Two weeks ago, the Common Council adopted Delaware District Councilman Mike LoCurto’s resolution asking the Brown administration to dip into the city’s surplus to restore funding for the city’s cultural institutions that were zeroed out of this year’s Erie County budget by County Executive Chris Collins. The city has not funded arts programs since 2001. Originally, LoCurto’s resolution has posied a sum of $300,000; in a last-minute compromise to ensure that the resolution would be passed anonymously, the amount was deleted from its text.

This week, North District Councilman Joe Golombek joined the fray, submitting a resolution asking that the city’s Arts Commission and the Departments of Assessment and Taxation, Audit and Control, Administration, Finance, Policy & Urban Affairs, and Management Information Systems evaluate the possibility of allowing city taxpayers to donate to a fund for cultural institutions on their city tax bills. This resolution, too, passed unanimously. “This is not meant to be a substitute for providing city funding for the arts,” Golombek said. “This is meant to be an additional means of providing funds to our cultural institutions.”

—geoff kelly