Baltimore City is expected to conclude years of controversy and turmoil Wednesday by officially terminating its contract with the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts.

But while the vote by the five-member Board of Estimates will resolve many of the questions surrounding the beleaguered events-planning agency, it will likely only ratchet up the anxiety of the city’s artists and small performing organizations, which have been watching the political drama unfold while bank accounts dwindle.

“We’re heading towards a precipice,” said Nicholas Cohen, executive director of Maryland Citizens for the Arts, an advocacy organization. “Baltimore has some of the best artists in the country, but we are struggling to get them the resources they need and, quite frankly, deserve.”

The city announced Oct. 16 that it planned to terminate its 22-year relationship with its quasi-governmental agency effective Jan. 20, citing years of financial mismanagement.

Mayor Brandon Scott’s office is widely anticipated to take over or subcontract to a third party many of the duties that traditionally have fallen to BOPA: planning public celebrations such as Artscape, running the weekly farmers markets and managing a handful of event spaces.

But at least for now, BOPA is responsible for disbursing around $500,000 annually in state funds to artists and arts organizations. Wednesday’s vote will have no impact on BOPA’s designation as Baltimore’s arts council, which was established by a City Council resolution in 2002.

But whether BOPA’s arts designation will remain intact through 2025 is up in the air. And that is what is causing many members of Baltimore’s arts community to lose sleep at night. On Oct. 29, nearly 150 people attended an online town hall-style question-and-answer session organized by BOPA to discuss the agency’s future.

James “Fuzz” Roark told a Baltimore Sun reporter that the 62-year-old venue he helms, The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre, has come to rely upon the grant of between $4,000 and $6,000 (or roughly 5% of the company’s annual budget) that it receives annually from BOPA.

In a normal year, Roark would have had the money for 2024 in the theater’s bank account before Labor Day. But this year, the earliest the funds will be disbursed will be by the end of January 2025.

“There are contracts we had to sign,” Roark said. “It’s a cash flow problem, and I’m praying daily to the theater gods. Now our question is, will we get that money at all?”

As a result, the theater cut the stipends it offered this fall to designers, directors and stage managers.

“It’s a snowball effect for us,” said Anthony Blake Clark, music director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, which receives about 2% of its annual budget from BOPA this year.

“And the funding delays are coming at a time when our costs have risen so dramatically,” he said. “I would hope that the artist grants are not a line item that gets brushed aside in this time of turmoil.”

The uncertainty surrounding BOPA has relatively little effect on the city’s largest cultural groups, such as the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. These big-budget organizations receive seven-figure grants from the state and have access to private donors that their smaller counterparts often lack.

The loss of a $5,000 contribution to a $29 million organization like the symphony might hardly be felt. But for arts groups with five- and six-figure budgets, the disappearance of a previously secure income stream could mean cutting critical programs.

Some organizations have reduced the size of their seasons and eliminated or raised the cost of community outreach events. Others say that the funding disruption has threatened their ability to continue offering free educational programs in schools.

“I can ask donors for money, but there is no guarantee I will get it,” said Ben Newman, executive director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra.

Steven Skerritt-Davis, executive director of the Maryland State Arts Council, said that if the city chooses to do anything other than maintain the status quo, it will have to act swiftly. Baltimore would have to submit bills revoking BOPA’s arts council designation, nominate a new entity as the arts council and submit a three-year plan of how it plans to serve the community, including a detailed three-year budget, by Jan. 31, 2025.

Once the application is received, the Maryland State Arts Council would conduct site visits, meet with stakeholders and submit a recommendation in advance of the board’s June meeting. Should anything go wrong, Baltimore would forfeit its customary $500,000 in state arts grants for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Some arts leaders think Baltimore would be best served by having two agencies: one to plan festivals and one to distribute grants to artists. They argue that over the past two decades, high-profile festivals such as Artscape have gobbled up the lion’s share of the financial resources and overshadowed the need to support city artists.

Still, others worry that bringing an arts council under city control could destabilize the arts community instead of strengthening it because city leadership — and along with it, a new administration’s priorities — will change every eight years.

Laura Malkus, president of the board of the Fells Point Corner Theatre, called for the establishment of an independent agency — within the city government or outside it — that would be “equitable and fair and have safeguards installed to insulate the arts council from this kind of turmoil in the future.”

Likewise, Roark said, it is essential that any new arts council be protected against political interference.

“We need some kind of firewall between politics and how the arts are going to be funded in this city,” he said. “It is crucial to keep the arts free of political pressure, so that we’re all operating on the same playing field.”

Have a question about this article? Contact editor Kendyl Kearly at kkearly@baltsun.com.