By: Diane Benjamin
Bloomington and Normal are the only cities doing their own garbage pickup in the area. According to the Pantagraph, Normal did their own investigation of rates.
They declared NO money could be saved by privatizing garbage pickup.
See the chart here: http://www.pantagraph.com/graphic-waste-collection-fees-services/pdf_a5d93a81-e7db-537c-b830-c5fafd8a34bc.html
The Pantagraph must not have noticed some of those other cities have cheaper rates with private haulers still making a profit. Obviously they make a profit or they wouldn’t be in business!
Also not reported is how many public employees would be laid off if garbage was private. Surely Bloomington and Normal wouldn’t just keep them all! How many pensions and benefits would be saved? How much is saved by not replacing trucks or doing maintenance on them? How much revenue can be generated selling the garbage equipment they currently use?
Just comparing rates as disingenuous at best. Millions in savings to both cities would mean less overall cost and lower tax rates. Of course honest serving officials would be required for that to happen. The current crop would just spend the savings elsewhere, yes that would cost you more.
By the way, service you get from private companies would be better because it has to be. I see comments every week on Facebook about citizens getting “missed”. Private service isn’t going to miss you, they like their customers and are forced to operate efficiently. How many things does government do right? The list is not as long as what they do wrong!
_________________________________
Also in the Pantagraph is a guest editorial from Carlo Robustelli, Tari Renner’s former lunch buddy before the PCard got taken away.
Carlo is crying because nobody respects the work done by the Renner appointed Downtown Task Force. He thinks the entire Council should have at least listened.
Tari is still pretending that joint meeting was a discussion, Carlo is pretending the same thing. Discussions without predetermined outcomes don’t require facilitators asking leading questions based on a survey they created.
Carlo, if Tari wanted REAL answers to downtown he should have appointed people who represented the population not just downtown. Your little cabal doesn’t understand the Coliseum was a catalyst project. So was the BCPA. Both failed. Moving the library just to make sure the City doesn’t have to maintain a parking garage was transparently idiotic. Your cronies also failed to mention the cost of building a new parking garage since the few people still downtown need a place to park.
The Creativity Center will do nothing but cost money. Maybe somebody can explain why the BCPA staff works there instead of in the BCPA! Sign it over to the non-profit. They claim people are dying to rent space. I noticed the committee left this gem out of the discussions.
_________________________________
ISU wants to bring in foreign students! Is it because enrollment is declining? Is it because Illinois residents can go out-of-state cheaper?
Who are supposedly the biggest abusers of immigration law? Isn’t it people who over stay visas? Is ISU going to make sure these foreign students go home and use their education to help their own countries?
ISU is paying the expenses to bring foreign teachers in, are they planning to pay for foreign students too? https://blnnews.com/2016/05/12/isu-buys-foreign-labor/
_________________________________
One more.
State Farm is rewarding employees with $1,000 bonuses. Good for them.
More large layoffs are going to happen in March.
I’m hearing State Farm might want to keep that downtown building. It won’t have tons of employees working in it, but they have other uses for it.
Tari needs to quit telling people what he wants to use it for. He doesn’t own it, as no rights to it, and has proven his economic development abilities are severely lacking.
Carlo Rob-us-taxpayers and the Task Farce can’t stop drolling over the State Farm office. The tax-and-spent approach has been a demonstrable failure: Collesium/arena, BCPA, Huff lofts, Route 66 museum, etc. The more money the government throws at Downtown, the worse it has become. Just look at the vacancies – State Farm, Commerce Bank, Front and Slummer building! Why do these politicians continue to believe that this time will be different? How does 1% of the local economy (Downtown), if that, get 99% of their attention. The market has said “no” to growing, developing, and working in the Downtown. It will get worse by the way with no lunch goers from State Farm. Fire up that P-card, Tari, we’ll meet you at Rosie’s…since the meal is on us.
You got it right BN Deserves Better! The market is currently saying NO to the downtown but our government and their crony capitalist buddies want to try to engineer economic growth by spending public money to create another “catalyst” building. If this town had some foresight and was progressive and had some 21st Century leadership, the downtown could have been a hub for entrepreneurship and startups. After which if enough businesses begin to grow, the downtown could be place that investors might want to develop. There are plenty of examples where this kind of thing has happened. But in Bloomington-Normal, economic development is either retail sales locations, hotels, restaurants or government funded building projects. There is no room at the inn for startups here in Crony Capitalism Land. It’s a big club, taxpayers and you are in it…but you get to pay for the parties.
Basically, ALL OVER this country DOWNTOWN (or UPTOWN) is DEAD. People do NOT want to drive into a city, to shop when they can safety and economically do it from the outskirts! With FEW exceptions this IS the norm! NOW. IF our council WANTED to REALLY bring the downtown to LIFE, they would be giving SMALL BUSINESS STARTUPS with a PLAN a small business loan, and I mean UNUSUAL businesses, not a tee shirt joint, bar, restaurant, etc, but UNIQUE to the AREA stuff, and do that MANY times over and guess what? You MAY get a downtown revitalization… Look at what Washington,IL has done. Among other towns. It don’t take a MAYORS conference or a ONE blah, blah, to get ideals. Just USE the brain that GOD gave you. (I know I’m asking a lot JONI & AMELIA) But give it a try! It JUST might work, and WITHOUT taxpayer money… And guess WHAT?? You’d get tax revenue and lower the deficit!
Wow economics 101 at WORK.
Give PROFIT a chance!
Carlo was given a job at IWU so he could help further change Bloomington over to full Democrats on the council and Town of Normal. He is a democratic operative from out of state. Renner wanted him here!!!
When all the retail on the east side goes away, downtown can be viable again. Not gonna happen.
Trust me, private garbage collection is no picnic either. I live in a small town that has only one option for a private company. Our rates have gone up three times in the past two years, and service is spotty at best. If you have the misfortune of being at the end of the route you are lucky to get picked up every few weeks. When it’s quitting time they just stop, even if they haven’t finished their route. When you call to complain they just tell you they’d be happy to cancel your service.
Who is your service with? I have zero problems with Republic.