Tag Archives: City Council

People are richer in the fifth district

At the last City Council meeting, the council discussed the Pioneer Parkway extension project, which would extend Pioneer Parkway from Allen Road three miles west to Trigger Road, crossing Routes 6 and 91 along the way. The objection was raised that we’ve been unable to adequately maintain the streets we currently have (in all districts, incidentally), and perhaps a better use of our limited funds would be to maintain our current assets before they deteriorate further. In fact, there has been no sealcoating or overlayment of our city streets (not including roads maintained by the state or federal government) since 2009.

In response, Councilman Spain had this to say:

I’ve never been one that really thought that an activity taking place in one part of our community has to come at the expense of another location. And I think we have a lot of things happening in Peoria that are positive for all parts of the city. And to say that a project like this that we’ve been working on for a long time shouldn’t move forward is pretty disappointing to me. And when you think about the activities and successes that we’ve experienced with growth in the northern parts of the city, I think that has been important. That doesn’t mean we should stop our efforts to grow the older parts of the city.

But the reality of our current tax base is that the real estate taxes paid in Councilman Irving’s district are about equal to all the real estate taxes paid in all four other districts combined. And so I think it’s important that we acknowledge that, and I appreciate your leadership on this issue, Councilman, and I think this will be another project that is important for the city and something that’s used to sustain services throughout the city so that we can continue investing in all parts of the community.

I first wanted to find out if it’s true that the fifth district generates 50% of the City’s real estate tax revenue, so I went looking for some sort of report that breaks down real estate tax receipts (or at least equalized assessed valuation information) by city council district. I checked with the Finance Department, the County Assessor, the City’s Planning & Growth and Economic Development departments, and even the Heartland Partnership — none of them had such a report. So I asked Mr. Spain how he came up with his figures, and he was kind enough to provide me with a detailed explanation:

My comments are based on preliminary work we have been doing with available EAV [equalized assessed valuation, or property value] information. The current EAV in the City is more than $2B. The D150 [Peoria Public Schools District 150] EAV is about $1.4B, about 70% of the total City. In Peoria, council districts 1-4 are almost exclusively within D150 (The exception to that is a small part of the 4th in Limestone). So at a maximum, the total real estate taxes of districts 1-4 is 70% of the City total. But we also know that there are large areas of the 5th district that are also in D150. Neighborhoods like WeaverRidge, High Point, Hawley Hills, Edgewild, Lynnhurst, Huntington, Oak Crest, and Charter Oak. I’ve attached a map that overlays our current council districts with Peoria County school districts -its a pretty good sized area of the 5th district that is still part of D150. We think there is enough property included in both the 5th district and D150 to represent about 20% of total City EAV.

Plausible, but I don’t know that I’d put it on the record as a fact without qualification the way Spain did at the last meeting. His analysis is based on some big assumptions. And, ultimately, it won’t matter much once the district boundaries are redrawn in a few months.

The bigger question is, what difference does it make? The issue at hand was whether we should use our limited funds to build a new road or maintain our existing roads. Existing roads are in poor condition all over the city — including the wealthy fifth district. I’m unclear as to what the relative wealth of the fifth district had to do with the item under consideration.

Mr. Spain, who lives in the fifth district himself, says he doesn’t think “an activity taking place in one part of our community has to come at the expense of another location.” True, but nobody said it does. Money given to one project, however, does indeed come at the expense of another project. Money spent on new city logos can’t be spent on police or fire protection. Assets given away for the downtown museum and hiking/biking trails cannot be used to generate tax revenue. And money spent on a study to extend Pioneer Parkway can’t be used to sealcoat existing streets.

Mr. Spain was no doubt trying to make the point that this proposed new road would open up more land for development, which would generate more tax revenues, which could then be used to benefit the whole city. And he probably was trying to say that finishing the study puts the city in a position to take advantage of state and federal grants for road construction (i.e., it makes the project “shovel-ready”). Those are reasonable, if not persuasive, arguments.

Unfortunately, what Mr. Spain actually said was, “the real estate taxes paid in [the fifth] district are about equal to all the real estate taxes paid in all four other districts combined” and that “it’s important that we acknowledge that,” which sounds like class discrimination, pure and simple. I don’t think he meant it that way (at least, I hope not), but I do think it was a poor choice of words.

In his e-mail to me, Mr. Spain also said one other thing in his defense, so I’ll give him the last word in this post: “Since it was not mentioned in your live blogging, I want to reiterate my position that investment in older parts of the City is just as important as investment in growth areas. I’ve really worked hard to find dollars for the older areas of the City -I was disappointed you didn’t acknowledge that.”

City redistricting process gets started

The five council districts in the City of Peoria are going to change. After each decennial census, cities are required by law to redraw their district boundaries so that each district has an approximately equal number of residents. The process for redrawing those boundaries got started Thursday night in City Council chambers.

The City’s redistricting committee is made up of the five district council members: Clyde Gulley, Barbara Van Auken, Tim Riggenbach, Bill Spears, and Dan Irving, with Spears acting as chairman since he’s the longest serving of the five. Their first meeting lasted about an hour and consisted primarily of establishing the criteria for redrawing the district map. Some of the criteria are required by law (each district must have nearly equal population and be compact and contiguous), and other criteria were added by committee members (don’t split neighborhoods between multiple districts, use major thoroughfares as boundaries as much as possible).

Keeping these criteria in mind, the committee asked the staff to come back with some proposed maps for the next meeting. They’d like to see several different possible configurations: one that has all districts running east to west (layered), one that has all districts running north to south (columnar), one that has districts one through four laid out as quadrants with the fifth district across the top of it, and one that preserves the current districts as much as possible (West Bluff in second district, East Bluff in third district, valley in first district, etc.).

Senior urban planner Josh Naven is in charge of creating these map proposals. Unlike the old days when these maps had to be created by hand, Naven will have the use of ESRI Districting software. The software comes preloaded with political maps and all the 2010 Census data down to the block level, and has some interoperability with the County’s GIS system. When Naven draws a district boundary, the software will tell him the total population count, minority population, voting age, etc., within that boundary. He can use this information to ensure the new boundaries meet federal and state requirements as he draws the maps to the committee’s specifications.

All redistricting info is being posted to the City’s website at http://www.ci.peoria.il.us/redistricting. This is where the proposed maps will be posted within the week before the committee’s next meeting, which will be Tuesday, June 21, at 5:30 in City Council chambers.

While the committee doesn’t legally have to complete its work until nearly the end of 2012, the City’s Election Commission would like to see the new maps adopted by Labor Day of this year, if possible. Executive Director Tom Bride said the Commission has to redraw all the precincts in the City and send out new voter registration cards, and the council district boundaries impact this process. Precincts cannot be split across district boundary lines, and voting districts are printed on the voter registration cards. The Election Commission’s deadline for completing these tasks is earlier than the City’s deadline for establishing new district boundaries. Establishing the new district boundaries early will keep the Election Commission from having to redo its work later next year.

Weaver picks up Montelongo’s mantle

One Thursday morning a month, councilmen Eric Turner and Jim Montelongo would hold a breakfast chat at City Hall where all citizens can come and talk about their concerns. It appears newly-elected councilman Chuck Weaver is going to continue that practice. A city press release states that Weaver and Turner will be in City Hall Room 112 this morning, May 5, starting at 7:30 a.m. All citizens are invited and encouraged to attend.

No live blogging tonight

I’ll be at the council meeting tonight, but will not be live blogging the event. My wife and I were invited to attend tonight’s swearing-in ceremony as guests of newly-elected council member Beth Akeson, so I’ll blog about the event afterwards. If you want live coverage, I recommend WCBU (89.9 FM), Comcast Cable channel 22, or the Peoria Journal Star (pjstar.com) which will be live-streaming the event this evening.

Of course, the big news tonight will be the return of George Jacob to the horseshoe for the first time since his motorcycle accident. This is also his last meeting as a councilman, as his term expires this evening. Godspeed, Councilman Jacob.

Peoria City Council 4/26/2011 (Live Blog)

Hello, everyone. Tonight is the last full meeting of the current City Council. Next week, we’ll be saying goodbye to Jim Montelongo and George Jacob, and saying hello to Beth Akeson and Chuck Weaver (Weaver is here tonight in the gallery). The rest of the players will remain the same. All the current council members are here tonight (except for Jacob, of course, who is still recovering from a motorcycle accident). Also enjoying his first council meeting is our new City Manager, Patrick Urich.

Well, you all know the drill — I’ll be giving you the live play-by-play for tonight’s council meeting. I’ll be updating this post frequently throughout the evening, under the agenda items listed below, so be sure to refresh your browser occasionally if you’re following along in real time. The city posts its agenda and almost all supporting documentation online here, so if you want additional information on a particular agenda item, be sure to check out that link. Here’s the agenda for tonight, April 26, 2011:

Continue reading Peoria City Council 4/26/2011 (Live Blog)

Peoria City Council 4-12-2011 (Live Blog)

Hello, and welcome to Council Chambers at Peoria City Hall. It’s 6:32 p.m., and the mayor is making several proclamations at the outset of the meeting before we get into the meat of the agenda. It looks like all the council members are present (except George Jacob), plus the two new council members — Beth Akeson and Chuck Weaver — are in the gallery.

As usual, I will be blogging live throughout the meeting, so refresh your browser every so often to see the latest updates. Here’s tonight’s agenda:

Continue reading Peoria City Council 4-12-2011 (Live Blog)

The District 150 conundrum

I find it really interesting that, as a City Council candidate, I regularly get asked about what the City can do (or what I can/will do as a City Council person) to help District 150. Oftentimes, the questions go beyond the support areas over which the City has control, and gets into school board policy — concerns over school closures, returning schools to a K-8 configuration, and similar things. In fact, from the questions I get asked at forums and in personal interactions, it looks to me like the state of District 150 is, if not number one, at least the number two priority of Peoria residents.

And yet…

Not a single person circulated petitions for the third ward school board seat. As a result, all the candidates there are write-in candidates. The third ward school board member vacating his seat this year is running for City Council instead. In the second ward, there’s only one challenger to sitting school board president Debbie Wolfmeyer. The last time Martha Ross was up for reelection, she ran unopposed. If I were to judge the public’s concern for District 150 by their efforts to change policy by getting on the board and challenging the status quo, I’d have to say it’s not a very high priority at all.

How are we to explain this strange phenomenon?

Peoria City Council 3/22/2011 (Live Blog)

Good evening, everyone. I’m live-blogging from home tonight, as I have had a terrible head cold the last couple of days — especially last night and this morning. So, I’ve got my Kleenex handy and lots of fluids nearby, and my radio tuned to WCBU 89.9 FM. This is probably a good time to encourage everyone who appreciates WCBU’s live coverage of the Peoria City Council meetings to make a donation to them — you can pledge online here.

This is the last council meeting before the April 5 at-large election. There are a couple of controversial issues on the agenda tonight: the low-income elderly housing facility proposed near the corner of War Memorial Drive and Sheridan Road (Item 3) and the East Village Growth Cell and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district (Items 4-6). If you’re following along live, be sure to refresh your browser every so often to get the latest updates. The meeting starts at 6:15, and begins with a few proclamations, so it will be a few minutes before we get into the agenda.

One of the proclamations was a touching commemoration of the life of Les Kenyon. May he rest in peace.

And now, without any further ado, here’s tonight’s agenda:

Continue reading Peoria City Council 3/22/2011 (Live Blog)