The Silver Spring Penguin

Silver Spring’s regional center faces budget cuts, but the urban-district advisory committee wants the cash to keep flowing to major arts events.

It’s a matter of maintaining the hood’s arts and entertainment image, Jennifer Nettles, property manager of the Downtown Silver Spring shopping center and a committee member, argued Thursday at the committee’s monthly meeting. The public money shelled out on special events is payed back in spades with higher sales for local retailers, and the hood’s ever-cooler rep as a smooth player, she indicated.

For example, this year’s jazz festival lured an estimated 25,000 people to downtown Silver Spring at a cost of $64,000. (Sponsors picked up about $12,500 of that tab.) Most committee members said the price tag was worth it because it helped make Silver Spring an arts and entertainment destination.

On the flip side, the Magical Montgomery event on Ellsworth Drive came close to eating asphalt this year when the county couldn’t foot the full bill. Management for the Downtown Silver Spring shopping center picked up the difference, but don’t expect private industry to pick up the tab too much longer, given current economic conditions, Nettles explained.

A push to spare the arts from budget cuts could be freakin’ hideous in the eyes of county workers, warned Mary Pat Spon, a committee member who also works for the teachers’ union. Public employees won’t stand for salary cuts or furloughs when concerts and street fairs can get the ax, she said.

The regional center, which handles MoCo exec Ike Leggett’s business in Silver Spring, plans for a $2.9 million budget in fiscal year 2010, center director Gary Stith explained to the committee. Two thirds of that money comes from parking revenues, with property taxes making up the rest, he said. But cuts still have to come from somewhere.

“I prefer not to lose positions,” Stith told the committee.

Aside from a small office crew in the regional center, the hood’s got Red Shirt workers who handle security, information services, sidewalk repairs and some landscaping. Payroll took about 82 percent of the regional center’s $1.1 million operating budget for fiscal year 2009. Compare that with 18 percent of the budget spent on public relations and events.

“There are value decisions to be made,” committee chairperson Jon Lourie said.

Photo: Crowds lounge at the 2008 jazz festival. Credit: Ron Pace/SSP.

Autumn’s good for plenty of things that can’t be relished the rest of the year. Football. Pumpkin pie. Macaroni and cheese. Jazz.

Okay, so mac and cheese rolls any day of the year, and jazz floats whenever. But the warm ooey-gooeyness of cheddar on pasta, plus the syncopated clinks of a vibraphone, are just that more awesome when served on a cool autumn night.

Luckily, that scene drops on Sunday when jazz percussionist Chuck Redd and his crew hit the Red Dog Cafe near Rock Creek Gardens. The jazz vet is an artist-in-residence at DC’s Smithsonian Jazz Cafe and teaches at the University of Maryland’s school of music. (Go Terps!) Oh, and he plays the vibraphone like a mofo.

In “Happy All the Time”, Redd races down those vibraphone keys on a macaroni-induced carbo kick, playing jazz the way it was meant to be played — with reckless abandon. He goes with a toe-tapping groove in “Laura”, which syncs his percussion with smooth piano sounds.

“On a Slow Boat to China” has a warm, cozy sound and jolly bass line, perfect for when that mac and cheese settles in the stomach. And “Cry Me a River” is the calm, soothing sound of an elastic waist band gently stretching for allowance.

Taste test Chuck Redd’s grooves off his website, then hit the Red Dog Cafe (8301-A Grubb Rd) for the real deal. Twelve bucks and a hearty appetite get you through the door. And don’t let the crowded Grubb Road parking lot fool you — there’s plenty more parking in the rear off Washington Avenue.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Gila Mosaics.