I do take big issue of raising the comparison with Denver and Boulder with dedicated art sales taxes and government commissions. It is not the purpose of government to promote any one business or tax the populice to promote any one market sector over another. Colorado Springs was unwilling to provide any measurable concessions let alone funds for our once thriving electronics industry. At one time, we were touted as the Silicon Mountain of the west and now virtually all of the semiconductor companies are gone. The most recent one to close their offices here is ON Semiconductor, and previous to that was Intel.

If our art market is good, it will thrive but it should stand on its own merits and the quality of its artists, not on the blood of the taxpayers.

I kind of fired up about the government public funding of enterprises that should stand on their own or be in private businesses. On the way to work today from north county, I passed an empty, 60′ FREX bus, cruising down the highway. Why are the taxpayers paying for empty buses to run up and down the freeway? Because the government wants to be big? I never see more than about 4 people in the FREX bus on the freeway. What a massive waste of our money to subsizidize such a loser. No corporation that expected to stay in business would continue to pour money in a sink hole like the FREX buses, nor should government be subsidizing the arts or any other private business unless there is a real, not perceived, payback. At least the vainished electronics industry in this town provided tens of thousands of jobs.