No to arts funding
The May 12 the Daily Question asks, “As a Miami-Dade resident, what’s a bigger concern to you: Traffic congestion or children being shot and killed?”
Regardless of your answer, the question highlights the pressing problems and priorities that Miami-Dade residents, need our elected officials to address with our hard-earned tax dollars.
In that same edition there is an opinion piece, County should be a full partner in funding the arts, co-authored by three multimillionaires who sit atop multibillion dollar organizations. Are they serious?
As the article states, the vast majority of South Florida companies already support the arts, but these gentlemen want to throw the burden onto the taxpayers’ backs?
They speak of the arts as some huge economic engine, but who really thinks that another concert hall or art gallery is going to fuel the solution to our many dire needs? They say they only want a mere $7 million for next year. Perhaps that’s chicken feed to them, but it’s meals-on-wheels for our needy elderly shut-ins.
May I suggest that these gentlemen suffer extreme affluenza that has radically and perversely distorted the priorities Miami-Dade taxpayers should be called upon to fund.
John S. Schwartz, Miami
This story was originally published May 16, 2016 at 9:44 PM with the headline "No to arts funding."