What Makes the World Go 'Round

I attend lots of cultural events.  I subscribe to most of the organizations whose presentations I attend.  I donate, beyond the cost of the subscription, to most of the ones to which I subscribe.  You have to donate.  Ticket sales provide less than half of what cultural/arts organizations need to survive.  Any arts organization that could do no more than fill a performance hall would go out of business.  And if they charged enough for tickets to pay their bills with the gate, no one would buy the tickets.  They'd be too expensive.  It's up to the devoted patrons to make up the difference with donations.  And grants from the Knight Foundation, the County, and other funders are critical.

The same is true of other settings.  The reason politicians don't want to have to rely only on public funding is that they want to spend much more money than the public will give them, either governmentally or by limited personal donations.  They rely heavily on the big donors.

One of the invariable features of public or community radio is that it relies on donations from listeners.  And the fund drives always make the point that it is a small proportion of the audience who donate to keep the station in business.

Someone recently told me about an amazing public museum somewhere in Arkansas.  From what I gather, it's a museum of Americana, from the earliest days to now.  The building is fabulous new architecture, and the collection is impressive.  The museum is free to the public.  This project was organized and paid for by Alice Walton (a Walmart heir) and several of her very rich friends.

Bill Gates, with support from Warren Buffett, have pooled a tremendous amount of money to effect public projects (education and otherwise) here and in other countries.

We see more modest versions of that here in BP, too.  We charge ourselves almost the highest ad valorem property tax rate we easily could, because we are a unique, and uniquely limited, community, and we need to support ourselves in unusual ways.  What we charge ourselves isn't enough, and even if we don't, for who knows what reason, decide to charge ourselves more, we make part of it up in other ways.  We charge ourselves non ad valorem fees, too.  We have to, because we need the money.  But even that isn't enough, which limits our ability to be a proper municipality.

One thing we have done, which is like the arts/culture organizations, or political candidates, is relied on the extra efforts, and extra devotion, of some of our neighbors.  We have public sculpture, because some of our neighbors have given of themselves financially to buy it, and donate it to the Village.  We have a Foundation, and it provides what it does, because many more of our neighbors make personal donations.  All of that is what has to happen, because taxes don't cut it, like ticket sales don't cut it.  Sometimes, public policy or vision is lacking.

Very recently, when I was on the Commission, I asked my Commission colleagues for a few things.  I asked them to task the Parks and Parkways Board to give us a unified median plan.  I also asked them to approve renaming the streets in BP, to reflect the old names these streets had, as well as the numerical names they have now.  I was disappointed, and surprised, to have had both requests declined.  To the extent that I could explore the feeling against these two requests, the answer seemed to be that the Village could not afford to improve the medians, or to buy new street signs.  But I wasn't asking for that.  I wasn't asking for money.

My vision was that we-- some BP residents, selected BP residents, many BP residents, maybe most BP residents-- would donate to create these improvements.  The Village recently improved a median in 114th Street.  But the money for the new plantings didn't come from Village coffers.  It came from personal donations.  I live on 119th Street.  There's a median in front of my house.  If there was a plan for what could and should go in that median, I would donate to provide it.  I'm sure a number of my neighbors would, too.

Maybe it's sad to say that many good things wouldn't happen without the extra dedication of a relatively few people, but that's generally true.  And we have those few people living right here in BP.  We have people who are interested and dedicated, and they show over and over how reliable and generous they are.  It's true that many people don't have that kind of vision, but that doesn't stop the people who do.  And it's those kinds of dedicated extra efforts that seem to make the world go 'round.