City budget must support culture

New Yorkers have many opinions, but one thing we can all agree on is that good union jobs are critical for our city and our economy. Key to this ecosystem are our cultural institutions. Arts and culture drive tourism and the New York City economy in a way that few other sectors do. Our cultural institutions, like schools and libraries, are part of the lifeblood of our communities.

Budget cuts to schools, libraries, and sanitation have received important attention, and some restoration from City Hall. Unfortunately, our city’s museums, gardens, theaters, and more have received large and painful cuts. Cutting culture makes no economic sense.

The cultural economy — that is, theaters, botanical gardens, museums, performing arts venues — generates $110 billion or 13% of the city’s economic activity every year. Thousands of union members, including those from District Council 37, fuel these world-class tourist draws and keep New York on top when it comes to arts and culture.

New York is still rebounding post-COVID and the cultural workforce is at the core of the revitalization. Along with our brothers and sisters in the hotel, restaurant, transportation and other key revenue-generating industries, we serve, greet, beautify, protect, educate, cook, drive, load the trucks, and keep the lights on.

The 34 members of the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), including the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Queens Museum, and New York Botanical Garden, have a distinct public-private partnership with the City of New York and reside in city-owned property.

These institutions rely on city support that has not increased since 2009. Moreover, the support we receive is a veritable rounding error within the city’s budget: of the $107 billion annual New York City operating budget, a mere .2%, goes to the city’s museums, gardens, theaters, and more.

In November and January, members of the CIG and other cultural organizations funded through the city’s Cultural Development Fund received drastic cuts. These cuts seemed at odds with the mayor’s comments at his State of the City Address, where Mayor Adams held up a copy of Time Out magazine touting New York’s status as the “Best City in the World.” We earned this title in large part because of the quality of our “cultural scenes” and “world class museums.”

Clearly, advocacy from the arts, cultural, tourism and labor communities are having an impact. Recently the mayor announced he’ll roll back the January cut — and we applaud him for that. Yet the November cut remains and funding for cultural organizations remains a political football in the budget debate.

Sadly, we don’t have to imagine what New York would look like without our culture — we received a horrifying preview from those first few months of COVID. From that meager time, one lesson must be that we all treasure (and invest in) New York’s cultural sector.

The mayor has rightly equated the rebound and success of the city to jobs. However, with these cuts and uncertainty in the sector, union jobs and other jobs are being jeopardized across all institutions and boroughs.

Funding for the cultural sector not only supports jobs, small businesses, and tourism, but the health and wellbeing of communities that rely on our cultural institutions.

Budget cuts have led to reductions or eliminations of programs for seniors with dementia at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, youth and teen programming at the Museum of the City of New York, free community concerts at Carnegie Hall, summer youth employment at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, and food distribution programs at the Queens Museum, to name just a few examples.

Culture brings joy to tourists and New Yorkers alike, and is the life spring of the creativity and diversity that makes New York, New York.

Mayor Adams has faced a difficult budget crisis. But we can’t solve one crisis by creating another. These cuts threaten our smaller institutions’ ability to remain open and threatens enormously impactful education programs, services for NYCHA residents, community composting programs, and senior programming at our mid-sized and large institutions.

The mayor has fully reversed many previously announced cuts to libraries, police, fire, sanitation and parks. He recently announced that he would not impose a third round of cuts set for April due to rosier economic realities and projections. Now is the time to invest in the jobs and cultural institutions that drive New York City by restoring all cuts to culture.

Garrido is the executive director of District Council 37, New York City’s largest municipal union. Killingsworth is the chief experience and impact officer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and chair of the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG).