Downtown Leaders Rely on Community Volunteerism For Municipal Events to Pay Business Friends For Municipal Marketing #lol

Rockford, IL – Regional businesses from the advertising, marketing, and PR industry that dabble heavily in municipal, city, state, and public charity* marketing contracts have decided to give back a percentage of their inflated overhead (gross profits) to the same community that is forced to eat their proud bullshit.  About 93% of all municipal marketing budgets are now subject to paying a large portion of their gross profits (inflated overhead) to non-profit organizations charities actually help communities and individuals– like the Red Cross, and the National Children’s Cancer Society.

*We loosely stress the use of “public charity”.  E.g., the Rockford Area Convention & Visitor’s Bureau (also known as RACVB and Go Rockford) is legally considered a private, non-profit organization.  In other words–er, IN ROCKFORD WORDS–it’s also a public charity business due to its close relationships with city government and local, private sector firms. What does this mean? RACVB handles the Downtown Rockford Amateur Sports Complex project. RACVB can award the marketing budget to a firm of its choice without having to legally publish a bidding process for the contract award in the local toilet papers.  RACVB, along with its Board members, and leaders from city government and private sector businesses, decides who gets paid for the development, construction, and marketing of.  We’re not talking $10,000. We’re talking millions of dollars being spent and handed out in various directions to the same businesses without public bidding. Sadly, the bid process wouldn’t matter as many of these deals are locked up behind closed doors ahead of time– that’s business, not charity.

This is one, little, indirect example of how the rich stay rich and the poor grow poorer in a community that already has an unhealthy cash flow while dealing with high unemployment, crime, and taxes.  In the state of Illinois, it’s pretty easy to keep y’all fooled as long as it’s presented as civic pride, amateur sports, trains, hotels, or transformation.  Expensive, imaginary, emotional stuff– lol.