By: Diane Benjamin
Quote from the story below: While Bloomington saw more births than deaths, domestic outmigration of more than 1,000 residents led to overall population decline.
Why are people leaving? Duh, taxes. We can quit worrying about a housing shortage. People will continue leaving since there is no reason to stay good enough to pay ridiculous taxes.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/more-than-half-of-illinois-counties-suffer-outmigration/
Wait until you see your property tax bill! Probably ever unit of government has needs that don’t include letting you keep your money.
Normal just raised taxes. I wonder if Chris Koos will try to convince Dan Brady to match Normal’s Food/Beverage tax and Hotel/Motel tax while they are flying to Rome.
I’m sure taxpayers are paying for their “diplomatic” vacation. https://www.cities929.com/2026/03/25/bloomington-mayor-to-join-rome-diplomacy-mission/
Property taxes must not be high enough yet for most people. Voters approve over 80% of referendums that have an emotional appeal. Sky is the limit…
High taxes or not, who would want to stay there? There is basically no future. Leaders were never interested in diversifying the local economy. No one wants to spend 30 or 40 years of their life working at boring, dead end jobs for local insurance companies that are slashing jobs and infrastructure. Rivian is a revolving door that hedges its future on a small market share and high priced vehicles with large repair costs in an industry that is totally dependent on government assistance. Local governments can’t even keep the infrastructure up to date and continually wastes money on downtown projects than only a noisey minority cares about. The local political and business leadership is beyond a joke where most have no idea what they are doing or what they are talking about. The same tired names run the show on all fronts and are fine with a status quo that’s been the same since the 1980s…and so it goes.