Utah Cultural Advocacy Alliance Grade: A+ (100%)

  • Candidate Name: Keith Schnare 
  • Your Municipality: Logan City
  • Elected office for which you are running: City Council

Question 1: Should government be involved in funding the arts and humanities?
Yes

Question 2: Have you had a personal experience with arts, culture, or humanities that have had an impact on your life?
Yes

3b // Optional, explain your experience.
Attending stage plays and musicals in Chicago when I was in high school and college.

Question 3: Do you support public funding for city and county arts councils who then re-grant that money to local arts and humanities organizations?
Yes

3b // Optional, explain why or why not.
Public funding gets things started which draws private contributions.

Question 4: Do you support Percent for Art programs, which designate 1% of public building costs for public art that are included within that building? Currently, only 8 Utah municipalities have such a program.
Yes

4b // Optional, explain why or why not.
Art in public buildings make them friendlier and give local artists a place to display their talent to the home audience

Question 5: Do you support having a Percent-for-Art program in your own municipality?
Yes

5b // Optional, explain why or why not.
Part of Logan's draw is the summer art and entertainment programs as well as the theater productions throughout the year

Question 6: Do you consider the arts and cultural sector an economic driver in Utah?
Yes

6b // Optional, explain why or why not.
Only in larger cities that have good tourist populations or are large enough to have local citizen support

Question 7: 32 municipalities have a RAP (recreation, arts, and parks) type tax to help support cultural organizations in their communities. Would you support a RAP type tax such as this in your own municipality? If your municipality already has such a local option sales RAP-type sales tax and you support it, answer yes.
Yes

7b // Optional, explain your experience.
A tax fund starts the process for funding cultural programs and encourages matching private funds

Question 8: Municipalities can facilitate partnerships between cultural organizations and the local tourism sector to boost the local economy. Do you support this? Optional, explain why or why not. 
Yes

8b // Optional, explain why or why not. 
Logan is doing this by designating a portion of the city as a theater district

Question 9: Municipal governments can create Cultural Districts - with or without tax incentives. Governments sometimes fund these via bed or tourism taxes within the Cultural District boundaries, but it can be done within municipal budgets fairly cheaply. Is this something you would support?
Yes

9b // Optional, explain why or why not. 
Logan is doing this by designating a portion of the city as a theater district which will allow more publicity opportunities