The Normal Town Council hasn't yet decided how to address the loss of grocery tax revenue included in the new state budget, according to Mayor Chris Koos.
That spending plan repeals the grocery tax, a move proposed by Gov. JB Pritzker. The state shared part of that money with cities and towns.
"We're looking at our options. It's a significant hit for the Town of Normal. It's about $2.6 million in lost revenue," said Koos, adding creating a town grocery tax is certainly possible.
“We're looking at our options, but we haven't had that conversation in depth yet,” Koos said on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
Koos said the town did object to the statewide repeal of the grocery tax through its membership in the Illinois Municipal League before the state budget passed. Pritzker called the tax "regressive" and said it mostly affects those who can least afford it.
Domestic violence
Koos said the recent killing of second-grade teacher Amy Moore, a teacher at Grove Elementary School by her ex-husband Matthew in an apparent murder-suicide, was a tragic event, and everyone’s heart goes out to the family and the Moore's three children.
"Whether it's Normal, Bloomington, Chicago, Poughkeepsie, whatever, it's a national problem and it's something we need to address. It's damaging to families and it's heartbreaking," said Koos.
He said the town and every community should be more proactive in the future.
“Mental health issues are something that we need to work more on as a community and gun control needs to be tighter, especially with people with mental health issues. Their ability to access firearms should be more restricted,” said Koos
Aquatic center naming
The town recently announced Fairview Aquatic Center will be renamed for the late former mayor, Kent Karraker. A lot of public officials never get something with their name on it. Koos said Karraker’s contributions to the town were to that next level, deserving generational recognition.
“Kent was a was a great mayor. He was a very effective mayor in his time, and aquatics and parks were something he was very proud of. A lot of the upgrades for Anderson Park and Fairview Park were a result of Kent's moving those projects forward. It was very important to him,” said Koos.
Karraker’s family members were involved in youth swimming in their early years.
“They always called it Grandpa's Pool,” said Koos.
Amtrak
The U.S. House of Representatives recently approved, on a bipartisan vote, the Think Differently Transportation Act. It directs Amtrak to come up with a plan to finally comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act that passed in 1990. Three-plus decades later, Amtrak still faces large compliance issues, many tied to aging infrastructure.
Koos, who sits on the national board of Amtrak, said the rail service has not been neglecting the issue and has been working on it.
“They realize they have situations where passenger train floors don't match up to landings. That makes it hard for people to get on and off trains. And you have double-decker cars, it goes on. Amtrak has been working on that for a number of years,” said Koos.
He said Inflation Adjustment Act funding will provide a boost to those “remediations and fixes.”
“For instance, the new Superliner double-decker cars will have elevators for disabled people to be able to better access the experience on those cars. But it's going to take time. There are quick fixes, and then there are long-term fixes,” said Koos.
Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner recently told Fortune magazine that he's the luckiest CEO in company history, at a time when federal funding infusion allows Amtrak to address many long-neglected infrastructure needs. Any one of the projects is several billion dollars, and Gardner said Amtrak is launching 10 of them at the same time.
Though the institution has little history or institutional culture of managing projects of that scale, Koos thinks Amtrak will be able to manage the complex implementation.
“My observation is the senior leadership of Amtrak is more than capable. It's a very strong culture with very, very talented people. There's a lot of new people that have been hired prior to the act and are moving forward. I think they have the capacity to manage that,” he said, noting there will be myriad subcontractors and people to do specialized work such as rail and tunnel replacements.
“It's anywhere from 10-25 years’ worth of work to do this. It's a long-term project, and things are starting at once. So far, things are falling into place, and these projects are going forward. We'll see what happens. But I'm very, very confident in the senior leadership,” said Koos.
