Daily Archives: March 14, 2007

City Council, City of Peoria

City jobs are fleeting

26 Comments

The City of Peoria owns a lot of large, specialized vehicles (snow plows, backhoes, graders, fire trucks, etc.), and thus, they employ mechanics to maintain its fleet as well as professional drivers for CDL Truck Driving Positions. Now the city is looking to possibly outsource this service and lay off its 11 fleet maintenance employees. City Manager Randy Oliver justified this course of action in his Request for Council Action:

During the 2007 budget review sessions Council asked staff to continually seek opportunities to reduce service delivery costs. Fleet maintenance, an internal service provider, was an area discussed as a possible service where the City could potentially reduce costs and/or enhance service by contracting with a private vendor. The attached RFP [request for proposal] calls for a vendor to complete all the current fleet maintenance services provided by the Fleet Management Division of Public Works and the Fire Garage in the Fire Department. The vendor would use the City’s current tools and facilities at Dries Lane and Fire Station 8. The City would retain ownership of all the major repair equipment. Smaller hand tools would be the responsibility of the vendor.

Contracting is something that many governmental entities are considering. Cities contract out services generally to reduce costs and/or improve services. Seeking proposals will also serve as a measure to compare costs between in-house and private service delivery. While a change in service delivery may be justifiable on the basis of any cost savings, as a practical matter, however, the cost savings should be sufficient to justify the organizational change. Many local government agencies use a cost savings threshold to determine whether the change is worthwhile. An attached spreadsheet is how staff would determine any cost savings.

This has caused a firestorm of controversy, complete with accusations of union busting. At last night’s council meeting, the council voted 6-5 to defer this discussion until May 8 (after the election, incidentally) “to give labor and management time to discuss possible cost savings,” according to the Jennifer Davis’s report for the Journal Star.

The employees, of course, feel that they’re uniquely qualified to provide this service for the city and should be retained. That’s a good argument to make, and they may be proven right. I don’t think that these employees will get dumped if some private company comes in a dollar less than what it costs to provide services in-house. I’m confident their experience will be taken into consideration.

The employees also don’t want to lose their jobs, of course. They point out that these are good, head-of-household jobs, which is true. Even neighborhood activist LaVetta Ricca sprang to their defense last night:

“When this council wants new TIF areas or money for businesses, you all say these businesses are going to provide good-paying, head-of-household jobs – like Firefly (Energy’s inclusion in an Enterprise Zone) last week,” Ricca said. “Because, as you all say, this city depends on good-paying jobs. And now you’re saying you want to get rid of these guys, these guys who’ve lived here for years, who’ve been dedicated to this city. I really have a hard time understanding this.”

But this is a spurious argument. It’s not the city’s job to take taxpayer money and manufacture good-paying, head-of-household jobs. The city’s job is to provide the services residents need with the best balance of quality and value it can get. There are plenty of professional services that the city could bring in house but are more economical and fiscally-responsible to outsource to private companies. Fleet management should not get any special treatment — certainly not on the basis that they get paid so well. That’s the very reason the city manager is looking at outsourcing them!

TIFs and Enterprise Zones are tools the city uses to attract private investment and the good jobs that generates. Are TIFs and Enterprise Zones abused? I think so. But that’s not an argument for creating or maintaining in-house services that could be justifiably outsourced.

Peoria Journal Star

GateHouse Media buys Journal Star

4 Comments

GateHouse Media LogoThe speculating is over. GateHouse Media, owners of the Pekin Daily Times and the Canton Daily Ledger, have agreed to buy the Peoria Journal Star and six other daily newspapers owned by Copley Press for $380 million, according to the Journal Star’s report. The best analysis of this so far is on Billy’s blog — here and here.

As I see it, there are two main concerns with this transaction.

One is competition. By buying the papers in Peoria, Galesburg, Springfield, and Lincoln, while already owning newspapers in Pekin and Canton, they practically have a monopoly on central Illinois dailies, with the notable exception of the Bloomington Pantagraph. Media consolidation is generally not a good thing.

On the other hand, it raises the importance of sites like Peoria Pundits and the Peoria Chronicle. Citizen journalism provides more diversity of opinion in the marketplace and allows more opportunity for minority positions to get information out to the public.

The other concern is quality. As GateHouse consolidates its operations among the newly acquired papers, staff is going to get cut — the concern is whether so much staff will be cut that the paper won’t be able to cover as much local content as it does right now. That would be a real shame.

I do a fair amount of criticizing the editorial positions of the Journal Star, but when it comes to local coverage, no other media does a more thorough job. You get things in the paper that you just don’t get anywhere else — obituaries, real estate transactions, exhaustive coverage of professional and local sports including high school sports, arts coverage, neighborhood coverage, police/fire/courts coverage, etc. This is real asset to the city, and should be preserved.

UPDATE: Paul Gordon is singing GateHouse’s praises now. Well, technically he’s just reporting, but it sounds really upbeat, doesn’t it?

Bradley University, City Council, City of Peoria

Supermajority approves Bradley’s institutional plan

2 Comments

Rubber StampA while back, there was a motion to require a supermajority vote to approve institutional zoning boundary changes. That motion failed. As it turns out, that initiative was moot because Bradley’s request to change their boundaries passed 10-1 last night.

There was a lot of talk about the importance of strong neighborhoods last night. Bradley and the neighborhoods have a symbiotic relationship, it was said. Bradley needs the neighborhoods surrounding it to be strong because that’s a reflection on the university. The neighborhoods need the stabilizing force of the university to remain strong neighborhoods, they say.

If that’s true (and I think it is, theoretically), then why is Bradley doing so much damage to their relationship with the neighborhoods by their unilateral behavior? Why are they destabilizing the Arbor District — the neighborhood to their immediate west?

There can be no doubt that the Arbor District has been destabilized, despite any protestations to the contrary. The president of the Arbor District’s neighborhood association, Mr. Wagner, stood up at the meeting and told the council members that in the 800 block of Cooper alone, thirteen homes had been converted from single-family, owner-occupied residences to rentals. Is this Bradley’s idea of a stable neighborhood: One where owners are moving out and absentee landlords are buying up their property?

Bradley likes to portray itself as neighborhood-friendly, but only when it serves their purpose. In my opinion, they’re opportunistic. They point with pride to the public meetings last fall and this February when they “communicated” with the neighbors. But this was one-way communication, not two-way collaboration. The major components of their plan, such as the parking deck, were non-negotiable.

Marjorie Klise got it right when she said that the issue here is not just the ends, but the means. She gave the best analogy of the flawed nature of this process when she addressed the council:

[audio:http://www.peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/Klise-03132007-Council.mp3]

Bradley would just as soon forget about the past and start moving forward from here. Forget about the process that got us here and look at their commitments for the future. Consider their “commitment” to the neighborhood, measured in dollars invested and conditions agreed to, like this one from staff:

Bradley University shall continue the positive ongoing communication strategy with surrounding neighborhood associations. Prior to each implementation of the improvements in the official development plan, Bradley University shall initiate timely discussion with the impacted and nearby neighborhood associations. Bradley University shall work with the neighborhood to stabilize and improve off-premise student housing, increase home ownership in nearby neighborhoods, and encourage a mutually beneficial campus-neighborhood relationship.

That sounds lovely, but there’s no enforcement mechanism. Ask yourself this, if Bradley started stonewalling the neighborhoods tomorrow in direct violation of this clause, what would happen? What could or would the city do? If past actions are any indication, the answer is nothing. Consider that the city couldn’t get Bradley to pave a gravel parking lot for the past 15 years. If they can’t enforce something as simple, obvious, and tangible as that, how are they ever going to enforce something as nebulous as “initiat[ing] timely discussion with the impacted and nearby neighborhood associations”?

By passing this ordinance last night, the city council tacitly endorsed Bradley’s tactics and offered no real assurance to the surrounding neighborhoods that this wouldn’t happen again in another 10-15 years. Instead of “removing doubt,” like Mrs. Klise said the city indicated was the purpose of institutional zoning, last night’s action has increased doubt. And that doubt will lead to more speculation along Cooper and other surrounding streets.

There were a lot of good sound bites about communication and neighborhood stability, but it was all belied by a vote that gave Bradley everything it wanted, and left the neighborhoods with the same empty promises they’ve had all along. Bradley’s plan should have been denied.