By: Diane Benjamin
Remember when the Normal Town Council gave themselves a raise? Koos is making $32,000 a year, Trustees make $6,800.
The meeting last night was less than 10 minutes. Andy Byars and Chemberly Harris didn’t show up. It sure looks like that raise wasn’t needed. They will claim they spend a lot of time outside of meetings. Email them and see who responds.
Of course there was no public comment.
Kathleen Lorenz asked City Manager Pam Reece to talk about the bid disparity in this story: https://blnnews.com/2023/07/17/normal-holding-another-short-meeting/
Reece didn’t add much to the discussion except she thought the two high bidders might be too busy to do the work – hence the disparity. She assured the Council the low bidder could complete the work. Stay tuned.
If you are dying to watch a meeting:
Reece’s claim that the other two companies bid 3 times more because they were too busy is a big red flag. The 2 companies that overbid do many millions of other work for Normal government every year. An independent committee should look into if these companies inflated their fees by this extreme on other town work too.
Normal operates on the good old boys network. It is rare for an outside company to bid on Town work without having a friend in government so low bids don’t rock the boat and expose the gravy train. This vendor may have exposed the severe overcharging and inside dealing that has been common place in Normal.
I don’t expect any council member to care to investigate.
Since citizens RARELY show up for Public Comment it shows them everything is fine.
Spot on Taxpayer! Add to this, several years ago during sewer work on Normal Avenue the project ran way under budget. This allowed the town of Normal to do more work than what they had originally planned. I did send an email to the Council and mayor on that one and got severely chastised by one particular Council member for questioning it. But, there is a method to this madness from all sides, the contractors and government. I don’t trust any of them.