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Call and Email Your Local CouncillorPlease check out this community release: http://www.beautifulcity.ca/bcbf.asp?id=22Learn Some Quick Facts1. The tax was communicated to the public as going to arts and city beautification in Executive and Council’s 2007 direction, eight plus public consultations, consultant, and staff reports, over 45 times in council from across the political spectrum and multiple post-vote media pieces. Recently mayoral candidates Smitherman, Pantalone and Sarah Thompson have also made public statements supporting the tax going to Art.
2. 2003 Council committed to bring per-capita spending up to $25 for 2008. This has failed: consider Toronto's current $18 per capita spending as compared to Vancouver at $19, Montreal at $32, New York at $54 and San Francisco at $80.
3. According to EKOS Research, only 18% of Torontonians are supportive of a billboard tax with the funds going into general revenue. 70% for a tax that enhances public spaces with art. This is backed by a 2007 Environics poll that shows 7/10 Toronto voters are in favour. Over 4600 people have signed a petition of support.
4. The city would not even have the tax without young artists coming up with the idea and pushing it through for the past eight years. It would not even exist without the citizen led effort so it cannot be considered an earmark of existing resources.
5. Fiscal stability should include strategic investment: a McKinsey and Co. study in 2006 found that "for every 1 dollar of public arts funding in a regional economy, 8 are generated."
6. The revenue is less than 0.09% of budget next year – Torontonians will get no visible benefit if it goes to increasing funding for entrenched interests – but if it goes to art in public spaces the effect will be revolutionary in supporting youth arts programs and creating a more vibrant city.
7. According to EKOS Research, 80% of Torontonians think that government investment in the arts in public spaces improves the local economy.
8. After inflation, cultural funding has been stagnant since 1991 and most artists live below the poverty line and work non-arts jobs.
9. According to the Martin Prosperity Institute average cities around the country have expanded their cultural expenditures by more than 4 times as much as Toronto, putting the city on the low end of competitive growth. The Conference Board of Canada argues "if Canada's largest cities are to become world-class centers of design, architecture, and culture, and attract young, talented, creative people, they will have to do more than invest in physical infrastructure. They will have to sustain vibrant cultures and become centers of excellence…Cities that offer a high quality of life attract and retain firms and workers in the knowledge-intensive and creative fields."
10. Vibrant public spaces enhance property values, boost tourism, give something highly visible back to residents, create opportunities for small business and will help build the city for the long-term.
11. At an ethical level, every other form of advertising subsidizes significant educational or enjoyable content in exchange for attention. (e.g. TV = 25% ads for 75% content, newspapers about 50/50). Billboard operators don't have to do that as people don't have a choice in viewing their messages. They are doing virtually nothing to support enjoyable or educational content. As advertisers they have broken the contract with the public. In fact, it could be inferred that industry is making record profits (up 11-19% in 2008) undermining the viability of other, democratic / participative / content supporting media outlets in providing "the lowest cost per thousand impressions of any media" and passing the full cost onto public spaces. We should look at public spaces as a conversation, and in a conversation it is always the responsibility of the strongest voice to ensure the smallest voices are heard.
12. If the billboard tax goes to art in public places it is essentially a benefit-targeted user-fee on the use (and too often degradation) of the city’s airspace and publicly maintained thoroughfares. Albeit using the stronger collection mechanisms of a tax that are necessary for extracting funds from an uncooperative and belligerent industry.
