Now is the time to feign surprise that the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts is operating in the red. Who could have anticipated that a project whose construction came in roughly $120 million over budget and was completed some 20 months late -- after a two-decade struggle to even break ground -- would bust the operating budget as well?

As the Miami Herald reported last week, a projected budget deficit of $150,000 for the year has ballooned to $3 million while anticipated ticket sales have fallen 44 percent short. Now that all the obvious pessimistic predictions have come to pass -- there's no where to park! there's panhandling and crime in the neighborhood! tickets are too expensive for most county residents to afford! -- the Center's administrators plan to return to the County Commission to ask for an emergency $4 million to keep the doors open through the rest of the season.

And you know what? I think that's just fine.

In fact, I think they should ask for more.

Herald readers wrote letters expressing outrage at the "boondoggle" and calling for the county "to privatize the center and let the rich pay full price for their playground."
Most familiar among the dissenters was developer, art collector, and philanthropist Martin Margulies, who wrote, "Taxpayers should be complaining about this money-losing facility where most residents cannot afford the price of tickets to see performances, let alone parking and a meal." Then he ended with a jab at the proposed new Miami Art Museum, which like the Carnival Center, is supposed to be built with a mix of public and private funds.

Some years ago, I interviewed Margulies about MAM's dream of a new building. While listening to him make the case for the privatization of culture, this thought occurred to me for the first time: I want my tax dollars to pay for culture. I don't have millions to pay for a private collection or to donate a building for a museum, but I still would like to have a say in the way culture is promoted in our community. I shouldn't have to be a millionaire developer or billionaire cruise line owner or pharmaceutical mogul in order to play a role in our shared cultural life.

My life is cash poor, but culturally rich. As a self-employed writer, most years I make roughly the median income for a resident of Miami-Dade County, which last year was around $36,000. Every few years I get lucky and make a lot more. This year I'm making considerably less. Like many other Miami-Dade County residents, I can't afford to buy tickets to see many Carnival shows. After paying my mortgage, property tax, insurance, and utilities, there's usually about $200 left each week for food, gas, and other necessities. The average ticket price of just over $40 for a show plus another $15 for parking would eat up nearly a third of my weekly disposable income.

That's pretty typical of cultural workers in town, at least the ones I know. Among local writers, dancers, actors, directors, visual artists, and musicians, sure, there are some well-paid stars, but most of us rank precariously among the middle class and are more likely among the working poor. Our standard of living usually depends on how many part-time jobs we can hold down while practicing our craft.

Often those jobs involve working with other people who don't make much money either. While both public and private funding for the arts has been cut drastically over the past two decades, much of the scant money that remains is dedicated to projects that promote art as a form of social service: oral histories for the homeless, dance for survivors of domestic violence, clowning for the terminally ill, music for the mentally ill, and all manner of educational programs for kids, especially "at risk" kids.

I don't mean to belittle of the value of these programs. On the contrary, it's because I have worked in these programs and seen what a powerful force music, dance, theater, literature, and visual art can be that I know that art is not a luxury. It is not and never should be reserved for the rich.

Luckily for me, I get most of my tickets for free. Or at least as part and parcel of the work I do as an arts critic. That has allowed me to show up at the Carnival Center more often than most of my neighbors and even to take a chance on shows that I'm pretty sure I won't like.

What I have seen at the Carnival Center this season has been sometimes inspiring, sometimes a yawn. Some shows are too commercial to stir my interest, others so experimental or foreign or just plain long that I find myself plotting an early escape. Often at the beginning or end of a show, I marvel at the beauty of the center's commissioned art works: the gorgeous curtain in the opera house designed by Robert Zakanitch, the lovely singing waters of Ana Valentina Murch's carved marble fountains. On my way to and from the Center at night, I love watching Cesar Pelli's lopsided mountains looking out across the city in every direction.

The most important contribution the Carnival Center makes to our community goes beyond the merit of or attendance at any single show. The Center's singular contribution is the attempt to forge a center for our deeply fragmented community. South Florida already has a vibrant cultural life: Art Basel and the Winter Music Conference on South Beach, Calle Ocho in Little Havana, the Lyric Theatre in Overtown, the Konpa Festival at Bayfront Park, and the Trini Carnival wherever it happens to be (last year, it happened to be at the opening of the Carnival Center).

But those much loved activities always, whether deliberately or not, throw up boundaries. Carnival Center CEO Michael Hardy and artistic director Justin Macdonnell say over and over again to anyone who will interview them that they are committed to making the center "inclusive." Their ambitious programming bears this out. There are artists who appeal to particular communities, as well as truly exotic acts who demand that we look beyond our selves. All forms of art are welcome here.

When I hear about the emergency budget cuts and read complaints from county commissioners and citizens alike about the Carnival Center's high costs, I worry that it is the most adventurous programming that will be trimmed away. I am especially concerned that the support of local artists will be dramatically reduced -- indeed, I am hearing from artists that it already has. This is tantamount to neglecting our infrastructure, to shortchanging our future.

The Carnival Center needs more money, not less. There is not much that the $3 million overrun would cover that I wouldn't want to pay for. Balance the air conditioning, for god's sake, if that's what's running up the electric bills. But if otherwise underfunded Miami police officers are being paid for extra duty to patrol the area, that's great. If lower paid security guards must be hired too, even better.

If the cost of commissioning local artists exceeds that of hiring a touring national company, so be it. They'll pay us all back at tax time. And if the ticket prices are so high that most people can't afford to come, then raise them even higher. That's right, higher. Because the person who can afford $65 can afford $100, and so on. And then give away all those empty seats to people who truly can't afford them.

Arts critics should not be the only ones reaping these cultural riches for free.