In these times of ever tightening budgets for towns and communities in Illinois and increasing taxes paid by residents, the City of DeKalb seems to have extra money to play with.

In a document released is on the official City of DeKalb Website, it shows an expenditure of:

$5400.00 for Target Employee Holiday gift cards

$5400 in Gift Cards For DeKalb City Employees
City Of DeKalb Expenditure Document Feb 2016 via CityOfDeKalb.com
loading...

Local DeKalb government watchdog website Citybarbs.com, uncovered the expenditure as it investigated city documents.

The investigation also found that DeKalb has an expenditure fund labelled as account 8306. It is a fund the city refers to as "Special Events” . According to Citybarbs:

It appears to be an account that pays for employee parties and gifts.

 

Here are the amounts budgeted over the past few years from this account:

 

2012: $ 7,000
2013: $12,000
2014: $15,000
2015: $19,750
2016: $22,850

So the question here is should your taxpayer dollars, that you pay through sales taxes and property taxes, be given to city employees as gifts and for private parties the public is not invited to attend?

So you ask, "is this a legal way to spend taxpayer dollars?". According to the Illinois Constitution:

SECTION 1. GENERAL PROVISIONS
    (a)  Public funds, property or credit shall be used only
for public purposes.

 

In a report filed by the City of DeKalb, more than half of the full time City of Dekalb  employees earn between $50,000 - $125,000 a year. Six employees make over $125,000 a year. Much above the average wage of the City of DeKalb resident. City employee salaries are paid for by tax dollars. The estimated median household income in 2013 was $37,329 according to citydata.com.

Do you feel your tax dollars should go for private parties and for gift cards for government employees?

Read more HERE.

 

 

 

 

More From Rockford's New Country Q98.5