Arts councils, arts presenters and artists statewide are breathing a sigh of relief and keeping their collective fingers crossed after the state House Appropriations Committee this week restored $3.3 million to Decentralized Arts Funding, the state’s principal means of distributing grant funding to artistic and cultural endeavors administered by both public and private entities. The restoration is the full 83 percent of funding the Jindal administration cut from the budget. It came through an amendment by Rep. John Schroder, a Convington Republican, to House Bill 1, the massive appropriations bill that funds state government for the next fiscal year.
The amended HB1 still has many stops to go before reaching the governor’s desk. It goes next week before the full house, then to the senate finance committee, the full senate, and then back to the house. But Lafayette Rep. Page Cortez, a member of the appropriations committee, is cautiously optimistic the amendment will remain intact. “It still has a long way to go to get through the process,” Cortez says, “but we feel pretty good the DAF funding will stay in there.” House Bill one is expected to reach the full house next Thursday. There were no objections to Schroder’s amendment among the 25 members of the appropriations committee.
“Of course we are thrilled that the House Appropriations Committee understood the significance of the economic and cultural impact these cuts would have,” says Gerd Wuestemann, executive director of the Acadiana Center for the Arts. “This is a very, very small investment — a tiny piece of the entire budget — with extraordinarily big repercussions throughout the state, even in the most rural areas.”
The state arts community erupted in late March when news of the cuts spread, with expression of outrage ranging from angry and pleading letters to lawmakers to a jazz funeral for the arts attended by hundreds in downtown Baton Rouge on April 1. By many accounts, Louisiana’s so-called “cultural economy” and the tourism it draws account for the second-largest contribution to the overall state economy.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
Subscribe to this comment's feed