PORT ANGELES — A week of financial uncertainty for the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center ended on a high note Friday when an anonymous donor pledged $50,000 to help the facility cover a $52,000 shortfall to hire a new director.
Linda Crow, president of the arts center foundation, said the donor, a Port Angeles resident who did not want to be identified, called her at about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday after a City Council work session Tuesday evening at which council members mulled options for bridging the funding gap.
“My mouth fell open,” Crow said.
“I was dumbfounded, elated, grateful — all of those things, every emotion you could have.”
The City Council will consider moving forward with appointing a new director at its meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday in council chambers at City Hall, 321 E. Fifth St.
“I don’t think there’s going to be any problem,” Mayor Cherie Kidd said Friday.
“There’s going to be a ‘Hip, hip, hooray!’ resounding from the council Tuesday night,” she added.
“As far as I know, all the members on the council see the value of the fine arts center.”
The donated funds will cover salary and benefits for the second half of 2012 for an as-yet-unhired — but waiting-in-the-wings — arts center director to replace retiring Executive Director Jake Seniuk, who said Friday his last day will be July 13.
It had been reported that Seniuk’s last day was to be Friday.
“It’s changed a few times,” said Seniuk, in his 24th year as director.
The donation is needed to cover a shortfall in fundraising efforts to support the center and to make a $42,000 payout to Seniuk for unused vacation pay and sick leave that have accumulated over nearly 2½ decades, interim City Manager Dan McKeen said.
Payout not budgeted
“The reason that there was going to be a budget shortfall for 2012 is primarily due to the payout for Jake, a long-term employee, that was not budgeted,” McKeen said Friday.
“To a lesser degree, we anticipated before this donation that the fundraising revenue would be below budget projections . . . to cover the salary for the second half of the year,” he said.
“If we had been on target, if there had not been a payout for Jake, and the fundraising would be on target, there wouldn’t be an issue at all.”
Arts center officials had asked the city for $52,000 to fund the center’s executive director position through the end of the year.
The donor participates in the facility’s “planned giving” fundraising program and decided to make the donation this year instead of 2013, said Vicci Rudin, chairwoman of the arts center board of trustees.
The donor requested anonymity because “they wanted it to be about the giving and the community,” Crow said.
McKeen said the person expected to be the next arts center director — whose name the city would not release — was one of four candidates interviewed for the position.
She has 20 years of experience, primarily in the Pacific Northwest.
It includes management of cultural arts centers, marketing, promotion, program development for gallery exhibits and fundraising for a nonprofit community arts center.
Planning
The City Council also will be asked Tuesday to include the new arts center director in planning and developing a 2013 arts center budget that will include developing a long-range financial plan.
An arts center task force had requested that the city cover the $52,000 for the director’s salary for 2012 and that the city permanently fund the position, which is filled by a person who becomes a city employee.
The center’s budget of $178,000 is supplemented with $38,750 in city funds, with the remaining money derived from a trust fund, an endowment and donations generated by volunteers and fundraising events.
Interim Finance Director Byron Olson cited the “wonderful partnership” between the city and the facility.
“Part of the history of the arts center is the great deal of success it’s had in leveraging dollars,” Olson said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
