County moves ahead with parking deck plans

I attended the Peoria County Board meeting last Thursday night. Among other business, they decided to approve a contract between the County and PSA Dewberry to prepare bid documents for the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum parking deck.

I spoke to the board during their citizen comment period at the beginning of the meeting. I had two concerns: (1) The City of Peoria should be part of the contract since they are the owners of the land on which the County wants to build the parking deck and, eventually, the museum itself. The contract calls for the County to provide site access, for instance. How does a body that doesn’t own the land provide site access? And there were liability insurance questions as well. (2) I reiterated the argument given in this post as to why the County shouldn’t start building until they count the cost and verify they have all the funds necessary to finish it.

When the item came up for discussion, one board member commented as to how our legislators “really came through” for us by getting so much federal funding for the parking deck. There were lots of accolades all around for that. Then board member Prather said we should just “get on with it” [i.e., building the museum]. Board member Widmer started to express his concerns over Lakeview’s most recent financial statement, which he said shows even more pledges have been cancelled, raising more questions about the level of private funding. Several board members laughed at him and cut him off. Then they voted to move ahead with the contract.