By: Diane Benjamin
It’s pretty obvious that David Hales can’t make a decision without hiring a consultant to tell him what to do.
The list never ends. Everything is studied by someone outside of government, even where to put benches and lights downtown. Now rates you are charged for water, sewer, garbage etc are being studied. The City is redistributing your wealth to consultants! Hales gets more than $200,000 a year, but he can’t make decisions. Consultants allow him to blame somebody else.
Bloomington really didn’t need to pay First Choice Consulting to study rates charged to you (last Monday-$66,924.25) – the report is already on their website:
A medium-sized Midwestern county faced a $1 million budget deficit. The county asked us to review the user fees charged by several departments where the county had statutory authority to set the fees based on the cost of providing the services. We reviewed fees in four departments and determined that the general fund was subsidizing the services by almost the entire amount of the deficit. The departments and the board recommended increasing fees to eliminate the deficit, therefore avoiding a property tax increase and/or staff and service reductions. http://fiscalchoice.com/recent-projects/
In 2013 Bloomington signed up with ICMA Center for Performance Measurement – no word on that cost http://www.cityblm.org/index.aspx?page=471
In 2014 they hooked up with the Illinois Institute of Technology on priority based budgeting – it was free, but then they didn’t do much either
In 2015 the McLean County Regional Planning got paid to predict the future
In 2015 Hales couldn’t balance the budget so Tari hand-picked tax raisers (Budget Task Force)
In 2015 Bloomington hired the Bronner Group to evaluate everything, or at least that’s what we are told.
2015 – First Choice Consulting
I bet I’m missing others – Readers?
What does David Hales do all day?
Breakfast and lunch at taxpayer expense?
David, do you need to hire a consultant to see downtown looks like crap?
Across the street from the Route 66 Visitors Bureau! If the thousands of tourists from all over the world are pouring into town, why do you need more money Tari?
“ICMA, the International City/County Management Association, advances professional local government worldwide. The organization’s mission is to create excellence in local governance by developing and fostering professional management to build better communities.
ICMA identifies leading practices to address the needs of local governments and professionals serving communities globally. We provide services, research, publications, data and information, peer and results-oriented assistance, and training and professional development to thousands of city, town, and county leaders and other individuals and organizations throughout the world. The management decisions made by ICMA’s members affect millions of people living in thousands of communities, ranging in size from small towns to large metropolitan areas.”
http://icma.org/en/icma/about/organization_overview
Membership Dues: $5K-$10K
http://icma.org/en/icma/partnerships/partnerships/strategic_partners_benefits
I can’t find it now, but I remember reading that it cost $12,000.00 to publish those “ICMA Award Winning” reports that no one seems to read.
Watch Hales, Fruin and Lower comment on the First Choice Consulting beginning @ 50:00min.
Was Hales ever a VP in a corporation? It is standard operating procedure in a lot of businesses to pay consultants lots of money to ensure there is someone else to blame when something goes wrong.
“The City of Bloomington recently received an award (2015) from the Illinois chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA) for its Sidewalk Master Plan, a document prepared entirely by staff.”
http://www.cityblm.org/index.aspx?recordid=1899&page=18
If the administration of the Public Works Department can do this, there is no reason the other departments could do the same.