Recent media coverage extols the resurgence of Northampton’s Academy of Music. Let’s review how it’s going.
The municipally owned Academy’s self perpetuating Board of Trustee’s is not answerable to the general public in a significant way. Mayor Mary Clare Higgins sits on the board as an ex officio member, but otherwise, the overseers are accepting $50,000 annually in taxpayer funding with no other elected representation. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit board, trustee meetings are not open to the public, nor are its minutes or other deliberative records. In the spirit of the Open Meeting Law and since trustees are accepting taxpayer dollars to maintain a public structure, this should change. For instance, the trustees could amend the will of H. R. Lyman to elect two members of their board from the public. They could publicly post meeting notices and open their gatherings to anyone who wishes to attend.
Academy partner WGBY’s vice president and general manager Russell J. Poetter told Dan Crowley of the Gazette that, "you have to build relationships with people" with regards to fund raising for the Academy. Trustee president Andrew Crystal, commenting on Academy solvency to the Springfield Republican’s Fred Contrada, said that, "it’s only going to work if we get people’s continued support." What better way is there to build relationships and earn support than by inviting the public into the formal policy making process through representative democracy? It works for Northampton’s Forbes Library and it can work here too.
From their website concerning the current board:
"As the Board of Trustees begins the next fiscal year, it does so without any vacancies. Having recently filled two empty seats, the 11-member board is complete. Newly (self) elected Board members include Gail Yacuzzo, co-owner of the Eastside Grill who is returning to the Board after completing a six-year term in 2005 and Leah Kunkel, a local attorney and vocalist who formerly served as chair of the Northampton Center for the Arts. The Board of Trustees is currently comprised of the following:
Andrew Crystal, president
Gail Yacuzzo, vice president
Stuart Mieher, treasurer
Carol T. Christ, Smith College president
Susan Fentin
Clare Higgins, Northampton mayor
Leah Kunkel
Linda McInerney, fundraising committee chairperson
Kara Noble
Alan Sharpe
Paul Weinberg"
According to the Gazette, the trustees saved about $91,500 in pay and benefits during the last six months of 2007 by eliminating permanent employees, several of which are city residents, and instituting a pay-as-you-go staffing system. They eliminated staff with two days notice and no severance pay. Trustees are also realizing about $1,000 a week in utility cost savings as taxpayers pick up that tab and public works personnel are performing functions like snow removal. The Academy’s website indicates that the Northampton Arts Council, a city agency, raised funds at events and contributed $7,750 to the Academy in 2007, and local restaurateur, Claudio Guerra, did likewise and donated $5,480, winning Halos from the Valley Advocate. As well the Gazette reported that trustees took out a $50,000 loan from their new partner, television station WGBY, and raised $60,000, after expenses, halfway through the 2008 fiscal year. They have contracted a bookkeeper and employ a production manager and part-time operations manager. They have also organized committees for fund raising and finance, that latter of which includes city treasurer George Zimmerman.
Interestingly by comparison, in about eight weeks, primarily through the use of the internet, a small informal group of private citizens raised more than $100,000 in donations in order to continue operations of the Pleasant Street Theater. This presents a contrast of the top-down institutional methodology utilized by trustees to revitalize the Academy, with the bottom-up grass roots effort that raised funds in order to preserve the Pleasant Street Theater, for the short term anyway.
WGBY
