WILL CITY CONTINUE OWN CULTURAL DISTRICT TASK FORCE?

By Juan Montoya

Just a little over a month after the City of Brownsville Commission voted to support the application of the Mitte Cultural District to the Texas commission for the Arts, it will now consider keeping a second track to that designation open by continuation of its Arts & Culture Task Force .

The item states that "the Arts & Culture Task Force for the City of Brownsville was established to research the best course of action to benefit the community by promoting Arts & Culture for quality of life initiatives. The Task Force will present its findings and propose a recommendation to City Commission for the continuation of the Arts & Culture Task Force."

This follows recent revelations that when the commission voted to support the application of the Mitte Cultural District to the Texas Commission for the Arts its proponents may have fudged their claims a bit claiming that their request to expand its boundaries by two or three times was based on advice by a former deputy director of the TAC who has since retired.

Since then the question has become:  "Did the proponents of the cultural district who asked the city to approve expanding its boundaries that will more than double or triple the original size to include some of the city's best downtown residential and commercial real estate falsely state that the expansion was required by the Texas Commission for the Arts?"

And will the the city-funded facilities inside the boundaries – and the income streams and state grants –  come under the Mitte District's board's control instead of the city's own cultural and art entities?

In hindsight, some city advocates say that given the Mitte Foundation's checkered past in real estate speculation (and litigation) it might foreshadow the same happening in Brownsville as the cultural district attempts to increase its footprint in the city's arts and cultural events. 

The Mitte Cultural District applied for designation from the Texas Commission of the Arts in 2016 and were turned down. They then initiated changes in operations and met face-to-face with TCA deputy director Bob McMillan – since retired – who allegedly told them they were on "the right track" with the planned expansion.

In their presentation to the city commissioners on August 18, 2020, the directors told them that the TCA had specifically recommended that the boundaries be expanded to make their application for cultural district designation more competitive. The recommendation to approve was made by Ramiro Gonzalez, director of Government and Community Affairs.

But a letter sent to City Manager Noel Bernal and circulated to the commission the day before the item came to a vote,  the MCD's claims that they needed to expand the boundaries to receive TCA approval – and grants – as a cultural district has been challenged.

The writers point out that Dr. Gary Gibbs, Executive Director of the Texas Commission on the Arts, was aware of the information put out in the Brownsville Herald by the MCD advocates and to the citizens of Brownsville, on Monday, August 17, as the reason for the huge expansion of the Mitte Cultural District was incorrect.   

Gibbs said he had a copy of that article and said that if anyone had just asked, TCA would have told them that the information was incorrect. Gibbs wet on to say that said that applying for a cultural district without a vibrant Arts and Culture infrastructure would be like “putting the horse before the cart.”

He also said that the expansion that was just done would make the size of the district too large and would likely cause application denial because the TCA focuses its efforts ijn funding district which are "walkable."

Brownsville had already appointed the Arts and Culture Task Force which has been seeking the "cultural district" designation by the TCA and are focusing their efforts on also applying for and receiving one or  more authentic cultural district designations for Brownsville sometime in the future.  According to the TCA, arts and culture tourist dollars are the largest amounts of tourist revenue for a community.

Tonight's vote will decide whether the city will continue its efforts regardless of the status of the Mitte Cultural District application with the TCA.