Morally wrong for city to leave vendors unpaid

The newbo evolve festival should be an assigned topic in management classes on the subject of failure. Failed marketing, failed governance, failed execution and moral failure. And in issuing a soft soap editorial ('Shuttering tourism bureau can't be end of newbo evolve saga,” Oct. 18) The Gazette did not hold anyone's feet to the fire.

The board of GO Cedar Rapids, which includes a City Council member and an assistant city manager, failed to execute a solvent festival. And with unpaid bills, local, state and national vendors, including an obnoxious and loquacious John Waters, the board of GO Cedar Rapids has given Cedar Rapids a bad name. It will take years to undo the damage it created.

A step in the right direction would be to pay the vendors. Regardless of the legal hand-waving that allows the city to escape its moral responsibilities, GO Cedar Rapids was the city's tourism bureau. It was the city's baby, and just like any parent, when the baby breaks something, the parent has a moral responsibility to fix it.

The law establishes the bare minimum of what is expected of a legal entity; a moral compass always establishes a higher threshold of right and wrong.

And if the city cowardly avoids its moral responsibilities, then the board members of GO Cedar Rapids should take out second mortgages or other lines of credit and pay the vendors.

Until the vendors are paid, city leaders and GO Cedar Rapids board members are in the moral wrong.

David Sheets

Marion