A decision by the Milton Selectboard to withdraw funding for a local artists’ organization has prompted pushback from some residents who think the decision was motivated by local politics.
Selectboard members last month voted against providing the Milton Artists’ Guild with a $2,500 appropriation for the 2024 fiscal year — an amount the board had already approved when drafting its 2024 budget last fall. Board members chalked up their change of heart to two incidents for which they said guild members were responsible.
Both incidents, which took place this year — one involving local school board races, the other related to the town’s annual inclusion festival — touch on contentious local policy debates.
Members and supporters of the guild pushed back on the assertion that at least one incident was the guild’s fault, with several saying at the selectboard meeting that it didn’t make sense for the board to pull funding for one of the town’s major cultural organizations.
“We’ve done so much good for so long here,” said Corrina Thurston, the guild’s executive director, in an interview Monday. “So we just felt pretty disappointed.”
The nonprofit organization hosts art lessons and operates a large gallery space, where local artists can sell and display their work. The gallery also hosts regular community events, guild members told the board.
According to selectboard and guild members, the first incident took place in February: A group of residents used the guild’s building to stuff and address envelopes with a letter supporting two candidates in the town’s contentious school board election.
Lisa Rees — at the time president of the guild’s board and the letter’s main signatory — also used the guild’s post office box as a return address but did not include the organization’s name. Thurston said Rees made use of the post office box to avoid any “blowback” being mailed to her home address.
The letter, which was sent just days before the election, addressed a key litmus test in this year’s school board race: support for a district equity policy. The policy, which has since been adopted, was divisive, with a vocal group of parents speaking out against it.
Some of those parents were associated with an organization called Vermont Parents Against Critical Theory, which had endorsed two other school board candidates.
Rees and her allies urged residents to vote for two board incumbents, each of whom supported the equity policy (and ultimately won). They said in the letter that two challengers — both endorsed by Parents Against Critical Theory and who had made public statements opposing the equity policy — would “use their platform to advance a toxic agenda” if they won.
Thurston said Rees — who had drafted the letter in her capacity as a town resident, not as board president — quickly regretted using the guild’s P.O. box and later apologized to the selectboard, saying the arts organization itself played no role in the letter.
Still, numerous residents contacted the selectboard to complain that the guild had taken a political stance, said Darren Adams, the selectboard chair. At a board meeting in May, resident Joseph Duquette — the husband of a losing school board candidate who opposed the equity policy — told the board it should stop funding the guild for good.
“This (was) clearly partisan activity that the town should not support, in either direction, with our tax dollars,” Duquette said at the meeting May 1.
Adams said in an interview this week that he and other board members came to share those concerns. And the board grew more concerned about the guild’s management, he said, after the second incident later in the year.
That incident involved a miscommunication over payment for a poet who performed at the artists’ guild building in late May, “as an extension” of this year’s Milton Inclusion Festival, according to Thurston. The committee organizing the festival on behalf of the town government — of which Rees was a member — asked the guild if it could use the guild’s building for the performance, and the organization said yes, Thurston said.
The guild’s perception was that, because the poet performed as an extension of the inclusion festival, the poet would be paid by the town for his performance.
But the town saw it differently, selectboard members said at last month’s meeting. When the $1,500 bill for the poet’s performance came before the board, members said they were confused, thinking that the artists’ guild should have covered the cost.
Thurston said she and Town Manager Don Turner worked to resolve the issue shortly after, with the guild agreeing to pay the poet. The organization also was reimbursed for the cost by inclusion festival sponsor Vermont Federal Credit Union.
Thurston and other guild members thought the case was closed, she recalled, and were surprised when the selectboard raised concerns at the meeting in August.
Adams and other board members said the incident showed the guild may not have sufficient “business controls” in place, and improper management had almost led to the town paying for an event that it did not, in the board’s eyes, host.
Adams said he worried the issues could have been flagged during a future town audit.
In response, Adams said at last month’s meeting, the board decided it did not want to provide the guild with its funding until “corrections” were made. He did not specify what changes, specifically, in the meeting or an interview, saying that was up to the guild.
“Challenge us next year to prove why we shouldn’t provide you with an allocation, if that’s what you request,” Adams told Thurston during the meeting. “This year, space is what you need.”
The board chair was adamant that he has “probably been the biggest” supporter of funding the guild in the past, and he’d likely vote to do so again next year. He also pushed back on the characterization that the board was “punishing” the guild, as several people in attendance suggested.
Guild members, though, said they weren’t sure what more changes they could make. Thurston noted during the meeting that Rees resigned from the board after the second incident, and now she is no longer involved with the guild in any leadership positions.
“I just don’t know what more we could have done,” Thurston said in an interview.
Thurston said the $2,500 appropriation this year would have paid the instruction costs for 50 free youth art classes or a 14-week arts session for people with dementia.
The organization, she noted this week, has managed to raise that money, and then some, in community donations since the selectboard’s vote. But she said that, while the organization still is eager to partner with the town on future events and projects, she worries that the vote could give people the wrong perception.
“We have over 180 people in our membership, and I’m not sure which way they all go politically. I don’t know that anyone here knows mine, because it’s not important when you walk in the door” Thurston said. “Just come in and enjoy the artwork. That’s all there is to it.”
