Wow — I just received this press release today from the City:

As reported in Friday’s Journal Star, I recently suggested a possible site to the Director of the Library. That suggested site is not a possible site at this time. In presenting my suggestion, I said that maybe the library would gain three votes. I should not have said this. I certainly had no knowledge that any three Councilpersons’ votes would have been swayed by selection of this site. I never intended to create the impression that I knew how any Councilperson would vote. There was no backroom deal being cut.

I regret this error and hope that this error does not detract from the on-going library discussion.

Randy Ray
Corporation Counsel

As you may recall, Gary Sandberg stated in his letter of resignation as library liaison that City Attorney Randy Ray had suggested that three votes would change from “no” to “yes” if the library board would pick Elliott’s strip club as the location for the new library and use their power of eminent domain to take the property. Library board president Mike McKenzie, library director Ed Szynaka, and councilman Jim Montelongo all attested to the truth of this deal being proposed.

Ray admits that he proposed the deal, but now says that he didn’t actually know of three specific council members who would have changed their votes when he made that statement. Evidently he was speculating that if the Elliott’s site were chosen, three council members would be so happy to get rid of Elliott’s (which has been mired in controversy ever since they applied for the adult use license) that they would vote for the $35 million in bonds.

Sorry, I’m not buying it. Read this account from the Journal Star again:

Library Board President Mike McKenzie said Ray asked library director Ed Szynaka to stop by his office May 16. During that meeting, Ray floated the idea about Elliott’s, eminent domain and how the idea would change the minds of three councilmen who intended to vote against the $35 million proposal, McKenzie added….

Szynaka, who would not comment for this story, repeated Ray’s idea at the board’s building committee meeting on May 19, a meeting that Sandberg attended as the council liaison. It was quickly rejected.

“I never heard about it again,” McKenzie said. “First off, the site’s too small for a library. Second, it’s not for sale and third, there’s an active business there. We do have eminent domain capabilities but we didn’t think that it was a reasonable proposal.”

McKenzie said even if three councilmen changed their minds and supported the library project on the Elliott’s site, current supporters might oppose the idea, nullifying the effect of the site change.

Now think about this scenario. Ray asked Szynaka to stop by his office. Ray suggested the Elliott’s site as a possible location for the library. Why this site? For what reason would he be suggesting it and why should the board consider it? It wasn’t chosen based on any objective criteria. Ray wasn’t in on the building committee meetings where site selection was discussed. It certainly couldn’t have been based on parcel size or price. No, Ray gave one reason for suggesting it and one reason only: they could pick up three council votes for the $35 million bond issuance if they chose that site. Then Szynaka presented Ray’s proposal at the next building committee meeting. The proposal was considered, objections were raised, and the committee decided to reject the proposal.

Now Ray is saying that he had “no knowledge that any three Councilpersons’ votes would have been swayed by selection of this site”? That undercuts the whole purpose of his pitching the idea to the board in the first place. If he didn’t really know anyone would change their vote based on that site selection, what was the reason for suggesting it? Because “maybe the library would gain three votes”? Why three? Who did he have in mind? And why is the city attorney trying to influence the site location with the library board by making false claims of council support for his idea?

Ray’s press release raises more questions than it answers. It actually makes the issue more serious. I mean, if you or I were to suggest to Szynaka that maybe he should consider such and such a site, that’s one thing. But for the city attorney to suggest that the choice of a site may be the deciding factor in how the council vote comes out based on his insider knowledge… that’s a serious attempt to influence the outcome of the process — and under false pretenses if what he’s now saying is true.

Methinks Ray has jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

City council members submitted a total of 49 questions about the proposed library expansion. Mayor Ardis collected them and submitted them to the Peoria Public Library Board and expects them to answer them all in writing by next Friday, June 6. The council will then discuss the answers during the June 10 council meeting.

Sadly, there’s no indication which council members asked which questions. Some of the questions are completely irrelevant (e.g.,”Whatever happened to the library at Main and University?”, “Why were the libraries closed the weekend that the high schools had finals?”). Others are designed to call the library referendum into question (e.g., “What percent of the 70% of people that voted for the new library system understand your full plan?”). Some are just idiotic (e.g., “If the downtown museum is successful, would it be possible to position the downtown library at that location?”). There are good questions, too, but I’ll bet almost all of them could have been answered by Gary Sandberg if any of the council members had bothered to contact him.

Below is the cover letter from the mayor. The questions can be seen by clicking the “Read the rest of this entry” link that follows.

OFFICE OF THE MAYOR

Jim Ardis
Mayor

May 30, 2008

TO: Library Board & Director
FROM: Peoria City Council
RE: Questions regarding Library Operations and Expansions

Please find the attached questions submitted by members of the Council. Note that all members were asked to submit questions for clarification from your report or possibly some information not included in your report.

We would like to emphasize that this process should not be viewed as second-guessing your work to this point. Our collective goal is to understand your thought process and recommendations and discuss how we can incorporate them into a plan for enhanced library services that can be done within a realistic budget. Every single person on our Council supports strong libraries.

Make no mistake; we feel compromise will have to happen if we are going to move forward. Otherwise we would have approved what you submitted to us 10 days before the decision was to be made. Please acknowledge that the questions attached should be viewed as a starting point and based on your response, will likely generate additional questions. We would like to think good communication will accelerate this process and get us to a point where we can focus on what we can both agree on going forward. We are very confident that Councilman Spears will be able to do an outstanding job as our liaison.

We would like to request that a written response be provided to the Council by 5pm on Friday, June 6th. In addition, we would like to place an agenda item at the June 10 meeting to discuss these questions and answers publicly. There will be no vote taken at that meeting regarding the issuance of bonds. Please advise the City Manager of your ability to provide the written response to these questions and your willingness to participate in Council discussion as outlined.

Thank you for helping us answer these very important questions that were not clear to this point. This due diligence is very important to the decision making process. Have a nice weekend.

Jim Ardis
Mayor

Continue reading 49 Questions about the Library →

I just received this news release from the city:

Mayor Jim Ardis has appointed Council Member Bill Spears to fill the position of Liaison to the Peoria Public Library Board.

Mayor Ardis said, “Moving quickly to appoint a liaison after Councilman Sandberg’s resignation stresses the importance the Council places on having a liaison in place as the conduit to work with the Board, and achieve a consensus that will enhance the library system.”

Gary Sandberg said he resigned at 7:00 Tuesday night, adding, “I’m not wasting any more of my time.” He also said that the council had forgotten they had a library liaison as they were all talking to the library board directly before the council meeting without including Gary.

Ed Szynaka, Peoria Public Library Director, had not heard until this morning that Gary had resigned. He said he was “extraordinarily disappointed” that Gary would no longer be the liaison, and said on behalf of the board that this news was a “very big disappointment to all of us,” adding, “but we will work with Mr. Spears,” after learning that Councilman Bill Spears had been appointed to replace Gary.

I asked Mr. Szynaka about Gary’s comment that the council was going around Gary before Tuesday’s meeting. He said that he and the board were “barraged with communication from council members and the mayor” in the hours leading up to the council meeting. He did not receive any communication from Gary during that time, nor was Gary included on the conference calls that took place. Outside of that, he couldn’t comment on whether Gary was being kept in the loop on the discussions.

The Library Board is ready to ask the City Council next Tuesday to approve the sale of $35 million in bonds to pay for upgrades to Peoria’s library system, including building a new branch in far north Peoria.

You may have heard the library’s director Ed Szynaka on the radio recently giving an update on where the library is in the process. It’s been a long year. The library has completed the programming phase of the process, and now they’re working on negotiating a site for the north branch. Negotiations will be more meaningful if they are able to talk real money, which is why they want the council to okay the bond issuance.

I got a chance to talk to Gary Sandberg, City Council liaison to the Library Board for this project. Everyone knows the library board had a couple of missteps early in the process, but Gary got them to agree to go through a deliberate and open process.

He showed me how they developed criteria for what features a new library site would need, and then went out and found sites that met the criteria to varying degrees. They put all that data in a matrix and ranked the sites by how well they met the criteria. The most favored site before this process (old K’s Merchandise building) came in third or fourth. The top two sites identified, as mentioned in the paper today, were the old Festival Foods store on Knoxville in Northpoint shopping center, and a greenfield site just north of Route 6 on the west side of Allen Road, behind the new Sud car dealership. I was pleased to see the sites were selected on a rational and objective basis.

But that’s not the end of the story. Next comes cost. Just because a site meets the criteria doesn’t mean that a fair price will be able to be negotiated for it. The asking price for the Festival Foods site is approximately $4 million. The Sud site is $5.50 per square foot developed (i.e., with roads, utilities, etc. built out to the property line). The Library Board will be trying to negotiate a lower price. The more they have to spend for land, the less they have to spend on construction.

The Festival Foods site is terribly overpriced. In fact, the owner of Festival Foods reportedly had been asking a little less than $2 million for the site before the library showed interest. It has certainly sat vacant long enough while other big box stores have been passing it by, searching for greener pastures (literally) farther north. Fortunately, they’re not the only site the library is considering.

This may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I would prefer a standalone building for this project, which in this case would most likely mean a greenfield development on the Sud property. The reason is that this is a civic building, and the architecture of civic buildings is symbolic. It symbolizes the civilization of a city. When you put a library in a strip mall, it says something about your community’s values, or at least about how much your community values (a) libraries, and (b) civic architecture.

Look at the other libraries in the system. Consider the Lincoln Branch. Here, you have a Carnegie library building proudly placed in the middle of a civic square. It’s inspiring and set apart from the surrounding architecture. You know immediately that this is someplace special. It’s not a title loan place or a pizza joint. It’s a civic building. It is important. The architecture and setting reinforce that importance.

Now I realize that not every library is going to look like a Carnegie library building. That’s not my point. My point is that it’s distinguishable. The McClure branch, which is more modest architecturally, is nevertheless a distinguishable and inspiring civic building. That’s what we should be shooting for in the north end, too.

The paper says the cost of the bonds to homeowners would be “about $50 per $100,000 of assessed property value a year.” That may be, or it may be lower. Because of the way the economy is, the city may be able to get an even lower rate for the bonds; instead of $0.15 per $100 assessed value, it may only be $0.13, in which case the cost to taxpayers would only be about $43 per $100,000 of assessed property a year.

Also, it should be noted that the $35 million in bonds isn’t just for a new north branch. Only about $11 million is going toward that. The $35 million is also going to triple the size of the Lincoln branch (they’re going to build a large addition), completely remodel the Main branch (also close to $11 million), and expand the Lakeview branch as well.

*Lincoln branch picture courtesy of PeoriaIllinoisan, via his Name This Peoria Landmark blog.

This week’s Issues Update from the City Manager’s office had this interesting review of the Peoria Public Library’s history. Fifth District Councilman Patrick Nichting had asked staff for this review at the last council meeting because “several citizens had requested information regarding the history regarding how the City Council became the authority over the Library versus other Libraries being under a Library District,” according to the council minutes. Nichting went on to say that “other Libraries under Library Districts had a mill rate and increases were voted under public referendum and voters decided increases in budgets.” Here is the report back:

The Peoria Public Library is organized and governed by the Illinois Library Act, 75 ILCS 5/1-01, et seq. As a Local Library, it is part of the City, in the sense that as the City annexes more property, that property is automatically served by the Peoria Public Library and is de-annexed from any library district it may have been a part of. As a Local Library, the Peoria Public Library is managed by a Board of Trustees, consisting of nine (9) Trustees appointed by the Mayor, with the approval of the City Council. A review of the City’s ordinances reflects that even as early as the 1940 Code Book, the ordinance establishing the Library was in place.

Under the Local Library Act, it is for the City to levy taxes for Library purposes. 75 ILCS 5/3-1 provides that in a city of 500,000 or fewer inhabitants, the corporate authorities (the City Council) shall levy a tax for library purposes of not to exceed .15% of the value of all taxable property in the City. There is also a provision in that section for an increase in that amount by referendum.

Historically, the City of Peoria, as a home rule municipality, has far exceeded the .15% limitation provided for in the statute. Currently, we are at .34%. Occasionally, there has been some discussion between the Library Board and the City over the question of whether the City has a duty to levy amounts requested by the Library Board. Section 75 ILCS 5/3-5 provides that the library taxes provided for “in this Act” shall be levied by the City Council in the amounts determined by the Board. This Section requires the City Council to levy the not-to-exceed .15% amount in an amount determined by the Library Board. The City Council is not required to levy whatever the Library Board wishes, based on the City’s home rule authority, because there has never been a referendum increasing this amount,. The City’s home rule authority is not a tax provided for “in this Act” within the meaning of Section 3-5.

A review of the history of the library levy reveals that in 1968 the library levy was .12%, which continued until 1971 when the rate became .1505%, then raised to .1708% in 1978. In 1986 the library levy went up to .2256% and in 1989 it went up to .4094%. In 2006, the amount was .3398%.

The referendum conducted last April was an advisory referendum. It could have been mandatory had the question been:

“Shall the annual library tax for maintenance and operation in the City of Peoria be increased from .15% to .50%?”

If such a referendum passed, then the City Council would have to levy any amount requested by the Library Board up to the .50% figure.

There is another type of library district which is organized under the Public Library District Act of 1991, 75 ILCS 16/1-1, et seq. In this second type of library district, the district itself levies taxes and the members of Board of Trustees are elected.

The statutes provide three separate ways for a Local Library such as ours to become a Public Library District under the Illinois Public Library District Act. The first, found in 75 ILCS 16/10-10, provides that the Board of Trustees of the Library adopt a resolution calling for the conversion and certifying the question of the conversion to the Election Commission who shall submit the question to the voters at the next regular election.

The second method of conversion, under 75 ILCS 16/10-15, which provides for the conversion upon the resolution of the Library Board and requesting the approval of the conversion of the City Council. If the City Council approves the conversion within 60 days after the resolution is adopted, the Board of Trustees shall convert the Local Library to a Public Library District. That statute goes on to provide that library in a home rule unit converted under this section shall have a maximum tax rate not to exceed the greater of 0.15% or the last rate levied by the municipality for library purposes for the most recent year before the conversion and that rate shall not be subject to any rate limitations or referendum requirements imposed by the Act. An increase, however, would require a referendum.

Finally, if the Library Board of Trustees does not initiate the change by adopting a resolution, the change can occur through a petition signed by 10% of those voting in the previous election and a referendum.