The Buncombe County Commissioners will be asked to give over $7 million in money (from taxpayers who can’t afford to buy their children food or shoes) to outside agencies. The spiel now is that these organizations supplant tax-paid services. An example might be the Asheville Art Museum, a subject so questionable mayoral and city council campaigns have been launched solely on the platform of giving the museum no more city dollars. The museum wants $2.2 million.
The museum, located in Pack Square, is in the middle of a $24 million upgrade. That amount includes construction, endowment, and expenses from the fund raising campaign. The construction will create new exhibition galleries, expanded collections storage, an education suite of studio classrooms, a multimedia lecture hall, a larger library, and a rooftop sculpture terrace and café.
If it’s not too late, I would like to add a community awareness project to the list of applicants. Anybody not appreciating why the arts and nanny statism must be supplemented with tax dollars is surely in need of outreach and education. We could create an Office of Community Awareness and staff it with community awareness coordinators and navigators. For a mere county investment of $60,000, returns on our investment would be over 2000 percent. I’d be in charge of this organization, and my first duties would be to hire a lawyer and accountant to help me with a successful application for next year.
The local daily lists the other applicants.
