By: Diane Benjamin

Last week I was at the Tri-Valley High School. They recently finished a renovation that included a new library. I was shocked to see what was missing: BOOKS. The library had some books but not shelf-covered walls normally associated with a library. My tour guide told me the kids don’t read books anymore.

O’Neil Pool needed replaced. Instead of a really nice pool for the west side, a Water Park is being installed. The neighborhood kids won’t be spending their summers there because the families won’t be able to afford it unless taxpayers subsidize them. Of course free activities had to be removed, like basketball courts. They might be back in the park in the future. Price tag: Slightly less than $12 million. Still on the table is replacing a parking garage and providing more space for public works. Those two will spring up in the future.

An expansion/renovation of the library is on the agenda for tonight’s City Council meeting. First flash back to October 15, 2018 – Committee of the Whole. The video is on Bloomington’s YouTube channel if you want to see the entire discussion about the library.

I really hate bringing back old horrors, but you have to see this clip to understand Democrat logic. The discussion previous to this comment concerned the library paying half the cost and the city picking up the other half. An example from June of 2018 was a 20 year $10,000,000 bond would cost $14,000,000, the same for 30 years would cost $17,000,000.

As long as the payment can be afforded, the total cost doesn’t matter:

Tonight’s discussion involves the City borrowing all the money the library needs and the library tax rate going up to pay for it. The documentation says the library can’t float bonds on their own, the the City has to:

http://bloomingtonil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=1140&Inline=True

What you may not know is Tari Renner stopped the library from building an East side branch when he first took office. He stacked the library board with people who wanted the library to stay where it is. Because of Renner’s antics people like this are now running the library: (Latest Library Board packet below)

Click to access packet%20for%20website_1.pdf

1)

The library did have GRAPHIC books in easy reach of kids!

2)

Anti-Racist training is racist because it requires judging people as groups instead of individuals:

3)

Pronouns!

4)

Giveaways:

Listed in the documentation are a number of events and the number of people who attended each. If the events involved a book, very few attended. Crafts and cooking got more people but why is a library doing those type of events? Programs for toddlers draw more people.

PDF page 14:

Total Circulation for 2021 is mostly down from 2020. What we don’t know is what percentage of that circulation is audio or videos instead of books. Visitors to the library see a lot of computer usage, expanding that is in the plan for tonight. PDF page 17 of the Library Board packet talks about computer games for teens and improving internet speeds with Metronet.

PDF page 17:

Meanwhile, staff must have been hungry in September:

Lots of memes are on-line like this one:

The library wants to City to borrow $17,000,000 for them to be paid back over 20 years. They want to raise your property taxes to pay for it. Spending this money does nothing to keep sewage out of basements.

Tri-Valley obviously cut their library based on some data. Has the Bloomington Library Board done the same research? Or, is the new library just for computers, events, videos, and a few books? Reducing the number of books on shelves wouldn’t provide enough room?

Below are pics of the Tri-Valley High School Library, they have a few shelves of books like the this:

Tonight will show you who the Democrats on the Council are, if you haven’t already figured that out. The agenda is very thin, I predict this will be a long conversation however. I hope somebody mentions people fleeing Illinois because of over taxation.