by P.D. Lesko

In July 2012 Deb Polich (pronounced Polick) was named the new executive director of the Ann Arbor Arts Alliance.

In August, says Polich, “We—the Arts Alliance Board and myself—had a meeting with Mayor Hieftje and Council members Taylor (Christopher Taylor, Ward 3) and Lumm (Jane Lumm, Ward 2), and we told them that a ballot proposal to fund the Percent for Art program with a millage was not a good idea. We just didn’t have enough time, or enough data to put together a good campaign.”

Despite her professional misgivings, Polich became co-chair of the ballot committee that urged Ann Arbor taxpayers to “B For Art.” Polich is the wife of Downtown Development Authority Board member (and Michigan Theater Executive Director) Russ Collins. Critics of the Percent for Art funding mechanism, including City Council members Marcia Higgins, Stephen Kunselman, Sally Hart Petersen, Sumi Kailasapathy and Jane Lumm have repeatedly alleged that the program is illegally skimming money from utilities and capital projects, including the city’s road repair fund.

In 2007, Hieftje was the lone sponsor of ordinance that funded pubic art projects, in large part, by skimming 1 percent from capital projects, including water, sewer and road projects. He modeled his ordinance after the one in place in Seattle—an ordinance that had been found to be illegally using money from utility projects for art. Two years before Hieftje sponsored his Percent for Art resolution, Seattle residents had sued their own city, and officials were forced to return millions to the utility funds. In their lawsuit against the Seattle Percent for Art program, plaintiffs led by Rud Okeson argued that city officials used City Light (a city utility) as a “cash cow” and charged it for a variety of expenses that were illegitimate, including some art projects.

After the August 6, 2012 primary election which saw Kailasapathy and Sally Hart Petersen replace long-time Hieftje allies Sandi Smith and Tony Derezinski, Hieftje and his remaining Hive Mind Collective faced the humiliating prospect of having the high-profile Percent for Art ordinance repealed. Lumm, Petersen and Kailasapathy have been vocal in their support of local art, but insistent that funding safety services take priority and that road and sewer funds not be used for art projects.

The ballot question committee CITIZENS FOR ART IN PUBLIC PLACES was formed on August 30, 2012, three weeks after Kailasapthy and Petersen won their respective elections. The address of the group on filing papers is 1100 North Main Street Ste. 106B—the address of the Ann Arbor Arts Alliance. Hieftje, his political allies and supporters, took the question of supporting the use of public dollars for art directly to the Ann Arbor voters. A ballot committee to support a millage proposal to fund art through property tax dollars was formed, Polish co-chaired the committee, and Proposal B was off and running.

Deb Polich’s influence looms large in the local arts community, but her office is modest. There is barely enough room for a desk, a book case and two chairs. Her first floor windows, however, overlook Argo Pond, opposite Argo Park; it’s a room with a view. Polich (pictured right) is a Libra, she says, and the best way to describe how she often sees issues is in 50 shades of gray (not her exact words, but you get the gist). During the course of a discussion about the failure of Proposal B, Polich leans across her desk and says, “The only thing I can say definitively about the Prop B vote is that the proposal was defeated. What that defeat means remains open to interpretation.”

That response is infuriatingly familiar to the no-frills-before-roads proponents who want to see the back of John Hieftje’s Percent for Art program, and money re-allocated to roads and other necessary services. Some suggest that the outcome of the vote was a definitive answer from the voters: no public money for art. Others, like Polich, and newly-elected Ward 2 Council member Sally Hart Petersen, are less sure. Petersen’s Ward 2 Council colleague Jane Lumm, however, immediately put forward a resolution to terminate the Percent for Art program based on the outcome of the vote. At a November meeting of City Council after Proposal B was defeated, Lumm said, “Funds used for public art would be better used for street repair, parks or other city expenses. Art pieces funded through the Percent for Art plan have had less than universal acceptance.”

“I’ll admit there were times when small, local vendors had to wait to be paid, but I never left anyone hanging,” says Polich.

It’s not hard to see why Polich had problems paying Artrain’s bills. Between 2008 and 2010, Artrain’s end of year tax returns indicate that the organization finished it fiscal year in deficit. The organization lost more than $1 million dollars in total, and overall revenues plummeted from $950,000 per year to $237,000. In 2008, Artrain owed $1.3 million dollars to two local banks, and a member of the organization’s Board, 78-year-old Lambert Althaver, loaned Artrain $165,000. By 2010, when Polich boarded the Arts Alliance Express, Artrain owned Lambert $182,000, though the organization’s bank loans had been paid down to $337,625 by selling off $1.06 million in investments and other assets. Total debt was still $586,255.

In many ways, by moving to the Arts Alliance in the middle of the battle over the city’s Percent for Art program, Polich went from the frying pan and into the fire.

Despite recommending to Hieftje that City Council back away from putting Proposal B on the November 2012 ballot, Polich and her Board of Directors promptly ignored their own advice. Polich was asked to co-chair the  CITIZENS FOR ART IN PUBLIC PLACES and said yes. She threw the Arts Alliance into the battle, as well. When asked why, she doesn’t exactly answer the question, “We advocate for the arts community.”

The tiny non-profit Arts Alliance (revenues were under $130,000 in 2010) plowed over $7,000 into the  CITIZENS FOR ART IN PUBLIC PLACES. In total, Polich provided 40 percent of the ballot committee’s total cash and in-kind donations from a single source, the nonprofit she runs. This use of donated funds to support the political pet projects of the Hive Mind Collective was duplicated by the Board of the Friends of the Ann Arbor Public Library. The Board of that nonprofit, without a member vote, donated $25,000 to the ballot proposal PAC formed to support the passage of a millage for the construction of a new downtown library. In 2011 the Friends of the Library organization lost money, as well, and the $25,000 donation amounted to a whopping 15 percent of the group’s $169,267 in revenue.

“But art is good for the economy,” says Polich, her voice rising, arms out-stretched, palms upright.

She is incredulous that taxpayers don’t see the obvious. Local critics would say Polich is out-of-touch. Those critics have an ally in Dr. Peter Singer, a professor at Princeton University who teaches bioethics. In 2009, Singer published The Life You Can Save, a book about charitable giving and the use of public money to fund non-profits. Singer argues that philanthropy for the arts or cultural activities is “morally dubious.” While Polich points out that one of the Arts Alliance’s major initiatives is Arts Education, Dr. Singer has refuted such arguments thusly: “I can see how that would be a worthwhile thing to do. But I’m not sure how well it compares with saving kids from dying from diarrhea or malaria.”

In the face of Singer’s brutally logical ethical arguments, whether art in Ann Arbor should be funded with public money suddenly becomes a very small, selfish, insular debate. For a laugh to break the tension, watch a 2009 interview with Dr. Singer by Stephen Colbert.

Despite the efforts of Polich and others, the smell of smoke from the spectacular crash and burn of Proposal B still clouds the air around Hieftje. Cornered, and notoriously incapable of admitting his mistakes, Hieftje appointed a committee of Council members to “examine” the Percent for Art program. Political insiders suggest that Polich had no choice but to throw the Arts Alliance, its money, and its good name in front of the speeding train that is the public’s intense dislike of the Percent for Art program—a program which has become the ugly poster child of the public money for public art movement.

A political insider offers one possible explanation: “John Hieftje is incredibly vindictive. Had Polich and the Arts Alliance not played ball, it’s entirely possible when Russ Collins’s appointment on the DDA was up, Hieftje would have tossed Collins off the DDA Board, and out of the shrinking Council Majority’s inner circle. It’s still the place to be for political players. For the moment, at least. That’s changing. Watch how many people on Council talk to Hieftje at breaks versus, say, Jack Eaton, when he’s there.” Eaton ran against Hieftje ally Margie Teall and came within 18 votes of unseating her.

Hieftje and his long-time Council ally Margie Teall sit on the Board of the Michigan Theater, where Collins has been the CEO for three decades.

When asked what, if any, political payback she expects the Arts Alliance to reap from its support of Proposal B, Polich shrugs and provides the perfectly politic answer. “I’m not a politician. I really can’t tell you what other people might be thinking.”

That Polich can’t say “what other people might be thinking,” might be precisely the problem. Christopher Taylor, Hieftje and the many local politicos and Hive Mind supporters who threw their endorsements behind Proposal B, as well as the Percent for Art program, often have no idea what people other than their friends are thinking, or worse yet, don’t care to know.

“I believe the proposal failed because we didn’t have enough time to mount a successful campaign. We needed a year, 18 months…some ballot proposal committees take two years to plan and execute successful campaigns,” says Polich with a sigh. “Washtenaw county residents support art.”

The question remains why, then, the Percent for Art program has succeeded in doing little more than seriously irritating taxpayers and voters who respond to surveys that they love art?

“It’s the whole Hive Mind thing,” says A2Politico reader Dave D. in an email, “people want the roads fixed. Read my lips. Fix. The. Roads. People want police and fire. People want their damn leaves picked up and it’s become obvious that Hieftje and his people don’t care what taxpayers want. Tony D. went down with the Percent for Art ship, as did Rapundalo. Her support for the Percent for Art hit Margie Teall real hard. She came to losing. AnnArbor.com doesn’t have a lock on what’s “news” anymore. People read A2Politico, A2Journal, Detroit papers, Twitter, blogs, national news stories about transit, about Ann Arbor even. A2Politico writes about the “Hive Mind Collective” and it shows up in comments on AnnArbor.com stories about how great local government is doing thanks to Hiefje’s leadership. There’s some serious reality checking going on.”

For better or for worse, the Arts Alliance and Deb Polich represented one side of an argument that, in retrospect, only added fuel to an already raging political fire. Will the Arts Alliance get burned?

Despite having her professional opinions ignored by the pols involved, and despite the fact that Polich believes the Percent for Art Program has a “horrible PR problem,” she and her Board members chose to embraced the ballot proposal, and the Arts Alliance came out in favor of using public money to fund art in Ann Arbor. When asked if embracing the unpopular Percent for Art program was a tactical mistake, in true Libra form Polich gave two answers. At one point in the conversation she repeated her mantra: “We advocate for the arts community. It’s what we do.” At another point in the discussion when asked whether backing the millage proposal flew in the face of public opinion, Polich displayed a bit of bravado. “If my involvement with Proposal B, if my support of the Percent for Art program takes me down…so be it.”

She does worry about her professional reputation.

She is convinced that the public’s intense dislike for the Percent for Art program is the result of “failures” on the part of  politicians, members of the “hard-working and dedicated” Art Commission Board, and even failures linked to the art projects themselves (the $1 million dollar rain garden and fountain in front of City Hall—a sculpture that, one could argue, has elicited more derision than appreciation in the comment sections of local news blogs).

“How do we change the public perception of the Percent for Art program?” Polich asks. “What we need is more positive media coverage.”

That’s easier said than done on the Arts Alliance’s modest annual budget that supports Polich and three staffers. Turning the tide of public opinion in favor of the Percent for Art program “would take a fortune and several years,” says a U of M PR staffer via email. “It would be better to kill it, bring it back and call it something else…anything else. And even then, it would be a tough sell. Bottom line? Public opinion matters. That tiny bronze sculpture that people refer to as a ‘phallus’ in front of that immense City Hall are two concrete reminders that elected officials in Ann Arbor don’t care what people think.”

by P.D. Lesko

We begin with a fairytale: Once Upon A Time there were five Ann Arbor City Council members named Sandi Smith, Carsten Hohnke, Leigh Greden, Stephen Rapundalo and Tony Derezinski. They all unquestioningly supported Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art program. They did this while funding a $1 million dollar brass sculpture, which their subjects referred to as a “phallus” or “urinal,” in front of the New Municipal Castle. These Council members voted to cut police and fire staffing, and to slash services.

When their subjects complained about funding priorities, these Council members sniffed, in unison: “Let them eat art!”

And then they were gone—politically decapitated in one election cycle after the other.

The moral of the story?

This November, posters, signs and postcards urged voters to “B For Art.” On November 6th, voters replied clearly with a Bronx Cheer for Art: “No. Public. Tax. Dollars. For. Art.”

Naturally, like the elderly, white, rich AADL Library Board members (and friends) who, after their own bond proposal was soundly defeated, went on to mewl and puke that the public would just have to “educated” about why the money was “necessary,” Ward 4 Council member Marcia Higgins, faculty emeritus at the Institute of Ignoring the Electorate, turned back Ward 2 Council member Jane Lumm’s voter-mandated effort to repeal the Percent for Art ordinance by explaining that Council had not “made its case” to the electorate and needed to form a “committee of Council members” to better craft the message of why the Percent for Art program should be funded with public money.

The Theater of the Absurd was in full swing with Council members scrambling to compete for the Tony Award for most ludicrous reasoning to vote against their own clearly-stated positions on whether the Percent for Art ordinance should be repealed.

Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman stood on one foot and stuck the other foot into his ear as he explained how, as a long-time “critic” of the Percent for Art program, that he had nonetheless voted for it in 2007. In 2011, Kunselman, who would like to run for mayor, called the Percent for Art program funding mechanism “illegal.” At a September 2011 Council meeting, Kunselman said, “I’ve said it time and time again, transferring monies out of the street millage account to the art fund is illegal,” he said, “whether you did it by ordinance or any other means.” On November 19, 2012, fourteen months after slamming the program’s funding mechanism as “illegal,” Kunselman voted against the resolution to revoke the Percent for Art ordinance.

Sabra Briere, Ward 1 Council member, explained her vote against dissolving the Percent for Art program with twisted logic that AnnArbor.com readers found offensive. Briere told the local news blog, ”When we represent our constituents, we don’t represent only those who agree with us. We represent those who disagree with us. We don’t just represent the majority. We represent all the minority voices as well. I would really like an opportunity to hear those minority voices.”

Briere was brutally mocked in the comments: “Beautiful. Ms. Briere, why don’t we put the Per Cent For Art up for a public vote? If the Councilwoman doesn’t think the recent millage failure was a direct result of the fiasco of the recent projects slipped through under this program (City Center Water Fountain, City Center Shiny Glass Project Behind A Metal Detector), both of which were championed by the Ann Arbor Public Arts Commission supporters like Margaret Parker and Marsha Chamberlin, then she needs to get out and talk to the voters of the 1st Ward. She’s beginning to sound like the Mayor.”

What inside baseball players know, however, is that Percent for Art has become the Poster Child of the “ignore-the-voter,” knee-jerk politics of the Hieftje Hive Mind. In 2007, Hieftje alone introduced the resolution to skim 1 percent for art from capital projects, including water, sewer and road projects. He modeled his ordinance after the one in place in Seattle—an ordinance that had been found to be illegally using money from utility projects for art. In 2005 Seattle residents sued, and officials were forced to return millions to the utility funds. In their lawsuit against the Seattle Percent for Art program, plaintiffs led by Rud Okeson argued that city officials used City Light (a city utility) as a “cash cow” and charged it for a variety of expenses that were illegitimate, including some art projects.

Sound familiar? A portion of the salary for the city’s first art program administrator was paid for out of the city’s water fund.

It would have been easy to amend Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art ordinance to end funding taken from road, sewer and water projects, but Hieftje is notoriously incapable of admitting his mistakes. He was, in fact, chided for being thin-skinned in response to criticism and retaliatory in the face of political disagreements in a 2004 editorial in the Ann Arbor News. The paper editorialized:

“Hieftje’s largest failure is not one of vision, but leadership. Few are willing to publicly criticize Hieftje because they expect quick retaliation and there is good reason for that conclusion. He sprints to accept praise. His reaction to disagreement is shrill. Hieftje could not identify one thing he would do differently in his current term as mayor. He was, however, ready to head down a path of identifying the missteps of city employees until he was reminded that the question pertained to his own actions.”

Exempting utility funds would also have significantly reduced Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art fund. City records show that since 2007 Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art fund has siphoned $38,000 from the solid waste fund, $40,000 from the parks millage, $60,000 from the stormwater utility, $367,000 from the water utility, $539,000 from the city’s street millage, $907,000 from the city’s sewer utility, among other funds. According to city officials, about $2.2 million dollars has been moved into the Percent for Art fund. This means $1.37 million has been skimmed from Ann Arbor’s various utility funds. In an October 2012 report, the Percent for Art program was sitting on a $1.668 million balance. Of that amount, $856,997 was earmarked for projects, including $400,000 for art to decorate the East Stadium bridges and $150,000 for Argo Cascades. But those projects are still under review by the City Attorney. That means there are $810,276 dollars unallocated—including revenues from sewer projects ($451,955) and street millage projects ($241,951).

Ward 1 Council member Sumi Kailasapthy ran for Council and told voters clearly that she was not in favor of using tax dollars for public art, particularly in light of the fact that the city was cutting emergency services. In July 2012 Kailasapathy told the media that, “The city needs to rethink how it uses public dollars for art. She called the $750,000 bronze sculpture in front of city hall a ‘fiasco’ and said she questions the program’s legality….”

Ward 2 Council member Jane Lumm, similarly, ran for Council and told voters she was not in favor of using tax dollars for public art. When she ran, Lumm was critical of the fact that Ann Arbor had diverted more than $2.2 million to public art from water and sewer utilities, the streets millage, parks and solid waste.

Her opponent, a long-time incumbent, called Lumm’s position on tax money for public art “short-sighted.” She went on to roundly defeat Stephen Rapundalo in the November election.

The election of Council members to replace long-time unquestioning supporters of Hieftje’s Percent for Art program sent Hieftje and his consigliere Ward 3 Council member Christopher Taylor into damage control mode. The result? A ballot proposal to raise taxes to fund art co-sponsored by Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere, Taylor and Hieftje. To support the ballot proposal, The Citizens for Art in Public Places PAC was incorporated in August of 2012 by Hive Mind supporter Jeremy Peters.

Peters, as you may remember (or not), posted an October 2012 entry to Concentrate’s MEDC-supported blog in which Peters called political activists concerned with attacks on local transit by the Hieftje Hive Mind drones and their Borg colleagues on the AATA Board, “obstructionist.” Peters attacked activists supportive of the protection of parkland by the local Sierra Club and that group’s members, “obstructionist.” Peters attacked those who were concerned about raising taxes in support of public art while at the same time cutting emergency services, and planning to close fire stations as “obstructionist.” To drive home his argument, Peters invoked a Gospel straight from the Sainted Republican Bible of political screed by urging the “obstructionists” to just say YES! to county-wide transit no one wanted, to just say YES! to parkland for parking and to just say YES! to spending $110,000,000 for a new library—to make things better for “our children.” Peters, an openly gay man, alas, has no children. While Peters passed himself off as a reasonable-minded supporter of “our children,” art, county-wide transit, parkland for parking and public land for private development, he neglected to mention in his bio. was he was behind the The Citizens for Art in Public Places PAC.

This is because The Citizens for Art in Public Places was not about art in public places. It was about politics and saving political face for John Hieftje and other politicos who feared newly-elected Council members elected might vote to dissolve the 2007 Percent for Art ordinance.

The PACs donors included Ward 3 Council members Christopher Taylor and Stephen Kunselman, Ward 4 Council member Margie Teall, former Ward 1 Council member Sandi Smith and County Commish Conan Smith, who donated $250, but still hasn’t paid back county taxpayers for the taxpayer money he filched for per diems for which an outside audit revealed he should never have been paid. Hive Mind Grand Drone and DDA Board member and County Commish Leah Gunn, who was up to her neck in the library bond proposal, as well, donated to Peters’s PAC.

Downtown Development Authority Board member John Splitt was among the peck of pickled politicos who donated to Peters’s PAC. DDA staffer Susan Pollay donated, too. Notoriously tight-fisted Hieftje donated a whopping $650, more than he has donated to any of his Council pals. Ever. Debra Polich, spouse of DDA Board member Russ Collins donated, as did Collins. The Ann Arbor Arts Alliance, which Polich heads, donated $2,000 in cash, $1,132 in free office space and other services for a total of $6,388 in cash, goods and services. According to the group’s most recent 990 tax form, the Arts Alliance took in a total of $122,690 and lost $124,740.

DDA Board member Joan Lowenstein’s husband donated to the PAC as did Ward 5 Council member Chuck Wapehoski and Ward 2 Council member Sally Petersen. AADL Library Board member Jan Barney Newman cut The Citizens for Art in Public Places a generous check.

Hieftje, of course, was the lone-sponsor of the 2007 Percent for Art Ordinance, and the persistent attacks on the legality of the funding mechanism for the Percent for Art program have pushed him into a political corner. Hieftje went on the record saying that he was “confident” Proposal B would pass. Ann Arbor voters, however, find themselves once again thwarted by Council members who prefer to “study” the Percent for Art program and its funding mechanism after voters roundly rejected using public money to pay for public art. There is a bright side to this story, however. It begins like this:

We end with a fairytale: Once Upon A Time, on November 19, 2012 there were long-term Ann Arbor City Council members who refused to vote to dissolve Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art program after voters rejected a ballot proposal to raise taxes to pay for public art. While funding a $1 million dollar brass sculpture which residents now refer to as a “phallus” or “urinal” in front of the new city hall, these Council members voted to approve budgets which cut police and fire staffing and slash citizen services.

When taxpayers complained about funding priorities, these Council members called out in unison, “We support the formation of a committee of Council members to determine whether the public should be told to carry on and go eat art!”

Then, they were gone?

It was Karl Marx who said, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

By P.D. Lesko

In 2007, Ann Arbor City Council passed the Public Art Ordinance that sets aside one percent of funds from all public construction budgets for art projects — to a maximum of $250,000 per project. On the City of Ann Arbor web site, it says that John Hieftje “championed the Percentage for Art Program to provide consistent funding for public art to beautify the city for decades to come.”

Prior to crafting the ordinance, it’s not clear whether sponsor Hieftje, or more to the point, Ann Arbor’s City Attorney Stephen Postema (pictured right) knew about the Seattle, Washington class-action lawsuit, OKESON VERSUS SEATTLE, that had, in 2005, forced significant changes to that city’s Percent for Art Program. The suit was the first time that any Percent for Art ordinance was legally challenged. A Washington State court found the use of money from city-owned utilities to fund public art illegal, and on appeal the judge’s decision was upheld. The issue was one of nexus – electric and utility funds cannot be used on projects that have no relationship to the mission and purpose of the utility services.

In 2005, several customers of the Seattle City Light utility filed a class-action suit and sued the city over its appropriation of money from the utility for the then 32-year-old Percent For the Art program. According to coverage of the suit published in the Seattle Post Intelligencer on 2005:

In this lawsuit, a lower court judge ruled that City Light could not be required to participate in the One Percent for Art program but could spend funds on art. The ruling stipulates, however, that any artwork must address only the needs of the utility’s employees and customers. Artwork may be purchased to provide a more attractive working environment that increases productivity, for instance, but not to improve the appearance of a power facility in the eyes of the greater community. In other words, the funds could be spent to enhance employee offices but not to mitigate the impact of a power plant on the surrounding neighborhood.

In August of 2005, Americans for the Arts filed an amicus brief in the Percent for the Art lawsuit in Seattle. According to a press release from the organization:

Seattle’s One Percent for Art ordinance is a national model and has been emulated by dozens of cities nationwide. While the lawsuit only addresses its application to Seattle City Light, it is significant, because Seattle is renowned for its public art and because this is the first time, to our knowledge, any Percent for Art ordinance has been challenged in a court anywhere in the nation.  The Washington State Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments for this case to take place on September 14, 2005.

Despite intense lobbying from the art community in support of the city’s legal position, as well as support from the local newspaper, the Seattle plantiffs won their case.

Seattle city lawyers had argued that two projects funded with money from the city’s electric utility promoted energy conservation, an important element of City Light’s mission, because they were illuminated by low-voltage lights, an important innovation in conservation. Seattle judge Sharon Armstrong wasn’t persuaded. She found that Seattle could not use the conservation rationale to tap into utility funds “merely because it (a piece of art) mentions salmon, or contains illuminated art work.”

In their lawsuit against the Seattle Percent for Art program, plaintiffs led by Rud Okeson argued that city officials used City Light (a city utility) as a “cash cow” and charged it for a variety of expenses that were illegitimate, including some art projects.

Shortly after Armstrong’s ruling, Will Patton, the utilities section chief for the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, told The Seattle Times, “he believes Armstrong’s ruling on City Light’s art expenditures would also apply to the city’s water and waste-collection utilities, similarly restricting their spending on art.”

In Ann Arbor Utilities Fund Percent For Art Program

City records show that since 2007 Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art fund has siphoned $38,000 from the solid waste fund, $40,000 from the parks millage, $60,000 from the stormwater utility, $367,000 from the water utility, $539,000 from the city’s street millage, $907,000 from the city’s sewer utility, among other funds. To date, according to city officials, about $2.2 million dollars has been moved into the Percent for Art fund.

Thus, the $1.37 million taken from Ann Arbor’s various utility funds could prove to be the Ann Arbor Percent for Art program’s undoing, just as it was in Seattle in 2005, two years before Stephen Postema’s office reviewed the language and legality of Hieftje’s proposed ordinance.

It’s not a stretch to argue that like in Seattle prior to Okeson vs. Seattle, Ann Arbor’s utilities are being used as cash cows and charged for a variety of expenses, including expenses related to the city’s Percent for Art program.

Katherine Talcott, initially hired as a part-time, contract worker in March 2009 as Ann Arbor’s Administrator for the City of Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art Program, told AAPAC’s (Ann Arbor Public Art Commission) commissioners in Fall of 2009 that, in addition to the 20 hours per week that she was paid as the city’s part-time art administrator, she had been working between 10-20 additional hours specifically on the Dreiseitl project for the Police-Courts building, a $750,000 project that has elicited public derision and ire, not to mention negative national publicity when it was revealed that Ann Arbor was spending $750,000 on art at the same time elected officials voted to cut firefighters.

Talcott told AAPAC those extra hours were authorized by Sue McCormick, the city’s director of public services. Why? Because Talcott’s pay came from Ann Arbor’s water & sewer fund. The logic for use of the sewer and water fund money was that the Dreiseitl project promoted education about water and water conservation.

Ann Arbor officials told AnnArbor.com that, “The city’s administration stresses that all public art projects must serve a purpose somehow related to the source funds. For instance, $750,000 in utility funds is paying for a sculpture being installed outside of city hall that will recycle stormwater.”

It’s the same flawed reasoning that Seattle Judge Sharon Armstrong found against.

Stonewalling Council member Kunselman’s Repeated Calls For a Legal Review of the Percent For Art Program

Third Ward Council member Stephen Kunselman (pictured left) has repeatedly spoken out against the city’s Percent for Art Program and the potential illegality of siphoning money from capital projects, such as street reconstruction and resurfacing projects, paid for by dedicated millage funds. He’s waiting for the Ann Arbor City Attorney to issue a written legal opinion. Though the City Charter requires City Attorney Stephen Postema to file written legal opinions with the City Clerk for the public to peruse, Postema has never filed one addressing Kunselman’s concerns. When, recently, Kunselman again brought up the question of the legality of the city’s Percent for Art Program, Postema was quoted as saying “his office has reviewed the Percent For Art Program and he’s not aware of anything illegal about what the city is doing.”

Despite public concerns and vociferous criticism leveled in the comment sections of A2Politico and AnnArbor.com, the Percent for Art Program has been consistently protected by Hieftje and a majority on City Council.

On December 7, 2009, a few months after Council voted to further shrink the city’s police and fire departments, Council voted to approve a resolution which proposed a temporary three-year cut in funding for the Percent for the Art Program from one percent to one-half of one percent. The proposed resolution to cut the funding was sponsored by John Hieftje and First Ward Council member Sandi Smith. Ten days later, the same Council members who had voted in support of the temporary cut to the program’s funding reversed themselves. Fourth Ward Council member Margie Teall “compared the idea of reducing the percentage to taking back a tax abatement that had been granted,” according to coverage of the meeting by the AnnArborChronicle.com. Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo argued more passionately to save funding for the Percent for the Art Program than he ever has to save the jobs of the city’s firefighters or police officers.

Hieftje also spoke against the resolution he had co-sponsored, and was quoted in the AnnArborChronicle.com as saying, incredibly, that “art might help us climb out of the economic downturn.”

It was classic knee-jerk politics.

In 2011, a resolution sponsored by four Council members to reduce or eliminate funding to the Percent for Art Program was defeated, as well.

Potential For Legal Embarrassment for Postema and a Political Quagmire for Hieftje

To be sure, should the Percent for Art program be challenged in court and, like Seattle’s program, be found to have illegally tapped into utility fund dollars to pay for public art, it will prompt a rash of embarrassing questions for the Ann Arbor City Attorney’s office. Like Seattle’s Mayor Schell, who had advocated for a Percent for Art Program in his city, and who had been deeply embarrassed by the judge’s finding that the program had been funded in large part through illegal means, there’s no doubt John Hieftje would be embarrassed, as well.

As for Stephen Postema, the first question that would be asked was whether his office had reviewed OKESON VERSUS SEATTLE during the course of approving the legality and language of Ann Arbor’s ordinance. It might appear a rather glaring professional error to have allowed Ann Arbor to use utility money to fund its Percent for Art Program when, just two years earlier, Seattle’s ability to do so had been found to be illegal by Judge Sharon Armstrong, a decision upheld on appeal to a higher court.

Hieftje and Postema would, perhaps, be even more deeply embarrassed than Schell. They would have to admit that Stephen Kunselman’s incessant questions over the past two years concerning the legality of the city Percent for Art Program had, in fact, been right on the money, so to speak. In response to Kunselman’s latest attack in which he was quoted in AnnArbor.com as calling the use of street millage money “illegal,” Postema told the news site he would “gladly issue a written opinion when the council as a whole directs him to do so.”

Council as a whole, of course, has never directed Postema to issue a written opinion about the legality of the Percent for Art Program, or anything else in the over 8 years he has served as the City Council’s attorney.

by Amy Kerr Hardin

Like to win a cool quarter million dollars?  You may be in luck if you are a socially conservative artist.

ArtPrize, a community art contest founded by Rick DeVos, kicked-off its 2012 call for entries this past week. There are just a few caveats to keep in mind though: you must make something very, very big, totally predictable, and preferrably just a bit more than cheesy.

Last year’s big winner was a 13 foot tall Jesus, on the cross, cleverly titled “Crucifixion.” Its claim to fame was its utter resemblance to about 10,000 similar works produced about 500 years ago. Even adored art critic, Sister Wendy, would likely say: “yawn.” Yet by popular vote, in western Michigan — the bible belt of the state, tall Jesus took the door prize at the biggest church raffle ever.

Previous ArtPrize winners include an over-sized bronze of Gerald R. Ford, native son to this uber-conservative and mostly Calvinist side of Michigan. Most entries have proven to be nothing more than pedestrian pieces whose only notable feature was their ridiculous “god-sized” scale and cheese-based theme.

ArtPrize begs the question: How do we define art?

My daughter paid me a surprise visit home from college this past weekend. As always, we got caught-up on her latest social and academic adventures, including the bizarre and fantastic things she’d recently found on the internet. Being a dedicated aficionado of Tumblr, she shared images of the world’s cutest and the world’s ugliest bunnies (yes, there really is an ugly bunny), then she showed me a YouTube video which she found hilarious. It was performance art.  (I know, I know, me too…ugh).

In it we find a woman in her mid-20s, of prodigious girth and indeterminate ethnicity, wearing a seriously ill-advised LBD and stilettos, standing before a five by ten pavement of one-pound butter bricks arranged in a neat square. Queue-up the music.

(pause…okay, we’ve set the scene…so let’s all just take a moment to close our eyes and try to envision her possible ”performance”…stilettos, cubes of slippery butter, large woman…

…take your time.)

If you simply can not even imagine what kind of thing could have happened, then you are probably a social conservative.

But if you tend to lean liberal in your social politics, then — hello, yes you guessed it! She stiletto-stomped the butter as if in a dairy-based small animal snuff flick, only to fall repeatedly in the buttery goo with a resounding Mad Cow thud each time.

Art or waste of dairy product?

Tolerant acceptance versus utter disgust of the butter-dance girl relies on a slippery cognitive scale, rooted deeply in human evolution as demonstrated in our social politics and divergent definitions of what is “art.”

There is plenty of proof that the neurobiology of art and politics are intricately and inescapably woven into our DNA. A study published in Current Biology indicates that social conservatives have larger amygdalas than liberals. This is the part of the brain responsible for fear and primitive emotions. They also possess a smaller anterior cingulate cortex, the section of the brain that provides an individual with courage and optimism.

Further research indicates these attributes are reason for the measurable behavioral differences between social conservatives and social progressives. Liberals tend to to be open to new experiences and ideas, more tolerant of conflict and ambiguity, better prepared to deal with conflicting information, more accurate in their assessments, and highly supportive of scientific innovation. Whereas conservatives prefer a structured approach to life, applying a single-minded model to decisions and thought processes, with a tendency to stubbornly hold opinions beyond their usefulness. Conservatives routinely block-out what they perceive to be “distractions.” In politics those “distractions” often turn-out to be what liberals refer to as “facts.”

Formal scientific study of the conservative mind dates back to the landmark 1950 research of Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson and Sanford, that examined the correlation between right-wing authoritarianism and individual fascist tendencies. Many cried foul at the time insisting that psychological traits can not be directly linked to political views. A more recent meta-analyis conducted by the American Psychological Association, using 88 studies with 22,818 subjects, confirms that conservatism is indeed directly related to specific personality traits. The analysis concluded that the right-wing mind is dogmatic, closed to new experiences, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, structured and orderly, adverse to integrative complexity, resistant to change, and oriented to achieve social dominance.

These biases are not confined to politics — they permeate every aspect of our lives, including our sense of aesthetic adventure.

The “Painter of Light,” Thomas Kincaid, who died this month, left a legacy of creating a vast marketing empire based on his sickly-sweet sentimental paintings of idealized villages. Claiming to be a born-again Christian, Kincaid capitalized on the archetypical aesthetic that social conservatives are drawn to so readily. His work represented fantastical scenes of a completely imaginary and idealized past, depicting cozy cottages all-aglow with the safety of hearth and home set in villages that could only exist in the dreams of the simple-minded.

Kincaid’s work unapologetically appeals to the values of faith, family and home. They are predictable, non-threatening and purposefully not provocative in the slightest — and Christian conservatives snap them up to the tune of $100 million in sales per year. His art adorns the hearths of the Hummel figurine lined mantles of  five percent of American households. They are willing to pay up to $10,000 for a limited edition lithograph. At its peak his “studio” was churning-out 500 pieces a day.

Kincaid knew he was on to something and marketed himself accordingly. He is quoted as saying: “People who put my paintings on their walls are putting their values on their walls.” As with most artists, his work is now worth more after his death. If there had been a means for Kincaid to take it with him, he certainly would have. He was a capitalist first, and a Christian as a distant second.

Bad art like Kincaid’s is flying off gallery walls, albeit, “galleries” that are located between The Gap and Bath and Bodyworks at the mall, leaving the quality, one of a kind, artwork to gather dust and for their creators to find day jobs at that mall.  It is tempting to blame the slump in the “real” art market solely on the economy. We all know that the arts are the canary in the coal mine indicative of the health and vibrancy of a culture and its economy, but maybe there’s more to it than money. As conservatism is on the rise, and becoming more stubbornly strident than ever, contempt for innovative and provocative art is also on the rise. Galleries that once sold fine art by skilled artists have now turned to marketing baubles and trinkets to stay afloat.

Conservatives certainly have not cornered the market on bad art. For the most part, they limit themselves to inoffensive kitsch. Many of the worst examples of art hale from the far left. The butter-dance girl “art” is not alone. In fact, it’s mild compared to some of the work that’s intended to offend the viewer. We’ve all seen the much decried art that is annually trotted-out and stamped with a scarlet letter by conservative lawmakers, especially as their budget deadlines loom, declaring them reason enough for a wholesale defunding of the arts. Citing these raunchy pieces is a time-tested tactic of the right. Politicians know that conservatives hold a special contempt and distrust for art. They are hard-wired to be suspicious of anything new or innovative. They simply can not help themselves.

And there is plenty to offend them.

From Damien Hirst’s macabre jewel-encrusted Crystal Skull to Maurizio Cattelan’s La Nona Ora, depicting the Pope being hit by a meteor, there exists a whole array of esoteric crap designed to fit almost anyone’s bad taste or delicate sense of outrage, but all for a price. On the tail of the Vatican’s uproar over La Nona Ora, Cattelan’s piece sold at auction for $3 million. It pays to offend.

Some of these edgy artists have tapped a new market — one which actually satirizes the kitsch so prized by the artistically-challenged conservative collectors. Others have embraced the artistic cheese whiz in its most honest and pure form without the filter of satire. They celebrate tacky art with a condescending affection, all while looking down their noses at its very essence. There’s both a collector’s market and a museum dedicated to these works.

Bad art is everywhere. Several years ago I attended a juried exhibit at a respected museum in my town. Among the winners were a piece of crumpled tissue stuck to the wall and a work with three small boards nailed together, entitled Three Sisters. The latter took the top prize with a gushing account of its provocative artistry from the juror — not a word of which I understood. On a sad note, the tissue entry experienced a catastrophic installation failure and fell to the floor. The artist was unaware that the white sticky-tack she used simply does not have the adhesive power of the blue variety. She should have asked a teacher. Tragic, really. Although, my daughter would have laughed.

So what is art?

Don’t ask an art critic, or an artist, nor a collector or a politician. They simply don’t know.

Ask a Neurobiologist.

Amy Kerr Hardin blogs at Democracy Tree.

by P.D. Lesko

City staff, John Hieftje, his City Council pals, the Board members of the Downtown Development Authority and even the members of the Board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority want taxpayers to renew the city’s Street Repair Millage for another five years. To get you to do it, city staffers and politicos are trying to lure you into supporting the tax by including sidewalk repair, financed by a proposed five-year tax increase. Of course, city officials could have been footing the bill for sidewalk repair over the past five years during which residents paid to replace some 55,000 slabs—an estimated total outlay of $7.9 million dollars. Hieftje and Council have been diverting Alternative Transportation money—money that was used for years to repair sidewalks—for “studies” related to their unfunded train fantasies.

Now, they propose to replace sidewalks when necessary—if voters will just renew the Street Repair millage and the tax increase.

City Council is not stopping at using sidewalks for bait in their effort to get voters to re-up a Street Repair millage that hasn’t been used to repair any significant number of the 179 miles of Ann Arbor streets rated poor by a state agency, or the Stadium Bridges. Now, City Council member Sabra Briere (pictured right) has prepared a resolution (Public Art Ordinance Amendment) to exempt both Street Repair millage money and General Fund money from being used by the Percent for Art Program. The message is clear: renew the Street Repair millage and the money will be protected and go toward repairing streets.

There’s just one problem: Briere’s resolution resembles another one that was proposed and passed back in 2006. That year, City Council passed a resolution shortly before residents were “asked to approve a increase in the parks tax. The council passed a resolution saying parks funding would grow at the same rate as the city’s general fund if voters approved the millage,” according to reporting from the former Ann Arbor News.

In 2006 the Ann Arbor City Council proposed a new Parks Millage of 1.1 mills. The new tax was expected to generate slightly less than $5 million annually. The increased tax was approved by the voters in November of 2006. Hieftje and Council quickly diverted millage money to fund police patrols. The local chapter of the Sierra Club confronted Ann Arbor’s “green” mayor for bleeding dedicated millage money from parks. The misuse of the millage money was reversed, but only partially.

That promise to protect parks millage money laid out in the 2006 resolution was broken soon thereafter. In May 2011 a member of the Parks Advisory Commission complained that since 2006 millions of dollars of the Park Maintenance Millage money have been diverted to purchase new vehicles and fund administrative bloat through the use of inflated internal services charges.

In short, several of the same politicos who have voted time and again to skim money from dedicated millages to fund administrative overhead, vehicle and software purchases, capital projects and services having nothing to do with the millages, are once again trying very hard to appear trustworthy—in a an effort to get taxpayers to once again fund a millage.

Briere’s resolution seeks to protect General Fund money from diversion to the Percent for Art Fund. This is a somewhat symbolic inclusion. Between 2007-2011 very little money from the General Fund (the fund that pays for services such as police and fire) was diverted to the Percent for the Art Fund, only about $50,000 of the $2.2 million total diverted. Money for the Percent for the Art Program isn’t pouring in from the General Fund.

Briere’s resolution also seeks to protect Street Repair money from use by the Percent for Art Program. To date, about $593,000 in Street Repaid fund money has been diverted to the Percent for Art Program. However, one needs to examine the timing of Briere’s resolution, and remember that Ann Arbor taxpayers have approved a host of dedicated millages, such as the Parks Maintenance Millage, which her proposed amendment omits.

First Ward Council member Briere’s Public Art Ordinance Amendment is much the same as John Hieftje’s 2008 proposed Charter amendment to “protect” public parkland from sale without a public vote.

Hieftje’s resolution focused on the sale of parkland, but excluded leasing from the amendment. As a consequence, he and a majority of Council members have exploited that loophole to try to push through a lease deal to allow the University of Michigan to build a 900 car parking garage on Fuller Road parkland. Under the proposed deal, the Fuller Road parcel owned by the public, valued at $4-$10 million dollars, would be leased for decades to the University for less than $45,000 per year, a deal the local chapter of the Sierra Club has condemned as a de facto sale.

At the moment, according to the City’s most recent audit, the Street Repair Fund has a $30 million dollar surplus. City staff, John Hieftje and his City Council pals, the Board members of the Downtown Development Authority and even the members of the Board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority have plans to direct use of the Street Repair Fund money, most of which have nothing to do with fixing the nearest street or road near you. There are big, expensive plans afoot to improve the “gateways” into Ann Arbor, including Washtenaw Avenue and State Street. Several City Council members and political appointees on various boards and commissions favor using public tax money to fund private development along the corridors. The suggested tax increment financing (TIF) scheme would skim millions from the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

Then, there’s the Stadium Bridge. While running for re-election, John Hieftje, Fourth Ward Council member Margie Teall, Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke and First Ward Council member Sandi Smith all told AnnArbor.com that repairs to the Stadium Bridge “were scheduled” to begin “no later” that March 2010. To date, repairs have not yet begun.

In fact, according to data from city officials, in all of 2010, the city repaired fewer than 6 miles of roads. In 2008 the city resurfaced just 4 miles of roads and streets. The Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association released data in November of 2009 that show Ann Arbor as having the third worst roads out of 1,800 Michigan municipalities, some 179 miles of roads found to be in “poor” condition. Roads in poor condition require reconstruction, as opposed to resurfacing. According to officials from MITA roads in “poor” condition cost seven times more to repair than roads in fair condition.

Between 2007 and 2010, Ann Arbor resurfaced fewer than 17 miles of roads, or only about 10 percent of the 179 miles of roads rated poor by MITA in 2009, all the while building up a huge surplus of tax dollars. Third Ward Council Stephen Kunselman recently called the diversion of Street Repair fund money to finance art illegal. It may well be illegal. So might diverting $1.37 million from the city’s utilities, a method of funding art that triggered a successful class action suit in Seattle, Washington three years before John Hieftje sponsored his Percent for Art Ordinance in 2007.

The current mayor and council have broken promises regarding the use and allocation of millage money. In 2006, they made empty promises regarding use and protection of the Park Maintenance fund money. Between 2007-2010 our current mayor and council have not hesitated, with the noted exception of Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin, to vote to divert money from the General Fund to finance pet projects—then voted to cut services.

As I’ve written before, whether the voters should renew the Street Repair Millage boils down to an issue of trust. The current mayor and City Council majority have repeatedly broken promises regarding the use and allocation of dedicated millage money. They have allowed the streets to crumble while hoarding tens of millions of dollars that should have been used for street and bridge repair. In 2006, they made empty promises related to the Park Maintenance Millage in order to entice voters into approving the additional tax.

After more police and firefighters were recently given pink slips, and six women were attacked in the space of a single week, John Hieftje was quoted by AnnArbor.com as fretting that our city doesn’t have enough public art. Sabra Briere’s Public Art Ordinance Amendmentmay or may not pass. Regardless of whether it does, voters should turn down the Street Repair Millage in November, and send a clear message to our elected officials and their political appointees that their recent votes in favor of non-essential capital projects such as the Fifth Avenue Underground Parking Garage, service cuts, and profligate spending in general, need to stop.