By: Diane Benjamin
The Bloomington City Council held a Committee of the Whole meeting last night. The first topic was roads.
City Manager Tim Gleason did a nice summary – just hit Play below.
Points made during the discussion:
1)
The ratings chart for streets has changed, the City thought they were too conservative for how long roads will last. See the rating here: https://cityblm.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=5e1560816da645e5b1001bba677fdacd
Hershey has a Fair+ rating now. Streid Drive also has a Fair and Fair+ rating. It is also a minefield of potholes. A slide presented claims the average rating for all roads in Bloomington is a 6.09 out of 10. Changing the ratings means Jim Karch doesn’t need $8.8 million anymore, it’s down to $6 million.
2)
The money that used to come out of the General Fund for streets before the Local Motor Fuel Tax and Sales Tax increase went to balance past budgets. It was never returned to supplement the new taxes.
3)
Sidewalks are included in the $4.6 million allocated to asphalt and concrete.
4)
The bond payments of $1.1 million per year on the $10 million borrowed is being paid from the General Fund, not Local Motor Fuel Tax. It will be paid off in 2023. I guess we are supposed to celebrate getting a little General Fund money.
5)
Tari again claimed 30% of the Motor Fuel Tax is paid by people who don’t live in Bloomington. He never provides any proof of that number. Unless people are stationed everywhere people fill up and survey every driver, that number can not be verified. It similar to the pretend “economic impact” numbers from the Coliseum.
6)
Alderman Mathy wants narrower lanes which will not only save money, but keep people from speeding. He must not have noticed Connect Transit buses can’t navigate turns now and stay in their lane. Hear him at 52:30.
7)
The transparency is nice except the Bike Master Plan wasn’t mentioned. Money is being spent on bike lanes at the expense of resurfacing more roads. The annual re-painting of lines that sucks up more money wasn’t mentioned either.
8)
Nothing is being done currently to collect a fuel tax from electric vehicles using the same roads. Nobody mentioned they can charge those vehicles for free too. Start with requiring a credit card!
9)
Passing a temporary increase to the Motor Fuel tax was mentioned. We know from history taxes are never allowed to sunset.
10)
Tari claimed at 1:10:00 his car has been damaged by the roads.
11)
The General Fund surplus was only mentioned by Gary Lambert during public comment. His comment are right before Gleason below. None of the alderman suggested moving the $4-$5 million to streets. What is the secret agenda for that money? Obviously there is one.
I’ve said it before Not until the voters of Bloomington vote the council seat warmers out of office and that Democrat mayor out things will never change. A more conservative council and mayor needs to replace every last one of them.
Mathy is ignorant. No narrow street is going to deter speeding anymore than the law passed for no cell phone use while driving. Only law enforcement enforcing the speed limit is the means to controlling speeding. A useless seat warmer!
These people have no master plan for traffic flow and street maintenance At best their “plan” is a reactionary plan.
Voters get rid of these people.
Narrower lanes = bike lanes!
I would HARDLY call many of our streets “ROADS” more of a graveled pathway to nice bike lanes.
30% of fuel tax comes from people in other areas? This guy is a regular comic, too bad he’s NOT FUNNY!
Think things are bad now? Just wait until Bloomington wakes up to potentially 4 (more) deviant loving Marxists on their City Council. (2 of them are guaranteed.)
“Elections have consequences.”
Any engineer will laugh at the comment that narrower streets reduce speeding. That’s just flat out false and has been proven time and time again. Rt. 66 used to only be 9 ft lanes, and deaths were numerous. The accident/death rate didn’t decrease until the lanes were widened to 11+’. What really needs to happen in Bloomington and Normal is what some call “lane diets”. It’s taking the massive, 4 lane roads that are never fully used, and shrinking them down to just two, possibly three, lanes. This saves on overall maintenance costs.
Which four lane roads are never fully used? I can’t think of any. Sounds like a set up to me.
Too bad the NEVER-USED, 7/8-mile, 3-4 lane concrete pavement on Mitsubishi Pkwy South (i.e. South of Six Points Rd) can’t be moved and put to good use elsewhere.
Add the never used fire station #5
Gas sales via credit cards can easily provide data on where people who purchase gas are from. That being said, I can’t see may companies spending employee time on producing reports for this type of data. If sure reports existed, I would think Tari would show them. Maybe the EDC could sit at gas stations for awhile and survey motorists.
Gas stations aren’t going to hand over that information to government!
Another Tari Renner pipe dream would be my guess. Doubtful any credit card company would compile and disseminate that data. They have no need to. Personally no one has surveyed me at any gas station. Maybe they were there and left on their bicycle.
Sure I can think of 4 lanes that should be 2. Fox Creek Rd and West Hamilton Rd. Definitely West Hamilton Rd. Two lanes with a middle turn lane would have been adequate.
That mess of N and S Regency Dr. that went from 4 lanes down to two was an ignorant move.
Like I said these seat warmers have no plan!
Tari’s plan is to get re-elected. Somehow that needs to be derailed by losing his next term attempt.
Tax’in Tari now has a second name….Rat Bastard Renner….only a Rat Bastard would continue to lie and act the way he does without showing remorse.
Leave it to a liberal group to change the rules when it suits them. Change the rating slide on the roads and lo and behold the roads are fine so we dont need to spend all that money on fixing roads we can get our downtown hotel, our sports complex and whatever else Tari O’ Renner wants.