Tuesday’s City Council agenda was revised today to add this item, a request to issue an RFQ (request for qualifications) to help the city hire a search firm to replace outgoing City Manager Randy Oliver.

Notable agenda items for the Jan. 22 meeting:

• A new traffic light is being requested for the intersection of Carriage Lane and Allen Road. Carriage Lane is halfway between Northmoor Road and Willow Knolls Drive on Allen.
• A new strip mall is being proposed for the corner of Knoxville and Alta roads. “No specific site plans or users are specified at this time,” but they’re going to build a 152,400 ft.² multi-tenant building with a drive-thru. Part of land to be used will need to be annexed to the city. The neighbors don’t like it, of course. They are against the added lights, noise, garbage, drainage, and tree removal, and are concerned that this will lower their property values and quality of life.
• The owner of Tequila’s in Chillicothe, Javier Munoz, wants to open a Mexican restaurant on Pioneer Parkway in the old Cinco de Mayo’s building. The previous owner of the building did not pay his HRA taxes, and Munoz said he had no affiliation with that owner. This is coming before the council because he’s applying for a liquor license.
• You’ll be able to drink a glass of local wine from the Mackinaw Valley Winery while dining alfresco on the corner of State and Water if this liquor license is approved.
• City staff wants to explore possible incentive programs to improve hospitality (i.e., hotel accommodations) downtown. Possible programs include the usual suspects (enterprise zone status, TIF, special service assessment) plus a few new ideas (“historic tax credits for buildings older than 1936,” “Civic Center supported capital expenditures,” “voluntary HRA tax to be used for capital improvements”). This should make for an interesting discussion. What was somewhat amusing was reading the litany of consultants/specialists who have told us we need better hotel accommodations downtown (Johnson Consulting, HVS consultants, PACVB, and a Six Sigma Black Belt team!). It reminds me of how many consultants said the Sears block should have urban density and mixed use.
• The Zoning Board of Appeals and City Staff want to change the fee structure for variance requests. The board felt that the fees were too high for small, residential requests and was actually discouraging residents from applying for variances and building permits for things like decks, sheds, and fences. The staff did a survey of other communities and based on their findings, have come up with a new fee structure. The proposed fee structure would charge a lower fee for residential variances than non-residential. It would also charge a lower fee if the variance is applied for before construction begins. Sign variances would have to pay a higher fee because “Staff and Board are of the opinion that improper signage pose traffic safety and aesthetics problems.”
• Once again, the Zoning Commission and City Staff are at odds. The first item is about a request to add an access point for 901 W. Glen Ave. It’s in what’s called an “overlay district” that restricts the number of access points purposely in order to prevent too much traffic congestion. The building owners/tenants share access points with other property owners. The staff isn’t necessarily against putting in another access point, but the petitioner (Michael Landwirth) did not submit a complete application, thus staff could not adequately review the request. Nevertheless, the Zoning Commission approved it on a 5-1 vote (Klise voted no), even though they have no idea what use is being proposed for the subject property. So now the council will have to sort it out.
• The second split decision is the Missouri Ave. project requested by Floyd Rashid. He wants to have a parcel that contains a vacant house on the corner of Missouri and War Memorial rezoned from residential to neighborhood commercial, or “CN,” under the Land Development Code. The residents on Missouri are opposed, and the Zoning Commission voted 6-0 to deny the rezoning. But City staff points out that it’s consistent with the Comprehensive Plan, is adjacent to existing CN zoning to the east, and under the Land Development Code would be a small-scale development that would be compatible with the residential neighborhood. This should also be an interesting discussion.

Although not on the agenda, no doubt there will be some discussion under new business about what the process will be to replace outgoing City Manager Randy Oliver.

Also on Tuesday’s agenda are two items that were deferred from last year:

1. A recommendation to deny a gate blocking a public street between The Cove of Charter Oak (new McMansion development) and Vinton Highlands.
2. A recommendation to change the city’s code so that Elliott’s strip club on University can get a liquor license. This is being recommended because of a recent court case that has led the city to believe that they are vulnerable to litigation if they don’t change the code.

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.

The city says that a new development at Radnor Road and Willow Knolls “meets all the qualifications of Section 4 of the [Enterprise Zone] Act” (20 ILCS 655). Really? One of the qualifications in Section 4 is “(1) An area is qualified to become an enterprise zone which […] (c) is a depressed area.” And just what is “a depressed area”?

20 ILCS 655/3(c) “Depressed Area” means an area in which pervasive poverty, unemployment and economic distress exist.

By the way, “pervasive” means “spreading widely throughout an area or a group of people,” according to the Oxford American Dictionary. So, let’s take a look at Radnor Road and Willow Knolls, shall we? Here it is on a map (courtesy of Google):

The development site is in that area just below the green arrow, bounded by Radnor to the east, Willow Knolls to the south, the Union Pacific rail line to the west, and Eagle Point Drive to the north. Here’s a house currently for sale on Eagle Point Drive:

Yes, the “pervasive poverty” in this area has depressed the listing price of this house (representative of houses in the area) to a paltry $264,900. Isn’t that awful? Too bad, too, because it’s right across from Kellogg Golf Course:

This is obviously where all the unemployed in the area loiter. You often see them sitting next to the greens with “will caddy for food” signs. They’re unemployed because of the “economic distress” of the area:

The Shoppes at Grand Prairie, 1.25 miles west

They’re also less than a mile from Sam’s Club, Willow Knolls 14 theater, and a plethora of relatively new development. We really should get together with some social service agencies and churches to work on caring for these poor, unemployed, economically distressed folks. The council is doing their part: they approved Enterprise Zone status at Tuesday’s meeting, 10-1 (Sandberg was the lone “no” vote).

Their reasoning? “Everybody’s doing it.” All over Illinois, they say, this is the way the Enterprise Zone is being used, so therefore, that’s also how we should use it. And if everyone else in Illinois were jumping off a bridge, then I suppose we would, too. The City’s economic development director Craig Hullinger also had this rationalization that he e-mailed to the council and also reiterated at the meeting:

There is some concern on the blogs about extending the Enterprise Zone to the new Horan development on Radnor.

This area is in the unincorporated County. They had proper zoning and sewer and water to build in the County, and they planned to do so.

By annexing them into the City and into the Enterprise Zone we give them a sales tax rebate on taxes for building material that we would not have gotten anyway if they had stayed unincorporated.

And we get a lifetime of property, sales, and utility tax from the development that would never have come to the City. And logical expansion of the city boundaries.

In other words, the ends justify the means.

Here’s the problem with this logic: it doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s a half-truth. Because the trade-off is less Enterprise Zone area that could be used to help legitimately depressed areas of the city, more land mass for the city to support with public works and public safety services which are already stretched thin, and an exacerbation of developer-welfare and the entitlement mentality among developers.

I think it’s interesting that the district councilmen in the first, second, and third districts voted for this measure even though it incentivizes businesses to move out of their districts and into the growth areas of the city. Even though it means less area that they could use to try to attract businesses to (and retain businesses in) depressed areas in their districts.

I also take issue with the idea that this development “would never have come to the City.” Never? Never is a long time. I think it’s most likely that growth in this area would have encircled this development within a few years, and the city would have annexed it anyway. I also think that the city probably has other tools it could have used to woo it into the city without further bastardizing the Enterprise Zone.

The City Council meets Tuesday evening at 6:15 p.m. in City Hall, room 400. Here are the agenda items that caught my eye this week:

• There are a couple of new businesses seeking to join the Warehouse District TIF. The first is LaVille de Maillet, LLC, which is buying the recently-closed Biggins Label Company building, 820 SW Adams. The development plan is to put shared office space in the front of the building and a residential apartment in the rear. Interesting trivia about the name of the company: “LaVille de Maillet” is what Peoria was called in the late 1700s when French villagers lived here (where downtown is now), led by French-Canadian military commander Jean Baptiste Maillet. The company is owned by Dennis Slape, publisher of the Numero entertainment guide. I’ve heard he’s going to set up a photography studio, and one of the other tenants may be ArtsPartners.
• The second new business in the Warehouse District I’ve mentioned in a previous post. Drumheller Bag Corporation of Clarksdale, Mississippi, is expanding and has decided to add a new plant here in Peoria. In fact, they like it here so well, they’re moving their headquarters here, too. They’ve already hired 57 employees, 50 of which are former Bemis workers.
• Does a development on Radnor Road really need to be part of the city’s enterprise zone? Would you consider Willow Knolls and Radnor Road to be a “depressed area,” qualifying for enterprise zone status? City staff and the Planning Commission think so. You really should click on that link and read the council communication — you won’t believe it. Double A’s Pizza just got a loan from the city’s Business Development Loan Fund in August of this year, and now they’re planning to move to this new development at Willow Knolls and Radnor, just outside the city limits. The city doesn’t want to lose the sales tax revenue (how much pizza do people eat out there?), so they’re offering this Enterprise Zone status to try to lure the development into annexing. Huh? I can only assume that it meets the letter of the law, but surely this use of the Enterprise Zone violates the spirit of the law. And do we really need more land annexed when we can’t adequately provide city services to the land we already have?
• As previously reported, the neighbors in Vinton Highlands don’t want a gate between their subdivision and the new, upscale Coves subdivision. So the Traffic Commission is recommending that the city deny the Coves developer’s request to install a gate separating the two neighborhoods. That’s the right decision; hopefully the council will concur.
• Finally, there’s an agenda item regarding changes to the Land Development Code. City staff has been reviewing the code to see how it works or doesn’t work, and they have made some recommendations for change. Most of them are reasonable, but the Heart of Peoria Commission had some concerns with a few of them. We expressed those concerns at our last meeting and the public hearing held by the Zoning Commission. Staff apparently doesn’t agree, as they are still asking for approval of their changes as proposed, without making any changes based on HOPC’s recommendations. The result is a council communication that asks for council to choose to adopt either Option A, staff’s recommendation, or Option B, which is staff’s recommendation with HOPC’s changes. Considering the council did not give HOPC any funding this year, it will be interesting to see if they consider our concerns.

There’s a city council meeting this coming Tuesday night, Nov. 27. There are a few noteworthy items on the agenda:

• Public Hearing on 2008 City of Peoria Budget. This is your chance to tell the city what you think of the proposed budget, and what changes you think should be made.
• Heart of Peoria Housing Market Survey. The Economic Development Department wants to hire a consultant — Tracy Cross and Associates — to “determine the market for housing and mixed use development” in the Heart of Peoria area, including downtown and the warehouse district.
• Kellar Branch resolution. Patrick Nichting is carrying the Recreational Trail Advocates’ water by bringing their resolution to the council floor. This resolution was written before the STB handed down their recent ruling; now that the STB has ruled, the resolution is moot, and should be disregarded.
• Ordinance requiring drug dealers/users be evicted upon first notice. Third District councilman Bob Manning and at-large councilman George Jacob are requesting that Peoria adopt an ordinance similar to one in Evansville, Indiana. “This ordinance requires property owners, who are given notice that illegal drug activity has occurred on their premises, to evict the tenants responsible for the illegal activity or otherwise abate the nuisance.” The hope is that this will cause landlords to act quicker to get rid of drug-using and/or drug-dealing tenants.