Is Rockford’s welcome sign unwelcome? City Council members are set to debate

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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UPDATE: The City Council’s Planning and Development Committee voted 4-0 to affirm support of the sign. Read about the debate and the vote HERE.

ROCKFORD — A sign welcoming people to Rockford at the city’s eastern gateway is set to become the subject of debate tonight before a City Council committee.

For aldermen who like the sign, it stands as a testament that people are welcome here regardless of race, religion, gender, ability, socioeconomic status or ethnicity. Others — most vocally Alderman Chad Tuneberg — have criticized it as being a coded message for allowing immigrants to come here illegally.

Tonight, the City Council’s Planning and Development Committee will consider a resolution brought forward by Alderman Mark Bonne that would affirm the council’s support of the existing message. The sign is at East State Street and Interstate 90.

Tuneberg, who initially raised issue with the sign a year ago, had noted in his criticism that the message was not approved by aldermen when it went up about six years ago. Bonne’s proposal would make it clear one way or another.

“He has a point about the message probably should have been approved by council in the first place. I don’t agree that he has a point that it’s a bad message,” said Bonne, a Democrat who plans to also recommend that future gateway signage should have council approval if it could be considered an official city message.

Bonne said he doesn’t think the City Council would have rejected the message when the sign was installed, and he expects the current council to support it now.

“To take it down sends a message, too now. To take it down sends a message that we’re unwelcoming,” Bonne said.

The debate initially surfaced Jan. 8, 2024, when City Council members were discussing eight ways the city would spend the final $3.2 million in federal American Rescue Plan funding. That plan included funding to establish signs and landscaping at gateways to the city. But the vote was coming a week after a plane with 355 migrants landed at the Chicago Rockford International Airport from Texas. The passengers were bused to Chicago, escorted by Winnebago County sheriff’s deputies to the McHenry County line.

Tuneberg raised issue with the sign, noting it was put up a couple years after a welcoming ordinance was pitched for the city and ultimately rejected.

“There was a movement of some sort to make Rockford a welcoming city, which I think was code word for sanctuary city but just turned a little bit differently,” the 3rd Ward Republican said at the meeting a year ago.

He went on to say that the sign would also serve as depicting Rockford as welcoming to criminals.

“Unless individuals are not criminals, rapists, human traffickers, individuals that cross the southern border illegally, maybe they’re processed and let go to come to a come court date five years from now or whatever — let’s stand up and be true to our sing into our city and say all you individuals are welcome,” he said in January 2024. “But if not, if we don’t want human traffickers, rapists, criminals to come here to Rockford, that sign needs to come down.”

Alderman Bill Rose responded at the time that a welcome sign with an asterisk was not welcoming.

“I’m not sure if we want to be the city that says all people are welcome and then we have a little dot, dot, dot – except – and start listing people. Because we all know what those communities that do that start listing people. They start listing people by race. They start listing people by ability. They start listing people by ethnicity,” Rose said. “Rockford has a strong history of bringing migrants to our town, most notably Swedish people. If we had Swedes coming into this town in airplanes and buses, I guarantee you we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

Bonne brought the proposal forward now after Tuneberg again called out the sign at a Feb. 10 meeting of the Planning and Development Committee. He raised the issue while discussing a violent crime victims assistance program, questioning if crime is increasingly being caused by people coming to Rockford from outside of the community.

“The sign at East State and the tollway where it says all are welcome, I would vehemently disagree with that as well as victims of assault, violence, trafficking and such,” Tuneberg said on Feb. 10.

Bonne said that new slogans could be pitched and approved for other gateways to the city, although he disagrees with the idea of removing the existing welcome sign.

“This is a good message, but I get why it’s a little politically divisive,” he said. “In the current political climate people are wanting to read into that it’s somehow a partisan message. It’s pretty twisted to get to it being unwelcoming because it’s unwelcoming to Republicans. I think that’s what the counterargument is, but I think we’re overthinking it.”

The city and the Illinois Tollway Authority have had an agreement since 1991 to set out rules and responsibilities for landscaping and signage on land owned by the tollway. That agreement was updated in 2018, a year after the tollway took on a construction project to build a new maintenance facility at the East State and I-90 intersection, according to the city. The city’s work to update the landscaping and the sign, including adding its current welcome message, began in spring 2018 and was finished in 2019.

The Illinois Tollway handled the majority of landscaping improvements at a cost of $185,000. The city spent about $30,000 on sign updates in partnership with GoRockford and Forest City Beautiful.

Chicago artist Justus Roe handled the colorful mural on the sign while the language was chosen by Jay Graham of Rockford-based marketing agency GrahamSpencer.

“It was tied to a larger business attraction strategy that had taken place,” City Administrator Todd Cagnoni said. “He identified this language through a series of studies that suggested and aligned the business attraction to fill high-skilled jobs within the community.”

Mayor Tom McNamara then approved the signage and it was constructed.

Tonight’s meeting is slated to begin at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas