This column is addressed to everyone in Hamilton County who enjoys our arts.

        You know who you are: You take your kids to the Children's Museum and the Omnimax at Cincinnati Museum Center. You spent an evening at Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival or Playhouse in the Park. You had a swine time counting the porkers of the Big Pig Gig.

        You enjoy Cincinnati Pops concerts. Your teen-ager has a membership in Enjoy the Arts and gets hundreds of dollars in discounted tickets (even to movies). Madcap Puppets and ArtReach have visited your youngster's school.

        You believe arts make Hamilton County a better place to live.

        So here's my question: Do you really want to be held hostage by 30 people who would kill the healthy growth of our arts scene?

        You've seen the headlines. At issue is a proposed $600,000 grant to the newly forming Regional Cultural Alliance by the Hamilton County Commission.

        At issue is 71 cents a person.

        The Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxation (COAST), a group that claims “about 30 active members” according to last Sunday's Enquirer, is crying foul because Commissioner Tom Neyer Jr. chaired a committee that took a cultural plan completed 18 months ago and held it together until an alliance could form.

        At press time, COAST was planning to seek an injunction on Monday that will prevent Mr. Neyer from voting on the RCA.

        COAST and its 30 members are very astute political players. COAST spokesman Jim Urling invoked the name “Mapplethorpe” when he told the Enquirer that “his group opposes funding the Regional Cultural Alliance because arts programs should not be financed with public money.”
       

It's a council

       

        The Regional Cultural Alliance is not an arts program. It is an arts council, which we desperately need (and almost all major U.S. metropolitan areas have).

        We need a unified voice for the arts.

        Why? Look to the riverfront. The Banks promises residents and restaurants, but it's an opportunity for weekend and evening events. Arts have to be a part of that.

        A council could administer big projects like the immensely popular Big Pig Gig.

        It could market our arts. We're a Delta hub; companies like Cincinnati Opera, Cincinnati Symphony and Playhouse in the Park are providing world-class art. It's time cultural tourists discover Cincinnati — and start spending money here?
       

Not politics

       

        Arts councils across the country — including our statewide Ohio Arts Council — are supported by public funding.

        Thirty people are trying to make this about politics. Make it about arts.

        Tell your County Commission (which has spent no money on the arts for 10 years) that you want it to provide start-up funding for the Regional Cultural Alliance.

        Don't let the RCA grant proposal die. Commissioner John Dowlin has expressed his doubts; incoming commissioner Todd Portune is vocally anti-RCA.

        If we've learned anything from the November elections, it's that every voice matters. Let yours be heard in support of our arts.

        Jackie Demaline is the Enquirer's theater critic and roving arts reporter.

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