By: Diane Benjamin
At every recent Council meeting Mayor Renner has appointed people to various boards and commissions. He is obviously transferring his agenda to every part of Bloomington and anywhere he can in the County. How many people didn’t want to stop serving, but were forced to?
Monday night Renner has two appointments and 4 reappointments. At the May 8th meeting he had 3 appointments. We usually don’t know much about the previous person who served, but I did find a reference in the CIRA minutes: http://cira.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/April-17-2017-Minutes.pdf
Chairman Colee was replaced by Jay Groves – formerly of ISU. I do know that Colee’s 4-year term expired in April. I do not know when he was first appointed, maybe Tari believes in term limits. Obviously it wasn’t Mr. Colee’s choice. Why Jay Groves? Was it really necessary to appoint a person who just retired, and not from the real world?
In other business:
http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=13039
The Council will establish an official Transportation Committee.
Section 301. MEMBERSHIP AND MEETINGS 1. The Commission shall consist of seven (7) members, appointed by the Mayor with the advice and consent of City Council. The appointments to the Commission should represent as broadly as possible geographic and/or social elements within the City, each with a demonstrated interest, knowledge, or experience in traffic management or transportation, including that three members must have a specific demonstrated interest, background or experience in one of the following: a. regional public transportation, such as transit or bus service; b. accessibility and ADA compliance; and c. bicycle transportation.
I guarantee nobody opposed to Complete Streets is going to be appointed!
Vehicle lanes will start to disappear in favor of bike lanes. In some areas specific lanes for buses may appear, made possible by removing a vehicle lane (Chicago did it!). Some streets will become narrower to purposely stow down traffic. Tari’s Council will of course approve. Maybe Bloomington can even get some bump-outs like Normal: (See the video here: https://blnnews.com/2014/07/30/more-on-normals-road-changes-get-a-bike/ )
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In Special Session before the 7:00 Council meeting, they will discuss changes to the JM Scott Trust – currently administered by the Township.
Instead of changing the Trust to give more power to the Council, they should be abolishing the Township. One less government agencies that nobody understands would be a good thing.
It won’t happen. The City won’t return to MetCom either. On the consent agenda is spending $291,382.78 over 4 years to keep what they have.
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You should really look into Bob Yell the Water Director. He has been arrested multiple times and now he is viciously attacking the poor residence of Lake Bloomington. He has even blown his stack at a couple of them. One of the citizens even has a recording of him going off on them. He is attempting to remove all of the boat docks from the citizens. He is also blowing up on employees, if they don’t buy into his agenda.
It’s spelled Yehl, and he has no arrests. It is funny that he lives in Hudson instead of Bloomington.
Most any 4X4 can take a speed bump comfortably at 28mph and drive right over the bump out, leaving them ugly to make a point. Lol.