Isn't it amazing, how little press notice this has raised? Are they influenced by their advertisers? Oh surely not!
GOOD NEWS, KEEP SHAKING TREE
Budget Committee has approved an increase to the Community Partnerships and Investments Program "in recognition of the work on the billboard tax." This is great as it will provide almost a million additional dollars for community led programming including everything from food programs for high-need kids to art in major institutions every year! The bad news is that it is a bit short of the 2.5 million left from the billboard tax for art projections this year and 9 million next. Additionally, not targeted to enhancing public spaces with art as the increase is essentially a 2% cost of living / inflationary adjustment to existing programs. For example it presently means only about 300K will go directly to Toronto's hundreds of arts organizations. Some have said that the arts avoided a 5% cut in general -- but that is a bit silly in the context of a 100 million dollar surplus and that the billboard tax is more than 5% of arts funding - find other arguments here: http://www.beautifulcity.ca/bc/bcarguments.pdf
However! Budget Chief Shelley Carroll also stated that there will be a "much improved plan" going forward to specifically benefit the arts at the April 7th Executive meeting (Committee Room 1, 9:30am - please RSVP / Share: http://tinyurl.com/yf233sn ) Our position is that substantial resources need accompany the go-forward plan this year -- conditions are good and positive precedent needs to be set in order for the policy to survive the election. There is no good reason settle on mediocrity...please help make this point via the 2 minute action below.
2 MINUTE ACTION !
The calls and emails are working. We need to do a round of really polite calls and emails to the Mayor and Shelley urging them to put the resources behind the billboard tax for art this year. Please call in (or email separately) something like the below. If possible, please reword, put a personal story and challenge if emailed back.
Mayor Miller - 416-397-2489 / mayor_miller@toronto.ca
Councillor Shelley Carroll - 416-392-4038 / councillor_carroll@toronto.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment