The Peoria City Council has a library liaison. It used to be John Morris, but since he’s left the council, there’s a new liaison: Gary Sandberg. An inspired choice, if you ask me, considering they’re planning to spend a whole bunch of taxpayer money on capital improvements.

Today’s Word on the Street gives a good example of why you want someone like Gary in there — to keep them honest, to expose back-room deals, and to make sure the public’s business is being handled properly:

…At-large Councilman Gary Sandberg, the library’s new council liaison, discovered that the library board’s building committee voted May 15 to recommend that the full board hire PSA Dewberry to program what will go in the new and expanded facilities. That vote was a full two weeks before local architects were asked to submit their programming proposals. Further, they were only given a one-day turnaround.

This is what you call “going through the motions” or complying with the letter, but not the spirit, of the law. The library board president (Mike McKenzie) defends the board’s actions because he “truly [doesn’t] believe [they] would have come to a different result.” So they sent it out to bid just as a formality. In reality, PSA Dewberry was preselected. The firms who wasted their time submitting bids were LZT Associates, APACE, and Farnsworth Group.

This is an inauspicious start to the library building program.