Arts Agency Faces 6% Budget Cut : Finance: Cultural Affairs Department would lose more than $300,000 but maintain its artists’ grants. Councilman Mike Woo warns of further reductions next week.

The proposed 1991-92 budget for the city’s Cultural Affairs Department includes a 6% reduction that would slightly affect operations and programs at several municipal facilities but leave intact the city’s grant fund. However, a councilman warns that the city’s budget crisis--including a projected $177-million deficit--could lead to further cuts.

The budget, which goes before the City Council next week as part of Mayor Tom Bradley’s proposed $3.9-billion budget, features several cuts totaling about $308,000. Among these are fewer exhibitions for city-run spaces including Barnsdall Art Park’s Municipal Art Gallery and Junior Arts Center, reduced hours for venues including the popular L.A. Photo Center, the loss of two department employees, the termination of the Frank Lloyd Wright lecture series and the postponement of the reopening of a photography center in San Pedro.

But remaining intact is the department’s recently revamped grants program, funded for the last two years through the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts.

“We haven’t cut any money going out for the grants program,” said Adolfo V. Nodal, director of the Cultural Affairs Department. “That will remain at the same level as last year, which is over $3 million. We’ve got a kind of psychological threshold here that we will not go below $3 million. We just won’t let it happen.”

But while city records show that the council changes less than 3% of the mayor’s proposed budget in a typical year, Councilman Michael Woo said cultural affairs could be hard hit during next week’s budget deliberations, which he expects to be “chaotic” and “very unpredictable.”

“The Cultural Affairs Department is going to be very vulnerable . . . and could be facing a tight situation with a lot of layoffs and cuts,” he said.

Nodal acknowledged that further reductions in his budget are possible. He noted that before deciding on a 6% cut, Mayor Bradley had asked Nodal to assess a “worst-case scenario” with 10% and 15% budget cuts.

“In that drastic reduction, we would have had to cut a couple of arts centers altogether and drastically reduce our festivals program (which sponsors about 50 multicultural events annually). But even then, the grants program would not have been reduced,” Nodal said.

(Analysts have suggested that Bradley may have the upper hand in budget deliberations, since he has veto power over any changes the City Council makes, and the council--which is down to 13 members--needs 10 votes to override his veto.)

Nodal also said that his special Endowment for the Arts--which comes from outside sources such as the new 1% fee on private development and is earmarked exclusively for programs such as artists grants--would help cultural affairs “ride this (budget crisis) out” more easily than other city departments.

In fact, despite the proposed 6% general fund cut, the new private development fee actually boosts the department’s overall proposed budget to $8.76 million. That represents a $300,000 increase from estimated 1991-92 expenditures of $8.46 million, thus creating a budget that the department “can live with” even in a time of increased expenses, Nodal said.