On November 12, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the organization tasked with dispersing the money collected to Cuyahoga County’s arts cigarette tax, held its meeting at the downtown branch of the Cleveland Public Library to approve its dispersals for the upcoming year,
An exceptionally large group of citizens not affiliated with CAC showed up and 11 of them signed up for the public comments period that precedes each meeting, should anyone be interested in speaking. Diverse on age, all 11 spoke about the recent takeover of Cleveland State University’s student-run radio station WCSB-FM 89.3 by Ideastream Public Media to broadcast a 24/7 jazz format.
All spoke about what a loss the former eclectic format (which included jazz) was to listeners and the community, as well as the students, and several urged CAC to put Ideastream’s $600,000-plus funding on hold until questions about the deal were answered. They include recent revelations that CSU and Ideastream were secretly negotiating for six months before dropping the bombshell on students and the community, with the possibility that they may have been violating public meeting laws.
As usual, there was little response from the CAC board members in attendance (Karolyn Isenhart, Daniel Blakemore, Gina Vernaci and Lenny DiCosimo) other than to express sympathy for the loss of the station. It has long been a CAC policy at public meetings to not engage with public comments, but to simply move on with its business, a format that also enraged the public when the meetings were overrun by artists angry about their plans to eliminate the Creative Workforce Grants which directly funded artists. It seemed to catch Vernaci by surprise, who asked Isenhart, presiding over the meeting, if there would be discussion. As usual there wasn’t. Both Vernaci and DiCosimo, the board’s newest members, expressed an interest in more engagement.