The City of Peoria tells us there is no money for adequate street repairs and snow removal, so they do away with some snow routes and completely do away with the old tar and rocking of streets. No money.
Then they tell us the budget is so tight that they have no choice but to lay off police officers and restrict the fire department to the size that if 2 major fires break out in Peoria, we’re screwed.
Then they take the Garbage Fee, a temporary tax as it was called, and raise it 110% and force it on your water bill. No pay, no water. They tell us this is to improve our garbage collection by making everyone rent a tote from PDC. They start the tax January 1st but most of us don’t have the tote. The $13 a month fee is a burden on a lot of fixed income people mainly retired and poor but who cares?
Remember when Councilman Turner was so concerned over the poor and fixed income that he worried out loud on the council floor about the $6 being taken on a 4 month basis? He said it should be a monthly charge as $6 was easier to pay than $24 every quarter? The reality of it was the Illinois-American Water told the city it was too much hassle to bill the Garbage Fee on their water bills every 4 months. It had to be every month for their computer software to handle it or they wouldn’t collect the fee for the city. So much for concern for the elderly huh?
Then the city after telling us there is no money to abate crime, is now tripping over themselves to give a developer millions to build a rather plain hotel downtown next to an empty old hotel. The plus? We get a skywalk to the Civic Center. We all know this story.
Now, though the State of Illinois is all but broke, our dear Governor wants to and most likely will cut all kinds of benefits including Medicare. All the cuts are on the backs of the working people or the poor. Every single one of them is. Guess what? The General Assembly of our State is on the verge of voting themselves some big raises. Some of the raises are about half of what a working person makes in a year. You can read it here: RAISES. Surprised?
Yep, our State politicians think they are doing a wonderful job and are going to pat themselves on the back with a nice raise. Don’t worry though. Jehan Gordon our whatever will say they don’t deserve it……. while they cash the check and smile.
This is a real slap in the face but here in Peoria, we are all used to getting slapped in the face by over powered, ego suffering political hacks who always seem to know how to spend our money. Buckle your belts people. Do without your meds, do without that food. Set that thermostat down to 50. No new cars for you. Get that garbage out without the tote and pay that fee. Cut back on that baby formula. Dried milk is ok anyway. Who needs real fruit? We have to make cuts folks and then we give the cut throats a raise? What would you expect?
Hat tip: Chef Kevin
8 comments:
I was stupefied and enraged when I saw on the news about these preposterous raises when planning to close Dwight which will destroy the town, add more unemployment and over-crowd already overloaded prisons, albeit they will let the other inmates loose to make room for this next group! To cut while giving unmerited/bloated raises is criminal!
Time to put our homes up for sale and bolt. Past time really.
Agree that not a good time to vote for raised when you're shuttering facilities and laying off people but I don't think you read the article.
It said: "
Collectively, the members of the Illinois House would get a $73,200 raise. That breaks out to about $620 for each member.
For the Illinois Senate, members would get a collective raise of $37,200. That breaks out to $630 for each member."
I don't think an increase of $600 per INDIVIDUAL is necessarily excessive!
It is excessive when the majority of us are unemployed or don't get a raise at our job. What have they done to earn their paycheck let alone a raise?
Really, they can't live on 6 figures? Maybe they should try out my five or unemployment benefits for a year and they would appreciate what they are being paid to mess up Illinois.
but it gets better. In the state of the city address, the mayor said they will working to get benefits under control for the city staff, I wasn't aware there were staff left other than the one they are hiring for the hotel. Apparantly their hunger for developer money wasn't satisfied by raiding the retirement fund, creating a larger sham garbage tax, and bonding the hell out of the city's "credit card". Peoria will be the next city to try to declare bankruptcy in a few years. Property values are decreasing, meaning fewer tax dollars, sales tax revenues remain poor, and people are tired of being tax (feed) to death. This will collapse on itself. To their credit the council does appear to have restrung all their fiddles to play when Peoria burns.
I guess my point is missed. It's not so much the $630 increase most are getting but if you read, some higher offices are getting $1600 or more increase. But, let me explain. Say you work and manage a company. The company is losing it's ass and the President of the company is under fire from all sides. So, what do you do? You go to his office and ask for a raise for the wonderful job you and all the others working there are doing? Of course you do if you are an elected Representative from the State and guess what? You get the raise! Bullshit! If anything, these reps should be getting a cut in pay. A big cut in pay. Ya know, one that hurts like it hurts the poor and the fixed income and even the working people in this state when these idiots decide to cut anything that benefits the working or poor people of Illinois. When the State is making money and is out of debt, then you all deserve a raise, otherwise, don't like it? There's the door. Use it. Or better yet, people get off your asses and vote these idiots out of office. Let them draw and live off unemployment for a change.
It must be nice to be able to give (vote) yourself a raise. They don't have the balls to leave it up to the voters.
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