So, if Council were to discontinue Percent for Art, which it created unilaterally, and then unilaterally create a Percent for Public Safety program, that money would ease the burden on the general fund which supports police and fire. The resulting savings could then be applied to human services.

As has been said above, it’s a question of priorities. If a public safety program is not possible for some reason, then maybe in these lean times, our millage monies ought to be going toward the purposes they were collected for, like streets, parks, solid waste, sewage, etc. instead of monumental art projects that only inspire resentment from those who are suffering from severe budget cuts made elsewhere.

A valid argument would be that it takes funding away from the very capital projects that enable it. They should argue that it takes money (less than 1% overall) away from utilities and streets, etc., capital projects.

But instead most argue that it somehow hurts police or fire or human services funding or specifically in this case, Safe House, when in fact it does not, could not.

Yep, $50,000 “could” have gone toward art from the general fund. But even if it did it could only be spent once. It would have paid for 1/2 a police officer for one year or perhaps it could have augmented the human services budget for one year.

The point remains that the funding that goes to art from the streets millage or the utilities could not ever have gone to Safe House. Those funds can only go toward capital projects related to the source of funds. Even if the art program were dissolved Safe House could not be a beneficiary.

On your other point, I don’t see how it would be possible for them to set up funding for human services except from the general fund.

I’m actually a supporter of using public funds for art, but this whole “our hands are tied, we can’t mix the buckets” argument is an embarrassment. The buckets are our own creation.

From The Chronicle’s report of the Nov. 21, 2011 council meeting:

During deliberations, city staff confirmed that at least a portion of the public art allocation required from the new municipal building (aka the police/courts building) could be associated with the general fund – about $50,000 out of the $250,000. [This is for art in the interior of the building, and is separate from the outdoor fountain designed by German artist Herbert Dreiseitl.]

As part of her Ward 2 election campaign, Jane Lumm had argued that general fund dollars were connected to supporting public art at the new municipal building – an idea that had been, until Monday’s meeting, poo-pooed by some councilmembers, including mayor John Hieftje, who had said no general fund money had been used for the public art program.

Regarding the assertion that general fund monies aren’t used in the public art program — “… In fact the ordinance says so.”

Yes, it’s accurate that “the ordinance says so,” because the council revised the ordinance at at its Dec. 5, 2011 meeting, with an amendment that excludes the public art ordinance from applying to any capital projects funded out of the general fund.

So there’s isn’t a “clean narrative” available here. It’s a nuanced and complex argument and deserves better, I think, that the flip response the mayor typically gives to it. It’s a response that asks his audience to believe that those who question the city’s priorities in setting up a public art program in this way just don’t grasp the basics of how the general fund works, or perhaps are just crazy.

Here’s some observations:

(1) The city of Ann Arbor’s leaders have invested a vast amount of time, effort and energy to establish a public art program that has a funding stream that’s not subject to the same year-to-year budgetary process that general fund expenditures go through, and which need not compete for attention with other kinds of expenditures on a year-to-year basis.

(2) The city of Ann Arbor’s leaders have invested a vast amount of time, effort and energy to develop an evaluation metric for funding non-profits (which provide human services) out of the general fund that is subject each and every year to the politics of an intense budgetary process, and which must compete for attention with all the other general fund expenditures each and every budget year.

Based on (1) and (2), I don’t think it’s crazy to conclude that Ann Arbor’s leaders place a higher priority on acquiring physical pieces of art than they do on support services for poor unfortunate people. I’m not saying that this apparent priority ranking is a logical consequence of (1) and (2) that comes out when you apply modus ponens — I’m just saying it ain’t crazy.

So when the mayor sees a demonstration in front of city hall that’s critical of a piece of art — as a kind of proxy for the priority ranking reflected in (1) and (2) — I think that he would better serve the community to come up with a more respectful response than to try to educate people about the general fund, or to profess puzzlement that anybody could possibly protest art. In my view, the mayor’s response — which trades on a vague accusation of ignorance or bizarre thinking — diminishes our public discourse, which ultimately diminishes our community.

The key to understanding the art fund is that the art has to be part of the project. Human services can’t be part of a project, it’s not even bricks and mortar.

It has been repeated many times in the press that none of the money that goes into the art fund can be used for general fund expenses. In fact the ordinance says so.