By: Diane Benjamin
Documentation for the 5:00 pm meeting: http://normal.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/3586
This meeting is not to address this:
Illinois State University is closed and Normal’s pension funding percentages have crashed, that is a real emergency. Stopping non-essential spending to get ahead of the more than likely severe revenue decrease isn’t an emergency being considered.
Protecting City employees is listed first – the City Manage can “modify” personnel policies.
This is for citizens:
What guarantee do citizens have that all emails will be read? Will the mayor decide some aren’t germane to the agenda and discard them?
Part of the ordinance is this:
What is Section 25.2-12?
PDF page 10: https://normal.org/DocumentCenter/View/7775/Chapter-25—Miscellaneous?bidId=
Note: The above has been in the City Code since 1969.
The Open Meetings Act allows emergency meetings without 48 hours notice. Instead of calling a meeting for a specific emergency, the Town is granting the mayor and City Manager broad powers to respond to whatever they consider an emergency.
This emergency can easily be made worse by government. Responses need to be targeted, shutting down businesses across Illinois isn’t targeting. Some of the local businesses won’t reopen. Some local retailers closed for 2 weeks and promised to pay their employees for those weeks.
What happens after two weeks? Companies can’t afford to pay employees indefinitely. Huge federal bailouts threaten future generations with huge interest payments.
Until Normal runs out of money their employees will be fine. We are writing history now. Either healthcare was saved from too many patients or the economy was severely damaged.
Possibly both. Take care of each other folks, government isn’t capable.
.
.
.
.
.
.
My prediction is expect a declaration similar to Champaign-Urbana. The left works closely together on everything. Pritzker probably consults with Newsom of Cali and Cuomo in NY everyday. There decisions eventually mirror one another. There only has to be one lead dog mayor for downstate and the nut in CU has declared herself the pack leader. Both Normal and Bloomington will soon follow suit. Expect all the shutdowns to be extended indefinitely and grocery and gas raids to continue through the summer. The more power these people give themselves the more they will seek.
The public won’t be buying in!
This one week sutdown has already been devastating. I do think that come April 1 or April 7th at the most JB Prickster is going to get an earful and immense pressure to back off.
If not sooner!
THat FAT F*** in Springfield is ONLY doing this because he isn’t a big TRUMP fan. Guess what? NO MORE DEMOCRATS—-EVER. I don’t care if its Jesus himself as a democrat! JB has done HIS BEST to try and RUIN the state economy, and he’s doing a GREAT JOB! THis COVID19 is NOWHERE As bad as the 1918 “spanish flu-INFLUENZA epidemic that DEVASTATED the WORLD! But ole JB wants to sound like he has some brains. They went away when he talked on the phone with Blogo!! As for a Gov. He’s a brain DEAD worthless politician who NEEDS to be relegated to the “ONE timer” club!
As for “uppity town and Koos making a “statement” uptown was DRY until 1975. Koos was probably STILL smoking dope then! Maybe Him & Jenn ought to have a “joint session” of the councils..
As a 3rd thought. I REALLY would like to see uptown be reclaimed at a sheriffs sale for 1/2 cent on the dollar, and MAYBE they would find a buyer! The land as a GREEN SPACE would be worth that!
Maybe RIVIAN will come thru and SAVE THE DAY! huh mr koos???
The economy on pause, workers scrambling, and gas prices dropping like a stone…perfect timing for a luxury electric truck company with no track record to peddle it’s $65k+ vehicles. ‘Honey, forget buying extra toilet paper, we need a Rivian!’
Why aren’t the braniacs at Rivian coming forward to put battery and vehicle production on hold and contribute their vast engineering knowledge and capabilities to producing medical devices that other auto manufacturers have offered doing? Would think Koos and Renner would have already made such a request of their centerpiece economic development achievement?
To the “professional” staff and politicians in Normal, emergency means protecting their precious Uppity Town, taxpayer giveaways to cronies, quasi-government agencies (ex. Connect Transit), and all the tax money they were counting on from people spending at restaurants or brick-and-mortar stores. Normal has a phony economy based almost exclusively on ISU and employees that work for Big Red. With the school closed and students attending class remotely, the Uptown house of cards is crumbling. Wonder what Koos and friends will cook up to keep the charade going. Perhaps, a stimulus package for local businesses that are the “right fit” and/or are within the “right” 3 block radius?
Just listened to prickster chastise president Trump over the federal government not taking care of things with the current virus crisis, excuse me me prickster how about you the governor taking care of things instead of whining on tv how the president is not taking care of your state. Can we expect the same whining from you when the 40 plus years of the democratic controlled state can’t meet their 250 billion dollar pension responsibility which has been exasperated by the current state of the markets.
And while you are at it I appreciate your staff communicating in Spanish to all those Hispanics in Illinois who can’t speak english but how about translating in German,Italian,Chinese,Japanese,Iran,Iraq, and all other foreigners in our state that can’t speak English. Better yet communicate that the current situation is why it so important to understand English as this is how we communicate in America.
As an “afterthought” I have some “sign language” for JB, and it’s pretty universally understood!
Same for Koos and Tari..
YES! upttity town is loosing their britches just now, and it’s cause for a celebration! Let’s see how they deal with a REAL crisis!
Anyone going to the meeting to give them your two cents?
People who live there should. I’m country free
Watch this very short video clip and see if you think the 100 million dollars spent on the ISU Uptown Marketing program was an efficient use of taxpayer money.
Tucker: What will higher education look like after coronavirus?
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6143005317001?fbclid=IwAR0LLnDsjxz6d8-DhAhV0aTQHQBgP3cA9maWxROtC_GI7vSPkSmXdcCz0m4#sp=show-clips
Attn: Normal taxpayers:
The financial losses in the short term with the shutdown of ISU combined with the loss of most of their Chinese students (and other foreign students) are the beginning of what will be a continuing drop in enrollment numbers that will slowly begin to remove millions of dollars from the Town of Normal’s economy.
Yes, allowing Koos and Company to put a debt free municipality into a large amount of debt to market Normal to ISU students was a really BAD idea.
Normal had better put an immediate halt to all of their stupid upittiy town projects. Our roads suck and now will remain crap everywhere but in upitty town. The economy is crashing and we’ll be lucky if we only loose a couple weeks of income but likely my job is gone already. I was so pissed hearing normal say keeping the circle green needed to be kept green regardless of how much it cost. Really $154k to water that little patch of grass. The only ones walking around the ivory uptown campus is government employees until at least this fall. Then they gave all their peeps raises. Many of them don’t have to go in to work but they still get full pay regardless of how long this lasts. Oh and their pensions that crashed will have to come out of my pocket now. Pam will be ok she just got her raise to 250k. People who make that much money have no idea what it is like to skip meals to pay rent. Can’t wait to hear how koos And Pam are going to Fu$@ us tomorrow. This town and state is going to Sh!@ with these people and their utter disrespect and indifference to people who do not work at ISU.
Normal needs to get their heads out of the clouds. We don’t need any more shiny new buildings in uptown. We will have people struggling. People should come before buildings.
wonder how long this “emergency” powers will last? days,weeks,years or forever? once you freedoms are taken away you play the devil getting them back again! history shows us this fact over and over.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Koos and Pam formally want King and Queen powers bestowed upon them. They want full public control, curfew, rationing, unchecked law creation and unquestioned enforcement. What does this say about them? It speaks volumes about what they think about us. We are literally cattle to them.
Never in my life did I expect to see this played out in plain view in America.