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The Multnomah Arts Center has been vital to Kristin Mitsu Shiga’s ability to make it as a self-employed artist.
She started MAC’s metalsmithing and jewelry program in Multnomah Village back in 2001 with her own tools and curriculum. Now, it employs Shiga plus six other instructors. The classes are affordable and usually full, often with a waiting list. Shiga has showcased her art at MAC’s gallery. She appreciates the center’s specialty equipment and ventilation, and meets at the center monthly with the other members of the Creative Metal Arts Guild.
All of this feels at risk if the upcoming Parks Levy renewal fails on the Nov. 4 ballot, she says.
“I really don’t think people understand what they would be losing,” Shiga says.
When people think of the Parks Levy coming up in the November special election—if they are thinking of it at all yet—resources like neighborhood swimming pools, greenspaces, and community centers probably come to mind first. But the levy has consequences for the arts and culture spaces in town, too. Portland Parks & Recreation manages three arts centers across the city: the Multnomah Arts Center in Southwest, the Community Music Center in Southeast, and the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center in North Portland.
That’s not all. The city also provides arts programming at five nonprofit organizations all over town, such as at the Rosewood Initiative in East Portland and the Pacific Refugee Support Group in North, and runs the Summer Free for All Program of about 50 concerts, movies and festivals at city parks. The full portfolio of the parks bureau’s arts and culture offerings runs $7.1 million out of its total operating budget of $541 million this fiscal year, according to the bureau.
The proposed Parks Levy is a five-year property tax for Portland residents at a rate of $1.40 per $1,000 of assessed value annually for parks and recreation purposes. That’s up from the current levy, which voters passed in 2020, that taxes at a rate of 80 cents per $1,000 of value. The 2025 levy would raise approximately $91 million a year for the parks bureau for five years, but it might cause people’s property taxes to increase by more than 3%, according to the city.
If it fails? “It will just be catastrophic,” says City Councilor Steve Novick.
Arts centers aren’t necessarily on the chopping block if the levy fails, any more or less than other PP&R resources. But the levy provides nearly half of the funding for the entire parks system, Novick says, so the cuts would go deep, including not being able to maintain outdoor parks and closing down community centers and pools.
Shiga will be on edge until the parks funding is secured, and probably afterward. In the past decade, “basically anything with the word ‘craft’ closed,” Shiga says. The biggies were the shuttering of the long-standing Museum of Contemporary Craft (1937–2016) and the Oregon College of Art and Craft (1907–2019).
At a time when the federal government is making destabilizing cuts to arts organizations, it’s even more crucial for state and local leadership to hold steady, Shiga says. The Multnomah Arts Center, built in 1919, was once an elementary school and has been in PP&R hands since 1980. In 2019, it got seismic upgrades, plus improvements to the six cottages that hold classes like printmaking and woodworking.
“To close it would be shortsighted of them,” Shiga says. “It’s a really rare resource.”
