Opinion: Boston Arts Groups Must Pay Their Share for City Services

Big Boston cultural institutions lag far behind nonprofit hospitals and universities in heeding the city’s call to contribute payments in lieu of taxes for receiving police, road, and other public services, a Boston Globe columnist writes.

Lawrence Harmon notes a new study showing that last year Boston’s hospitals and colleges complied at rates of 96 percent and 88 percent, respectively, with City Hall’s request for beefed up payments. The rate for cultural entities was 39 percent, with some major institutions, such as the Institute of Contemporary Art and the New England Aquarium, offering nothing.

“The ‘eds and meds’’ get the concept of mutualism and recognize the difficulty of running a city in which half the land area is tax-exempt,” Mr. Harmon writes. “Cultural institutions either don’t get it or prefer to view the city from sublime heights.”