Two representatives of the Marshalltown Municipal Band, Jody Brintnall and Director Brett Umthun, stood before the council to ask for $8,000 that was previously generated through the aforementioned levy before the legislative change last year. Brintnall, who has been a member of the band for over 50 years, provided some history on the levy and said the MMB has a nice mix of older and younger players, rehearsing on Monday nights and performing on Thursday evenings at West End Park through the summer months. In 2023, they played 10 concerts along with special occasions like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and the courthouse rededication, and according to Brintnall, the average attendance is between 35 and 50 people.

With the floor opened up to discussion, Councilor Jeff Schneider described the band as “a worthy community asset” and felt the funding request should be granted, and fellow Councilor Mike Ladehoff felt that it was a worthy use of Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) dollars.

Councilor Gary Thompson asked Brintnall if the $8,000 the organization was requesting made up its entire budget, and she said it was a supplement to the total budget of around $11,000 with the other $3,000 coming through private fundraising. Thompson believed the amount was so miniscule that it could be fundraised every year without much trouble.

Fellow Councilor Barry Kell echoed the comments of Schneider and Ladehoff and said the band was a great amenity for the community with participation from all age groups.

Marshalltown Arts and Civic Center (MACC) Board of Trustees President Karn Gregoire addresses the city council during Monday night’s meeting to make the case for a $100,000 funding request. The council voted 4-3 to bring back a formal motion to fund the request.

“This is money very well spent,” Kell said.

Councilor Mark Mitchell, on the other hand, felt he could help Thompson with fundraising because there were plenty of people in Marshalltown looking for tax deductions. With no public comments, Schneider motioned to give staff direction on a formal resolution to provide the $8,000 in funding through LOST, but it failed as a narrow majority of councilors — Mitchell, Thompson, Al Hoop and Greg Nichols — opposed moving forward while Kell, Ladehoff and Schneider voted in favor.

“Your honor, I will fundraise. We’ll get the money,” Thompson said after the vote.

MACC funding

From there, the council spent the next 40 minutes considering and debating a $100,000 funding request for the Marshalltown Arts and Civic Center (MACC), formerly known as the Fisher Community Center, at 709 S. Center St. before voting 4-3 to move forward with a formal resolution to fund it, with Hoop, Kell, Ladehoff and Schneider in favor and Mitchell, Nichols and Thompson opposed. Like the band, the MACC previously had its own special voter-approved levy before it was consolidated into the general fund as a result of HF718.

Several members of the MACC Board of Trustees, including Mike Mason, President Karn Gregoire, Paul Gregoire, John Hall, Sharon Greer and Dr. Cynthia Ragland, came to the podium and expressed similar sentiments about what a unique asset the late Bill Fisher’s art collection is to Marshalltown. Mason said about 50 percent of the facility’s operating revenue comes from the city’s contribution, and the city has been contributing to the MACC/Fisher Community Center since 1969.

“The legacy, the impact of the community center and the Arts and Civic Center on the city and to the residents is as important as it ever was, so we appreciate your concerns and your considerations,” Mason said.

Karn Gregoire, who previously served as the executive director of the Martha-Ellen Tye Foundation, said the surviving members of the Fisher family would like to see what their ancestors gifted to Marshalltown stay in the community. She warned that if a sustainable funding source could not be found, the art collection would need to be moved to another city.

She also discussed the name change from the Fisher Community Center to the MACC and said she had the full support of the family in taking that action.

“It wasn’t about Fisher. It was about Marshalltown and what this facility and this art could do for our community,” Gregoire said.

Gregoire touted the MACC as a gathering hub in the community both for events and corporate meetings that makes a strong impression on potential future residents and/or employees. She concluded by sharing a long list of contributors who have made private donations to the facility and urged the city to continue with its full commitment.

“Without the city’s support to the operations, we cannot continue to operate the MACC, and without the MACC, the art collection would not have a home and would be lost to another community,” she said.

Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce President/CEO John Hall, a fellow MACC board member, tied amenities like the art collection into the larger economic development picture, noting that he had just came before the council during the same meeting to ask for support on moving forward with the sale of a lot in the new Edgewood Industrial Park.

“It’s not lost on me that tonight, we saw unanimous approval on building a brand new data center, gonna bring jobs to the community and how excited everyone gets around the table for that,” Hall said. “But economic development is a balancing act. It requires balancing what it means to bring new companies in with the needed amenities and assets to make sure that we’ve got the workforce to support and the quality of life and culture necessary to continue to sustain our companies for a long period of time.”

He described amenities like the MACC and the art collection as amenities that are “the dividend” the community gets to claim on the back end of supporting successful and longstanding local anchor businesses like Emerson/Fisher. Hall added that if the board knew what the state legislature was going to do ahead of time, they may have committed to a different fundraising strategy or left the art in Chicago, but the city’s support made it possible.

“Pulling the funding at this point sends a clear message to the donors that have already supported this and to the donors that would still be coming forth to support the Martha-Ellen Tye Playhouse renovation that this isn’t something the community cares about or that the council cares about,” Hall said. “But I think you’ve seen through the list of donors that have stepped up to support this that that’s not the case.”

Sharon Greer also offered her support for the funding request, emphasizing the history of the city’s commitment to the community center and contending that any reduction in funding would be “bad timing” because of all the work to reconstruct the facility after the 2020 derecho. The insurance premiums for the policy on the buildings have increased to almost $27,000 a year due to the number of claims, she said.

“The art gallery and extraordinary collection is a gem for Marshalltown. It would be very sad if your legacy as a council would be that the art collection is moved to Chicago. I would hope that you would support this facility and make certain your commitment to this iconic building, which I see like the courthouse,” Greer said. “We count on your commitment, the community’s commitment, and the board’s gonna have a commitment no matter what. But it includes the city council for decades, and hopefully that’s part of our future.”

Councilor Greg Nichols, who was communicating remotely, said he and his wife used and enjoyed the MACC, but he felt the city needed to face the reality that the state took the money away and the focus should remain on balancing the budget.

“I think we need to make hard adjustments so that in the end, we can all be stronger,” Nichols said.

Ladehoff called the issue personal to him as the shadow of Bill Fisher is putting food on his family’s table every week, like thousands of other Marshalltonians, and commented that he would hate to see the city lose the art collection and a gathering place for local nonprofit organizations.

“I just think it would say more about myself as a councilperson if I were not to grant this request, so I’m in favor of granting this request,” he said.

Kell said he was “disheartened” by the decision not to fund the band and was worried about the MACC potentially losing its funding.

“Yes, our budget moving forward is in flux and there’s some uncertainty, but we have the funding today. We can continue to fund the MACC, provide them another year, see what the runtime gets them in terms of return on investment. It gives them an opportunity to properly plan for the future,” he said before referencing his own employment with Emerson. “As the only councilor up here with young children and looking for those amenities that we can provide culture and exposure to our citizens, to my children, to make them excited to be in Marshalltown, and we don’t have to go to a major city.”

Kell spoke of an experience with Emerson employees who visited from Mexico and the fact that the art collection rivals the one at a museum in Mexico City, one of the largest cities in the world, before concluding that he feared for the city’s future if it were to be abandoned.

Mitchell, who took office at the beginning of the year, said he had been listening to his constituents since being elected, and they didn’t feel that public spending on arts and culture should be a top priority for the city.

“We have a budget. We need to get things straightened out here first. My vote will be no,” he said.

Schneider said it would be foolish to even take the chance of losing the collection and that the budget was not in “dire straits” as other councilors had indicated. Thompson asked about whether the Fisher Governor Foundation owned the MACC, and Karn Gregoire said the foundation owns the building and the art but does not have its own funds beyond that.

“There is no money to donate. It is not a foundation like the Martha-Ellen Tye Foundation. This foundation only owns the building. There is no money for operations. That all comes through the MACC,” she said.

Thompson cited the website ProPublica as listing the Fisher Governor Foundation’s total assets as valued at over $5 million and wondering what they do with them, and Gregoire responded that the art itself comprised the assets. He praised the facility and said most of the community had a connection to the MACC, but with the potential loss of the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) dollars depending on the result of the March 5 special election, Thompson felt he couldn’t answer to the taxpayers he represented and indicated he would vote no as a result.

Hoop asked City Clerk Alicia Hunter if the agreement would be for one year or multiple years, and Schneider then made a motion to move forward with a one-year, $100,000 agreement funded out of LOST. In seconding the motion, Kell also noted that even if LOST is voted down, it won’t sunset for another year.

During the public comment period, MARSHALLTOWN President/CEO Joe Carter repeated his mantra that the community cannot cut its way to prosperity and hoped the council would vote to provide the requested funding. While describing the MACC as an asset to the community, Mark Eaton then returned to one of his frequent arguments: that with over 230 nonprofits in Marshalltown, some of them with multimillion dollar endowments, it was time for them to step up and contribute to the operations instead of placing the onus on the city’s taxpayers.

“We are raising storm sewer rates. The county’s raising taxes. The school district’s raising taxes. The taxpayer is taxed out,” Eaton said. “It’s time for those nonprofits with multi million dollar foundations to stand up and fund these programs. I don’t understand why we sit on all this money when the community needs it to grow, as they say. And I agree. Why can’t we fix it from both ends of the string?”

Paul Gregoire, a fellow MACC board of trustees member and Karn Gregoire’s husband, paid homage to Bill Fisher for his near constant legacy of service and financial contributions to the Marshalltown community and Marshall County and felt the contribution would be a way of continuing that legacy.

“I can also tell you that if we can’t operate this facility, there are a lot of nonprofits that won’t have a place to meet anymore for free,” he said. “That’s a community service. That’s what the Fisher family wanted, and I can tell you again, let’s honor that legacy like we do when you walk in that facility. You can still feel it. Let’s honor that as a group, as a town, as a council, as Joe Public, whatever. I ask you to please do that because it’s a facility that fills a huge need we have here.”

Leigh Bauder described the MACC as a gem but cited the budget struggles and challenged the board of trustees to do more private fundraising in an effort to reduce the overall ask from the city. Ragland, the final public speaker, said that while conversations about long-term funding will need to happen down the road, the MACC needed the money now to at least buy another year and figure out the future.

A motion to bring back the funding request in the form of an official resolution ultimately received approval by a narrow 4-3 vote, with Hoop, Kell, Ladehoff and Schneider in favor and Mitchell, Nichols and Thompson opposed.

——

Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.

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