By: Diane Benjamin
In case you didn’t know, the City of Bloomington Employee Activities Committee threw a party on October 31, 2017: https://blnnews.com/2017/12/12/party-on/
EAC threw themselves another party on January 27th at the BCPA – the Winter Event. This time there is no reference to a charge for attending.
The City even PAID the BCPA for using the facility the City owns – $1,750.00:
Postcard invites were MAILED to employees, I have pages of RSVP’s employees had to track while on the job. Each attendee was allowed to bring a guest.
The event was catered $7,791.30:
The catering was planned for 275 people. The City supposedly has around 650 full-time equivalent employees. Since each guest could bring a friend and I have many RSVP’s stating many are bringing a guest, easily less than 175 employees bothered to attend.
But, this event wasn’t just for employees! Other people were invited too:
Look at the email addresses, the City did the redactions.
The event had a cash bar. The City had to pay the bartenders though –$650.00.
There is more though. The City hired a DJ and had a photo booth:
I think they chose this quote since another quote said they don’t do uplighting- $1,800.00:
Parties need to hand out prizes!
They had a prize budget of $3,000.00. They only spent $2,862.91. See the 100 items given away HERE
Cost summary:
1750.00 – Rent BCPA
7,791.30 – Food
650.00 – Cash Bar
1,800.00 – DJ/Photo booth
2,862.91 – Prizes
_______
$14,854.21
That doesn’t include the time employees spent planning this swaray, addressing invites and postage, and responding to emails.
I have emails going back to November. That means they are already planning the next party.
Far less than half of the employees attended, so who was the party really for?
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Diane, when will you understand… we work for the city employees, they don’t work for us.
Keith Richards would have had WAY more fun on LESS money! OH, but it’s HIS money! Not some taxpayers… I’m surprised they didn’t have the Pink Flamingos with dancing koalas show up!
No flamingos for the winter! I wonder where they are?
Before arriving in Bloomington the flamingos had been studying the ostriches and learned how to hide their heads in the sand. Since arriving in Bloomington the flamingos have studied the art of deception learning from the demoncrats that brought them here.
Near $15K, seems to be an ample budget, particularly if only 50% of the employees attended. If this party was a reward and recognition event at which an invitation was extended to those employees who exceeded their established performance goals, it would be entirely different story. Under that scenario, I as a fixed income retiree, would have no problem with the expenditure being $40K for 85% of the employee team.
But that is unlikely to occur in a municipality employee group. Where reaching expectations is showing up for work. Nothing linked to value creation metrics. Pay bumps linked to years of service. And many other flawed reasons to provide more money to those employed … just because they have lived another year.
The low party participation is an indication that the team work across the City employee group may at best, be weak. I fear that the human resource leadership and development practices may need improvement at the city. Of course, unions tend to drive an unhealthy relationship wedge between members and the employer.
Taxpayer attitude towards civil employees. Just reading these comments objectivity, brings into light the true feelings for tax paid employees. Not necessarily management, but the hands on workers that do the job day to day. This attitude comes off as they are lesser people than the tax payer and that is just hogwash. I have and probably most have watched people belittle workers simply because they didn’t drop what they were doing and instantly take care of them or they didn’t like the garbage container wasn’t straight when set back down. I can not prove this, but it does seem feasible that some of their pay scale is to help compensate them for dealing with that attitude. I call that the “Crap Tax” for putting up with that.
Using this logic, all customer service providers should be given a bonus for listening to customer complaints. That doesn’t happen in the private sector. Local government employees receive a 2-3% annual pay increase. The private sector has received, on average, a 1% annual increase over the past 9 years. City employees only pay 25% of their healthcare premium with $3,000 maximum out of pocket expenses. The private sector employees (with the exception of large, national, Fortune 500 companies) pay 40-50% or more of their premium with a $13,000+ maximum out of pocket expense. Private sector employees can not accumulate sick days & vacation days year to year. The corporate world stopped using pensions for retirement because it is unsustainable. The private sector does not allow pension spiking. All of these expenses are paid for by the general public leaving the private sector employees with less discretionary income thus leading to decreased revenue to pay for all of those government benefits. The result, a need to continue.to raise taxes which further burdens the non-government worker. Bloomington is at that point currently. There is no economic growth. The current state of affairs is unsustainable. And, the beneficiaries of this are partying on taxpayers expense.
skunk, I am a retired Customer Service Manage with a agriculture company. Spent twenty years as one. In sales with them before that. While 98.5 % of the people we deal with are in need of service work and are reasonable to deal with, it is the other 1.5% that create the sad fact that customer abuse is a problem also. I’ve been called lots of things by “good people” and had totally unreasonable tactics tried out to get their way. I have also served on smaller elected boards and seen what voters demand of day to day employees of the taxing body. Most understand that snow removal or road repairs take a amount of time and money while others demand we stop and take care of them as they are having a party this weekend and want the road in good shape for them. Or something like that.
Sometimes, when I thought it was warranted, I’d let an employee leave early while still on the clock. This was repaid when extra weekend days were required. But had this been a tax payer situation, there would be no way to use common sense and work with an employee. There IS a difference in how tax payer employees are seen by the most taxpayers.
Trump recognized individuals for exceptional heroic efforts, recognizing someone for just showing up for work isn’t special. I heard there was a new hire in HR. Was that for planning parties? Add up all of the hours spent during the year for parties and social events and that might add up to 1 FTE.
Next time Bloomington or Normal does not want to cut an employee, these expenses should be reviewed line by line at the next meeting after pointing out how many employees could be saved in lieu of most workers guaranteed 3% raises and gold-plated healthcare costs. Hold wages in line for a few years and things will start to trend better. Don’t spend many, many thousands of dollars on these frivolous things while others are suffering the burden of constant annual tax and fee increases.
Seriously? Most companies are lucky to get one party a year, perhaps at Xmas. These parties are a slap in the face to the hardworking taxpayer. Let’s see, I have to pay more in taxes so that city workers that make a good wages with excellent benefits can party down. It’s hogwash and stinks to high heaven!