by Manuel Gonzales

In the spirit of Austin's election season, during which Austinites will pound their way to the polls and voting booths and decide who should be Mayor and what not, Austin Downtown Arts decided to question our potential City Council members and our potential might-be Mayors and discover their views on the subject of the Arts and Downtown. Out of the twenty candidates running for either Mayor, Place 2 City Council, or Place 6 City Council, we randomly selected twelve candidates to whom we asked (or, at least, tried to ask) these three questions:

Do you have any ideas on what the City Council can do (if anything) to enhance the relationship between public art, downtown revitalism (especially in East downtown) and tourism?

What is your position on a new performing arts facility for Austin, and/or do you have any ideas on how to renovate Palmer auditorium?

Do you have any definite ideas on how the City Council could act to help enhance or bolster the issues of cultural diversity with public arts funding in Austin?

We sent our feelers out at the beginning of the week and gave them until Friday, April 18th. Five days. Not a long deadline, but we all know that you shouldn't give politicians too much time to think, for who knows what might happen. Out of those twelve candidates, we received one response to the questions, four phone messages (followed by an eternal game of phone tag -- a game which, when playing against a politician, you are most certain to lose), a returned e-mail message because the candidate's campaign headquarters supplied us with the wrong e-mail address, and nothing else. No other faxes or e-mail responses. Not even a promotional photograph. Here in the age of information, we received one answer to our questions.

That was from Eric Samson, who is running against Eric Mitchell and Willie Clyde Lewis for Place 6 on the City Council. To top it all, when I spoke to the gentleman on the phone, the only one to answer our three simple questions, I accidentally called him Eric Lee Swanson. "Let me guess. You must be calling from the Tarrytown Gazette." After he spelled his name for me, slowly and in a loud and clear voice, I asked him our questions.

"First of all, I think that if we were to establish a clearing house for artists and performers or provide vacant properties for venues in the East Austin/ Downtown area, it would open up a lot of opportunity to enhance the relationships between Downtown and the Arts. Also, if we opened up city properties without the required deposits and supervisory fees, it would allow more venues and would revitalize East Austin and Downtown Austin. Plus, there's the Carver Center in East Austin which could be renovated into an East Austin Performing Arts Center. There are really a lot of things the City Council can do to improve the relationships between Art and Downtown and tourism. About renovating Palmer... Renovating Palmer at first seemed to me to be nightmarish, but there are quite a few people who are rooted in the idea of Palmer as a more expediant option. But there are other options as well. We do need a solution, with the imminent loss of Bass Concert Hall. One option is to build, along with the new Museum of Art, a small or large Performing Arts Center, but one way or another, we need something down there. As for your third question, first of all, remove the $200,000 cap in Austin for funding. There is a lot of bad accounting and bad politics going on right now that also affect the spread of funds. I think that if we set aside funds for more street festivals, like our Pecan Street Festival, something downtown, in East Austin, that will draw people into East Austin, that will greatly help increase the interest in diversity in arts. Right now, people have no reason to go into East Austin and they have no idea what's out there. If we can draw them into East Austin and show them what East Austin has to offer, culturally and artistically, with street festivals and such, then we can diversify Austin's art community and maybe acquire more funding for less supported art groups."

And there you have it. Our answer. I must admit, it's less than desired, but almost more than I hoped for. And, for those interested, I did speak to Max Nofziger's secretary and Max himself, a few campaign aides, someone's child, and Gus Garcia. Only none of them had any answers. If you want to see a list of the City Council and Mayoral candidates, complete with addresses and phone numbers, to maybe ask them our questions yourself or ask your own questions, you can either call the City Clerk's office and they can fax you a copy, or if you don't have a fax machine but are cyber-connected, you can look up the list on the City Council web page at <www.ci.austin.tx.us/> which will direct you to the Council and Mayorial candidates, and if you have neither fax nor internet capabilities, you can simply drive or ride your bike or walk to City Hall at 124 West 8th Street, and they can hand you the list. If you do happen to talk to any of the candidates before, during or after the election, tell them we here at Austin Downtown Arts and DiverseArts give them a hearty hi-ho.

[Editor's note: Manuel Zuniga's office responded to our questions after the editorial deadline and was not able to be included.]