By: Diane Benjamin
This month’s Connect Transit Board meeting was moved from October 25th to October 17th. NO financial information is available in the Board Packet. Normally the packet shows income and expenses for the previous month.
Keep in mind, Connect Transit is claiming they will shut down on January 1st because the State hasn’t paid them. Since the packet doesn’t have the usual information, we don’t know how bad the September loss was and how much was spent on travel and other expenses that could have been deferred.
The meeting was moved ahead 8 days for two reasons: 1) Show some proposed new routes (2) Pass a resolution.
The resolution demands payment from the State of Illinois. Illinois must have a secret money printing press somewhere.
Illinois ran out of other people’s money a long time ago. Not making Connect Transit’s September financials available should be an issue since that means the last information available is from August.
Tomorrow night there is a meeting to discuss funding problems: http://www.connect-transit.com/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=307&TargetID=1,2,3,7,8,6,11,12,13,14,5,15,16,4,17,18,19
This meeting is designed to provide a convenient forum for all members of the community to share feedback and conversation about the future of Connect Transit services due to state budget issues and the lack of funding for public transportation. This meeting will take place Thursday, October 27 from 6:00pm until 8:00pm in the Normal City Council Chambers at Uptown Station, 11 Uptown Circle, Normal
Maybe somebody should ask why people across the State should pay for Bloomington-Normal Transportation. Maybe somebody should ask why huge empty buses are roaming the streets instead of a more proper size. Maybe somebody should ask why September financial information isn’t available. Maybe somebody should ask why sane people budget a $12,000,000+ operating loss and think that’s sustainable.
Below is the resolution:
This is a link to the packet as posted – without any operating information: http://www.connect-transit.com/documents/October%2017,%202016%20Regular%20Board%20Meeting%20Binder1.pdf
According to Connect transit, if bus service doesn’t exist people will sit in their homes completely helpless.
American ingenuity must have been beat out of them. Riders will be incapable of finding alternate transportation.
Welcome to self-imposed government slavery!
Connect Transit Vice Chairman Mike McCurdy is also the President of Bike Blono. http://bikeblono.org/board/
His bio on the link above claims he has a passion for “sustainable transportation”.
(you can stop laughing now)
Why isn’t Mike collecting bikes and giving them away? Not sustainable?
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“Connect Transit Vice Chairman Mike McCurdy is also the President of Bike Blono. ”
Hahahahahahahah,,,this town is so screwed up! What a joke!
I still wonder if this is a case where Connect Transit will lose the government funding if they do not use it. So, they make sure their operating losses match what they get from outside government sources. They have no incentive to save money and every incentive not to save money. It’s a standard problem everywhere that people will waste money in order to get the same budget next year. The difference is that private sector businesses have competition and thus budget cuts are forced by higher ups.
We don’t seem to have the sharpest knives running much of anything in this town…. it is either Moe, Larry or Curly… LOL
Voter turnout is dismal for local elections. The people deserve what they get!
Yes they certainly do… empty buses running around everywhere on streets that look like they have been recently bombed… Send out the hot tar truck…. we got buses to run here in #Blono… LOL
I’ve seen the red-white-and blue buses with screens so you can’t tell how many people are riding!
Don’t forget that ISU prepays for students, faculty, aan staff to ride at a discount, but with the new routes, they can’t use the system they way they used to.
Just give them Uber vouchers – It would be cost effective… forget the buses… who in this town wants to ride on a bus if they have a car or a friend with a car or Uber account? No one… This is not a big city with traffic congestion and parking problems. This is a small town with a very small percentage of poor or handicapped people who can’t drive or don’t have cars or technology or money. We can take care of these people in a much more cost effective way than running monstrous empty buses over our potholed city streets.
Common sense isn’t allowed!
I have noticed that we have a very short supply common sense in our little backward world here in Bloomington/Normal. We want to act like a big town when we are just a little want-to-be big town. It is like children playing “Let’s pretend we are a big grown up town”. We will have buses zooming around right? Peoria has a Civic Center so we need one too! If the taxpayers were not paying for this it would be almost funny.
These guys believe “quality of life” amenities will keep millennials here. They forgot they need jobs.
Have they talked to any millennials? The ones I have talked to think the leadership in this area is a joke and the area is on a highway to nowhere. We need leadership first and then high tech startups and new businesses in general. There are NO opportunities in this town for talented young people. They will continue to leave when they can and they will not be coming back.
🙂 More of that common sense! How about running for office?
This town is not ready for someone like me. I would want to disassemble the 20th Century bureaucratic hierarchical structure that is driving this silliness like the bus system and replace it with an inclusive citizen empowered lean government that listens to and truly acts in the best interests of the people. The rich, powerful and connected people in this town would quickly want to see me run over by one of our wonderful empty buses!
Bloomington had Judy Stearns and now Kevin Lower. They can’t defeat anybody on their own. More people like them and you need to run!