The City of Saskatoon spent $8,202 to paint art on doors in a downtown back-alley in 2024, according to documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“It’s absurd the city has kept on wasting taxpayer money on these ridiculous back-alley decorations,” said Gage Haubrich, CTF Prairie Director. “Why does city hall insist on spending money prettying-up this alley? Are the resident rats and alley cats demanding it? If local businesses want artistic back doors, they should buy a pail of paint instead of filling out a grant application.”
The project called “Alley Gallery 2024” was paid for by city taxpayers and the downtown business improvement district. The city also contributed $4,500 for a similar project called “Door Décor” with the Broadway business improvement district in 2025.
The downtown business improvement district is currently asking the city for $15,000 to paint art on doors in a different back-alley, according to the documents.
The city previously wasted nearly $100,000 of taxpayers’ money putting up colour-changing light balls in a back alley in 2023.
The City of Saskatoon is currently forecasting a 7.43 per cent property tax hike for 2026 and a 5.92 per cent hike in 2027.
Taxpayers Federation has the receipts.
Our Western nations are SO wealthy that we can afford this kind of spending. Because artists are special.
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/sf-approve-affordable-housing-artists/
Having known more than a few artists over the years, public art is not normally funded based on talent or originality. It is bestowed on the ideological correct, butt kissers and friends and relatives of the politicians who decide the funding.
Which explains $4 hundred thousand spent on a piece called “White-ish Spot Shots on Black Field”.
/s.
I’d like to see you positionish that dot with such artistic meaning!
/s.
It’s a skillful juxtaposition of dots. And it’s juxtaposition he wanted!
Yes.
I can only assume the back door art is to stop graffiti. Calgary did a similar project on utility covers and it has pretty much stopped graffiti as they won’t cover another artists work. So the cost should come down for graffiti cleanup to offset the expense of door art (one would hope).
Without looking at their books, one cannot tell which is cheaper to go with. The colored globes .. well that just seems wasteful but these are bureaucrats.,
When it comes to government spending, the taxpayer’s back alley is always involved.
“downtown business improvement district”, “downtown revitalization”…”downtown restoration project” call it whatever you want but the truth is they’re urban side hustles played in every medium sized city in Canada. Cleverly tapping into the nostalgia of a bygone era that’s never coming back.
Businesses fold up or move on… gutting the tax base and reality denying members of town council convincing tax payers “we can bring it all back if we just spend the money on the right things”. Plunking down art galleries in the downtown core are the biggest enticements.
It’s a grift.
L – Downtowns had hustle and bustle and a vibrant business and social life. Then in the 1970’s, the Supreme Court outlawed laws against vagrancy, begging or euphemistically panhandling.
At first it seemed of little consequence, but later alcoholics and drug addicts and muggers and more recently street gangs and gang wars over turf emerged as offspring. All the while suicidal empathy justified by the view that the mugger/addict was the victim of the crime; judicial supremacy had arrived.
The police motto: To serve and protect started to disappear from police cars. The responsibility/right of the citizenry to suppress crime and to be assisted by police e.i. under British Common-Law was rewritten under “the living tree” revisionist principle of jurisprudence.
Downtowns and public spaces became habitat for inhumanity. Therein lies many a tale of woe.
Maybe just double check the names of the artists because the Indigenous Inkjet printer art collection reported missing from Montreal last week just may have been found in the alley.
The Chinese Communist Party, when supplying opium to an army of junkies was no longer needed to fund the party and undermine Chinese society, gave the junkies an ultimatum: get clean or be declared enemies of the people and be packed off to forced labour camps with little hope of coming out again. The junkies got clean and stayed clean.
Funny how we can’t do that, eh?