The Annapolis Art in Public Places Commission will be dissolved and remade within six months, the City Council voted Monday night. The legislation to dissolve the commission in its current form was brought by Ward 2 Alderman Karma O’Neill, who was a member of the commission from 2018 to 2020.
The legislation passed under suspension of the rules, on the same day it was introduced, so that it could be decided ahead of the planned Thursday commission meeting to elect new officers. All members of the council voted for the legislation except Ward 5’s Brooks Schandelmeier, who said he believes reforms could have been made to the commission without dissolving the organization and that suspending the rules in this case feels “sneaky and wrong.”
The commission used to be funded by the city’s annual budget. In 2021, the Maryland General Assembly allowed the commission to instead receive 3% of hotel tax revenue generated in Annapolis, boosting the commission’s funds by about four times, O’Neill said. In fiscal year 2022, the last year the commission was funded by the city budget, the commission was budgeted for $67,000 but the annual funds ranged greatly, as in fiscal year 2019 the commission was budgeted for about $27,000.
“It’s in the best interest of taxpayers and residents to have a commission that is operating efficiently, effectively and in the best interest of the arts community,” O’Neill said in an interview. “There’s been some dysfunction among members. … This is a way to pull it back. Take a look at it. Create strategic plan, create processes that are transparent, public-oriented.”
While a new commission framework is created, city Planning and Zoning Director Christopher Jakubiak will oversee the commission’s duties, including approving grants.
O’Neill said the main problem with the commission is that there is not a defined, followed process for the commission to solicit grant applications and provide the funds. Last year, O’Neill said, five groups reached out to her, unable to get a response from the commission. The restructuring of the commission, she said, should have happened when the budget grew in 2021.
The Art in Public Places Commission is a volunteer commission appointed by the mayor to publicly and privately fund public art in the city. The commission has faced public scrutiny in recent years, including backlash on proposed designs for a sculpture in Westgate Circle and disagreements between members during public meetings.
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“We have a large amount of money that, I think we have a general consensus, the city hasn’t put appropriate oversight over,” Annapolis Mayor Jared Littmann said. “Because we have this pool of money, the longer we don’t have oversight of, controls over, I think we’re at risk for neglecting our duties of oversight. So I think the quicker we get to that point, the better.”
David Arthur, the vice chair of the commission, said in an interview after the vote that none of the complaints O’Neill cited in her testimony for the bill made their way to the commission. The commission, Arthur said, worked on a new policy framework last year to improve its grant system and to make the application form available online, but the plan was never implemented by the Planning and Zoning Department.
“I think we just, we needed some support,” Arthur said. “What really would have been helpful is to hear some of these complaints apparently, [O’Neill] got that no one else got, to know what was going on.”
Arthur said that within the past few months there had been some disagreements between members and dysfunction, but that the disagreements were because members were passionate about their work. The chair of the commission stepped down in January.
Genevieve Torri, a member of the Art in Public Places Commission from 2018 to 2024 and chair of the commission from 2019 to 2023, said in an interview that she had a conversation with O’Neill after the legislation was posted online. Torri said she believes that “change needed to happen,” but wasn’t sure about the level of change proposed, but that after a conversation with O’Neill, said she feels “confident” that the legislation is aimed to be a “reset” for the commission. Torri said she stopped watching commission meetings because they were “disrespectful and toxic.”
Chrisa Rich, the current Ward 5 commissioner on the Art in Public Places Commission, said during public comment before the vote Monday that she was “very concerned” about the vote.
“I do feel that some of the decisions or the reasoning for legislation tonight, we didn’t know anything about it,” Rich said. “The rest of the commissioners, we lost our chair. We didn’t hear anything about it, not until we were scheduling our meeting. So to me, and I might ask the new mayor if you could have more communication with the city moving forward and I do hope that there is a real positive outcome tonight.”
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