All posts by C. J. Summers

I am a fourth-generation Peorian, married with three children.
General News

There is no honor among thieves

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From the Washington Examiner:

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes’ seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”

A comment on the story in the New Haven Register says it all: “Karma working her magic in New London.”

City Council, City of Peoria

City Council preview

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There’s a city council meeting tonight. Here are some items of interest:

  • There’s a request to use Tazewell County Asphalt Company to seal a parking lot behind the city’s municipal services building. I wonder why the council would even consider patronizing businesses in East Peoria — a city they believe tolerates discrimination, as they made perfectly clear a few weeks ago. Will they reject this bid and any others until these communities adopt the same Fair Employment and Housing Commission statutes as Peoria?
  • Despite all the cost cutting, the city will still have to raise property taxes. A truth in taxation hearing will be held tonight.
  • Comcast’s cable franchise agreement with the city, which expired way back in 2006, is up for yet another temporary extension. Will a permanent agreement ever be reached?
  • Continued discussion on the 2010 budget, including a discussion on the cost of police uniforms.
  • Taxes are also going up in the “Town of Peoria.” You gotta love the “Town of Peoria.” It has the same borders as the City of Peoria, and the City Council members are the Town Trustees. Yet, they get over $2 million in separate tax levies. Illinois: king of superfluous municipal organizations.
City of Peoria, Peoria Journal Star

Word on the Street counterpoint

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Let’s talk about today’s Word on the Street column:

Critics of publicly financing a Downtown hotel have linked last year’s City Council vote to extend $39.3 million in bonds for the $102 million Marriott with this year’s budget reduction decisions.

Some council members are fighting back, saying the criticism is unfair and inaccurate. They say the bond issue for the hotel project has nothing to do with next year’s budget deficit, or with the budget in general.

This ought to be good. I can’t wait to hear how $39.3 million has nothing to do with the budget.

“There is a misperception being promoted that the city has $39 million in the bank and is giving it away to a private developer when that is just not the case,” at-large City Councilman Ryan Spain said.

Oh, no. I know the city doesn’t have $39 million in the bank. That’s precisely the point. The city is going to have to go $39 million in debt to give $39 million away to a private developer.

At-large City Councilman Eric Turner agreed. “It doesn’t impact anything,” he said.

By “anything” here, I’m assuming he meant it in the context of the 2010 budget. And this may shock you, but I don’t disagree with him in that assessment. It won’t impact anything in 2010. But it will certainly impact the budget in 2012 and beyond. But I suppose that’s irrelevant, eh? Why look past the end of your nose when making decisions, right?

Linking this year’s deficit-related decisions, such as cutting police officers, with last year’s hotel project vote has been done at times during council meetings and on blogs.

He’s talking about me here, in case you didn’t catch it.

At-large City Councilman Gary Sandberg has brought up the issue before, saying the priorities of the council are screwed up. He said he has received calls from constituents concerned with why the city is assisting a developer build a hotel at a time when police officers may be laid off.

If the city wanted to assist the developer by improving public infrastructure around the site, that would be one thing. It’s quite another thing to just hand over cold hard cash to a developer to help him construct his project.

At issue is the city’s public financing portion of the project.

The city’s bond will be paid back through revenues generated by the project, including tax-increment financing and additional hotel, restaurant and sales taxes it generates.

“Revenues generated by the project.” That assumes revenues will be generated, which is a point of contention. Private banks, whose loans would have to be repaid through revenues generated by the project, have not been willing to loan the developer the money he needs to start the project, despite all this backing from the city. What do they know that the city doesn’t? Or is it just that the city is content to take higher risks with taxpayer money than banks are willing to take with their private funds?

Also, not explicitly mentioned in this statement is the fact that the council raised sales taxes 1% within the Hospitality Improvement Zone. Why was this necessary if “revenues generated by the project” are sufficient to pay back the bonds?

Projections show the city is to owe $2.5 million in 2012, the year the hotel is anticipated to open. The opening date likely will be pushed back because of delays in moving the project forward.

Not mentioned is the reason for the delays: inability to get private financing.

If the revenue from the project doesn’t materialize as anticipated, it is possible the city can make its bond payments from revenues from adjoining tax-increment financing districts (the hotel project is located within a TIF district, a key economic incentive device allowing the project to potentially happen).

City officials have estimated that about half of the $39.3 million can be raised from three adjoining TIF districts and directed to a fund that is separate from the city’s general operations fund, which pays for police, firefighters and other services.

If other TIFs are so flush with cash, why don’t they use that money to retire those TIF bonds early so the tax revenue go into the city’s general operations fund where they could pay for “police, firefighters and other services”? Wouldn’t that be a better use for those funds than on a hotel?

Recently retired Economic Development Director Craig Hullinger said the project “shouldn’t have a negative impact on the budget. It creates jobs and a tax base. That’s the logic for doing this.”

That’s what they said about MidTown Plaza.

Spain said the timing is right for the project. The hotel, when completed, would connect to the Civic Center via a skywalk.

And that’s relevant because…? I’m unclear whether these are just two disjointed statements the reporter decided to put in this paragraph, or if he’s implying that the skywalk was Spain’s justification for “the timing [being] right for the project.” If the latter, I have to believe there was more to his reasoning than what was reported. No one would say that a skywalk is justification for giving a developer $39.3 million in tax money. No one would be that foolish.

Project naysayers may have another chance to publicly sway the project. If developer Gary Matthews gets the financing needed to proceed, then the council will have to vote on the sale of bonds in order to officially participate in the financing of the project.

Matthews is still attempting to secure the private financing to begin a project that was originally supposed to start last spring. A national economic recession, though, has slowed the progress. (J.S.)

Yes, the recession is slowed progress, because the economic climate makes this project too risky for credit markets. But not too risky for our tax dollars, according to Mr. Spain and Mr. Turner. After all, we won’t have to pay the piper for several years, so it’s all good.

Museum Block, Peoria County

Museum odds and ends (UPDATED)

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  • From the Wall Street Journal: “Ten Things Museums Won’t Tell You.” Number 7: “Our priceless treasures are languishing in storage.” Number 9: “You think our building is ugly; we say it’s one of a kind.”
  • The County is still hashing out a redevelopment agreement with the Peoria Riverfront Museum (PRM), the City of Peoria, and Caterpillar. I received a draft copy anonymously through the mail. One of the items: “PRM will commence construction of the Project if and when all conditions precedent are satisfied, including receipt of funds equal to the entire Project Budget, plus a project contingency in a to be determined amount.” Another interesting provision states that once PRM is up and running, Lakeview Museum will cease to exist. I’ll post a copy of the document this evening.
  • So, how much is the entire “Project Budget” and how much in funding has been received? According to an October 22 letter to the County, the total project budget is $79,486,662. The total pledged dollars: $73,285,140. Since then, the state has passed a bill (still waiting for the governor’s signature, I believe) allocating $5 million in additional funds to the museum, which would bring that total up to $78,285,140. That leaves a remaining funding gap of $1,201,522. However, most interesting is this statement (emphasis mine): “The total amount collected for the project to this point is $14,244,543.”
  • Merle Widmer has his own update on the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum.

UPDATE: As promised, PDF Link here is the document.

City Council, City of Peoria

Moore’s list of critical city positions

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It was mentioned during the city council meeting that City Manager Scott Moore asked the council to restore 22 critical positions with the city. The list was projected on the wall briefly, but wasn’t included in the packet on the city’s website (at least, I couldn’t find it). I was able to get a copy after the meeting — here are the positions:

Manager Recommendations for Operations
Positions Restored
In Priority Order

6 Police officers (PPBA)
2 ECC Communicators (AFSCME)
Network Specialist (AFSCME)
Computer Operator (AFSCME)
Legal Administration Coordinator (AFSCME)
1 Animal Control Officer (AFSCME)
Police Records Manager (Exempt)
1 Animal Control Officer (AFSCME)
2 Part-Time Kennel Technicians (AFSCME)
1 ECC Supervisor (Exempt)
Public Safety Coordinator (Exempt)
1 Accountant (Exempt)
1 Code Enforcement Inspector (AFSCME)
2 Police Info Tech for 3rd Shift (AFSCME)

Subtotal (22 Positions)

Note: “ECC” stands for Emergency Communications Center. According to the city’s website, “The ECC provides dispatching services to Peoria Police, Peoria Fire, Peoria County Sheriff, Emergency Medical Services, Peoria County Fire & EMS agencies and other City departments as part of the Peoria City/County Enhanced 9-1-1 system.”

City of Peoria, Peoria Police

Police Benevolent: Why haven’t they agreed to wage concessions?

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After the Tuesday night City Council meeting, I caught up with Troy Skaggs, president of the Peoria Police Benevolent, and asked him why the police union had not agreed to any wage concessions. He said there were basically three reasons.

He told me that the union met Monday night, and that City Manager Scott Moore gave a presentation. During that presentation, Moore said this wasn’t going to be a one-year concession. It was likely that the city would be back next year asking for concessions again. And probably the year after that. This was the first time the city had come out and said these requests for concessions would be ongoing and not a one-time deal. That’s the first reason the union was uneasy with agreeing to wage concessions.

Secondly, Skaggs pointed out that the police department is already down 16 positions. Seven positions are vacancies from the beginning of the year that they simply haven’t filled, and an additional nine positions are officers who took advantage of the Voluntary Separation Initiative (VSI) recently offered by the city. They’re not going to fill any of those positions, yet the council wants to cut the department by an additional 17 positions. At the same time, according to Skaggs, the fire department is “back-filling” ten positions, eight of which were vacated due to VSI. So the police union doesn’t see the equity in these two situations.

Finally, the city wouldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t lay off more officers anyway, even if the union did agree to wage concessions. That really made the union uncomfortable, since they could give up wage increases and lose a bunch of additional officers anyway, meaning they’d be doing more work for no additional pay. Before I talked to Skaggs, I had asked Mayor Ardis about negotiations with the police union, and while he directed me to talk to the union president, he did mention that the police department had wanted some guarantees but the city didn’t feel comfortable with the offer having strings attached.

My take: I can understand, on the one hand, the city not wanting its hands tied in case the forecasted (or actual) deficit gets worse. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me for the police union to expect some sort of commitment from the city in return for wage concessions.

Bottom line, though, we need police protection. We can’t balance the budget at the expense of public safety. If we “punish” the police union for not taking wage concessions by laying off more police officers, we’re only hurting ourselves.

The council needs to face the music and raise revenue somehow. They simply can’t balance the budget by reducing expenses because the cuts are too deep. Even the City Manager recognizes this — he identified 22 positions that have been cut so far that he’d like to see restored because they’re critical for the city. Those positions include restoring six police officers and several support personnel in the police department.

The real mystery is why the council is so reticent to raise taxes for public safety when they’re so quick to raise taxes for private development schemes like the proposed downtown Marriott hotel deal. Nobody wants higher taxes, but if we’re going to be paying higher taxes anyway, the proceeds should go toward the highest public benefit. As it stands now, we’re paying higher taxes and getting less police protection in return.

Not only is that bad public policy on its face, it only exacerbates the city’s predicament because it drives residents and business out of Peoria. Nobody wants to live where it’s unsafe — whether perceived or actual — and nobody is going to want to shop and dine in Peoria when they can get the same goods and services at a much cheaper tax rate just over the river, or in Peoria Heights, or in any of the other surrounding communities. The city is cutting its own throat.

City Council, City of Peoria

Liveblogging the City Council 11/3/2009

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I’m here, but a little late, so I’m afraid I missed the beginning of the meeting. It’s 6:48 now.

Communication from the City Manager and Finance Director/Comptroller Requesting the Council to PROVIDE DIRECTION to STAFF Regarding the PRELIMINARY FY2010 – FY2014 FIVE-YEAR COMMUNITY INVESTMENT PLAN (CIP).

There apparently was a relatively large handout given to the council before the meeting which I don’t have, which makes it difficult to follow the discussion.

Regarding the Community Investment Plan (CIP):

  • There’s a bridge in Springdale Cemetery, and the repair of it is in the budget as a capital expenditure for next year. The motion was made not to fund it. That motion passed unanimously.
  • Councilman Spears (4th Dist.) is now talking about the Gateway Building Plaza. He doesn’t want to see it replaced with granite.
  • Councilman Spain (At-Large) says they only got their booklets about a half hour before the meeting tonight. He asks administration if there are any non-essential projects or any that are not essential for 2010 and could be put off. Mayor Ardis agrees. Mayor says he didn’t get booklet at all.
  • Councilman Sandberg (At-Large) asks about a bridge on Sheridan Road and why we were funding (until the vote) a bridge in Springdale Cemetery, but not this bridge. Rhetorical question.
  • Councilman Jacob (At-Large) asked about a state grant.
  • Councilman Sandberg says he doesn’t know what we’re getting for the $2.7 million allocated for the Glen Oak School Neighborhood Impact Zone. He’s committed to the project, but he wants to make sure we’re reinvesting in the new vision of this area and how it ties into the East Bluff, not just replacing concrete. “It’s not just ‘put it back the way it was.’ Integrate it into a new solution that will stabilize and bring people back into the East Bluff.” He made some disparaging remarks about the Columbia Terrace project, basically saying that all we did there was put it back the way it was, instead of implementing the principles of New Urbanism (traffic calming, pedestrian friendliness, form-based code, etc.). Council Member Van Auken (2nd Dist.) took umbrage and said they did more than just put it back the way it was. Councilman Riggenbach (3rd Dist.) thanked Sandberg for his remarks and then proceeded to thank a number of other people, including former third district councilman Bob Manning.

Motion to receive and file by Van Auken; seconded by Turner. Motion passes unanimously.

Communication from the City Manager Requesting the Council to PROVIDE FINAL DIRECTION to STAFF on CLOSING the REMAINING FY2010 BUDGET DEFICIT.

No wage concession agreement reached with Police Benevolent union or AFSCME. So, there’s still a budget gap of $642,597. The City Manager is recommending that 22 positions be restored at a cost of $1.1 million, creating a larger deficit. Floor is open for deliberation.

  • Councilman Spain moves to accept the budget as presented with concessions identified, seconded by Councilman Irving (5th Dist.). In other words, not restore the 22 positions as recommended. Sandberg is concerned that the motion includes refinancing debt, which will only cost us more in interest, which is exacerbating the problem; thus, he will be voting against the motion. Councilman Montelongo (At-Large) clarified that in the next couple of meetings, the council will be looking for ways to close the remaining budget gap. Motion passes 10-1 (Sandberg voting nay).

Floor is open for comments concerning the budget.

  • Charles Williams — Concerned about the Peoria Police Department. We have all this crime. Why do we need to provide a Tahoe for the Police and Fire chiefs? Why do we need a captain on duty all night? We have crime all around the city, but we’re cutting officers? We need 20-25 police officers. We need to raise taxes to pay for it. We need safety. What is the Police Chief doing? He needs to account for what he’s doing. He’s also upset that PAWS funding was cut.
  • Lavetta Ricca — [Missed what she said; sorry.]
  • Savino Sierra — Unions need to sacrifice.

Ardis announces that this is the last meeting for Economic Development Director Craig Hullinger. Recognizes Hullinger for what he’s done for Peoria, and praises him for living in Peoria, and he looks forward to working with him in the future. Ardis also recognizes Captain Baer (sp?) who retired. Recognizes newest captain, Captian Mitchell, and welcomes him to their administrative team.

No executive session. Van Auken/Irving move to adjourn. That’s it. Short and sweet.

City Council, City of Peoria

Will council “show leadership” against discrimination?

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Generally speaking, small businesses are exempt from employment discrimination statutes. “For example,” says one state publication, “Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based upon race, color, religion, gender, disability and national origin, only applies to employers with 15 or more employees. These threshold limits are designed to protect small employers from the considerable financial and time costs associated with compliance with the statutes.”

Peoria’s city code reflected that same threshold for filing a discrimination complaint with the Fair Employment and Housing Commission. A few weeks ago, the City Council decided to change the code, so now a discrimination complaint can be filed against any employer, even those with 1-14 employees. If you find yourself in situations like this, then make sure to consult a qualified disability attorney to help you build your case.

During the discussion, the official minutes of the meeting state: “Senior Staff Attorney King said neighboring areas such as West Peoria and Peoria Heights did not have such an ordinance to her knowledge…. Council Member Sandberg expressed concern that Peoria was putting itself at a disadvantage when being competitive to bring in new business. He said he felt the resolution that was passed at the State level had the responsibility to govern these issues.” His concerns were roundly pooh-poohed by the mayor and several council members:

Mayor Ardis answers: “We shouldn’t not do the right thing because our neighbors aren’t doing it.” Turner says Peoria should show some leadership in this area. Gulley says he hopes this ordinance will drive every business out of Peoria that wants to discriminate. Privilege of the floor given to Don Jackson, President of [Illinois] NAACP. He speaks in favor of the motion “in the spirit of Everett Dirksen.”

The ordinance passed unanimously.

Then, a couple of days after this council meeting, the Pekin Chamber of Commerce announced (emphasis mine): “The 48th Annual Peoria Branch Freedom Fund Banquet will be held on Saturday, November 14th at the Par-A-Dice Hotel and Conference Center in East Peoria.” Wait a minute…. Why is the NAACP holding their Freedom Fund Banquet in a community that (using the logic displayed at the Peoria City Council meeting on Oct. 13) tolerates discrimination? Why don’t they hold their banquet in Peoria — a city that has the stricter anti-discrimination policy?

Peoria City Council members were all invited to the banquet. Will they attend an event being held in a community that is not doing “the right thing,” according to Peoria’s Mayor? Will all those who spoke out so forcefully on the council floor on October 13 stick to their principles of “showing leadership” against discrimination on November 14? We’ll see.

Museum Block

More tax money going to museum

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The proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum is poised to get $5 million more of our tax dollars if Gov. Quinn signs Senate Bill 1181 into law. It includes this provision:

Sec. 213. The sum of $5,000,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary, is appropriated from the Capital Development Fund to the Department of Natural Resources for capital grants to Peoria County for costs associated with construction and development of the Peoria Riverfront Museum.

Now, based on a July 21 Journal Star report, “Officials are trying to bridge a $5 million gap in public and private dollars still needed.” So, this $5 million infusion of cash from the state should finally get the museum fully funded, right?

Surprisingly, no. According to this new Journal Star report, “The museum project presently has a funding gap of about $6 million, and $5 million from the state would nearly close that, he [Jim Richerson] said.” How can we explain this discrepancy? Was the report in July incorrect? Or did the museum lose $1 million between July and October? If the latter, how was the money lost?

It’s worth pointing out again that during the time leading up to April’s referendum, museum officials assured everyone that the remaining $11 million would be raised through private donations, aided largely by the CEO Roundtable. Now they are seeking to plug these gaps with more public money — that is, more of our tax money.

At the same time, according to yet another Journal Star report, the state’s spending plan “reduces or eliminates funding for dozens of other [educational] programs. Agricultural education, for instance, will lose half of the funding it got last year, leaving it with almost $1.7 million. Funding for early childhood education is being cut by a third, and bilingual education programs will see a 25 percent reduction.”

But they’ve got $5 million for a museum in Peoria! Priorities, you know.