Monthly Archives: May 2010

City of Peoria, Peoria Area CVB, Peoria Civic Center

Civic Center loses wrestling tournament to Springfield

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The Illinois Kids Wrestling Federation’s annual Jon Davis IKWF Kids Open will be moving to Springfield for 2011 and 2012. The Peoria Civic Center has hosted the event for more than a decade. The contest is held every January and has brought in anywhere from 1,300 to 2,100 wrestlers annually. It was held at Redbird Arena until 1995 when the group left to protest ISU’s decision to drop wrestling as a varsity sport.

In e-mails forwarded to The Peoria Chronicle by a source who wishes to remain anonymous, Sports Sales Manager Chad Mentzer of the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau wrote, “After talking with Mike Urwin with IKWF, there are two reasons why we lost this piece of business…. #1 Hotels. Average cost [in Springfield] is approximately $20 cheaper per night. #2 Facility rental fees. Projected fees in Springfield are, based upon expenses from 2009, considerably less than the Peoria Civic Center.” The group sought a block of 400 room nights for the one-day event.

Joel Green, Director of Sales and Marketing at the Hotel Pere Marquette responded to Mentzer’s e-mail by saying that his hotel had “lowered our rates considerably for 2011… after holding our rates for 2009 and 2010.” January rates are historically low to begin with in the Peoria hospitality industry. Regarding the venue, Debbie Ritschel, General Manager of the Peoria Civic Center, added, “In this particular case the fact that they [Springfield] will not have to cover ice in their arena may have also been a factor.”

In April, Holiday Inn City Centre General Manager Sami Qureshi stated that the top reason conventions skip Peoria is due to the Civic Center’s rate structure. This recent convention loss and the reasons cited by the IKWF appear to support that contention.

The loss of this event also highlights the competitive nature of hotel room pricing. If the Pere Marquette lowered its room rates below 2009 levels and Springfield was still able to offer rates $20 per night lower, one wonders how a four- or five-star Marriott hotel will be able to offer competitive rates that are high enough to pay off the debt service on a $37 million bond taken out by the City of Peoria.

City of Peoria

Changes to neighborhood zoning considered

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From this week’s Issues Update for the City of Peoria:

NEIGHBORHOOD ZONING TOPICS MEETING. Staff is currently working on text changes that address several topics relevant to the appearance and quality of life in neighborhoods. Those topics include the following issues:

  • Width of driveways and location of parking spaces
  • Number and location for storage of recreational vehicles
  • Front yard fence permit process
  • Regulations for group living facilities (proposed changes to regulations for halfway houses, recovery homes, and residential substance abuse treatment facilities)
  • Transfers of property

Since these topics impact or have the ability to impact all neighborhoods in the City, the Planning Department is inviting all City neighborhood associations to a meeting on Thursday, June 3, 2010, at 6:00 P.M., in the City Council Chambers to hear current regulations, issues, research, and possible options for the group to discuss and provide feedback to staff. Text changes will be finalized after this meeting and sent to the Zoning Commission for public hearing and then to the City Council for final consideration.

City of East Peoria

Everyone’s atwitter about Bass Pro Shops coming to EP

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You’d think it was the biggest thing to hit Illinois since Caterpillar decided to locate their world headquarters here. A large chain store — Bass Pro Shops — is going to open a location in East Peoria by the river next year. Not many details are available about the deal, but the Journal Star article does say this:

The store will be about 145,000 square feet – almost twice the size of the Kohl’s department store on Main Street – and take up just more than 20 acres of the 35-acre site. It will produce about 300 full-time jobs when completed, and at least another 200 full-time workers will be hired during construction…. [T]he deal between the city and Bass Pro Shops is unusual in that East Peoria will own the land, building, parking lot and road leading to the store. Bass Pro Shops will be the tenant.

The city will issue $40 million in bonds to pay for the project, which will be paid off through sales and hotel/motel taxes. Further details about the deal will be released at upcoming council meetings.

Readers of my blog will not be surprised that I don’t get all excited about big box stores. According to glassdoor.com, most local jobs at Bass Pro Stores are in the $8-$12/hr. range, or about $17,000 to $25,000 per year. These aren’t what one would call “living wage” jobs. The construction jobs will be good, but temporary.

Of more interest to me is the City of East Peoria’s development plan, since it will undoubtedly be used as a benchmark for future City of Peoria projects, unfortunately. While the amount — $40 million — is the same, it’s really not the same deal as Peoria’s downtown hotel plan. Peoria is giving the $40 million to a private developer who will then own the whole block and be responsible for the maintenance of all the structures; furthermore the property will be on the property tax rolls. East Peoria, in contrast, will own the Bass Pro Shops building and grounds, making Bass Pro merely a tenant, meaning they will get no property tax revenue on those twenty acres. So East Peoria is now in the land development business, evidently. I wonder if East Peoria will be charging its tenant any rent. It appears they won’t, since the paper says the bonds will be paid off with taxes.

On the plus side, Bass Pro Shops actually has a track record of drawing in a lot of local and regional customers, unlike the current hotel and museum market. So sales tax revenue is more likely to go up. Most of that additional sales tax revenue will come from East Peoria, but Peoria will get some spillover, which is good.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Mayor

Mayor’s directive elevates district reps’ power

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It’s no secret that district council representatives are given a lot of deference on “district specific business” already. Most of the council votes in lock step with the district councilman and are happy to defer items for no other reason than the district council person requested it.

Now Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis wants to take it a step further. He sent this e-mail to council members on Thursday, May 6:

In an effort to insure that agenda items are ready for council debate I have asked the Manager to put a sign-off line on council communications for district council-members to approve district specific agenda items before they are placed on the agenda. This will not only insure that the district member is ready for the item to come forward it should also minimize deferrals because they are, in fact, ready for council consideration.

Thanks in advance to District Members for assuring your district specific business is approved by you for placement on the agenda.

That means that an item will not even be put on the agenda unless the district representative approves it. To state it another way, under this system, items can be kept off the agenda by the will of a single city council representative. For instance, if Clyde Gulley didn’t want the Washington Street/Route 24 changes to come before the council, he could decline to sign off on this district-specific item, which would keep it off the agenda in perpetuity — even if all the other council members wanted to move forward on it.

The Mayor’s directive gives a special privilege to district council representatives, allowing them to dictate the will of the council on items impacting their districts. But where does the Mayor get the power to make such a directive? The City’s Municipal Code and Council Rules don’t confer this authority on the Mayor, nor does any ordinance preclude any council member from submitting an item for the agenda.

Section 2-31 of the municipal code states, “All reports, communications, ordinances, resolutions, contract documents or other matters to be submitted to the council shall, not later than 10:00 a.m. on Friday preceding each council meeting, be delivered to the city clerk, whereupon the city clerk shall immediately arrange a list of such matters according to the order of business and furnish each member of the council, the mayor, the city manager and the corporation counsel with a copy of the same prior to the council meeting and as far in advance of the meeting as time for preparation will permit.” Nothing in there requires the proposed agenda item go through the Mayor or the district council representative. It merely has to be delivered to the city clerk.

It would appear that the Mayor cannot make such changes without a majority vote of the council… unless, of course, the council voluntarily consents to the Mayor’s missive, abdicating their responsibility to represent all of Peoria, not just their own fiefdoms.

General News

Ancient oak felled to make way for yet another strip mall

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Here’s a picture of a large, beautiful old oak tree that has stood for at least one hundred years, maybe even two or three hundred. This picture was taken just a few weeks ago on Big Hollow Road, next to Michael’s, across the street from Barnes & Noble. Here’s what the same parcel looks like now:

The property was recently sold, and now it’s being cleared to make way for a new strip mall (because if there’s one thing Peoria needs, it’s another strip mall). The City of Peoria has no tree protection ordinance, although attempts have been made to establish one for many years. Eleven years ago, a giant white oak was removed from the Michael’s property, even though it was in the corner of the lot and not obstructing anything, and even though the developer assured neighbors it would be spared. Now another ancient oak is gone.

I don’t know if a tree ordinance is a good idea or not. The prospect raises a number of concerns about property rights and government power. I guess I just wish people would, of their own accord, value old trees like this and not so cavalierly uproot them in the name of “progress.” Commercial development that incorporated natural features of the land would be so much more interesting. But there seems to be a blueprint for strip malls that all developers follow. As a result, we’re treated to the same, generic look wherever we go, not just in Peoria, but throughout most of the country. It’s a shame we can’t be more creative… and less destructive.

City Council, City of Peoria, Kellar Branch

Liveblogging the City Council 5/11/2010

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Here we go again! It’s Tuesday night in beautiful downtown Peoria in historic Peoria City Hall, Council Chambers. All the council members and the Mayor are present except for Montelongo, and they will be disposing of the following agenda. Be sure to refresh this post often as I’ll be updating it throughout the evening.

The business portion of the meeting starts at 6:41, after 25 minutes of proclamations.

Continue reading Liveblogging the City Council 5/11/2010 →

Peoria Public Schools

D150 public comments on the web for all to hear

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The Peoria School District 150 Board of Education decided last month to discontinue live broadcasts of the school board meetings on public access cable television starting in May. Instead, they are going to show the meeting a week delayed, and they’re going to excise the public comment portion of the meeting — that is, they are going to censor part of the official meeting because they don’t want the public to see it.

However, since the school board meetings are open meetings, recordings can be made by any member of the public. Former Journal Star employee Elaine Hopkins made an audio recording of the public comments and posted it on her blog, Peoria Story. Kudos to her for keeping the public informed while the school board tries to keep the public in the dark. There are still a few kinks to work out; for instance, she’s uploaded the file in WAV format, which is uncompressed and makes for a hefty download. Once she learns to compress it into a reasonably-sized mp3 file, we’ll really be in business.

It’s funny. These comments used to be available only to those who watched the meeting live on Comcast Cable in Peoria. Now they’re available on demand to anyone in the world who wants to hear them. The school board’s attempt to suppress the broadcast of these comments has resulted in even wider distribution! I love irony.

Kellar Branch, Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star shamelessly defends secrecy in government

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The Journal Star Editorial Board had this to say about the recondite Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation, created by Tom Leiter:

Leiter’s group was never formally hired by anybody. But it’s not as if he acted without the knowledge of the governments involved, whose elected representatives had by majority vote publicly endorsed this rail-to-trail conversion, and who could have asked him to stop at any time over the last couple of years. Some feel he gave the impression that this effort was being done pro bono; he says he did volunteer his personal time, as did others, and that his organization is merely recovering its expenses, which includes work done by his law firm and by outside counsel. The risk of borrowing the money for the escrow account is his group’s, not local taxpayers. Leiter got the job done here when all other efforts at breaking the gridlock had failed.

The whole editorial is one long ends-justifies-the-means argument, with this paragraph being the apex. According to the brain trust at 1 News Plaza, there’s nothing wrong with having a third-party organization do the public’s business in private — so private that not even our elected representatives knew what was going on. It’s okay to have that organization then come to the public body and ask for reimbursement of $1.25 million in expenses after the fact, when the line is abandoned, the railroad companies paid off, and it’s too late for the elected representatives to say “no” without putting the whole plan into legal limbo. Basically it’s okay to have third parties obligating taxpayers to the best deal they can secretly haggle.

…as long as the newspaper agrees with the end result, of course. It’s not hard to imagine how much ink would be spit onto the editorial page in outrage had this kind of chicanery been done for a project with which the newspaper disagreed. I guess when the newspaper is opposed, it’s corruption. But when the newspaper agrees, it’s just “the way the sausage is made.” Ho-hum. It’s just the way politics works. Nothing to see here; move along!

The fact is, this is bad public policy. Even trail supporters see it. As much as they want the trail, they aren’t in favor of obligating taxpayers to an underhanded payoff to get it. The public’s business should be done in public. Sure, there are times when councils have to go into closed session — but it’s still the elected public representatives who are deliberating in those instances, and any final action to expend money still has to be done in open session. What we have here is a deal that was done not by elected representatives entirely in secret, with the final price tag revealed at the end of a process that is past the point of no return.

The Journal Star has sunk to a new low in defending this kind of deceitful tactic. It doesn’t matter if they’re for the trail or against it, this process is wrong and should not be condoned. They’re a newspaper, for crying out loud. The fourth estate is defending secrecy in government! Journal Star Editorial Board, have you no shame?

City Council, City of Peoria, Kellar Branch, Peoria Park District, Village of Peoria Heights

Taxpayers to be soaked $1,250,969 for non-essential trail — and that’s just the beginning

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I’ve been saying it ever since the sphynxlike Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation first appeared that its clandestine efforts were going to cost the taxpayers lots of money. Now we know just how much: $1,250,969.

That’s the amount of money in taxpayer dollars the Peoria Park District is going to pony up to buy out the leasehold interests of two rail companies on the Kellar Branch rail line: Pioneer Railcorp and Central Illinois Railroad. Doing so will free up the middle portion of the line to be converted into a recreational trail.

But that’s the beginning. After they buy out the leasehold interests, they still have to actually build the trail, which will cost untold millions itself. In 2006, the estimated cost of conversion was just under $6.5 million.

But there are other costs. The City of Peoria actually owns the Kellar Branch. So in order for this plan to go through, the City has to give the Kellar Branch (technically, the easement) to the Park District. The appraised value of the Kellar Branch is $2,872,500. So how much is the City planning to ask for this valuable asset? $1. That’s right, $1. And the City doesn’t even get the salvage rights for the rails.

Perfect timing. Right on the heels of a City Council retreat where we learned the City is facing a $10-11 million budget deficit and is in dire need of a new revenue source, our illustrious City Council will likely approve a request next Tuesday to squander a nearly $3 million asset. Pioneer Railcorp at one time offered the city $750,000 for the line, but the City turned them down. No, they were holding out for the Park District’s winning bid of $1.

Anyone who thought that the Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation was buying out the rail carriers’ leasehold interests out of charity was naive. Included in that $1.25 million is $140,800 for the Corporation’s “expenses.” No list of expenses is given. I suspect it includes a little reward from the Park District for finally acquiring what they’ve coveted for so long.

For those of you keeping score, let’s see what our new grand total is for tax dollars wasted on non-essentials/poor investments:

“Wonderful Development” (Downtown Hotel) $37,000,000
Peoria Riverfront Museum $34,700,000
Firefly Energy Loan Guarantee $6,000,000
Civic Center Expansion $55,000,000
Kellar Branch acquisition $1,250,969
Kellar Branch conversion $6,441,738
Total $140,392,707

It’s like they say, pretty soon you’re talking real money. But we can’t afford to fix sidewalks or resurface streets, or fully staff our police and fire departments. Yes, I know I’m conflating expenses from several municipal organizations (City, County, Park District), but the fact is that all that tax money comes from the same source: our pockets. The Park District raising its property tax levy puts pressure on the City not to raise its levy. It’s all related.

Perhaps we could take those toll booths we’re removing from Riverfront Village and install them at the entrances to the Kellar Branch trail. Given the number of users predicted by the Journal Star, we should be able to solve our entire budget deficit by charging a modest toll.

City Council, City of Peoria

Council faces grim budget realities

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The Peoria City Council had their annual retreat Wednesday night at the Peoria NEXT Innovation Center on West Main street. All the council members, the Mayor, and City department heads attended the retreat.

I was unable to attend the entire retreat, but did get there for roughly half of it. Based on materials distributed at the meeting, revenues are down again, and they’re expecting another ten to eleven million dollar deficit. They also appear to be anticipating a possible decline in population. One of the slides labeled “Key Expense Drivers” stated, “5,000 Loss in Population equals Approximately $500,000/yr of per Capita Income — 1 person = $100/capita.”

The Journal Star reports that revenues are down for a few reasons: (1) “reduction in property tax revenues because of a slump in the city’s equalized assessed valuation” caused by “assessment devaluations of commercial properties throughout the city,” (2) “January’s sales tax figures dropped by 10 percent from their November and December numbers,” indicating a troubling trend, and (3) “state income tax revenues are down from a year ago.” Nothing but bad news from the finance director.

By the end of the meeting, the following “next steps” were established, which are nearly identical to last year’s budget process:

  1. City Manager: Sit down with the professionals and come back with a budget that shows the cuts that can be made.
  2. Look at all forms of revenue growth — everything is on the table.
  3. Department heads to sit with staff and consider additional budget modifications.
  4. Challenge to the staff to consider new, alternative, and creative forms of service delivery to reduce costs/enhance revenues.

Translation: Expect higher taxes and/or fees, the possible invention of new fees, and more cuts in services. The Mayor especially made it clear that he believes the budget hole cannot be filled by cutting alone — new revenue will have to be generated.