By: Diane Benjamin
Government’s job is first to preserve and protect freedom for future generations. How is that one working for you?
Next, government should only be doing what citizens can’t do for themselves: police, fire, water, sewer and roads.
Maybe citizens need to start building their own roads and charge a toll to use them. Local governments are doing a terrible job maintaining roads, how many of you have damage caused by potholes? Check out the bike paths though, smooth as silk. (That’s couldn’t be because the mayor owns a bike shop!)
All Day Budget Session: Listen to Kathleen Lorenz at 7:30:00. She thinks spending $3 million on roads out of a $138 million budget is something citizens should be sharing with people who think the Town doesn’t spend enough.
Kathleen: The Town plans to spend a little over 2% of the budget on roads. Citizens want better roads. The Town spends almost 98% of all tax dollars on other things instead of what the citizens want. Do you represent the Town or voters?
You are celebrating this Ms. 2% Lorenz?
Obviously better priorities are needed. April 6th voters can elect those who know that. I’m still not done with the Budget Session. Stay tuned.
Roads don’t get politicians names put on them but buildings do. Start putting “Funding for this smooth road approved by Lorenz” and more roads will be magically be fixed.
Question – Even though millions are approved by the council to spend every year to fix our roads, why are the citizens STILL upset about the condition of our roads today?
Obvious Answer – We aren’t prioritizing our spending correctly and we need to spend more to properly fix the roads.
Given Answer – We approved money to fix the roads so nobody should say we aren’t fixing our roads.
Answer to the given answer – That wasn’t the question.
They, like Bloomington, think you need to pay more if you want them fixed. Taxes you already pay can’t be used.
So then the honest answer should have been. “Sorry, we don’t have enough money to spend on better roads.”
But then that leads to all kinds of uncomfortable conversations and hard work.
At least Bloomington has earmarked the LMFT increase to resurface the roads. Early FY22 budget proposals for Bloomington road repair is $7M. Due to the decrease revenue in LMFT as a result of COVID, Bloomington plans to use $2M sales tax revenue plus $2M from GF reserves. Bloomington is keeping its commitments to road repair, unlike Normal.
Maybe Kathy can have the newly hired propaganda minister for the town of Normal (Cathy Olofffson) write a press release for her. Or maybe she already did and that’s what Kathy is repeating. Just want to make sure the people of Normal get their money’s worth from our two chatty Kathy’s. We did after all have to pass a tax increase in order to hire Oloffson.
C’mon Diane, the Town needs the money to pay for overpriced and vacant offices in Uptown. Roads? You can’t be serious! Haha. Normal, like most communities, missed a golden opportunity to fix roads at the height of the lockdown when everyone was at home.
Don’t forget Lorenz and all of those up for re-election voted to double the gas tax to fix roads then they voted to use gas tax to build more bike trails. Also the town is spending over $2M LESS on the roads next year. Come on man!!!
There must not be any council kickback schemes yet put in place for road expenditures. Is that harsh? Sometimes the truth hurts.
Don’t pick on Lorenz. She is a little slow. Even after the Coliseum and the Cornbelters failed to produce the promised tourism she still believes a $40 some million dollar soccer complex is a gold mine. We need to stop picking on Kathleen and elect people who are capable of more thought than just knowing how to rubber stamp.
I beg to disagree. Lorenz knows EXACTLY what she is doing. They all do. Forgive me if I call you out for projecting your own slowness onto her. The primary problem with the good (but comatose) people in this town is that they are jaw-droppingly naive and fast asleep on an epic scale. I suppose it’s impolite and bad midwestern manners to call out people who are stealing from you and your community in relative drips and drabs — like sneaking pieces of candy out of a child’s bag without them seeing. But perhaps soon these criminals (yes, even small-time thievery and fraud is criminal, I stand by the term) will be brazen enough to operate more openly, on a bigger scale, and that will finally get people’s attention.