By: Diane Benjamin
The October Connect transit meeting was held earlier than usual, so financial information wasn’t available. The November meeting was held on 11/22, it includes reports from September and October.
See the packet here: November-22-2016-regular-board-packet
Start here:
Page 32 of packet.
Then this one:
Page 27 of the packet
I think it’s safe to assume the $90 if a typo.
Why are these two agreements important?
The residents of Normal pay taxes to the Town and Unit 5 as well as the Federal government. Look here for who funds Youthbuild: http://www.ybmc.org/support/
The list includes various federal agencies and Unit 5. Here’s the impact:
Taxes you pay go through many layers of bureaucracy (salaries, benefits, pensions) before getting to Youthbuild.
Youthbuild then launders the money further before sending some to Connect Transit. The Town of Normal already budgets money for Connect Transit, paying for employee rides is just an additional under-the-table subsidy. More paperwork, more bureaucracy, and more redirecting tax dollars.
The point is that way too many government employees exist – at your expense – because money is shuffled from one taxing agency to another to another and to another. The value of every dollar decreases with every transfer. Therefore higher taxes are needed to pay for even more employees to further shuffle your money. Since our local governments have no intention of only funding programs with local dollars or NOT doing them, this practice will continue. The State and feds are more than happy to keep doling out bucks after taking their cut.
How is ridership?
Connect Transit is now operating 7 days a week. The 1st Quarter of 2017 was July – September.
Just to make this easy, let’s say that’s 90 days.
502,411 riders divided by 90 days = 5,582 riders per day.
It’s safe to assume if they rode to some location they had to ride back too.
5,582 riders divided by 2 = 2,791 riders per day.
See Part 2 for how much it cost!
https://blnnews.com/2016/11/30/connect-transit-lunacy-part-2/
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I’d be really interested to see what the ridership numbers look like if ISU/Heartland students are removed… Of course, we never will.
See the packet. ISU ridership is down too. I love the note that says ridership goes up January-March, maybe because of cold weather. Duh.