By: Diane Benjamin
The Connect Transit Board didn’t meet in December, so January 26, 2021 the Board will review November and December 2020. They finally achieved breaking through the $1,000,000 operating loss and did it both months: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pH-FJxYfLWtjHzbnh98Ge3P6El4HURHu/view
November 2020:
December 2020:
EVERY DOLLAR for “Assistance” is money government took from somebody who earned it.
The cost for every rider in November was $6.95. In December is was $7.76.
A ride on the smaller Mobility buses was $57.19 in November and $59.16 in December.
Even though riding is FREE – people aren’t riding:
See PDF page 28. November 2020 ridership was down 42.8% from 2019. December was down 36.1% – PDF page 30.
Since everything is going to well since Mark Peterson took over as Interim General Manager:
Wow! Just wow. And on top of all this we have a pension earner from the town of Normal (over $120,000 per year) filling in as general manager from Arizona. Wow! Just wow!
I believe a thorough audit of Connect Transit would show you where the “losses” come from.
employees, benefits, solar panels, etc. All the spending is listed.
Another (negative) milestone for Connect Transit. Further proof that it is a blank check quasi-government agency that exists to serve its employees and vendors. There would likely be a lot of people standing to lose a lot of money and respect if CT were to go through a comprehensive audit. How much money is shuffled around to other government agencies, local media (which never seems to have any questions about CT’s poor service and mounting losses), and the Chamber gadflies who eagerly line up to be a vendor for this taxpayer albatross? It’s nice to see that Mark Peterson finally understands the benefits of living in a lower tax and more business-friendly state…now that he has a six-figure pension and cushy job with no accountability. Connect Transit is a demonstrable failure and does not, nor has it ever, served its constituency. It’s another in a long line of taxpayer-funded endeavors whose only outcome is to provide a living for insiders. For as long as I can remember, Bloomington-Normal has had a stagnant at-best private sector economy with declining to flat growth. In that vacuum, the so-called leadership got together and decided that TIFs and federal government grant-funded initiatives would be their meal ticket. Simply borrow money against future generations for various projects, get your picture taken for a fluff piece in the local paper, and then hand out jobs and vendor contracts to certain local people and businesses. Ask yourself, how many businesses would crumble if Bloomington-Normal didn’t have all these government-led agencies or projects, and they were forced to instead compete in the private sector marketplace with other businesses, locally and outside BN.
One would THINK they could use those NEW showers and do some “money laundering”.. There is NO explanation for this kind of brain dead spending. Koos probably shudders at the THOUGHT of how many bicycles this could buy.
BETTER PRIORITIES!