Category Archives: City of Peoria

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

City Council to get form-based code presentation tonight

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If you missed last night’s meeting at the Gateway building (you can read about that meeting in the Journal Star today) and you want to know more about the proposed form-based codes for the Heart of Peoria, watch the City Council meeting tonight at 6:15 on Insight cable channel 22 (or head downtown to see it live on the fourth floor of City Hall). Ferrell-Madden and Associates will be presenting the new “Land Development Code,” as it’s called now, to the council early in the evening’s proceedings.

The whole idea of this new code is to recognize that zoning needs in the older, urban part of town are different than zoning needs in the suburban part of town. Right now, we just have one zoning ordinance that applies to the whole city, and it’s based on suburban standards (e.g., strictly separating residential and commercial uses of land, extensive parking requirements, fast arterial streets, large setbacks for buildings, etc.).

That kind of zoning just doesn’t work for the older part of town where density is so high that they often can’t meet the extensive parking requirements without tearing down buildings to put in parking decks or large surface lots, where buildings and neighborhoods were designed for mixed uses of land (corner grocery stores, residential apartments above commercial shops, etc.), and where businesses are supposed to front the street, coming right up to the sidewalk.

In addition to these general provisions for maintaining the character of older neighborhoods and commercial districts, the Land Development Code also includes additional, highly-detailed provisions for four specific “form districts”: the Sheridan-Loucks Triangle, the Prospect Road Corridor, the West Main Street Corridor (Renaissance Park), and the Warehouse District. These provisions are tailored to these individual areas, taking into account their unique features and needs. The time it takes to develop such a detailed code for these areas makes it impossible to do this for all 8,000 acres of the Heart of Peoria all at once; but more form districts will be added over time.

As mentioned before, this is not coming before the council for adoption tonight. There will be an intense public hearing process over the next month or so, and hopefully the code, with revisions, will come before the council for adoption sometime in December.

Amtrak, City of Peoria

Ardis is in on Amtrak meeting

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Peoria’s Mayor Jim Ardis will be pressing for rail service to come back to Peoria when he meets with Dick Durbin at a meeting in Champaign, the Journal Star reports:

“I would definitely like to get on Sen. Durbin’s radar because he is very supportive of continued funding for Amtrak,” Ardis said. “Even though it hasn’t been here, we’re the largest metropolitan outside the city of Chicago. I think people would use it and it would help for economic development.”

[…]Still, Ardis said he hasn’t taken a serious look at the possibility and plans to discuss it with council to find out if others are on board after the meeting with Durbin.

So, for all of you other rail-enthusiasts who were wondering who to contact to express your interest in passenger train service returning to Peoria, there’s your answer: contact your city council representatives. It sounds like their interest is going to have an effect on how hard Ardis pushes for it.

There are some significant logistical hurdles to overcome. A common misconception people have about railroads is the belief that the tracks are just like interstates or highways — i.e., that any trains can travel on them whenever they want. But the truth is that railroad companies actually own their own rights-of-way, and any other company that wants to use it has to enter into an agreement and pay a fee to the company who owns it.

That’s right, unlike public roads and airports that are subsidized by the taxpayers, railroads are all privately owned and maintained. And Amtrak doesn’t own any track in Illinois. So for Amtrak to come to Peoria, one of the sticking points is determining what tracks it would/could actually run on. Once that’s determined and a deal is worked out with the owner of the tracks, most likely those tracks would have to be upgraded because Amtrak trains generally run at a higher speed (70+ mph) than freight trains. And that costs money; probably state money.

The bottom line is, there would have to be better ridership than there was back in the late 70’s when train service left Peoria, or the early 80’s when Amtrak left East Peoria. And, contrary to some comments I’ve seen, just running a train to Normal to connect with trains there isn’t going to cut it. We need a direct-to-Chicago route (in less time than it takes to drive) if we want to get significant ridership. One of the reasons ridership was down 20-30 years ago was because service got so bad and trains went so slowly due to deferred track maintenance.

I think Peoria would embrace fast, quality passenger train service to Chicago and St. Louis. I’m glad to hear that Ardis, Durbin, and other elected officials are interested.

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan

Form-based codes are back on the agenda

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There’s a new Land Development Code soon to be proposed to the City Council, but first it needs to go through a rigorous public hearing. To kick things off, Ferrell-Madden and Associates will be holding an informational meeting at the Gateway Building downtown at 7:30 p.m. They will also be making a presentation to the City Council at their regular Tuesday meeting.

The Land Development Code is basically the Heart of Peoria Plan codified into Peoria’s zoning ordinance. There will be many presentations over the next couple of months — to developers, to commissioners (zoning, planning & growth, Heart of Peoria, Ren Park), and to the public, to try to get constructive input that will strengthen the code before it goes before the City Council for adoption.

Amtrak, City of Peoria

Amtrak service being considered for Peoria?

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Amtrak LogoThe Quad-City Times reports on the possibility of Amtrak service being expanded in the state (emphasis mine):

Officials throughout Illinois have been invited to discuss such an expansion during a meeting to be hosted Tuesday by Amtrak president Alex Kummant and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

[…] The Tuesday summit, scheduled to take place in a refurbished Amtrak station in downtown Champaign, is an attempt to build on the train ridership increases Illinois has seen in recent years.

Along with the potential for adding service to the Quad-Cities, the meeting will address an ongoing study looking at the feasibility of providing Amtrak service to Rockford. The talks also will touch on the prospect of adding a Peoria stop to Amtrak’s offerings.

Even though this is highly speculative right now, it’s nice to know that it’s at least on the radar. There was just a letter to the editor today from a Peorian who would like to see Amtrak service from Peoria again — I’ll bet there are a lot of people who feel that way. And since the “River Station” (actually the Rock Island Depot) is vacant, it could become a depot once again, this time for Amtrak — a perfect addition to Peoria’s downtown renaissance.

Hat tip: David Jordan (via PeoriaRails Yahoo! Group).

City Council, City of Peoria

It wasn’t “zoo money”

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The Journal Star’s headline this morning is a bit misleading. It reads, “Zoo money switched to demolition.” It was actually street improvement money that was switched to demolition:

The City Council took $100,000 once slated to help create a grander entrance to the new zoo and instead voted to use it to demolish vacant problem properties.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday to move the money since 3rd District Councilman Bob Manning said there are no longer plans for a grand entrance in lower Glen Oak Park. Manning, who represents the park and the Glen Oak Zoo area, said the money is needed for demolitions.

There were preliminary plans to update the Glen Oak Park entrance at the corner of Abingdon Abington and Perry streets to make it a “grand entrance” to the zoo. Manning set aside $100,000 to help in that effort by updating the city’s portion of the intersection, perhaps putting in a roundabout.

But when the zoo scrapped plans to put a “grand entrance” there, it freed up that $100,000 to be spent on a higher priority elsewhere. Manning recommended, and the council approved, spending that money on demolition of condemned properties instead.

So, I understand the headline, but it certainly gives the wrong impression. It makes it sound like the city is taking money away from the zoo, which is not the case. It was never “zoo money.”

City Council, City of Peoria

Council not about to take fees off the books

Remember those underground storage vaults and pedestrian walkways that “encroach on the public way” downtown that was the subject of some controversy a couple months ago?

Well, there was some follow-up on that at last night’s council meeting. At the council’s request, staff reviewed the ordinance that charges fees for encroachments and gave the council some choices on what to do. They could (a) keep the current ordinance and fee structure, (b) keep the ordinance and modify the fee structure (to reflect inflation over the past 30 years), or (c) keep the ordinance but eliminate the permit fees.

The city, desperate for money, chose option (b) with little discussion or disagreement (although Mayor Ardis and Councilman Nichting voted against it). These updated permit fees are estimated to bring in over $100,000 per year into city coffers.

What happens now is city staff has to do an inventory of all the underground vaults in downtown and notify those businesses that they are going to start collecting permit fees on them again. Since these fees haven’t been collected since the early 1980s, the city’s records are woefully out of date and incomplete.

My take: This was the right decision. The city has been contemplating new public safety fees and raising property taxes because they are so short on funds, so collecting fees that are already on the books is a no-brainer. City staff should never have stopped collecting these fees in the first place, since they never received council authorization to do so. The council ought to enforce the ordinances they already have to raise money before they raise taxes or create new fees.

Aaron Schock, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools, Public Building Commission, State Legislation

District 150 & the Public Building Commission, Part 2

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In my last post, I looked at quotes by Senator George Shadid and District 150 Treasurer Guy Cahill regarding Senate Bill 2477, a bill that would allow the school district to borrow money to build new schools through the Public Building Commission (PBC) without having to get approval from voters through a referendum. In other words, a bill that will allow the school district to pick your pocket for their building program, a program that is questionable at best.

The Governor vetoed the bill, but Shadid has announced his intention to try to override it. Does he have enough votes? It looks very possible: A three-fifths vote is needed to override a veto; that means 36 senators and 71 representatives. Senate Bill 2477 passed overwhelmingly with 43 ayes (9 nays) in the Senate and 89 ayes (25 nays) in the House. So, if all those people felt strongly enough about the original form of this bill, they could easily override the Governor’s veto.

But why are so many senators and representatives in favor of this bill? Maybe it has something to do with the way it was presented. I’ve been reading transcripts of the floor debate in the Senate and House (did you know these are available on-line?), and it’s been a real eye-opener.

Let’s start with Senator Shadid in the Senate. He had this to say:

[T]hey [the school board] are really in dire — dire straits because they can’t get a referendum passed. They have a sixty-percent minority student population and this would be very, very beneficial and really well — well needed. I mean, we need this in our city.

They’re in dire straits? We need this in Peoria? They can’t get a referendum passed?

He was challenged on that last statement by Senator Burzynski (R-35th Dist.) who asked, “when was the last time they offered a referendum to the people?” Senator Shadid:

I have to tell you, they — they’ve not had a referendum on the — for the last ten years that I’m aware of. I can only tell you that when I tried to build a county jail, we had three referendums that failed and we finally had to go to the public building commission in 1985 to get a jail built that was to replace the jail that was a hundred and twenty-five years old.

Burzynski rejoined, “what I recall in the discussion in committee is the fact that it’s been close to thirty years since they tried to pass a referendum.”

So, Shadid’s argument is, as I understand it, thus: Since it was so difficult twenty-one years ago to pass a referendum to build a jail, obviously it will be impossible now to get a referendum passed to build new schools. It’s not even worth trying to get the money that way — we need to circumvent the voters just like we did to get the jail built.

Yet, only six years ago, the Journal Star reported that “Illinois voters approve[d] most school bond issues” (3/23/2000): “Seven of the 10 area schools that asked for more money, got it. Now they’ll be able to construct new buildings, renovate old ones or just pay bills.” None of these bond issues were in the City of Peoria, but they were close — as close as Dunlap, to give just one example. It just goes to show that when a school board makes a good case for increased funding, it is possible to get a referendum passed, without picking voters’ pockets.

Okay, onto our newest representative in Springfield, Mr. Aaron Schock, who took to the floor of the House to speak in favor of this bill:

I rise in support of Senate Bill 2477 not only as the Representative from Peoria, but also the past president of the Peoria School System. This is a piece of legislation that is not only supported by our school board, but also our entire city council.

Wait, it is? Did I miss that meeting? Does anyone remember the “entire city council” expressing their support for this bill? Can Schock provide any evidence to support this statement? Of course, in Springfield there’s no one to dispute his assertions, so as far as the Illinois House is concerned, Peoria’s entire city council supports this bill. Schock continues:

And I certainly hope that we can have overwhelming, if not unanimous, support from this General Assembly. This really gives local control to our school board and to the Public Building Commission in Peoria. Right now, our Public Building Commission already has the authority to build libraries, to build prisons and jails, and we’re simply asking for that same authority be given back to our school system, which it has had for many years. All of the schools in our district in the recent history that have been built have been done so using the Public Building Commission.

And I believe that’s the very reason they took the power to bond for school construction away from the PBC, isn’t it? And what does he mean by “this really gives local control to our school board…”? Since when is getting approval from taxpayers in your own school district not considered a local decision? I’m guessing by “local control,” he means simply “control.” It takes control away from the voters and gives it to the school board. Back to Schock:

We have more inadequately housed students, according to state standards, more inadequately housed students in Peoria than any other school district in the state. I think it’s a shame right now that our Public Building Commission has the authority to house prisoners and jail inmates and give them adequate standards but we’re not giving that same authority to school children in our state. So, this only seems like common sense. I wanna thank Majority Leader Currie for her work on this Bill. It’s a commonsense piece of legislation, something that’s gonna really help Peoria. And I wanna say thank you to her for her willingness to take this cause on for the betterment of school children in Peoria. I urge a “yes” vote.

The common theme between Shadid and Schock is that our students in Peoria are “inadequately housed” according to state standards. You know what that standard is? Any students who are going to school in a building that is more than 67 years old are considered “inadequately housed.” That’s it. So, Schock is inadvertently right when he says, “this only seems like common sense.” Indeed. It’s isn’t really commonsense legislation, it only seems that way because of the way it has been presented.

There is more in the transcript that I would love to cover, and maybe I will in the future, but for now I want to point out one more thing. The main sponsor of this bill in the Illinois House was not Schock, but Barbara Flynn Currie (D-25th District). When she introduced the bill, she said, “This measure has the strong support of Peoria School District #150. I know of no opposition.”

No kidding. Who in Peoria would think to call Barbara Flynn Currie to express their opposition to this bill? But it does bring up a good point. Perhaps we should start writing to the entire Illinois General Assembly to express our opposition to this bill. And perhaps someone on the council (Mr. Spears?) could let the legislature know that the city council has never expressed their support for this bill. I’m sure the School Board won’t mind the city setting the record straight since they have made it perfectly clear they don’t value the city’s cooperation anyway.

Here’s where you can find a list of all the Representatives (http://www.ilga.gov/house/) and Senators (http://www.ilga.gov/senate/). Just tell them you want no taxation without representation, so please uphold the Governor’s veto of Senate Bill 2477.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools, Public Building Commission, State Legislation

District 150 & the Public Building Commission, Part 1

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Do you think District 150 should be allowed to raise your taxes without a referendum?

If not, you’ll want to pay attention to this story. It’s not online, unfortunately, so here’s a lengthy quote from Clare Jellick’s story in the 10/3/2006 Journal Star titled, “Senator fighting Governor’s veto,” subhead, “Shadid supports bill for school construction”:

PEORIA — State Sen. George Shadid wants to override the Governor’s amendatory veto of a bill that benefits District 150, the senator said Monday.

The bill, originally sponsored by Shadid, allows the district to ask the Peoria Public Building Commission to issue bonds for school construction. The district plans to repay the bonds by restructuring its property tax levy, but the governor doesn’t want this method used without voter approval.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich considers this funding structure as raising taxes; District 150 does not, and Shadid is prepared to fight against the veto.

“(The School Board) is elected by the people in this community, so I’m going to take their word for it that they’re not going to raise taxes,” said Shadid, who initially supported the governor’s proposed changes.

The debate is over what’s considered raising taxes. The district intends to replace old bonds with new bonds, meaning that the tax rate will stay the same, but people will be paying the rate longer. If the district issued no new bonds, the tax rate would drop gradually starting next year.

The old bonds would be paid off completely by 2012. The district is proposing that the rate continue until 2015 at the earliest and 2020 at the latest.

“Could (taxpayers) enjoy a tax reduction without this (legislation)? The answer is clearly yes, but the school district clearly needs to build, and it needs to borrow to do it,” district treasurer Guy Cahill said Monday.

The School Board passed a resolution Monday to cap the tax rate, which is enough assurance for Shadid. He intends to use this during the fall veto session to make his case for the override.

“I feel comfortable with them giving me this resolution that they’re not going to raise the rate,” Shadid said.

[The Governor still stands by his amendatory veto.]

The soonest the amendment could be considered is November. A majority vote in both houses is needed to accept the change. A super-majority (three-fifths vote) in both houses would override Blagojevich’s veto and make the original version of the bill law.

A couple of comments are in order here. First, the school board passed a resolution saying they would cap the tax rate, and that’s enough assurance for Shadid that they won’t raise taxes. There are two obvious problems with this:

  1. The school board changes over time; just because this school board promises to do something doesn’t mean it can’t be overridden by a later board. And, of course, there’s nothing preventing this school board from reneging, either.
  2. Whether or not they promised a rate cap completely misses the point. The tax rate is supposed to go down starting next year. If it doesn’t, then the school board is clearly raising our taxes; Cahill even admitted it. The point is that tax increases such as this should be approved by the voters — you know, the ones who have to pay the taxes.

Secondly, Cahill claims “the school district clearly needs to build.” Oh? Kind of like they “clearly” needed to close Blaine-Sumner Middle School (built in 1927) because the building was so decrepit, yet once it was closed they were somehow miraculously able to immediately rehabilitate it for use as district offices, even adding air conditioning? If this was one of the worst (and since it was one of the first schools to be closed, we can only assume it was), then I’d say their schools aren’t in as bad of shape as we’ve been led to believe.

No, it’s not at all clear that the district needs to build. It’s crystal clear that they want to build. The fact that the district is trying to find a way around the voters only shows they are so certain the public won’t buy it, they’re not even going to attempt a referendum. Rather than go through the difficult work of proving their “need” for new buildings and the funding for them, then pursuading the public to pass a referendum, they’d rather pick taxpayers’ pockets.

And that’s what Senate Bill 2477, without the Governor’s amendatory veto, will allow them to do: pick our pockets. But why has the Illinois General Assembly been in favor of this bill in the first place? And what are the odds they’ll be able to override the Governor’s veto? I’ll explore some possible answers in my next post.

City of Peoria, East Bluff, Peoria Public Schools

More false hope from District 150?

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Clare Jellick reports in the Journal Star today:

District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton won’t continue buying properties near Glen Oak Park until he has time to talk to neighborhood groups and City Council members, he said Monday.

Hinton told the School Board Monday that he had originally intended to bring forth a recommendation at that meeting, but “for now that’s not going to take place.”

“I just want to talk to (people) and let them know where we are and what we’re thinking,” Hinton said after Monday’s meeting.

The implication is that Hinton is still trying to work out a compromise with the city and East Bluff neighbors. But if the last two counterproposals he offered the city are any indication, it’s likely this will simply be another attempt to pursuade everyone that putting the school next to a park is the best idea in education since the Dewey Decimal System.

But I’ll try to suppress my suspicion until I hear “where [they] are and what [they’re] thinking.” Maybe he’ll surprise us all.

City of Peoria, Peoria Civic Center, Peoria Journal Star

Are corporate rates hurting Peoria hotels?

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Former Peoria resident and mayor Bud Grieves put pen to paper again this week and wrote to the Journal Star, this time about the Civic Center expansion and new hotel feasibility study. What I found most interesting was a passing comment toward the end of his letter:

Finally, the business community has a responsibility to pay a fair price for a quality room with good service in our town. Hotels simply cannot afford the continuous investment required to keep properties up-to-date, let alone pay their staff a living wage, if area businesses think they can pay less than $100 a night for a room. Unfortunately, that has been the case for far too long in Peoria, and it must begin to change if we expect room quality to improve.

What Grieves is referring to here is the common practice of large businesses in Peoria (e.g., Caterpillar) negotiating a “corporate rate” for hotel rooms for their clients. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this in theory — one expects to get a better price when one buys in bulk. In this case, large employers who bring in a lot of lodging business want to buy hotel rooms in bulk, as it were, and whatever hotel has the best rate gets the business.

The problem is, what if the only rate they will accept is one so low that it doesn’t allow the hotel to make enough money to pay for capital improvements? This puts Peoria hotels in a bit of a bind. They can reject the low corporate rate and lose so much business they risk going out of business themselves, or they can accept a rate that’s enough to keep them afloat but not enough to make substantial improvements to the property, thus perpetuating a downward spiral in rates.

Is Grieves right? Are the rates demanded by the business community in Peoria unrealistically low? If so, what can be done about it? And what would the implications of this practice be for a new hotel induced to locate here by tax breaks and other incentives?