By Joe Ragusa
BLOOMINGTON – A change to Bloomington’s sick leave buyback program is being put on hold for at least two months.
City Manager David Hales told the council Monday night he and city attorney Jeff Jurgens discussed the potential changes with several Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund employees who would be affected by the sick leave buy back changes.
Hales said their reaction was pretty negative.
“When we asked for a show of hands, almost everyone felt like the rules shouldn’t change mid-stream,” Hales said.
The proposal would have forced some city employees to cash out their unused sick leave in one lump sum prior to retirement, instead of the current policy that allows employees to spread those payments out over the final three months of employment.
Alderman Scott Black said he didn’t feel comfortable voting on the proposal with such short notice.
“We’re speaking in a lot of hypotheticals. It’s hard to really drill down to what it actually looks like. At least for me and I suspect the employees, too,” Black said. “Additionally, I think it would be great to get some unfiltered employee feedback.”
The council voted unanimously to delay a vote on the matter for 60 days.
Green Top Grocery will receive a sales tax and property tax incentive package to help build the co-op at 921 E. Washington St. in Bloomington.
The city council voted to approve a 10-year sales tax rebate and five-year property tax abatement by a 5-1 vote: Alderman Lower voted against it while Black, Diana Hauman and Joni Painter excused themselves because they are minority stakeholders with the co-op.
Alderwoman Karen Schmidt said people in that part of town don’t have a place to purchase good, healthy food.
“They have access to Frito’s and they have access to food they get at the convenience store,” Schmidt said. “In my opinion, this is very transformational in many ways.”
Under the agreement, Green Top Grocery has to invest $1.9 million into the property and open by the beginning of 2017.
The agreement also includes development of adjacent property at 915 E. Washington St. It didn’t name the tenants of the new site, though. Mayor Tari Renner said that was done to protect the potential investor.
“As soon as I can talk about it, I’m going to be out there with bells on because it’s really great and it’s really exciting,” Renner said.
Joe Ragusa can be reached at [email protected].
