Jennifer Davis did such a good job summing up the council meeting last night, I’m going to cheat and say just read her article in the Journal Star.  But I would like to make just a couple of comments about last night’s meeting.

First, it was loooong — over four hours, which is unusual these days.  When they finally got to Mayor Ardis’s plans to make the city more business-friendly, they had already been at it almost three hours, leading local businessman Lee Graves to thank the “new council,” tongue-in-cheek, for holding shorter meetings than earlier councils.  That got a laugh from everyone.

Second, I found the rhetoric during the parking discussion fascinating.  The council decided on a 9-2 vote to offer free parking for two hours at a time during the day (see my previous post for more details), but only after a lot of discussion.  During that discussion, some council members talked about how people would rather walk a couple blocks for free parking than pay for the parking that is closest to the business they’re patronizing.

That’s funny.  Just a few weeks ago, the council voted to put an unnecessary parking deck under museum square based on their belief that people would never even walk across the street from one of the surrounding lots or decks.  We were told then that we live in a northern climate here in Peoria and no one is going to walk a block or two in the rain or cold.  Now we’re told that they will walk a couple blocks — if the parking is free.  Huh.

Well, based on this new information, I think the council should reconsider their plans to build that underground parking deck.  Let’s just provide free parking at any of the surrounding lots or decks by having the museum validate visitors’ parking tickets.  Compared to parking validation, I wonder how many years it would take for the city to get a return on its investment for the parking deck.