Selling ad space on city property is not “creative”

Proposals of selling ad-space on things like firetrucks and are often framed as “getting creative” by the city councilmen that propose them. In fact, it’s not creative – it’s poorly thought out, and shortsighted.

These proposals are bad deals that don’t solve fiscal problems (at best, they’re a drop in the bucket). Real creativity would be finding ways to solve the financial issues at their core. The job of government is not to parcel out city property to private industry.

Note that in this story, they never mention how much the shortfall is, what the root causes are, or how much putting ads on firetrucks will bring in.