"…a one-horse town with no horses, even the leaves being blown down the streets don't like being there much, and there is nothing to do in town except complain about how awful the football team is, go to the movies and, if you can find yourself a partner, make love."

From Synopsis of The Last Picture Show, in Wikipedia

Orpheum Budget Demands Diligent Oversight

Monday's story in the Register-Mail would lead us to believe that the 16% increase in payroll at The Orpheum was "not because the theater has added more staff, but because existing positions have been expanded to increase marketing efforts and manage shows", according to President and Managing Director Kate Francis. Well, forgive me for borrowing a couple thousand bits of Brett Cornish's picture so I could link it to the story about his hiring, a story which was published a couple of months after he was in the saddle at The Orpheum, and a contract was secretly let for a new website, which would help "establish the brand of The Orpheum". Take the link above, and you'll have some questions now that 15 months have past. In fact, I recommend you view the new website which is the crown jewel of their new marketing efforts before I say any more about this. For some background of how this came to be, you may wish to see a previous story which became somewhat popular outside of Galesburg:

Secret Website at The Orpheum: http://ucimc.org/node/2811

Since the figures are legally required to be made public, we would like to know:

• total budget for the past 3 years
• total payroll for the last 3 years
• total cost of the website that appeared last month

That will do for a start. It will soon be time to re-evaluate their municipal funding,
which is only a recent anomaly that can and should be corrected.

David Roknich
Candidate for Mayor
Galesburg, Illinois
Galesburg411.com