By: Diane Benjamin

When you vote for progressives your taxes will go up. Utopia takes cold hard cash – YOURS.

During the Work Session at 6:00 pm last night the only topic was increasing the gas tax. The theme at this meeting and the 7:00 meeting was “pots” of money.

Think about how you handle money. You know certain bills have to be paid every month. Since you likely don’t want to be homeless, the mortgage/rent is always paid. Ditto other expenses like cell phone, electricity, etc get paid too. Responsible adults only speculate with disposable income – what’s left after essential spending.

Compare that to government. They create nothing that earns income, if they attempt business type activities they always lose money. The only funds they have are taken from the people who earned it.

Government doesn’t prioritize spending the way citizens do. Employees get high priority, mundane things like streets have no priority unless you pay more. (Sound like Bloomington? Yes it does!)

Progressives always want NEW items, maintenance is way too boring. (More on that next!)

Four of your representatives on the Normal Town Council voted to bring an increase in the gas tax back to Council:

The four with their hands up want you to pay more. Some of the new gas tax will be diverted to Connect Transit. The huge empty buses can destroy the streets while you pay more to fix them.

In reality a higher gas tax allows the Town to take less money from the pot of what staff gets to spend (General Fund) because more money will be in the transportation pot.

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If you forgot – Bloomington now pays for street repairs from gas taxes. Remember pre-Tari and pre-gas tax? Streets were fixed with General Fund money. The gas tax allows them to spend that money elsewhere. Progress!

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It appears Normal won’t even use the increased gas tax windfall for streets, they are low priority. Koos will be defeated in April because his priorities aren’t close to what citizens expect. More on that next too.

Watch the meeting here. Raising the tax was justified with lots of statistics. Reported was the majority of the time gas is cheaper in Bloomington even with an $.08 gas tax. Markets drive the price. Bloomington has more competition, therefore low prices. You are still expected to buy in Normal however, the collective needs your bucks.