By: Diane Benjamin
From City Manager David Hales’ February report: http://www.cityblm.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=8404
Page 51
The green line is the current year. Please tell Tari the number of visitors is decreasing. Ask him to explain why the library needs an addition!
Yet the mayor is quoted in yesterday’s Pantagraph with the following:
“We’re getting 400,000 plus people coming in and out of our library, but they aren’t dropping any money anywhere because there is nothing but the city dump immediately south of it.”
This statement is so outrageous I can’t believe any credible reporter would allow him to get away with it, but we’re talking the Pantagraph, so what else is there to say.
First, the high attendance is largely due to homeless people hanging out of the library. Let me be clear, I don’t object to homeless people hanging out at the library. What I do object to is using them as a skewed statistic to justify economic development in area where it clearly does not exist.
What’s more, what the mayor is proposing for this area is not going to be a source of revenue to the city with the library and the YMCA both being non for profit entities. It’s just a greater expense to the tax payer which is what Renner considers economic development.
Finally there’s the issue of what is a city eyesore being the garaging facilities for city garbage trucks and other city services that will have to be relocated at great expense to the city if this property is to be redeveloped. No talk of what is plan is for this, but I’m sure it will be expensive.
So a lot of unanswered questions and future expense to we the people. This is nothing more than another city white elephant.
“Attraction of new targeted businesses that are the “right” fit for Bloomington”
I was going to open a porn shop at the Stuckley building there at Goodfield and since they tore that down and someone else bought it I guess I won’t be looking for a place in BL. LMAO
Goal #6 – downtown, not a “need”
This doesn’t look good –
“The 398 building permits issued in February 2015 was down 11 percent from the same month one year earlier.”
Decline in library use. I wonder what they paid for that new Bookmobile. The mayor and city manager, if that’s what you want to call him, must be looking at the library use numbers and graph upside down. Yeah like where their brains are located.
Let me guess that new truck vehicle bought for public works was a diesel and they aren’t cheap.
I remember seeing the price somewhere, but can’t recall what it was. Expensive, but not horrible.
“If his mouth is open, he is lying.” That quote fits real good.
I’d say he might use these attendance stats better to justify not having the main library where it is. Expanding where it is — not much.
Silly peons, er I mean taxpayers, if a government program is in decline, it means that we aren’t spending enough on it. It never means there is a problem with the program itself. Everybody knows that.
In all seriousness, the 400,000 number is bunk. A lot of those people do not have the means to spend extra money during a library trip. It’s already hard enough for them to find time and money to get there (by the way, kudos to the people who put in the effort to get to the library as it would be much, much easier for them to sit the kids in front of the TV).
It will just become another case of everyone (rich and poor) subsidizing entertainment for well off families who can afford to have a parent stay at home and take their kids to the extra story times.