The Village of Bolingbrook uses Ronnie Bull Sports Sales. This company is owned by Ronnie Bull, School Board Member. Nobody knows if he gets all the business because of political clout or because he is the best price. You decide...
According to the statements from 2009 and early 2010, Mr. Bull was charging the following:
$9-$16 per tee shirt
$19-$23 per polo
$27 - $32 per hooded sweatshirt.
Bolingbrook uses his company for specialty items, such as awards, police extra clothes, plowing and public works clothes (Name embedded only), and any other clothes that required screen printing, emblems, etc. Some other orders that have been placed and need to be noted are:
06/24/08 $1,742 Promotional 200 Carry Cases for Exchange Club Convention
08/01/06 $10,357.35 for 1093 black sports bags
03/20/2007 $905.64 for 200 Lions Club Sun Visor Organizers.
Now it is not Mr. Bull's fault that the Mayor spent this kind of money on promotional items. It is the Mayor and Trustees fault. However, the multiple times we asked and FOIAed last year about bidding on these contracts, we were not given the information. What does that tell you?
So look at the numbers, google costs for these items and determine if you think that these costs were the lowest that the Village could have gotten. What gravely concern us is that Mr. Bulls company is in Romeoville, so our Village dollars contributed to Romeoville's taxes. Especially since The Locker Room in Bolingbrook has been in business since 1977, has services almost every student that has grown up in Bolingbrook, and has been a loyal hardworking and fair priced Bolingbrook contributing tax business....
If you ever have met Mr. Bull, he is a caring and ethical person. He is not gouging the Village for prices. He is a small business owner who lives in the Village of Bolingbrook and provides excellent service to the Village. I do not think that he should be ineligible to sell to the Village because he is a School Board member nor under greater scrutiny. Afterall, as noted above, we are talking about less than $15,000 in total items! We aren't talking about a multimillion dollar road contract here which requires multiple bids. We are talking about T-shirts here!
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