OS residents have questions after sudden Mary C. shakeup. ‘Something weird is going on.’
Gina Stebly and her family love the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center.
Stebly’s son has attended theater and art camps there. Her step-daughter has prepared made-from-scratch meals at the Center’s cooking and baking classes. So Stebly understands why Mayor Shea Dobson insists that his city’s decision to take over the Mary C. won’t result in any significant changes to its offerings. She just doesn’t believe him.
“They keep saying they want to keep the programming, but they can’t keep the programming because they won’t have the same facility and they can’t keep the funding because they don’t have the same funding sources,” Stebly said. “Something weird is going on.”
The city mailed a letter to the nonprofit organization that runs the Mary C. on July 10, giving 90 days notice that it was ending the management contract. Although some aldermen have said they hope and expect the Friends will remain in the building, the Mary C.’s board chair Elizabeth Feder-Hosey said the organization has no choice but to prepare to leave by October, unless the city rescinds its notice.
For people like Stebly and her family, the city’s move is as baffling as the Mary. C.’s programming is rewarding. According to figures provided by Feder-Hosey, 700 students participated in the Center’s culinary classes in 2019. Last year, 4,000 people bought tickets to the Mary C.’s theater events. This summer, just over 200 students signed up for camp.
The future of those programs is uncertain.
‘It’s disheartening’
All three of Heather Denison’s children have taken classes at the Mary C. She’s had a hard time finding activities for her middle son, who has autism, but after he said he’d like to try a cooking class, she called the Mary C. and they quickly put something together.
“It was the one thing that he stuck with,” Denison said.
Her daughter came home from classes on women in the arts, taught by instructor Carmen Lugo, reciting the names of people Denison had never heard of.
Renee Swoger, who moved to Ocean Springs from Dallas four years ago, said the Mary C. was one of the first organizations her family got involved with. She’s taken cooking classes and her kids have attended camps and classes.
“It’s disheartening to us because it’s like, why are they changing something that’s not broken?” Swoger said.
In February, Dobson wrote a letter of support for the Mary C. as it applied for a Mississippi Arts Commission grant. He called it “a cultural beacon for the community” and said that it “continues to thrive.”
What lies ahead?
Alderman Ken Papania joined all of his colleagues (aside from alderman Rickey Authement, who recused himself because his wife is on the board of the Friends) in the July 7 vote to end the city’s’ contract with the Friends. But Papania said it wasn’t his intention to force big changes at the facility.
“It’s nothing to do with removing the Friends of the Mary C. from the building,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I definitely want the friends of the Mary C. to stay in that building and run their programs.”
He said he is not sure about the details of the new plans for the Mary C., such as how the funding will work as control shifts from a nonprofit to the municipality of Ocean Springs.
As he considered the issue during the board of aldermen meeting on July 7, Papania said, it seemed to him that bringing the building under city control and using it to house a new arts and culture coordinator was logical.
“It just sounded like a decent business model,” he said. “If you own a building, you want to have some control in it.”
At the board of aldermen meeting Tuesday night, Papania made a motion for the board to meet with the Friends to discuss next steps. His motion died when no one seconded it. Authement was acting as mayor pro tempore because Dobson had not attended the meeting.
Dobson said on Facebook Live Tuesday morning that he had not attended the meeting because he was awaiting the results of a test for COVID-19.
In an interview Tuesday, Authement said he would have seconded Papania’s motion if he had been able to. The Mary C. is in his ward, and he doesn’t understand why his colleagues have decided the city should take on the financial burden of managing it.
“We’re going to have to have a public meeting to discuss this,” he said. “The sooner the aldermen come to terms with that, the better things will be. [Right now] I think they’re just set on the direction they’ve chosen.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
