What a waste of money.

Victoria City Council, already spending $72,000 a year on an artist-in-residence, is now going to spend another $72,000 per year to add a second artist-in-residence, this time aboriginal.

That’s on top of a poet laureate for $4,500 a year, and a youth poet laureate for $2,750 per year.

Yeesh. From the Times Colonist:

Jordan Bateman, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, called the expenditure “foolish” and said it’s small expenses such this that can just keep adding up.

“This is the kind of foolishness that gets city councils into a lot of trouble,” Bateman said. “Last year, you had the Artist in Residence. Then you add the Indigenous Artist in Residence this year. Next year, no doubt, there will be a Youth Artist in Residence. The year after that they’ll discover that women are under-represented and you’ll have a Female Artist in Residence. This can go on and on and on and you get further and further away from what the actual job of City of Victoria is: health and safety issues — water, sewer, parks. Things like that,” he said.

Stan Bartlett, chairman of Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria, suggested the city might try a taxpayer in residence initiative instead.

“One for retirees, working poor, single moms, seniors, unemployed millennials, disabled, new entrepreneurs and university students. You could pay they guys — eight of them a dollar a year — as taxpayers in residence. They could shadow councillors and maybe encourage a culture of frugality at city hall,” Bartlett said.

Bateman conceded that the expenditure is a tiny piece in a $224-million operating budget.

“It’s easy to let politician wriggle off the hook because it’s a small amount of money. You hear that when politicians give themselves raises: ‘Oh, you could get rid of all of us and you’d only save 100th of one per cent of a budget.’ But these nickels and dimes eventually add up to full dollars and that’s the problem.

“There’s also a focus issue. If you take that money, what are the significant problems facing Victoria today? Well, I don’t think a lack of arts or culture would be in the top 50 in the list of problems,” Bateman said.