by:  Diane Benjamin

Monday night the Bloomington City Council heard a presentation on a new way to create budgets.  It started with a professor from the government division at Illinois Institute of Technology.  He didn’t say it, but he thinks cities are stupid and incapable of doing the right things.  In Bloomington’s case he may be right.  Who else thinks subsidizing every program is sustainable, unless you are government.  Contrary to what Mayor Renner repeats frequently, there wasn’t 9 months of budget talks last year.  He also promised a year’s worth of budget talks this year, it hasn’t happened.

A guy from Lincoln Nebraska raved about the program they have been using for around 7 years.  You really need to watch the presentation and Council comments.  Who are the “pets” of  Renner and Hales on the Council?  The tape will tell you.  If you read between the lines, you can also tell what the true intent of the program is.

I contacted a reporter who covered the implementation in Lincoln.  Here’s her comment to me:

Basically, the city does a survey every year (or 2, now that they do a budget every other year) to see what people see as the top priorities, and then they build the budget around that. In the past, they’ve also done sort of a town hall meeting — although the participants are probably hand-picked — to further talk about issues and options. That part of the process seemed a bit suspect, when I watched it. They’d bring in city employees to explain things they wanted, or why they needed to increase taxes, and by the end, people were convinced. The whole process can probably be manipulated to achieve a desired outcome, but it does give people a voice in the process.

The process may be able to get rid of at least 1 golf course.  It may be able clean up a little other wasteful spending.  Here’s what it won’t do:

• Ask if Coliseum management should be changed
• Ask if you want to spend 8.5 million on lighting in downtown Bloomington
• Ask if the BCPA should be forced to break-even
• Ask  if David Hales has cleaned up the bar scene downtown
• Ask if the City spends too much money on consultants
• Ask if the library should expand
• Ask if the City is employing too many people
• Ask if the City pays too much money to employees
• Ask if travel by City employees should be cut
• Ask how big the zoo should be allowed to grow

I’m sure you could add to the list.  Have you watch the video?  If not, you missed the comments about the maximum number of people who have ever participated in Lincoln was 3000.  Population at the time was over 250,000.  You also missed how citizens practically begged for tax increases instead of cuts to their programs.  You also missed David Sage saying the Council and following Councils had to abide by the changes.  The next Council couldn’t change the game plan.  David:  Why don’t we just abolish aldermen?  Evidently they aren’t important.

You also missed Administration creates the priorities list for citizens to evaluate.  Again, Council is immaterial.  You also missed Karen Schmidt asking the obvious questions:  Does politics play a role in what’s on the list and whether what the citizens decide is implemented?  The answer was YES.

Oh, you missed where surveys completed at the library were thrown out.  Too many from the same IP address.  The guy from Lincoln even said they were probably poor people without any other access to a computer.  So they threw them out?  Maybe they didn’t get the required result.

One more thing that won’t be on the list:  Do you want to give  The Ecology Action Center $37,700 for green projects to limit your freedoms:

429 ECOLOGY ACTION CENTER 00000 20150002 INV 05/12/2014 579 83799
1 10010010 70690 NonDept Purch Serv 37,700.00
Invoice Net 37,700.00

Lincoln Nebraska has a brand new arena.  It’s only been open 1 year, so it was passed after the budgeting was changed.  I bet that wasn’t on the list for citizens to rate.  Lincoln borrowed $300,000,000 to build it!

Evidently their press isn’t any better than the Pantagraph:  http://watchdog.org/145527/lincoln-arena-4/  The City and the press tried to make citizens believe it was making money, luckily alternative media exists.  Here’s another article from a couple of days before it opened:  http://netnebraska.org/article/news/pinnacle-bank-arena-economic-slam-dunk-or-air-ball  Read the end – sounds just like Renner.  They must have taken the same talking points class.