By: Diane Benjamin
The country is $18,000,000,000,000 in debt. I hope I got enough zeros on there for TRILLIONS!
No wonder Normal decided to go with the Doug Farr underpass plan instead of the cheaper overpass – they had no intention of paying for it!
Chris Koos expects the entire rest of the country to fund their lunacy through another Tiger grant. After all, they already got $22,000,000 for the train station.
Does Koos have any kids? If no, that explains why putting more debt on future generations is immaterial – he just wants an underpass!
The bird-cage liner is reporting that Koos is in high demand around the country for his development skills. Spending other people’s money is something to be celebrated. Maybe the US can sell the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone to pay down debt including the Koos share in Normal.
Future generations will prefer dumping places they can’t afford to go. The tax burden just to pay interest on the debt will bury our kids.
Maybe they can vacation in the underpass.
#1, China probably already has dibs on Yellowstone and the grand Canyon due to the money we owe them. #2, Good idea, let Koos live in the underpass and become a certified troll.
Diane, I follow your posts and rarely, never, made any comments. While I enjoy watching you stir the pot, maybe you might focus on something more consequential than an underpass?
Concerning Koos high demand, it likely has to do with his ability to bring monied capitalists into the area and coordinate private enterprise and government bureaucracy. The commercial real estate tax in uptown Normal has increased in some cases, over 500%.
Diane, I guess the real question is how do we qualify expenditures of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax expeditures across the country? At least the people who live, work and play in uptown Normal won’t have to dodge the trains anymore. I believe the underpass is the preferred way of crossing the tracks. I’ve seen more than a few students being scrapped off the train tracks while walking in an i-pod fog.
I suggest keeping on the trail of our Bloomington public officials who are apparently hell bent on mimicking the success of Uptown Normal. In Bloomington it appears that our property taxes have only just begun to increase from political ideas who enjoy only support of their tax payers. Keep up the good work and I hope you can keep me anonymous. >
Koos created a balancing act of cash flows that will collapse if tax receipts continue to sink. See if somebody will give you the memo sent to the council questioning the future. I doubt anybody will release it, but Koos is worried.
Freely admitting that I might be naive but Koos has brought monied capitalists into Normal? Do you mean the straight up it’s their money alone, or the cronies seeking taxpayer funding? Just curious.
I don’t see the value of downtown real estate taxes increasing 500%. Outside of the fact that downtown Normal used to be not much to look at, I must argue that all Koos has really done (at huge taxpayer expense) is encourage building owners to update their facias, plant some trees, and,,,uh yeah, build a round-a-bout that some of the bigger fire trucks can’t get through and screw up the intersection at Beaufort and Linden. And, mind you continue 365 days a year with cheap Christmas tree type lighting night after night. Really?
The underpass is not going to stop students from walking around in an i-pod fog as it makes no difference. Students that don’t pay attention to the traffic that surrounds them has been an ongoing problem since way before i-pods or cell phone even became mainstream. Hate to see someone get hit by a train but stupidity is destined to do stupid and unsafe stuff.
Welcome to the comment section sir but defending the gross misuse of the citizens money for such a small section of the town of Normal isn’t going to get past the mudd.
Thanks Mudd! I was too busy today to reach your level of coherency.
Harry, if you had really seen someone “scraped” off the tracks as you stated, take it from someone who actually has. It’s a horrible experience. For you to use that as a reason for building this taxpayer raping underpass is ludicrous! There a many crossings in Normal where the trains will be traveling at higher speed (20mph). This is just another example of “empire building” by the Normal Town Council and Mayor Koo’s!
Harry. When you take millions of dollars from other people and spend it specifically in a specific pinpointed small area a chimpanzee could improve the area. Nothing genius about it. The problem is the property that was stolen to do it and the millions of debt that future generations will have chained around their necks.
Why not solicit private donations and name the underpass after the principal donor?
keep in mind that Darin LaHood’s daddy was transportation secretary for Obama which means that he was the chief operating officer for government handouts for the Obama administration. Just keep that in mind when you hear all the talk about Darin being a fiscal conservation. If that’s true it’s certainly not genetic. Maybe someone should ask Darin how he feels about the town of Normal being awarded a Tiger grant.
He won’t answer whether he favors raising the gas tax (Daddy is out campaigning for it).