The Fresno Arts Council will remain the county’s primary arts agency.
Fresno County supervisors unanimously approved keeping the Fresno Arts Council as its partner for state funding on Tuesday in spite of the arts nonprofit’s $1.8 million embezzlement scandal.
Tuesday’s vote allows the council to serve as the county’s partner for the State and Local Partnership Program, which ranges from $45,000-90,000 in grant funds for city and county arts and culture projects.
Andrea Mele, the council’s interim executive director, came to speak at Tuesday’s hearing, sharing a handful of additional guardrails — like an outside accounting firm that will oversee money and even manage transactions for the body, a best practice for nonprofit organizations.
“We value the organizations that have stayed with us,” Mele said at the Tuesday meeting.
The board’s vote was procedural. If the board didn’t say yes, the Fresno Arts Council would not be able to apply for state funding.
In February, Fresnoland broke the news that a former employee of the Fresno Arts Council was subject of an embezzlement investigation.
Since then, the employee has been identified as Sulianna Caldwell, the council’s former operations manager — a position that oversaw the nonprofit’s books finances. She pleaded guilty to one felony count of wire fraud for embezzling $1.82 million from the Fresno Arts Council over the span of more than three years.
Almost all the stolen money was gambled away, according to Caldwell’s attorney Kevin Rooney. Caldwell appeared in federal court Monday for an arraignment hearing.
Though the plea agreement orders Caldwell to provide full restitution to the arts council, it is not known how or when the city or county will see that money.
Karen Simpson, a member of the council’s board of directors and inactive certified public accountant, said the decision to hire an outside accounting firm is an effort to avoid future risk of fraud following the organization’s embezzlement scandal. Simpson said they are “logging in daily” to do the work alongside a council that now only has three members on staff — less than half of what it once had.
Supervisor Luis Chavez said he was pleased to see that Tuesday’s group emphasized rebuilding “trust” within the local community as one of its main focuses. It was a sentiment shared by many on the dais.
“In our experience, when something like this happens, a lot of times, the entities that do, become the strictest and the best to work with,” said officer Paul Nerland, the county administrative officer.
When news on the embezzlement broke, many in the local arts community expressed anger and frustration to city leaders over the lost funding, all under the nose of city hall.
But, at least at Tuesday’s meeting, a handful of artists came to speak at public comment, praising the county for its decision to continue the working relationship with the Fresno Arts Council, and to the nonprofit as it continues to navigate the new status quo.
Among the public commenters was Megan Anderson Bohigian, Fresno’s fifth poet laureate. Bohigian said that Fresno is “known internationally as a poetry center,” and the credit for that doesn’t solely belong to the artists.
“It’s partly that way because the arts council has continued to create programs which bring art, bring poetry into our schools,” Bohigian said at the Tuesday meeting.
The Fresno Poet Laureate Program was created by the Fresno Arts Council. Among its alumni is Lee Herick, Fresno’s third poet laureate and the current California Poet Laureate.
Tony Sanders, the founding artistic director for Shine Theatre, said at Tuesday’s meeting that he was “stumped for words” to describe the support the arts council brings to the local community.
“To know that there’s an entity that you don’t have to explain what it is that you do, or why you do what it is you do,” Sanders said. “They get it. That means the world to us as artists here in Fresno.”
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