What Would You Do With $150,000?
It’s a great question to consider. If you had a spare $150,000…what would you do with it?
Logical answers would include paying a mortgage, setting up a college fund for children or grandchildren, establishing a scholarship fund…a host of good ideas comes to mind.
If you’re the City of Waterloo, however…if you have a spare $150,000, you spend it changing the logo and symbol of the police department.
That’s how much it’s going to cost to replace the current logo, which has been around for more than 50 years.
It was drawn by internationally-renowned cartoonist Jack Bender, who at the time was a staff cartoonist at the Courier newspaper. He was asked to come up with a design that evoked the department motto of “vigilance”. So Bender came up with the griffin, that legendary fictional creature with the body, tail and back legs of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle. It first was seen around 3000 BC.
In the past year, some claimed the logo was racist and had to go. When I’ve asked how, I hear more about people’s feelings about police as opposed to the symbol. If that is the case, simply changing the logo on the uniform and patrol car is not going to change the department, and it’s misleading people to suggest otherwise.
Now, after a year of study, the city council rejected their own commissions designs in favor of one a police group suggested…no character or logo, but essentially just the words “Waterloo Police”.
Technically, tax dollars will not go to make these logo changes; rather, it’s from bond revenue. But obviously, that money could have been spent elsewhere and kept the city taxes lower.
I’m not sure what I’d do with a spare $150,000…but I surely would not spend it on an unneeded rebranding of the police department.
