By: Diane Benjamin
http://bloomingtonil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=1119&Inline=True
Bloomington won’t be voting on the changes to your garbage service presented last Monday. It didn’t make the agenda, actually not much made the agenda.
The Council will still be meeting virtually but most of the Local Emergency Ordinance is being cancelled. See PDF page 179 and following. Of course the documents are written in legalize, good luck figuring it out.
Changing the Solid Waste program may have been delayed because some members of the Council don’t believe citizens need to pay for the services they get. Of course if garbage was privatized it would likely cost less and be more efficient, but those discussion aren’t allowed because union employees would be affected. Maybe the discussion that needs to take place is “should rich families subsidize poor families”. Of course that would be class warfare. One alderman thinks people shouldn’t be required to fund services they use. This is a tweet posted during last Monday’s meeting:
Solid Waste has shown a profit in past years only to lose it from increasing costs which means fewer services and fee increases. Somebody please tell Jenn capitalism is the answer! Government usurping services performed more efficiently by the private sector is a no-brainer! It won’t happen.
Bloomington has been fighting this problem for a decade, is surrender immanent? (Not likely, government doesn’t abdicate power)
How about abolishing the Enterprise Fund and putting it back in the General Fund – where it used to be? The Coliseum is an Enterprise Fund but somehow it NEVER had to show a positive balance!
The City has the following Enterprise Funds because they want citizens to pay for the services they use. It also makes raising fees really easy if the balance turns negative – except for the Coliseum of course:
- Water
- Solid Waste
- Sewer
- Storm water Management
- Golf/Parking
- Coliseum
Other Agenda Items:
This one is fun – Mboka seizing power! He can approve “event” liquor licenses himself instead of going through the Council. Aren’t events planned a long time in advance? 60-90 days can’t be shortened? The Liquor Commission meets frequently and so does the Council, so why is it taking 60-90 days? Bureaucrats? So the answer is just to give power to 2 bureaucrats? (Liquor Commission only needs 2 votes to approve anything)
The City still shows Tari Renner has the chair of the Liquor Commission: https://www.cityblm.org/government/boards-commissions/liquor-commission
Screen shot since it will probably be changed soon:
Renner has been out of office for almost 2 months, no rush kids. Evidently Mboka isn’t going back to the pre-Tari Liquor Commission of 5-9 citizen commissioners instead of just 3 where he only needs one ally to do anything he wants.
We will also get an update on finances, should be fascinating stuff. Maybe the City will want 30% reserves now instead of the 15% David Hales thought was adequate. (Your reserves don’t matter if fees can go up)
