At least Jersey City is using a better funding mechanism than Portland Oregon's stupid one, where every person in the city 18 and over is expected to pay $35 each year. Regardless of how poor you are if you make at least $1000 a year you are expected to pay $35 of it to a local arts tax.
If you leave the state, they will try to collect on years that you didn't live in Portland at all. Even if you have moved across the country 3 years ago, they will track you down and continue taxing you, and it's a fight to get them to stop. They are notorious for sending tax bills repeatedly to dead people. The tax is levied as a poll or head tax, which is specifically illegal in Oregon, but in a lawsuit, the state supreme court chose the narrowest interpretation possible to force the illegal tax past the state no poll tax law. Now Portlanders who are living on the street and have nothing, get hit up for this $35 tax yearly.
To make matters worse, the arts association, RACC, that gets this money wastes it terribly. I am fine with it's use in schools, and even arts organizations like the symphony and ballet that actually employ people, but when they wasted around $700,000 on a piece of "art" that are 2 hulking rusting scrapheaps near 2 bridges that slightly resemble the former skyline of an old factory, while it damages the sidewalk with constant rust, and drips rust on people walking by ruining their clothes, I don't trust those RACC idiots to do anything right.
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At least Jersey City is using a better funding mechanism than Portland Oregon's stupid one, where every person in the city 18 and over is expected to pay $35 each year. Regardless of how poor you are if you make at least $1000 a year you are expected to pay $35 of it to a local arts tax.
If you leave the state, they will try to collect on years that you didn't live in Portland at all. Even if you have moved across the country 3 years ago, they will track you down and continue taxing you, and it's a fight to get them to stop. They are notorious for sending tax bills repeatedly to dead people. The tax is levied as a poll or head tax, which is specifically illegal in Oregon, but in a lawsuit, the state supreme court chose the narrowest interpretation possible to force the illegal tax past the state no poll tax law. Now Portlanders who are living on the street and have nothing, get hit up for this $35 tax yearly.
To make matters worse, the arts association, RACC, that gets this money wastes it terribly. I am fine with it's use in schools, and even arts organizations like the symphony and ballet that actually employ people, but when they wasted around $700,000 on a piece of "art" that are 2 hulking rusting scrapheaps near 2 bridges that slightly resemble the former skyline of an old factory, while it damages the sidewalk with constant rust, and drips rust on people walking by ruining their clothes, I don't trust those RACC idiots to do anything right.
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