Representatives of Allen County, Iola, USD 257 and the Bowlus Fine Arts Center will meet next week to look for common ground in funding of Bowlus’ operation and activities.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Tony Leavitt, at Tuesday’s meeting of the Allen County Commission. Leavitt serves as chairman of the Board of Education. “We need to come together and work this thing out.”
A parade of Bowlus supporters testified to its worth as a community institution Monday evening when board members announced they would ask the District Court to revisit the Bowlus will and other particulars to determine their role.
State cuts to education over the past several years have forced the school district to re-evaluate its use of the Bowlus for its music, art, speech and drama classes. The district this year paid $144,000 for its use of the Bowlus.
The proposed meeting was an outgrowth of 30 minutes of discussion that began with Susan Raines, Bowlus executive director, sharing the details of the center’s $404,735 budget.
Raines said she came to commissioners with hat in hand, and asked the county to increase its support from $32,000 to $75,000, “not knowing at this point what the district will be able to do.”
Raines justified her request by pointing out the Bowlus was much more than an Iola school building. It serves all districts in the county and community residents within, as well as those from elsewhere that “come and spend money here.”
“I look at the Bowlus as belonging to everyone,” she said.
“I think we need to put long-term finances together,” Leavitt said. Having celebrated the center’s 50th anniversary two years ago, he added: “We need to make it work for the next 50 years. Not knowing what’s going to happen in Topeka, I know that’s difficult.”
“We’ll look at our budget,” Commissioner Tom Williams said. “The folks in Topeka have done things that may hamstring us in the years ahead. Telling us how to manage our budget, when they can’t manage their own.”
“There will be a way to make this work,” Talkington injected, and then proposed a session to bring together city, county, district and Bowlus representatives, where he hopes plans will be developed to extend it well into the future.
The past two years Allen County has contributed $32,000 each year to the Bowlus and had intentions of doing so in fiscal year 2017, which starts July 1. The city, meanwhile, has given the equivalent of 1 mill in ad valorem taxes, or about $29,000.
