SAAG cafe represents a massive subsidy by the city
By Letter to the Editor on May 14, 2021.
Editor: What is the city social contract with tax-paying businesses? The Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) has been released. The Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG) project is again proposed, and again, wants to open a café with taxpayer money.
We believe the SAAG, in addition to sports, the Exhibition, Street Wheelers, and others, is one of many important pieces of our tourism draw. These draws pull people in who will use our hotels, restaurants, and shop throughout the City. The SAAG has operated superior programming that has enhanced Lethbridge for the past 30 years.
Unfortunately, they lost us at ‘Venti Latte.’
There is no demonstrated need for a café at SAAG, as there are multiple restaurants providing food services to the area around SAAG and Galt Gardens. Whether the SAAG operates the proposed café, or contracts it out, City funds will be used to build it with no taxes earned or costs recovered by the City. This would represent a massive “subsidy” not provided to any other small business having to compete with the taxpayer-funded café.
Further, you would think that proposing a profitable café would allow SAAG to become more self-supporting. Doesn’t appear so! The estimate provided by SAAG is for the City to increase its annual support to SAAG by $70,000. It is unclear what the additional funds will pay for.
The latest modernization proposed for SAAG in the CIP will initially cost taxpayers a staggering $5,788,000! Why is a renovation of this size and cost required only 10 years after the last modernization? How much of this cost is the café?
Consider that the SAAG only pays $50 in rent to the City each year, and receives back a monthly subsidy. The City also gifted the SAAG $76,000 for 2021 and $76,000 for 2022 for COVID offset. While COVID impacts are understandable, another $70,000 annually is not. Where is the business case?
Taxpayers need to tell council that public money should not be used to fund competition against our local businesses – the same businesses that sponsor our community in a variety of ways. Once businesses are gone, who will pay taxes and donate the soccer uniforms? Not the SAAG. Please ask your councillors to remove the restaurant from this project.
Jeffrey DeJong
Lethbridge Transparency Council
-1
I’d encourage the feckless sad sack of wannabe political pundits at the Lethbridge Transparency Council to stop trying to frame each debate to which they contribute their unsolicited whining as a conflict between public and private sector interests, because the way they propagate antagonism is becoming part of the problem. I’d also encourage them to look up the term “social enterprise,” but then again it seems like they’re against any kind of project that doesn’t only service someone’s bank account. Raging against arts groups and other non-profits, as this transparency council often tries to do, isn’t thoughtful advocacy of small business or community. It’s petty, closed-minded NIMBYism in action. Their efforts would perhaps be more effectively spent discouraging patronization of big box retail, which siphons money from our local economy at far more egregious rates, and, in my opinion, is a far greater threat to downtown than another cafe.
The feckless sad sack is you for failing to read the article. Support for the SAAG is indicated with the caveat that they shouldn’t be subsidized by the taxpayer to compete with a multitude of private operated businesses in the area. Stella’s, Milk, Bread and Honey to name a few. Do you want them to line up at the taxpayer trough? Would you support subsidizing them Go shop at Costco, who employ hundreds of local people. Expand your narrow view of economies. Get some perspective.
LTC should get out a bit more and visit similar galleries in other places large and small.
If they did , they would be surprised to see that most if not all such places have small, limited eating/drinking facilities.
Suggesting they take profits away from other small cafes to my mind is unproven. Visiting the gallery and partaking in a coffee is not exactly a threat to others catering for a “drop in” clientele.
That there are some in this city who believe any form of public expenditure in the form of the “arts” in all its forms is a waste of money is unfortunate. (I am not suggesting though that LTC is of this mind set)
“Arts” are as much a part of the health of a city as are sports stadiums, libraries and exhibition grounds, most of which provide some sort of food service.
It is ironic that LTC acknowledges the positive impact SAAG has had on the city and at the same time fails to understand the need for a small cafe for those visiting – people who may or may not wander the streets in search of another local coffee shop.
Having said that, perhaps SAAG and or the city provide actual cost estimates for this project. I agree another major upgrade to the tune of over $5 million does not make any sense whatsoever at this time.
Please indicate where it is unproven in cities of 100k or less. Ask Stella’s and others downtown, Pita Pit, Penny Coffee, how they with their neck on the line feel about SAAG being subsidized by the taxpayer.
I think your point about “their neck being on the line” is well taken. The current situation locally as elsewhere is dire and now should not be the time for advancing public expenditures . Point taken.
John said: “There are some in this city who believe any form of public expenditure in the form of the “arts” in all its forms is a waste of money is unfortunate”
Hi John.
I’ve got numerous arguments to prove the hundreds of millions taken out of our paychecks to pay for the pretentious palaces is an enormous waste of money.
Care to debate me on the topic?
Hi Seth.
If these “pretentious palaces” include museums like the Galt, concert halls (Yates), education facilities (Helen Schuler), the local library, CASA, multiple sports facilities or parks then guilty as charged.
I happen to think they all have a part to play toward a healthy and vibrant city.
That there is another side to the story , is understood and I respect your view.
Not that I’m currently agreeing or disagreeing with public funding for sports facilities, the library, or Galt, but for now, I’m strictly referring to the arts. That is, hundreds of millions spent, and continuously being spent on the massive money pit that is Casa, Yates, and similar facilities.
BTW- It’s not that I dislike the arts. It’s that I despise needless waste and despise forcing people to pay for someone’s else’s hobby.