By: Diane Benjamin
See Part 1: https://blnnews.com/2019/07/31/did-chris-koos-lie/
The second issue in Koos’ letter pertained to fire stations.
Stan Nord had been looking at why Bloomington and Normal couldn’t have a joint east side fire station since both want one:
Pam Reece’s reply:
See the document here: Fire Department Study
The real question should have been: Why can’t two towns work together to save taxpayer money?
From the same Pantagraph article linked in the first story: https://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/koos-nord-acted-alone-to-poach-bloomington-business/article_aeff8b7c-78a3-5e32-b1ef-f65e4e81f812.html
Excerpts:
Nord also approached Bloomington Fire Chief Brian Mohr about combining departments or stations with Normal.
On the issue of fire departments, Nord said he and Mohr are childhood friends, and he didn’t feel their conversation was inappropriate.
Pam Reece sent this email to Stan and the entire Council on July 3rd. Note Koos’ language in his letter is lifted from this email:
I hope you saw Pam’s “Board of Directors” comment.
She and most of the Board think they only do policy. Stan and Karyn have a policy: Taxes are too high, people are leaving Illinois, we are going to stop it.
Stan’s reply:
Is this and the previous story enough evidence Koos lied about Stan Nord?
Every municipality must have an ethics officer by law. They are also required to have an ethics ordinance. I emailed Town lawyer Brian Day this morning for that information, no response so far.
Can we assume the Town of Normal has neither? A search of their website did not show either exists.
The Trustees must hold the Mayor accountable for his libelous attacks on Stan Nord. The Trustees are evidently in hiding. The citizens of Normal must demand Koos gets censured or the only people who will know about his treachery are readers here.
The media stole the Hyatt story from yesterday, I bet they don’t touch this one. #FakeNews.
Well, I’d look at ALL this in a DIFFERENT aspect. They ASSUME that EVERY conversation that Stan has has intent or deep meaning, so to run this through the “TRUTH MILL” The people getting all bent up over this conversation SHOULD be warned that EVERY conversation that THEY have ALSO has deep meaning or INTENT, As in KOOS saying that Stan went over his head in talking to Mohr, or Tari saying most ANYTHING that comes out of his mouth!! Now BOTH these examples would NOT pass the litmus test !!
So I guess we are to be ASSURED that Koos and Tari don’t go over “others’ heads EVER, whether it be with Kroger, Council, Citizens, or a PCARD lunch, etc..
MAYBE we should have surveillance & audio cameras in bicycle shops as an ordinance??? We COULD expand that to “certain” restaurants that accept Pcards also..
The establishment media will avoid this like King Elijah Cummings avoids visiting West Baltimore. I think we have one big rat and we all know what he looks like: Fuhrer Chris (I love to back stab anyone who challenges me) Koos. And now for a VERY interesting video from John Ward (one of my favorites): Comrade Fudge (and Donald Trump) Ends Elijah Cumming’s Career https://youtu.be/qzEt2PLKaOY Yes, it is well worth the time to watch this short video.
It was a good video in that he cleverly pointed out the truth. Koos and Renner hate the fact that there are people holding them accountable. They hate being held accountable, just like their fellow progressive marxist democrat comrades in Congress.
Trump and Koos would make quite the team! Don’t know who is lying more!
Censure is not enough . Renner has been censured in the past and we all how that has worked out. Koos MUST remember that Stan Nord is a taxpayer as well as a council member. If Koos is treating Stan like this imagine the lies that spew from his mouth to all the citizens of Normal.
The part of this that we must not miss is that according to Queen Pamela, previous city managers already discussed this and predetermined that merging fire departments is not a good idea. That would be the community brain trust of Hales, Hamilton and Peterson. Need we say more?
This is a very dark window into our form of city government in both towns. The city managers are running the show and we’re just to assume what they decide is what’s best for our community. This is anything but representative government.
Bottom line, if it does fall in line with Lyle Sumek all reasonable ideas of suggestions are off the table.
Absolutely correct. They don’t want people on the Council who do anything but rubber stamp their ideas.
Could there be an email missing? I see Stan’s reply on 7/5 goes to Scott Preston as the recipient. Usually that would show Scott sent something to Stan in between Pam’s email on 7/3.
That’s possible. I received THOUSANDS of pages and have found things still missing
Well you know, the cities already discussed the idea of a stupid Soccer complex, a downtown hotel, etc. and yet these ideas just keep re-surfacing. But it’s a big fiasco to re-surface the idea of merging fire departments!!! Hypocrites!!!
While her ultimate responsibility should be to the taxpayers, Ms Reece does bring up a valid point about disruption to the firefighters, their famiies, etc. But that is not a reason against having these discussions, it is a reason For. What better time to look at a workforce reduction through consolidation than when both are looking at a potential increase? The personnel increase and decrease will at least partially offset each other so if there is a net decrease it can hopefully be achieved through attrition, and if there is a net increase it can be minimized to the benefit of both budgets.
They can’t disrupt their voter base.
Are you kidding me? So, it’s okay for Mark Peterson to go front page above the fold in the Pantagraph that he wanted to close the Orchard Street substation and end bus service without a “immedeate public conversation” but not in merging services? Town of Normal can discuss marginalizing the marginalized without public oversight, but try to discuss reducing taxpayer burden and all bets are off?
The epitome of snarky is this one: “I have apologized to Tim Gleason for this situation”…oh, please. Really?
You know what’s funny is Pam got her job without public input. The Town of Normal didn’t allow citizen input on her hiring, heck, the Town barred citizens from knowing who even applied. Her insistence a public conversation must be had is nonsense. It’s hypocritical nonsense.
I made a public noise when they hired Pam for this very reason. The Town chooses when they want to discuss and when they do not want to discuss things with the public, her acting like there is some standard protocol to engage citizens is nuerotic.