In honor of all the citizens who waited till the midnight hour to address the council, let’s all sing together this classic Wilson Pickett song:
Tonight made me nostalgic for the councils of yore when Bud Grieves was mayor and the council meetings would go late into the night every week.
Tonight’s council meeting ended officially at 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, October 10. And Jonathan Ahl had to be awakened to sign off.
The City Council voted 9-2 7-2 with two abstentions (Jacob and Sandberg) Tuesday to relax one of the conditions on Adams Supermarket owner Ahmad Abud’s liquor license. But instead of granting Abud’s request to only require an off-duty police officer from 8 p.m. to midnight, the City Council went with the Police Chief’s recommendation to require an officer from 5 p.m. to midnight. Still, this is two and a half hours less than the original 2:30 to midnight requirement.
But councilman Clyde Gulley said if Abud didn’t get everything he wanted, he would recommend to Abud that he close his grocery store and leave town. That’s the spirit. Way to retain business, Gulley. Who else have you encouraged to flee your district because they didn’t get everything they wanted from the city?
UPDATE/CORRECTION 10/11/07: Below, I mistakenly cited the City of Peoria operating budget. In fact, the money in question was $200,000 from the capital budget set aside in 2007 for design and engineering of the Sheridan Loucks Triangle specifically and exclusively. $200,000 per year from 2007 to 2011 was requested, but only $200,000 in 2007 was funded. Sorry for the confusion, and thanks to my friend at the city who wishes to remain anonymous for pointing out my error.
In the 2007 City of Peoria budget (pp. 128-129), money was set aside for economic development. Here’s where some of that money was designated to go (emphasis mine):
2. Community Revitalization Activity – Activity cost $238,529
This program is responsible for undertaking projects which promote downtown Peoria and adjacent areas, including the Riverfront and residential neighborhoods, as an attractive location for working, living, and entertainment. Specific activities, to be undertaken, within the next five years, include:
- Create and implement residential enterprise zone.
- Identify and execute initiatives to revitalize the Warehouse District and Southern Gateway.
- Finalize redevelopment plans for the former Sears block to create a cultural and entertainment destination for the Region.
- Identify and redevelop blighted/contaminated property.
- Continue revitalization initiatives in Council-directed areas (Sheridan Loucks, Prospect Road, Renaissance Park).
- Undertake and complete public infrastructures improvements to support business and industry.
So, at tonight’s council meeting, Councilwoman Barbara Van Auken brought forth a motion to spend some of that money to enter into a contract with the Farnsworth Group, Inc. “for the DESIGN of the SHERIDAN TRIANGLE BUSINESS DISTRICT ENHANCEMENT from McCLURE AVENUE to HANSSLER PLACE, in an Amount Not to Exceed $183,750.00.” This is in the Sheridan Road form district that was created by the council back in May of this year.
In order for form districts to be successful, there are two things that need to take place. First, there needs to be a form-based code — a pre-planned area that provides a consistent and predictable development pattern. That’s the private investment side of the equation. Second, improvements need to be made to the streets and sidewalks in order to make it an attractive area both for redevelopment by investors and patronage by potential customers. That’s the public investment side of the equation.
Plans for improving the intersection and streetscape in this area were developed during a charrette hosted by Farrell-Madden Associates. You can see the results of that charrette by clicking on the picture to the right. You’ll notice the pictures show wider sidewalks, street trees, intersection changes, etc. The next step is to develop a project plan “splitting the area into logical phases for construction” with estimates and specifications for each phase. That’s what Councilwoman Van Auken asked for this evening.
But the council voted it down 6-5. Ardis, Turner, Gulley, Jacob, Montelongo, and Spears Spain voted against it. Van Auken, Sandberg, Manning, Spain Spears, and Nichting voted for it.
Why? I’m certain I don’t know. It appears they voted it down because it’s too close to the next budget cycle. Councilman Clyde Gulley kept talking about the Griswold Improvement Project — for which there is $0 in the 2007 budget — that the council voted against funding earlier this year because it would have been a budget amendment. He somehow thinks the two projects are analogous, and since the council voted down his street improvement project, he’s going to vote against everyone else’s. Other council members said we need to set priorities before spending that much money — as if they didn’t already set the priorities for 2007 in the 2007 budget.
So now, evidently the money set aside for improving the Heart of Peoria area this year will not get spent.
The Journal Star’s editorial today is dedicated to criticizing Councilwoman Van Auken and her remark that the city should sell the Gateway building because “Government should not own buildings or property except for government use.” Granted, that wasn’t the best argument she could have given, and the editors of the Journal Star have fun dissecting her logic.
But what the editors don’t do is give any good reason for keeping the Gateway building. Here’s the best they can come up with:
And we’d add that, in fact, Gateway does serve a civic purpose: That building and its restrooms were built for the benefit of the public, specifically visitors at riverfront events.
The Gateway Building is a convention and banquet facility. The only way the public gets any benefit out of it is if they rent it from the Peoria Park District for somewhere between $600 and $1,500. The public is not under-served for convention and banquet space. Besides the River Station, Packard Plaza, the Pere Marquette, and a host of other private places to rent, there’s always the gigantic expansion of the Civic Center. How much more tax-subsidized banquet space do we need?
The only things the “visitors at riverfront events” really “benefit” from for free are the public restrooms. So the question is, don’t you think $5.5 million is kind of a steep price for public restrooms? I think so. I bet if they could sell the building, they could use a small fraction of the proceeds to build some really sweet public restrooms elsewhere along the riverfront.
Here’s part of an e-mail that was forwarded to me today, apparently written by Recreational Trail Advocates leader George Burrier:
We have reached a crisis situation in our trail development that requires your help now! Central Illinois Railroad (CIRY) is proceeding to rehabilitate the Kellar Branch by replacing rails and ties. It expects to be operating over the line by November according to a statement made by the foreman of the work crew. The Peoria City legal department states that it has no power to prevent this work from continuing. Please write or call Mayor Jim Ardis and your council member to ask for an explanation of why this is happening and what action Peoria intends to take to prevent the Kellar Branch from being used for rail traffic, why there is no operating agreement and why Peoria is not receiving rent for using the right-of-way. […]
The Peoria Park District has already made a formal presentation showing how a shared right-of-way is not physically practical and financially exceeds the current funding available.
This is hysterical. The trail advocates all marched down to the council meeting on February 20 and demanded that the council support Central Illinois Railroad so the city could “keep their trail options open.” Now they’re shocked — shocked, I say — that a railroad company would want to, oh I don’t know, run a railroad on that line. Gee, who’da thunk?
Now I guess they want the city to kick Central Illinois Railroad off the tracks as well. I mean, what other option is there? The legal department has already said that the city can’t do anything to stop them from running trains on that line. But the Trail Advocates are already on record supporting Central Illinois Railroad! Ha ha ha!
What the trail advocates fail to understand is that the rail carrier has a legal obligation to provide rail service over that line. There are shippers who want to use the line, and there is no pending request for discontinuance of the line (and hasn’t been for almost a year now). So what the trail advocates are essentially asking the city to do is conspire to keep Central Illinois Railroad from following the law.
Open your eyes, trail advocates. The railroad isn’t standing in the way of your trail. The Park District is standing in your way. While it may be physically impractical to share certain parts of the railroad right-of-way, that’s not true of the whole stretch. And those parts that are physically impractical can be worked around by putting that portion of the trail on-street or using one of those glorified sidewalks like they’ve already installed along Pioneer Parkway, University, and Sommer.
They can do it; they simply refuse. And instead, they’re wasting everyone’s time and a whole lot of taxpayer money fighting for the railroad right of way. How many more years are they going to keep fighting? How much more money will they waste? If they took all the money the city has paid in legal fees over the past 15 years and used it to build the trail instead, it would have been done years ago.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — the trail advocates have lost sight of their goal. If the goal is to get a trail, then they should give up trying to get the railroad abandoned and simply work around it. It will be quicker and cheaper. Instead, it appears that the trail is only a secondary goal — the primary goal is to get rid of the railroad line, and there’s no justification for that.
The Zoning Commission currently meets the first Thursday of each month at 1:00 p.m. The Ad Hoc Committee on Commissions determined that this may not be the most convenient time for property owners to come down to City Hall and express concerns regarding a zoning change that would affect their property, and recommended the hold at least some of their meetings in the evening. The Zoning Commission voted to keep everything status quo.
So now the Planning and Growth Director and a couple of council members are insisting. On the agenda for tonight is a proposal that would change the meeting time from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. on a one-year trial basis, just for 2008.
The city did solicit input regarding the time change from several groups, and these are the results:
Staff surveyed three groups – neighborhood associations, citizens who had received notices of CZC public hearings within the last three months, and current members of the Zoning Commission. We asked if they would be more likely to attend the 6 pm meeting and if they would be interested in serving on the CZC if it met at 6pm instead of 1 pm. The results of the survey are summarized below and included in the survey report, Attachment B.
- Neiqhborhoods – 85 groups contacted, 16 responded (19%)
- 13 (81%) favored evening meetings
- 1 (6%) did not
- 2 (13%) did not respond directly to the question
- 3 were interested in serving on the CZC and 3 others needed more information
- Citizens who had received notices of CZC public hearings the last three months – 253 citizens contacted, 7 responded (3%)
- 3 (43%) favored evening meetings
- 4 (57%) did not
- 1 interested in serving on CZC
- Current Zoninq Commissioners – 6 responded (100%)
- 1 favored evenings meeting
- 5 did not
In addition, Council Member input was sought. Three favored evening meetings, and two others provided comment or questions.
The neighborhood groups appear to have spoken loud and clear — almost 20% responded, and they were overwhelmingly in favor of the evening meeting schedule. Only 3% of those citizens who receive notices even responded, which leads me to believe that they don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other.
According to a Journal Star report, “If the City Council changes things on Tuesday, at least two members [Richard Unes and Greg Hunziker] say they will quit.” The reason? “We’d be sitting here until 9 p.m. or 10 o’clock in the evening,” Unes is reported as saying.
Well, of course I understand that sentiment; it’s not exactly the most exciting way to spend an evening. But it is only one evening per month. And frankly, they should value the time of the citizens they’re appointed to serve more than their own time — that’s why they call it “public service.” I don’t expect that argument to get them much sympathy from the council, either, since they meet at 6:15 every other Tuesday (on average).
Also, threatening to resign doesn’t carry a huge punch when you consider there’s no shortage of people willing to take their place. Since Chad Bixby resigned, the Heart of Peoria Commission has no representation on the Zoning Commission, so one or two HOP/C members need to be added, plus there are three neighborhood group members who have expressed interest.
In the absence of any good argument against changing the time, I think they should go ahead and try the 6:00 meetings for a year and see how they work.
From a press release:
ALLEN MAYER SCHEDULES NEWS CONFERENCE TO FORMALLY ANNOUNCE CAMPAIGN FOR STATE REPRESENTATIVE
Peoria County Board member Allen Mayer will hold a news conference on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 to make official his campaign for the Democratic nomination for State Representative from the 92nd District.
WHO: Allen Mayer
WHAT: News conference to formally announce candidacy for the Democratic nomination for 92nd District State Representative
WHEN: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 11:00 a.m.
WHERE: Peoria County Board room, 4th floor of Peoria County Courthouse, 324 Main Street, Peoria
Adams Supermarket owner Ahmad Abud (aka Hussein Alsalahi) insisted that his South Side grocery store needed to sell liquor to be successful, and was willing to agree to a number of conditions in order to secure his liquor license. One of those conditions was having an off-duty Peoria Police officer act as a security guard from 2 p.m. to midnight.
Sales haven’t been as good as Abud thought they would be, so he’s looking at reducing costs — and one of those costs is the off-duty police officer. He wants to only have an officer working security from 8 p.m. to midnight, and he has the support of First District Councilman Clyde Gulley.
The Police Department, however, thinks that won’t be sufficient and is recommending a third option — that the police security officer start at 5 p.m. They further recommend that this be on a 12-month trial basis, and that if there’s any trouble, the full 2 p.m. to midnight condition be reinstated.
Gulley and others will complain that this is unfair because it’s not required of any other grocery stores with liquor licenses. That’s a valid complaint. But on the other hand, Abud did agree to it. If he thought it was unfair, he should have stated that early in the process, like when he appeared before the Liquor Commission initially or when his license came up for approval before the council. Since he enthusiastically agreed to the conditions, and is now trying to get out of one of them, it makes people nervous that he will continue to chip away at the conditions until his store is nothing more than a glorified liquor store.
My sincere condolences to the Chicago Cubs and their fans on losing the National League Division Series. I know there’s a lot of depression right now, but there is some good news, thanks to Lou Piniella’s forward-thinking strategy:
Carlos Zambrano is fully rested and ready for his start on Sunday.
Clare Jellick has written on her blog what we all knew, but that the school board wouldn’t admit before now — that the district has money to build two new schools, one on the East Bluff and one in the North Valley. They just don’t want to build two schools:
At the end of Thursday’s forum, I approached School Board president David Gorenz to talk about the available funding. He recognized that the [$40 million worth of] PBC money is out there but said the district wants to use it for “other projects throughout the district.”
And of course, since the money they get from the Public Building Commission (PBC) is available without a referendum, there’s no accountability to the taxpayers on how it’s spent. (You can thank Aaron Schock for pushing through the bill that made it possible.)
So what are these “other projects throughout the district” on which they want to spend the PBC money? Well, of the $28 million of PBC funds they’ve already requested, $21 million is for the Harrison replacement school. According to a Sept. 29 Journal Star article:
$5.2 million in PBC bonding authority will be used to update the former Social Security Administration building at 2628 N. Knoxville Ave. It will house a program for at-risk youths.
The district’s Central Office, 3202 N. Wisconsin Ave., will be renovated with $1.8 million from the PBC. [emphasis mine]
So, $1.8 million for the district’s office building. Remember that. Let’s go back to Clare’s blog for a second and look at something District Treasurer Guy Cahill has said:
The district is planning one large school at 120,000 square feet that would cost between $20 and $21 million. Two smaller schools would add at least $1.2 million to that construction budget [emphasis mine], district treasurer Guy Cahill has said.
Setting aside for a moment the folly of acquiring another building that needs over $5 million in renovation when the district already has plenty of buildings — including the old Blaine-Sumner school they recently renovated for more office space — and in fact are supposedly trying to get rid of buildings, let’s just look at their office building rehab plans. I think it’s safe to conclude that the district feels it’s more important to spend $1.8 million to fix up their office building than spend $1.2 million to build two smaller schools, which is what the parents and teachers want, what their own Master Facilities Plan called for, and which has been proven to improve student achievement.
So much for interim Associate Deputy Superintendent Fischer’s statement at the last community forum that “our students deserve the very best.” I guess they only deserve the very best of what’s left over after our administrators get their offices renovated and redecorated.