City funding for Quincy Society of Fine Arts fails to get eight votes; goes back on next week’s agenda

QUINCY — A resolution to authorize giving $25,000 from the city’s Economic Growth Fund to the Quincy Society of Fine Arts didn’t get enough votes from the Quincy City Council on Tuesday night.

However, the resolution will be back on the agenda for the Sept. 9 meeting.

Six aldermen — Ken Hultz (R-3), Mike Farha (R-4), Richie Reis (D-6), Jake Reed (R-6), Ben Uzelac (D-7) and Jack Holtschlag (D-7) — voted in favor. Six aldermen — Greg Fletcher (R-1), Eric Entrup (R-1), Jeff Bergman (R-2), Dave Bauer (D-2), Kelly Mays (R-3) and Glen Ebbing (R-5) voted against. Tony Sassen (R-4) and Mike Rein (R-5) were absent. 

Quincy Mayor Mike Troup said he would cast a seventh vote in favor of the resolution to break a tie, but the resolution didn’t get the eight votes necessary for approval.

“Could I lay it on the table for reconsideration next week?” Farha asked after the votes were tallied.

Corporation Counsel Lonnie Dunn told Farha he could reconsider his vote.

“I don’t want to reconsider my vote. I want these two to be here,” Farha said, pointing to the empty chairs of Sassen and Rein.

Dunn then told Farha the resolution could be reconsidered at the next meeting and put back on the agenda.

“I want to do that,” Farha said. “I’m notifying you now.”

Uzelac said Farha could make the motion under new business next week.

“No, I can do it now,” Farha said. “Congress does it all the time under Robert’s Rules of Order. They have a parliamentarian, and they’re experts, and I think we can do it.”

“Would you be opposed to maybe sending it to a committee like finance?” Entrup asked.

“Yes, I would be opposed,” Farha said.

Farha then explained how the Quincy City Council agreed 15 years ago to start weaning city dollars from not-for-profit agencies.

“We made a lot of cuts. We did it with a broad axe,” he said. “Now maybe this was too much. There is a long tradition. There are some very fine people who are involved in this, and it enriches lives. I’m fine with it. We owe it to them. We owe it to ourselves to be responsible and give them an answer. If it doesn’t pass, it doesn’t pass. I think there’s confusion about a lot of this stuff.”

Ebbing admitted at the meeting’s end that he was confused and thanked Farha for having the resolution placed on next week’s agenda.

“I am not against (the resolution),” he said. “I voted no. I’m all for the program. I am confused with the process of our (funding) not-for-profit organizations. I need more clarity on that and maybe more from the legal counsel, too.”

Bergman said his vote was not against the Quincy Society of Fine Arts.

“Right now, there are still a lot of questions with the process of the funding mechanism,” he said after the meeting. “It’s more of a question about procedure. How did we get from the request to the council floor? (The no vote was) more geared towards the administration and how it was handled before it got to us, and the information that was given to us before we came to a vote. 

“I have no problem with this organization or the benefits it provides. I have questions pertaining to the information that was given to us and that probably should have been given to us in a more efficient manner before we came to a vote. The real question you should be asking the aldermen who voted yes for it is: Why did you vote yes?”

Bergman said Troup provided information to aldermen about a conversation he had last week with Quincy Society of Fine Arts leaders. The mayor wrote in an Aug. 30 letter that he recommended the aldermen vote to give the $25,000.

“The arts have a tremendous funding mechanism now in Illinois,” Troup said after the meeting. “It helps that (Gov. JB Pritzker’s) wife is big into the arts. We’ve had a Chicago arts group come down to Quincy, and they were impressed. They looked at our architecture. They looked at a couple of our museums. Plus we’re the first and oldest art society in America, and that means something to the arts people.

“Laura (Sievert Hesseltine, executive director of the Quincy Society of Fine Arts) invited me to the meeting. Having a city representative involved with an arts discussion, (the Chicago arts group) doesn’t get that in most communities. Laura thought (afterward) she had an opportunity to get a grant to help with a bandstand or amphitheater for the riverfront. What she asked was if we could give $25,000 to help with the grant application.”

A $25,000 line item for the arts funding was included in the 2024-25 Fiscal Year budget that aldermen have approved. (Hesseltine said the Quincy Society of Fine Arts has a $635,000 annual budget.)

“Now we have to get a resolution, and that’s where we’ve hit a snag,” Troup said. “But at least the coffin is not sealed.”

Hesseltine told aldermen during the public forum at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting that the arts create $15.6 million in economic activity annually and add a half-million dollars to the tax base. She said the ordinance that created the 1 percent food and beverage tax, which feeds into the economic growth fund, says the money should go organizations focusing on marketing, tourism, retail and projects that further the Quincy Next Strategic Plan, which lists among its primary goals, arts, recreation and tourism.

She said after the meeting she thought the vote would be close. She knows her work is not yet finished.

“Every time somebody wants to bring an engineer to town, they call me because those families want to know that we’ve got a good quality of life here,” Hesseltine said. “I’m happy to go out and do those things if we want to get in front of state decision-makers and get these big dollars. It’s not rhetoric.

“I got a $1.5 million grant two years ago (from the Illinois Arts Council to help construction of an addition to the Quincy History Museum that includes an elevator). To think that America’s first arts council doesn’t have a nickel of city buy-in … that’s embarrassing.”