LIGHTFOOT WANTS ‘MODEST INCREASE’ IN HOTEL TAX TO BOOST CHICAGO ARTS
The total tax on a Chicago hotel room is already the highest in the nation at 17.4 percent. But it won’t stay that way if Lori Lightfoot is elected mayor.
She wants to raise it to boost the $1.7 million now devoted annually for grants supporting Chicago artists. Lightfoot called that amount “pocket change.”
“There should be no reason why artists are leaving Chicago to go to New York or L.A. or some other place that’s more friendly and more livable for them. We need to make sure that we create the environment here where they can thrive and feel like this can be their home,” Lightfoot said.
“I believe that one of the things we should do is have a modest increase in the hotel tax so we can expand the amount of monies that are actually available . . . We just want to make sure that we’re doing a lot better than $1.7 million in grants to artists.”
Lightfoot said she hasn’t settled on a specific amount, characterizing the increase only as “modest” and “small” — but enough to “actually yield dividends,” she said.
Even 1 or 2 percent, she said, “would go a long way in providing us with a steady stream of income where we could significantly expand our reach in grant making to artists,” she said.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel talks often about his early days as a ballet dancer in high school and college.
He was widely viewed as a champion for the arts who bankrolled an amusement tax waiver for neighborhood theaters and concert venues with fewer than 1,500 seats by raising the amusement tax on major concerts from 5 percent to 9 percent.
If elected mayor, Lightfoot would re-examine the amusement tax, “to see if there’s things that we need to do to change it to make it more user-friendly,” she said.
“We’ve got to look at anything that we can to make sure that we’re not providing artificial barriers for neighborhood organizations to be able to participate.”
Standing before an impressive row of Chicago’s best-known artists, Lightfoot unveiled an arts and education program with the ambitious goal of restoring music and art in every Chicago Public School. Currently, it’s only a handful, she said.
Her arts agenda includes: prioritizing funding for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events; developing an artists-inresidence program to build job opportunities for artists and mentorships for young people; and overhauling the “Percent for Art” ordinance, which requires 1.33 percent of the construction or renovation costs for municipal buildings and public spaces go toward original artwork displayed on site.
The plan was music to the ears of the artists standing behind Lightfoot.
“We sometimes in Chicago act as though the arts are a frivolous add-on. We take them out of most of our public schools. But arts are where we become deeper, broader and more thoughtful as a country,” said mystery writer Sara Paretsky, who created the private detective “V.I. Warshawski.”
Also there was Amy Morton, a Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member who plays Trudy Platt on the NBC show “Chicago P.D.” She traces her roots as an actor to the drama program at her public elementary school.
“Lori passionately believes that every Chicago school in every neighborhood needs art in their curriculum — that an appreciation of art makes people better citizens and that appreciation begins in childhood,” Morton said.
“She knows that, where artists live and work, communities flourish and businesses flourish.”