Of course, the truth of the matter is that this underground parking deck isn’t for the Central Illinois Regional Museum at all — it’s for Caterpillar’s visitor center. As councilman Sandberg pointed out, Cat originally wanted an above-ground [underground] parking deck built on their portion of the Sears block and paid for with federal dollars. But they found out that federal rules prohibit the use of those funds for [public] parking decks on private property. Furthermore, the Heart of Peoria Commission strongly recommended there not be any surface parking on the site. So Cat, rather than doing away with the parking, now decides to put the deck underground on the public half of the property and use property tax dollars (through the TIF) to pay for it.

The rest of the council is, of course, perfectly okay with that. They had all kinds of justifications for it. Councilwoman Van Auken said that removing the cap on the TIF wouldn’t take money away from essential services like fire station staffing. Bill Dennis has the best response to that spurious argument.

But the most embarrassing justification was the “we- have- to- approve- this- plan- or- Cat- will- move- their- headquarters- out- of- Peoria” reason. To hear Chuck Grayeb talk, for instance, you’d think Cat was poised to pull up stakes and move out of town any second, and that Peorians should be sacrificing their virgin daughters on an altar outside Cat headquarters and paying tribute money to keep them here.

Let’s face it — Caterpillar is a very large employer and has been very generous to Peoria civic projects and charities. I’m all for giving credit where credit is due. But that doesn’t mean our council should just rubber stamp every Caterpillar request. To do so makes the council a mere figurehead government that represents Cat and not Peoria residents.