Public support of art

(Re: Talk of the Town, column, the Local, March 11)

What a breath of fresh air from the Gibsons mayor and the public art committee.

Both privately and professionally, I have spent a lifetime advocating for creative artists. I, too, believe that visual, literary and performance arts should be paid for, just like sidewalks and plumbing, and not solicited as a donation from the artist.

I also say this with respect to charities that need to fundraise: a patron can buy or commission the art to donate for auction or display, and in that way, support both the artist and the fundraising organization. To repeat a quote I cannot attribute: parking meters make more per hour than artists. That is very true, never more than in the past year.

And, just like tourism does with accommodation levies, levels of government need to allow taxes or fees to be extracted for support of public arts. Adopting policies of designating a reasonable percentage from developers for community amenities like public art, as they already do locally with parkland and libraries, would go a long way to enrich our environments in all the senses.

Gail Hunt, Gibsons