Museum Block

Why is all the artwork gone? (UPDATED)

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In July 2006, downtown museum developers with city approval kicked off “Picture Museum Square.” For a fee, anyone — artists, schools, businesses, etc. — could paint one of the panels of the plywood fence surrounding the old Sears block downtown. The idea was to raise money for the museum project and make the block more attractive while waiting for construction to commence. Each panel cost $500. Many participated as several of the panels were decorated with various styles of artwork.

But it’s all gone now.

As PeoriaIllinoisan shows with his trusty camera, the plywood fence surrounding so-called Museum Square has been painted black. It’s unclear whether Caterpillar or the City painted over all the artwork. You may recall that Caterpillar recently was granted a lease by the city to use the block as an employee parking lot while their parking deck is getting some maintenance work done to it.

The lease agreement specifically states that the outside of the fence is the City’s responsibility to maintain, and that additional artwork can be painted there, although Caterpillar has the right to approve the artwork first:

5.5 … In addition, the City shall maintain the exterior of the existing fence surrounding the Premises. The City shall have the right to grant additional licenses to community groups to paint or attach artwork or graphics to the exterior of the fence surrounding the Premises, provided that Caterpillar shall have the right, in the exercise of its reasonable judgment, to approve all such artwork and graphics. The attachment of such artwork and graphics shall not negatively impact Caterpillar’s use of the Premises.

I’ve written to Interim City Manager Henry Holling asking for an explanation for the painting over of the artwork. I’ll update this post with his response when I receive it. I agree with PeoriaIllinoisan: inquiring minds want to know.

UPDATE (6/10): Here’s the response I received from Henry Holling:

Mr. Summers, the fence painting was worked out between the Museum Group and Caterpillar. The artwork was not painted over, it was removed for future use.
Thanks for your inquiry.

Also, the Journal Star has an article today about plans for the fence. I’m glad to hear they didn’t paint over the artwork.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Library, Peoria Pundit

Prominent blogger defends subjective, secretive plans to squander taxpayer money

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It’s not every day that a blogger comes right out and scoffs at objective, public processes for spending taxpayer money. But one prominent blogger has done just that. Billy Dennis says that making decisions via an objective, rational process is ludicrous and will result in poor decisions, like the failed “New Coke” formula.

That’s right. An open process like the one the library board has employed for more than the past year — including over 40 public meetings and an advisory referendum — is worthy of scorn by Mr. Dennis. In contrast, a closed-door summit between the city and school district, “held at the District 150 administrative offices with only a few elected members of each board so that the press and public could be excluded from the meeting,” is worthy of applause! The site near Expo Gardens was already publicly considered against objective criteria and discarded. For personal reasons not fully disclosed, the site is now being resurrected and pursued by the council, but behind closed doors.

I’m sure you’re wondering why Billy would take such a strange stance — against transparency, for special interest interference. For one thing, he thinks it’s good policy. Since council members are elected and answer to the people, he thinks that gives them carte blanche to discard any and all processes, no matter how well-researched or documented, in order to pursue their own personal pet projects. After all, if the people don’t like it, they’ll just vote that person out of office… after the money’s been squandered, unfortunately.

Another reason Billy stands up for arbitrary decision-making: he believes it might save $8-10 million. It has a great ring to it, doesn’t it? “Saving” $8-10 million? Where does that figure come from? Has it been verified? And are we really “saving”?

The figure comes from Mayor Ardis. The Peoria Times-Observer reported: “Ardis said closing the Lakeview Branch could potentially trim $8 to $10 million off the price tag of the library’s expansion and renovation project, projected at $35 million.” See, if they build a new library at Expo Gardens, less than two miles from Lakeview, there would be no need to keep the Lakeview branch open. Closing that branch, and thus not sinking any money into expanding or renovating it, would drop the price of the library’s renewal plans to $25-27 million (at least, by the Mayor’s calculations); hence, the $8-10 million in savings.

To my knowledge, neither the Mayor nor anyone else has released any detail on how they arrived at that figure. Not knowing the sale price of the land by Expo (it’s not for sale), the environmental clean-up costs, or a host of other variables, I don’t know how the figure could be verified.

As far as whether it’s “saving” anything, that’s kind of a backwards way of looking at things. If I say I’m going to spend $25,000 on a car, and then I decide to buy a $15,000 car instead, did I just save $10,000? No. I spent $15,000. Now, suppose the $25,000 car could seat six people, so my family of five could fit comfortably, but the $15,000 car only seats four. Have I made a wise decision to spend $10,000 less when the car I bought doesn’t meet the needs of my family?

This library upgrade works the same way. A new northern branch will cost about $11 million to construct, based on the experts at BCA (the library consulting firm that’s been working on this project who have a pretty good track record estimating library construction). Wherever we put it, it’s going to cost around $11 million. The question we have to ask ourselves is where the wisest place is to build the new branch. If we spend $11 million to build it in the wrong place, was that a wise use of that money? Is that being fiscally responsible?

Billy evidently thinks so. He’s admitted that it doesn’t matter to him where the new branch is built, which is tantamount to saying he doesn’t care whether the city council squanders $11 million or not. He’ll just be happy that the council “saved” $8-10 million, even if $11 million is wasted in the process.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Library

Library answers the City

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If you haven’t already seen them, you can read the library’s answers to the City’s questions here (large PDF file). It’s over 40 pages long, so I’m not going to paste the text into this blog entry like I did for the questions. I did like this answer, though:

There is a desire to achieve the goals arrived at after extensive study by expert consultants and input from the Peoria public, including over 45 public meetings, and web, in-house and mail comments. However, since building a consolidated branch at Exposition Gardens does not address those goals, we set aside this idea after applying the same tests we did to all other sites. One of the main goals of our building program is to be sure that we are not just doing a temporary fix on our libraries but building for the future.

Here you can see an example of what I said in my previous post. They got public input, they utilized expert consultants, and they ran the Expo Gardens site through an objective criteria. It’s also nice to see that the library is thinking about long-term solutions and not temporary fixes. That way, they won’t have to come back asking for more money in just a few years.

It will be interesting to hear the discussion that ensues Tuesday night at the council meeting.

Peoria Public Library

The problem with the library “process”

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I can see that I’m not making myself clear regarding what I find objectionable about recent events surrounding the library. Some people seem to think that I advocate no council oversight of the library board or that I think the advisory referendum should be taken as binding the council to every jot and tittle of the library board’s recommendation. Not so.

Let me try to explain my concerns (hopefully) better.

I believe that decisions like this one regarding library expansion should be made rationally and objectively, with real public participation and consideration of the needs of all stakeholders. I believe the library board has, to the best of their ability, done that. They have done their planning openly, had public meetings, included people in their strategic planning from all stakeholders (planning & growth department, chamber of commerce, school administration, etc.), and established an objective criteria for evaluating locations for a northern branch.

The library board ran all potential sites for a northern branch through their criteria and let the chips fall where they may. They looked at things like cost of acquisition, size, proximity to patrons, etc. The board’s initial preferred site — K’s Merchandise — did not make the cut. The board was surprised to find that the Sud’s property and the old Festival Foods were the top two sites, based on their objective criteria. That’s why they made the recommendation they did.

Contrast that with the city council. The council has no criteria for objectively choosing a site. Nor have they held any public meetings to get input from the community. The first site they floated was Elliott’s strip club on University. That was done behind the scenes in an attempt to influence the board with the promise of extra votes.

When that was shot down, the council suggested Expo Gardens. A meeting was hastily put together with representatives of the city, school board, and library board. The city is no doubt preparing its case for this site to present during the question and answer time with the library board that’s been added to the end of Tuesday’s council meeting.

Here’s the problem I have with this “process.” It’s not a process. It’s council members with pet projects or special interests using the library for their purposes instead of establishing a criteria and making objective and rational decisions based on that criteria. Nichting would like to see Elliott’s run out of the north end of town — that would be good for his constituents and it would be good for his district — so he suggests putting the library there. Spears has big plans for making the area around Expo Gardens into a family-friendly place for recreation and entertainment, so he suggests putting the library there.

Well, guess what? You can defend almost any site on that basis. Why not put a library in one of the form districts in the Heart of Peoria area? It would be a neighborhood anchor and spur redevelopment in those areas, it would be walkable, and I could come up with a hundred other benefits if I wanted. You probably can think of a lot of reasons putting a library near your neighborhood would be good, too. That’s not a reasonable or sufficient way to decide where the library is to be sited.

If the council has legitimate questions regarding the criteria the library used, I think it’s reasonable to discuss modifying that criteria — at an open meeting, with public/stakeholder input. Then, once everyone agrees on the criteria, go out and look at potential sites again, including any for which a council member has an affinity, and run them all through the criteria and may the best site win.

That’s what I’m advocating. Does that make it clearer?

Peoria Journal Star

Note to Journal Star: That would be the East Bluff

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From today’s paper:

West Bluff man faces child pornography charge

PEORIA — A West Bluff man appeared in U.S. District Court on Thursday accused of having several hundred child porn photos as well as talking to minors on the Internet.

Jeffrey S. Ellington, 40, of 1500 N. Knoxville Ave., Apt. 11 stands charged with distribution of child pornography, a charge that could send him to prison for up to 20 years.

Knoxville Ave. is the dividing line between the west and east bluffs in Peoria. The way street numbering works here, even-numbered addresses are on the north and east side of streets, odd-numbered addresses are on the west and south side of streets. So “1500 N. Knoxville” would be on the east side of Knoxville, putting it in the East Bluff — not the West Bluff.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Library

Library quiz

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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.)

Continue reading Library quiz →

City Council, City of Peoria

Council preview 6/10/08

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Next Tuesday the City Council will meet. The agenda is online here. Notable items of discussion:

  • There’s a request to give Enterprise Zone status to all of Metro Centre, Sheridan Village, and Evergreen Square shopping centers. Big plans are in the works for all three, and the city wants to provide incentives. Metro Centre’s plans are fleshed out the most in the request — they’re planning to spend one- to three-million dollars on renovations and a mixed-use retail/residential development that will overlook the Lakeview nature preserve.

  • The Kellar Branch rail/trail feasibility study comes up for approval. This is specifically a request to hire T. Y. Lin International, an engineering firm, for a flat rate of $20,000 to give an independent analysis as to how much it would cost to build a trail next to the Kellar Branch rail line. Peoria Heights would pay $5,000 toward the cost, and the City of Peoria would pick up the remaining $15,000.

  • The request for a liquor license for Elliott’s strip club comes up for a vote again. It had been deferred while the City and club owners worked with a mediator. I have no idea if they reached a resolution or if this item will be deferred again.

Also of note, I believe this will be Jonathan Ahl’s last time covering the Peoria City Council and hosting “Outside the Horseshoe.” I hope he’s planning to have a “goodbye” episode that will feature his favorite interviews and clips over the past several years. I also hope he leaves the longest pause ever between “WCBU” and “Peoria” when he signs off.

General News

Randy Oliver up for Surprise city manager job

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Look out, Ed Boik — Randy Oliver is following you.

Ed Boik used to work in the Planning and Growth department, but recently moved to Peoria, Arizona. Now, word comes that former City Manager Randy Oliver is likely to become the new city manager in nearby Surprise, Arizona. The city council there selected him unanimously from a pool of 109 applicants, which had been whittled to five finalists. A contract could come up for a vote before the month is out.

Not everyone is happy about how the choice was handled. The article mentions several people who were unhappy with the lack of transparency on the part of the Surprise city council in making their selection.

Here are some interesting quotes:

“You’ll find I’m an upfront person,” Oliver said. “As I told the council, we may or may not agree. There are times that people don’t agree, and the key is you can do that professionally. As evidenced by my career and history, I run a very clean administration. I don’t put up with anything that’s not.”

Oliver said he left [Peoria, IL] when it became clear the job was no longer “the best fit” and city leaders had transitioned to focusing only on basic services.

“They didn’t think the city should be involved in certain things outside of police and fire,” Oliver said.

Nonetheless, Oliver provided Surprise leaders with a letter of recommendation from Peoria’s mayor.

Interesting. This is new information — he left because he perceived the city was focusing only on basic services? And therefore he didn’t see his services as “the best fit”? I guess that means he was in favor of more “progressive” spending behind the scenes. I can see how that would cause some friction, especially around budget time.

Oliver had been a finalist for city manager in Durham, North Carolina, but that job was ultimately offered to Pensacola, Fla., city manager Tom Bonfield.

Good luck to Randy in getting the gig in sunny Arizona. Maybe he and Ed can get together for supper sometime and talk about the good old days in Peoria.