Mayor Naheed Nenshi blasted a councillor’s proposal to slash the public art budget in response to the economic downturn, telling people at a luncheon for the arts Thursday to lobby his colleagues against the idea.
In a motion council will debate Monday, Coun. Peter Demong wants to freeze all public art spending until at least 2016, and reallocate all unused art funds from older projects.
At the annual mayor’s luncheon for the arts, Nenshi called that idea “terribly short-sighted” and unnecessary, since art budgets amount to only one per cent or less of infrastructure projects.
“If one is going to use what’s going on in the world and the very real pain that people are feeling in the community as an excuse to go after a program one never liked in the first place, there are words one can use to describe that, which I will not use,” Nenshi said to close out the afternoon awards celebration.
It was a friendly crowd for Nenshi’s message. Attendees, a mixture of artists and business executives, booed when Nenshi first brought up Demong’s proposal.
“You can imagine how I feel about this,” the mayor said over the boos.
Although critics complain that sculptures or murals alongside public buildings are nice-to-haves, Nenshi argued that nobody complains about a project’s paint or landscaping budget.
“We just assume that the building isn’t finished unless we paint or plant grass and trees. So why in the world would we believe that a piece of public infrastructure is finished if it does not involve public art?”
Over his two terms on council, Demong has repeatedly criticized the public art program and the large sums allocated to beautification projects. Last spring, he endorsed a measure that would limit the public art spending to only 0.5 per cent of a project’s budget for any portion above $50 million — a measure Nenshi also supported.
Demong is advocating a total freeze on the program because of low oil prices and economic downturn, although council won’t learn for a month how the provincial budget will alter the city’s infrastructure grants.
Nenshi urged his audience of artists and others Thursday to advocate against Demong’s cut.
“There are people in this room who are property developers. All of you have (the) phone numbers of council members on your speed dial,” he remarked, at an event sponsored by a major inner-city property manager.
“There are seven members of council here today. I’m sure they’d love to hear your opinion on this matter.”
Coun. Ward Sutherland said on Twitter the mayor’s remark about developer influence is “inappropriate, and can imply many things.”
Last December, Nenshi also irked colleagues when he said after a Chamber of Commerce that people should lobby particular councillors to ease zoning restrictions on secondary suites. The following week, council resisted any firm action on the policy reform Nenshi has long pushed for.