By: Diane Benjamin
Thank God Steve Vogel is retiring for good! His column today doesn’t merit commenting on and I sure didn’t read the whole thing. If I hadn’t jumped to the comments I would have missed that he is walking off into the sunset – keep walking Steve! I wonder what left winger will replace him?
Reporting got far worse with today’s Coliseum loss story. (It was still the coliseum last April 30th)
A report on the loss is being presented to the City Council Monday night – hence the story. We still have NO IDEA how much CIAM lost as of 4/30/16 because they took the records or destroyed them when they left. The Pantagraph reported they lost $500,000, but no reports exist on the City website. We do know what the loss was in 2015:
VenuWorks lost $673,518 before depreciation last year, CIAM lost $677,480 before depreciation (1,538,684 – 861,204). the rag reported CIAM lost $500,000!
All the documents are on-line, is it that hard to look up the real numbers? I will help you Pantagraph: http://www.cityblm.org/government/advanced-components/documents/-folder-139
Depreciation is part of operating expenses, attempting to leave it out is fraudulent.
The article states for the year ended 4/30/2017 Revenue was $2.6 million and Expenses were $3.3 million.
Take a trip down memory lanes to before it was built. Bonds were sold to build the Coliseum based on a study completed in 2002. Revenues were projected to be $7.1 million a year with expenses of $4.8 million. https://blnnews.com/2017/02/26/coliseum-smacks-taxpayers-again/
The Securities and Exchange Commission should have banned Bloomington from ever selling bonds again!
Add to the scam the failure of David Hales to supervise – as I reported for YEARS and filed a lawsuit over!
Think I was making it up? The auditors agreed with me: Page 5 http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=12544
If the City “suddenly become suspicious” those who did should be prosecuted along with whoever is found to have ripped off taxpayers!
I told the City FOR YEARS what was happening at the Coliseum. David Hales made sure no investigation took place – the majority of the Council gave him huge raises while ignoring his failures.
Not only has the City of Bloomington failed to protect taxpayers from waste fraud and abuse, the media has failed in its responsibility to report the truth.
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Going to miss him
The Pantagraph article about the Coliseum looks like it was just pulled from the archives with a few words substituted and rearranged. “Ground Hog Day” in July.
Or the writer got the info from a person who has a problem with facts.
Vogel is gone….great news but the paper is a rag regardless. Rarely do they and did he have correct facts. He called Rauner a billionaire since day one. That may only be true this year. Prior to that no. He like most other writers at that paper remind me of how people must feel working for TASS, afraid of the government thus continually kissing Tari’s, Koos etc, etc butts. I did like the one comment about Vogel in Pantagraph….wonder how long it will stay up concerning maybe he should go to writing kid’s books. Most of his stuff was on the level of see Jane Run and the effort in researching his comments showed an equal amount of expertise.
Google is working on software to write local (news) stories. Perhaps Vogel and the local rag are a part of the initial experimentation.
Heck, that was my FAVORITE part of the Pantagraph in the outhouse. ALWAYS a CLEAN ending!