All posts by C. J. Summers

I am a fourth-generation Peorian, married with three children.
Kellar Branch

Rail/trail committee being formed

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City Manager Randy Oliver updated city council members this week on plans to form a committee to look at the feasibility of building a trail alongside the Kellar Branch rail line:

Representatives of the City, Park District, Peoria Heights, and TriCounty Regional Planning met with Central Illinois Rail and Pioneer Rail in separate meetings as requested by the Mayor and Council. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the possibility of side-by-side rail and trail for the Kellar Branch. The result of these meetings is a recommendation that a task force be formed by the Village of Peoria Heights and the City of Peoria, with each community nominating three members, to determine by April 1, 2008, whether side-by-side rail and trail is feasible or not. The feasibility is intended to consider both engineering feasibility and financial feasibility. The Committee has suggested that three members each be appointed by the Mayor of Peoria and Peoria Heights. The meetings will be noticed and opened to the public. It is proposed that the Committee draw up the railroads, the Park District, City staff and outside technical resources if necessary to make a recommendation to the two cities.

Journal Star city beat reporter John Sharp has been following up on this story and found out some interesting info:

  • The City hasn’t chosen their representatives yet. “Oliver said the Peoria City Council could decide by its Jan. 8 meeting if this is the direction the city wants to go and, if so, who should serve on the committee.”
  • Peoria Heights has. “Peoria Heights Mayor Mark Allen said he plans to have his Village Board vote on his three recommendations by Jan. 2. Allen said he will recommend Peoria Heights residents Vern Kimberlin and Sherryl Carter serve on the committee along with Junction City owner Alexis Khazzam.”
  • It’s estimated to take “about $10,000” for the committee “to be able to go out and get their technical questions answered by someone this committee feels is unbiased.”
  • Hopefully, if everyone agrees, the cost will be distributed among the entities on the committee. “The city of Peoria plans to contribute $2,500, and various other parties – including Peoria Heights [and Pioneer Railcorp] – will also be asked to contribute.”

One of the proposed Peoria Heights participants, Alexis Khazzam, was interviewed recently on WEEK-TV. He feels the city should take a “tougher stance” and should charge the rail carriers rent to use the line. His strategy is, “By charging the rail companies rent, it’ll make them say, ‘if we only make $50,000 operating or serving the customer that exists on it, it might not be worth it for us to pay $180,000 for rent a year,’ or it might spur them to say, ‘okay, we know what we need to pay; we need to increase revenue.’ At least it’ll be out of the city’s hands and in the trail advocates’ hands and the rail advocates’ hands and let that be a fair fight.”

First of all, the underlying assumption here is that keeping the line open for one customer is not justified. Unfortunately for trail advocates, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) ruled just the opposite — keeping the line open for even one customer is justified in this case. Thus, any effort by the Cities, as rail owners, to force closure by charging excessive rent will similarly be struck down by the STB.

Secondly, as was stated in the WEEK report, Pioneer maintains that its contract with the City is still in force, and the City claims that it expired under its own terms in 2004. That contract called for the city to charge the rail carrier $1 per year in rent to operate the line. The city also has a signed land use agreement with the Park District that charges them the same amount — $1 per year — to rent the land if it’s able to be used for a recreational trail.

I would consider this rail/trail committee to be the first real progress we’ve seen in over a decade on the Kellar Branch controversy. Hopefully the committee will come up with a solution that works for all parties involved.

City Council, City of Peoria

Last council roundup of 2007

Manning and Spears were both absent. The meeting started with a couple of annexation agreements, both of which were approved by everyone except Sandberg, as usual. Sandberg continues to warn that annexing land with low density requirements is only going to exacerbate Peoria’s problems, but the council is undaunted. They believe Peoria can annex itself into prosperity, even though it’s been trying to do that for 40 years unsuccessfully.

The consent agenda passed unanimously, with one notable exception (more on that later). Some of the interesting parts of the consent agenda that passed:

  • The city extended its franchise agreement with Insight/Comcast for up to 180 days. The franchise agreement expired in April 2006 and has been temporarily extended numerous times since. Comcast’s takeover of Insight will be complete in January; after the downsizing, rightsizing, rebranding, and general mayhem has subsided, no doubt they’ll finally decide whether to get a city or state franchise license.

  • A sidewalk cafe on State Street was approved for a new business called Water Street Wine Cafe & Coffee. I’m sure that won’t be successful, because it’s right next to railroad tracks, and I have it on good authority from frequent commentators on my blog that creative-class-outdoor-wine-drinker-types hate railroad tracks.

  • The Mayor filled the two vacancies on the Zoning Commission. One of the appointees is Mark Misselhorn, who is also a Heart of Peoria Commissioner. The other appointee, Timothy Shea, isn’t a Heart of Peoria Commissioner. So, given the opportunity to put two HOPC members on the Zoning Commission, the Mayor appointed one. I applied to be a Zoning commissioner, and was recommended by Gary Sandberg and Pat Landes. I know Beth Akeson was also willing to serve and was recommended by Sandberg. Neither of us were appointed. I’m not personally offended by the snub because everyone knows that zoning meetings are about as much fun as recovering from a tonsillectomy, but I do think it says something about the city’s commitment to New Urbanism that so little effort is being made to infuse those principles into the commission that has arguably the most impact on how the city looks and works.

Perhaps the weirdest vote of the night was on the lone item pulled off the consent agenda: item L. “L” as in “light up.” It’s a seemingly mundane item calling for the City of Peoria to conform one of its ordinances to a state ordinance. The reason it’s controversial is because that state ordinance is the Smoke Free Illinois Act.

Van Auken pulled this off the consent agenda. She moved that the council not pass it. Sandberg seconded it and said the reason to reject the ordinance is because (a) the state law is poorly written and could lead to downtown businesses getting tickets for non-patrons who happen to be smoking within fifteen feet of their entrance, and (b) the city’s police department is too busy working on more important issues to be called away to give citations for smoking violations; since the state issued this unfunded mandate, the state should enforce it. Councilman Gulley joined in by stating that if the city passes this ordinance, then they will have to pay for adjudicating the tickets, whereas if they don’t pass the ordinance, the tickets would be adjudicated by the state’s attorney. Randy Oliver countered that, while that is true, the city would get 100% of the fine if it prosecutes under a local ordinance, and only 50% if under a state ordinance violation. Turner tried to counter that since the violation is complaint-driven and is not high-priority, it wouldn’t pull any officers off their beat or cause any hardship.

Then it came time for the vote. Remember, it was a motion to deny, so a “yes” vote means they don’t change the ordinance. Initially the vote was 4-5. Van Auken, Sandberg, Gulley, and Jacob voted for the motion to deny (meaning, they voted against passing the ordinance). Then Jacob changed his vote. Why he changed his vote, no one knows — the motion was defeated either way. But the final vote tally was officially 3-6.

Then a motion was made to approve the ordinance. That vote was 5-4. You’d think that would mean it passed, but it didn’t. To change an ordinance, it’s not enough to have a majority of a quorum. You have to have a majority of the council, and that means it needs six votes to pass. So the motion failed.

The weird part is Jacob’s switched vote. Had he voted to approve the ordinance, he would have been the sixth vote, and it would have passed. As it is, he voted against denying it, then voted against approving it. The only thing I can think of is that when he changed his vote on the first motion, it was so he could later ask for that motion to be reconsidered. Speaking of reconsideration, the motion to approve will probably be reconsidered at the next meeting when Manning and Spears return.

The item on changing city code relating to strip clubs and liquor licenses was deferred until the January 8 meeting.

Before that deferral, however, the council dispensed with Item No. 7. To really do this one justice, I should write a separate post about it, but I don’t have time. Perhaps another enterprising blogger could take up that task. Essentially, it’s another bite in transforming Growth Cell 2 from industrial to commercial zoning. This appears to be the latest plan.

The existing Comprehensive Plan says that Growth Cell 2 will be industrial, and has that area zoned accordingly. That’s why there are warehouses and rail spurs and stuff like that out there. Developers, however, want that land out there to be commercial, which is why Wal-Mart, Menards, and a litany of other stores are drifting there, many of them leaving empty buildings in their wake. Toward that end, another parcel on Allen Road was rezoned tonight from industrial to commercial.

Gary questioned why this didn’t go to the Planning Commission to be vetted. Nichting said the market should decide what goes out there, not the Comp Plan. And by “market,” he means “developers.” And by “Comp Plan,” he means “the city.” In other words, the city shouldn’t plan the city, developers should plan the city. Because we’ve been letting developers plan the city for the past 40 years, and that’s why we’re awash in revenue, able to provide ample public works and public safety services, and have myriad people moving into Peoria from all the surrounding towns and villages.

It was a typical council meeting.

Radio

Don’t miss OTH Year in Review Dec. 18

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UPDATE: If you missed it, you can listen to it online here. Thanks, Jonathan!

I just got the WCBU e-newsletter and thought I would pass this info along:

Outside the Horseshoe Year in Review – December 18

WCBU’s Outside the Horseshoe will continue its annual tradition of a year-end special that counts down the top stories of the year, and looks ahead with predictions for next year. Join us Tuesday, December 18th at 7:00 PM for a special one-hour edition of Outside the Horseshoe. WCBU’s Jonathan Ahl will lead the roundtable discussion that will include John Sharp from the Peoria Journal Star, Shaun Newell from 1470 WMBD, and Billy Dennis of peoriapundit.com.

I hope they taped this in advance, because it sounds like Billy is coming down with a cold. Get well soon, my friend.

City Council, City of Peoria, Traffic

Cove gate deferred, but why?

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Cove at Charter Oak logoAt Tuesday’s council meeting, one item on the agenda was a recommendation from the Traffic Commission to deny a request to install a gate on Sedley Avenue between Vinton Highlands and the newly-constructed Cove at Charter Oak subdivisions. That item was inexplicably deferred. So far, I haven’t been able to find out why it was deferred. I’ve e-mailed Councilman Bill Spears, who asked for the deferral, but received no response. Another citizen has called Public Works and been told that department doesn’t know why it’s been deferred either. While I haven’t driven out there myself, it’s apparent from the minutes of the public hearing that the gate has already been installed.

This seems to me like an open-shut case. There was a public hearing, and the majority of the people who spoke were against the gate. Those who spoke in favor of the gate said it was for one purpose only — to reduce traffic and make the neighborhoods safer. However, there is no evidence that there is currently any traffic problem or any reasonable cause to believe there will be a problem in the future. If traffic does become a problem, there are other traffic-calming methods that could be employed short of installing a gate.

So why the deferral? What is holding up the denial? Are there behind-the-scenes efforts to try to get this gate approved against the wishes of the residents and against the recommendations of the Traffic Commission and City Staff?