Category Archives: City of Peoria

2011 Election, City Council, City of Peoria

Please vote for me on Tuesday, April 5, and then come to the party!

30 Comments

Tomorrow is the election. There are ten candidates for City Council, and the top five vote-getters will be our at-large council members for the next four years. I’m asking for your vote so that I’ll be one of those five.

Here’s my radio ad which has played the past several business days on WMBD (1470 AM), WSWT/Lite Rock 107 (106.9 FM), and WPIA/KISS-FM (98.5 FM); it explains what my priorities will be if I’m elected:

[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/Summers-for-Council-2011_192K.mp3]

I would like to thank everyone who has supported me, those who have already cast their vote for me during the early voting period, those who have endorsed me and given me advice, those who have put my sign in their yard, those who have encouraged their friends and family to vote for me, and all those who will be voting for me tomorrow.

You’re all invited to join me at the G.A.R. Hall, 416 Hamilton Blvd., on Tuesday night starting at 7 p.m. for an election night party. (In the spirit of consolidating services, Beth Akeson and I will be having our election night party together.) I hope you can all attend!

City of Peoria, Peoria Journal Star

Puff piece ignores controversy on Matthews Market disposition

25 Comments

The Journal Star just published a puff piece on East Peoria developer Gary Matthews written by the recently retired Paul Gordon. It includes this gloss over the disposition of Matthews Market:

Matthews returned to Peoria – something he’d always planned to do – and went to work for his father at Matthews Market in the early 1970s after they made peace with each other. The idea was that he’d take over the business some day.

“But I didn’t like the grocery business. I don’t know why, exactly, but it just wasn’t for me,” he said.

He got his real estate license and went to work for David Joseph in his company’s residential real estate division. “My dad was disappointed, but he understood. He sold the grocery store after I left.”

Well, there’s a lot more to the story than that. And it’s all chronicled in erstwhile reporter Gordon’s own newspaper’s archives.

Matthews Market was located at 1500 NE Jefferson and was open until December 1992 under Gary Matthews’ ownership. It closed reportedly due to crime and urban decay in the neighborhood, as well as competition from larger grocery stores. The store still carried a mortgage and a lien, but suddenly the City of Peoria was interested in acquiring the property. On January 16, 1993, the Journal Star reported this:

Peoria’s second police storefront is expected to open this spring in the former Matthews Market building, 1500 NE Jefferson.

The City Council will be asked Tuesday to approve a deal to acquire the building.

The city’s cost is expected to be $135,000, provided a deal can be worked out with Northside Neighborhood Housing Services. That deal would involve the trade of a city-owned house at 1120 NE Jefferson in exchange for the housing service releasing its $33,000 lien on Matthews Market.

First of America Bank holds the first mortgage on the building, which closed in December.

The city’s first police storefront opened Dec. 15 in a city-owned building at 101 N. MacArthur. In addition to neighborhood policing, the storefronts deal with zoning and code enforcement issues.

“What it represents is the partnership of the city, community-based policing and the neighborhood,” 3rd District Councilman Dave Koehler said. “Hopefully, (area residents) will have an ear for their concerns and complaints that is more readily available.”

Development Director Tom Tincher said the second storefront is expected to open within 90 days. Police Chief Keith Rippy said last year he plans to open a total of five storefront police offices throughout the city.

Pretty sweet deal for Mr. Matthews. He had more into the store building than it was worth, but the City was willing to take it off his hands for the cost of the amount owed on the property. Controversy erupted on February 11, 1993, when this story broke:

Third District Councilman David Koehler showed poor ethics in mingling his private matters with Peoria City Council business, his opponent in the upcoming election said Wednesday.

Koehler responded by calling candidate Nina Nissen’s charges “politics of desperation,” and added that Nissen is ethically suspect herself for mounting a “smear” campaign.

Nissen, a former assistant personnel director, issued a statement Wednesday calling for a “cleanup of City Hall in the area of ethics.” In recommending a city ethics code, Nissen questioned … the city’s recent purchase of the former Matthews Market, 1500 NE Jefferson, for use as the city’s second police storefront. The city will assume a $135,000 first mortgage on the building and swap another house to the Northside Neighborhood Housing Service to clear up a $33,000 lien.

The problem, Nissen said, is the building is owned by Koehler’s former campaign manager, Gary Matthews.

“It’s wrong if Koehler used his influence to help his campaign manager benefit from an action of the City Council,” she said. “Sure, we need a storefront. But does it have to be Matthews Market?” Koehler said Gary Matthews is no longer involved with his campaign. Koehler’s campaign organization statement on file with the city clerk lists Matthews as his chairman, but Koehler said the statement — — filed in July 1990 — is outdated.

“Yeah, Gary helped me out” in his 1989 campaign, Koehler said, adding that he kept a distance from the Matthews Market negotiations. “In terms of whether there was any special favors on my part for Gary — no.”

Koehler won reelection, but not before more criticism was heaped on the project. The following article appeared in the Journal Star on February 22, 1993 — which is also when we learn that, in addition to a $135,000 mortgage and a $33,000 housing service lien, Gary Matthews still owed $65,000 to the City of Peoria for a loan they gave him as well:

A local political organization claims city officials are wasting taxpayers money by purchasing a deserted grocery store for a storefront police station.

Peoria’s second police storefront is expected to open this spring in the former Matthews Market building, 1500 NE Jefferson.

Members of the People’s Coalition for Political Reform said at a news conference Sunday they want to reveal what they call “a waste of city funds” on the abandoned building.

Although not opposed to the storefront idea, group officials said there are many questionable factors involved with land acquisition, building administration and finances.

Group members said the city is paying too much for the run-down, deserted supermarket.

The city’s cost is expected to be $135,000, which is what remained on the buildings mortgage. City Manager Peter Korn said the city will make monthly payments on the building until the mortgage is paid off. He said he is unsure what the monthly payments will be.

First of America Bank holds the first mortgage on the building, which closed in December.

That deal also involves the trade of a city-owned house at 1120 NE Jefferson to the North Side Neighborhood Housing Service in exchange for the release of a $33,000 lien on the former market.

“The only thing they are doing is putting the city of Peoria more in debt. What we have here is a money pit,” said organization spokesman Rolf Sivertsen.

Korn said the city will also forgive a $65,000 loan balance owed to the city by the former owner of Matthews Market , Gary Matthews. The original loan to Matthews was $110,000, but $45,000 has been repaid.

The city became interested in the property because they already had money invested in it as a result of the loan, Korn said.

In addition to financial problems with the project, the People’s Coalition said the facility is too large for what the police need. The building is 8,000 square feet.

Korn said the police facility will occupy about 2,000 square feet and the remainder of the property will probably be used for community organizations.

But Sivertsen said he won’t believe the city will lease out the extra property until he actually sees the leases.

By September 10, 1993, the City was looking to resell the building, which was too big for the City’s needs from the beginning, and lease a portion of it instead:

Peoria’s third police storefront amounts to a pig in a poke, a city councilman said this week.

The city’s purchase of the former Matthews Market, 1500 NE Jefferson, was first announced in January. The deal took a new twist in recent months, however, as a business offered to buy the building and lease a portion to the city.

“The net result will be an economic situation that’s less costly than for us to be in the . . . storefront at Sheridan and Nebraska,” city development Director Tom Tincher said Wednesday.

The city currently operates police storefront stations at Sheridan and Nebraska and at 101 N. MacArthur Highway. Fourth District City Councilman Steve Kouri is not sold on the deal, which he figures will cost more than $250,000 before the storefront opens.

“It’s a bottomless pit, as far as I’m concerned,” Kouri said.

Tincher refused to divulge details of the pending resale of the building.

The City Council in January approved the first part of the deal: assuming the $135,000 mortgage held by store owner Gary Matthews and swallowing a $60,000 city loan. The store closed in December 1992. Tincher said the business approached the city about six months ago, intent on buying Matthews Market and occupying a portion of the structure.

Third District City Councilman David Koehler agreed the Matthews Market deal might not look good on paper, but said it represents a life preserver tossed to an inner-city neighborhood drowning in disinvestment.

Further repairs on the Matthews Market building will cost an estimated $63,975, according to city estimates. The City Council approved $27,315 of that amount Tuesday in the form of a roof repair contract awarded to Peoria Roofing, a contract awarded after competitive bidding and an approval based on the criteria list in this article (Common Questions To Decide How To Treat Your Roof – SWS Roofing).

Kouri said he supports the concept of community-based policing, but not the storefronts, which have been lambasted by critics as mere public relations ploys.

On December 22, 1993, the aforementioned deal was approved. In a story about the council’s decision to grant a sidewalk cafe license for, ironically, one of the buildings adjacent to Big Al’s that Matthews now plans to tear down, the Journal Star added that the council also took the following action:

Authorized the sale of the former Matthews Market building, 1500 NE Jefferson, to A&E Blueprint, which would lease a portion of the building back to the city for a police storefront.

A&E Blueprint currently is located at 3530 NE Adams, but will be bought out for the Illinois Department of Transportation’s McClugage Bridge and Adams Street improvement.

A&E will pay the city $135,000 for the building and lease back 2,600 square feet for the city storefront, at an annual rate of $2.50 per square foot, or $6,500.

I’m not sure when the police storefront idea fizzled, but at some point this leased space became the Peoria Township office. Recently, the township also moved out of the building, and the City no longer rents the space for anything to my knowledge.

The bottom line is this: The taxpayers of Peoria gave Gary Matthews a $98,000 gift 19 years ago by forgiving his $65,000 city loan and erasing the $33,000 housing service lien as part of the exchange for his run-down Matthews Market building. The sweetheart deal was alleged to have been political payback by then-council-member Dave Koehler because Matthews had been his campaign manager. The building was in such bad shape that the city resold it less than a year later and just leased a portion of it.

This is the same Gary Matthews to whom the taxpayers of Peoria are now giving a $37 million gift (including a $9 million developer’s fee) to build the Wonderful Development (aka, the downtown hotel project).

And now you know the rest of the story.

City of Peoria, Transportation

Spoof shows absurdity of train to Normal

9 Comments

Outrage. Disbelief. Skepticism. These were all feelings people told me they had while reading my April Fools Day post — a mock news report saying all Peoria flights would be going through Bloomington’s airport.

Everybody recognizes that flying to Bloomington and switching planes would be silly. Those who fly want direct flights to major hub cities, like Chicago.

Yet local leaders are actively pursuing something equally absurd: a passenger train to Normal. Instead of pursuing a direct route to Chicago, local leaders are all too willing to settle for a shuttle to the twin cities where passengers can switch to another train that will then take them to Chicago.

It will never work. People take the train to save time and money. A train into Chicago saves time since gridlock traffic can be averted getting into the city. Money is saved because a round-trip ticket is less than the cost to park in Chicago, let alone the cost of gas to drive there.

But going from Peoria to Chicago via a connecting train in Bloomington will add considerable time and expense — time and expense that can be avoided by simply driving to Bloomington and parking for free. And that’s what people will do.

The city should be pursuing direct passenger rail service to Chicago, not a shuttle to Bloomington-Normal. For additional reasons, see David Jordan’s posts on this topic here and here.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

Van Auken begs school board for what the Council denies

28 Comments

I about spit out my soda when I read this in an article about District 150’s board meeting Monday night:

Some, including City Councilwoman Barbara Van Auken, asked the board to halt any decisions.

“I’m here to beg you — defer these decision until you have some community outreach,” said Van Auken, who represents District 2, which includes Columbia Middle School, 2612 N. Bootz Ave. “If you have a bad process, you’re going to have a bad outcome.”

Well, I agree with that statement 100%. But I have a few questions: Where was Council Member Van Auken when the City Council rammed through a $39 million hotel deal with only a single business day of public notice and no “community outreach” whatsoever? Where was her concern over “bad process” then? Why didn’t she “beg” the council to defer that decision?

Van Auken’s admonishment kind of reminds me of the Heart of Peoria Plan: something that’s adopted in principle but ignored in practice.

2011 Election, City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

The District 150 conundrum

37 Comments

I find it really interesting that, as a City Council candidate, I regularly get asked about what the City can do (or what I can/will do as a City Council person) to help District 150. Oftentimes, the questions go beyond the support areas over which the City has control, and gets into school board policy — concerns over school closures, returning schools to a K-8 configuration, and similar things. In fact, from the questions I get asked at forums and in personal interactions, it looks to me like the state of District 150 is, if not number one, at least the number two priority of Peoria residents.

And yet…

Not a single person circulated petitions for the third ward school board seat. As a result, all the candidates there are write-in candidates. The third ward school board member vacating his seat this year is running for City Council instead. In the second ward, there’s only one challenger to sitting school board president Debbie Wolfmeyer. The last time Martha Ross was up for reelection, she ran unopposed. If I were to judge the public’s concern for District 150 by their efforts to change policy by getting on the board and challenging the status quo, I’d have to say it’s not a very high priority at all.

How are we to explain this strange phenomenon?

City of Peoria, History

Another historic property may see wrecking ball

12 Comments

Included in the Peoria City Council’s evisceration of the city’s historic preservation ordinance was a provision that exempts church-owned property from historic preservation. Specifically, the motion said, in part, “No property or structure that is owned by a religious organization and is used primarily as a place for the conduct of religious ceremonies or to further the religious mission or business of the owner shall be subject to the regulations set forth in Articles I through IV of this Chapter by reason of its location within a Historic District….”

That’s all Westminster Presbyterian Church needed to file suit against the City:

Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1420 W. Moss Ave., wants a judge to declare Westminster House has a religious use and therefore can be demolished under changes made to the ordinance Feb. 8…. For years, Westminster has tried to demolish the Westminster House, located at 1508 W. Moss Ave. and in the heart of Moss-High Historic District. The efforts have led nowhere until perhaps now. In 2008, the church unsuccessfully tried to convince the historic preservation commission to allow it to demolish the building. Then they filed suit in federal court, a legal action that was defeated last fall.

The suit filed Monday states the church began holding men’s fellowship prayer meetings on March 9 and that makes the building, which had been used until 2006 as office space, a religious building.

This illustrates the can of worms opened by the council’s action. Do existing historic landmarks automatically get de-listed if they are owned by religious organizations now they are exempt? What if a religious organization purchases an historic landmark building? Does it then automatically get de-listed?

I wonder if those on the council who voted for this amendment had really thought through all the ramifications before passing it.

2011 Election, City Council, City of Peoria

Last scheduled Council candidates forum tonight

16 Comments

There’s a candidates forum for the Peoria City Council at-large race tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the G.A.R. Hall, 416 Hamilton Blvd., downtown Peoria. The event is sponsored by the Central Illinois Landmarks Foundation (CILF), so there will certainly be questions about the candidates’ views on historic preservation. However, the questions will not be limited to that topic. Any city- or council-related issues are fair game.

City Council, City of Peoria

Peoria City Council 3/22/2011 (Live Blog)

14 Comments

Good evening, everyone. I’m live-blogging from home tonight, as I have had a terrible head cold the last couple of days — especially last night and this morning. So, I’ve got my Kleenex handy and lots of fluids nearby, and my radio tuned to WCBU 89.9 FM. This is probably a good time to encourage everyone who appreciates WCBU’s live coverage of the Peoria City Council meetings to make a donation to them — you can pledge online here.

This is the last council meeting before the April 5 at-large election. There are a couple of controversial issues on the agenda tonight: the low-income elderly housing facility proposed near the corner of War Memorial Drive and Sheridan Road (Item 3) and the East Village Growth Cell and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district (Items 4-6). If you’re following along live, be sure to refresh your browser every so often to get the latest updates. The meeting starts at 6:15, and begins with a few proclamations, so it will be a few minutes before we get into the agenda.

One of the proclamations was a touching commemoration of the life of Les Kenyon. May he rest in peace.

And now, without any further ado, here’s tonight’s agenda:

Continue reading Peoria City Council 3/22/2011 (Live Blog) →

City of Peoria, Peoria Fire Department, Peoria Mayor

Ardis pooh-poohs city-run ambulance service, but explanation raises more questions

21 Comments

The City Council candidates are often asked at forums what ideas we have for generating more revenue for the city. Gary Sandberg has suggested that the City should provide its own ambulance service, severing its contract with Advanced Medical Transport (AMT). The way he sees it, we already have a professional fire department that is first on the scene and capable of providing basic life support (BLS); it would not take much to have these guys trained to provide advanced life support (ALS) as well.

Mayor Jim Ardis apparently heard about this and took up his pen to write an editorial in the Journal Star. He says:

During the current campaign for City Council, some candidates have suggested that the city consider starting its own ambulance service. As a 14-year veteran on the council, I have studied this question time and again and the answer is always the same. A city-operated ambulance provider will require a taxpayer subsidy from our general fund and lose millions of dollars each year.

AMT doesn’t receive a taxpayer subsidy. In fact, AMT pays the city a dispatch fee that generates $100,000 per year. We have a good medical emergency response system. It is not broken and meets the highest national standards defined to date. Private studies have provided the same conclusion.

Start-up costs to begin transport would be nearly $3.5 million for equipment and training. AMT writes off more than $2 million per year as uncollectable, bad debt. The company also discounts $5 million for Medicare and Medicaid. The city could not afford to lose a penny of revenue and still wouldn’t run this operation in the black. Simply put, transport is not a core service for our citizens.

…Our ambulance service agreement with our professional fire department is an idea that works. Adding to our already strained payroll is an idea that does not make sense.

I’m not going to dismiss Ardis’s criticism out of hand. But this explanation leaves a lot to be desired. Given the numbers put forth in this editorial, one has to wonder how AMT didn’t go bankrupt years ago. Why is AMT able to operate in the black, but the City of Peoria couldn’t? Since AMT is a not-for-profit organization, I took a look at its Form 990.

According to the 2009 Form 990 (the latest available), AMT’s total revenue was $11,696,795. That revenue went up every year from 2005 ($9,224,551) to 2009. Total expenses were $10,776,223, including the executive director’s salary of $256,549, the assistant executive director’s salary of $113,612, and the controller’s salary of $110,651. Considering they’re a non-profit company, and thus their services are priced accordingly, I’d say they’re doing pretty well, and have been for a number of years.

Again, I’m not saying that Ardis is necessarily wrong — I’m just saying his article doesn’t explain why AMT is able to make almost a million dollars a year and pay handsome salaries to its top brass, but somehow the City would lose money hand over fist if it provided the same service. I’m also unclear why we would have to “[add] to our already strained payroll.” Why couldn’t the existing personnel who are already BLS-trained also be ALS-trained? There would be training and equipment costs to be sure, but why couldn’t those costs be covered by the revenue the City would receive the same way AMT’s training and equipment costs are covered by the revenue they receive?

We need Paul Harvey to give us the rest of the story.

Census 2010, City of Peoria

A picture of Peoria’s shifting population

20 Comments

From the City’s Planning and Growth Department, here are a couple of pictures that show the migration of Peoria’s population from the older neighborhoods to the south into the newer neighborhoods to the north. Areas in red and orange saw a decline in population, whereas areas in yellow and green saw an increase. As you look at these, take particular note of how large the area is that is losing population versus the area that is gaining population. Here’s a map that shows the change just over the past ten years:

And here’s what the change looks like over the past forty years:

Here are some other revealing statistics:

Year Population Area
1970 126,963 40 mi.2
2010 115,007 49.84 mi.2

That means that, over the past 40 years, there has been a 9.42% drop in population, and a 24.6% increase in land area that has been annexed into the City. In other words, our city has gotten physically bigger, but the burden of providing city services to all that land is falling on fewer taxpayers.

Now, to be fair, we had large population losses from 1970 to 2000, but have seen a slight population gain between 2000 and 2010. So let’s compare just the changes in the past ten years. Population increased from 112,936 to 115,007, or 1.83%, yet land area grew from 44 to 49.84 square miles, or 13.27%. If it takes over 13% growth in land to net a little under 2% growth in population, I would submit that we cannot sustain such a policy.

These charts illustrate that we have to find ways to get people moving back into our heritage neighborhoods. Northern growth alone is demonstrably insufficient to pull the city out of its fiscal crisis.