Separately, the early projects funded by the percent for arts funding undermined public support for public art funding in general. That disapproval then caused the arts millage to fail. It is hard to believe that the tiny millage for funding arts could not acquire majority support. That is the harm the original program did to public art in general.

One concern I often hear is that we have spent huge sums on art but it is not produced by local artists. As I understand, Council believes that publicly financed art cannot favor local artists over those from other communities or countries. If our method of financing public art is the reason we cannot favor our own artists, then we need to establish a funding method that allows us to prefer our own arts community.

Rather than using tax dollars to purchase art, we need to set up a program that encourages private donation. Any private party can choose to buy local art without any question of legality. Unless we can find a way to use public dollars to buy local art, it is time to turn our efforts to organizing private art funding.