today is the day everyone. we can bring back the Oklahoma Art in Public Places Program. all we have to do is get NO votes on SB1859. they are voting today. contact your state Senator and ask them to stand with arts and culture by voting NO. if this bill passes it will make the program funding be optional. this is in the name of saving money in light of the general revenue shortfall. they compare their plan to what texas has. here is what i have to say to that... 1) the ok art in public place program has zero impact on general revenue and will not save any money there. 2) currently it IS optional in that you can opt out of placing public art and giving the funds for the project to the state public art program. so the decision to have public art in a specific spot is already there while maintaining a funding source that has zero impact on general fund. 3) if program is not given a guaranteed funding source there is ZERO security for any of the staff on this program that theyre position has any certainty at all and it makes it very difficult to budget for projects with so much uncertainty 4) texas already funds the arts and public art at a lower level than we do. we have a proud arts culture in this state going back a long time and should be protecting it, not slowly chipping away at it piece by piece. so today we can save the public arts in oklahoma and protect a proud tradition bu getting our state senators to vote NO on SB1859, or we can watch our lawmakers continue to slowly chip away at arts in oklahoma. please contact your state senator and as many others as you can. we can do this, and all it takes is 5min from each of us. here is a link to all of oklahomas state senators: oksenate.gov/Senators/Default.aspx?selectedtab=0
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 14:43:12 +0000