By: Diane Benjamin
Below are the payments per year to the law firm in Springfield. In 2013 they got NO tax dollars because Bloomington has an attorney on staff. Normal still has their own attorney.
Tari wanted an Administrative Court to squeeze the citizens into complying with his wishes. Remember when Tari used to tell the media they aren’t doing anything different than past Councils? Oh yes they are!
This isn’t all of the legal expenses, some work is outsourced to other firms.
A staff attorney could be hired for $200,000 including benefits. Instead your taxes are propping up Springfield.
2017: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=15346
Sorling Northrup Hanna Cullen & Cochran Ltd $ 752,100.40
2016: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=11540
Sorling Northrup Hanna Cullen And $ 718,524.31
2015: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=9335
Sorling Northrup Hanna Cullen And $ 631,216.68
2014:
Sorling Northrup Hanna Cullen And $ 60,769.78
2013:
ZERO
Budget Book 1: http://www.cityblm.org/home/showdocument?id=15984
PDF page 259
Challenges
Deteriorating road conditions and increasing number of sewer cave-ins cause increases in impromptu care and reactive adjustment.
The City Council’s increased commitment to street resurfacing is making a difference in bringing overall street conditions to a more acceptable level. This commitment is combined with a Staff-Council commitment to stretching dollars and extending the life of streets though pavement preservation measures. City crews perform permanent patching, and contractors have been hired to use pavement preservation methods, primarily Reclamite overlay that acts in similar ways to seal-coating a wooden porch. These measures have the potential to save millions of dollars. Patching comes out of Street Maintenance while resurfacing and pavement preservation out of Capital Improvement. (What increased commitment?)
Recommended service levels for roads (below), which began in FY 2018, are an improvement, but still create a reactive approach rather than a proactive approach. Five times more local streets exist than arterial streets. This means that more time and money will be spent reactively repairing pot holes and other issues by keeping the minimum rating for the majority of roads, which are local, at 3 or higher. A proactive approach would keep all minimum ratings for all roads at 5, but current funding levels don’t support that approach.
In 2018 the Council spent $3.8 million.
The local Motor Fuel Tax and the 1/4% Sales Tax don’t provide $8,880,063 for the 2019 budget.
Either the Council is going to slide in another tax increase or their “commitment to street resurfacing” is really a joke on you.
The budget books are written so poorly (on purpose) I can’t tell what they actually plan to spend on roads. Still checking into it though.
If they need money – de-fund legal!
There are many things that could be defunded or funding reduced. The Council will not address them.
🐥
This is JUST DEPRESSING! The folks in Springfield CATER to these small town minded IDIOTS and charge them a bazooka bills to do so. THIS mayor, council and IDIOTS of interest who are supposedly IN CHARGE HAVE TO GO!!! WHO makes this kind of money, and tonight they WANT to hire a “study” done for a new sports complex. JOHNEE PAINTER has to be ONE of the biggest idiots who ever walked the face of this planet. She is incapable of making a decision on HER own MERIT! SAD to believe her and the rest of the council, including ole “Smilin’ Amelia” will make decisions that will cost us WAY into the future. There’s NO reason for this crap. VOTE them ALL out and send them to SIBERIA! MAYBE they can’t damage the tundra..
We don’t need give-a ways to agencies and for feel good programs. If we give unmotivated people stuff, they will expect and demand that stuff all the time. We make it to easy for nonfunctioning people to live here.
Those charges are criminal, and yes they are absolute idiots for paying them like that for anything. Like my Grandma used to say, “If you aren’t doing anything wrong you don’t need to have a lawyer in your pocket all the time. It’s always the shady ones that always need a pack of lawyers, or the rich ones that someone is always trying to take something from them” – and we know it isn’t the last example in Bloomington’s case. – I wonder whose brother-in-law or sister or cousin or old college room mate works in what firms?
DONT SHOW THEM THIS: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/10/los-angeles-painting-city-streets-white-in-bid-to-combat-climate-change.html
They’ll paint the streets and leave the potholes like LA is doing, but hey “saving the planet”! LOL
In Indianapolis citizens are filling the potholes themselves.