Some Heart of Peoria Commission members want the commission to voluntarily disband, possibly as early as our next meeting — the final one for 2008 — on December 5 at 8:00 a.m. The theory goes that commissioners could have more of an impact if we weren’t a city commission. We could instead organize ourselves as a public advocacy group, similar to Peoria City Beautiful. This would free us from the restrictions of the City Council and the Open Meetings Act, allowing us to meet as often as we want and have a coordinated lobbying effort of council members.
This idea has been going around for a while. We talked about it at one of our meetings a year ago or so when the Council was considering disbanding HOPC. At that time, HOPC voted to oppose that move. The Council decided to keep HOPC, but cut all funding for the commission and reduced its meeting schedule to six times per year. So now voluntary disbandment is back on the agenda for discussion at our Dec. 5 meeting.
I have no idea if it’s any more likely to pass. The last time, we ultimately decided that the advantages of being a city commission outweighed the advantages of being a private advocacy group. Should make for an interesting discussion.
Not sure if I have a real opinion one way or the other regarding whether you can advance your agenda better as a City Commission or a private advocacy group, but I’m a little stunned that one of the reasons given for the consideration is that:
“This would free us from the restrictions of the City Council and the Open Meetings Act…”
While granted if you’re not a governmental committee, you’re not doing the public’s work, it seems like this is a step backwards in terms of having open, accountable, and transparent government. If you want more meetings, what prevents the group from having ad hoc meetings on their own – call them study sessions, work groups, whatever you want….I hardly think that the City will/can prevent that and I doubt that you need much in the way of funding or staff resources to have a meeting that is in compliance with the Open Meeting Act.
Sound like this may be the path taken by the RENAISSANCE PARK COMMISSION, it is sad after all the $$$ spent on studies and meetings that thing are allowed to die a slow death.
One of the first things they do to silence critics is to bring them into the system.
That’s one very good reason to stay out of the “system”–District 150 included. I’ve watched teachers become “administrators” and forget all about what it was like to be a teacher.
More neighborhood friendly business in the making — no HOP Commission then we can forget about the HOP plan.
HoP Commision is sorely needed. You must NOT disband.
My unsolicited advice would be to disband. The last three years I was in Peoria, I couldn’t find a single elected official that valued anything the commission did, said, or thought. The commission became window dressing to prop up the false notion that the city still aspired to the Heart of Peoria Plan.
I’m not saying the city should or shouldn’t embrace the plan. That’s a different debate. But its clear that the commission has been mostly pointless and without influence. Try something different.
CJ,
Why don’t you wait until after the election to decide HOPC’s future? Different council could bring different views.
Just curious, have any portions of that HOP plan which was presented years ago been put into place. I don’t care about the zoning code as that was something that was talked about before or the warehouse district. Again, something before.
Did anything concrete come of the meetings, the plan, the talk and the discussion? There were all kinds of ideas for new things such as water parks, etc. what ever happened to those.