KC's cultural institutions need tax support from entire metro area

Kansas City Star

March 24, 2008

There has been a steady stream of dreary news about the tough financial times faced by many cultural and arts groups that draw audiences from around the region.

To name a few:

** Liberty Memorial and the World War I Museum have asked for $620,000 more each year from Kansas City municipal coffers.

** Union Station has requested a 5-cent property tax increase, also from the city.

** The price tag of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts project has climbed to $400 million, with much yet to be raised.

Most of these community cultural assets probably will have their aid cut, not raised, in the city's proposed budget.

Kansas City, for obvious historic reasons, is the location for almost all our important metropolitan cultural institutions. Many were founded when Johnson County and the Northland were farmland and small towns, not the population centers they have become today.

With the city experiencing serious financial shortfalls, isn't it time that the responsibility for supporting these cultural institutions be shared by the entire region that benefits from them?

'We know half of the audiences for all the arts and cultural organizations are from Kansas,' said Joan Israelite, executive director of the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City.

The museums, the zoo, the performing arts, etc., all are a big part of our local quality of life. And from an economic development perspective, they are amenities that are important to attracting investment and smart people to the Kansas City area.

'The battle today is about attracting talent,' said Bob Marcusse, president of the Kansas City Area Development Council. 'There's an expectation a community has a certain level of cultural and social amenities.

'If those amenities are not available, we won't be winners in the effort to attract and retain world-class talent.'

Perhaps it's time to revive the bistate cultural district.

'Many people believe the bistate cultural district activating authority has expired, but it's still in place,' Israelite said. 'At some point it needs to be revisited, because it's still the best solution to provide world-class arts and cultural offerings for our metropolitan audiences.'

And now, free of the poison-pill load of subsidizing professional sports, a regional sales tax dedicated to the arts and cultural needs of the community might make it.

The original idea of a bistate cultural district was conceived in the early 1990s as a broad-based way to generate support for cultural offerings that appeal to regional audiences. After persistent lobbying, it was approved by the state legislatures of Missouri and Kansas in 1995.

Ever since that unprecedented achievement in interstate diplomacy, however, the arts have had to take a back seat to other interests.

In the mid-1990s, cultural groups that spearheaded the effort were asked to stand aside to allow the Union Station restoration to be the first project to benefit from the new tax. They were promised that it would be temporary and that the next time around the arts would have their turn.

Then along came the lease-renewal demands of our professional sports teams. The bistate tax was hijacked to become the proposed vehicle to finance the half billion dollars in improvements that the Royals and Chiefs wanted to stay at the Truman Sports Complex.

Knowing how tough it would be to ask area voters to underwrite wealthy sports team owners, particularly for a deal negotiated solely by Jackson County, those who crafted Bistate II sweetened the proposal by promising that 50 percent of the proceeds would go to arts groups. That unwieldy plan failed miserably at the polls in 2004.

Eventually, Jackson County voters agreed to pay the freight for the sports complex overhaul.

Now that the sports battle is over, the arts should have their due.

Since the cultural district legislation remains in effect at the state level, it only would take approval by the legislatures in the five primary metropolitan counties to put it on the ballot

The biggest challenge might be a more palatable name to sell the proposal. 'Bistate' may be repugnant at this point.

How about the Greater Kansas City Arts and Cultural Fund? It captures both the geography and the spirit of what it could accomplish for the community.

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