By: Diane Benjamin
While Bloomington is trying to pay cash for purchases instead of borrowing for capital expenses, Normal is running in the opposite direction.
The Town of Normal stockpiles money in reserves, the applicable fund for this discussion is Vehicle and Equipment reserves.
Obviously citizens in Normal are paying higher taxes so the Town can bank part of your money for the future. Tonight they will decide to finance a fire truck instead of paying cash. $1,000,000 was budgeted from the Vehicle and Equipment Reserves Fund. It wouldn’t have been budgeted if the money was not there.
From the budget – PDF page 31 https://normal.org/DocumentCenter/View/18611/Town-of-Normal-Budget-2021-26
From tonight’s meeting documentation: https://normal.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/4039
The Bait and Switch is on PDF page 77:
So the General Fund is fine and so are Vehicle and Equipment Fund reserves, but the Town wants to spend close to $100,000 on interest instead of paying cash.
See the last line: “future flexibility” and “changing circumstances”. What exactly does that mean?
Rivian isn’t bringing enough prosperity to allow Normal to pay cash as they promised?
Or, is money being stockpiled for the underpass?
You won’t find out tonight because the bobbleheads don’t care and the mayor will stop any discussions that might lead to the truth.
Keep this in mind when the Community Reinvestment Plan is discussed soon. Reserves are meaningless when an underpass needs your cash.
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RINOs Preston and Lorenz have voted over and over to spend gas tax money on the bike trail. I have no doubt they will remain true to their RINO colors and vote to spend Firetruck money on something else. (Something else = Underpass)
This is how they fund all their unnecessary ego projects – Short road spending a little, or the fire pensions a little, or the police pensions a little, or sewer maintenance a little, or water system a little, or any number of other funds a little, and very few people notice or care. Heck, short Them All and you’re unlikely to get any complaints. A million here, a million there, pretty soon you’ve got real money in that ego-project slush fund!
Problem is they’ve been doing that for years, even decades, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Our roads aren’t what they should be, especially given our gas taxes. Our sewer and water systems are in embarrassing disrepair. Our first-responder pension funds are severely underfunded; by some standards, beyond repair.
Their rationalization for financing what should be a cash purchase is an Outright Lie. They are not concerned about our local economy, or even about lives of local citizens. If they were, they would have Ended the lockdowns and restrictions as soon as possible rather than extending them as long as possible, and now ramping them up yet again.
I like to stockpile ready cash, and pay for everything on credit, to pay people to do my dirty work under the table. I wonder if the same principle applies here?