On Wednesday, February 29, I went with Ann Mosey, executive director of the Northfield Arts Guild, to the Minnesota Citizens for the Arts Arts Advocacy Day at the Capitol. Along with a team of other folks from the southeastern part of Minnesota, we talked to most of the legislators serving this area including Northfield's Sen. Al Dekruif and Rep. Kelby Woodard.
One message of the day was "Please don't divert Legacy funds from arts and culture to a Vikings stadium" and all the legislators we spoke with agreed that this should not be done because it was clearly not the intention of the voters to use arts and culture funds for this kind of enterprise. The Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution was adopted in November 2008 (by 56% of the voters to 39% against). The Amendment dedicates 3/8 of one percent of the state’s sales tax for 25 years to these funds:
33 percent to a clean water fund,
33 percent to an outdoor heritage fund,
14.25 percent to a parks and trails fund, and
19.75 percent to an arts and cultural heritage fund.
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Northfield has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in arts and culture funding in the last year as well as additional dollars from the parks and trails fund.
Northfield's artists, art events and art organizations help make Northfield a wonderful place to live, draw visitors to town, and provide jobs; I wanted to convey to legislators that arts funding helps spur economic development rather than being an easy to cut extra. You can write or call your legislators to give them your opinion.
