I was pretty surprised last night when the Town Hall event I attended became a pitch for a ballot measure.

After a day of considering it, though, I can see many positives to the way in which the event was planned.

Commissioner Same clearly has an agenda. That agenda includes finding ways to bring more money into the Arts community. The way he's decided to do this is a ballot measure and considering the personalities he had with him up on stage last night, he's definitely got all his ducks in a row up to this point.

If Commissioner Sam is committed to having a ballot measure for a tax-funded sponsorship for the Arts, it would definitely help him if the community he's working to help didn't shoot itself in the foot by arguing _meanly_ with each other about who should benefit from that money. By bringing a lot of potential beneficiaries together in a room where they can see each other's humanity will help foster a "we're all in this together" mentality.

One of the down sides to the way this was handled is that even though Commissioner Sam brought together a bunch of people based on their Creative Capacity he failed to take advantage of that creativity when he narrowed the possible solutions down to one: more money from the public.

Truly, when all you have is a hammer (tax money in this instance) then every problem looks like a nail.