It’s alive.

The agreement was cancelled. The developer didn’t perform. The letter had been sent. All the Council needed to do was ratify the action. They could have definitively ended the hotel deal last night. They should have supported the City Manager driven the final stake into the heart of the Wonderful Development.

But they didn’t. They voted to defer the cancellation of the agreement for two weeks. During that time, the City will meet with developer Gary Matthews and try to work out their differences so the project can move forward. If they can’t, then supposedly the Council will end the deal at their next meeting on September 27. (But who can believe that, really? It’s more likely they’ll just defer it again if Matthews misses yet another deadline.)

One must seriously question what difference two more weeks can make considering he’s already nine months past the deadline. But they think they can work things out and allow this project to proceed. They want to bring it back to life.

And who made the motion to keep this project alive? One of the newest council members, Beth Akeson, who ran on a basic services platform in April’s at-large election. Given the opportunity to vote down this expensive white elephant, she led the way in keeping it alive. So it appears it only took five months for her to be assimilated into the Council’s dysfunctional culture of spending gobs of tax money on foolish projects.

On a positive note, though, the other new council member, Chuck Weaver, voted against the deferral, preferring to cancel the project. He can recognize a bad deal when he sees one.

I shouldn’t be surprised by all of this, but I really thought there was a good chance the deal would really die because the Mayor and the City Manager were in favor of killing it. But last night, even the Mayor did an about face and voted for the deferral, speaking in favor of keeping the project alive after all.

Just when there was hope that the City had finally come to its senses, it’s back to business as usual for the Peoria City Council. And the roads continue to crumble. And the police department continues to be stretched thin. But we’ll jump through hoops to give a millionaire developer $37 million of our tax money as a gift.