“Peoria Park District cuts levy,” the Journal Star headline reads. The article starts, “Taxpayers will be glad to hear the Peoria Park District just adjusted this year’s levy – down – by $63,000.”
That sounds pretty exciting… until you realize that the levy is still over three-quarters of a million dollars more than last year. The Journal Star reported on November 20, 2008:
A $41.4 million budget for 2009 was cleared by Peoria Park District trustees in less than 17 minutes Wednesday. That budget includes a $14.5 million tax levy, which is $821,000 more than the amount in the 2008 budget.
So, it appears to me that instead of the levy going up $821,000, it’s now going up “only” $758,000, or $63,000 less than originally planned. It’s better than a sharp stick in the eye, but not quite as exciting as the paper makes it sound.
A special edition of The Economist magazine (“The World in 2009”) includes this article, which was alluded to in a previous comment. The article is titled, “The Museum-building binge.” Here’s something to consider when deciding how much money and land we want to dedicate to a new downtown museum complex:
Museums often enjoy cheeringly high visitor numbers in the first year or two, but then attendance tends to taper off.
“Sustainability is the new buzzword,” explains Javier Pes, editor of Museum Practice, a journal published by the Museums Association. Wealthy private donors have been happy enough to contribute large sums in exchange for a glamorous new wing named after them. But donations tend to ebb after the museum reopens, and directors need to find other ways to pull in tourists after the initial excitement wears off, such as pricey blockbuster shows. Operating costs go up.
In Denver, for example, where Daniel Libeskind designed a new $110m building for the art museum, an initial boom of visitors in 2006 has waned, and budget constraints have forced the museum to cut staff. The remarkable new structure—an explosion of angles and intersecting shapes—is the centrepiece of Denver’s nascent culture district. Yet some visitors complain of feeling disoriented inside. […]
Such investments are clearly unsafe bets for urban renewal.
What is the Museum Collaboration Group’s plan to sustain their optimistic attendance numbers over the next 20 years (i.e., the duration of the bonds used for construction) and beyond?
News and Comment about Peoria, Illinois
