The opening jingle from Tom Goes to the Mayor was running through my head as I filed into a standing-room-only Wyncote NW Forum at Town Hall last month for the final of three public roundtables hosted by Mayor Katie Wilson’s Arts, Culture, and Creative Economy Transition Team. The mayor wasn’t there, but her rock-star lineup was: Northwest Folklife artistic director Ben Hunter as co-lead along with Randy Engstrom (who himself served as director of the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture from 2012 to 2021), Elisheba Wokoma (co-executive director of Wa Na Wari), Michael Greer (president and CEO of ArtsFund), Jesse Hagopian (educator, author, musician), Edwin Lindo (cofounder of Estelita’s Library), and Amy Nguyen, executive director of Watershed Community Development and Wilson’s newly appointed director of the Office of Arts & Culture.
Attendees comprised a cross-section of the community, from members of the Arts Commission and nonprofit execs to working artists. While the crowd mingled, Hunter plucked guitar on the dais, but the chill vibes didn’t prevent a jump scare caused by piles of sticky notes stacked on high-top tables around the room—a sure sign of impending break-out groups. Experience has shown that sticky notes rarely move past ideation purgatory. Spoiler: All conversations lead to affordability.
Yet, something in the Wilson-charged air felt different. In assembling this transition team, the mayor made the arts a co-equal policy area alongside housing and transportation. What could this mean for us?
As the presentation and subsequent Q&A unfolded across the next two hours, the team discussed their findings—priorities that had emerged after two months and hundreds of conversations with community members. Some items landed like a broken record skipping, like the need to position the creative industry as an economic driver. Others felt vaguely Kafkaesque, like the creation of a brand-new cross-departmental Creative Economy & Cultural Infrastructure Office. Some ideas sent a frisson of excitement through the room. Here are some of the big ones:
1. Untapped tax opportunities that don’t place the burden on homeowners and residents, including a cruise ship tax (it would function similarly to the current hotel-motel tax and could hypothetically fund free public programming across town), a secondary market ticket tax, and a men’s professional sports tax. In Seattle, men’s pro sports have historically enjoyed an exemption that allows stadium tax to be retained for stadium upgrades only, instead of funneling into the Seattle Arts Account (as does the tax revenue from other Seattle teams—funds that are subsequently administered by the Office of Arts & Culture).
2. A municipal bank. This one’s a potential money saver. Seattle currently banks with Wells Fargo and uses our money to pay this private company. (A feasibility study commissioned by the city in 2018 indicated $150,000 to $200,000 spent in annual banking fees.) Those public funds could be reinvested in community needs, including the arts. The bank itself could offer low-interest loans to artists.
This ambitious, many-hurdled goal isn’t new—Seattle has explored the idea since 2014, and in 2016 former city councilmember Kshama Sawant introduced legislation to end the city’s contract with Wells Fargo when the company was taking heat for funding the Dakota Access Pipeline. The council voted to break up with Wells Fargo, but we soon ran back because no other bank could manage our $3 billion annual cash flow.
Logistical hurdles include amendments to both the city charter and state Constitution, compliance with a slew of federal banking regulations, obtaining a significant amount (hundreds of millions) in start-up capital, and meeting state collateral protection rules. There’s only one municipal bank in the US—the Bank of North Dakota, founded in 1919. It’s been successful; it was the only US bank to remain profitable during the 2008 financial crisis.
3. The creation of interdepartmental teams or subcabinets to cultivate a civic identity around art—messaging that speaks to tourists, residents, and artists that we are, in fact, an art city, damn it. Unsurprisingly, this topic ruffled the crowd at Town Hall and elicited ping-ponging points of view from audience members: We should look to cities like New York or New Orleans for the blueprint—why reinvent the wheel? Conversely: Our culture and assets are unique; imitating other cities is futile and foolhardy and we must look inward.
A few days after the meeting, I met a fellow attendee (an artist) for coffee. “For as big a political revolution this city went through with this election, I wish there was more visionary thinking,” they said. Frustration is fair: Supposing the city is able to accomplish any of this, are taxes, banks, and defining our nebulous civic relationship with art going to help artists pay rent? And isn’t framing art as an economic driver just a euphemism for gentrification?
“Artists creating value that ultimately prices them out: It’s so clear that this is a failed way to think about how art fits into a city,” the artist continued. “It just ends up being a little Potemkin village. Much of what the city funds is more about creating an appearance of art activity than truly supporting artists. You have to ask, who does this benefit?”
It’s hard to know what to do with this buzz in the air: The ideas are inspiring but embryonic, at times incredibly vague. And we’ve been burned before. But something Engstrom touched on in a conversation a few days after the Town Hall meeting sums up why the excitement seems justified. “Wilson doesn’t have a lot of lived experience with the arts community,” he said. “Maybe it’s a good thing she’s not already deeply embroiled in the arts; she’s going to bring some fresh perspective to moving things along.”
Maybe that’s ultimately the most exciting part of this moment: We don’t know what Wilson has in store for us. That also makes it all the more important to maintain these conversations and the accountability they foster. I implore the transition team and the Office of Arts to keep some form of these roundtables going—sticky notes and all.