The Estevan Art Gallery and Museum (EAGM) has been hit with cuts as part of the city’s 2018 budget that focuses on savings in response to cuts at the provincial level.
The city budget was made public recently and is still in the discussion stages. The affected groups will get to voice their concerns to the city before the budget is scheduled to be approved in late January.
“Most of the organizations we were looking at will experience some forum of cutbacks, others who avoided cutbacks will be not receiving increases,” said Mayor Roy Ludwig.
“Council was looking at half of the cutbacks last year. We have had grants withdrawn from the province and we wished we had more time to respond to the cuts and withdrawn grants we are dealing with now.”
“We lost approximately $900,000 with the provincial government in their last budget when they decided to pull various grants from communities like Estevan,” he added. “When we lost that money we had to look at absolutely everything to try and make that shortfall up. Having been dealt that $900,000 decrease the province did come back and we were returned 30 per cent because of the outcry but we still lost approximately $600,000,” said Ludwig.
The province has been going through some budgetary issues and recently took a detailed look at their fiscal management and realized they were running a large and expanding deficit, so they consequently had to make some tough choices.
“Part of the reason these cuts started was because the province started to look in greater depth at their financial situation and they realized they were in serious budgetary deficits,” said Ludwig.
Last year the provincial budget was a disappointment and the lack of communication between the province and various Saskatchewan communities has resulted in massive cuts across the board.
“Last year was one of the worst budgets we have seen in a long time and because of the lack of dialogue they came out and made these unilateral cuts,” said Ludwig. “We are absolutely hoping we can get things back on track and get back to having dialogue with the province.”
“We have a new minster and we have initial meetings with him and they seem to be going in the right direction and we will know more when this next budget comes out,” he added.
Amber Andersen, who the EAGM’s director, has been working at the EAGM since 2011 and she is not happy to see the cuts but understands the city was put in a bit of a corner by the provincial government.
“I know the city didn’t want to cut our budget at all; this is at the provincial level,” said Andersen.
The city of Estevan plays a major role in keeping EAGM open by covering 90 per cent of its expenses.
“The city covers about 90 per cent of our wages and they also cover utilities, heat and power,” said Andersen. “They just told us we were getting cut 20 per cent, which will work to out to about $30,800,” said Andersen.
“We haven’t made any decisions yet but we are going to have to tighten our belt across the board somehow because the provincial and city budget have both affected our revenue sources,” she added.
The lack of funding from the provincial government has affected the arts and culture sectors the most because regional, city and provincial money pays the operating costs of the EAGM and other agencies.
“Those two organizations release grant money at the begging of the year but they also were cut and culture centres across the province had their budgets cut or they just stayed the same,” said Andersen.
One of the bigger concerns for EAGM is the price they have to pay artists for their work. That price is not controlled by the government and as such is usually increasing.
“Museums have to pay fees called CARFAC’s and those are standardized fees you pay artists when they loan you their art to be displayed in the museum or gallery. CARFAC’s have been increasing three to five per cent every year, consequently having art on loan is increasingly becoming more expensive,” said Andersen.
The other larger problem facing the EAGM in light of these cuts is an issue surrounding keeping current employees on board.
“You will not find a grant for human resources, which is an area that deals with wages, employees, hiring people or keeping current employees on board,” said Andersen.
“Summer students and interns are a more plausible new-hire because their experience and time at the museum has to do with education and training and there is money sometimes available for that. However interns and students are only hired on a contract basis,” she added.
Andersen understands that sometimes things get tough finically and EAGM will know more about their fiscal situation at the end of January.
