By: Diane Benjamin
I filed a FOIA request with the City of Bloomington on January 31st when rumors started to swirl about a revote on hiring a lobbyist.
Of course they delayed my FOIA until 4:30 today – after the vote. They claimed legal had to review. Ha Ha.
Here is part of one email from Tim Gleason instructing the NO votes on how to change their mind. I’m sure there is more, maybe tomorrow. All Gleason sees is dollar signs for downtown.
Take away for alderpersons : Any council member that has any doubts , concerns , or thoughts of voting ‘No’ on any issue presented by city staff needs to contact Gleason PRIOR to the meeting to allow Pekin Tim sufficient time to change their mind and vote Tim’s way. #GleasonKnowzBest
Is Gleason auditioning for a job at this firm like Peterson sought employment elsewhere after he retired. Collect huge pensions/retirement benefits and move to the private sector, sure, that would be their right. However, perhaps a good way to move forward with this is that the vendor’s contract would be terminated immediately if they hire or contract with any former city administrator within 1 year of retirement/separation.
Gleason is totally incompetent if this was so important why would he not have educated the entire council before bringing it up for a vote. He is paid thousands a year to manage the city of Bloomington and he is not smart enough to be proactive and provide council with info on why he thinks that they should approve this.
Shame on the council for believing him and allowing another vote.
Like I said before if he has to pay an outside firm to get money for Bloomington he is not qualified to have his job!
Stay tuned, another story soon. It will explain what he was up to.
All the Council ever sees is downtown. No one cares about downtown or uptown except those that own it, live near it, work near it, rely on its bureaucracy, and supporting services.
Commerce and business which in turn creates capital through investment and development and production/creation is made outside of downtown. Not through governmental agencies DOWNTOWN. Reduce “downtown” ie government and watch the private sector grow.
But that’s not going to happen, especially when they’re not even going to give us transparency. They barely let us vote. They don’t let us decide who gets put on the ballots in normal. They create boards and commissions out of thin air to make decisions about elections that the city clerk, or the Bloomington election commission or McLean County election commission should be deciding but this board of trustees, make decisions about an election with people on the board that are going to be in the election. So they get to decide who the competition is.
It’s like this, the sharks decide how big the shark tank is (town or village), what sharks are in the tank(ballots), when they go in the tank(clerk stalling), how they go in the tank, who gets to see in the tank(transparency), who feeds the sharks(favoritism), how much they get fed(salaries), and only they get to decide it (the fix), but the bait (us plebes) has to pay for it with our lives.