Every year in Schaumburg’s Septemberfest parade you will see Mayor Larson and other Village Board members passing out candy to the children lining the streets of Summit Dr. I never really gave this a second thought until I looked through Schaumburg’s detailed budget for 2010-2011.

Recently, we found in the approved Schaumburg Detailed Budget 2010-2011 (174), that the Mayor’s Office shows a line expense of “CANDY FOR COMMUNITY PARADES”  for $6,000. We also found in the Mayor’s office budget an expense of $850 for “PARADE VEHICLE RENTAL” to “rent a trolley for the Septemberfest Parade and the Hoffman 4th of July Parade.”

That seems like a very large expense for just two parades. Even more curious was the fact that the expense was budgeted for the Mayor’s Office and not promotion for a specific government program or agency.

We also found a line item for “TEENS/SEPTEMBERFEST PARADE CANDY” in the amount of $500 in the human services budget and a line item for “BICYCLE PROGRAM SUPPLIES’ of $100 that included “Candy, handouts for bike events/volunteer efforts (Septemberfest, etc.)”. The amounts of $500 and $100 in the human services and bicycle program budgets shouldn’t be alarming, promoting government services is sometimes a necessary cost of running a government program. The amount of candy to promote the Mayor’s Office and the Village Trustees is 10 times greater than all other budgeted candy expenditures combined ($6,000 vs. $600).

The Schaumburg Mayor's Office can buy 1.8 tons of candy with the $6,000 budgeted for 2010-2011.

Just how much is $6,000 of candy? At Sam’s Club you can purchase a 5.33 pound bag of candy for $8.42. For the $6,000 budgeted, you can buy nearly 3,800 lbs. of candy. That’s a lot of candy.

To put that amount in perspective, at last year’s Septemberfest Parade the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition spent less than $50 on candy for the Septemberfest parade (not using taxpayer funds) and it lasted for about 3/4 of the parade route.

The $6,000 in candy budgeted for the Mayor’s Office is a major cause for concern. While the amount is small in terms of the total annual budget, the expense is symbolic of more systemic problems. The Mayor’s Office doesn’t promote a government service or agency, it promotes the Mayor and the Village Trustees. Why should the taxpayers of Schaumburg be forced to subsidize  the promotion of politicians? Obviously, the answer is that it shouldn’t. Government shouldn’t be providing its elected officials with freebies to hand out to citizens at parades. If politicians want to hand out candy, it should do so out of their own campaign funds and not of taxpayer dollars.

For a Mayor and Village Board who rushed through a historic $23.5 million property tax just last December without voter approval, the $6,000 candy expense is emblematic of arrogant and wasteful elected officials whose taxpayer financed self-promotion is nothing short of shameful.

Voters can be sure that in my run for Mayor of Schaumburg no taxpayer dollars will be used. Any candy handed out at parades will come out of campaign funds.

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