Category Archives: City of Peoria

City Council, City of Peoria, Kellar Branch

City walking over dollars, looking for dime

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On Tuesday night, the city council was reminded again about the impending budget crunch due to new accounting regulations known as GASB45:

GASB refers to the General Accounting Standards Board, an operating arm of the private Financial Accounting Foundation. GASB establishes standards of state and local government accounting. And Section 45 is a policy adopted by the board in 2004. It requires that governments must account today for future costs of guaranteed medical benefits for retirees…. [Those] higher costs, when the bills eventually come due, must be paid for by higher taxes or reduced services.

Standard and Poor’s, which takes this seriously because it rates government credit, said in a December 2004 report that GASB could uncover much higher costs that could “seriously strain operations” or uncover conditions in which governments “are unable or unwilling to fulfill these obligations,” which could hurt governments’ credit ratings.

So, Peoria is going to be facing some potentially drastic measures, such as making cuts in health care coverage for employees. Since that’s unpopular, every item of business, no matter how small, came under scrutiny. They even spent time haggling over hiring a part-time training coordinator for a mere $5,000.

I would be more sympathetic to these conscientious cost-cutting measures if it weren’t for the fact that the city council is poised to throw away a $565,000 asset without giving it a second thought. While they’re haggling over $5,000, the park district can hardly wait to get the word that it’s okay to tear out a half-million dollar rail line known as the Kellar Branch — a rail line for which there is a willing buyer or lessee — so they can turn it into a hiking trail. The irony is that the city could get the money and the trail, too, if they’d accept Pioneer Railcorp’s offer to buy or lease the line.

If the city council is really interested in plugging the GASB45 gap, then they should stop walking over dollars to pick up a dime.

City of Peoria, Peoria Journal Star

Everybody’s the exception

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Phil Luciano’s article today once again highlights the no-win situation of city code enforcers. You know, if they don’t enforce the law on the petty issues, people complain about them not doing their jobs and wax eloquent about how important it is to fix problems when they’re small so bigger violations aren’t likely to happen (aka the “broken window theory”). But if they do enforce the little issues, then people like Phil Luciano complain that (a) the ordinance is stupid, and/or (b) this person who’s breaking the ordinance should be an exception.

In this particular case, apparently Phil thinks that code violation officers, upon seeing someone violating some ordinance, should immediately find out how much money the person has put into their house, interview the person to see if they have a justified reason for breaking the ordinance, perhaps interview a few neighbors to see how they feel about it, and then make an informed decision on whether to enforce the law or not based on those factors. Most importantly, if the person threatens to move, immediately tear up the citation and allow them to break any code they want.

Obviously, the problem is that everyone has an excuse for breaking an ordinance. Rare is the person who flagrantly violates the law without some reason for doing so, no matter how flimsy that reason may be. I’m sure code enforcement officers have heard them all.

Question: Do we want the code enforced? If not, let’s get these ordinances off the books. If so, stop complaining when the code enforcement officers do their jobs.

Blogosphere, City of Peoria

The WikiPeoria Project

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PeoriaIllinoisan has a great idea going over at his blog. He’s been visiting Wikipedia to see what it has to say about our fair city and thinks it’s missing some important information. Check it out.

UPDATE: Wikipedia is “an encyclopedia written collaboratively by many of its readers.”  All entries are supposed to be written from a “neutral point of view.”  And most importantly, contributors are supposed to respect other contributors.  So, how does one explain that after a contributor added “Name This Peoria Landmark” to the “external links” section on August 12, someone named “rklawton” removed that link on August 13?  Is someone purging Wikipedia’s Peoria entry of any blog references?

City of Peoria, Museum Block

Regional Museum can’t be everything

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In today’s Journal Star, former editor Barbara Mantz Drake profiles the Science Center of Iowa (Des Moines). She’s getting ideas for what should be included in the new Central Illinois Regional Museum here in Peoria. Along with the article is a sidebar titled, “Iowa Science Center has parallels for Peoria.”

Several things are similar between the two museums: size, exterior glass, planetarium and weather studio, cost to build, etc. But a couple things are much different: the annual operating budget in Des Moines ($7.8 million) is “nearly twice what is projected for Peoria”; and whereas Des Moines’ museum is limited in scope to science, Peoria’s museum square “will be a place for people of all ages to explore art, history, nature, science, technology, culture, high school sports and the Caterpillar story.”

So Peoria’s museum will have six times the scope and half the budget. Is that supposed to be a good thing? Also, how in the world is Peoria’s museum going to cover all of those subjects (art, history, technology, etc.) in the space Des Moines devotes to science alone?

Usually, museums limit their scope (they’re a history museum, or an art gallery, or a sci-tech musuem, etc.) because the type of museum affects a number of factors: how much storage is needed? what kind of storage conditions are needed? what kind of laboratory services are needed for restoration/preservation of artifacts/exhibits? what kind of skill/expertise do staff members need (e.g., you would want an archaeologist on staff for a natural history museum, but not for a sci-tech museum)?

Speaking of scope, the working title I understand is still the “Central Illinois Regional Museum.” So, in addition to broadening the subject matter, it appears they’re also broadening the subject area — how much of “central Illinois” is going to be covered by this museum?

When the museum idea was first pitched, it was called a Peoria history museum. How did we get from that to this unwieldy, unfocused museum described in the paper today? And how is a museum with such breadth of subject matter going to be supported by half the operating budget of a single-focused museum of the same size?

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

Time to consolidate school districts?

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On the agenda Tuesday night is a request from Wilder-Waite Elementary School to be annexed into the City of Peoria.  Wilder-Waite is part of Dunlap School District 323.  They can’t be annexed yet because their boundary is not contiguous with Peoria, but they want to sign an annexation agreement so that when Peoria does annex the land between the current city limits and their property, they will also be annexed in and receive police, fire, and other Peoria services.

When Richwoods Township was annexed into Peoria, there were several school districts that shortly afterwards were consolidated with District 150; a unified school district was an important part of the annexation plans.  There was the fear that without such consolidation, Peoria schools would be divided into the haves and have-nots.

Considering the tax revenue that is generated in the northern part of Peoria that doesn’t go to District 150 but to District 323, are we not seeing that happen today? Aren’t we concentrating the wealth of the city into one school district while the other district suffers?  Isn’t it time we unified the school districts within Peoria’s city limits?

City Council, City of Peoria

City staff wants their unauthorized practice codified

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As I explained in a previous post, the multi-billion dollar company American Financial Realty Trust (through their subsidiary First States Investors) recently bought the National City Bank building downtown (the old Commercial Bank building). That bank has a pedestrian walkway and underground vaults that encroach on the public way. Therefore, the city is supposed to be collecting ten cents per square foot on that encroachment annually.

Action was deferred last week while the staff answered some questions from the council. Those answers were released today. I’d like to simply look at the whole request and comment as I go:

First States Investors 4500 LLC, as the new owners of the National City Bank Building at 301 SW Adams, seeks the City of Peoria’s permission to continue using the pedestrian walkway and underground storage vaults on the property. Since both the walkway and the storage vaults are encroachments upon the public way, the buyer is seeking assurances that the City of Peoria will allow the continued use of the property. The buyer and seller were concerned that any refusal by the City of Peoria to allow the continued use and enjoyment of the encroachments would prevent the fullest utilization of the property and would require the parties to renegotiate the terms and conditions of the sale.

This part is completely reasonable. They want to be able to continue using the pedestrian walkway and underground vaults. The city can easily provide them assurances regarding this request. It’s the next part that defies logic:

Though § 26-111 of the Municipal Code, provides that a building owner pay .10/square foot as an annual fee for any encroachment upon the public way, the City of Peoria has not collected such a fee for a number of years.

Why not? That question was not answered in this new communication from staff. It’s apparent that nobody authorized the staff to stop collecting these fees. They just stopped, and now they want to use their negligence or deliberate unauthorized action to justify the continuation of that policy:

It would be unreasonable to begin collecting same relative to this transaction given the number of years the encroachments have existed.

No, what’s unreasonable is that staff has failed to do their job and are now shamelessly flaunting it.

The language of the ordinance provides for the building owners to provide proof of adequate public liability and property damage insurance prior to commencing any reconstruction, repair or other maintenance of the encroachments. Additionally, the Directors of Public Works and Inspections must authorize and monitor any repairs or reconstruction of the encroachments such that the City of Peoria is assured that the integrity of the public way is maintained.

Of course they should provide insurance for their own encroachment. The fee isn’t assessed to cover that. As far as the directors of Public Works and Inspections authorizing and monitoring any repairs or reconstruction, I think it’s fair to ask if they’ve been doing that, or if such monitoring also ceased “a number of years” ago.

The encroachment square footage, according to the Assessor’s Office, is 750 s.f. over the alley and 848 s.f. under the alley. If the annual fee were collected on this property, it would amount to $159.80. The land and building value is more than $4,000,000 and the City is receiving tax revenue on same. We believe collection stopped in the 1980’s.

The implication seems to be here that the amount is so small in comparison to the property tax revenue the city gets that it’s not worth collecting. Hogwash. The city collects lots of petty fines from businesses that pay plenty of property taxes to the city. The city by rights should charge them for the fees they haven’t paid since “the 1980’s.” That’s over $4,000 for the past 26 years.

Perhaps the most comical part of this is that according to this request, the company buying the bank building hasn’t even asked to get out of the fee — the only thing they’ve asked for is assurance that they can continue using the walkway and vaults; i.e., that the city won’t make them tear them out ala Peoria Heights vs. Alexis. Why city staff is insisting that the city stop collecting fees is a mystery.

But if that’s really what they want, then Patrick Nichting is right: they should include an amendment to the municipal code that repeals this fee. If a multi-billion dollar company shouldn’t have to pay it, then certainly no one else should.

City of Peoria

Toward a Smokeless Society

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Sangamon County is the latest municipality to succumb to the anti-smoking police. According to the State Journal-Register:

The Sangamon County Board, by an unusually narrow vote of 16 to 13, approved on Tuesday a comprehensive workplace [including bars and restaurants] smoking ban that is set to go into effect the same day as Springfield’s – Sept. 17.

Activists are ramping up efforts to foist such a ban on Peoria, too. Of course, no one is forced to patronize or work in bars or restaurants against their will, and in fact there are quite a large number of restaurants that are already smoke-free by choice. That doesn’t stop anti-smoking activists from trying to restrict private property rights so that all bars and restaurants are non-smoking by law.

It seems obvioius to me that the real goal of these organizations is to make smoking itself illegal. If that’s the case, then there are other ways to go about that than stomping on private property rights. Fight to have the FDA regulate nicotine as the drug it is. Or fight for a constitutional amendment prohibiting smoking. But as long as it is still legal to smoke, and it’s still legal for people to assemble, then it should still be legal for said assembly to smoke ’em if they got ’em.

Incidentally, the smoking gun (ha ha) in the anti-smokers’ arsenal is a number of scientific studies they use to back up their claims regarding the health hazards of environmental tobacco smoke (also known as “ETS,” “second-hand smoke,” or “passive smoke”). I think it’s fair to question those studies, or at least anti-smokers’ use of those studies, in light of this article from Junkscience.com.

[Full disclosure: I am a non-smoker; never smoked anything my entire life, although I did hand out real cigars when my son was born.]

City Council, City of Peoria

Council Roundup 8/8/06

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The council meeting was relatively short, mostly because a good number of items were deferred. Although, I have to give credit to Mayor Ardis for reining in debates — after watching several council meetings since he took over as mayor, I’ve noticed that he stresses brevity and tries to cut off debate once the council members start repeating themselves.

The council questioned staff regarding why fees have not been collected on banks that encroach on the public way, and deferred approval until they get some answers. Staff was also asked to report how much money the city has been losing because of this practice. Councilman Nichting made an excellent point as well — if the staff comes back in two weeks proposing the council continue to not collect these fees, they should bring back a request to change the municipal code so that it conforms to the city’s practices.

Councilman Nichting actually had two — count ’em, two — excellent points last night. He also questioned why the Peoria Civic Center (PCC) is giving part of their hotel tax (part of the “H” in “HRA”) to the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (PACVB). The PACVB works on behalf of the entire tri-county area, yet only City of Peoria hotels pay HRA taxes. So the whole tri-county benefits, but the funding is coming disproportionately from Peoria hotels. Good catch. That item was deferred two weeks.

A day after the school board voted unanimously to support historic landmark status for Irving Primary School, the city council voted unanimously to make it official. The designation protects the building from demolition and the exterior from modification. The inside can be renovated and repartitioned, however, to accommodate alternative uses.

Gary Sandberg asked why the Nebraska overpass on I-74 wasn’t finished yet. IDOT officials had promised the council it would be completed in June of this year, and it’s still not open. Breaking that connection, in concert with the other I-74 construction and closures, has meant longer response times for emergency vehicles and greater inconvenience for Peoria motorists who have to drive further to get across town at a time when gas prices are soaring. Not a big deal if it were only closed for a few months, but it’s been over a year and a half now. Why isn’t it completed?

In addition to this, there were a few other notable items of business and some interesting citizen requests to address the council, which have been ably reported by Jennifer Davis in today’s Journal Star.

City of Peoria, Museum Block, Peoria Journal Star

Luciano is right about museum

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In a move sure to make his bosses unhappy, Phil Luciano wrote a scathing column criticizing the city’s plans for a new downtown museum. He doesn’t think it will be much of a draw:

Think of it this way: Peoria is about the same size as Allentown, Pa.; Evansville, Ind.; and Waterbury, Conn. Would you pack up the kids, gas up the van and head to any of those places to drink in their rich history?

I think Phil makes a good point. But I don’t think having a downtown museum is the problem per se — it’s the scale of the project. Why is the whole Sears block going to be devoted to the museum? Isn’t that putting all our eggs in one basket? What happens if the city’s tourism projections don’t pan out? Aren’t we left with a multi-million dollar millstone?

This is why, as I’ve argued before, it would be better to make the museum square more densely developed, as all our handsomely-paid consultants have been telling the city for years. Add retail, restaurants, and especially a residential component. By including private development on that block, the city collects property and sales tax revenues to offset the costs of maintaining and managing a museum on part of that parcel.

Plus, if people are living, shopping, and eating down there, the block will be buzzing around the clock throughout the week and weekends. Without those components, the block after 5:00 and on weekends will look exactly as it does now before a single brick has been laid: a black hole.

In short, I think there is enough interest in Peoria and its history to support a museum, but not a “museum square.” Scale it back and allow private development.