I wrote this article that appeared in the May 23, 2008 issue of The Frisco Enterprise. I realize that I never included this in my blog but it becomes more and more relevant with each passing day…
Let me start by saying that I am a huge proponent of arts and culture and feel we need more of both in our community. Unfortunately there are some people who are trying to play politics and paint a picture that I don’t support arts. That is simply not true, as I truly believe art and culture is what defines a community.
In last week’s commentary by a former Frisco council member, he calls it a “political football”. If that is true, then it is a football that has been fumbled so many times that I don’t think it will ever be recovered. As I mentioned before, and he was kind to point out, I think that in concept, the Arts of Collin County (ACC) project is a great idea, but it has been very poor in execution. As it was made very clear in this last election season, I don’t play games. As a former council member and concerned tax paying citizen, I simply call out what I see needs attention and this definitely deserves attention.
Frisco’s growth has doubled since ACC was approved, and through talking with especially newer residents, I have found that most don’t even know the origins of this project. Let’s go back in time and look at where this project came from. Back in 2002, the citizens of Frisco voted to approve $19 million for a four-city Arts project. I originally voted in favor of it myself back in 2002. McKinney quickly withdrew causing it to become a three-city project.
As I said previously, the concept is great but the execution has left a lot to be desired. Although I know the intentions were there in the beginning for this to be a positive initiative for the region, it would be hard to deny that the organization has been ineffective in the integral planning as we are now six years down the road and nothing to show for it.
The ACC is short roughly $25m for phase 1 and they are going to look to the three cities (Frisco, Plano and Allen) to make that up if they can’t raise it. Each city is going to come back to you looking for $5-7m to make up the deficit. And that is just Phase 1 of an ultimately $250m plus project. Where is that money going to come from?
It’s time to cut our losses and at least for Frisco, time to look at how we can build an Arts and Museum district of our own with the money that voters have allocated towards Art projects in two different elections. It is time to stand up for the Frisco citizens and taxpayers and say enough it enough.
The plan that I loosely talked about during my campaign for Mayor, and I would challenge the city to take a close look at, is to look at how we can re-allocate the $19 million (now $16m that is left) that was approved by the voters back in 2002 for this project. Yes, I realize we would have to have another bond election to spend that money elsewhere but that would also give us a chance to re-evaluate what it would cost to do it right in Frisco and have the bond election accordingly. Combine that with the $5 million approved for an arts and science center in 2006 and we can build a community theatre, festival area, and Frisco arts and science center. This will all be part of the arts and museum district that I talked about (which has now been given a big start with the recent announcement of the American Railroad Museum coming to Frisco). This will also connect with the Grand Park to the south and the west and the revitalization of downtown to the north and the east.
Knowing that immense growth has occurred from 2002 (from when the original bonds for the project were approved by voters) until now, I feel confident that voters would approve reallocation of that earmarked bond money for Frisco’s own cultural betterment instead of leaving it to chance and not seeing anything for many years, if ever, to come from the Arts of Collin County project. Which by the way, is being built in Allen, not Frisco. We have performing arts halls in Richardson (Eisemann) and Dallas (Meyerson) and Fort Worth (Bass) and I just don’t think we should be spending this kind of money outside of Frisco. Let’s look at Arts and Culture in Frisco first!
