The Arts and Culture Advisory Commission met on July 16, 2026 at 4:00 PM in the City Council Chamber. The commission discussed and voted on several proposed art projects from the subcommittee, ultimately approving a reduced allocation for a 250th anniversary mural and tabling all other funding decisions to a future meeting.
Okay. Let's go ahead and bring the the let's call this meeting to order. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes, agenda item C, roll call. Commissioner Wolf. Here. Commissioner Comarter. Here. Vice Chair Dennis. Here. Chair Hypes. Here. Ex Oficio Member Browning. Ex Oficio member Pardon me. Four ton ex officio member Harris. Here. Chair Hypes, I would like to remind the audience that if they wish to address the commission, they must submit a green request to speak form located at the podium in the back of the council chamber. Citizens can submit public comment to the commissioner electronically no later than one PM on the day of the meeting. Comments received before the deadline will be sent to the commission will be part of the record and will be mentioned as part of the public comment portion of the agenda. Material may be emailed to city clerk at City of Mercedes Doggab. Any correspondence received after one PM will be distributed to the commission and retained for the official record. Agenda item D, public comment. Chair Hypes, we do not have any requests. And there's no one here that wants to make a request or any nothing. Okay. Let's move on. Agenda item E, action items. Agenda item E1, approve subcommittee recommended art projects. Good afternoon, Chair and Commissioners. Christopher Jensen, um, Director Parks and Community Services, filling in as best I can this evening for Jennifer Flackman. Um before you this evening is for your consideration, some art projects um that the subcommittee wanted to bring to your attention and request your feedback on. Uh one of them being the 250th mural project. Um this year marks the 200th 250th birthday of the United States of America, and the city council has expressed interest and support for the art commission's consideration of different ways to memorialize that birthday. Um the council has expressed interest in commissioning murals to commemorate this birthday on city owned property or public ride away. The vision is to create timeless pieces of public art that celebrate both the national milestone and California's history, culture, landscapes, and sense of community. Staff identified a few potential locations for your consideration, including a wall at the corp yard, which I'm gonna showcase here. So this is the public works corp yard out off of V Street. And um the concrete walls uh also over the M Street Bridge going over Bear Creek, often referred to as Veterans Boulevard, and in this section we have uh several flags memorializing different eras and wars um in our history. So the concrete blocks here and potentially the um guardrails could be utilized or incorporated in an art project for everyone passing by to be able to view and appreciate, and then the corp yard project um the public works houses about 30 percent of the city's workforce. Um it's also an area of MERSAD, uh South MERSED, which has been um highly uh has a great reputation for a lot of our art history um in the city, uh but that particular corner we don't have a whole lot of projects, so it's an area that um staff felt could utilize uh some of this investment. Um like past our projects, um staff have worked closely with selected artists to provide input through the design process, and uh staff would work closely. I apologize. And the final mural concept would be reviewed by staff considered by this commission and ultimately approved by your city council before moving forward. So uh tonight for your consideration are the locations that have been teed up for you by staff in um M Street crossing Bear Creek and also the copiard walls, um getting your input on that, and then if there's any um ideas or concepts that you would like to see put forward in the RFP that would go out awesome. Any discussion here that's uh let's start this off. All right, Colton, go ahead. Chris, just curious. Um, out of these out of the two proposed locations, is there a preference from staff or city? I think the hope was both moving forward with both. Doing both.