“YOUR AD HERE” is how the Chicago Sun-Times caught reader’s attention for this Bank of America ad on the Wabash Avenue Bridge monument.
Yesterday, I suggested that maybe the Crystal Lake City Council could recoup some of the $64,000 it spent of our money on four stone monuments telling people they were on Virginia Street.
I say “our” money because the $16,000 apiece pillars were financed with Tax Increment Financing District bonds.
These are bonds to be paid back by taxing any increase in the assessed valuation in the TIF District.
Those dollars that are lost by overlapping tax districts are then extracted from the pockets of other property taxpayers when their tax districts raise their tax rates.
Quite convoluted, I’ll admit.
It’s so hard to understand that Mayor Aaron Shepley contended that no one’s taxes would go up when the Council was considering the Vulcan Lakes-Route 14 TIF.
How no taxes would go up when an over $20,000 million project was going to be borrowed and paid back over 23 years was beyond this economics’ major’s imagination.
But, you can understand that city council members, aldermen and village trustees consider this “free money”–tax money to ve extracted for which they cannot be help responsible…because the process of picking people’s pockets is so indirect.
In any event, Chicago has decided to sell advertising on its bridge monuments.
After advancing the possibility on its front page last week, the Chicago Tribune printed a photo of the Bank of America ad on the Chicago River’s Wabash Avenue Bridge monument on its front page Tuesday. “Desperate times?” asks the photo caption.
On Tuesday both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune published photos of an ad bought by the Bank of America on the Chicago River Bridge monument.
If Chicago can do it, why can’t Crystal Lake?
Being able to do something doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to do.
Re the Chicago ad pics –
Tacky, Tacky, Tacky
r Ron Paul, maybe two polls makes a trend in Iowa.
Continue Reading
Twice this week, a survey shows Paul on the rise and in second place among likely Iowa Caucusgoers, finishing within the margin of error with poll leader Herman Cain.
The Iowa State University/Gazette/KCRG survey of 377 Iowa Republicans out today had Cain at 25 percent and Paul at 20 percent. Bloomberg’s Iowa poll out Tuesday had Cain at 20 percent and Paul at 19 percent.
Paul has been the first choice among at least 10 percent of Iowa Republicans since this summer, and has been between 10 and 12 percent since October.
In today’s survey, Mitt Romney came in third with 16 percent; Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry were tied for fourth with 8 percent.
There’s no sign yet of Newt Gingrich’s surge in this poll; he’s tied at 5 percent with Rick Santorum. That might be the timing of the survey: today’s was conducted between Nov. 1 and Nov. 13, spanning the first two weeks of the Herman Cain sexual harassment scandal, which broke Oct. 30. Bloomberg’s survey covered a narrower window of time from Nov. 10 through Nov. 12, and had Gingrich in fourth place with 17 percent.
Huntsman had 0 percent in today’s poll. Of those surveyed, 8 percent said they didn’t know who’d they’d pick in the Jan. 3 caucuses, and 6 percent picked “other.”
In 2008, Paul finished fifth among Iowa caucusgoers with 10 percent.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68596.html#ixzz1eCNd4InF
That Bank of America sign looks AWFUL. Barf.
It screams. We are inept at running our City of Chicago, we can’t manage our budgets, we won’t cut costs and services, so we’ll sell the one thing our city has going for it, it’s beauty.
It’s right up there with the Cubs trading Lou Brock.
Just a bad decision.