by:  Diane Benjamin

Tomorrow the Bloomington City Council will meet ALL DAY to discuss the City budget.  Mayor Renner and City Manager David Hales are presenting “Culture Change”.  They want raises for City employees and 17 new employees.  Those 17 new employees come with 17 new pensions.  The City of Bloomington pension systems are severely under-funded now, why would they want to add more pensions?

This meeting will be Live-Streamed!

You can watch your elected officials discuss the budget for the first time

(unless they suddenly have technical difficulties)

Click here – then click Live Video Stream:  http://www.cityblm.org/index.aspx?page=61

It starts at 8:00 am

Reading a short recap of the discussion in the Pantagraph won’t tell you what really happened.  Citizens need to see for themselves what the Mayor and Alderman say.  It will be a totally different story than reported by the media.

Watch them spin their way out of this:

The Bloomington pension funding has improved – from Critical risk to Extreme Risk.  That’s progress, but not nearly enough.  Illinois local pensions are wreaking havoc on city budgets and taxpayers

You can see the whole report here: http://illinoispolicy.org/simplereport/the-crisis-hits-home-illinois-local-pension-problem/#sthash.beNwpQ5P.dpuf

I previously posted a comparison of Champaign City employees and Bloomington salaries:  http://blnnews.com/2014/02/25/comparing-salaries-bloomington-and-champaign/

Mayor Renner and City Manager David Hales want to raise salaries for Bloomington’s already highly paid employees.  That raises pensions even more.  Then they want to add 17 new employees and add 17 more pensions.

Are they trying to completely destroy taxpayers?  Don’t forget the tax increases they want!

From the Illinois Policy Institute report:

The city of Springfield, for example, now dedicates 100 percent of its city property taxes to pay for the pensions of police, fire and city workers.

And even that’s not enough. The city’s annual pension costs now exceed its total general fund property tax revenue. This has forced the city to cut funding sources for other core services – Springfield has been forced to cut its police force by nearly 15 percent since 2007.

The only way out of the pension mess created in Springfield is to NOT hire new employees.  Labor has to be contracted for as many positions as possible.  David Hales could have contracted labor, but obviously he thinks of taxpayers as a piggy bank.

Tune in and watch at least a little tomorrow.  You will wonder how some of the these people were ever elected!  You can also attend in person in the City Council Chambers:  http://www.cityblm.org/index.aspx?page=17&recordid=2045

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