Daily Archives: March 27, 2007

City Council, City of Peoria

Council Roundup: Boots and Phase II

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Besides the double-taxation outrage that was deferred for a month, there were two other notable items passed by the council tonight:

  • Boots for parking ticket scofflaws — The council passed the ordinance that would allow an immobilization device (commonly referred to as a “boot”) on a car that has five outstanding, unpaid parking tickets on it. There were two amendments made to the ordinance — one was to allow 48 hours (instead of 24) for the tickets to be paid before impounding the car after the boot is applied; the other was to send notice to scofflaws that their car will be booted if they don’t pay up via certified mail instead of just regular mail.
  • Phase II of Riverfront Stonehenge Village approved — Riverfront Village has not been successful. Every year for the past six years, on average, the city has taken $100,000 from the Central Business District TIF and used it to pay for Riverfront Village losses instead of using it to pay off the bonds of the TIF. That’s $600,000 it’s lost over six years.

    Nevertheless, based on the City Manager’s projections, the new three-story office building that developer Mike Wisdom wants to erect on the stilted concrete pad will make that deficit disappear. I’ll believe it when I see it. Projections don’t mean much — the original project was supposed to break even, not lose $100,000 per year. We’ll see if these new projections are any more accurate than the last ones.

    One thing they’re going to do is apparently build a new pedestrian walkway that will take visitors right down to the new museum square. Considering how much money the museum project hasn’t raised, this walkway could be our own personal “bridge to nowhere.”

Update (3/28): A couple of things about the Riverfront Village project. If I could wave a magic wand, I would get rid of it as it’s currently configured. I’m not philosophically opposed to having development along the riverfront, but I think you should be able to actually see the river and enjoy the river view from said development, that it should be pedestrian-friendly, and it should be aesthetically pleasing. But, considering the monstrosity we know as Riverfront Village is already there and we can’t feasibly tear it down, we should take this lemon and try to make lemonade if we can. Perhaps this “Phase II” is a way to do that.

Regarding the pedestrian walkway, it’s come to my attention that my post made it sound like I was saying it would span Water street and the train tracks — no, no, it doesn’t do that. It’s just that it’s supposed to “connect” (the City’s word) with Museum Square eventually. Essentially what it does is provide access to the concrete pad from the Water Street side so you don’t have to walk around to the river side to get up to the businesses on top. It’s hard to argue that this wouldn’t be an improvement. But the council communication made it sound like the purpose was to poise it for connection with Museum Square, which seemed like a spurious use of city money.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria County

City needs to tell County Board we’re sick of double taxation

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On November 6, 1996, the Journal Star reported, “Peoria County voters approved a quarter-cent public safety sales tax Tuesday to pay for jail and warning siren improvements. With 96 percent of precincts in, the measure had 61 percent of the vote. The tally was 37,194 for the tariff and 24,047 against.” The tax went into effect January 1, 1998, and was expected to generate $3.3 million every year.

I wonder how many of those voters would have voted for that tax if they knew then what we know now: it apparently only applies to that part of Peoria County outside the City of Peoria’s corporate limits.

The City Council tonight deferred for one month a request to purchase a new Outdoor Warning System control system for $160,008.15. Why wouldn’t this system be paid for by the County out of that public safety tax? That’s what the City Council would like to know. According to City staff, the county won’t pay for it because the County Administrator said they won’t.

That’s right. Even though the City has almost 62% of the County’s population (112,907 City residents out of 182,328 total residents for the County), and we’re all paying the .25% County Public Safety Tax every time we buy any general merchandise in the City, the County thinks they shouldn’t have to use that revenue to purchase a new control system for our warning sirens, even though we live in Peoria County — even though that was the stated purpose of the tax when it was approved by the voters.

So, all of us City dwellers are already paying for warning sirens, but that money is only being spent by the County Board outside our city limits. Thus, we’re being asked to pay $160K more for the same service within our city limits!

Frankly, that’s an outrage. The City of Peoria is part of Peoria County, and we should be getting the services we’re paying for. We’re not. And it’s not just the warning sirens.

Remember the other thing the public safety tax was supposed to pay for? Warning siren improvements and…. A new county jail. Right. And in addition to City of Peoria residents paying the public safety tax for that, Peoria Police have to pay the County a booking fee of $20 for every inmate they want to house in that jail — the jail that we helped pay for! This last came up in the summer of 2005 when Randy Oliver suggested the City stop paying said fee. Well, we’re still paying it.

Enough is enough. Either city residents should get to stop paying the public safety tax, or we should get some benefit from it. But the current system is broken.

I encourage all of my readers to contact their County Board representative — or all the County Board members, if you want — and ask them to start providing the City the services it deserves for the money we’re paying in sales taxes for public safety. Here is a link to the County Board members and their contact information.