By: Diane Benjamin
Part 1: https://blnnews.com/2025/08/26/bam-bloomington-residents-put-in-their-place/
I’m going to attempt to track how much money the City is spending relocating Public Works to the former Owens Nursery property.
Start with the purchase June 10, 2024: https://d3n9y02raazwpg.cloudfront.net/cityblm/f7099398-5bbe-11ee-ae13-0050569183fa-791fe512-602c-4d20-98c8-ecdbbed39134-1717791762.pdf
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Last night $154,740 was approved for a consultant to create a preliminary design for the “campus”. It won’t have any construction plans, just recommendations for things like where entrances and exits should be, what buildings should be where, where the Citizens Convenience Center should be etc. They will also make a rough estimate of the total cost. $10 million has been previously floated. This design will take about 4 months. Expect cost estimates of almost twice that. If you observe how government operates, initial bids are always way more than expected because everything but the kitchen sink is in them. Government can then claim they are cutting out “frills” to decrease the costs.
If you remember the downtown streetscape estimates, that’s exactly what happened.
These 2 zoning changes were on the agenda:
Since staff recommended delaying both until September 8th, they were. Several Public Commenters wanted these passed. If you still don’t know what your residence is zoned, find out before 9/8. Your neighbor could be building another house behind theirs. Bloomington residents should see this story about Portland Oregon: https://obrag.org/2025/06/coastal-residents-too-many-adus-ruin-neighborhoods/
I just got this story this morning: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/illinois-city-named-among-nations-most-livable-small-cities-in-new-ranking/3814611/
This ranking does not include Normal since both cities would be over 100,000 people.
Excerpt:
The most livable small cities in the U.S. are in the Midwest, with one of the top-ranked locations sitting in Illinois, according to a new list.
The ranking of “Most Livable Small Cities in the U.S.,” created by financial website SmartAsset, looked at more than 270 cities with populations between 65,000 and 100,000 people.
Each city was then ranked based on a number of factors, including housing affordability, poverty and unemployment rates, health insurance coverage, access to healthcare, entertainment facilities and commute times, according to data from the Census Bureau’s 2023 one-year American Community Survey.
Of the top 15 cities on the ranking, 12 were in the Midwest, and one was in Illinois.
The most livable city on the list was Plymouth, Minnesota, followed closely by Bloomington, Illinois, which made the list at No. 2.
While Bloomington had lower average housing costs, Plymouth saw housing costs represent a smaller percentage of average incomes. Average commute times in both cities were close to 20 minutes.
Bloomington has a housing crisis? Somebody should tell SmartAsset.
Does anyone at the city realize covering yards with more homes (ADUs) will increase the risk of flooding?
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Emotional heartstrings. When the liberals try to manipulate your emotions, you know there is a hidden agenda. Yes, if granny lives far away, is still able to live independently or cared for by granddaddy, wants to live closer so they don’t need a car to visit, and you don’t want them living in your house, an ADU may provide a solution. They want you to believe ADU’s won’t be a problem.
One speaker referred to not putting her mother in a “convalescent home”. She must not realize that a convalescent home is a short-term rehabilitation facility which provides physical therapy after hospitalization (illness or surgery) so someone can get strong enough to go home to live independently. A doctor determines that. If they are not able to get strong enough to live independently, they either move to skilled nursing care facility or go home where someone will be actively caring for them, whether it be a family member or a hired CNA. If that is the case, they shouldn’t be living in an ADU by themselves in a backyard.
There is not a large demand for all these grannies to be living in families’ backyards. The REAL reason why they want ADU’s is so they can be rented out it provides a homeowner additional income and creates affordable housing. They can’t tell you that, because it’s hard to resist grannies. Putting apartments in backyards is a way to underhandedly destroy single family neighborhoods without explicitly stating their real goal of eliminating single family neighborhoods. According to the liberals, single family neighborhoods represent wealth that lower income people deserve access to and deserve to live among wealthier people. That is where the real “demand” is.