Educate yourself and then your neighbors if YOU already fund the Chamber to bamboozle you.
Do you know if you have been funding the Chamber of Commerce with your tax bucks? Way too many of us have been fleeced IMHO. It sounds cool that they bring "business" to your area or promise you’ll get new local jobs and all of that will increase the tax base. A couple of links below give examples of how.
In my non-scientific observations over decades – a truthful cost/benefit analysis could and should shame them out of existence. Their trips and hosting fancy dinners etc.for themselves and visiting prospective "businesses" is great fun for their ego.
But the "courtship" all too often results in contracts to spend more of your tax bucks to woo the move, and then give them 5 or 10 years of tax free operation – which local mom & pop businesses are never offered. When the perks are gone – and it is time for them to pay their fair share – they slip out of town to their new victim city like the Baltimore Colts in the middle of the night.
I had not known about Chamber running ads for specific candidates. It sure explains why politicians never seem to question the huge tax bite requests from Chamber wheb approving yearly budgets. Pretty cozy.
Decades ago maybe there was a need. Now, any good business can go online and check your area gang activity, education rankings, infrastructure woes, average local salaries, recreation and culture venues, etc.
An honorable business is looking for a low crime area with good schools, fire departments, roads, hospitals and a supply of educated workers. Money wasted on schmoozing & public relations cannot overcome the damage done by starving needed services of tax pennies to enrich outfits like the chambers of horrors.
My advice is to teach consequences:
When you and your neighbors finish using mental pitchforks & torches at your town hall or county commission meeting to convince politicians to defund these leeches, to spank them for outsourcing and offshoring and hiding foreign money for political ads ------------------------- start investigating how much tax cash is being gifted to your local "committee of 100" or "committee of 50" or otherwise named local group who is also duplicating the touted ambassadorial services by entertaining themselves and others in lavish style in the name of luring new jobs to town.
Build a better town/county they will come ( good businesses.) The ones who need to be bribed in are easily bribed out. Yep, I still haven’t even forgiven the Brooklyn Dodgers either. They ruined my interest in or loyalty to sports teams, before I knew they were part of a disgusting monopoly elitism.
For that matter, what is the profit in towns and counties all across America endlessly spending in hopes of stealing disloyal businesses from each other?
Linky stuff: (which I think I placed in opposite order from the quote outtakes -- and I have no clue how to correct. :( )
http://timesfreepress.com/...
"J. Ed. Marston, vice president of marketing for the Chattanooga Chamber, said the public funds support a separate development program run by the Chattanooga Chamber Foundation, which is a legally separate identify from the membership-supported Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce. Both groups share the same board and staff, however.
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Last year, cities poured more than $3.3 million of taxpayer funds into Chambers across the state, according to a new study by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an anti-tax group based in Nashville.
The Chattanooga Chamber received nearly $1 million of public funds last year from the city of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, the Tennessee Valley Authority and EPB to help fund its economic development programs"
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One person in comments section posted:
According to their 2008 IRS Form 990 filing:
Hayes Ledford $55,718
Cheryl Millsaps $35,864
Shannon Andrews $64,099
Joseph Marston $74,891
John Riddell Jr. $117,418
Thomas E Wilson $188,896
Trevor Hamilton $203,516
Not including $1,336,415 in investment income they had revenues of $2,821,963 and spent $1,758,522 on salaries and benefits for 33 employees. Or over 62% of grants, donations and fees go to pay salaries and benefits, which seems excessive for a non-profit. Top employees have been increasing their salaries over the last few years. Almost $900,000 was paid to key employees, officers and directors."
In another town:
In Branson, Mo. Newspaper, Branson Courier , they explored another way the Chamber of Commerce gloms onto citizen taxes ------------- to develop and maintain Chamber website without contract to protect city if they wanted to use a different marketing vendor . Headline reads:
Cost to city taxpayers for chambers private web site "millions" - benefit to the chamber "priceless"
Here’s the link to their story written way back in 2003:
http://www.bransoncourier.com/...