By: Diane Benjamin
Source: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=14998
Citizens may not realize when they pay bills by credit card the City gets charged a fee for accepting the card. Just for one month there is over $81,000 listed as “Credit Card Fees”. See PDF page 161-163. That’s money that can’t be used for anything else. There are other charges listed as “bank fees”, I don’t know if they are the same.
It looks like the City is buying another award:
The Arena swallows more of your money:
What does Bloomington get for $100,000 a year from the Economic Development Council?
What benefits do citizens get from the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau for $475.000 a year?
See both websites here:
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These organizations and the arena simply create jobs for the sake of having jobs. We have nothing to show for the amount of money spent. No one outside of BN thinks this is a destination. Sorry folks! Further, the money spent on these no-results organizations is taxpayer money that must necessarily first be confiscated from productive people/businesses/areas of our economy. So, in effect, we are punishing the successful and rewarding the complacent and incompetent.
It is called socialism and the only people benefitting are the socialists like Crazy Tari Renner and his gaggle of crooks slopping out of the government trough!
Sometimes I feel like we are in an economic horror movie!
The City’s budget also includes $380K for B/N Advantage—the group of 17 who went to Arkansas to study quality of life initiatives.
BN Advantage is a joke! It’s not even clear from their own website what they are or what they do. (The website is terrible by the way.) How does BN Advantage differ from the EDC? Or BN Vistors Bureau? Or any of the 100s of other committees and subcommittees on business/economic development. The field trip to Arkansas was packed full of mostly big government, high taxes, and anti-business morons. No matter the destination, input from their hosts or other takeaways, the answer to these so-called “leaders” will always be government-led and -planned.
Busy busy busy, very busy and very perky (except when/if they are questioned or crossed in any way) Some of them have to know, well at least I would think some of them would, that what they do is a joke, albeit a cruel joke, that they are not REALLY doing anything of real value at all, and the fact that they gleefully do it anyway tells me a lot about who and what they are. Seminars, “field trips” (like 6th graders take) meetings, retreats, “special committees” (oooh special) and of course twisting and lying whenever they decide to tell us peasants about what nonsense they are up to now with our money – this is what being “actively involved” has become – and it’s a shame. Somehow, someway, and soon something HAS to change in this town. I wish I knew a quick and easy fix for it, but, sadly I don’t. I’m sorely afraid it’s “progressed” to far. Thing is, there ARE plenty of decent sane people in this town, the problem is getting them to just at least vote in local elections, and KNOW who and WHAT they are voting for not just blindly voting in incumbants. Even that would help.