By: Diane Benjamin
Surrena Fish was back with an update on Tent City. She claimed there is a waiting list now and police had to be called to break up a fight. Just hit play to hear her comments.
The Connect Transit update on the downtown transfer station isn’t that long. If you don’t want to listen to it, just page through the slides. When everything you do relies on other people’s money, the red tape takes too long to navigate and requires spending on the useless so that boxes in a pencil pusher’s office can be checked.
This is why Connect wasted money on worthless electric buses — government ideology led to free money that wasn’t available for gas or diesel buses. Throwing money away is immaterial when the government knows it can obtain more through taxation or simply printing it.
A $10 million State Grant and an $8 million Federal Grant were obtained in 2019. However, that $18,000,000 isn’t worth $18 million anymore due to inflation. According to the CPI Inflation Calculator website, Connect needs almost $4 million more in 2024 to purchase what could have been bought in 2019 with that money. https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2019?amount=18000000
Since construction isn’t ready to happen, that number will continue to increase because inflation is not under control. (Has Normal started building the underpass yet?)
Instead of bidding the project, a Request for Qualifications was issued. A board will pick one of the 6 who submitted a response and then negotiate the price. There is a hard-to-read slide at 13:13 with a drawing and details of what they want to build. Public meetings will be held, and an agreement with the City of Bloomington still has to be reached.
Meanwhile, every day makes construction more expensive. Inflation rakes in money for governments because taxes are higher on everything you buy. This project reveals the extraordinary number of hoops that must be jumped through to satisfy the ideological whims of those controlling the wallet.
Did you pay your part of the Federal Debt yesterday? https://www.usdebtclock.org/
I thought I read yesterday were the POTUS once again doled out $6B on student loan debt foregiveness for public service workers. He continues to defy the SCOTUS ruling.
Coming up next is what seems like unlimited funding for Ukraine and Israel. Increase the speed of the printing presses for the dollar. More ink is going to be needed also.
Mean while Republic Services for garbage pickup jacked up my rate from $256 to $324. How’s that for inflation? Needless to say they didn’t get a renewal from me. They wanted to negotiate to $272 and I said no. Why, because 3 months later you’ll raise it up over $324.