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Already facing inevitable new cash crunches, Miami-Dade County has been tossed a hot potato as a cultural pillar, the Frost Science Museum, arrives to seek financial aid.
Many worthy calls on the county’s wallet are conceptual: transportation, housing, social services, aid to the homeless and so on. Yet the fact that the county relies on taxes limits aid; its wallet only gets fatter to spend more if it collects more from our bank accounts.
Commissioners can wisely apportion limited funds among unlimited needs when needs are concepts. The crunch comes when a supplicant has both a face and a vast base of fans who are also voters.
When a contingent from the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science Inc. visited a committee last week to seek aid to both shore up the museum’s 8-year-old building and keep it running, the county was caught in a vice.
In response, Commissioner Eileen Higgins ticked off new challenges that limit the county’s ability to help. Next, commissioners pointed the museum toward ways to help itself before asking the county – a path to stability that every cultural institution should follow.
“Our county is going to come upon some really, really hard times, guys,” Mr. Higgins said. “We saw the leveling out of property taxes last year. We don’t know what the changes in the constitutional officers is going to cost us, but it’s somewhere between $50 million and $100 million extra. The new courthouse is going to come on line and that’s going to be – I don’t know – a $40 million a year payment. The Judge [Steven] Leifman Center [for mentally ill inmates] is going to come on next year, and that’s going to be another $40 million to $50 million a year payment.”
After this list – what former commissioner Javier Souto called “the parade of the horribles” – commissioners pointed back to the science museum to pull itself up by its own bootstraps before asking the county to bail it out.
Museum construction got $165 million from county bond borrowing, but in 2017 work was only 72% done and private pledges to finish the job weren’t paid, so the board asked for aid. The county borrowed $45 million more to complete work on the condition that the museum not come back for more until 2031. The board signed off but now wants that condition killed so it can get more aid now.
“You all have received more money than any other cultural institution in Miami-Dade County that is not a county-owned institution and we’re dancing around that $45 million,” said Ms. Higgins. “That money would have been $4 million a year operating budget … we give the PAMM (Pérez Art Museum Miami) $4 million a year, so you would have gotten yours as well… You opted to give up your operating expenses for capital expenses.”
But what most bothered Ms. Higgins and others was that the museum didn’t try other fund sources before coming to the county.
“You’re only fishing in our pond, and that upsets me,” she said. “I do think there is an obligation for you to at least ask the City of Miami.”
“You are on city land,” she told a museum delegation. “You are in the City of Miami and the City of Miami provides no funding nor ever has provided funding for the Frost Museum” nor for other Miami-based cultural institutions that she listed.
“Now, on the flip side, if I were asking about any cultural institution in the City of Miami Beach, every one of them would have direct support from the city that hosts them. So, I find it quite interesting that you have harnessed the cavalry to only fish in our pond, and you did not go fishing in any other pond for this.”
René García said the commission should resolve that “anyone that’s going to come to us for money should have local support” as matching funds. “I think that makes a lot of sense because it should not always fall on the county… Moving forward, I would hope that the Frost Museum will try to get something out of the City of Miami.”
“Our pursuit is broader than Miami-Dade County, but the point is well taken,” said Adele Valencia of LSN Partners, a government consulting firm aiding the museum. “We’ll certainly pursue” city funding.
Commissioners also pointed to private donations. They debated whether developer Jorge Pérez had given more to the Pérez Art Museum Miami than investor Phillip Frost had given to the Frost Science Museum. And they looked to adding major donors to institutions’ boards.
“I love the Frost Museum, but I love the financial stability of our county more,” Ms. Higgins said. “It’s a recurring theme that all of our institutions are saying they can’t afford anything. So at some point you all need to look at your board structure.”
No sizable cultural institution supports itself without public or private donations. All want to do more and have someone else pay for it. Each is deserving and each wants more money. The question commissioners asked is, how hard have they worked to raise money before tapping the county?
The county has two choices: splinter limited money into small slices trying to reduce unlimited needs or spend more money by raising taxes.
Every organization can either trim a bloated spending plan or find ways to fund it. Commissioners asked the museum to find more sources than just Miami-Dade taxpayers. It’s a proper request, especially when the museum hasn’t even tried city hall.
This hot potato gets tossed to the full county commission Dec. 3. Commissioner Higgins said she will vote no and suggested the museum return in two years for aid from a new bond issue. The other 12 will all say they love both the Frost and financial stability. That choice has no easy answer.
This post was originally published on here
