The Bend City Council’s quiet decision to eliminate a committee dedicated to arts and culture has rankled its former members, who say it was an inexpensive way to demonstrate a commitment to art.

Since 2002, Bend’s Arts, Beautification and Culture Commission has advised councilors and staff on arts and culture issues. Volunteer members, many of them artists, met regularly and worked as conduits of information between the city and local arts organizations.

The commission was down to two members — violinist Phil Ruder and nonprofit financial manager Jenny Malone, whose term was set to expire — at the end of the year, but it also had nine pending applications from people who wanted to join. Instead, the city opted not to appoint new members and dedicate staff and council time to core services, including public safety, infrastructure and economic development, said Robyn Christie, city recorder.

“They’re a fabulous committee, but there really wasn’t any connection with the council goals,” Christie said.

The council’s five goals, which include improving transportation, increasing affordable housing options and keeping residents safe, are important, Malone said, but so is art and culture.

“We all live here,” Malone said. “We know that roads are important and sewers are important and they cost a lot of time and money. But the ABC commission always rested on the backs of volunteers, and it’s disappointing that the city can’t leverage volunteers.”

The commission had a $25,000 budget — a fraction of the city’s total spending — during its first few years, said Matt Schiffman, a former chairman. But for at least a decade, it’s lacked a budget, and commission members spent their own money, he said.

Unlike some other city committees, the arts commission only had one assigned staff member: Christie, and before her, former City Recorder Patty Stell.

Christie said the amount of time she spent on arts commission work varied, depending on how much the committee was doing — for instance, it took up a lot of her time when the city participated in monthly First Friday events, she said.

The city will continue taking part in the Arts and Culture Alliance and the Bend Cultural Tourism Fund, Christie said. She’ll attend meetings of the Arts and Culture Alliance, a group of more than 50 organizations, businesses and individuals from the three counties in Central Oregon, and Malone will remain the city’s appointed representative to the Bend Cultural Tourism Fund through the end of the year.

Kelly Cannon-Miller, executive director of the Deschutes County Historical Society and an Arts and Culture Alliance board member, said while the regional group does important work, it’s not Bend-centric in the same way the now-shuttered arts commission was.

“A commission that is put forth by the city shows that this is something the city cares about,” she said.

The historical society previously received a Bend Beautification Award, which the commission created to honor projects in Bend. It also opened its archives to artists creating exhibits for the biannual City Walls at City Hall art show.

Former commission Chairwoman Liz Rink said those shows and the four-panel piece of art the commission commissioned to celebrate Bend’s centennial brought residents to City Hall and helped the city engage with the community.

“They never even go to City Hall, and then they come in and there’s beautiful art there,” Rink said.

The commission also worked with Bend’s planning commission to draft a city code allowing murals in the Makers District, a primarily industrial area along First and Second streets between Olney and Greenwood avenues. In the future, Christie said, the council may form temporary ad hoc committees to deal with one-off issues like arts-related code changes.

Malone said a dedicated commission that meets regularly and is tied into the arts community has the knowledge and ability to tackle these issues in a proactive way. She said the city’s decision to make the committee inactive puts it in the position of being reactive instead of proactive.

“We feel that a standing group can just go, take off and run,” Malone said. “Without it, you lose time, you lose expertise and you lose knowledge.”

— Reporter: 541-633-2160; jshumway@bendbulletin.com