By: Diane Benjamin
Monday is RAISE your
TAXES day!
The fund balances aren’t enough! You must pay.
Be compliant, stay home, cuss at the Council from the safety of your couch.
Or, you could quit eating out as much and paying the outrageous food and beverage taxes. Or, you could buy more on-line and save those taxes. Or, you could stand up for yourself and tell the council they are chasing people out-of-town by taxing them to death!
Whose money is it? Theirs or yours?
Special meeting agenda: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=14628
The Council won’t vote Monday, they just want to see who is paying attention. The vote will be at an upcoming meeting. Meanwhile, there is plenty of money for downtown.
Nice topic for the remembrance of a tragic day.
The fees will most likely be doubled over the next 5 years just like Normal did. The real problem is there is no guarantee the revenue will be spent for sewer repair and maintenance. The City Manager has the authority to transfer funds to other accounts as he and the Finance Director see fit. Several years ago, $2.4M was transferred out of the Water Fund to pay for losses from the Coliseum and not transferred back. Monday’s Regular Council Meeting has another Budget Amendment proposal. The fiscal year began May 1 and already there have been multiple amendments. The routine has become “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” The tax base has shrunk as indicated by lower utility/water usage. There is no indication how the “borrowed money from the Employee Health Account will be paid back. The CIP and Downtiwn Task Force have yet to be addressed. Wake up folks!! Time to “storm the Bastille.”
With the complacency or lack of knowledge of a lot of voters in Bloomington / Normal maybe when they have to pay $10.00 in taxes for a $10.00 meal they will finally realize how the powers to be in the cities have fleeced them. Unfortunately by then it will be too late to reverse the status quo.
Yes, one only has to have visited UK and some European countries to know where we are headed. In fact, I do a little countdown type thing and think “ok, they are doing this in UK now, so, it should be here in about 1-3 years and wah-lah, nearly every time I’m right. The leftists are simply chomping at the bit to get a VAT tax levied too and soon we will know the joy that Sweden knows to pay the US Dollars equivalent of $35.00 (35 U.S. dollars) for a bowl of soup and a couple of slices of bread in a storefront cafe low/mid-price restaurant or around $15.00 in Switzerland for a Big Mac “Value Meal” at McDs – oh yes, if the “Left” is left unchecked, we too can soon look forward to that life