BLOOMINGTON - Residents fed up with juvenile crime in the Twin Cities might show up at Monday's Bloomington City Council meeting, but they won't likely get a chance to speak.

Also, the council is expected to have more discussion about the city's police radios. Bloomington police were scheduled to test its radio system last week.

The council will meet in regular session at 7:30 p.m. Monday at City Hall, 109 E. Olive St.

A July 31 Pantagraph story about juveniles causing trouble at a strip mall at Empire Street and Hershey Avenue prompted public comments on pantagraph.com encouraging people who are tired of the problems to attend the council meeting.

An announcement about the meeting posted on the Internet has been given to the city's aldermen.

Bloomington Mayor Steve Stockton said he would like to hold a discussion about juvenile crime and what the city can to do help solve the problem. But, he added, it won't happen Monday.

"Nobody has talked to us about getting on the agenda," Stockton said. "They should call ahead with something like this so we can schedule time for them to speak. We cannot have groups of people show up whenever they want to so they can talk for an hour on a topic. This is why we have agendas."

For the Monday meeting, the city issues the council agenda by 4 p.m. the previous Thursday to meet the 48-hour notification requirement of the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

Two people who appear to be organizing the effort to get local residents to attend the council meeting declined to be quoted for this story.

Before the council's regular session, it will meet at 6 p.m. for a work session to discuss the city's police radios. That is part of an on-going issue between the city and the town of Normal and McLean County over the ability of their police and fire departments to communicate with one another.

Normal and McLean County upgraded their radio systems to Starcom 21, a digital system, while Bloomington remains on an analog system. Problems with patching the two systems together and officers communicating with each other became apparent during a July 3 incident at the State Farm Insurance Cos. headquarters at Veterans Parkway and Washington Street.

More than 100 officers from a variety of police agencies, including Bloomington, Normal, McLean County, state police, and Illinois State University responded to the insurer's main building for what turned out to be a false alarm.

Go!

What: Bloomington City Council meeting

When: 6 p.m. Monday for the work session; 7:30 p.m. for the regular session

Where: City Hall, 109 E. Olive St.