The agenda for Tuesday night’s Peoria City Council meeting is short — just two items. But don’t let that fool you into thinking it will be a short meeting.
It’s that time of year when the council starts discussing the dreaded budget. In keeping with the council’s desire to include more meaningful input from citizens, Tuesday’s meeting will offer residents a chance to comment on the budget after some pertinent information is presented:
A. REVIEW of CURRENT OUTSTANDING CAPITAL PROJECTS;
B. PRESENTATION OF OVERALL VISION/MISSION/CORE FUNCTIONS;
C. REVENUE REVIEW;
D. PUBLIC COMMENT Relating to the 2009 CITY BUDGET.
If you’re looking for information on the city’s budget, look no further than peoriabudget.com. City staff has assembled a number of helpful charts and graphs to give you a picture (literally) of the city’s revenue and expenditures, broken down a number of different ways. Here are a couple that will be germane to Tuesday’s meeting (click on the thumbnail to see the full graph):
These two graphs show the revenue sources for the city. They’ll come in handy when it comes time figure out how we’re going to raise more revenue for the city’s needs.
Perhaps the rocket scientists who sit on the council might
consider that we are in the midst of a financial meltdown and it might be a good time to stop wasting money. Nah, they wouldn’t consider that, the Fed will bail the City of Peoria out, won’t it?
Dump the museum and any other money/time wasting projects.
New Voice—- such as the ball stadium,the Gateway Building, the parking decks, the Riverplex, the Zoo and all proposed expansions, even the Children’s Museum — are these projects on your list?
Karrie,
I do get your point. Everyone in the area has ‘pet’ projects they love to support. Some people love the zoo, could care less about Riverplex……..etc. It is about proper management. You have to weigh what we spend to build and maintain a project, against the return. Gateway Building, Riverplex have been labeled ‘bombs’ in the past [especially Gateway]. The museum, in my humble opinion, is the biggest bomb of all. A mismanaged, multimillion dollar bomb that is about to explode, leaving all of Peoria with another mess to clean up.
P.S. Were you getting snotty?
This new tool bar is great! The riverplex, the ball park, the museum, the zoo. I hear constant bitching about anything new. A major project is completed and you would think something horrible has happened. There are still people who refuse to visit the civic center. Sometimes it seems as if the only way to appease people would be to cease all development immediately.
I like the Civic Center.
No not getting snotty. No, nothing against new. Just about living within our means as individuals, as a community, as a nation —- we can see the imploding with the lancing of the mortgage boil — the effects are widespread.
I agree with New Voice —
‘You have to weigh what we spend to build and maintain a project, against the return.’
The problem is that the return on the project is never financial, only a financial blackhole regardless of the ‘entertainment / health / whatever’ returns achieved.
It is $ x million here and $ y million there and so on such that it becomes a whopping $ z million altogether which we simply cannot afford. Private businesses cannot operate in a deficit ledger position and be deemed successful.
“Lancing of the mortgage boil?”
I think the concern is that the personal gain far outweighs public gain in some of these projects funded by the public. The museum, for instance, may be one of those projects, seeing that The Peoria Historical Society and Lakeview have not been historically run in the most efficient and ethical manner. (There is a rumor out there that many of the donations to these organizations have been confiscated by the trustees and now are hanging on the walls, or otherwise in the possession of those same trustees. Or perhaps an even worse case, laying uncatelogued, and uncared for in some basement or cellar somewhere.) Where is the mummy’s hand that once belonged to James Bastow?
How about a graph of Peoria’s expenditures?
I’ve said it before, but, for those of you who missed it, I like
zoos and museums, and the Riverplex is great. BUT, I want
a Mercedes convertible, and a condo in Colorado, and a lot of
other things that are nice. I don’t buy them because I can’t afford them. First you have to decide what you truly NEED, and then,
if you have anything left over, what you can afford to buy that
you WANT. Govt. usually does it ass backwards. They decide
what they WANT, and then force the taxpayers to pay for it.
And what is rarely considered is the ongoing costs of these projects.
Once built, they have to me maintained. That costs real money.
The day of reckoning is almost at hand. The taxpayers are not
a bottomless pit of money. With the $850B bailout millstone around our necks, the pit is going dry fast.
KCDAD,
WHOA! I hear what you are saying! You are however, a socialist-communist-liberal. I must therefore, discount anything you say/write. Sell that Eugene V. Debs t-shirt and maybe we will listen to you.
MOUSE,
Exactly.
I am not a Socialist! I am not a liberal… ok, maybe I am a little.
The initial cost of amenities such as the museum is not the problem. Its the forever cost of maintanence that is the killer. Our grandkids will be paying for this and their grandkids. So we want to saddle ourselves and our future generations with things we really can’t afford to buy? Its like credit. Sure you have a $5,000 or $15,000 credit line on your credit card, but do you have to use it all? Can you afford the payments? And do you realize you are paying the credit card companies to let you use your own money? How much sense is that? Yes credit cards are good for emergencies, such as car repairs or house repairs, but for regular purchases, think two or three times before you use it. We need to think two or three times before we use our future tax money for a museum or anything else that we can live without for now.
What kills me is that several ‘cost-cutting’ ideas have been thrown around since this project began years ago. Like with EVERYTHING else in this town…the ‘powers that be’ will not listen to anyone outside their circle.
New Voice you are right. They won’t listen to anyone else and they think that they are so special that they know what is best for us. But this time they don’t seem to be getting the support that they normally attract with one of their self-serving projects.
Karrie,
Well done.
SD: I agree that the ongoing maintenance is a large financial commitment. Nevertheless, the initial outlay of funds for the brick and mortar is also problematic for me. In my opinion, not only can we not afford the wants which The Mouse has identified, we then pay for these wants on our public credit card aka public bond debt.
I agree with Mouse — I like museums — but we cannot afford them.
So, kcdad was asking for an expediture graph for Peoria — perhaps CJ could and would make a bond graph for current and proposed expenditures in Peoria and Peoria County.
Here are some projects for consideration — please remember to fully inspect the price tag — initial cost and then credit cost (bond interest for twenty to thirty years). For me, it gives me a headache and a warning message —- “Danger Will Robinson.”
* Gateway Building
* Ball Stadium
* Restaurants on stilts
* Parking Decks
* Civic Center Expansion
* Library Expansion and Rehabilitation
* CSO Repairs
* Riverplex
* Zoo Expansion
* Children’s Museum
* Riverfront Museum
* Bellwood Nursing Home
Please remember to add the annual maintenance costs for each of these projects. Not one of these projects has made met projections as promised nor will any in the future. {Please note: CSO Repair are not in this category.)
Individual governmental entities are not silos unto themselves — little fifdoms which keep taxing the peasants to financial death.
Let’s get back to governmental basics and stop competing with the private sector. Not to mention the fact that in many parts of Peoria, we have garbage curbs, sidewalks, and streets which are basic city services. And the regressive garbage tax, …….
The election cycle comes again in the spring for local offices. Heralded by more candidates promising to change the system and vote for the basic services. Then the electorate is again slapped in the face by the reality of having been hoodwinked again.