By: Diane Benjamin
Remember the $3000 Sister Cities spent at Biaggis? https://blnnews.com/2026/06/22/bloomington-tonight-6-22-26/
The farewell banquet happened on 4/3/2026, nobody updated the Sister Cities website with pictures of this event: https://www.bnsistercities.org/sister-cities-blog
Other events from the previous 2 days are there, just not this one.
Below is what the FOIA I received shows. 80 people attended the farewell banquet. The total bill was $4380.90, not including a 20% tip of $876.18. I bet those servers are happy there is now No Tax on Tips at the federal level, Illinois still taxes tips.
That makes the total $5257.08. The bill was paid with 2 different cards. $3000.00 was paid with a City P-Card. $2257.08 was paid with a different card. I’d love to hear why two different cards were used. Maybe the budget only covered $3000 or maybe the attendees that probably shouldn’t have eaten at taxpayer expense were deducted from the total. (spouses and kids of team members and Straza’s guest)
PDF page 342: https://www.bloomingtonil.gov/home/showdocument?id=32655&t=639171113327755380
In the Bloomington budget:
FYI: Bloomington-Normal also has a Vladimir/Canterberry Sister Cities Assoc: https://vcsistercitybn.org/new/ Their website is updated but has a lot less information. For obvious reasons no student exchange is occurring.
The attendees:
The receipts I received:
Great job!
Also note “they” have their favored places. Spreading the peoples’ wealth around doesn’t happen much.
With regard to splitting the cost between two cards, it’s possible that the transaction limit was reached on the one card and another card had to be used for the balance.
So it appears there were 2 meals and 2 desserts for each of the 80 attendees. Quite the meal there! Instead of spending $450 on fruit/cheese/vegetable trays, why not get those from Sam’s, cater in one entree and dessert per person, and avoid the nearly $900 tip. It seems this could have been done at half the cost.
It would be great to understand what we get out of these arrangements. Are those cities buying Rivian vehicles? Are they funding travel on their own dime that generates more fro the local economy than what is spent on the committee itself?
It’s probably nice to have these and put on a sign, but what is the benefit to this versus other ventures that promote culture-sharing and travel?