Tomorrow, City of DeKalb is sponsoring a business development presentation featuring a local businessman who has already made a lot of money doing business with DeKalb. I understand that this is the second such presentation.
Reasonable people could make at least three objections to this series.
1. This is not a core function of city government. It is a core function of the Chamber of Commerce, which also gets a lot of DeKalb taxpayers’ money (the old ReNew DeKalb funding plus tourism funds). Our financial consultants have cautioned us to stick to our core competencies and this is not one of them. Likewise, it bears no relation to stated priorities.
2. The event throws Constitutionally-protected equal treatment under the bus. Here’s a business leader getting special treatment and free advertising for his business. You know what’s business-unfriendly? Playing favorites. Putting some companies under your wing while persecuting others.
3. Council just passed an unprecedented property tax increase and there’s still no plan to fund street maintenance at the level needed. There should be no frills while we can’t fund the basics and they have their hands out, but the city is spending our resources of staff time and money on extras.
It’s like a person putting feathers in her cap and not noticing that the cap itself has dry rot.
Barnes-Flyer