What had been a fairly sedate Normal Council meeting on Monday night turned into a Parade of Horribles as six members of the public spoke at the end of the meeting about a number of items they feel the town has handled or is handling inappropriately.
Two speakers focused on a bill State Representative Sharon Chung (D) Bloomington, has put forward in the legislature in Springfield. The bill would exempt the Town of Normal from having to elect a Supervisor, Collector, Assessor and Clerk.
The town won a court case in January when Judge Mark Fellheimer ruled that Normal did not have to elect these offices.
Chad Berck told the council, “The judge already ruled that the state law does not apply to Normal because Normal is a Home Rule town. So it makes no sense to spend our tax dollars to change law that doesn’t even apply to Normal making any legislative action moot an act of arrogant misuse of law.”
Berck continued, “The only way it makes sense is if the town attorney believes the judge was wrong and that his decisions would not survive an appeal. This would also mean the town really believes the law saying these three positions should be elected by the voters.
“It would also mean town staff were worried they can not be able to convince/coerce another judge to side with town staff again,” Berck said.
Normal Councilmember Kevin McCarthy is a proponent of Chung’s bill.
According to Corporate Attorney Brian Day the town waited for the appeal date regarding Fellheimer’s decision to pass before moving forward with the change in law.
“This bill only codifies what the judge said and what is existing law at this point,” Day stated. “It doesn’t change anything one iota from what came out of that court case.”
Ovicki Rowe addressed the council regarding what she calls electioneering at Unit 5 School District events.
“What are you going to do about this issue,” Rowe asked. “What is the Normal Police Department going to do about this issue?” There were previous complaints filed before mine. I filed mine on March 16. But there were several complaints filed before mine on March 16.”
“What I witnessed on March 16th at Normal West High School at the school district concert should have never happened because complaints had already been filed before mine. This is a concert for the kids and the students The whole point of not having electioneering on school campuses is so that you can go to high school events and the concerts for the kids not to see campaign literature and materials.”
Rowe continued, “So when I went to the concert on March 16th there were campaign materials on the table right by the door to enter the gym for the concert. You couldn’t miss it because you had to go past this table of campaign literature. This is against Unit 5 policy and also illegal.”
Day said, “In terms of electioneering stuff, people should be able to read that information for themselves. I am not going to wade into that mess. I don’t think we have enough time for that. We will be here to the next night.”
Mary Carlisle spoke about combined sanitary and storm water sewers.
She said such systems result in people’s basements filling up with “raw sewage and storm water during excessive rain events. Unfortunately the people trusted to run the town of Normal have neglected their fiducial responsibility to taxpayers over the last several decades.”
“Instead of investing and replacing and upgrading the failed several years old storm and sanitary sewer system, they have chosen instead to spend money where it is neither needed nor wanted,” Carlisle said. The citizens of Normal don’t need all of the fancy plans for new buildings in Normal yet council representatives vote for these things anyway.”
Councilmember Karyn Smith said, “Citizens coming forward with their concerns are always welcome to express them at the council. I do want to specifically address one individual that spoke against Normal having an issue with combined storm water and sewer systems.”
“That is not the case for the Town of Normal,” Smith stated. “It is an issue for Bloomington residents but it is not a problem that Normal has. We have the luxury of having developed after Bloomington did in much of our residential areas and we never took that shortcut.”
Karl Sila paraded his own list of horribles during his time at the microphone.
Among other items Sila criticized the council for spending $30 million on a pedestrian underpass but not taking care of roads, spending water funds on snow plows, buying a Rivian truck that has been photographed in the Mayor’s driveway, and spending money on bike paths while not funding police and fire pensions.
