by:  Diane Benjamin

This morning Robert Rees (Cities 92.9) discussed an article from yesterday comparing Bloomington, Champaign, and Peoria spending.  Robert wondered what Normal spends per citizen.  The public seems to think Normal spends more than Bloomington.  Although Normal has spent many millions on Uptown – their budgets were ultra-conservative before Chris Koos was elected Mayor, so the spending looks incredible when compared to what it was.

The Town of Normal is extremely transparent with lots of information citizens might find interesting.  They are NOT transparent with total budgets and total spending.  The following numbers came mostly from articles in the Pantagraph instead of the Town website.

It’s interesting to see what the pre-Uptown budgets were compared to now.   Instead of researching for hours, I just picked some years that were readily available:

Yesterday I reported that Bloomington spent $2111 per citizen in 2012.    http://blnnews.com/2014/01/20/comparing-bloomington-move-or-start-fighting/

Normal’s Bond rating (Moody’s) 10/3/2012  Aa1 (one step higher than Bloomington)

The link below has TONS of information.  If you are a resident of Normal, you might want to check out the revenue increases by year.  The Town isn’t trying to hide where they got the money for Uptown – you!

There are also crime statistics and how much the Town earns from arrests.  There is money to be made from students with pot.

The pensions funding is also interesting – hence the recent property tax increase.

Below is a graph of the debt from Uptown.  Evidently the citizens like it,  Koos was re-elected again.  If he resigns, I’d look for trouble.  The ability to pay back the debt is heavily dependent on the economy.

http://il-normal.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/4000

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