By: Diane Benjamin
Monday night the City Council got a long report from multiple City employees on what is happening downtown this summer.
Your large garbage pickup got changed to twice a year, downtown will see garbage and recycling picked up 7 days a week. The streets will be swept twice a week. The Way Finding signs will be getting installed. 13 blocks will be resurfaced, Front Street is left over from last year, somehow Center Street got added to the list. I asked Jim Karch how both made the list, he replied about Front and didn’t answer about Center.
Screen shots from the meeting video:
Downtown is getting 60 self watering flower pots. The speaker is hard to understand, but I believe she says SIXTY – see 46:15
DowntownBloomington.org/events lists 120 events happening downtown this summer. Most aren’t new, like the Farmer’s Market that already draws people downtown. They accept Food Stamps.
Did you know you are funding downtown facades? These grants are merely named after her, she didn’t leave money to fund it: http://www.cityblm.org/home/showdocument?id=4101
This is one of the projects you paid for last year, the business is ironically called Reality Bites. The Historic Preservation committee approves the grants. It is also redistribution of wealth to those government prefers.
The parking garages downtown are being automated! I wonder what they did with the people who used to work at them? The City must still not realize paying to park deters visitors when free parking exists at strip malls and what’s left of Eastland Mall. Forcing people to pay to park isn’t going to bring them downtown.
If you want to hear the downtown presentation just hit Play below. Prior to that was the first annual report from the Public Safety and Citizens Review Board. They almost had themselves convinced they weren’t needed when nobody filed a report. Then that one got filed, the police were found to have followed procedures, and we can’t know any details. I believe he said only two complaints were even filed with the police the entire year. We don’t know how much money they spent producing brochures (in English and Spanish) and distributing them.
The discussion of the local history of the circus was first. It appears taxpayers won’t be funding the statue that will be placed at the corner of Washington and East. The County already approved it, evidently Bloomington has to at the next meeting:
Read more on PDF page 2 of this County document: https://www.mcleancountyil.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/6510
I bet everyone will love the antique (100 year old) look of the Wayfinding Signage. NOT!!! I guess the theory is that looking old will help attract lots more folks to downtown Bloomington? THEY ARE WRONG!! The people that would like it are dying off and are not drunks, so they will NOT be going to downtown and there are very few historians who would either. (Don’t miss my point that the vast majority of people going to downtown businesses are going to the bars.) $580,000 for signage that very few will use or even find interesting is a vast waste of our tax dollars!!! BTW, in this day and age, people use the phones to find places and to follow a map on it! No need for wasteful spending. You can tell that I am certain that the signage is a complete waste, however, if our city goes ahead with it, it should be modern, maybe techy signage, not old fashion garbage signs!!!
The signs need to be electronic so we can easily remove notations as businesses close or move away. It will look bad to have multiple ‘closed’ bumper stickers plastered across the pretty old-timey signs.
I apologize for this comment but I just could not pass it up. The downtown signage is great. Now the people who go to the bars will have their version of a tree to pee on like a dog has trees. Then they will have to have another rust grant to fix the signage.
Glad to see Downtown get the attention it deserves! It has been neglected for years….while city focused on and spent exorbitant amount of money on new streets and subdivisions on the east side and the widening of VP. The downtown isn’t going anywhere. The buildings and streets MUST be taken care of! Continued neglect will just cause increased expenditure in the future. A beautiful vibrant downtown will only attract visitors, which will increase the demand for shopping and restaurants which increases revenue!! The ENTIRE city will benefit!
Between the Coliseum and the BCPA and TIF districts, the City has sunk at least $100,000,000 into downtown. Will it take another $100 million?
Amazing. Amazingly wasteful and out of touch with reality.
City documents have made no secret that downtown is a primary priority. This is the reason for Tricia Stiller being added as a city employee with no background in development matters and another reason Tim Gleason was brought in as City Manager. Besides, Tari believes he is heir apparent to Dick Durbin and needs a legacy project to run on such as progressive building projects that sells to a millennial electorate. Renner is extremely ignorant when it comes to economics but does not care. He will use a portion of all new local taxes by making sure they get transferred to the general fund over some convoluted reasoning to pay for his downtown plans. It doesn’t mean anything if it is successful or not, just that he did something to put on his political resume. He is still stinging from the Congressional beat down he took years ago and his lifelong intention is to right it. He wants a seat among the D.C. political elite to show his mommy he’s a success. Has the same mental illness issues as Carrillo.
I thought Trisha got the job because she was screwing Tilton’s son. It’s not what you know it’s who you blow. Didn’t the Tilton’s get one of those grants? Yeah, they did. Aren’t they heading up the Friends of the BCPA that Jamie Mathey used to cater for? Hasn’t Diane done several articles about the lack of transparency at the BCPA? Yeah, she has. Good thing we have a judicial system that works…oh wait we don’t. People better get WOKE and someone should start enforcing the law.
And yet, still the only thing that will thrive down there is bars and coffee shops. Give it up already, Tari, my car can’t take it anymore.
The roads there will be great, you just might not be able to find way to get there!
Can I get some hot tar for Hershey Road? There is one hole right now that I will fill myself if the city gives me a 5 gallon bucket of tar? My only other option is buying a dune buggy….
After seeing how annoyingly durable it is when Not wanted on streets and sidewalks, I’ve often wondered if used chewing gum wouldn’t be a good patch material…
The “Full of Rust Grants” are a joke! Quick cash for local contractors, working at “prevailing” wage of course. Our money handed out discriminately to businesses in a specific neighborhood that Tari and the Council think is the center of commerce and life in Bloomington. (Apparently, they don’t leave City Hall or visit Veteran’s Parkway.) The signs are a complete waste of money and will have no impact. However, I’m sure Tim Fleeceson will make up some stats and use a fancy graph to show us an amazing economic impact. Ha! Next election cycle, the voters will reach their threshold for pain and pull a Normal. Hopefully, it’s not too late.
Facades. And that is all you get in with it, is,,,facades. An outside look of a building does not equal economic prosperity. We all know this. Renner doesn’t care cause the Renner transparency is the ability to see right through him. Decieve to achieve.
Can anyone tell me a single reason to go downtown? Bueller? Bueller?
Didn’t think so.
$600 K for signs?? They better be guilded and hung with cast iron, as you KNOW the weekend crowd will have “monkey bar” contests on them.. I wonder if a LOCAL sign company is doing them?? WHO is doing the installation? What is the code on these signs? Are they also at ground level in braille so they’re ADA compliant??
Will they also be lit at night?? I bet $600 K is a STARTING figure..