麻豆视频

The impact of cultural organizations in the community cannot be denied.

Not only do they offer music, history, literature and the arts with events and exhibits, but they also provide a variety of programs, many of which are free. Those programs are often a hit with young people.

These agencies are a tremendous asset to our city.

That鈥檚 why we鈥檙e lamenting the money they lost through grants from the city. The Estevan Art Gallery and Museum, the Souris Valley Museum, Souris Valley Theatre and Estevan Arts Council have all seen their funding dropped between 10 to 20 per cent.

Now, before we go pointing the finger of blame at Estevan city council, this isn鈥檛 necessarily council鈥檚 fault. This is another repercussion from last year鈥檚 provincial budget. The city lost nearly a million dollars in government funding, thanks to a quirk in the provincial revenue sharing formula, and the government鈥檚 crushing decision to repeal two-thirds of the grants in lieu of taxation.

Not only did that cost the city a million dollars for last year, but it鈥檚 going to be a million a year in perpetuity, or at least until the grants in lieu program is restored. (Don鈥檛 hold your breath on that happening).

You probably don鈥檛 want to have the capital budget account for the bulk of your spending cuts, so the operating budget is going to feel the brunt. Grants to cultural organizations will be among the victims.

So cultural agencies have to look at reduced programs, layoffs, phasing out summer students and other expenses because they don鈥檛 have the money they used to.

These organizations also have fewer grants to access, in part, due to reduced provincial funding.

If they were hoping the city would offset some of the reduced provincial grant funding, that would have been a mistake. But they knew it wouldn鈥檛 be realistic to expect the city to come forward with more money at a time in which the city has less money to work with.

The employees and the board members of these cultural organizations are smarter than that.

The job losses are arguably the toughest part, since most of these organizations operate with one to three employees, and some staff members are part-timers. It鈥檚 never easy to bring in a talented, hard-working person who, in many cases, has relocated to the community to work here, and then let that person go for a reason that had nothing to do with performance.

In a perfect world, cultural organizations wouldn鈥檛 need funding from the city. They would be fully owned and operated by the private sector. And in a perfect world, our sports and recreation facilities would be operated by the private sector. Our tax dollars would go to infrastructure and to other operations.

But this isn鈥檛 a perfect world. In a community the size of Estevan, for these cultural agencies to operate, they need public support, just like in a small city, your sports and recreation facilities are often publicly funded and operated.

So it鈥檚 vital for these cultural organizations to receive some taxpayer dollars.

After all, our community is richer when we have facilities and people who provide arts and culture to our residents.聽