Dear City of Ottawa - My Ottawa STILL Includes Culture!!!!!

I had my husband help write the following letter which i have sent to City Hall and various Representatives. This is ridiculous. Why do we still have to keep fighting this?
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Welcome to Dumbed Down City, population –you.

Once again actions have preceded thought. One wonders at this fallibility for this century of advancements points towards an apex of human understanding. A good hoodwinking it is. While city hall execs get the boot with hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts, the arts get the shaft once again. I am ashamed that we still have to keep fighting about keeping Arts and Culture alive in this town when it has been proven time and time again, that we pump money into the Ottawa system.

As an Ottawa Tax Payer, who pays over $4000 per year in Property Taxes, and one who has paid to use City of Ottawa Facilities to rehearse as an artist and who is one who enjoys all arts, from paintings, to theatre, to music, I DO NOT support the 100% elimination of funding for festivals and the 42% reduction of funding for the arts and I want that money reinstated before the budget is passed.

While City Hall has rarely been charitable with its arts community, the source of funding has trickled. Mayor O’Brien is now preparing to park his Benz on the trickle lest it become a flow.

Let’s be clear, no arts community expects blank-cheque charity. Any artist knows that art is only true art when hard fired in the kiln of the hungry. And while I applaud a politician whose intent is clearly stated, I find nothing to applaud in a community that believes zero means zero without knowing the cost of zero. The cost is always that which we see least, the easiest cut to make.

Unfortunately the cut and the cost will be a struggling arts identity that will continue to struggle for less and less funding. While not forced out of it their theatres and dance halls, artists will have to charge more, and work in worsening conditions. Audiences will have less and less choice, perhaps giving up the search all together. And let’s be clear, business will also suffer as a result. Easier isn’t just the purview of government as audiences drive instead to see American artists on boxy-big screens.

If the cuts continue, when and if the enlighten Ottawa goes searching for a piece of art outside of the mainstream, the cost will be made prohibitive by semi-professional or amateur art groups eking out meager existences. The beauty of art is its birth in a crucible of supportive attendance—give and take.

Don’t get me wrong I believe in the Ottawa Senators. I believe, however, that there cow palace was planned with business concerns in mind and not a search for a city’s heart. Mayor O’Brien’s search again for a zero tax increase (har har) will continue with an attack on the only other thing that remains to define a city’s heart--it’s art.

Paris was not romantic Paris until the artists invaded Montmarte. And Ottawa will never be anything other than dumb Ottawa if the artists have to lay claim to distant acres to get some funding attention.

To be perfectly crystal clear:

1. any cuts to festivals, arts and heritage programs and organizations are unacceptable;
2. any proposed increases to funding already committed should be followed-through; and
3. that the City of Ottawa consider a budgeting mechanism so that this does not happen again.

I urge you to rethink this obsurd proposition. Saying NO to culture is saying no to your city.
My Ottawa Still Includes Culture!

Respectfully,

Chantale Plante
Public Servant , Tax Payer AND Artist