I don’t want to belabor this point but the city of LaSalle must stop wasting YOUR TAX DOLLARS ON UNNECESSARY PROMOTIONAL ADVERTISING! We discussed this topic again last Monday with no decision being made. It seems the finance committee can’t come up with a recommendation. Chairman Green decided to hold an extended finance meeting starting at 6pm on the 19th of this month before our regular council meeting. I will be unable to attend this meeting due to another commitment. I was hopeful we could put this issue to bed once and for all.This past week we placed ads in the News Tribune on Wednesday October 7th and Thursday October 8th.
If you saw Wednesday’s paper it was on page A6 and A7. It was the ad for the Jazz’n the street 2009 for this Saturday the 10th. While I realize that this is a LaSalle event do we really have to put the Mayor’s picture along with all the names of the current city officials in the ad? What good does that do except for the News Tribune’s bottom line and the official’s free political ad getting our names in front of the public? And guess what….your tax dollars paid for it! The business’s ads make sense because they are advertising themselves to the public. We don’t need to advertise the city of LaSalle to the Illinois Valley area, that’s just plain stupid!
If you go to the next page you will see an ad that states the City of LaSalle is proud to support the fine arts of our areas schools. Tell me something. If we don’t put this ad in does that mean that everybody will think the city doesn’t support the fine arts of area schools? On the next page is an ad for the same thing featuring Frank Mautino’s name. The difference is its paid for by guess who……Frank Mautino, not the tax payer.
But just when I thought I had seen it all I got Thursday’s paper with an insert titled “Who’s Who in the Illinois Valley 2009. In it on page 3 we have a half page ad showing a picture of Don Aleksy and Sam McNeilly at our Rotary park site. Apparently these are two important guys in the Illinois Valley! I’m sorry you other cities in the Illinois Valley don’t have anybody as important as we do on staff. It must be very embarrassing! I must note here that no other city chose to advertise in this section so the above statement must be true!
Have I made my point yet? Isn’t it time we woke up and stopped this wasteful spending? It should be noted that I have held this belief ever since I was first elected AND when our current Mayor was an alderman he supported the same belief. My how times have changed. I have been told I would tie the mayor’s hands if we ran this through the council first before approving any ads. That reasoning is beyond stupid! We don’t need to advertise in this fashion at all. There is no decision to make. The council decides if and when we donate tax dollars to charity. Lets stop this craziness now. While I don’t blame the News Tribune for asking , its time we quit throwing your tax dollars away only to improve the News Tribune’s bottom line!
Call your aldermen and Mayor and tell them to stop this misuse of tax dollars NOW!
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