Category Archives: City of Peoria

City Council, City of Peoria, Museum Block

Honey, I shrunk the museum

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Shrinking museumI hear tell the museum folks are wanting to modify their agreement with the city to make the proposed museum even smaller than it already is. It may come before the council on July 10.

My sources say they want to reduce the gross floor area from 96,000 to 80,000 square feet. I wonder what that will do to the display space. Considering they were only going to have about 70,000 square feet of display space before, this reduction could potentially leave less than 60,000 square feet for the public.

And, of course, a reduction of square footage demands architectural changes to accommodate the smaller space. No word yet on what those changes will be, although I’m still hearing rumors that it will involve reducing or eliminating the second floor.

I would suggest that they follow the sage advice of philosopher C. S. Lewis: “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

City Council, City of Peoria

Council to citizens: be quiet

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Minute MinderThe council is installing something new this week for Peoria citizens: a timer. Those pesky citizens take up a lot of the council’s time on Tuesday nights, so in addition to reducing by half the number of opportunities to address the council (the council’s now meeting only twice a month instead of four times), they’re also going to start strictly enforcing the five-minute rule when citizens take to the microphone.

To facilitate the new rules, they need to buy a timer. But not just any timer:

The $2,675 electronic timer is supposed to tell citizens when their allotted five minutes to address the council is up. The timers – one mounted on the public lectern, one on the back wall and two behind the mayor’s desk – will use green, yellow and red lights to guide speakers on how much time they have remaining.

A $2,675 timer? Are you kidding me? The timer pictured above can accomplish the same thing for only $7.99 from Bed Bath and Beyond. For $14.99, you can get a digital timer that will allow you to have your one-minute warning beep, if that’s important.

That’s not all. The council is also going to require that anyone wishing to address the council fill out a card — before the meeting — in order to be recognized. Since there are fewer meetings, they will undoubtedly be longer. So now we’re going to require citizens to get down to City Hall before 6:15 to fill out a card and then sit in council chambers for the whole meeting, which may go until 10:00, just so they can speak for five minutes at the end and, presumably, get cut off if they speak too long.

Now tell me this isn’t an effort to try to discourage citizen comments.

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan, HOPC

HOPC meeting to be continued Friday

The Heart of Peoria Commission last Friday started working on our proposed work plan for 2007-2008. We will be finishing our work plan at another special meeting this Friday at 8 a.m., in the conference room in the Planning & Growth department. The meeting is open to the public, as always.

So far, the commission has expressed interest in focusing on implementing New Urbanism principles in transportation and the public space, continuing to assist with the implementation of the Land Development Code and the four Form Districts, and developing marketing materials for the Heart of Peoria Plan area to generate interest in reinvestment. These are subject to change and/or further refinement at this Friday’s meeting.

When the work plan is completed, it will be submitted to the City Council for consideration during their July 24 meeting. They’ll decide at that time whether to keep and fund the commission, or decommission us.

City of Peoria

Special assessment projects update

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Since writing my post about how slowly a particular special assessment project took to be completed, City Manager Randy Oliver wrote me to explain how the special assessment process works:

Special Assessments are funded as money becomes available. Unfortunately during the 2001-2003 budget crunch little of no funds were budgeted by Special Assessment. Projects are funded on a first-in first-out basis. This is the reason for the delay on West Melbourne.

I wrote back to ask a couple of follow-up questions and received this response:

City Council Budgeted $1.1M in 2005, $1.2M in 2006 and $1.2M in 2007. At the end of 2007 unfunded Special Assessments will be $1.725. This represents 3 projects (W. Wagner Lane Sidewalk, N. Easton Pace curb and W. Ridge Road curb and ornamental street lights). The projects are from 2005, 2006 and 2007, respectively. If funding would have remained at the 2005,2006 and 2007 levels in 2000, 2001 and 2002 things would have been fine. Unfortunately that was not the case. Please note that the City also did not buy many if any replacement vehicles or equipment in those lean years. The Fleet is almost back to the proper level.

So there you go. There had been no money budgeted by the city council for special assessments, which is why the project got delayed. Still funded by the council during the lean years: parking deck subsidies and the Gateway building. Priorities, you know.

City of Peoria, Peoria MSA

Peoria city ranking down, MSA ranking same

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Peoria LogoThe U.S. Census Bureau released its 2006 population estimates this month, and the big news (via the Journal Star) is that Peoria has dropped from fifth- to seventh-largest city in Illinois:

The top 10 cities in the state ranked by population are: Chicago, Aurora, Rockford, Naperville, Joliet, Springfield, Peoria, Elgin, Waukegan and Cicero.

True. But the Bureau also released the figures on Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) for Illinois, and the Peoria MSA is still second-largest in the state. Peoria’s MSA includes five counties: Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford, Marshall, and Stark.

The nine MSAs in the state ranked by population haven’t changed order since 2000. They remain: Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, Peoria, Rockford, Champaign-Urbana, Springfield, Bloomington-Normal, Decatur, Kankakee-Bradley, and Danville. It should be noted, however, that Rockford is creeping up on us. In 2000, Peoria’s MSA had 46,695 more people than Rockford; the 2006 estimate shows a spread of only 21,942.

On a more interesting note, the City of Peoria’s population grew by only 171 people from 2000 to 2006, whereas Peoria’s MSA grew by 3,295. So, we’re not attracting many people to live in the city of Peoria when they move into the area. There’s some discussion going on over at Billy’s place on the reasons for that. In my opinion, the top two reasons are District 150 and taxes.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Housing Authority, Peoria Public Schools

Time to shame Peoria’s most notorious slum lords

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Remember when the City of Peoria tried shaming slumlords by putting a sign in front of their rundown properties with the name and number of the owner? Maybe the city should put one of those signs in front of these properties:

Meyer Building small

Harrison Homes

Know who owns these properties? The top one is the old Meyer building in the Warehouse District, and it’s owned by the illustrious District 150, which is terribly concerned about losing tax revenue from the Warehouse TIF. Of course, their neglected property isn’t contributing to lower property values down there, right? Margaret Hanley, who owns A. Lucas and Sons right next door, called District 150 out on the condition of their property at a recent council meeting, and rightly so. I wish I could say this was an isolated case, but alas, it isn’t. The district has lots of neglected properties (not to mention their school buildings). They recently demolished one property on Prospect and plan to demolish two more. And they own about 10% of the property in the Warehouse TIF District, which was passed by the council tonight. So put up the sign in front of the Meyer building and others with District 150’s name and number; label it “slumlord.”

The bottom building shows a very small sample of the boarded up windows adorning Harrison Homes, owned by the Peoria Housing Authority. If you’ve ever been by this low-income housing complex, you will notice that just about every building has at least two windows boarded up, often many more. And if you saw the map I posted earlier, you may have noticed that a number of homicides and lots of aggravated discharges of a firearm take place within Harrison Homes. We’re not paying taxes for these people to run a ghetto. They’re supposed to be providing decent transitional housing for people. Allowing their properties to fall into this state of disrepair is egregious. Council members Gary Sandberg and Barbara Van Auken called PHA out on the state of their properties at tonight’s council meeting, and rightly so. Put up the sign in front of Harrison Homes with the PHA’s name and number; label it “slumlord.”

It’s time for these public bodies to step up to the plate and take responsibility for their role in lowering property values and providing havens for crime. If they don’t, then the city should go after them just like they would any other slumlord. If these public bodies moan and complain, the city can explain that they’re just cracking down on crime and trying to raise property values, for the betterment of all Peorians.

City of Peoria

The wheels of government turn slowly

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SnailOn the council’s agenda tonight is a request by the residents on West Melbourne Avenue for some ornamental lighting. What’s interesting to me is that this request was approved by the Board of Local Improvements on June 19, 2003. That’s a full four years ago. Why does it take four years for something like this to be implemented?

Delays like this cost money. Materials get more expensive, and labor gets more expensive. It’s more expensive for the city, which affects all taxpayers, and it’s more expensive for the residents of Melbourne Avenue who agreed to pay 50% of the cost of this improvement through a special tax assessment on their properties. Actually, only 52.98% of the property owners agreed to it (it takes a simple majority for approval), so for those who didn’t want the ornamental lighting, the increased costs add insult to injury.

If the city is looking for their next big Six Sigma project to make the city more efficient, they needn’t look any further than this process.

City of Peoria, Crime

Mapping Peoria crime

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Someone recently asked to see Peoria’s homicides plotted on a map. I had mentioned that would take some time; well, as it turns out, the police already have such a map, and it was included in the agenda for tonight’s council meeting. It shows not only homicides, but also “aggravated discharge of a firearm” violations. I don’t think this will surprise anyone:

Homicide Map

On tonight’s agenda is a proposal to help stem the violence — the Cease Fire program, which was suggested by fourth-district councilman Bill Spears. Kudos to Mr. Spears for looking for new ideas on how to solve our crime problem.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Library

Library building program gets off on wrong foot

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Peoria Public LibraryThe Peoria City Council has a library liaison. It used to be John Morris, but since he’s left the council, there’s a new liaison: Gary Sandberg. An inspired choice, if you ask me, considering they’re planning to spend a whole bunch of taxpayer money on capital improvements.

Today’s Word on the Street gives a good example of why you want someone like Gary in there — to keep them honest, to expose back-room deals, and to make sure the public’s business is being handled properly:

…At-large Councilman Gary Sandberg, the library’s new council liaison, discovered that the library board’s building committee voted May 15 to recommend that the full board hire PSA Dewberry to program what will go in the new and expanded facilities. That vote was a full two weeks before local architects were asked to submit their programming proposals. Further, they were only given a one-day turnaround.

This is what you call “going through the motions” or complying with the letter, but not the spirit, of the law. The library board president (Mike McKenzie) defends the board’s actions because he “truly [doesn’t] believe [they] would have come to a different result.” So they sent it out to bid just as a formality. In reality, PSA Dewberry was preselected. The firms who wasted their time submitting bids were LZT Associates, APACE, and Farnsworth Group.

This is an inauspicious start to the library building program.