared set of beliefs, actions, and values that determine how we organize life, then every decision about what food we eat, how it's prepared, whether it's seasoned enough, that's culture.

By logic, divesting from the arts and culture is an investment in our division.

We don't have a talent intelligence or hustle problem, we have an infrastructure problem.

This isn't just arts funding, this is cultural economics and workforce development.

Restore the million, but don't just restore the budget, build an infrastructure that makes this conversation obsolete.

Not just more events, more ownership of the establishments that produce them, more access to capital that allows creators and culture workers to scale, that makes partners that makes a partnership out of our relationship to our city, not one of servitude.

I'm the mentor of many young people coming up in arts in the city, and I'm a guardian of a Boston Arts Academy student who's hopeful about her future as an artist.

And I invite her to I invite her to that hope and hope to expand it.

And I hope that you won't make me a liar.

Boston made me, and I'm leaving the stage, not because I'm tired, just because I'm tired, but I'm tired.

I'm depleted, exhausted, depressed, but also because burnout, exhaustion, disposal, displacement, and a deep desire to leave are part of the right of passage of being an artist, being a black woman in the city of Boston.

So let's build the systems.

I want to build a system that makes sure the next generation don't have to beg, that we don't need other people to be the experts of our value, because we're gonna make it tangible and legible so it's investable.

Reinstate the 1.25, and moreover, I can't believe we're having a conversation about putting back money that that wasn't significant enough to make change in the first place.

Let's let's adequately invest in the arts.

And let it not be lost on us what our leadership and this this trans this transition of power looks like.

What they're being set up to inherit.

So let's support them and make sure that we don't blame them for what they're inheriting, but in fact that we fight to make sure that they can represent us in a in a just way, in a just manner.

Um so with that, I'm done.

Uh, excuse me as I duck out.

I have to prepare for a sold-out ICA event and a performance at the Isabella Garner Museum on Saturday because this is my real life, y'all.

So thank you.

Okay, so I've got Tim Timothy Nay, Lee Lennon, Casperta, and uh I think it's Sonia Lava.

So thank you, Chair Weber, for staying so late and giving an opportunity for everyone here to speak.

I am a long-term resident of the Fenway, a parent, a certified artist in uh Boston.

Uh, and have filmed uh a documentary on Crump at the Strand.

Um, it's a difficult theater to light for film, but uh it can be done uh provided you have the right team.

And uh some of the projects, one was mentioned earlier, the Fenway Memory Project, which is uh oral history of the neighborhood, uh going back to the 1970s when buildings were being burned uh in the city for profit, arson for profit.

Uh we've also covered the queer Fenway history, uh, and we we looked at um the uh the importance of of involving the community in development.

And I know a lot has been talked about, perhaps the further cooperation between the uh planning department, those mitigation funds, and um in MOAC.

But I feel in a way that I I I misspent some of my time because I I served the last five years on on uh uh impact advisory group and uh really spoke up a lot in terms of having space, uh having a concern with infrastructure.

Uh we know under the last couple of mayors, there have been studies done showing the desperate need for space.

Um what we ended up with fortunately is is will be in five years when the project is built, uh, a civic uh cultural space where planning department um finally put in that acoustics should be considered in in the design of the facility.

But when I returned uh last week, I I took my child who's uh who studies at Boston Ballet and New England Conservatory Music, um, and we were in Dublin for the school break, and I brought back a Seamus Haney uh book slash translation of the Aeneid.

Um I thought I would be reading that, but then I found myself looking at the annual comprehensive financial report.

And and I suggest that that is one of the documents uh that really should be delved into what are the unrestricted funds and how did it come that 27% plus the percentage of inflation um brought us all here today.

Um I don't know how we got red circle, that we didn't get blue circled.

Uh it's just portion it.

Um, and and I think that if you know we probably were to look at the um uh the trial balance going through last month, that we may see the city uh is is in a better position than the narrative that we've been presented with.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Uh Lee Lennon, um Casperta, Sonia Laba, and then uh sorry.

Um I'm not sure uh Fee and Lola uh Coker, sorry, I apologize.

From Rosendale, Boston Center for the Arts.

Whenever you're ready.

Good afternoon.

My name is Sonia Lamba, and I am a school counselor, a former DCF worker, a mentor, a dancer, and very proudly the board president of origination culture arts center.

I am here today to speak strongly against the proposed 27% reduction in funding for the arts and culture in Boston.

Quite frankly, this level of reduction is reckless.

In my work across schools, child welfare, and community organizations.

I have seen firsthand that the arts are not an extra, they are essential.

Research consistently shows that students involved in arts demonstrate higher academic achievement, improved attendance, and stronger social emotional skills.

Arts participation has been linked to increased graduation rates, better critical thinking, and greater engagement in school, particularly for students in urban communities.

But beyond the data, I want to speak to what I see every day.

Art organizations provide safe, consistent spaces for young people, especially in cities like Boston, where many youth are navigating systematic inequities, community stress, and limited access to resources.

These programs offer structure, belonging, identity, and a place to be seen and valued.

With the ongoing cuts to DEI funding, many organizations are already struggling to survive.

Some have already closed their doors, much like we've seen with many small businesses across Boston.

Further cuts to arts and culture funding will only accelerate that loss.

At origination, I cannot count the number of young people who have walked through our doors and found not just a program but a pathway.

We have supported youth who have gone on to become not only dancers and performers, but social workers, teachers, nurses, doctors, bankers, and activists.

Many of them are first generation college graduates.

Many of our high school diplomas, college degrees, even graduate and doctoral degrees.

That impact, it doesn't happen by accident.

It happens because these programs invest in the whole child.

When we cut funding to the arts, we are not just cutting programs, we are cutting opportunities, cutting safe spaces, and cutting futures.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm just last names.

I have Coker, McLean Nichols, uh Duarte, Hunt, Chaperon, and I think Nay Black and Toshera.

How's it going, everyone?

Uh, my name is Nate McLean Nichols.

I'm the program director for the Center for Teen Empowerment's Boston chapter.

Um we have the privilege of being able to employ around 45 young people from different Boston neighborhoods, specifically those in Mattapan, Roxbury, and Dorchester.

Um, and we have a very unique privilege as well as being able to employ youth and adult artists with our teen apartment studios Arts for Social Justice program.

Um I myself am also an artist.

I'm from Roxbury, born and raised in Boston, and I currently reside in Dorchester.

So I'd like to just share real quick a lot of what my peer just echoing what my peers have also shared.

Um but first and foremost, you feel me?

I've been involved in multiple different creative processes hosted by the mayor's arts uh office of arts and culture that have been able to help elevate creative institutions in the city, um, such as BTO Boston, such as um the Theater Offensive, who all spoke here today, spoke here today.

Um, I've also been a recipient of the Opportunity Fund, which has helped me maintain creative direction over my art through financial um stability and partnership.

And currently right now, we're facing these cuts to the department that afforded me those opportunities because that will prevent artists in the city um from the stability that we need in order to continue to move Boston into the realm of arts forwardness that the current city administration has been thriving for.

This is about more than the arts.

Our creative sector is one of the driving forces behind Boston's economic success, and the cut to the arts and culture is a cut to our city's lifeblood.

So I urge the city council to do one of two things.

I want you guys to propose either propose amendments to the mayor's proposal that uplift the priorities of the artists and cultural worker constituents of yours, or reject the mayor's budget outright and propose a new budget that prioritizes working class creatives, such as myself for everything we have into our city as we honor the past, value the present, and prepare for the future.

And so I know most of the city counselors not here today.

Councilman Weber, you know what I mean?

Shout out to you.

So I mean, I know this is your job as lazy means chair, but I also want to share that appreciation because it's really important.

And right now for the folks that are in the building, still, I think it's important that we are emphasizing it urgent for the city counselors to make this decision.

Because even though you're in a role where we're in the strong mayor system where it might not feel you have very much power, you do.

Right now, our lives and our futures are in your hands.

So I urge you to be able to make that decision.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I hope to have more of my colleagues here May 26th, uh 6 p.m.

Come by.

Everyone will get a chance to speak.

Um so I have uh Duarte Hunt.

Uh I'm Chapper Chaperon, Nay Black, and to Shara.

Hi.

Um I'm Raquel Duarte Hunt.

I am a small business owner of Cafes Duarte.

I am also associate director of education at Company One Theater.

Um, also born and raised in Boston, parent of two young artists in BPS, partner to a muralist and a DJ, and I've been a working theater artist in this city since the early 2000s, and also an educator and CYD worker.

And back then there were all these scrappy theater places all over the city.

You were talking about ABC No Rio.

We used to have piano factory, we used to be doing art and basements all over the place.

Where did those spaces go?

What are the zoning and licensing laws that changed that effectively eradicated all of those third spaces around the city?

That's something I really want to know.

Um I also want to say that these cuts are cuts to Boston's youth primarily and to our collective future.

You know that the problems that this city is facing, this country and our planet right now are facing, these require radical changes to the way that we run our societies.

And I want to say, like, the fact that BPS students are being taught to the test right now.

Maybe you know, NYC got rid of the Regents Test.

That would make a really big difference for Boston students.

Um it means that teachers are under extreme pressure.

And Joseph, I know that you are aware of how many of our BPS teachers are artists, and how much of the vanishing middle class is made up of artists.

Um these teachers, they can't focus on the required SEL social emotional learning and uh creative problem solving, um, including self-expression and the sharing of stories that is required for the development of our young people.

And so they partner with Company One, and Company One brings in theater, and theater with its ensemble and experimental nature already includes cooperation and finding new solutions that include everyone's voices.

C1 and all of the artists in this room know that theater and all art is inherently educational.

We build community and our budgets show that we value the cultural work that keeps us human in an increasingly increasingly oppressive world.

Don't cut the funding.

Let's push for humanity in this city.

And I appreciate how much you have been talking about the interconnection of uh this ecosystem in which we need to advocate for the true value of this art of our arts world.

So I want you to succeed.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Um I I have uh chaper Chaperon, uh no, May Black, to share uh okay, and then so we have just before you start, we have uh a couple things online, and then anyone else who hasn't signed up and you want to testify, you know, you can't testify again, but if you if you haven't spoken uh and you want to testify, please just just line up.

So whenever you're ready.

Cool, cool, cool.

Hello, everybody.

What's good?

Thank you so much to everyone who is still in this room.

Oh my gosh.

Thank you to all the counselors, Kenny, Joseph, man, bless y'all's brains for consuming all this information and is holding it down.

Um my name is Stax.

I am a talent manager, a spoken word artist, and I also work for a creative nonprofit called Beat the Odds.

I don't got nothing written down, okay, so you can be 11% certain I'm speaking for my soul, okay.

Um it's funny because coming to this hearing, I was like, okay, our community needs to somehow like convince them how powerful the art is, and literally the whole time I'm hearing y'all talking I'm like, okay, wait, they already understand.

Y'all talking about your families and how your son is at BAA, you guys have been going to events and shows, Kenny's a DJ.

There's a whole office for arts and culture.

So we gotta be doing something right if there's at least a whole department for it.

Um I'm glad that we can agree there, but I want to offer a perspective, right?

Because I graduated from Berkeley College of Music.

I'm from Boston, born and raised, I never left, and somehow I didn't even know we had an art scene.

So I was about two seconds away from leaving to LA.

I had an offer lined up and everything, and um God compelled me to stay, and I say that to say that like there's a lot of people who can easily go to a New York or an LA.

The the simp the outcome of this budget cut is very simple.

If people can't sustain their lives here as creatives, they're just going to have to leave.

Um, and it's unfortunate because the people in who've been in this room and the folks who couldn't make it, they are here by choice.

Um, and that's really powerful.

Like everyone in here is very special.

If they decided to stay in Boston and figure out how to make a way, um, and then I thought about the 27% and the fact that it only amounts to a million, and so the total is like what, 3.7.

So already the slice is mad.

So it's like we we shave it off the smallest slice already.

So I just please urge you to find it in your hearts to reinstate this budget.

I appreciate y'all, God bless you.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

But before we go to anyone else who wants to testify, so we do we still have so you go.

Is this an S or a B?

Okay, uh Okabe.

Uh is been waiting on Zoom, well, which is easier than waiting in the room, but um if you go, yeah.

Can you hear me?

You go.

Oh, hello.

Okay, I can I can hear you.

Okay, thank you so much.

Yeah, whenever you're ready.

Oh, yes.

Great.

Matt, hello, my name is Yuko Okabe.

I'm a full-time studio resident with the Boston Center for the Arts or the BCA on Chaymont Street in the South End.

Sorry for not being in person.

I'm feeling been feeling sick for the past few days.

Um, but thank you for giving space for artists to share.

Why city funding for arts matters to Boston for the past 10 years.

I've been I've worked as an illustrator, public artist, and consultant with various Boston cultural organizations, and I've seen how art creates spaces for gathering for beauty and for social justice.

Um, I worked with teens at the Elliott School of Fine and Applied Arts and JP, where we used art as a language to talk about food justice in Boston.

Um, during the pandemic, I worked with the POW Arts Center and Chinatown residents to create a public art installation about mutual aid.

And I'm just a small example of the expansive and amazing number of Boston artists and cultural organizations like the ones you've heard today, who use creative thinking to tackle housing, immigration rights, public health, and more.

And as Joseph Henry said earlier, culture can play a role in supporting communities.

So I feel like this is such a truly altruistic arts community, and I've been fortunate to meet amazing artists at the Boston Center for the Arts and across the city.

This is such a wealthy city and has so much innovation and tech and health care and resources and amazing minds, and taking away art and removing its funding, takes away a language and a way of connection.

And just to wrap up, um, a Boston artist, as Boston artists constantly fight to exist and afford to live work in a city.

I think of this quote I heard once from a local artist.

Um, and they said, artists love Boston, but I wish Boston loved us back.

And if we really want to protect Boston's culture, its sense of justice, and its community fabric, I ask that you please reinstate the one million dollars to the Office of Arts and Cultures for 2027.

So thank you.

Okay, thank you.

We we do have two videos, so we're gonna stagger this.

We're gonna do one video, then you and then a second video, and then you can bring us home.

Uh so let's uh I don't know, Ethan.

Can you hear me?

If there are is a video to play, let's I don't know how I cut it off at two minutes, but I I need a video.

For some reason, that's my phone sort of playing the Dubliners.

A city is only as great as its arts and culture because artists are the keepers of culture.

Artists make living history.

Artists motivate, activate, and educate the public.

Artists are the emotional and spiritual well-being of a city.

A city that does not support its artists and arts organizations cannot be and will never be a great city.

This budget is embarrassing.

The recent Boston Arts Review article states that not only is Mayor Wu proposing a 27% cut to Moac, but our sector is only given 0.07% of the overall city budget.

That is shameful.

And this recent proposal comes from a long line of Boston underfunding the arts while at the same time continuing to look to artists and arts organizations to make this city great.

We are tired of begging for crumbs while being asked to work overtime.

Artists are not lazy dreamers with our heads in the clouds.

And our labor generates billions of revenue annually for the city.

Artists are the canaries in the coal mine.

We are always the ones who get resources taken away first, which is a symptom of an unhealthy society.

And yet, in times of fascism, you all look to artists to lead.

Because artists are the ones brave enough to speak truth to power.

Artists are the ones brave enough to dream of a future where there is liberation for all.

Artists are leaders, we are innovators, we are emotional regulators.

We are society's therapy when the world is crumbling.

Artists are the ones who preserve and honor humanity.

A city that wants to thrive cannot afford to defund the arts.

My name is George Ye.

I'm a retired professor of business strategy, and since returning to Boston seven years ago, I've been deeply involved in the city's arts and cultural ecosystem as a board member, advisor, participant, and significant donor.

I've worked with organizations including the Boston Lyric Opera, the Huntington Theatre Company, GBH, the Powell Arts Center, and the Asian American Playwrights Collective.

And I continue to support multiple institutions financially and through governance and advocacy.

I speak today not only as an academic observer, but as an active participant, an investor in Boston's cultural life.

As you well know, arts and culture are not peripheral.

They're a major economic engine.

In Greater Boston, the sector supports tens of thousands of jobs and generates billions in regional economic activity each year, with substantial spillover into hospitality, retail and tourism.

Cultural institutions anchor neighborhood economies and contribute directly to Boston's competitive position as a global city by attracting and retaining talent.

But the economic case is only part of the story.

Arts and culture are also critical social infrastructure.

They contribute to well-being and mental health, strengthen community cohesion across diverse populations, and support community peace by creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and connected.

From my perspective, as both a strategist and a donor, public funding plays a catalytic role.

Every dollar of public funding for the arts typically leverages multiple dollars in private and earned revenue.

When the city invests, it signals credibility, attracts philanthropy, and enables long-term planning.

When funding is uncertain, it constrains both programming and private giving.

What is at stake is not simply funding line items.

It is the future of Boston as a globally competitive city, a cohesive community, and a center of creativity and innovation.

Not as discretionary spending, but a strategic investment with clear economic returns and profound social impact.

Thank you for your time and leadership.

I'd be pleased to support your efforts in any way I can.

Okay, thank you.

Just introduce yourself and uh you got two minutes.

Excuse me.

Hi, um, my name is uh Evan Sheeds.

I'm a filmmaker, uh born and raised in Boston, uh based right now in Brighton, but I call it Dorchester my home.

Uh I didn't write anything down, I wasn't expecting to testify, so forgive me, counselor, uh, if my thoughts seem a little scattered, but um I wanted to um start by echoing uh Mayor Wu's um uh slogan as she says uh every day when that I get to hear every single day at my job, which is Boston is a home for everyone.

I believe that um this proposed budget, I think directly goes against that when it comes to the um divestment from the uh mayor's office of arts and culture.

And um I think that with artists like as people have said before, um, the with people can easily artists feel that they they can easily like go to New York where there is in where there seems to be some type of infrastructure there uh for arts and culture.

And um I understand people I think are sympathetic in our understanding when we talk about like um the loss of the ARPA funds from the federal government and all these types of things.

However, this seems just like a step backwards in a time where the previous year I feel like a lot of artists felt like we were finally making real headway uh in partnership with the city in building a um an actual arts infrastructure.

Um and so I just want to show my voice and my advocacy.

Again, I wasn't expecting to testify today, but I believe that it um is important that, and I'm very happy that everybody here from all the public testimony I've seen from the presentations that I've seen, that there is a lot of advocacy behind this issue because it is a real issue, and I do believe that this divestment from the mayor's office of arts and culture would be a huge step backwards.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Um yeah, we we've also you you're you're up next.

There's a Letoria Boyd who also signed up, but if you're in the room, feel free to join us.

Okay.

I was one of the displaced artists from 155 uh North Beacon Street at the Sound Museum.

Um this budget is not like what we need right now as artists.

We need something that we can actually build towards.

Um I was a teacher for about 20 years.

I was the 2020 Spark uh educator mentor of the year.

Uh and uh I still work with a lot of my former students who are in the arts who are out here trying to make it as creatives.

Uh they're working in at the MGM, they're working all through these places, and this investment is another signal for them that it is time for them to find another place that is actually viable for them for the arts.

Um this is something I had to have a I I have to wrestle with constantly.

I have family in Los Angeles, it's very easy pull for me to go to a place where there's a lot more creative um leverage and there's a lot more creative opportunity.

So uh this this budget cut should be something that cannot happen.

Uh it's going to drive more artists away from the city.

Uh, thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

Uh okay, it looks like everyone who who uh wants to speak has spoken.

Uh I just want to thank the panelists really for everything you're doing.

Uh I know this is a really tough budget year.

I, you know, I this is my job, and so I've been through a bunch of these, and there's a lot of departments in terms of what we are cutting where you know food assistance.

I mean, there's just there's there's things out there.

This is the theme of you know, this budget is uh, you know, there's increased health care costs and wages for you know, city teachers and firefighters and you know uh public works folks who keep the streets paved, and um it there we we have the power to make amendments here on the city council, and I know you know most ever most everyone cycled through here, they're not here now, but they saw the the you know the the strength.

I mean uh you know, of the I didn't I didn't know I didn't expect you most of these hearings, there's maybe four or five people, not 150 or whatever it was.

So um, you know, in terms of the power of of art, I think you just in terms of the numbers here, you made a powerful statement, and uh you know we'll be talking about you know this and going forward.

So I just you know I want to thank everyone.

Okay, I've got two thumbs up.

That's that's that's I want to go home.

Uh so thank you very much again, and uh uh this hearing is now adjourned.