||| FROM SAN JUAN ISLANDS MAKERS GUILD |||
County Council has passed the new Cultural Access Initiative that will invest 1/10th of 1% of sales tax in valuable programs that enrich all ages of our community, across all islands in the San Juans.
This initiative creates a fund of aprox. $800,000 a year for classroom, community, and organization services – and will serve as a base fund that attracts matching funding and services. With visitor purchases providing a large portion of this funding, it is an excellent resource to enrich our local community, at minimal local cost.
Thank you to Manny Cawaling at INSPIRE WA for helping develop this at the state wide level, and cheers to San Juan as the FIRST rural county to bring it to life!
Special thanks to Councilmembers Wolfe and Minney for their support, and to the dozens of organizations who have championed this initiative.
Creativity, Innovation, and Wonder ahead!!
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Thank you to everyone who wrote letters, spoke up, and helped to make this happen; and to our county council members for passing it. Artists contribute greatly to our local and state economies, inspire us, and entertain us. The arts on Orcas Island reflect the best of our community, and the money will go to great use.
When this new program begins in 2025, the lead agency adminstering it is SJC Parks and Fair. The County will issue information well in advance. Watch for news to come.
It is at least partly this kind of out-of-control Tax-and-Spend insanity that cost the Democratic party both houses of congress and the white house this year, with unknown but potentially terrible consequences for all reasonable people. For both lame duck councilors to vote for a regressive and ill-defined tax, taking $800,000 of our money to hand out to their political comrades via “grants” is simply shameful. How dare they try to sneak this past us! And lets not forget the 10% for administration ; there’s an unnecessary $80k job handing out OUR MONEY for “cultural access”. Whatever that is supposed to mean!
I hope that repealing this legislated theft is the first order of business from the new council!
Ken, I thought I’d share a little info to hopefully assuage some of your frustration. It’s not always obvious, but the arts and the artistic vibe on the islands greatly contribute to our economy. Investing in the arts sector with a small 1/10th of 1% of sales tax will help the arts contribute more, which helps the overall economy. The cultural access money will help not only the arts but also cultural institutions, schools, and environmental (science-based nonprofits). You’ll see positive effects for even sectors that are not obvious, like real estate sales, and environmental restoration, and schools performing better (that helps a lot of families). Statewide, the creative sector accounts for nearly 20% of Washington State’s economy, contributing nearly $120 billion annually to the state GDP, according to a report released by the Washington State Department of Commerce. It also shows that the creative sector employed 383,001 workers, which accounted for 9% of total employment. While the majority of the industry is located in urban centers, creative economy jobs can be found in every corner of the state.
We hope this investment will eventually make you proud.
Personally, I don’t care about the few extra pennies or so that this hidden tax will impose. It won’t change my life in any way. I admire creative people and enjoy their contributions to our quality of life in SJC.
What i do find distasteful is being gaslighted with non-facts presented as support for a typical end-of-term giveaway by a failed council. Does anyone remember the culvert-to-nowhere salmon project that Ms. Wolf tried to jam down the throats of Orcas landowners who were unfortunate enough to own property that would have been adversely affected by her decision?
Ayn, I applaud your enthusiasm for the creative arts. You made several eye-opening assertions of fact without citation to any reference. Are you including Boeing in your calculation of the quantum contribution of the “arts” to our economy?
I came late to this ordinance and feel conflicted. Not by the small amount we residents will pay if tourism continues to plague our summers but the obvious tactics involved in seeking to fix a problem that does not exist. We have an incredible number of non-profits per capita and much of their work and scant employment of locals is important. Most apply for and receive government grants of various types to stay viable.
As I sat listening to the line up of supporters, nearly all persons involved in schools or non-profits who will directly benefit I realized the certainty of passage.
The prudent person test will be seeing what projects are granted once the feeding frenzy begins with good for art and culture a most fuzzy outcome.
If this county can’t do much more to build affordable housing, including local taxing opportunities (if we aren’t in full throated tax revolt by then), there will be no sustainable island culture or arts or thriving schools or working families with kids who may benefit from this tax in the way it was orchestrated and portrayed.
Thanks, Steve, for your comment about the confusion at the county level about a realistic solution to our housing problem,
Several years ago, I wrote to our county councilman for District 2 about a proposed solution to the perennial “housing affordability crisis” which perpetuates a government-imposed solution that primarily benefits certain entrenched NGO interests at the expense of the community.
My recommendation was to identify open land with access to utilities for creation of a new housing community using manufactured housing. Not tacky trailers or doublewides, but architecturally esthetic mobile structures that can be carried on the ferry, trucked to the site, assembled and inhabited ih a matter of weeks. They call these “park models”.
I received no response whatsoever.
Though I too am conflicted as to the final outlay of such funds, I will also offer my “congratulations.” My conflict lies in the notion that funds for cultural and art events in the San Juans generally means funds for more tourism. I know, I know, it’s for both “us and them.” That is, for all 20,000 of us… and all 1,000,000 of them.
And though I’m one who doesn’t normally advocate for more tourism, in the spirit of promoting the richness of our island’s past cultural heritage I’ve often wished that we might honor the former native inhabitants of this region by helping them build a caretakers house and an interpretive center out on Madrona Point in hopes that they might re-open the area for education and visitation. It’s a special place in the world and it deserves recognition as such. I’ve often felt that this is a no-brainer, that it would be a two-fer for both the tribe and us, and it has generally always had sort of a “full-circle” kind of feeling to me.
I know Peter Fisher, and a few others have been working on this possibility for years… perhaps some of the funds from this could be used to further their efforts and make such a dream come true?