Finally, something worthy of a blog post!
This has to be the MOST tone deaf things that I have read since the election of Barack Obama…:
The debate in Ann Arbor, where firefighters are being laid off due to a multimillion dollar budget deficit, is over an $850,000 piece of art.
That’s how much the city has agreed to pay German artist Herbert Dreiseitl for a three-piece water sculpture that would go in front of the new police and courts building right by the City Hall.
The city has the money to do it because in 2007, it agreed to set aside for public art 1 percent of money that went into capital improvement projects that were $100,000 or larger. Most capital projects involve streets, sewers and water.
Ann Arbor City Council member Stephen Kunselman, a Democrat, opposed the art deal.
“I think it is incredibly insensitive,” Kunselman said. “It is insensitive to the staff and their morale. It is insensitive to the community. There are people out there struggling financially, and here we are spending a large amount of money on a piece of art.”
Kunselman said the city is also eliminating the solid waste coordinator from the budget, which oversees trash pickup, and hiring an art coordinator.
City Administrator Roger Fraser wrote in an e-mail that the solid waste coordinator position was eliminated as a cost-cutting measure because the solid waste millage had decreased. Fraser wrote that the art coordinator position would be paid for by the public art fund.
Fraser noted that the public art dollars did not come from the city’s general fund, which is used to pay salaries and benefits, and that less than $6,000 of the art money came from the general fund.
The art projects also must have a “thematic connection” to the source of funding, Fraser wrote. The $850,000 art project is water-themed, because the money came from storm water funds.
But some critics say that a city creative enough to fund art from storm water projects should be able to find money to cover essential city services.
“That’s the classic argument,” said Glenn Thompson, an Ann Arbor resident and longtime critic of city spending. “But the city has become very, very good at shuffling money in and out of the general fund when they want. These people are very good at putting it in and out of the general fund when they wish.”
Michael LaFaive, the director of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative said nonessential services are being funded throughout the state.
“Administrators cry poverty while lavishing money on the beautiful people,” LaFaive said. “The threat to dismiss firefighters often comes while officials protect golf courses, wave pools and art. No city can cry poverty while it defends recreation and aesthetics such as art.”
LaFaive said administrators get creative with budgets to fund pet projects.
I would say that I am shocked about this; but hey, it is Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor, for those who are not from these parts; is a bastion of Liberalism. Basically, it is San Francisco in Michigan. Yeah, it is that liberal. 🙄
True Story: When I actually worked for a living; back in the mid 90’s, I made a delivery to that city, I mean, right downtown; you talk about feeling like driving into an alternative universe. 😯 There were people…..everywhere. I was near, as in like a block away, from the local university there. It was quite the interesting experience. I remember getting my package signed for, and scrambling to find the entrance to the freeway and getting the heck out of dodge! I went back to the shop and said in my most pitiful, mournful, voice, “PLEASE, DON’T SEND ME TO ANN ARBOR ANYMORE!” I thought the secretary at the office was going to fall out of her chair laughing at me. 😀
A man can only handle so many weird looking people in one place! 😀
Others: Classical Values, American Spectator, Questions and Observations, The New Editor, Wizbang, theblogprof and Moonbattery
One Reply to “Local Stupidity: Ann Arbor Michigan spends $850,000 on art, while firefighters are laid off”
Comments are closed.