The city council will be considering whether or not to approve giving ArtsPartners a 2.5% share of the restaurant portion of Peoria’s HRA tax for four more years. Here’s a little background from the council communication:

In 2000, the City and Civic Center amended their Intergovernmental Agreement to provide that ArtsPartners of Central Illinois receive 2.5% of the collected Restaurant Tax revenue collected commencing with the September 2000 Restaurant Tax receipts and continuing through August 2002. In August 2002, that Agreement was extended through August of 2004, and again from 2004 to 2006. In 2006, the City approved an Amendment through August 2007. The Civic Center Authority Board unanimously voted on August 23,2007 to continue funding and approve a four (4) year Intergovernmental Agreement with ArtsPartners capped at $75,000 per year and continuing to receive the 2.5% of Restaurant Tax through August 31, 2011.

A recent Chronicle commentator argues that ArtsPartners duplicates the efforts of other organizations. Since arts groups do their own local advertising/promotion, and since the publicly-funded Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau promotes the Peoria area (which would presumably include promotion of the arts offerings) to tourists and those relocating, why do we need yet another publicly-funded agency to focus on the arts?

I think the commentator has a point. Furthermore, while the arts are important, so are other things. What about sports? Should we start a publicly-funded “SportsPartners” organization to market and promote all the sporting events in Peoria? Schools are important — how about a publicly-funded “SchoolPartners” to promote all the great public and private schools we have in Peoria?

Here’s a better idea: If the Civic Center doesn’t need all that HRA money, how about reducing the tax instead of trying to find other ways to spend it? Lower taxes have wide appeal — I’ll bet they would help tourism and relocation at least as much as ArtsPartners.