I’m not saying Issue 2A would bring Boulder something like the Teatro-Museo Dali, but arts liven up communities including Salvador Dali’s hometown of Figueres, Spain. I’ve been here!

City of Boulder Ballot Issue 2A, at its simplest, asks voters to approve extending an existing 0.15% sales tax that is scheduled to sunset (expire) in 2024 until 2044, and would devote 50 percent of the revenue to arts and culture uses. The other 50 percent would go into the city’s General Fund, with some general potential uses specified in the ballot language (see actual language below).

Without raising additional taxes, shall the existing 0.15 cent city sales and use tax for general fund purposes, approved by the voters by Ordinance 7300, be extended beyond the current expiration date of December 31, 2024, until December 31, 2044, with the revenue from such tax extension and all earnings thereon be used to fund services and projects as follows:

  • 50% for fire and emergency response services, public safety services, human services, homeless solutions and services, parks, and other general fund purposes;
  • 50% for arts, culture, and heritage purposes; including direct and grant funding for arts and culture nonprofits, professional artists, arts education, venues and workspaces, public art, and multicultural programs;

and in connection therewith shall any earnings from the revenues from such tax extension constitute a voter approved revenue change and an exception to the revenue and and exception to the revenue and spending limits of Article X section 20 of the Colorado constitution.

The Story and Numbers Behind 2A

Splitting the tax revenue would devote about $3.6 million to arts and $3.6 million to the General Fund in its first year, but proceeds in future years can depend on economic activity. The city would be able to retain and use all revenue that comes in without needing to issue refunds under the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) if revenue comes in above a given point, since 2A includes a clause in the language called “de-Brucing,” named after TABOR author Douglas Bruce.

If voters defeat the tax extension, the 0.15% sales tax would expire at the end of 2024 unless another ballot measure is approved.

There is a bit of a story around how 2A came to be, in its final form. Earlier this year, a group called Arts For Boulder circulated petitions for a proposed ballot measure that would have devoted all of the money from the tax extension (estimated at about $7.2 million for the coming year) to arts and culture. The group gathered enough petition signatures to put this measure on the ballot, but there was concern that devoting the full amount of the tax extension to arts and culture could impact funding available for future General Fund needs.

The existing 0.15% tax was itself re-enacted by a 2003 tax extension ballot measure, and the funds were to be used for “fire, police, human services, parks, and other General Fund” needs. City staff departments make departmental budget recommendations which can influence how the city uses General Fund money, but City Council has the final say on approving the budget. The city’s approved 2023 General Fund budget was about $188 million, while the city’s entire budget was roughly $513 million, for perspective.

Arts and culture are currently funded under the city’s budget to the tune of about $1.8 million this year, while the city has leeway to adjust this level of funding during its yearly budget process. Generally speaking, devoting all of the tax extension revenue to arts would have represented about a fourfold increase in arts funding relative to current levels. But since the existing 0.15% tax is currently used in the General Fund, the initiative as proposed would have earmarked a substantial amount of money for the arts that might otherwise be available for general needs.

City staff eventually prepared several options regarding what type or types of tax extensions to put on the 2023 ballot, which included the originally proposed arts funding from the citizen initiative, the 50-50 split between arts and the General Fund, and an option to continue devoting all of the revenue to the General Fund. The ballot measure proponents agreed to support the 50-50 split, as did City Council by a 7-2 vote, and that’s what voters will see on the ballot in 2023.

This year’s ballot measure only offers fairly general language about how the arts and culture money would be used (see box at right). For those interested in more information about the city’s process for determining how arts and culture grants are rewarded, visit this webpage from the city’s Office of Arts and Culture, and there is a tab at the top of that webpage to learn more about the city’s volunteer commission that will play a role in the grant process, the Boulder Arts Commission.

Richard’s Take

I’ll probably support 2A, and if this sounds sort of lukewarm, it sort of is. At the bare minimum, I have some ambivalence. The 50-50 breakdown between arts funding and General Fund use was obviously a down-the-middle split between the ambitious arts goals from the petition drive and existing use of the 0.15% tax, and I just can’t say it was a thoughtfully analyzed breakdown of what the city or the arts community actually need. King Solomon might have approved of the blunt decision to cut the thing in half, but while I’d prefer far more detail in charting what to do with 20 years of specific revenue, I still can’t get to the point of “that’s a deal-breaker for me.”

That said, I am an arts supporter and done right, better arts funding should provide several layers of benefit for those who choose to appreciate:

  • Aesthetically, who wants a town without color, without sound, without experimentation, without people gathering to enjoy someone else’s creativity? Simply put, arts help make life more pleasant for Boulder residents and visitors to our fair city alike, and I for one could easily handle more of it.
  • Arts can generate direct or indirect jobs and economic activity. For a second, imagine the money flowing through Boulder if Taylor Swift moved her business headquarters here. Now, come on back to reality. Boulder artists aren’t likely to ever become mega-millionaires, but we have real-life local people and organizations who sell tickets, rent venue spaces, purchase supplies, own or operate businesses (for-profit or nonprofit), and potentially make money through holding jobs or selling their own products.
  • Creativity is typically a positive activity even if it doesn’t lead to lucre. I dabble, and there’s a real satisfaction that comes with an artistic accomplishment, however minor. Creativity tends to be a good alternative to certain types of behavior, and focusing on a craft often leads to improvement as an artist.
  • Experiencing someone else’s artistic output can be inspirational – in fact, that’s often the artist’s intent – and inspiration is not necessarily something that translates well into a comparison with raw budget numbers. In my opinion, it’s important for people to get out of their day-to-day drudgery and do something that might be enlightening or perspective-expanding.

It’s tough for me to try guessing how the 50 percent of revenue going to the arts in 2A could impact other General Fund needs over time, because I have no crystal ball with which to see the future. I want to call this out not because I’m deeply concerned at this moment in time, but because informed voters in my opinion should always consider that earmarking funds for one type of use could contribute to fiscal trade-offs into the future. We will have a recession someday. We have housing and homelessness difficulties right now, infrastructure by definition always ages and needs repair or replacement, and we could easily face new problems we haven’t even imagined yet in 5-10-15 years. And even though I’m not opposing 2A, I was glad Council members Mark Wallach and Nicole Speer both voted against putting 2A on the ballot and wrote this guest opinion explaining their opposition.

Be truthful – who among us predicted with great accuracy the 2013 flood, the pandemic, or the Marshall Fire? While state or federal governments usually help fund responses to mega-disasters, local governments also have to be part of the initial responses and managing the aftermath. That’s your washed-out roads, compromised water quality, loss of housing units, economic disruptions, public health and safety issues, and the like. It’s completely prudent to have financial reserves and advance planning in case of emergency, and at this point in history we have to be brutally honest that we don’t know how big the next emergency will be. And I have criticized past State of Colorado proposals to “budget by initiative,” because it typically does not involve comprehensive analysis, so I hope we don’t do much more of this in Boulder with the remaining years I might have left on the planet.

Nevertheless, I’m glad we live in a visionary and artistic community, and I think it’s obvious that passing 2A will help us improve upon our current levels of beauty and vibrancy. And for one positive attribute of earmarking, leaving decisions completely up to future City Councils might lead to situations where arts funding is compared directly with items like public safety needs, whether that seems fair or not. If 2A passes but we need to adjust funding levels some time over the course of 20 years, we might need another ballot measure, and the people of Boulder will once again have the chance to weigh in.