By: Diane Benjamin The Bloomington City Council meets tonight at 6:00, Normal meets at 7:00. Bloomington tonight: https://bloomingtonil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=1055&Inline=True PDF page 19 Who decides what the “right” fit is and why does their opinion matter? I hope nobody still believes the Council does the budget. See PDF page 21: The Council gets 10 MINUTES to […]
By: Diane Benjamin The chart below was compiled from these 3 links listed. This is strictly my opinion, but I lumped General Fund spending and Enterprise Fund spending together because things like garbage used to be in the General Fund but now it isn’t.. The Enterprise Funds are: PDF page 50: https://www.cityblm.org/home/showdocument?id=22149 All of these […]
By: Diane Benjamin Today the paper has a cool graph showing City of Bloomington budgets for the last 10 years. I recapped the same info here: https://blnnews.com/2018/03/08/bloomington-budget-workshop-saturday/ See the Pantagraph graph here – bottom of the story: http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/government-and-politics/council-eyes-business-fees-overdue-parking-fines-to-balance-budget/article_b1dd3a23-7b7c-50aa-8f9e-30046a7375a9.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1 Instead of pretending spending is up over 10 years, they should have marked on the graph […]
By: Diane Benjamin Saturday the Pantagraph cried in an editorial wanting to be relevant. Today they printed the City talking points. They don’t understand that regurgitating what government buddies want you to say doesn’t drive people to read! See: http://www.pantagraph.com/opinion/columnists/bechtel-daily-newspapers-worth-the-price/article_a10766c7-c709-5c81-b62f-519f8800ec01.html http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/government-and-politics/city-staff-to-give-council-options-for-m-deficit/article_5e8cdbfc-3bf5-508b-9d97-f0307f5331e2.html The packet for tonight has very little information on the new budget – See […]
By: Diane Benjamin I thought for a minute somebody had kidnapped David Hales and replaced him with a conservative. He actually said the Council must lean how to say NO. He said the City can’t maintain what we have now, but people keep talking about building new things. Library David? Aquatics center? Sports complex? Public […]
By: Diane Benjamin See Book 1 of the Budget here: http://www.cityblm.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=8224 I have to congratulate Bloomington for putting together a readable budget. It contains lots of details and easy to read charts. Yesterday I posted the Administration Budget, I will be posting others later. Police and Fire are two departments essential to citizens. Below is […]
I’m re-posting this article in honor of Bloomington’s $180,000,000 proposed budget! See this companion post too: http://blnnews.com/2014/01/20/more-on-bloomington-champaign-peoria/ by: Diane Benjamin In 2012 the population of Bloomington is listed at 77,733. Champaign’s population was 82,517, Peoria was 115,687. Note: Bloomington is the smallest! These numbers are all from the City’s websites. Total Budget information: In 2012 […]
