Town Square Sales Taxes

 Looked at the business located on the Carbondale square and realized that over half of them do not collect any sales taxes. South side of the square is empty save for the train depot, which houses the offices of Carbondale Main Street and the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce, both of which are not for profits that don't sell anything. 

The west side of the square consists of offices, Fringe, Practice Pad and the Rainbow Cafe. Practice Pad may sell some musical equiptment but its primary business is music lessons.. Services in Illinois do not collect sales taxes.

North and east sides have two restaurants, 2 groceries, ABC Liquors, Hair Brains and Arthur Agency. The first five do collect sales taxes but the last two do not. That is a lot of places in downtown not generating any sales tax revenue.

Mural

 Another mural completed, this one just west of Woodlawn Cemetary on the side of the Wellness Center. Features Calvin Scott playing the trumpet, as he does at every Memorial Day celebration at Woodlawn. The cameos are John A Logan on the right and Daniel Brush on the left.

Church Vandalism

 Man wallking through the parking lot at St. Francis Xavier Church one afternoon last week decided, for whatever reason, to pick up a rock and wing it through a church window. Happily a staff member saw the man break the window and got Carbondale police there before he left the area.

Big Chill

 The renamed and revamped Dairy Queen, now named "Wazo's Big Chill" reopened this past Friday and crowds have been good so far. Both times I drove by there were people sitting on the wall along S. Illinois and a line of people at the window. 

I expect Big Chill to do much better than the relaunch of El Greco some years ago. Despite the long lines of people waiting to get into El Greco when it announced it was closing, and then again when it re-opened, there was never enough demand for the restaurant's menu to keep customers coming back multiple times. Ditto for Mississippi Flyway. Despite the lamentations upon its closure, people did not eat there often enough to keep it open.

Dairy Queen/Big Chill does not have that problem. The restaurant did not close because of lack of demand but because the franchisor yanked the license. The DQ's biggest problem was always finding enough staff to operate. Barring a major change in the menu, (Blizzards will have to have a different name as that is a DQ trademark), Big Chill should remain successful.

Peeping Tom

 Carbondale Police are looking for a male with tan skin and a chubby face in his early 20s, who has been seen peering through the window of a house on West College and another on North Springer on the nights of June 29th and July 5. The decription of the man in both cases is similar enough that it is likely the same person. In the case of the North Springer incident, residents of the house saw the man looking through a window on the second floor, while the West college sighting was through a ground floor window.

Vandal Arrested

 41 year old Dustin Randolph of Marion was arrested today in Carterville on charges of vandalizing several law firms in Carbondale the last week of June.

Randolph was charged with throwing rocks and chunks of concrete through the windows of 4 different law firms and a retail business between June 27 and June 30.

City Flag

 Might be time to update the city flag. Just looking at it does not indicate what the symbols on it mean. According to the city code, "The City flag shall consist of the Corporate Seal in gold, black and white on a white background."

The items on the city seal are a railroad track and spike, a lamp symbolizing education, a cross commemorating the first Memorial Day observance, along with cotton boles with the black coloring honoring the importance of coal to the region.

As I have read elsewhere, seals go on offical docutments. Flags should be simpler and not need to have the name of the community on it.