Mayor Kautz receives national arts honor
Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth Kautz is one of three elected officials in the nation chosen to receive the 2012 Public Leadership in Arts Award.
The award was presented by Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education, and the United States Conference of Mayors. They’ve presented the awards annually since 1997.
The award honors elected officials who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the advancement of the arts. Kautz was presented the award at the Conference of Mayors’ 80th annual winter meeting in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 19. Kautz is a past president of the conference.
Kautz received the award for her and the community’s work on the Heart of the City, the Burnsville Performing Arts Center and the city’s annual Art and All that Jazz Festival. The other two honorees are Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Frank Ortis, mayor of Pemroke Pines, Fla.
“Gov. Quinn and mayors Kautz and Ortis have each demonstrated their dedication to thoughtfully using the arts to spur economic development while enhancing the quality of life in the communities they serve,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts.
“I am thrilled and honored to receive this national award for local arts leadership,” Kautz said. “I have been blessed to work with so many business and community leaders who make the arts in all forms a priority. I share this award with them. We are very aware that the arts enrich the lives of our citizens, document our history and drive economic vitality.”
What Kautz did, she did with our tax money and fees the city collects from a landfill. The great philantropists of Burnsville contributed less than 2% of the total cost. The Kautz contribution was to add a thousand theatre seats in an area that already had more seats per capita than any place in the USA except New York City. To add insult to injury, these seats had been supported by over $500,000 in philanthropy in the years leading up to Kautz’s decision to build her own theatre.
If an awards are to be given they should go to the philanthropists and not wasteful politicians that are supported by their local newspapers and local chambers of commerce.
The decision to build the Burnsville Performing Arts Center was based on false imformation and the local newspapers continue to cover up the big lie. I you want evidence, compare the amounts shown for an “operating loss” in the ThisWeek newspaper to the 2009 and 2010 CAFR reports available on Burnsville.org.