By: Diane Benjamin
Follow-up to this story: https://blnnews.com/2023/03/07/normal-buy-local-is-immaterial/
At the March 6, 2023 Council meeting the Water Director, John Burkhart, wanted to start buying parts from a company in Washington Il instead of the local supplier they have used for decades.
Here’s the problem: Normal doesn’t stock a lot of parts because they claim they don’t have room. If an emergency occurs, how often did staff run and pick up the required parts locally?
A FOIA answered that question. From March of 2022 through February of 2023 Normal was billed 162 times.
143 of those were marked Customer Pickup
The minute and half video of John Burkhart below makes it sound like getting parts from Washington is no big deal. He claims they can deliver. I seriously doubt this company will emergency deliver parts 143 times in one year. That’s almost 3 times a week,
Will taxpayers have to pay staff to pickup parts 143 times a year in Washington when they have been available for decades locally? The Washington company didn’t stock what Normal used. Are they going to stock everything Normal has picked up here or will parts need to be ordered? Will repairs be delayed because Burkhart changed suppliers?
Of course only 1 Council member bothered to ask questions. Guess which one!
Taxpayers deserve better than Burkhart, Pam Reece who allowed this, and a Council that rubberstamped it. This is a perfect example of “professional staff” in action.
Did a Burkhart buddy change from the local company to Washington? Just asking!
This is at least the 5th time in the past couple of years that I’ve heard Normal refused to buy locally or stopped buying locally because of some personal relationship the mayor or a town employee had with an out-of-town company. What has the Chamber of Commerce done to get Normal to spend as much of our tax dollars with local businesses as possible?
The Chamber is no longer about Buy Local etc.
The Chamber is ALL about Open Borders /Open Immigration and fighting min wage increases while trying to make employees feel grateful just to have a job.
The Chamber just wants a replaceable supply of cheap wage slaves and government bailouts for themselves.
Throwing Gala’s & sucking up to local politicians to curry favorable regulations – thats the Chamber ‘o Commerce real purpose.
The Chamber has turned into a woke left wing organization. They now endorse mainly democrats including Biden.
That’s a shame. I’ll bet there are a lot of people who don’t realize that.
From the video, the rationalization seems to be cost savings, but it’s also very clear they have not done the due diligence to determine if there truly will be any cost savings or to determine if customers (us taxpayers) will be negatively impacted.
If we had an elected supervisor, as IL law dictates for incorporated towns of our size, we’d have somebody to hold accountable if this goes badly. But Normal doesn’t want that and has taken steps to ensure that will never happen.
If you Want responsible government, if you want Representative government, it’s time to take action and vote Nord, Tititilli, & Sila for town council – the bottom line is we need the bottom three!
KOOS AND HIS CLOWNS ARE GOING TO GET SUED https://youtu.be/zm8VanFwWHM
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