By: Diane Benjamin
At the 8/25/2025 Council meeting a LONG list of email public commenters was read. I FOIA’d the City for those emails in September. I received a response with EVERY NAME redacted.
Of course that isn’t legal. Nobody at Council meetings makes an anonymous public comment. No one who emails the Council can legally remain anonymous either.
Page through these emails. Of course this was orchestrated. The three main topics are signing the Not In Our Town pledge, the Nazi flyer, and the police not meeting with Wesley United Methodist church.
In case you forgot that last one: https://blnnews.com/2025/08/26/bam-bloomington-residents-put-in-their-place/
In case you missed this story proving NIOT is illegitimate: https://blnnews.com/2025/10/22/krystle-able-and-the-not-in-our-town-silence/
I wonder if law enforcement questioned Derek Lopez about the flyers since he thinks Trump supporters are nazis? He’s still locked up: Judge-Denies-Release-of-Former-ISU-Teaching-Assistant-for-Trump-Threats
That story adds some twists to what has been reported.
Meanwhile, if the employee(s) that completed my FOIA were properly trained, the names never would have been redacted. THEY increased costs by having to do it twice.
Unsure if you have heard this, but my neighborhood HOA had a meeting with the city (Bloomington) and the city mentioned that they are thinking about charging a fee for FOIAs in the future.
They passed it . I think it only applies to commercial