By: Diane Benjamin
Wonder why all local governments need ever increasing amounts of your money?
The County, Bloomington, and Normal all have 3 top Administrators. Budgets keep increasing because all these people need things to “administer”. If problems were ever solved they wouldn’t have jobs, so nothing is ever solved.
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Which administrator created an island at Towanda Barnes and Ireland Grove?
This was a joint Bloomington and County project which was engineered flawlessly. Serious accidents have been close to eliminated with stop lights and a right turn lane from Towanda Barnes onto Ireland Grove.
The pictured island though was a miss. It requires maintenance that could have been avoided. Grass needs mowed and plants need attention. Instead of creating an attractive alternative that didn’t require continual maintenance and wasn’t dead during the winter, another job security project was installed.
I don’t know if the City or County came up with this one.
Deferred maintenance is a huge problem. That problem could be alleviated by not creating things that need maintenance.
Bloomington created this at Rt 9 and Veterans. It is more maintenance at taxpayer expense that does zero to make the lives of people who can’t afford rent better.
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Just in case the local progressives decide they need to solve “food deserts”, show them this story: https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/the-merc-co-op-to-close-downtown-kansas-city-kansas-location-at-end-of-2025
People can prosper when government allows them to. Local governments are too big, therefore people aren’t prospering unless they are government employees.
Normal:
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Median household income in McLean County: $78,329
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/mclean-county-il
Oligarchs?
Bloomington doesn’t make it as easy to see who rules: https://www.bloomingtonil.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/31300/638808224982070000
The County doesn’t either:
https://mcleancountyil.gov/DocumentCenter/View/28151/FY25-Total-Compensation-More-than-75000
Normal’s total compensation – only over $75,000 are listed: https://www.normalil.gov/DocumentCenter/View/14857/Total-Compensation-Report—Town-of-Normal
Do you remember when they first made the ‘Bloomington logo’ out of rock and flowers? They made it wrong and had to redo it? I laughed out loud. It’s not a complicated logo.
The only reason that a co-op store in Kansas city would close I am guessing is because it was losing enormous amounts of money, was it due to people stealing or just lack of business, and guess what the millions of dollars that the taxpayers spent to start up the store is wasted.
Don’t we have a grocery store, Green Top, not a co-op but but considered in a food desert. Didn’t we have some council people that voted to give them 30% of their taxes back. I wonder why that store is failing also.
Food deserts. Even back in the day, my parents would go to 2-3 different grocery stores using coupons and chasing deals. Maybe there should be a school on every corner too.