By: Diane Benjamin
Recap:
Grant Walch was appointed Ward 1 Alderman – Jeff Crabill and Julie Emig voted against him. Evidently they didn’t like replacing a self-identified progressive alderman with a more conservative one.
Road funding isn’t close to what it needs to be. The $7 million was increased to $9 million, factor in inflation and that isn’t close to what is needed to close the “acceptable” gap in road conditions. Julie Emig thinks citizens should be re-trained to accept poor roads. See 1:51:30. She wants to ask: “What is good enough?”.
Part of the problem with roads is only Rowe Construction bids on them. The “buy local preference” in Bloomington code needs removed for road construction. Under the current system enough capacity to catch up doesn’t exist. Area businesses don’t bid because of the local preference clause.
When I get around to it I plan to report the history of road work in Bloomington and the failed promises of past Councils and 1 mayor.
The Council passed creating a new department to oversee the Coliseum, BCPA, and downtown events. In the future hiring more employees will be brought back to the Council, for now some employees will be shuffled.
During the roads discussion experimental repairs were said to be impossible because those would require monitoring. The presenters claimed they don’t have the staff to do that. The City can hire staff for entertainment, just not roads.
The biggest unreported item I saw last night was the report given by the Police Chief. See this slide:
The open southern border has allowed Fentanyl here. People are dying because the Federal government is empowering the drug cartels. Chief Simington knows why Fentanyl is here, he mentioned Mexico. He also mentioned organized retail thefts are causing large losses in local stores. Gangs enter armed with cutters to subvert security tags on high dollar items. He mentioned Dick’s Sporting Goods and Best Buy.
Just hit play to hire the Chief’s entire presentation, some good statistics – some bad. The detectives are having a difficult time making arrests in shootings because those who know who aren’t talking.
