Daily Archives: August 10, 2007

City of Peoria, Peoria Police

Take wrong ticket? Fired. Kill someone while boating drunk? Reinstated.

8 Comments

I just about fell out of my chair this morning when I read that Troy Parker has been put back on the police force by an arbitrator, albeit on unpaid administrative leave. Parker, you’ll recall, was fired for driving a boat while intoxicated, crashing the boat, and killing Damon Teverbaugh.

So, let me see if I understand how things work here. If you get drunk and kill your best friend in a boating accident, you should be allowed to stay on the force until convicted in a court of law — internal investigations are insufficient to fire you read more about the DWI Criminal Law Center who can help you get representation. But if you take a winning ticket at the Par-a-dice by accident because you thought it was your own, then make restitution immediately upon finding out you were mistaken, and no charges are filed — you’re fired anyway. Case closed.

Something is not right here. I don’t know if it’s racism or just that Dunnigan was disliked by the wrong people, but you can’t tell me there isn’t an inequity in punishment here. Why is Troy Parker still on the force and Marshall Dunnigan isn’t?

City of Peoria

City evidently looking to outsource code enforcement

14 Comments

The City of Peoria has been looking for ways to save money, and one of those ways is to consider outsourcing certain functions currently done in-house. When City Manager Randy Oliver looked at outsourcing the mechanics that work on the city’s fleet of vehicles, he met with a tremendous amount of push-back. Now it looks like another department is on the list for outsourcing: code enforcement.

Take a look at this Request for Qualifications (RFQ) on the International Code Council website:

Job ID: 2331984
Position Title: Property Maintenance Code Enforcement and Administration
Company Name: City of Peoria
Job Function: Code Compliance/Enforcement Officer
Entry Level: No
Location(s): City of Peoria, Illinois, United States
Posted: August 8, 2007
Job Type: Contract
Job Duration: 1-2 Years
Min Education: None
Min Experience: 1-2 Years
Required Travel: None

Request for Qualifications
City of Peoria, IL invites experienced companies interested in administering and enforcing property maintenance codes to respond to this RFQ. Peoria, IL currently enforces the 2003 International Property Maintenance Code, with adopted amendments. Peoria has a diverse population of 112,000, which includes many older neighborhoods, as well as continuous growth with numerous new subdivisions under construction. Interested companies would be expected to provide housing and environmental enforcement, to include, but not limited to, tagging vehicles for towing, posting abate notices, issuing work orders, issuing housing violation notices for admittance to Housing Court, issuance of citations and follow up appearances in Housing Court, as well as Peoria County Circuit Court. If you would like more information, please call the Inspections Office at (309) 494-8626. Interested organizations should submit information no later than 4:00 p.m. Friday, August 31, 2007.

Please submit your response to:

City of Peoria
John Kunski
456 Fulton St., Suite 401
Peoria, IL 61602

Peoria currently has 21 employees according to the City’s website (2 managers, 13 inspectors, and 6 support staff members). So outsourcing this department could conceivably save considerable money. Other cities have done it, to mixed reviews. At least one blogger has suggested it.

I think most people would agree that we need more code enforcement officers because of the huge work load out there (right now, it’s my understanding that code enforcement is complaint-based), but the city simply doesn’t have the money to hire more and more people with salaries and benefits. So maybe this is the solution to both problems. On the other hand, if they do outsource it, we’d better not have to report our complaints to a call center in India.