By: Diane Benjamin
I asked Jim Karch to explain how much will be in the budget for roads. This is his response: (click to enlarge)
Roads are Not a priority!
This is what it looks like when politicians lie to you to win elections.
Your Motor Fuel Tax will be raised 4/23 to add a little to roads. It looks like the ONLY money being spent again are taxes the Council increased. The budget is over $200,000,000, but nobody can find money for roads. This spending is not enough to get the roads up to POOR condition.
It isn’t Jim Karch’s fault your roads are a disaster. Blame the Council-they vote on the spending. Cuts are too difficult for them.
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Can Karch please define what “permanent pothole patching” is? Sounds like non-sensible liberal speak, like when they refer to assault rifles as “fully semi-automatic”….
He’s trying techniques to lengthen the road life. If the Council would give him money he could really fix the streets.
You talk a lot on here about the union members benefits being to lucrative. Have you seen Jim Karch’s benefit package. And yes he does have a lot to do with what gets spent on roads. He oks all the wasteful spending.
What wasteful spending? Be specific
I’ll start with something small. It’s the city’s 101 program we’re a group of citizens visits a few city departments. The city spends over 1,000 on making city street signs with the participants name on them. Plus cost of food and overtime for this.
City 101 is done by Nora under the administration department. $$ is also spent on certificates of completion. Karch does not oversee that activity.
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He is involved in it. He host it at public works
Department heads request funding from Council for specific projects. It is Council who votes for the appropriations.
Any wasteful spending that has to do with any department he is over.
I need details, outside the City it’s impossible to know what wasteful is – other than free lunches.
FIX the streets is the PROPER REPLY! They just cannot KEEP putting cold mix in a hole and expect it to be a permanent fix! WHAT is Bloomington going to do WHEN the MAIN water pipeline under PIPELINE ROAD breaks and has to be TOTALY replaced? Answer that Tari! OH, Ole Mr Koos will have us riding Bicycles and driving electric cars.
I put that same picture of Renner in a dark corner in my basement right. Haven’t had any mice since. Perhaps that could be a truthful claim on his campaign literature.
Street/sewer repair is not a priority, period!
Gotta luv the sink hole there at Mercer and Lincoln streets. What has it been over a week and nothing has been done. Gotta luv the cold patch done nearby too. What a joke!
No joke one never knows if the pavement under them while driving will collapse.
I’ve always been baffled as to why we (America) constructs roads the way we do. We should build roads to last, like they do in Europe, not have the lowest builder build them. We spend far, far more on maintaining them we would if we spent more up front to build them to last.
I have a friend from the UK who is very well versed in many areas of construction including the overseeing of huge projects in London – I talked to her about this very subject when she was here visiting a few years ago, she told me the mix they use around here on roads is horrible – cheap and is most likely used for both cost efficiency and to insure constant employment of road crews for constant repairs. She also said that especially with the drastic weather conditions we have that they could and should be using a FAR different mix and materials than what they are using now. The initial cost would be more but the surface would last far longer making it more cost efficient in the long run.
I’ve heard/read the same thing, as well as the base that is created to put the road on. Here we “do it on the cheap.” Pathetic.