Leaders in St. Pete step up to fund arts programs

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It has been months since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed more than $30 million that would have funded arts and culture programs throughout the state. For many of those arts programs, those cuts left them scrambling.

Jenee Priebe is the director of the SHINE Mural Festival, where artists come in from all over to showcase their talents using colorful and impactful murals.

“There are a lot of people that will never go into a museum. They will never go into a gallery. Maybe they’re not interested, maybe they can’t afford it, maybe they feel uncomfortable in those spaces, but they can come walk around downtown and see museum quality art free and accessible to the public,” she said.

Once the governor cut funding, she feared there would be no SHINE this year.

“That was a significant part of the SHINE budget that was cut in that state veto that we were pretty much counting on,” Priebe said. “We’ve gotten it the last few years. And we had scored really high on our application. There was no reason to have that happen.”

In a last-minute move, the same city they decorate with one-of-a-kind art and murals stepped up to fill in that funding void. City council member Gina Driscoll led the charge.

“It’s really unfortunate what the governor did, but I called for the city to step up and step in and help out because we love calling it the city of the arts. It was time to put our money where our mouth is,” said Driscoll.

According to Driscoll, the city will take money from the remaining budget to fund this year’s mural festival and increase the arts funding budget going forward.

“We were able to take some money from the current budget that is kind of leftover or has not been utilized at this point and go ahead and put that in now to the arts funding so that we can get that money out to the arts organizations and the artists in need faster,” Driscoll said. “We’re also bumping up the spending that we’re going to do in fiscal year 2025 and that’s going to significantly increase arts organization funding as well as individual artist grants.”

City officials said the city is adding $695,000 to the FY24 arts budget from the General Fund Balance. Any unused funds will be rolled over to the FY25 budget.

The SHINE Mural Festival begins this October.

This month, St. Petersburg city officials said City Council will hold two public hearings about the city’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget. Community members are invited to attend in person or watch live. The first public hearing city council will adopt the tentative FY25 City Budget and millage rate. That meeting is on Thursday, Sept. 12 at 6 p.m.

At the second public hearing, city council will consider adopting the final FY25 Budget and millage rate, and approval of the Capital Improvements Plan. That meeting is on Thursday, Sept. 26 at 6 p.m.

Both public hearings are being held inside Council Chambers at City Hall, located at 175 5th St. North. The Fiscal Year 2025 Budget begins on Oct. 1, 2024.