There’s a lively debate going on in Chattanooga right now about funding for public art. Several years ago, as part of the ambitious 21^st Century Waterfront Plan, visionary civic officials enacted a percent-for-public art program to establish what they thought would be a sustainable mechanism for art in the public realm.

Now, facing the reality of recession-driven shrinking revenues, the mayor and some members of the city council want to undo the ordinance that commits one percent of capital improvement budgets to art in favor of a lesser amount, which the mayor says will not fall below $100,000.

Amid the uproar have emerged two well-crafted and wonderfully rational messages. On October 16, the Chattanooga Times editorial page rose in defense of the art program, calling public art “as important to economic development as good schools, streets, sewers, hospitals and other civic amenities.”

One October 22, Rich Boyd, the executive director of the Tennessee Arts Commission addressed the Chattanooga Rotary Club and exhorted the city to stay the course with its public art program that “has made this city special.” An edited version of Rich’s speech appeared as a Times editorial on October 27.

It’s tough not to sympathize with city council members struggling to make their budgetary ends meet, but Chattanooga’s public art program has made a difference in our city. Art advocates appropriately point to the day Volkswagen officials announced their decision to locate their assembly plant in Chattanooga. Volkswagen CEO Stefan Jacoby stated, “We always knew our decision would come down to something intangible, and you have made the intangible tangible.”

Public art itself is tangible; the intangibles are the ways in which, as Rich so aptly stated, “It questions the way we look at the world [and] offers different explanations of the world we live in.”

Any city without a public art program should start one. Any city with a robust public art program in place ought to preserve it.