By: Diane Benjamin
http://www.normal.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/2784
Town of Normal payments for tonight: (Click on any pics to enlarge)
Would you take your kids Trick-Or-Treating in Uptown if you knew you paid for the candy?
The ICMA conference was in Texas, looks like a FOIA for all credit card charges is needed.
Sit down if you aren’t already:
FOIA filed!
Handouts to preferred non-profits continue, plus the Rivian costs for October and other kickbacks:
Some municipalities are running away from Body Cameras due to the cost of storing the video. Evidently Normal isn’t.
I could keep showing you other spending, like $2,900 for Face Painting. PDF page 20.
Tonight will be a short meeting, I bet few if any citizens show up to protest the Comprehensive Plan that calls for Pack-Em-and-Stack-Em housing.
Instead of showing up tonight, families will leave. The American dream is space, not living on top of each other. When people find out taxes and space are MUCH better outside of Normal, they will flee. Normal is attempting to tell people how to live instead of allowing them to make their own decisions. You need to walk and bike so they don’t have to pay for infrastructure.
Start reading on PDF page 51.
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How is government limiting sprawl and saving money a bad thing? People can live anywhere they want, but cities and towns can no longer to afford to run costly sewer and water to far flung future subdivisions. Not sure why this is a bad thing…
They can’t afford it because they don’t want to. Giving people quality of life is far more fun. If Normal wasn’t almost $100,000,000 in debt and planning on spending more money, they would have plenty of money.
In many other areas (FL and TN) developers are responsible for installing sewer, roads, etc…according to local specs.
Somehow our local developers (chamber of commerce…etc.) swindled our local governments into paying for part of their development cost. Think of it as welfare for developers/rich/1%.
If I am not mistaken Snyder still owes the city for some housing/golf course development?
In the end government gets bigger, the in crowd gets more tax money kick backs, and the middle class gets TAXED more.
Normal/Bloomington have TIF’ed our childen into GENERATIONAL debt… The smart money knows sales revenue is flat/down.
Anyone notice the sudden switch from TIFs to tax abatement as a means of economic growth? My guess is the smart money knows TIFs are going to collapse and better to get tax money upfront to avoid when Peter comes looking to steal more from Paul.
I think the developers need to pay for access to the infrastructure. Good call “…says”! Florida and Tennessee have stronger balance sheets…not a coincidence. If people demand more space and/or other amenities, the market will recognize that and build accordingly. Snyder is a snake pit. Where are the liberals demanding that these millionaires “pay their fair share”??? Diane – I agree that Normal does have an agenda of government-controlled quality of life and a utopian downtown (er, Uptown). Koos ran for Mayor of Uptown not Normal. He rarely visits or interacts with other parts of town. This was evident throughout his last campaign.
Yes, Snyder still owes the City about half of a million dollars for the Fox Creek Subdivision. The City has been functioning as a bank for developers for decades. The killer is that Renner assigned Mr. Feder, a Snyder Companies Executive, to sit on the Budget Task Force.
Developers can pay for infrastructure, but what about solid waste removal and fire & police protection for these far-flung areas? Do these new neighborhoods get a park or screw’em? If they get a park, that’s another ongoing expense. Should the Town develop continuing charges to developers? Or do we privatize everything, including police and fire? Private cops (sounds bad…)?
I’ve lived in 2 country subdivisions, both with parks the homeowners took care of. Garbage was private with NO problems. If Normal doesn’t want the houses don’t annex the property. Downs figured it out with Mallingham. Part has Bloomington addresses and part has Downs after they figured out they were giving up money. The bottom line is: if government stuck to essential services instead of building their version of utopia, money wouldn’t be an issue.
Pack em and Stack em is basically just the old “ghettos” trick – herd em up and centralize them – that way they are far easier to control and monitor in a myriad of ways. Knowing history and the tricks that have been used by those in control for centuries is a good thing to know and understand. It makes it far more difficult for the powerful to trick the less powerful if the less powerful know what the end game really is, and the methods used to achieve it, and no, I’m not saying a “Holocaust” is coming, I’m saying the methods always lead to more control and centralization. One of the mistakes Rome made, was it’s empire was too vast – same with Russia, it was too vast to control. The powerful learned from these mistakes. – ok, now just carry on thinking that pack em stack em is a good thing…that it’s good for us…