By: Diane Benjamin Local property values are rising which means your property taxes will be going up based on the new value of your home. Units of government claiming they are keeping the rate the same as last year want you to believe they aren’t raising your taxes. When you bill comes in the mail […]
By: Diane Benjamin Your property taxes were raised last night with the consent of the two Republicans on the Normal Town Council. The rate was kept the same (for now) but with rising property values the Town will collect over $300,000 more than last year. The vote last night was sold as “statutory”, another vote […]
By: Diane Benjamin From this story about Chemberly Cummings campaigning with tax dollars: https://blnnews.com/2021/10/30/normals-monday-council-festivities/ One of the people getting paid with tax dollars is a former campaign intern for Chemberly. I wonder if that’s why Mallory’s $500 is called a “stipend” while the other person’s $500 is called “mentor”. Malloy didn’t get paid for being […]
By: Diane Benjamin Kathleen Lorenz and Scott Preston claim to be Republicans. This story proves they are fakes. First a quick review of what Enterprise Funds are. Local government decided years ago people need to pay for what they use. Hence, Enterprise funds were created to specifically tax you based on usage. Water is one […]
By: Diane Benjamin Normal held another meeting that lasted close to 2.75 hours. It will obviously take more than one story to cover it. I’m starting at the end. For the second time recently a citizen had to wait until the end of the meeting to offer Public Comment. This is because of Normal’s ridiculous […]
By: Diane Benjamin Realtors got heavily involved in last April’s Election. You probably noticed lots of campaign mail had their name on it – from Springfield. In addition they gave Koos: McCarthy: Cummings: Preston: Look up all contributions here: https://illinoissunshine.org/ FYI: Bob Broad, Planning Commission head and Julie Hile partner plus advocate for zoning changes […]
By: Diane Benjamin Think back to April when the Normal Town Council approved Horton Group for Insurance Broker Services. One thing stood out as suspicious. The Town issued an RFP and received 5 responses with detailed proposals. The meeting documentation was pages of glowing staff praise for Horton but the bids from the other four […]
By: Diane Benjamin It has been obvious for a long time the Town of Normal government exists for itself, not the citizens paying their bills. The last thing Koos and company want is pesky citizens messing up their plans. Chris Koos has stated Council meetings are “business meetings”, he leaves out the part about being […]
By: Diane Benjamin Anybody remember BN Advantage? It was a huge collaboration of the unelected who got your money to operate. This story explains who: https://blnnews.com/2015/10/29/round-2-bn-advantage/ It would take a lot of research to figure out how much of your money was thrown to this group. This story shows $423,867 just from Bloomington: https://blnnews.com/2019/04/29/bn-advantage-magazine/ Where […]
By: Diane Benjamin Chris Koos and has band of merry fleecers will continue to increase funding to Connect Transit. They adore empty buses and the $1,000,000 a month the feds and state poor into McLean County to keep it running. They love electric buses and solar panels. They love transfer stations that give their union […]
By: Diane Benjamin I’ve written almost 7600 stories since 2012. Most I can not remember, luckily readers do remember. The story below is one readers remembered that I didn’t. Chris Koos is infamous for his insider deals that benefit friends and a compliant Council that allow the fleecing of taxpayers. I can’t possibly remember all […]
By: Diane Benjamin Do you want a mayor of Bloomington with an agenda or one that listens to citizens? Mike Straza was on Cities 92.9 last night with Steve Suess. Listen to the beginning of the podcast: Straza worked on Chris Koos’ re-lection campaign 4 years ago. Much worse, Straza was on Dave Shields team […]
By: Diane Benjamin Chris Koos knows he has nothing to run on. Instead of discussing issues he clipped and chopped comments made by Marc Tiritilli before Rivian incentives were approved by the Normal Town Council. Koos wants you to believe Tiritilli was against Rivian buying the plant when Marc was actually against taking money from […]
By: Diane Benjamin Chris Koos had rulings against him before for violating the Open Meetings Act, but never 2 very close together. This was the first violation: https://wordpress.com/stats/post/90250/blnnews.com The Attorney General’s office finally found time to rule on a second (OBVIOUS) violation. This one was filed in 2019 by Karyn Smith. WEEK has the story: […]
By: Diane Benjamin This map isn’t as crazy as it first appears: When the Town of Normal runs new sewer lines they assess fees to the new area to recover those costs. All those shaded areas have been mapped to recover those costs. The fee per acre is printed for each. This is the map […]
By: Diane Benjamin Normal has two water problems: The first is spending over $5 million to run water lines on top of Bloomington’s out West College The second is brown water or worse at various locations around the Town. Chris Koos keeps trying to claim discolored water doesn’t exist. Just hit play to hear him […]
By: Diane Benjamin Proving yet again the priorities of staff have nothing to do with what citizens expect: The Town is going to fix West College, it needs it! The problem is they aren’t just going to fix it. So far just DESIGN is budgeted at $1.45 MILLION. DESIGN Nothing is going to be built […]
By: Diane Benjamin Chemberly Cummings is the perfect Trustee for the establishment in Normal. She believes her job is to rubberstamp staff recommendations. Listen to her Saturday interview – start at 38:30 – https://www.cities929.com/steve-suess-podcast/ She, and all the other Trustees except Stan Nord, think they hire “professional staff” who are experts in their fields, so […]
By: Diane Benjamin https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-0416.00029 Fitch does have Normal at AAA, did Normal pay to get that rating? Moody’s doesn’t have Normal at AAA: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/normal-town-il-moodys-assigns-230707753.html This story is based on the $2 million debt Normal recently refinanced instead of paying it off. QUOTE: RATING OUTLOOK The stable outlook incorporates our expectation that the town’s financial position […]
By: Diane Benjamin Of course Stan Nord knows taxpayers got fleeced to rent the second floor of 1 Uptown Circle only to fill a hole in Uptown. The Council that approved paying $35000-$36000 a month simply did as they were told. Chris Koos wanted the hole gone and obviously the private sector wasn’t going to […]
By: Diane Benjamin Since Chris Koos, Kevin McCarthy, Scott Preston, and Chemberly Cummings want your vote April 6th, does this look like something they would do to get it? The Normal Council held a 9 hour budget session yesterday. Surprise! They aren’t going to raise property taxes this year. Instead they are rearranging money they […]
By: Diane Benjamin I’ve questioned for YEARS why CIRBN employees are considered Town of Normal employees entitled to all the benefits every other employee has. CIRBN is a direct competitor to other internet providers who don’t have that luxury. The Town of Normal has subsidized CIRBN by using their service and paying them to run […]
By: Diane Benjamin The best evidence yet to not re-elect Scott Preston and Chemberly Cummings: While the Town of Normal is determined to put non-compliant restaurants out of business by fining them for not closing indoor dining, staff can eat in a conference room at Town Hall. The Town attorney – Brian Day – who […]
By: Diane Benjamin This meme popped up on Facebook about the same time The Normal Town Council proved it to be true: Start with the Work Session Normal had on December 7th to decide whether to create an ordinance to enforce Pritzker’s non-enforceable Restore Illinois waste of paper. See the video in this story: https://blnnews.com/2020/12/08/normal-isnt-shutting-down-businesses-for-violations/ […]
By: Diane Benjamin Numerous items Normal citizens need to know: Below is part of an email written by Stan Nord. The yellow is City Manager Pam Reece’s response to his email. Pam does not understand citizens saw Target being looted and the destruction to police vehicles while the police did nothing. They know Mayor Chris […]
By: Diane Benjamin Of course we know the local elections are not non-partisan. Koos and Renner don’t hide the fact they are Democrats. Carrillo and Crabill don’t hide they are socialists. Scott Preston is involved with the local GOP party. The association list goes on and on. When elected, ideology isn’t suddenly thrown out the […]
By: Diane Benjamin The Town of Normal has a LONG history of over-paying for properties and then selling them for much less. (or just giving them away!) I’ve done numerous stories since 2012 detailing some of them. Here are 3 blatant examples: https://normal.org/archivecenter/viewfile/item/2115 In 2015 Normal bought 513 N School for $170,000. 509 N School […]
By: Diane Benjamin Our current Illinois Attorney General is starting off worse than Mike Madigan’s daughter. They still have not ruled on the Request for Review submitted by Karyn Smith when she was denied the right to speak on an item not on the agenda. It is getting close to a year since she filed, […]
By: Diane Benjamin If Illinois had a competent Attorney General a ruling against Normal for their public comment policy would have been written many months ago. (the law requires them to rule within 90 days) We don’t, so Normal continues to stifle citizen speech only because they can. A complaint was filed with the AG […]
By: Diane Benjamin Pam Reece can’t understand why Stan Nord is questioning the actions of past Councils. If Pam can’t understand why Stan was elected, she had an opportunity handed to her: Stan has raised questions about a number of issues. Some of them included Town owned properties being leased for much less than market […]
By: Diane Benjamin Kathleen Lorenz claims to be a Republican, so does Scott Preston. It is Republicans like these that made me leave the Republican Party years ago. The days of voting for party are long gone. Base your vote on the CHARACTER of the candidate, not the party. Both Lorenz and Preston know Normal’s […]
By: Diane Benjamin Stan Nord has tried to reach out to fellow Trustees who claim to care about taxpayers. Scott Preston was one of those. Think back to this story: https://blnnews.com/2019/07/31/did-chris-koos-lie/ Preston knew before the rest of the Council that Chris Koos wasn’t telling the truth about Nord going “lone wolf” because Preston was copied […]
By: Diane Benjamin Everything below was received by FOIA. I received another treasure trove of emails – stay tuned. Remember this note Mayor Koos sent to Bloomington and leaked to the media? This note was in the Pantagraph on July 17th. https://blnnews.com/2019/07/31/did-chris-koos-lie/ On July 26th, Stan Nord sent proof to the Mayor and the entire […]
By: Diane Benjamin Update to the story on Normal paying property taxes they don’t owe: https://blnnews.com/2019/08/11/normal-like-paying-property-taxes-you-dont-owe/ Every day that Normal fails to file the PTax 300 form to change the taxable status of properties that should be exempt means more taxes. Normal will get billed next year for the number of days it was taxable […]
By: Diane Benjamin Remember when the media did a story Chris Koos evidently fed to them about Stan Nord going rogue? Koos wrote a letter to Tari Renner and the media ended up with it. https://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/koos-nord-acted-alone-to-poach-bloomington-business/article_aeff8b7c-78a3-5e32-b1ef-f65e4e81f812.html Let’s start with Koos’ first claim: a Normal Council member went “lone wolf” to recruit across borders. I had […]
By: Diane Benjamin Some angry citizens of Normal appeared at Public Comment asking the Trustees to at least investigate moving the proposed fire station to a different corner. Staff had spent too much time to backtrack, they voted to proceed with “the plan” as presented anyway. Kathleen Lorenz and Scott Preston voted against it. One […]
By: Diane Benjamin Early voting is nothing more than a ploy to get people to vote before they have facts. It takes a long time to herd people to the polls who might not be so excited about voting. Cue the Community Bus. Don’t do it! Lines for voting in a Primary are never long, […]
By: Diane Benjamin Years ago I heard the developer of the Marriott felt he pulled off a legal robbery of the Town of Normal taxpayers courtesy of the hayseed Council hell-bent on a downtown hotel. The rich continued to get richer last night courtesy of the Normal Town Council. Two citizens spoke during public comment. […]
By: Diane Benjamin Evidently Tari is still reading this site contrary to his claims. Or maybe one of his minions contacted him about last night’s story: https://blnnews.com/2017/07/30/do-we-have-a-prosecutor/ He couldn’t stop himself from calling me a liar and threatening to sue: He fails to explain how the charge for Margot’s ticket got on the PCard statement […]
The Pantagraph attempted actual investigative journalism by FOIAing travel expenses from numerous area governments. Their report was difficult to read since experience making numbers understandable was obviously lacking, but at least they tried. After all their hard work and hammering of Scott Preston, they failed to take him down – just as they failed to […]
