Category Archives: City Council

City Council, City of Peoria

Council brainstorms money-saving ideas

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The August 11 Peoria City Council meeting promises to be a long, long meeting. The council spent an hour and a half Tuesday night brainstorming ideas for plugging the projected $10 million budget deficit. City staff will take those ideas and run the numbers on them (and in some cases, check the legality of them), then bring them back on August 11 for a policy session where council members will discuss them in detail.

Here is the list of ideas as compiled by the Journal Star:

New tax and fee ideas

  • 2 percent tax on package liquor
  • “Carry out” tax on restaurants, retail establishments, distributors or other businesses that generate wrappers, bottles and other products that turn into litter
  • “Bed tax” on not-for-profit entities such as Bradley University and local hospitals
  • Business license fee
  • Additional tax to use city parking decks
  • Arrest fee
  • Fire service protection districts
  • 5 percent water utility tax
  • Storm water utility tax
  • Fee assessed on pet owners
  • 2 cent per gallon motor fuel tax
  • Eliminating $6 a month garbage tax and rolling it into the property tax

These were in addition to the suggestions made by staff in this report, which includes wage freezes, voluntary separation, revenue adjustments (cutting funding to ArtsPartners, the public library, and other organizations), and revenue increases (e.g., eliminating free land waste pickup).

Councilman Gary Sandberg also suggested that, if the council is going to consider cutting funding to the library, they should also consider cutting funding to the Peoria Civic Center by the same percentage. He also asked staff to bring back a report on how much downtown parking decks would need to charge to break even (i.e., eliminate parking subsidies).

He also hinted at a more radical suggestion: eliminate the city’s police department and turn that function over to the Peoria County Sheriff’s Office. Sandberg points out that county law enforcement officers’ salaries are one-third less than Peoria police officers’. After the meeting, he added that we could put half the savings in salaries toward plugging the budget deficit, and use the other half of the savings to hire more police officers. In effect, we could help plug the deficit and increase police protection at the same time.

I asked Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard what he thought about Sandberg’s proposal. He said that it wasn’t an apples-to-apples comparison to compare city officers to county officers. Instead, when comparing salaries, the council should compare city officers in Peoria to city officers in other similar-sized cities. He said that there are differences between city and county law enforcement, but didn’t elaborate on what those differences are.

City Council, City of Peoria, Illinois American Water

Water rates could skyrocket

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Future water bills will be significantly higher if Illinois American Water Company and the City of Peoria get their way.

Illinois American Water Company (IAWC) wants to raise rates about 5% for infrastructure improvement, plus another 30.18% for a general revenue increase to cover higher operating expenses. The City, also in need of more revenue, is considering the possibility of imposing a 5% water utility tax to take effect next spring.

Let’s see, 5 plus 30.18 plus another 5 . . . that’s a 40.18% increase! That means a family that currently pays $30 a month for their water bill will be paying $42.05 (and this doesn’t include the $6 “garbage fee” that will remain on the water bill as well). That’s an increase of $144.60 per year. Wow!

Speaking of the garbage fee, they’re simultaneously looking at cutting the very services that fee supports. They’re suggesting the elimination of free landscape waste pickup — transferring the cost of that service to the users.

Meanwhile, downtown parking will continue to be subsidized. Priorities, you know….

Look for the exodus from Peoria to continue.

City Council, City of Peoria, Zoning Commission

Main Street Commons to go before Zoning Commission (UPDATED)

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I attended a quasi-public meeting Tuesday night regarding the proposed Main Street Commons project that is slated to go in where the old Walgreen’s is at the corner of Main and Bourland.

The meeting was held at the PeoriaNEXT building (which incidentally has doors that face Main Street, but they’re all locked; all pedestrians have to walk around the back of the building — by the parking lot — to enter the building, which is symbolic of the lip-service Peoria gives to pedestrians). Pat Landes and Kimberly Smith from the Planning and Growth Department were there, along with Thomas Harrington and Shawn Luesse representing the developers, and second district council person Barbara Van Auken theoretically representing the district, although she appeared to be only representing the University East neighborhood Tuesday night.

The proposed project is due to go before the Zoning Commission on Thursday at 3:00. Here’s the information that has been submitted.

There’s a lot to like about the project. It hides most of the parking in a ground-floor garage under the building. It includes retail shops on Main and Bourland. They’ve pledged to adhere to the approved building materials outlined in the code, although they apparently haven’t decided which materials they will be using.

But there are ten variances they are requesting from the Zoning Commission, and ultimately, the City Council. Many of them are minor. A few of them are troublesome:

  • Fulfilling open space requirement by demolishing a home on the corner of Bourland and Russell and leaving it as a vacant lot (albeit landscaped). (This actually involves a couple variance requests.) Instead, they should simply reduce the size of the building. This would also remove the need for another variance to approve a longer building than allowed by code. It would preserve a single-family home on the corner, thus providing a better transition to the neighborhood and removing the need for a street wall.

  • Speaking of street walls, another variance requests approval for a street fence instead of a street wall. While this seems relatively innocuous, it continues a precedent trending toward removal of the street wall requirement completely. That’s not a good thing. Street walls serve several functions, one of which is to help prevent exactly what’s going on here — leaving an entire corner vacant.

  • The code requires that “no window may face or direct views toward a common lot line.” The developers want this waived “to allow living room windows on the west elevation of the south building, for proposed units on the second through fifth floor, (overlooking the Jimmy John’s parking lot) to be located 7′-4″ behind the common lot line.” The concern here is that, eventually, we hope that the Jimmy Johns property will be redeveloped. It currently has a one-story building with a parking lot in front (suburban siting), so overlooking the parking lot is not a problem. But what happens when that lot is redeveloped? Will the Main Street Commons development negatively impact efforts to redevelop the Jimmy Johns property? Keep in mind that the code will require that any redevelopment of Jimmy Johns’ property be a multi-story building sited next to the street and abut the Main Street Commons property. Will this cause problems from a fire-fighting standpoint? Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to the question of its impact on future development because it was disallowed by Councilperson Van Auken at the meeting; the question was “theoretical” and besides, I’m not an immediate neighbor to the project. This kind of myopic thinking (ignoring both the regional impact of projects as well as the future implications of developments) is most unfortunate from a sitting council person, but not particularly surprising.

On a positive note, it’s great to see mixed-use development being proposed for Main Street. Having residents will provide more natural surveillance of the surrounding streets, and will provide a larger market for the retail shops that will go in on the ground floor. Overall, this is the kind of development we want to see. My only caution would be to consider the unintended consequences of variances to the code; as Councilman Sandberg pointed out at the meeting, the developers already know they will get 100% occupancy, so they’re just trying to maximize profits at this point. There’s no reason they can’t meet the requirements of the code, especially on the points above. The Zoning Commission and City Council should seriously consider enforcing the code at these points for the long-term good of the city.

UPDATE: It passed the Zoning Commission with next to no deliberation. Marj Klise was the only “no” vote. One of the commissioners said that provisions in the Land Development Code were “open to interpretation” — which is to say, meaningless. That was enlightening. Another commissioner said he was all for it because of all the revenue it’s going to bring to the city at a time when the city is facing a $10 million deficit. Too bad he evidently wasn’t aware that this project has been added to the Enterprise Zone and is getting its sales and property taxes abated… and that the City is asking the state to extend the Enterprise Zone past the 2013 expiration date. This project isn’t actually going to bring any revenue into the City, but it’s going to make a whole lot of money for the developers!

City Council, City of Peoria, Waste Management

Talking trash

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The city’s solid waste removal contract with waste removal solutions for households expires at the end of this year. This contract has been in place since about 1992. Now, if you’re just an average person, you might think that the city had plenty of time to start the process of rebidding this contract. After all, they knew when it was due to expire, and they know how long it takes to negotiate contracts such as these, so logically they should have been able to work backwards from the deadline to determine a time line for the rebidding process.

But they didn’t do that. No, here it is June 2009, six months before the end of the contract, and they’re just starting the year-long process. Naturally, they are requesting an extension to the existing contract that has been in place for 17 years already to allow them extra time to negotiate a new contract. That request was on last week’s (June 23) agenda, but was deferred for a month.

Meanwhile, they managed to engage a consultant to get some advice on rebidding the contract. I don’t know exactly how city departments are allowed to spend their budget, but it seems to me that every other consultant that has been hired by the city had to be approved by the council; this consultant contract never came before the council. However, it must be no big deal because the council didn’t seem to care.

The consultant made a bunch of recommendations on how the city can lower the cost of waste removal. Of course, all those suggestions mean worse service for residents. For instance, they’re recommending that everyone be provided a 90-gallon tote, and that all other garbage containers be outlawed. You wouldn’t be able to buy your own tote, of course — you’d have to essentially rent it from the disposal company. And they want to do away with alley collection of garbage, even though that’s one of the reasons alleys exist, and many older neighborhoods were designed for garbage collection from the alleys, not from the curb.

To their credit, the city council has so far been pretty adamant about keeping the alley collection of garbage, but city staff is trying to convince them to change their minds. They want to big the contract with all-curbside pickup as an option so the council can see how must more expensive it is to include alley collection. There’s only one reason for splitting out these costs: to try to persuade change. One wonders why it’s more expensive to run a truck down an alley rather than a parallel street 130 feet away. Waste Management says their trucks are too big for our alleys (solution: use smaller trucks). City staff says the heavy trucks damage the alley surfaces (question: wouldn’t moving the trucks to the streets just move the damage to the streets as well? Or is this an admission that alleys are poorly maintained in the city?).

The consultant is also suggesting that the city limit or do away with picking up anything that doesn’t fit inside one of the recommended 90-gallon totes. So, whereas now you can throw away that old couch or cabinet (what they call “bulky waste”) — the consultant says that should stop, be reduced to just once or twice a year, or charged an extra fee, such as $10 or $15 per item.

The biggest issue, however, is going to be how to include universal recycling. There is a lot of popular support for alleyside/curbside recycling as part of the base contract. Currently, anyone who wants to recycle has to pay extra and are billed directly by the hauler. That means that a household like mine that recycles pays three times for garbage service: once on our property taxes, once on our water bill, and once directly to Waste Management. Most households are not willing to pay three times for garbage hauling, so they just throw all their recyclables away in the regular trash. In other words, our current system incentivizes people not to recycle. That needs to be changed.

However, that will cost more money. So the question becomes how to pay for such service. One idea is to do the opposite of what we’re doing now: make recycling pickup free, but charge a fee for regular garbage. The way they do this in Morton is by selling trash stickers. However, in a more urban area, there is concern that this might lead to more illegal dumping or other unsanitary conditions as some people attempt to avoid the fee. So another idea is to make all collections every-other week. Regular garbage would be picked up on odd weeks, and recycling would be picked up on even weeks, for instance.

One other change that has been recommended in order to save money is switching to a sticker system for yard waste. Right now, unlimited yard waste disposal is included in the base contract. The cost of that service could be offset or possibly covered completely by charging residents a fee per bag of yard waste. On the other hand, this would be yet another reduction in services city residents already enjoy and for which they already pay twice.

Who would have thought garbage could be so complicated?

City Council, City of Peoria

How would you plug the city’s deficit?

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The Journal Star is reporting that taxes and/or fees will have to be raised to plug the deficit, according to Mayor Ardis:

Ardis didn’t say which revenue will be increased, other than to say it could be a combination of things, such as a possible sales tax increase or a water utility fee…. The mayor did say it was unlikely the city’s portion of the property tax will be increased, citing other government bodies such as District 150 that have already increased their tax rate. “It would be the absolute last thing we’ll look at,” Ardis said. “(The property tax) is tapped.”

Wait a minute. The reason we can’t raise the property tax is because other taxing bodies have “already increased their tax rate”? That makes absolutely no sense, but let’s just accept it for the sake of argument. Why then should we consider raising the sales tax, considering the county just raised their tax rate? Why doesn’t the same “logic” apply?

And if the city’s revenue-producing abilities are limited because other taxing bodies are raising their rates, then the first thing we need to do is stop giving any of our revenue to those other taxing bodies. For instance, the city should immediately stop giving any tax money to the park district or the school district. Does that mean that there will be no programming on the riverfront? Tough! Does that mean that district 150 won’t get city-provided crossing guards? Sorry! The city needs to use all its available revenue to provide its own core services, not services for other taxing bodies.

Frankly, the mayor’s comments should come as no surprise. A couple council meetings ago, council members were given a packet of information available for download from the city’s website about the budget. Included was this document outlining possible cuts and revenue increases. In fact, since we have that info, here’s what I’d like to do:

I’d like you to pretend you’re a city council member. (You should be feeling a power trip right about now; if you don’t, you’re not pretending right.) Okay, council person? Now, you have to plug a $10 million structural budget deficit by either cutting costs, increasing revenues, or a combination of both.

How would you do it?

You can use the options provided in the aforementioned report, or add your own. It has to be realistic (so, for example, “print money out of thin air like the Federal Reserve” is not acceptable). Also, it has to be a long-term solution because this is a structural deficit. Short-term stop-gap measures don’t count.

Just to make things easier, here’s a summary of options outlined in the report:

INCOME OPTIONS

  • Property Tax — Each $.01 added to the levy raises $200,000. The owner of a $200,000 house would pay $6.60 more in property taxes annually per penny.
  • Water Utility Tax or Franchise Fee — A 5% utility tax or franchise fee placed on the use of water would yield approximately $1,200,000 each year.
  • Sales Tax — An additional .25% increase in the home rule sales tax would bring in an estimated $3,850,000 each year.
  • Package Liquor Tax — 2% tax on package liquor would raise about $700,000 annually.
  • Parking Tickets — If the $10 fine was raised to $15, an additional $90,000 in revenue annually.
  • Garbage Fee — Peoria residential properties pay $6 each month in garbage fees. For every dollar the monthly rate is raised, the City would gain an additional $336,000 annually.
  • Motor Fuel Tax — The City currently collects $.02 per gallon of fuel sold. For every penny added, approximately an additional $400,000 in revenue.
  • Stormwater Utility Fee — Rough estimates indicate charging $2.00 per month per “residential unit” would generate about $1.2 million.

COST-CUTTING OPTIONS

  • Wage Adjustment — Cutting the salary increases of staff from 4.75% (union) and 3.5% (management) to 2.5% across the board would save $1,839,113.64. Cutting them to 1% would save $3,088,880.53.
  • Voluntary Separation Initiative — No amount given, but the idea would be to offer early retirement to long-time employees who make high salaries, thus reducing the total payroll.
  • Service Cuts/Layoffs — Again, no amount given, since it would depend on which services the city decided to cut. What services do you think should be eliminated? We may be able to find out how much such a cut would save.
  • Medical Premium Increase — If the rate at which employees participated in the base premium cost were raised by 5% for all types of coverage, the City would save an estimated $811,000 in FY2010, based on 2009 premium costs. A family membership in the PPO would cost the employee $408.92 each month vs. the current rate of $272.61.
  • Reduce Capital Budget — For FY2009, Council approved a Community Investment Plan that funded $21,434,873 worth of projects. Of that amount, only $8,908,895 was in discretionary spending (funding sources not strictly limited to capital projects). This amount represented only 55% of the project funding ($17M) identified by staff and Council.
  • Use of HRA Taxes — The primary and obligated use of the proceeds of the Hotel-Restaurant-Amusement Tax is to pay down the Civic Center bonds. Annually, any revenue remaining after bond payments is apportioned by agreement to the Civic Center Authority, Peoria Area Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, ArtsPartners and other community organizations. Many communities use their HRA taxes to support operating or capital projects.

Okay, you have the raw data. Now find $10 million. On your marks. Get set. Go!

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan

Dismantling the LDC one piece at a time

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The deconstruction of the Land Development Code continued at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Now the City is going to allow “separate, accessory parking lots in the West Main Street, Local Frontage category.” Because nothing says “pedestrian-friendly” and “urban” like large surface parking lots . . . or so City administrators in the Planning and Growth Department think. They defended the amendment by saying surface parking lots fulfill the intent of the code:

Administration of the LDC found that prohibiting separate, accessory parking lots is not consistent with the intent of the Land Development Code as stated in section 1.5:

  1. Create a “park-once” environment.
  2. Promote reuse, redevelopment and infill.
  3. Encourage mixed-use neighborhood main streets.

You read that right: the City is arguing that big surface parking lots are consistent with the Land Development Code, which is based on the Heart of Peoria Plan, which is based on New Urbanist principles. Somehow, I don’t think that tearing down single-family residential houses in order to construct large surface lots is the kind of “redevelopment and infill” the authors of the LDC had in mind. In fact, it goes directly against other intent statements in section 1.5, such as:

  • Encourage and assist in the preservation of existing buildings and housing stock.
  • Use the scale and massing of buildings to transition between the corridors and surrounding neighborhoods.
  • Use the commercial corridors as a seam sewing neighborhoods together rather than a wall keeping them apart

But the change was approved in a rare 7-3 vote, with Sandberg, Jacob, and Gulley voting against it. Not so rare was the fact that only two council members spoke to the issue — Van Auken in favor, Sandberg against — before it was approved. The LDC will not be repealed all at once. It will simply be pecked away little by little until it looks no different than the old Euclidean zoning it replaced.

City Council, City of Peoria

Repeat after me: “Consensus is bad”

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During the last election, one of the big buzz-words was “consensus.” For instance, then-councilman Bob Manning wrote an endorsement of his eventual successor in which he said, “He is known as a consensus builder. He is not a divisive or polarizing figure. Rather, he brings people together to achieve results.” Conventional wisdom at the time was that the council was working better now than it ever had, and the reason was because of this new ethos of consensus-building.

At first, I tried to differentiate between good and bad “consensus.” (Good consensus involved timely and effective public input into projects; bad consensus was just another word for “groupthink.”) But since then, I’ve determined that what I was calling “good consensus” would be better described as simply “good leadership.” And “consensus” is always bad.

Certainly the last thing the council needs is more consensus. “Consensus” is defined as “general agreement or concord; harmony.” The city council couldn’t be any more in agreement if they held hands and sang Kumbaya . . . unless they found a way to get Sandberg off the council so every vote could be unanimous. The council (then or now) doesn’t need more consensus; it needs more critical thinking. It needs more deliberation — public deliberation.

Billy Dennis is right when he says, “Technically, policy might be set in public, but the process of arriving at the decision is not.” How many times have you seen this happen? An issue comes before the council. A motion is made to approve and is seconded. Councilman Sandberg speaks against it. There is no further discussion. Ballots are cast, and the motion passes 10-1. This happens time and time again. On big votes, like the decision to give $39.5 million to the Wonderful Development (aka Marriott Hotel), a few more council members speak in support of it, but the outcome is the same: no deliberation; 10-1 vote to approve.

How can eleven people get together and not have any major disagreements on nearly every issue — even one involving almost $40 million? Is this not an amazing phenomenon? As I see it, there are only two possible reasons why this would happen consistently over a long period of time (I’ve excluded the implausible option of it all being a huge coincidence that they agree on absolutely everything):

  1. The council members are skirting the Open Meetings Act and deliberating these issues out of the public eye. (Note I said “skirting,” not “violating.”) This is Billy’s theory. He suggests that decisions are made “during phone calls and emails, and during social events.” Conflicts exist, but they are being resolved in secret.
  2. The council members are blindly following the recommendations of staff or the district council person without thinking through or deliberating the issue at all. Council members avoid conflict by not thinking.

Both of these options involve “consensus.” Neither of these options is in the best interests of the taxpayers.

Lewis Lapham once said, “In place of honest argument among consenting adults the politicians substitute a lullaby for frightened children [i.e., “consensus”]: the pretense that conflict doesn’t really exist, that we have achieved the blessed state in which we no longer need politics.” And former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher explained, “To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.” Did you ever read a quote more descriptive of the Peoria City Council’s decisions?

Council members, the Journal Star, and the proverbial “man on the street” all think consensus on the council is fantastic — soooo much better than those old, divisive councils where they argued about stuff (gasp!) in public! And yet, the decisions haven’t gotten any better. They just have fewer, shorter meetings with more unanimous or nearly-unanimous votes. And — did I mention? — more secrecy. Because if you’re going to keep up “the pretense that conflict doesn’t really exist,” you can’t have transparency in government.

Bottom line: Consensus is bad. Remember that the next council election.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

Vallas returning to Peoria

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Education reformer Paul Vallas, who last visited Peoria in late 2007, is returning this Saturday morning to meet with Peoria City Council members at Mayor Ardis’s request. The Council has scheduled a full-day retreat this Saturday at the Peoria Civic Center’s Lexus Room starting at 9 a.m. The agenda for the meeting includes several guest speakers including Vallas, a representative from Mesirow Financial, and Heart of Illinois United Way Vice President of Community Investment Don Johnson.

Ardis says he didn’t ask Vallas to speak on any specific topic, but about reforming schools in general. “His experience in successfully reforming urban school districts should make his comments informative and relevant,” Ardis said Tuesday.

The last time Vallas was in town (also at Ardis’s request), the Journal Star reported (12/22/2007):

Vallas said if District 150 were to engage in reform efforts, he would spend his spring break in Peoria working with the district. He would recruit one or more persons to work on the project locally, and he would come back to Peoria periodically to monitor the progress.

He said Ardis has agreed to pay for his gas expenses driving to and from Peoria, along with occasional overnight hotel stays during his road trips.

But despite the City’s efforts to help improve the City’s schools, District 150 said, “no thanks.” Since then, the District has shortened the school day for several Wednesdays at a number of primary schools for no justifiable reason, fired their Comptroller/Treasurer for undisclosed reasons, decided to close four schools (including a high school yet to be named), and issue bonds for $38 million to dig out of a budget deficit. No need for outside advice from a proven reformer here, huh?

2009 Campaign, City Council, City of Peoria

Akeson concedes, decides against recount

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Beth Akeson ran against Tim Riggenbach for the third district City Council seat, replacing outgoing councilman Bob Manning. Riggenbach won the election by 12 votes, causing many to wonder if Akeson would ask for a recount. Wonder no more — Akeson sent out this release late Monday:

I would like to congratulate Tim Riggenbach on his victory in the recent City Council election. I have spoken to Tim and have wished him my best as he takes his seat Tuesday evening.

To my supporters who urged me to pursue a recount: I would like you to know I deliberated for weeks and concluded a recount would be a formidable and costly exercise, and most likely to no avail. Please accept my thanks and appreciation for the kind emails, notes and words of encouragement. I have offered Tim a helping hand if ever needed and ask you to do the same.

We live in a city with so much potential; let’s join together and do our best to see great things accomplished.

Sincerely,
Beth Akeson