By: Diane Benjamin

The Pantagraph has a ridiculous editorial today urging the City to spend spend spend on downtown.  They must not realize with building the Coliseum and covering the losses, rehabbing the BCPA, and with the TIF dollars from the past – Bloomington is probably close to spending $100,000,000.  Don’t forget to add the interest on loans, somehow it’s always left out.  The Coliseum is still a failure, downtown is marginally better, and the BCPA serves a very small percent of citizens.  Spend more Pantagraph?  Your office may be downtown for now, but it doesn’t mean people elsewhere care, especially when the roads and sewers haven’t been adequately funded for years.

This post won’t be 100% accurate.  The actual costs you paid just this year for the Coliseum will be higher, but finding all the variations on the Bills and Payroll reports isn’t worth my time.  Included are expenses paid for the Pepsi Ice Center too.  Loan payments are NOT included.

First, I found some payments that seem odd.  Ask your alderman for an explanation since the City hates FOIA requests.

This is the total for the two above:

They might be quarterly bills, but why isn’t the Coliseum paying their own electricity?

I reported one of these payments made at last Monday’s meeting, here’s two more. A FOIA has been filed.  It should take all of 10 minutes to answer, but they will run it by a lawyer before releasing it.  They will extend the required 5 days response just for spite.  Eventually I will know what they are paying – they just want to make sure you have to wait to find out.

The 3 Wire Transfers were approved on July 11th, funny how they didn’t take place then..

This payment was made 9/12/16:

Including the above, my calculations show a total of $1,232,633. This includes repairs/maintenance that grew when VenuWorks took over, consultants, and auditors.  It doesn’t include whatever the loss was as of 4/30/16 because I still don’t know what it is.  I’m guessing it’s between $500,000 and $1,000,000 before depreciation.

(I wonder if they will fix concession commissions!)

See my worksheet here:  Coliseum Worksheet. The dates correspond with the Bills and Payroll dates here:  http://www.cityblm.org/index.aspx?page=242&parent=106

How much more should be spent Pantagraph?  The first $100,000,000 accomplished what?

Imagine throwing away another $100,000,000!

Remember that downtown stakeholders meeting last week?  Here’s an email I received by FOIA about it:

The media was there, I wonder who wanted to conspire in secret?

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