Category Archives: City of Peoria

City of Peoria, Kellar Branch, Peoria Journal Star, Peoria Park District

Park District can walk lapdog Journal Star on new trail

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The Peoria Journal Star has published another article on the proposed Kellar Branch conversion. Of course, it is information that was on the blogs two weeks ago. However, since they’re a full-time, mainstream media outlet, and not just doing journalism as a hobby, they had the time and access to contact several people for quotes about the project, including Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis, Pioneer Railcorp attorney Bill Mullins, Park District director Bonnie Noble, and head of the inscrutable Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation Tom Leiter.

Here’s what the Journal Star didn’t ask any of these people: Why did Pioneer Railcorp (who has steadfastly opposed trail conversion) change their mind? What is the purpose of the Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation? It’s been reported that Leiter’s company “bought out” the interests of the parties on the Kellar Branch; how much did that cost? Will those costs be passed on to the taxpayers? If so, why has that agreement not been publicly disclosed?

These are all questions that a watchdog media would have asked. But the Journal Star, which has long been a lapdog for the Peoria Park District, took a pass on doing any investigation that would hold public officials accountable for disclosing what’s being done or going to be done with our tax money. No doubt they’ll report on the costs after the fact, the same way they put a big article on the costs of a new charter school the day after the school board voted to approve it.

City Council, City of Peoria

Liveblogging the City Council 1-12-2010

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Welcome to Peoria City Hall, Council Chambers. It’s 6:35 p.m. and time for the first council meeting of 2010. As usual, be sure to refresh this post often as I will be updating it throughout the evening. All council members and the mayor are in attendance. The mayor is evidently growing a beard, no doubt to emulate yours truly. Councilman Jacob appears to have a broken finger, as he’s sporting a pretty large cast on his right hand.

So without any further ado, here’s the agenda:

Continue reading Liveblogging the City Council 1-12-2010 →

City of Peoria

City crews just about done plowing

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From a press release:

City crews have completed final plowing and salting operations on primary streets during the night. Motorists can expect primary streets to be slushy and wet during the morning rush.

Plowing on residential streets was delayed due to additional snow during the night. Residential streets are 95% complete, with the expectation of being 100% by 10:00 a.m. this morning. Crews will begin alley plowing this morning and hope to have them completed by late afternoon.

City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan, Streets

Main Street: Actions speak louder than words

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According to the Journal Star’s “Word on the Street” column, Second District Council Member Barbara Van Auken “wants Main to be considered a priority again.” While I welcome efforts to move Main Street back onto the priority list, I have to wonder what is meant by “priority.” The same amount of money for Main Street improvements has been budgeted in 2010 as was budgeted in 2009: $0. Lack of funding was the reason given for moving Main off the priority list in the first place back in November 2008.

The article goes on to explain that, specifically, she’d like to see additional parking and property redevelopment along the stretch from University to Methodist. “[Additional parking is] an inexpensive thing we can do on the short term and hopefully slow the traffic down, making (exceptions) for the so-called rush hours in the morning and afternoons.” I presume she’s talking about on-street parking, given that only on-street parking would have a traffic calming effect. I agree that adding parking on Main is relatively inexpensive and easy to do (plus it would make Main more pedestrian-friendly and offer easier access to businesses). But why then was it not done last year? Why did she support the addition of off-street surface lots in the West Main form district instead?

“‘I’m trying to work with all of those property owners to the maximum extent possible to redevelop that entire block and look at some of the parking issues and some (improvements) of the facades and that sort of thing,’ Van Auken added.” Great, but facade improvement and property redevelopment are private investments, not public ones. In fact, several businesses have already improved their Main Street facades. When is the city going to do its part in improving the streetscape?

Public Works Director Dave Barber was also interviewed for the article. Notably, the paper said he “estimates it will cost $12 million” to make “a considerable impact on Main.” The figure includes the cost to “reduce the street’s lanes, landscape it and make it more pedestrian friendly.” In November 2008, the estimate for this same work was $10 million. So the estimated costs have risen 20% in 14 months. The longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes.

I appreciate the pro-revitalizing-Main-Street rhetoric, but frankly I’m tired of talk. All we’ve done is talk for seven years. Let’s see some action. Let’s see some money appropriated for it. Let’s see an RFP go out to perform the work. And don’t tell me we don’t have the money. Any city that can afford to give $39.3 million to a hotel developer (downtown Marriott), lease its prime real estate for $1 per year for 99 years (Sears block), tear up its railroad infrastructure (Kellar Branch), and turn its industrial park into a greenfield for low-wage big-box stores (Pioneer Park) obviously has money to burn.

When it comes to priorities in Peoria, actions speak much louder than words.

Chamber of Commerce, City of Peoria, Peoria Mayor

State of the City Address preview

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This year’s State of the City address will be at the Holiday Inn City Centre, 11:45 a.m., January 26. The Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce has published a video preview of the event:

Notable this year: It won’t only be the state of the city, but also the state of District 150. Interim superintendent Norm Durflinger will be presenting along with Mayor Ardis. If you want to attend, you can register here. Cost: $50 for non-members of the Chamber, $35 for members. For those of you who don’t want to spend the cash (like me), the city usually posts a copy of the speech to the city’s website immediately following the event. It’s free.

Bradley University, City of Peoria

Campustown Save-a-Lot to be leased to Bradley?

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Here’s what we know for sure: Campustown developer David Joseph already has another tenant lined up to replace Save-a-Lot, and it’s not a grocery store. Other than that, no one will comment for the record. So the question on everyone’s mind is, “who will the new tenant be?”

Over on Billy’s blog, one commenter suggests it will be an Ashley Furniture store. But in WEEK-TV’s news coverage, the manager of the Save-a-Lot tells a different story:

The Save-A-Lot store manager says the building won’t be empty for long, and he is hearing that it could be replaced with a Bradley bookstore.

I have heard Bradley rumored as a possible tenant from several sources — although they don’t all agree on what exactly Bradley will do with it. Possible uses run the gamut from a bookstore, as WEEK suggests, to offices, to an education center. I wrote to Bradley’s public relations rep — former Journal Star editor Shelley Epstein — but my inquiries have not been answered. Read into that what you will he’s out of town and unable to answer me until he gets back Sunday or Monday.

If the rumors are true and Bradley is going to be Campustown’s largest tenant, is that good or bad for the West Bluff? Let’s weigh the pros and cons.

Pros

  • Bradley would be a stabilizing presence in Campustown. Presumably, security would be increased, which will make the area safer.
  • Since Bradley isn’t buying the space, but rather leasing it, the city will continue to collect property tax revenue. And since the Campustown TIF ended this year, the property taxes will go back to the local governments again, and the city’s portion will go into the general fund.
  • More students and/or employees of Bradley going to school and/or working at Campustown may increase business for the remaining retail stores and restaurants.

Cons

  • The city will lose sales tax revenue. If the store is converted to an office or education center, no sales tax revenue at all will be collected. If it’s converted to a new Bradley bookstore, the old bookstore would likely close, so there would be a net loss in commercial square footage, which translates to a net loss in sales tax revenue.
  • A quality commercial anchor would better serve the West Bluff. As Campustown was originally conceived, a grocery store was supposed to provide basic infrastructure to the West Bluff that would be convenient for residents and an attractive amenity for people considering a move into the neighborhood. Thompson’s/Sullivan’s were excellent tenants toward furthering that vision, but Save-a-Lot (being a low-end grocer) sent a different message. While acknowledging that Save-a-Lot was a poor choice for a commercial anchor, the way to improve Campustown would be to bring in a better grocer, not convert retail space to institutional.

From the city’s standpoint, there’s no question that the cons outweigh the pros. They’re going to lose money. Sales tax is the city’s bread and butter. In an effort to keep property taxes low, the city has been piling up sales taxes and fees to cover the rising costs of public works, public safety, and developer incentives.

It’s not as if the city couldn’t absorb the loss of Save-a-Lot’s tax revenue by itself. But this isn’t an isolated incident. There seems to be somewhat of a trend in retail outlets and residential properties being taken over by non-tax-producing entities. For example, the old K’s Merchandise was taken over by OSF. The old Damon’s restaurant in Riverfront Village was taken over by Heartland Partnership. The old Leath Furniture was converted to a church. And huge swaths of land and houses that used to be on the property tax rolls have been taken over by District 150 for various building projects — or, in the case of the Prospect road properties, expensive blunders. In the case of District 150, taxpayers get hit with a double-whammy: we have to pay millions to acquire the properties, plus we lose the revenue they produced. The city can’t sustain such a trend without compensating growth.

From a neighborhood standpoint, the problem with Campustown has always been crime. The place has a reputation for being unsafe, and until that changes, you’ll have a hard time getting tenants to locate there and you’ll have a hard time getting patrons for those tenants. If Bradley’s presence were to reduce crime in Campustown, I think most residents would see it as a net gain for the West Bluff. Conversely, if Save-a-Lot is gone (and, despite its faults, the store was serving the needs of some lower-income West Bluff residents) and there is no increase in safety in return, that will certainly be a net loss for the area.

City Council, City of Peoria, East Bluff

Council looks to state for help, but won’t help themselves

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The city council can be so schizophrenic sometimes.

At Tuesday’s meeting, they first decided to keep taxing residents of the East Bluff Special Service District 18 cents per $100 equalized assessed value for another ten years to continue funding the East Bluff Neighborhood Housing Service, a controversial organization residents feel is ineffective and secretive. The vote was 9-1.

Then, just a couple of agenda items later, fourth district councilman Bill Spears made a motion “to begin discussions [with state legislators] on innovative ways to bring back the core of the inner city by giving incentives, such as tax breaks to homeowners and owned businesses.” After some discussion, that passed 9-1 also.

So they’re for talking about tax breaks with state reps, but not actually giving tax breaks to a distressed part of town when given the opportunity. Tell me that isn’t dysfunctional.

City of Peoria

Advice for Peoria from Thomas Jefferson

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And now, here is some advice from our third U. S. President that we would be wise to follow here in Peoria — and, for that matter, all other levels of government:

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.

Delay is preferable to error.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

City of Peoria

“Right now is an absolutely horrible time to be in the hotel business”

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So says Ben Thypin, senior market analyst for market research firm Real Capital Analytics, in a November 30, 2009, article for Moneynews.com. Why? Occupancy rates are falling on the order of 10%, and more and more hotels are going into default.

Hotel loans have begun falling into delinquency faster than any other kind of commercial real estate debt.

The rising defaults paint a grim picture for an industry with increasingly more rooms than guests, and more hotels still opening every day. It’s a problem that could get worse before it gets better, with demand expected to remain weak and ambitious new projects planned before the meltdown worsening the room glut.

The oversupply means room rates should stay low for at least another year, good news for consumers but not so great for hotel owners and the banks that lent them the cash to build or buy.

In a related story (forwarded to me by one of my alert readers), Governing magazine takes a look at cities building convention hotels and asks the question, “Should cities be in the mega-hotel business?”

[Heywood] Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio, is the nation’s leading critic of publicly funded convention centers and hotels. He argues that conventions in general, not to mention the facilities that host them, are a declining business. He says that more and more meetings take place online rather than in gigantic buildings, that the recession has only accelerated this process, and that recovery is not going to bring back the old days of massive trade and professional shows with participants flying in from all over the country. The crisis is causing some people to visit Sereno today instead of staying locally.

Sanders cringes as he sees cities betting on convention centers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, then doubling down on that bet with hotels that cost hundreds of millions more. His research suggests to him that the link between new headquarters hotels and increased convention business rarely emerges. “You get to do a big project with big promises and lots of money for consultants and bond counsel and underwriters and engineers,” he says, “but you may do it at the expense of the very important things that may make a city’s future.” Sanders would prefer that cities invest in schools, roads and affordable housing.

Meanwhile, back in Peoria where we ignore data such as this, the City is still breathlessly waiting to pour $39.3 million into a new downtown Marriott hotel. Jim McConoughey, president of the Heartland Partnership, recently was interviewed by the Journal Star. It included this bewildering exchange:

Q: There has been some criticism of late with regards to the city of Peoria’s involvement with assisting the hotel project with a $39.3 million revenue bond. Given the current economy and considering the struggles with other TIF projects like MidTown Plaza, how do you respond to someone who says that now is not the time to do the hotel and that the hotel project is a different TIF project than MidTown Plaza?

A: I may never be able to convince that person. They are trying to save their way out of an economy. This is about investing. When you look at a hotel project compared to other things, you can look at it in a couple of different ways – one is that they have been collecting taxes on that site for a hundred years. They have needed positives for a very long time. It’s only been in recent years the condition of (the Pere Marquette) hasn’t paid its own way. To have some degree of investment in it is a positive event for that particular project. For the short term, if you did nothing, it would feel like you are taking a less risky position. But the riskiest position is to not do anything.

First of all, the question is incorrect. It’s not a $39.3 million revenue bond, but rather a general obligation bond. That means if the hotel flops, the taxpayers are still on the hook to repay the bond debt.

Secondly, McConoughey is right about one thing: he’ll “never be able to convince that person.” The rest of his answer is basically the Peoria motto, “it’s better than nothing!” McConoughey treats “investment” here as though it is a purely positive thing. In reality, there are good and bad investments, and this downtown hotel scheme is a bad one (for reasons stated above and previously). A great investment today would be in the cannabis industry, with plenty of notable companies investing in it and getting huge returns. You can check out this article “https://www.newcannabisventures.com/sol-global-reports-c244-million-investment-gains-in-q1/” to learn how companies are investing in the cannabis industry.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Police

Red-light cameras on Peoria Police wish list

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I was reading over the agenda for the City Council meeting tonight, and this caught my eye: “2010 Legislative Agenda Items.” It’s described as “a list of items [that] are submitted to our local legislators with the expectation that the items will be reviewed with possible action taken in Springfield.”

One of the items on that list is a request that Peoria be able to use red-light cameras:

9. Automated Traffic Law Enforcement Technology/Red Light Running Expansion.

Current law allows for a governmental agency in a municipality or county located in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, Madison, St. Clair, and Will Counties to establish an automated traffic law enforcement system, in cooperation with a law enforcement agency that produces a recorded image of a motor vehicle’s response to a traffic control signal. The technology is designed to create a clear recorded image of the vehicle and the vehicle’s license plate. It further provides that the owner of the vehicle used in the violation is liable for the violation if the violation was recorded by the system, with exceptions. This legislation would give Peoria the authority to operate automated traffic enforcement technology for red light running.

On the one hand, I can understand the reason for the request. Since the City Council has cut dozens of police officers, the police department is having to look to alternative methods of law enforcement, including automation. These red-light cameras would allow intersections to be monitored without any officer present at all. If a vehicle runs a red light, the camera snaps a picture and the driver automatically get a traffic ticket in the mail.

On the other hand, however, photo enforcement is a bad idea. Consider this Chicago Tribune report that came out just over the weekend:

If improved safety is the goal of red-light cameras, then it is a mission largely unaccomplished for the first crop of area suburbs that raced to install the devices after they became legal in 2006, according to state data.

Accidents rose — in some cases, significantly — at half the 14 suburban intersections outfitted with traffic cameras by the end of 2007, the data show. The number of crashes fell at just five of those intersections after cameras went in, while two showed little change.

These findings aren’t unique to Chicago. In fact, numerous independent studies have shown an increase in traffic collisions due to red-light photo enforcement. Peoria (Arizona) saw the number of accidents double this past year at intersections where red-light cameras were installed.

Of course, these statistics are routinely ignored by municipalities because of another, more compelling statistic: increased revenues. Photo enforcement can be a cash cow for municipalities. A physical police officer at an intersection can only catch so many people in a day running red lights, whereas cameras catch every person, every time. That means a tremendous increase in the number of traffic citations, and hence, a windfall of revenue. A report by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, for example, found fine collections in Kingsport (TN) quadrupled after cameras were installed.

It’s because of this conflict of interest (revenues vs. safety) that many people are opposed to photo-enforcement.

The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and some municipalities with red-light cameras have allowed themselves to be corrupted by the love of money. The National Motorists Association reported in 2008 that six cities were caught shortening the length of yellow lights at photo-enforced intersections in order to increase revenue. In some cases, the yellow lights were so short that they were actually unsafe — i.e., drivers got caught in a situation where they were too close to the intersection to stop safely, but too far away to make it through before the light turned red. Thus, these municipalities were blatantly trading safety for revenue. In other cases, the municipalities simply tried to trick motorists by making the yellow light durations shorter at photo-enforced intersections and longer at non-enforced intersections.

Yellow light duration turned out to be an interesting topic when looking up information on red-light cameras. Several sources cite studies that show longer yellow light durations are more effective than photo-enforcement at increasing safety and reducing red-light running. So if safety is really the motivating factor here, perhaps instead of asking legislators to approve photo-enforcement in Peoria, the police department should ask the Traffic Engineering division to increase yellow phase duration at intersections.