One of the latest mantras by the band of merry moderates on the City Council is that we need advertising to fill the gaps in revenue to help Madison Metro. Well, there’s a few flaws with that . . .
First of all, remember all the hoopla 4 months ago about being able to raise $260,000 by starting a pilot program to have busses are fully wrapped in advertising. Well, its been 4 months and I haven’t seen a fully wrapped bus yet. Have you?
Truth of the matter is, that advertising revenues for Madison Metro has been steadily declining. A recent report by Madison Metro says that income from advertising has declined as follows:
2001 – $284,420
2002 – $341,276
2003 – 390,405
2004 – 301,100
2005 – $169,112*
And part of this advertising revenue has to be paid to someone to install and remove the advertsing and sell the advertising. This costs the City $100,000 a year.
And at the same time, its interesting that while some council members act like we haven’t been getting enough revenues from bus fares, the fares have gone up by $1M in the last 5 years:
2001 – $6.6M
2002 – $6.4M
2003 – $6.1M
2004 – $6.6M
2005 – $7.6M
But council members remain fixated on advertising that isn’t performing the way they anticipated. Another example is that adverting in parking ramps isn’t meeting its goals either. Last I checked with staff, we were supposed to raise $75,000 with our advertising in parking ramps, but we’re only on track to make 82% of that or $62,000.
So, when the proposal came up for advertising on bus shelters, I felt like we were being sold another promise that wasn’t going to be kept. These are proposals that might make folks feel good and give the illusion of “holding the line on taxes”, but they aren’t delivering they way they promised. Talk about having “fiscal awareness”, these proposals are feel-good gimmicks that don’t deliver and I think the public should be more aware of the fiscal impact of these proposals and rhetoric.
*Please see the report to interpret these numbers on your own. Seems that either in 2001 – 2004 these are not all advertising revenues or we should add $124,134 to this number.
