By: Diane Benjamin
While I rarely ever agree with ANYTHING the Town of Normal does, they are light-years ahead of Bloomington on transparency. A lot of information is on their website, citizens just need to look for it.
See this report, it is issued every year: http://www.normal.org/DocumentCenter/View/6662
This Financial Trends and Conditions report covers 4/1/2014 – 3/31/2015. It’s loaded with easy to read graphs showing multi-year comparisons. Below are three I found interesting. Renner is killing taxpayers with his pensions funding plan, Koos thinks the funding levels will increase when investment income increases. Meanwhile, the total funding percent is decreasing.
Total debt is also listed. You are only $85 Million+ in the hole!
These grafts seem to have a hidden message. When you compare the funding percentages for both Departments it coincides with the I Q level of the Town Board. A small surprise that Normal can overcome at the next couple of elections.
Investment returns are going to be sub par for years. The town’s assumptions that we are all the sudden going to go back to the boom boom years of the internet age (circa 1996-1999) are wishful thinking. It is not going to happen