Bump Outs and the Buskirk Chumley

What do both of these things have in common? Many locals believe the City has no business getting involved in either one of them. The Buskirk Chumley Theatre is a beautiful old historic building that deserved to be saved and restored to its present day splendor. With that being said the question arises as to what the limits are to government funding for civic and cultural facilities such as this. When the City of Bloomington decided to get involved in the refurbishment of the old theatre it was a worthy and noble cause for such a grand old building but the money was offered in exchange for and with the full understanding that the City of Bloomington did not want to own the facility. The funding concept was that upon the completion of the remodeling the facility would become nearly self sufficient under the able management of the Waldron Arts Center. Detractors insisted that concept was highly improbable and the project was nothing more than another drain on valuable taxpayers resources.

Several years and several hundred thousand dollars later the City is getting ready to tread down a very slippery slope indeed, taking over the ownership of this relic from the past. The facility has never come anywhere close to being profitable and unfortunately probably never will. This is simply another example of a small handful of elected officials selling unrealistic pie in the sky concepts to the public so they could secure funding for another one of their “causes”. How can this happen you ask? The answer lies in the fact that a high percentage and getting higher all the time, of the elected officials have virtually no background in business or economics. The cost of maintaining such a facility is enormous and with the limited revenues it generates it would give even a risk taker cause for concern of getting involved in this endeavor. The point is it’s a really nice building but at what cost?

This brings us to the second half of the commentary, the bump out debacle on Auto Mall Road on Bloomington’s eastside. Where is the public outrage for this public / private deal made in a complete void of public input or knowledge. It was reported the repairs would cost the City $24,000 however the actual cost of making reparations will probably never be known as it too will undoubtedly be shrouded in darkness. The simple fact remains that tens of thousands of taxpayer’s dollars were wasted for tearing out and repaving this entire stretch of roadway. Mayor Kruzan has taken responsibility for the circumvention of due process and subsequent mishandling of the project and is surely hoping the issue will go away as faster than the city workers patched and repaved the roadway.

This year alone we have endured two major traffic obstructions to facilitate development on the eastside. First the community was force fed an undersized “round a bout” on Moores Pike that cannot even be negotiated by a semi-truck and now we get to pay for the removal of more public impediments installed by this same developer on Auto Mall Road. I wonder just how much Wininger / Stolberg and its principals donated to Mayor Kruzan’s election campaign? This unfortunately is just another example of the all too typical dictatorial style of leadership that we presently have in City Hall, which is all the more reason not to let this be swept under the rug. If this were private enterprise someone would surly loose his or her job and it has been suggested that if you had to start somewhere start with the Director of Public Works Julio Alonso.

What I would like to know is why are we so conditioned to accept this type of incompetence and over site from government officials and furthermore why do the offenders get off without suffering any consequences? There is obviously a vast separation between taking responsibility and being accountable. Responsibility is when you own up to throwing an arrant baseball through someone’s window. Being accountable is when you actually pay for the window. In this case taking responsibility is one thing but who is going to be accountable and repay the thousands of misused and abused tax dollars? Evidently no one!