Often elections don’t have a clear choice or show clear differences between the candidates. In Normal you have a clear choice. Most people believe in term limits for politicians, with good reason. When people are elected over and over and over the absolute power they feel is corrupting. We have many obvious examples: Harry Reid, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, etc etc etc!
Local politics is no different. A ruling class exists in both Bloomington and Normal. Input from the public is limited in Normal, even more than in Bloomington. All council seats are elected at-large in Normal. Where you live may be totally unrepresented.
The Uptown TIF district is a large area, with the southern part hardly touched so far. Uptown is only 1 of the 4 Normal TIF districts.
Obviously Chris Koos wouldn’t be running for office again if he had completed his plans.
This election is a question of whether you want his plans to go forward, therefore you also accept the debt attached. You must also be willing to accept the rest of Normal being largely ignored. You must also accept the crony capitalism being deployed to entice business to Uptown. There are a lot of stories on this site with all the details.
The 3 currently serving council people are all YES votes for anything brought to them. Government was never intended to be run by YES people. The citizens of Normal need representation by a broad range of ideas. How thrilled were you with Normal spending over $20,000 to study bringing a grocery store to Uptown?
If you actually believe term limits should be imposed on politicians, vote for a new Mayor and Council. If Chris Koos is reelected, the citizens of Normal will be sending a strong message that they agree with his agenda.
The new citizens seeking seats on the Council are:
Jarrod Rackauska
Gary Ohler
Ron Ulmer
Vic Conner is the obvious choice for Mayor. He has the time and intelligence to represent the people instead of an agenda.
With an expected voter turnout of 20%, the people who do vote will decide for the whole town what path to take. Someday the citizens will wake up and decide apathy wasn’t a good choice. Will they decide on April 9th they have had enough of Koos and Uptown?
