By: Diane Benjamin
One more story from last Monday’s Normal Town Council meeting:
If you missed the video of Chemberly Cummings’ stating Chris Koos can’t be questioned over appointments, watch it now: https://blnnews.com/2021/10/19/quick-hits-from-normal-last-night/
Cummings claims to have 8 Unit 5 students signed up for her “local government” class. The taxpayers of Normal are funding her political activist training while the GOP says nothing. She is not only creating activists, she is indoctrinating them to be clueless.
My new favorite quote: If you trust government your history teacher didn’t do their job.
Why is the Town of Normal allowing her to do this? A better question is: Why are Normal taxpayers allowing the Democrat Party to use tax dollars to create campaign staff?
The Town of Normal is probably wishing they had never persecuted Stan Nord over sewer tap on fees they forgot to charge previous owners of his West College property. The tap on fee issue will continue because Nord sees no consistent policy from the Town on who pays on who doesn’t. This story clearly shows the problem: https://blnnews.com/2021/10/07/is-this-incompetence-or-corruption-normal/
This issue is more than important – it shows staff is either incompetent or corrupt by charging some developers and not charging others. The ones that aren’t charged cost taxpayers money. The annexation agreement in the linked story above states what the fee is, staff publicly stated they aren’t “on the map” so there is no fee. Wrong answer!
The issue came up again Monday with the new Sunset Lake development. That area is not on the fee map but they are being charged tap-on fees anyway. Did staff just make up a charge? Is the charge sufficient to recover the costs? Establishing fees per acre is the purpose of the map, by not keeping it up to date staff can make whatever deals they want.
After a one meeting reprieve because Koos was intimidated by the Jelani Day activists, he was back in form Monday. Stan did get a few minutes to relate the fee map problems, but eventually Koos had enough and called him out of order. This issue will never end until staff makes a clear policy and presents it to Council. The backroom deals are costing you money.
If you want to see the entire discussion, just hit play:
Hang in there Stan you are supported by many
Scott Preston is the Town of Normal Republican Chair and he does not say anything about Chemberly and Koos using tax dollars to build Democrat activists. The Democrats investment in keeping this RINO in office is paying off well for them.
I will not vote for Preston to represent me when he runs for Dan Brady’s seat.
Self described Republican Lorenz never says a word either.