By: Diane Benjamin
Shouldn’t a school, in the business of educating students, have more teachers on staff than any other type of employee?
Does Caterpillar have more employees making their products or working in the office?
From Heartland Community College website: http://www.heartland.edu/about/facts.html
275 Total Faculty, 598 Total Staff!
The number of staff is more than double the number of teachers. Are the staff teaching? Writing the courses? Walking students to classes? Shuffling papers?
The Heartland Board decided last night that YOU need to pay almost 9% more to support the junior college.
Add that to the 1% Sales tax increase in Bloomington and Normal on January 1st. Don’t forget, McLean County is raising your property taxes too. You pay more for gas thanks to the Motor Fuel Tax both Bloomington and Normal passed. Amusements are higher thanks to the Bloomington tax. All your utilities cost more thanks to increased Utility taxes. The County constantly raises fees for services, I’m sure you don’t hear about them. Garbage collection rates in Bloomington have already been raised and will be raised again. Bloomington has a consultant studying other rates – anybody want to bet their report says you aren’t paying enough?
I’ve spent the morning reading news reports from around 1995 when people were trying to decide whether to build or keep renting. $50,000,000 was the figure thrown around as the cost. Supporters were upset about $1,000,000 per year leaving McLean County because people were attending other Community Colleges, like Parkland.
As of 6/30/2015, Heartland was $80,950,000 in debt: http://www.heartland.edu/documents/bo/cafr2015.pdf Page 60.
Heartland is blaming the State for their increase. Here’s a better reason why they want your money – their REVENUE was down more than $2 Million from last year and $2.4 Million from the year before, so they went straight to their piggy bank-YOU: (Page 81 at the link above)
Lesson:
When government tells you the cost for one of their Must-Have projects, they lying! The original people quit and other clowns get elected with different agendas. The priority never changes though: Spend Spend Spend.
(Remember Coliseum will never cost you a dime?)
Below is the Heartland money grab history-see the far right column: (Page 83 at the link above) 2015 will be .535
The taxable value of property increased substantially since 2005, the rate charged to you went up even faster.
What is it going to take for you to realize government at every level is working for themselves – not you?
Why are droves of people still leaving Illinois? Duh.
I agree. I fear it will only get worse. Even when colleges do well financially, there tends to be yearly fee and tuition increases, sometimes housing cost increases. It used to be that junior colleges were rather attractive options for those wanting to spend less on college, but you are dealing with students who are working one or two jobs and they are lucky to be able to have enough to manage a part-time course load and still be able to save to pay off their loan plus interest. That’s why if kids are going into college they are going for more lucrative careers. The medical profession can’t attract teachers or generalists because specializations offer more money, which means loans are paid off faster. This means that they go to locales that can pay larger salaries. Towns and cities can’t attract high-salary businesses because the grads go elsewhere. The cost of college is out-pacing income for some folks which means jobs can not be filled and businesses can’t grow. More kids should learn a trade then go to college, that way if things are bad you can build homes or fix people’s plumbing. STEM is great, but I know there are students who would be great at skilled trades.
Many of the people considered staff at Heartland are teaching. There are teachers who are considered full time faculty and then those who teach part time and some even full time who are considered staff. I taught a class at Heartland once and was considered part time staff. So, it’s important to make that distinction. It all depends on how your contract is structured. That said, I’m not supportive of the increased tax levy. You’re spot on in your assessment, just need to clarify that many “staff” people at Heartland are teaching.
College priority is not about education, it’s all about big business making money. The game is on for whatever the crooks in charge can do to take the common man’s wealth for their own gain.
I half-agree with you. I would say the crooks are the colleges themselves which raise tuition but the quality stays the same. Big business is the partner of colleges to get talent, but it is “donating” to support certain programs. Then we see dorms that are better than most people’s apartments after grad school. It is for-profit education but we do need it. Advanced science and math has helped us immensely. However, I am always weary of job placement claims because it can give a false impression of the job environment. Some companies won’t even recruit at some colleges because they lie about the quality of education. Those online colleges are buyer beware.
Rumor has it that the City of Bloomington is considering raising its property tax. Given the proposed property tax freeze from Rauner, the giant TIF district and the City’s ED department policy of tax abatement for developers, the money has to come from somewhere–the taxpayers.
Heck, let’s pass a pink flamingo tax while we’re at it. ANYONE happen to catch the babble on WGLT that ABNORMAL is going to use their tax increase money on various nefarious stuff, but NOT on soccer or recreation facilities, as they can’t afford them at this time!!! Wanna place book on FUTURE tax increases because UPTOWN “needs” a soccer mommy shelter or recreation complex that they can’t afford?? AND I’ll take points that they ONCE AGAIN “sucker” the bloomington illumaniti into raising taxes, just because ABNORMAL “can’t” raise theirs and look (too late) stoopid with a higher tax rate then Bloomington-the plot thickens!
sidenote: Went out in the country today and the EX-mitsubishi plant was sure quiet, you could fire a battling gun and not hit anything! Wonder IF czar KOOS has people lined up for buying this extravaganza?? I”l bring the popcorn.
Attack what you know to be fact. Many of those considered “staff” are teachers. Yell and scream all you want about colleges but the reality is that Heartland was the first place that jumped up and said we’ll do our best to retrain and develop new skill sets in those individuals displaced from Mitsubishi. Often I think your rants are nothing more than vitriol – who can yell the loudest. If only all of your posts would stop showing up in my news feeds. annoyed
So, where is Heartland getting the money for that re-training? State Farm? Taxpayers maybe. We already subsidized the plant, might as well pay the employees for education that us little people can’t afford since Heartland is now unaffordable.
What about all the workers who have lost jobs and never worked at the car plant?
Good point. What about all the people making half of what they did 20 years ago? Tax Tax Tax.
An employer in my home town partnered with a tech college to train local workers needed to fulfill some government contracts. Not sure who pays for the training (taxpayers or employer). Long story short, they had to hire people outside the town because 50% of them were failing the drug tests after they completed the training and went through the interview process. I like that Heartland is willing to retrain people but in the meantime there are bills coming in. Not sure how the job market in Bloomington/Normal translates for workers applying for jobs with different skill sets. My guess is people will look for another job in another city and then get retrained if they so desire. Not sure there are employers hurting that much for workers that the auto workers could still work and live here. You almost have to have ESP so you don’t get surprised by the layoffs these days.
What about people who OWN property in the “Enterprise Zone” and pay higher taxes and have “city regulations” think they’ll LOWER the taxes and quit enforcement of their “far reaching” city ordinances now that it’s GONE? The Illinois TAXPAYERS paid for the rail yard, property and MMNA Parkway PLUS tax breaks for 10 years. Guess we should paid for their materials too, huh?
The City just set up a NEW Enterprise Zone for the same area with hopes to attract a company to the MMNA building.
Where did you see that? The State has to approve new zones, I think.
November 9, 2015 Regular Agenda 8B
http://www.cityblm.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=9364
Public Hearing Notice
http://www.cityblm.org/index.aspx?recordid=4153&page=19
The State has to approve it because of the impact on taxes. If I remember right, they only look at proposals once a year.
You’re right!
“The BNEDC assisted the partner government agencies in the application for a new EZ in December 2014. Unfortunately, our application was not among the 49 zones that were approved by DCEO during its summer 2015 selection process. The proposed ordinance and intergovernmental agreement before the Council now would authorize the City’s participation in a new EZ to be applied for in December 2015 for DCEO consideration in the summer of 2016 when 19 new zones are scheduled to be approved. All participating agencies must adopt the ordinance for the application process for a new EZ to move forward. If the new application is successful, the new EZ would commence on January 1, 2017.” See above link.
The City believes they will get approval this time since MMNA has left.
That also means nobody is close to taking the plant over.