Month: October 2020

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Who is the real Rachael Lund?

By: Diane Benjamin Democrat Lund is running for the McLean County Board in District 5 against John McIntyre (Republublican) and Joann Litwiller (Libertarian) Lund cleaned up her social media sites before declaring her candidacy, but some of her posts were captured before that happened. Read below before you vote for “Nasty Woman”. Lund isn’t a […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

UPDATE: What do people boarding up know that you don’t?

Update from ISU campus: Grounds crew at ISU have spent this entire week covering the river rock in the landscaping around campus with ground cloth and mulch to limit the number of easy projectiles on campus. By: Diane Benjamin The local Walmart stores are boarding up because of the election. The Town of Normal is […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Will Normal’s Council listen?

By: Diane Benjamin The information below was sent to the Normal Town Council a few days ago by a resident of Normal. It concerns the Town’s plans for the additional $.04 gas tax. “Before you spend $’s on bike paths, bike/road new construction or consider Connect Transit funding increases, watch this video.” “Bus corner extension […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

2 things you need to know

By: Diane Benjamin WGLT revealed why Mollie Ward was Renner’s pick to fill out the rest of Scott Black’s term: https://www.wglt.org/post/renner-tabs-fierce-advocate-west-bloomington-council-vacancy#stream/0 “Mollie Ward, left, of Not In Our Town, kicked off a vigil outside Bloomington City Hall in March of 2018 in a push for a welcoming city ordinance” Renner evidently wants the Council and […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Shrinking Normal

By: Diane Benjamin Follow-up to the same information about Bloomington: https://blnnews.com/2020/10/28/shrinking-bloomington/ From information the Town of Normal submitted to the Illinois Comptroller’s office: 3/30/2020 3/30/2019 This data shows a decrease of 273 people in just one year. Keep in mind Bloomington’s population decrease was mostly in the last fiscal year too. The link for 2018 […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Shrinking Bloomington

By: Diane Benjamin Below is the data reported to the Illinois Comptroller’s office by the City of Bloomington. Bloomington hasn’t released their 4/30/2020 financial statements to the public yet – just to the Comptroller who makes them available to everyone. 4/30/2020: 4/30/2019 Population dropped 632 in just one year. Meanwhile full-time employees increased by 7. […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

The rest of Bloomington last night

By: Diane Benjamin I hope the next mayor eliminates most if not all proclamations. Tari wasted a lot of time last night reading 3. Two of them were to declare the month of October something important. He made these pronouncements 5 days before October will end. Guess they weren’t important enough to announce earlier. Public […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Bloomington crushes MLK’s vision

By: Diane Benjamin Bloomington City Manager Tim Gleason made it official last night: If you are white, don’t apply for a job with the City. Marin Luther King’s vision of a colorblind society is officially dead. Post COVID no money needs to be spent celebrating MLK Day ever again. Bloomington now has a Diversity and […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Sick Leave Buy Back isn’t gone!

By: Diane Benjamin https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=25362 I thought there was a deadline for City of Bloomington employees to retire if they wanted to spike their pensions, but evidently it’s still happening: These two employees will receive much higher pension benefits merely because nobody at the City stopped them. This fleece has cost Bloomington taxpayers MILLIONS of dollars […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Subsidized Housing in Normal

By: Diane Benjamin The first floor of One Uptown Circle has never had a tenant. The second floor is rented by the Town of Normal for close to $36,000 a month. Need a place to live? WGLT estimated taxpayers got stuck with 60% of the cost of this building. https://blnnews.com/2020/01/03/1-uptown-circle-the-old-story/ Instead of affordable housing, Normal […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Since gas taxes are paid by people who drive . . .

By: Diane Benjamin The Town of Normal plans to spend gas taxes on bike paths, Constitution Trail, and Connect Transit instead of roads. People who DRIVE on those ROADS pay the gas tax – therefore other vanity spending should only happen with that money when the roads don’t look like this: If the Town doesn’t […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Dying to know? Bloomington Debt!

By: Diane Benjamin $270,944,173 Again this year Bloomington’s finances are on the Illinois Comptroller’s site BEFORE the City gets around to releasing the CAFR (financial statements). The fiscal year ended 4/30/2020 – almost 6 months ago. Why rush? What do they show? Bond Debt: 47,780,000  IMRF pension debt: 12,821,451 Police Pension Debt: 77,693,023 Fire Pension […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Bloomington: Hershey Rd delayed

By: Diane Benjamin One of the worst roads in Bloomington was scheduled to be resurfaced this year. The calendar of work kept changing. The last time I checked Hershey Road was scheduled for October, now it isn’t: https://www.cityblm.org/government/departments/public-works/bloomington-streets#ad-image-1 By spring parts of Hershey will be an off-roading adventure. West Oakland was also in really bad […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Opportunist Straza

By: Diane Benjamin Ward 5 is now left with one far left candidate for alderman. Mike Straza is dumping his alderman campaign to run for mayor. https://www.centralillinoisproud.com/news/local-news/mike-straza-announces-bid-for-mayor/ Straza was the Treasurer for Responsible Cities PAC – the PAC the so responsible Normal Mayor Chris Koos helped form. Responsible? More like attempting to hide Irresponsibility! The […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Huge garage sale to benefit Humane Society of Central IL

Since they are having trouble getting the word out: Friday 9am to 3pm and Saturday 9am to 1pm at the Moose Lodge on IAA Drive in Bloomington Kitchen items, dishes, Christmas and Halloween décor, games, toys, books, small furniture items, lamps, power tools, pet items, sporting goods…way too much to list.  Tables are full and […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Tari isn’t running again for mayor

Below is Tari’s announcement on the City of Bloomington website. Announcing a political decision on a taxpayer owned website? Renner forgot a few facts about his tenure as Mayor. The total budget when he took office was $167,000,000. https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=2014 The total budget now is $230,320,572. https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=24730 That is $63,320,572 spent by government instead of the […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Bloomington’s Monday night show

By: Diane Benjamin The Bloomington City Council had a short meeting, only around an hour. Did you miss Tim Gleason’s announcement Bloomington got named the happiest city in America? This is actually from five months ago, but here’s the announcement: https://www.zippia.com/advice/happiest-city-each-state/ Since the City is full of happy people and all the problems are fixed, […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Pritzker lost yesterday, today nothing changes

Maybe in a year or two the case of Darren Bailey against Governor dictator Pritzker will get to a court Chubby has to believe. Pritzker lost yesterday in Circuit Court in Springfield. The Clay County case which ruled Printzker’s executive orders illegal stands. See this Edgar County Watchdogs story for details: https://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/2020/10/governor-pritzker-loses-motion-to-vacate-darren-bailey-case-clay-county-order-stands/?fbclid=IwAR2rMYnYbBcF_BS7b1ekm3FV4yxg3Owhx1dfoq1ILNZfL0NHYDUzIm4N-5I Meanwhile Bailey’s attorney, […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Normal needs to formally declare war with Bloomington

By: Diane Benjamin Of course the media won’t ask questions and officials in Normal won’t publicly say anything about it. But, instead of suing Bloomington when they dissolved the west side sales tax sharing agreement (Metrozone), Normal appears to be plotting. Of course they are using your money for payback. A pattern is developing, even […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Bloomington meeting tonight too

By: Diane Benjamin Committee of the Whole meeting tonight: http://bloomingtonil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=1092&Inline=True Only two items are on the agenda: Creation of a Public Arts Commission Making Juneteenth a City holiday Obviously Bloomington doesn’t believe government is a necessary evil and therefore should only do what is necessary. Every other essential government service like roads, sewers, and water […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Is Koos profiting from lockdowns?

By: Diane Benjamin A reader just found this story from May: https://www.bicycleretailer.com/retail-news/2020/05/13/exclusive-sale-greets-protesters-illinois-bike-shop The story is about the citizens who showed up to protest Chris Koos’ business being open while many citizens weren’t allowed to make a living. It even includes his now infamous image taunting the protesters: BUT, The story has a quote from Koos […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Proving yet again Normal doesn’t want to hear from citizens . . . .

Monday night the Town of Normal is finally “fixing” their Public Comment Policy. The Town is making sure it as difficult as possible for citizens: PDSF page 105: https://www.normal.org/DocumentCenter/View/12612/Council-Packet–PDF Right now citizens aren’t allowed to talk about anything not on the agenda. That was obviously illegal and the Town knew it. Instead of just having […]

Written by Diane Benjamin - editor

Since Bloomington staff won’t just answer a simple question . . .

By: Diane Benjamin It was pretty easy to determine the COUNTY was paying for the Bloomington Election Commission for this story: https://blnnews.com/2020/10/08/you-cant-make-this-stuff-up-bloomington-election-commission/ I emailed the Bloomington Finance Director just to verify and didn’t receive a response until yesterday: That is 7 days after I wrote the story! This is the document they sent, you have […]