Category Archives: City Council

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan

Council Roundup: Boring

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Hey, not every meeting can be filled with exciting and/or controversial issues worthy of blogging. Tonight’s meeting was a pretty big yawn. They are looking at the city’s health insurance benefits, trying to determine if they’re comparable with other municipalities. Riveting.

The Heart of Peoria Commission received council support to ask for $500,000 in federal funds from the Economic Development Initiatives Program. These funds would be used for infrastructure improvements in the Warehouse District, marketing for the Heart of Peoria Plan area, and possibly the establishment of a design studio. Basically, passage of this tonight means that they’ll send a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin asking for the money. It passed unanimously.

The last thing on the agenda was approving an ordinance that prohibits people under 21 years old from serving alcoholic beverages. Gary Sandberg clarified that this would still allow under-age wait staff at restaurants to deliver alcoholic beverages to tables. It passed unanimously.

Barbara Van Auken mentioned that some Bradley students are going to be doing their senior project on improving the Sheridan-Loucks business corridor. That will actually be pretty cool. I’d like to see some updating along that stretch — and attracting some new businesses. It’s a nice area.

And finally, the only mildly-exciting moment was when Michael Langley addressed the council and got into a little sparring match with Patrick Nichting that Mayor Ardis had to break up. That was entertaining.

I don’t want to depress you, but it will be another whole week before we get to have another fun-filled evening in council chambers.

City Council, Peoria Police

Where’s the scorn for enforcement of handicapped parking?

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Remember how radio personalities, city council members, and office water-cooler gatherers laughed and scorned the Peoria police for their enforcement of jaywalkers just a few days ago?  Oh, how ridiculous, they said.  That law is dumb, they scoffed.  The police should be focusing on real crime instead of just trying to score some easy income from fines.

Where was all that scorn when this story came out about handicapped parking?

Peoria hiked its fine from $200 to $350 and also launched a crackdown dubbed “Operation Helping Hands.”

A parking enforcement officer was assigned to randomly check handicapped spaces throughout the city and issue tickets, and police officers were instructed to step up enforcement in their districts.

An organized crackdown?  Higher fines?  An officer specifically assigned to do nothing but “randomly check handicapped spaces throughout the city and issue tickets”?  Where are all the armchair police chiefs decrying this waste of department resources?  Is this really more important than all that “real crime” they were castigated for not fighting just a few days ago?  Why didn’t Councilman Morris have anything to say about the “heavy-handedness” of upping the fine to $350?  Doesn’t he think the police should just hand out warnings to handicapped-parking scofflaws?  Why didn’t Councilman Sandberg point out that able-bodied people often use their handicapped relative’s placards so they can park close, and then argue that this loophole invalidates the whole system?

See, people really do think that ordinances are worthy of being enforced, even though they’re not “real crime” and aren’t always foolproof — they just don’t want the police to enforce ordinances they don’t like.  That’s understandable for radio personalities and water-cooler loiterers, but the city council should have stood up for the police like Barbara Van Auken did a week ago.  In fact, I think several council members owe the police an apology for castigating them for doing their job.

City Council, Illinois American Water

Question for Grayeb: What do you have against Germany?

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We get it, Chuck.  You really don’t like Germans and you don’t like our water company being owned by them.  You want the city to buy it back so it’s under local control.  You’ve made your point, now move on. 

As you know, Illinois American Water Company is owned by RWE-AG, a German company.  And at every council meeting, Grayeb has something snide to say about the Germans and how much they don’t care about central Illinois.  And I mean every meeting.  To hear Chuck talk, you’d think Hitler himself was running the company, poisoning our water in an attempt to exterminate Peorians.

Well, guess what, Mr. Grayeb?  The water utility isn’t the only company with corporate headquarters far away and thus (by your logic) little concerned for our needs here in the heartland.  Consider these (and shudder!): 

AmerenCILCO:  headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri
Insight Communications:  headquartered in New York, New York
SBC/AT&T:  headquartered in Bedminster, New Jersey

That’s right!  The city has a lot of work ahead of it to purchase these basic services and get them under local control again.  I realize these companies may not be interested in selling their respective systems to the city, but since when has that stopped you?

I wonder if anyone is sending Grayeb’s xenophobic diatribes to Friedrichshafen, Peoria’s “sister city” in Germany.  Maybe if Germans are such horrible people, we should sever the city’s official relationship with them.  And maybe we should pass an oridance outlawing the eating of German food and force the Hofbrau House out of the city.

Suggestion for Grayeb: tone down the rhetoric.  You’re not winning the hearts and minds of Peorians with your current “foreigners-are-evil” tactics.

City Council, Peoria Police, Traffic

Council Roundup: Jaywalking and “W. B.” Grayeb

Councilwoman Van Auken expressed appreciation for the Peoria Police and defended their enforcement of laws against jaywalking.  She suggested that if people think jaywalking laws are stupid, perhaps they should work on repealing such laws.  And that was the last sensible comment made on the subject.

Following Van Auken, several council members scoffed at the police doing their jobs by acting on citizen concerns and issuing tickets to scofflaws.  Reasons? 

There are more important crimes on which they should be focusing, one said.  Yes.  And there are more important crimes than speeding and seat belt violators, but they set up stings for those all the time.  Not compelling.

Another was concerned that it will drive pedestrians away from downtown.  I never realized that running across a busy street while dodging cars was the definition of “pedestrian friendly.”  One wonders why we bother putting up Walk/Don’t Walk signals all over town with countdowns and everything if they’re such an impediment to a pleasant pedestrian experience.  Let’s be real friendly and require pedestrians to take their lives in their hands on all busy streets!

Still another council person thought it was too heavy-handed of a response to write tickets.  I suppose they could have handed out warnings, especially since they had never enforced jaywalking before, so I’ll give them that one.

But then there was my favorite reason:  the law is too difficult to understand.  Yep.  That was one of Morris’s and Sandberg’s complaints.  I guess there are some loopholes in the jaywalking law (what law doesn’t have loopholes?), and because of that, we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, according to these two council members.  If this discussion hadn’t gotten completely ridiculous prior to this point, it crossed the line here.

But just when you thought it couldn’t get any goofier, “W. B.” Grayeb chimed in.  You know what the “W. B.” stands for, don’t you?  Yep, you guessed it: “Water Buyout.”  This is the only issue Grayeb cares about anymore.  All discussions come back around to the water buyout, somehow, some way.  We got our weekly report on how RWE (did you know they’re foreign owned?) isn’t going to be selling American Water Company in pieces.

I’ll revisit “W. B.” Grayeb in a future post.

City Council

Council Roundup: The big issue that disappeared

Well, I’m sure I’ll read about this in tomorrow’s paper, but the issue I was waiting for inexplicably disappeared tonight.  Crusens had asked to deannex the former Hunts property from the City of Peoria so it could be annexed by West Peoria.  This makes sense since they’re contiguous and would most likely be used for one business, Crusen’s bar, which is located on the West Peoria side.

However, they sent a letter requesting their petition for deannexation be withdrawn.  Without any further explanation, the issue was gone.  Poof!  That didn’t stop Councilman Morris from babbling about his opposition to deannexation anyway. 

City Council

Council Roundup: Peoria loses federal funds; reduces staff

The city is two employees leaner after tonight. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reduced the amount of money it provides the City of Peoria in the form of three grants: the Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnership Act grant and Emergency Shelter Grant.  The grants were reduced by 9.5%, 6%, and 0.5%, respectively.  That’s a lot of lost funding — in fact, it’s a $260,000 drop from last year, and a $903,000 drop since 2002.

That means that the city has to do something to make up for the shortfall.  They decided tonight to take several steps, including a cut in staff.  The Planning Department will lose two employees and funding for specific programs was moved around or reduced. 

Additionally, one staff position will be moved from the Equal Employment Opportunity office to the Inspection Department.  This generated quite a bit of discussion, as Councilman Gulley was opposed to it.  He questioned whether there was enough remaining staff to comply with EEO requirements.

The recommendation passed on a split vote, 6-4.

City Council

Council Roundup: Mail call — we’re demolishing your property

When the city identifies an unsafe or dangerous building in Peoria, it can move to have it demolished.  Part of that process is sending a letter to the owner of the property telling them the city is going to be tearing it down.  Up until tonight, the City of Peoria has been mailing those notices via certified mail.  After tonight’s vote, those notices will be served via regular mail.  It will save the city maybe $300 a year and shave three weeks off the demolition process. 

Not very significant, as Gary Sandberg and others pointed out.  But it’s some movement, so it passed, 6-4.  Something that didn’t come up in the council discussion, but was included in the Request for Council Action, is that this decision means Peoria will be following the State of Illinois statute on the same issue (65 ILCS 5/11-31-1).  So it’s not like Peoria is an oddball community by serving these notices via regular mail.

City Council, Heart of Peoria Plan, Museum Block

Museum Square Revisited

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The boomerang-shaped building is back.  And it wants more money.

Apparently the underground parking deck is going to cost $3 million more than planners thought, so now they want to set up a TIF to pay for it.  The Journal Star editorializes that the city should give them the money because it’s a “signature development of this generation.”  They reason that it was the Heart of Peoria Commission’s recommendation that led to the idea of putting the parking underground, so the city should accept responsibility for that action.  After all, they argue, “Would City Hall prefer that Museum Square have a suburban-style surface lot on its riverfront?”

That’s a rhetorical question, of course.  But it’s also a false dichotomy.  There are several other options in reality.  In fact, this could be just the opening the city council and Heart of Peoria Commission needs to revisit the site plans overall.  Let’s look at just a couple of other options:

Do We Really Need More Parking?

One thing to consider is whether additional parking is necessary on that block at all.  There’s a parking deck and surface lot directly across Water Street that gets very little use during the day.  And since, under the current design, Museum Square will only be active during the day, wouldn’t that parking suffice?  You have to figure, they’re only developing a little over a third of the square footage on the old Sears block, and the museum design doesn’t include any residential or restaurant component that would keep people there past 5:00 when the museum closes.  Why the need for more parking?

Change the Building Plans

One of the reasons the underground parking is going to be so expensive to build is because it’s a rectangular parking area partially underneath the building and partially underneath a courtyard.  In other words, the footprint of the building and the footprint of the parking deck don’t line up.  That adds to the cost.  So, I think it would be reasonable to suggest that developers consider modifying their building plans. 

Why not?  Museum backers are wanting to change the financial details of the plan; why isn’t it fair game for the council to turn the tables and ask the developers to change the physical details of the plan?  There’s more than one way to save $3 million. 

There’s plenty of justification for this idea that goes beyond the parking situation.  As I’ve written previously, the current design for Museum Square is totally contrary to the Heart of Peoria Plan, which the city council adopted “in principle.”  The Heart of Peoria Commission unwisely chose not to make a recommendation when the site plan came before the council back in November.  But maybe this new wrinkle will give them and the council a second chance.

If Museum Square were to follow the Heart of Peoria Plan, the parking deck wouldn’t be an issue:

  • The style of the buildings would be in keeping with the surrounding architecture, meaning (among other things) they would be more rectangular in shape, making it possible for the footprints of the building and underground parking to coincide.
  • There would be more density on the block.  Instead of only a little more than a third of the block being developed, over two-thirds would be utilized; a larger building footprint means more room for parking underneath.
  • There would be residential (or hospitality), retail, and restaurant components included in the plans, which would generate additional revenue for the development and keep the block active 24 hours a day, seven days a week, justifying the need for more parking in the first place.

The Journal Star is right about one thing.  This will be the “signature development of this generation.”  So isn’t it important that we get it right?  I know some may balk at the idea of sending the planners “back to the drawing board” at this point when they’re so far along in the process.  But until the buildings are in brick and mortar, all they have to change is their paper drawings, and that’s not going to cost $3 million.

Now is the time to revisit this and get it right.

City Council, Peoria Civic Center

How about if Peoria buys the naming rights?

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I got to thinking about my last post, and I have an idea.

Do you remember how the federal government regulated speed limits in the ’70s?  They told states they could have any speed limit they wanted, but if they wanted federal money to maintain the roads, the speed limits had to be no faster than 55 mph.

Suppose the City Council were to pass an amendment that says the Civic Center Authority can name the venue and arena whatever it wants, but if it wants HRA tax revenues, it will have to be named the “Peoria Civic Center” and “Carver Arena”?  Doesn’t that sound fair?  That way, if they can wean themselves off HRA taxes, they can sell the naming rights.  But as long as they’re operating on taxpayer dollars, the taxpayers get to decide the name.

I think we’ve earned that right, don’t you?  According to the Journal Star’s editorial today, HRA taxes amount to $55 million.  Here’s an issue where I agree with the Journal Star — the Civic Center should scale back their plans instead of selling the naming rights.

City Council, Television

State of the City

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Mayor Ardis delivered the State of the City address today at the Holiday Inn City Center.  HOI News and 1470 WMBD each have good reports. If you’d like to see it for yourself, Insight Communications will be rebroadcasting it tomorrow, January 26th, at noon on cable channel 22.

UPDATE: Jonathan Ahl has informed me that a podcast of the State of the City address is available from www.wcbufm.org. WCBU (89.9 FM) will also be rebroadcasting the address at 7 p.m. Tuesday, January 31.

UPDATE 2: The Journal Star has a PDF of the speech on its site.