By: Diane Benjamin
Bills and Payroll for tonight: https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=24570
Coliseum expenses:
The first entry is for bills Bloomington paid that VenuWorks needs to reimburse – all the rest are coming out of taxpayers pockets:
I don’t remember ever seeing a check written for loan payments, usually they do wire transfers:
$795,000 was paid in principal on the bonds
$274,471 was was paid for interest.
34.5% of what was paid is interest
The total cost of building the Coliseum has never been stated, interest is never included. This statement in the 2010 Financial Statement recaps the original cost without interest:
Source: PDF page 165 https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=2068
This note is also in the same financial statements: (PDF page 9)
How’s that working out?
When it was built the Coliseum wasn’t ADA compliant:
Just the design needed to make the Coliseum ADA compliant was $120,000. https://blnnews.com/2016/11/16/coliseum-failure-from-the-start/
Sidewalks and ramps added another $571,875 in 2017 to make them ADA compliant: https://blnnews.com/2017/08/28/dumping-dollars-downtown/
I can’t find a definitive number for what the elevator cost. I remember hearing estimates of $1,00,000 but the ramps and sidewalks might have been included in that amount.
Will the Coliseum fleece taxpayers forever?
(or is something else going on we haven’t been told?)
Who really terminated the contract?
It’s a BLACK HOLE for taxpayer money!
Shut it down. Sell off any parts of it like chairs with small plates saying ” Bloomington’s Boondoggle”.
The City is just moving around piles of debts from this fund to that fund in a sick game of three-card Monte. The house of cards that is the Bloomington economy is running on borrowed time (and money).