By: Diane Benjamin
While waiting for Bloomington to comply with yet another FOIA on water bills I stumbled across this story: https://blnnews.com/2021/06/29/free-free-free-bloomington/
The Finance Director is on video detailing in June of 2021 how many water bills were more than 60 days past due. He also detailed how many were past due pre-COVID. Magically when people were sent a shut-off notice a large number forked over the money to keep the water on.
The emergency ordinance stopping water shutoffs was passed in March of 2020 – Tari Renner was still mayor. 5 of the aldermen who passed that ordinance are not on the Council now: Mathy, Painter, Carrillo, Black, Bray. Boelen, Mwilambwe, Crabill, and Emig are still around.
Scott Rathbun’s report showed past due water bills were huge in June of 2021:
Past Due grew by almost 1000 accounts during the moratorium. Remember many weren’t 60 days past due, they were over a year old. The water was never shut off, so the bills continued to mount.
The eviction moratorium didn’t end until October of 2021. The squatters who didn’t pay rent or their water bills had freebies from March of 2020 until at least October of 2021.
Think they cared about conserving water they didn’t have to pay for?
When the emergency order was ended in June of 2021 at least $1,000,000 was because the City Council passed an ordinance saying people didn’t have to pay. I’m sure the amount is a lot higher now with late fees and penalties plus people who continued not to pay until the water was shut off or they were evicted.
This is the low estimate that can be used to benchmark future Council action – like fixing what they broke by cancelling the debt they transferred to landlords.
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The so called “eviction moratorium” and the “water bill ordinance” are THEFT!
I am sick of the theft and I am sick of the inflation!
A coincidental correlation is that theft always drives up prices.
This is why there will continue to be an affordable housing shortage. Government elites villainized landlords as rich greedy people. They forced landlords to pay the bills of their deadbeat tenants and removed the ability to evict them. Many deadbeats stopped paying rent on top of their water bills further sinking landlords. Deadbeat tenants refused to waste their time to get the government handouts to pay their rent and water. They were already living for free so why should they bother? After watching this all play out, I don’t see why would anyone build “affordable” housing when the government has shown they will screw you over for trying to help people who can only afford “affordable housing”?
Penalties and late fees should be waived as they are not actual costs. The water bills should be paid for from the pandemic funds the federal government gave each state to cover pandemic costs.
JoAnn, agreed!
Someone needs to punish exactly how and where all the county and local and state pandemic finds went and specifically to who in detail.
Pathetic and typical of this area. Pantagraph, WGLT, Where are you?
Bloomington has been transparent. They also have huge reserves, they could write them off
Gotta stick it to working class, property owners, taxpayers and working class for as much as they can. Sounds like Illinois typically. Nice strategy. Not! Dumb leaders