By: Diane Benjamin
First a medical update: Prayer does work! My husband has had people all over the globe praying for his recovery. Today he woke up, opened his eyes and responded to our voices and commands from the medical staff. He had a brain aneurysm that burst on Good Friday. The ICU neurology staff are amazed at his recovery the last few days. 50% of people in his position never make it to the hospital, half of the other 50% never return to their previous life. He still has a long way to go, but praise God – he is back!
Monday night:
(the packet is 576 pages – how many council members read it?)
Coliseum sucks up another $104,323 for a new wireless network:
The public must have WiFi! Yep, the new network let’s the public use it too. I guess David Hales hasn’t noticed that MANY cell plans have gone to unlimited data making the use of an unsecured network worthless.
More Bike Paths:
The City, the County, and Normal spent MILLIONS building a bike path from Chenoa south to somewhere – maybe Funks Grove. How many people are using it? Did anybody study if that trail is being used at all?
Monday night the Council is being ask to pre-approve looking into building a trail from Bloomington to Manfield. If they vote yes, the construction will be automatic.
People do ride bikes in the country. Lots of them out by Dawson Lake without a dime for a trail. I saw bikers in the country east of Towanda Barnes on GE Road today. (no trail)
If you build it doesn’t really mean they will come. Without looking at the use of the multi million dollar existing trail, even voting on adding another one is just stupid!
Collections:
Evidently the City doesn’t have any idea how to collect the money owed to them:
Seriously, the Comptroller’s office has to teach them how to collect money?
Turning Bloomington into Normal:
Form based code is back because the radicals in Bloomington want buildings like Normal has – commercial on the main floor, apartments above. The goal is to get rid of cars by making everything walkable. A better word is an ugly place to live! Pack them and stack them! Let’s all live on top of each other and never leave the neighborhood.
David Hales gets another raise:
From: $185,190.05
To: $188,708.33
(1.9%)
It’s going to be a LONG meeting.
They have to cram everything in before the new fiscal year starts.
Lots of other things I didn’t get to.
I think the coliseum has just graduated from a money pit to a money black hole. And WiFi is needed for what reason? I noticed we still have US Cellular sign up? It appears that no one wants to pay the money for the name rights? So how much is that an hour for Mr. Hale? He must be doing some very good things for that kind of cash? So he was having trouble getting by on $185,190.05? He needed a raise? Are you kidding me? I am sorry but that is an insane amount of money for the size of this town. So what will his pension look like? OMG….
SO glad to hear the good news about your husband. Miracles do happen.
Glad to hear that your husband is coming along.
So glad your husband is doing better. Great news.
Diane I’m very happy to hear your husbands serious illness appears to be improving.
On a comment from your recent post concerning the Bloomington elected officials expenditure on stacked housing with commercial first floor and residential housing on upper floors. I think your views on the quality of life with “stacked housing” might be a little critical. As a citizen I have always thought some of us are country mice and some are city mice. I think Bloomington could do better, but their effort to follow Normals planned community style is a great idea. In my travels I have always appreciate this European approach of combining commercial and residential life. I have recently moved into this of life style. It is easier to meet and interact with other residents and businesses. My experience of living in Hawthorne Hills for over a decade illustrated a much more detached lifestyle where you rarely interacted with any neighbors. Big house, concrete pond, keeping up with the Jones was really isolating for me.
I will continue to pray for your family and hope we might enjoy a cup of coffee in Uptown Normal if you find time in your what must now be a hectic world with your husbands illness to content with. Hope you might also have time to check out my blog as I have yours for some time. I think we agree on many of your ideas and have different opinions on other points. Anyway, good luck with your husbands illnesses and it sounds like your prayers are being effective. Good Luck
I’ve lived a neighborhoods where everybody interacted and one where they didn’t. It seems the more expensive the house the more likely the owner is to drive in the garage and shut the door.
The point is having the basic liberty to CHOOSE to interact or not. NOBODY should celebrate or support having the government force every form of deviancy, dependence or depravity “up your nose” and into your personal space in the name of “diversity” or “inclusion”. Property rights matter!!
Worse than an expensive home and shutting the garage door upon owners arrival, and I have seen this a few times, is moving to the country and putting up a high privacy fence. Open spaces?
Property rights dude! I don’t know why anybody would do that, but it’s their property. People are just friendlier in middle and lower income neighborhoods.
That’s rich! A persons quality of life is what one makes of it, not what the government mandates.
Great news on Andy! Have been and will continue to pray for him.
Thanks, he has a LONG road to go.
I am glad that your husband is doing much better!
“Monday night the Council is being ask to pre-approve looking into building a trail from Bloomington to Manfield. If they vote yes, the construction will be automatic.”
They are going to spend millions to rip out old railroad tracks to run a paved asphalt trail 3/4 of the way to Champaign (Mansfield) from Bloomington? A “Rails to trails” bike path is nice for traveling through urban areas, but who will use the sections of the path that run for miles through isolated cornfields?
What is wrong with reviving those rail lines for passenger rail to connect towns? A train carrying only one carload of passengers per week would add more value to the local economies than a paved rural path that may see one or two bikers a year. This kind of nonsense is happening all over the country.
Your proposal of using the existing tracks for passenger rail makes too much sense. Someone has a “vision” of having bike trails run all over the State especially along the Route 66 corridor. There is Federal Grant money available to pay for part of the build but the local communities will have to provide ongoing maintenance which is costly. No one seems to consider the long term fiscal impact of these projects.
Liberals NEVER consider consequences!
in all fairness, the Local Debt Recovery program is not as you paint it. The intergovernmental allows for the Comptroller’s office to check distribution of an individual’s claims against the state (tax refunds, etc.) prior to the state issuing any refunds or otherwise to individuals who owe local government money. The Comptroller would essentially garnish on behalf of the government to collect amounts due.
Collection agencies work wonders!
Having direct experience with same, not always. The missing piece would be social security numbers. Those are rarely collected by utilities and school districts making collection agencies inert.
The city had tons of unpaid water bills. Letting people not pay is an option only government allows.
Bike paths are a joke as still I see many people riding the wrong way against traffic, on the sidewalks even when there is a bike lane there, no signalling, wear dark clothes at night, etc. Put up all the signs you want to, people ignore them all the time. Can’t report them cause they have no license plate number. To the cops it’s a waste of their time. Liberal ignorance bliss.
It is a shame the City doesn’t finish the Constitution Trail. There are so many segments to nowhere. Other than for recreation, there will be little use for bike trails to LeRoy or beyond.
Diane,
Thanks for your work on here.
I had an aneurysm burst five years ago. It is a long road ahead but glad to hear of your husbands progress. bafound.org has been a good place for to receive support and information for me.
Thanks! He’s off the ventilator now and talking!
great news on your husband. there’s already a bike path from fox creek road to Shirley. I do know they want to extend it to McLean. you might see a family use it on the weekend.
Millions for a family or two! That’s brilliant.
The constitution trail in town is really nice. Not sure there is much benefit in running it out to random places all over the county. Was there a study done to justify the expense or is this a case where enough interest could be faked to justify a trail extension?
On another note, unlimited data plans are anything but unlimited. They drastically slow down your connection as you use more data. Check the fine print, but it’s usually a couple gigs of data before the slowdown starts.
So, this God you praise allowed your husband to have a brain aneurysm burst, but then, because you asked, is helping him recover. He’s omnipotent, supposedly. He knew your husband would have the aneurysm, so why go through this step of you praying to help your husband when he knew this would happen all along? Why not just fix or prevent the aneurysm? Oh, and you don’t think bikes belong on the street, but also don’t favor off-road trails for bicyclists. Should we just junk all bikes? Does God have an opinion on that?
Sure he does! We got to see a miracle, we know how many great friends we have now, and several people we know who refused to talk to each other have now mended their relationships. That’s the short list, I could go on.
God would hate government tax theft and then wasting what was stolen. Go count the bikers on Chenoa south this weekend. Do their job for them. I bet more bikers will pass my house.
I wonder if the City will suggest to the Comptroller’s office not to collect from certain businesses that have continued to be delinquent on paying the City. If this allows the City to collect hundreds of thousands, if not more, in past due taxes, fees, etc., then they could plow more money into basic necessities like streets. To me, the most disappointing thing above is the raise for Hales. If only he would have gotten that job up in Racine. I see him sticking around long enough to secure a pension and then heading off to some other city to screw things up. Sadly, the City Council does not seem to want to hold him accountable.