I found two articles in last week’s paper to be of interest. One talked about town expenditures and the “wish list” of items that unfortunately there are currently no funds for; things such as year-round decorative tree lighting on the Avenue of Fountains, or a grand entrance to the Park at the crosswalk, or replacement of deteriorated benches in the Park, etc.

The second article was about the Park Place project and mentioned that developers are required to contribute one percent to fund public art.

My suggestion is to loosen up the definition of public art to include any project that beautifies the Park and downtown areas of town. The town could have a list of desired projects and developers could choose which project to donate toward.

With the upcoming new developments such as Park Place, CopperWynd expansion, the mixed use project behind Bashas’, Adero Canyon, etc. we could raise quite a bit of funds to beautify and improve our town without a single tax dollar being required. And it would not cost the developers anything more than they are already required to pay. A win-win.

I do love our extensive statue collection, but at some point there becomes a limit to the benefit to the town with adding more. Projects like these would create visual excitement and be a draw for tourism in town, which would truly be a benefit for our new downtown development and local businesses.

This is something that would have to be enacted soon, because these large projects are moving right along and there will be less areas to be developed in the future; so the time is now. What do you think, Town Council?