Why not buy art with tax money?

I’ve been paying taxes since my freshman year in high school, when Doug Meinecke hired me to sprinkle cheese on pizzas and clean the bathrooms at Breadeaux Pizza.

Don’t worry — I washed my hands before cleaning the bathrooms.

By my count, that was 24 years ago.

I’m now 38, meaning that when my generation finally qualifies for retirement at age 96, I’ll have given a good deal of money to the government.

Maybe it’s inherent Gen X cynicism, but I’ve always just assumed my tax money is being wasted, whether it’s on undermining regimes in the developing world or brainstorming better ways of blowing stuff up.

We visited the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History this summer in New Mexico, and on display was an atomic bazooka the Army came up with in the 1950s.

My heart swelled knowing my grandparents helped pay for something so ridiculous.

When it comes to tax money, I’m always just pleasantly surprised when I see a bumpy road getting fixed or I hear a fire truck on its way to an emergency.

It’s hard for me to think of tax money as “my” money, as so many fellow citizens do. After all, if I tried to keep “my” money, I’d wind up in prison.

I’ve never once fumed, “That’s MY money they’re monkeyin’ with” when I read that the F-35 stealth fighter can’t get off the ground.

But it also wasn’t a surprise a couple of weeks ago to see several residents up in arms when the county board of supervisors took up the issue of whether to fund $22,000 worth of public art with the people’s money.

The supervisors had all but promised the three-county Raccoon River Valley Trail that they’d support a grant to commission new art along the trail with a match.

Supporters want to turn the entire, 89-mile bike trail into a one-of-a-kind public art corridor with the help of Iowa artist David Dahlquist.

But when the agreement came up for a formal vote on July 27, a couple of residents came to speak out against the buying of art with taxpayer money, leading to a drawn-out debate on the subject by supervisors.

After some grandstanding, supervisors nevertheless agreed to provide the match by a vote of 4-1. (And, in the end, they decided not to use tax dollars, but rather Louis Dreyfus funds and camping receipts.)

Of all the things we blow money on, it’s still art that brings critics out faster than you can say Des Moines Water Works.

In May, the supervisors voted unanimously to pledge $15,000 over the same period of time as the art — three years — to the legal defense of three counties being sued by Des Moines Water Works for polluting the Raccoon River with nitrates from farm runoff.

There was no protracted debate that day.

There was no mention of how nitrates in the river regularly make the water potentially dangerous to drink or any lofty, forward-thinking talk of what we as an agricultural county could do to ensure we’re not contributing to the problem.

It was more like, “Our way of life is under fire ... get out the checkbook.”

But what if we’re wrong?

What if we are, in fact, polluting the waterways?

Or, to ask another question, why shouldn’t tax dollars be used to buy art?

Somebody go dig up Grant Wood. I want my great-grandpa’s money back for that silly WPA stuff.

Public art on the bike trail is a much safer bet.

It’s hard to believe, but people do travel places just to see art. (I’m one of those weirdos.)

The supervisors were almost apologetic in voting for art, but they shouldn’t be — Des Moines has successfully poached young people from our small towns for years now because of its embrace of the creative class.

In the 20th century, you hoped to lure a factory to your town to employ lots of people.

In the global economy, accommodating small-business owners and entrepreneurs is now the way for a community to compete. And their accommodations include access to culture — public art, recreational trails, coffeeshops and good local restaurants.

We have those.

We just need to get behind them.