Q: How many members of the council currently sitting around the horseshoe endorsed the library’s plan and urged voters to support the $35 million referendum in April 2007, and who are they?
Click on “Read the rest of this entry” below to see the answer. (If you’re reading an RSS feed or the permalink for this post, don’t cheat by reading ahead — see how many you can name without looking.)
And the answer is: Seven. That’s right, seven out of eleven council members, or 64%, supported the library’s plan, which included expanding Lakeview, building a new northern branch, closing the South Side branch, and expanding the Lincoln branch. The seven council members are:
- Mayor Jim Ardis
- Clyde Gulley
- Barbara Van Auken
- Jim Montelongo
- Eric Turner
- Gary Sandberg
- Ryan Spain
I have a quiz, too. How many of the current 11 members of the Peoria City Council are tasked with being the ultimate authority on how taxes are levied and then spent, being as they and NOT the Library Board, are elected by the citizens of the City of Peoria?
Answer: All of them.
http://www.pjstar.com/news/x1056106725/Bibo-Council-queries-expose-difficulty
Gotta love this!!
Billy — Do you think they should base their tax-levying decision on the results of an objective, public process (like the one the library board has gone through over the past year and a half) or on the subjective desires of a few council members without any public input?
C.J.: You mean like the objective, public process by which they use to determine that empty land way out in North Peoria qualifies as an enterprise zone because it is “blighted?”
And I’d say that a project that costs $8-10 million less meets at least SOME objective criteria.
I’m just saying that it’s idiotic to not consider all options, even though said option wasn’t mentioned two years earlier. Conditions change.
http://www.pjstar.com/news/x2058733776/Library-plan-faces-critics
Yesterday, I emailed Spears that I thought this Richwoods site seemed like a 150/City of Peoria deal worked out among themselves.
He didn’t address that point in his response.
Billy — that option was considered. And rejected. From the Journal Star (emphasis mine):
CJ,
The Peoria Heights Library is only two miles from the Lakeview branch so how much sense does it make to expand the Lakeview branch when a newer library is only two miles away. My biggest issue is that the whole idea seems to be to build a new library on the far north side ignoring the existing facilities because they are not in the City of Peoria. BTW I don’t have a problem with the plans for the downtown library although I am a little concerned about closing the south side branch. Of course the south side library is only 3.8 miles from the alpha park library.
The part about the site being not for sale is a little silly because the cost savings would come because the site is already own by a public body and therefore wouldn’t cost anything. As far as the environmental issue they will have to be cleanup at some point using public dollars anyway.
I don’t think a deal with district 150 “wouldn’t cost anything.” And just because a cleanup will have to be done at some point with public funds, what reason is there to use funds that could go to library services?
kohlrabi,
The building site won’t cost the city anything and I didn’t say the cleanup costs would come out of library services. The 35 million is for capital expenditures not books so even if the money for cleaning up the sight came out of the 35 million it still wouldn’t come at the expense of books or other services. My guess is that the Richwoods/Expo site was graded so low was because it was at the very bottom of the north area of their map. BTW why aren’t they talking about building a library branch on the west side of Peoria? Right now the most western branch in the city of Peoria is the south side branch. There is tremendous growth going on the far nw side of Peoria, when do those people get their library.
Curious, My guess is that Peoria Heights didn’t design their library — size- or programming-wise — to support all of central Peoria. I also doubt they would have the tax base to be able to support the amount of use it would get if it became the de facto central-Peoria branch. Even if it did replace Lakeview, an Expo Gardens branch would still not be close enough to the north Peoria population its intended to serve.
And as for the site not costing anything — are you seriously suggesting the school board would just give the land to the city? Surely you jest.
C.J. – Regarding the Peoria Height library, I remembering reading an article in the Observer a few years back after the new Heights library came on line and it discussed just that matter — that there were so many users in Peoria and Dunlap utilizing the library in Peoria Heights and that it was taxing their limits.
Pretty sorry excuse for a city (Peoria) that they have to defer citizens to use the library of smaller communities because they can’t get their act together at the Council.
O.k., one more thing. I just read the PJS article about the Council’s proposal to locate the new library adjacent to Richwoods as part of a larger plan to redevelop Expo. Who owns Expo? Is it privately owned? Is the property for sale?
CJ,
If you had a branch at the Expo gardens it could serve both central Peoria and the near north side. You still have an expanded McClure branch and a redesigned downtown branch. When you add the Peoria Heights library you get pretty go coverage in central and near north Peoria. As I have said before the far north side is closer to Dunlap and their new $2.5 million addition which was design for the growth on the far north side even though the city of Peoria annexes the property into the city and therefore out of the Dunlap library district.
As to the point you have made on Billy’s site about the city council getting involved now, I think the issue is the city council desire, or at least some councilmen’s, to look at the bigger picture. One of the issues with an organization like the Library district, and I am not singling them out it happens in all organizations, is the get so focused on their segment that the lose sight of the bigger picture. I don’t even think that is bad, but then a higher body, in this case the city council, then looks at the issues and tries to blend those plans into an overall plan. At least that is how it should work.
Frustrated,
My understanding is that the city owns Expo gardens.
reply to curious: I believe they are owned by “shares” held in trust by the Expo Board and/or others. It is certainly not owned by the city.
Curious – My point was that district 150 will want something for the city or library to use the land. Nothing is free.
Oh come on people… Isn’t it obvious? The city is gonna bail out the District 150 by buying up the property at Expo gardens… it will please the Richwoods people… it will please the School District… it will please the Library… the only people who get screwed are anyone who was looking for a another branch of the library other than Lakeview to go to. (You could walk from Expo to Lakeview in about an hour… slowly. It is less than a mile and a half.) To make any sense at all, it should be out by Charter Oaks or Picture Ridge.
It should be at the old K’s Merchandise!!!
K’s is too old and needs a ton of work that the $35 mill won’t cover. and K’s is pending sale and the buyer doesn’t want to share with the library.
Thank you RE…. I thought that was the original place they were going to put it. Let them put it out North then.. let Dunlap help pay 🙂
Saturday morning and I took the time to read the answers the library board gave to the 49 questions from the city council. First off the questions were in my opinion mostly ridiculous and redundant. But to its credit the library board did a fantastic and complete job of answering those questions and giving additional information and maps and graphs. Their answers were far more sensible than the questions that were asked. They have done their homework and then some.