After a summer of disconcerting inaction on Joliet’s $23 million shortfall for 2012, budget deliberations in Joliet’s City Hall have really heated up.

Mayor Tom Giarrante’s proposed plan combines tax hikes, service cuts, pension payment restructuring, and planned negotiations with employee unions as a means of bringing down expenditures; and the Council, much to the delight of Joliet residents, has voted to raise sales and utility taxes in order to generate more revenue.

Getting an inordinate amount of attention in the local press as well as in Council deliberations, though, are potential cuts to Joliet’s less-than-lavish support of the Rialto Square Theater, the Joliet Area Historical Museum, and Bicentennial Park. The mayor proposes relatively modest decreases for these important cultural institutions, while District 1 Councilman Larry Hug advocates slashing city support entirely.

Hug’s attitude is hardly surprising. Whenever economic times get tough, public expenditures on the arts always come under the gun. But the reasoning behind these potential cutbacks is both mathematically misguided and philosophically impoverished.

Let’s do the math first. The mayor’s proposed cuts to the above arts organizations total $266,000 — less than two percent of the city’s $17 million gap in operating expenses. Giarrante’s strategy here is plainly symbolic: while such reductions are admittedly ineffectual because they’re so small, they demonstrate his willingness to make tough decisions across the board.

Ironically, the draconian “cut everything” approach espoused by Hug would not generate all that many savings, either, and could potentially hurt the local economy. Take the Rialto: eliminating its $700,000 of city support trims only four percent from that $17 million shortfall. Yet that would be potentially devastating to the Rialto’s always precarious operating budget, and thus jeopardize the $7.5 million of local economic activity it generates annually.

But let’s also think beyond mere numbers. What would Joliet be like without Bicentennial Park’s music concerts, dramatic productions, and cultural festivals? Without the rich perspective on the our area’s culture and history provided by the much-lauded Historical Museum?

How would the otherwise depressing and downtrodden downtown landscape look without the glitz, energy, and architectural pizazz of the iconic Rialto, Joliet’s only serious venue for nationally-renowned live entertainment?

Oh, sure, life would go on. The garbage would be picked up (on the street, not in the alley), sewage would be processed (in most neighborhoods, anyway, though not necessarily the Ridgewood area on the city’s East Side), and the lights would stay on in City Hall. But a culturally-impoverished existence in which the arts are devalued and unfunded is neither desirable nor acceptable in a city of our size and aspirations.

The question we should be asking, then, is not how much we can slash and burn the already paltry public support of our cornerstone arts organizations and cherished cultural institutions. It’s rather this: what kind of city do we want to live in?

This article was published in the Wednesday, 5 October 2011 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. Information about Joliet’s 2012 budget can be accessed at the city’s official website, which lists links to various budget reports and proposals.