The City of Centralia will not provide roughly $1.4 million requested by the Fox Theatre Board earlier this year and the makeup of the board directing the project appears to be in flux.
The Centralia City Council officially denied a funding request from the Fox Theatre Board on Tuesday, Oct. 13, after the matter was originally brought to councilors last spring.
Council members were clear that the denial does not represent a desire to abandon or sell the theatre, but rather a difficult budget outlook for the city.
“I personally don’t see a way for us to approve the funding right now with the other budget implications,” Deputy Mayor Kelly Smith Johnston said. “But I want to express gratitude to the board for keeping the vision and being caretakers of it in the face of some pretty insurmountable challenges and a rapidly changing funding environment.”
The council voted unanimously to support a motion from Councilor Tucker Voetberg that moved to not provide the requested funding. In the motion, he included language to imply that while the council would not provide the funding currently, it would revisit funding the theatre at a later date.
“I motion to not fund the Fox Theatre until an undetermined future date,” Voetberg said.
Neither Voetberg nor the council at large gave a specific date to revisit the issue, instead choosing, intentionally, to leave the exact timeline up to the council to decide in the future.
Ahead of the decision, the city council also received legal guidance concerning the Fox Theatre. During previous meetings with the Fox Theatre Board, its members have suggested the city may be held to the terms included in state grant funding provided to the theatre, which could include paying back grant funds if the building were sold or meaningfully changed.
Most of the grants accepted by the board are geared toward restoring theatre or arts spaces and come with requirements that the building retain that use over the long term. Contract attorney for the city, Colin Olivers, told the council that while the grants may limit the use of the building for the years to come, other details of the grants apply only to the board. He does not expect the city to be liable to pay back grant funds.
“Broadly speaking, I would say that the grant agreements primarily obligate the Fox Theatre Board in specific ways,” attorney Olivers told the council. “The primary impact that the city could have is that a lot of the grant agreements have sort of a continuing obligation for use of the Fox Theatre as a public arts space or a theatre.”
Despite the months of time that has elapsed since the initial request, this is the first legal determination the city has received on the issue. That's largely because the request lined up with the departure of the city’s former attorney, Kyle Manley. The city currently is relying on contracted attorney services billed by the hour.
During the meeting, both City Manager Michael Thomas and Voetberg also informed the council that the existing members of the Fox Theatre Board are planning to replace themselves over the next four months. Both serve on the recently convened Ad Hoc Fox Theatre Committee, which also includes members of the theatre’s board.
“They thought they’ve gone as far as they can go, the current board now,” Voetberg said. “They’ve gotten all the funding that they can get, and they’re saying it's now time for fresh blood.”
Giving a rough idea of when the council may revisit funding for the theatre, Thomas suggested coming back to the table sometime next year. At the same time, Mayor Chris Brewer suggested the council wait until new members of the board are established before revisiting the issue.
“Maybe it behooves us to sort of wait that out, maybe see what the new board looks like,” Brewer said. “Maybe they have the capability. Maybe they have connections that we may not have had before.”
The council decision comes more than six months after the board originally informed the council that it would run out of money before completing renovations of the old theatre. In March, the board approached the city council requesting approximately $1.5 million in funding through a bond or other funding source.
At the time, board members, led by Board President Joe Clark, said they believed the funding would be enough to get the building partially completed; or at least enough for a partial certificate of occupancy, which would allow the building to start hosting small events and qualify the theatre for additional grant funding.
The city most recently contributed $1 million in bond funding to the theatre in 2018.
Centralia city staff, including Thomas and Finance Director Bret Brodersen. advised the council against funding the theatre given a difficult budget outlook and existing debt payments on previous bonds.
Read more background information on the matter in previous Chronicle reporting at https://tinyurl.com/3pu466mz.
