Toronto City Council approves billboard tax funding for arts and culture

Although the result was not seriously in doubt, it’s a relief to learn that Toronto City Council voted today to approve using a $22.5 million reserve fund from an outdoor advertising tax for arts and culture funding.

The city’s Executive Committee had approved the plan and forwarded it to Council last week.

The extra money will be doled out in annual installments, with the first $6 million addition to arts funding coming in 2013. The total extra arts funding will increase by $17.5 million over the next four years.

According to the Toronto Arts Foundtion, until the new money starts to flow, Toronto is the last among Canada’s big cities in terms of per-capita arts funding.

Ever since voting on the goal of funding arts at the rate of $25 per capita in 2003, one fiscal obstacle after another has been placed in the way of actually putting extra money into the system.

Given inflation — especially in the cost of performance and exhibition space in Toronto — the $25 of 2013 is worth less than 10 years ago. But the city’s arts workers and patrons will celebrate even this devalued victory.

The chief proponents for the billboard tax plan, BeautifulCity.ca, are justifyably patting themselves on the back today.

BeautifulCity co-founder Devon Ostrom issued a great thank you to all the individual and institutional supporters and activivists “that multiplied our efforts and made the BeautifulCity.ca Alliance an unstoppable, ridiculously persistent force for making Toronto a better place.”

John Terauds