Tag Archives: City of Peoria

City of Peoria, History

Another historic property may see wrecking ball

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Included in the Peoria City Council’s evisceration of the city’s historic preservation ordinance was a provision that exempts church-owned property from historic preservation. Specifically, the motion said, in part, “No property or structure that is owned by a religious organization and is used primarily as a place for the conduct of religious ceremonies or to further the religious mission or business of the owner shall be subject to the regulations set forth in Articles I through IV of this Chapter by reason of its location within a Historic District….”

That’s all Westminster Presbyterian Church needed to file suit against the City:

Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1420 W. Moss Ave., wants a judge to declare Westminster House has a religious use and therefore can be demolished under changes made to the ordinance Feb. 8…. For years, Westminster has tried to demolish the Westminster House, located at 1508 W. Moss Ave. and in the heart of Moss-High Historic District. The efforts have led nowhere until perhaps now. In 2008, the church unsuccessfully tried to convince the historic preservation commission to allow it to demolish the building. Then they filed suit in federal court, a legal action that was defeated last fall.

The suit filed Monday states the church began holding men’s fellowship prayer meetings on March 9 and that makes the building, which had been used until 2006 as office space, a religious building.

This illustrates the can of worms opened by the council’s action. Do existing historic landmarks automatically get de-listed if they are owned by religious organizations now they are exempt? What if a religious organization purchases an historic landmark building? Does it then automatically get de-listed?

I wonder if those on the council who voted for this amendment had really thought through all the ramifications before passing it.

City Council, City of Peoria

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

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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) →

City of Peoria, Peoria Fire Department, Peoria Mayor

Ardis pooh-poohs city-run ambulance service, but explanation raises more questions

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The City Council candidates are often asked at forums what ideas we have for generating more revenue for the city. Gary Sandberg has suggested that the City should provide its own ambulance service, severing its contract with Advanced Medical Transport (AMT). The way he sees it, we already have a professional fire department that is first on the scene and capable of providing basic life support (BLS); it would not take much to have these guys trained to provide advanced life support (ALS) as well.

Mayor Jim Ardis apparently heard about this and took up his pen to write an editorial in the Journal Star. He says:

During the current campaign for City Council, some candidates have suggested that the city consider starting its own ambulance service. As a 14-year veteran on the council, I have studied this question time and again and the answer is always the same. A city-operated ambulance provider will require a taxpayer subsidy from our general fund and lose millions of dollars each year.

AMT doesn’t receive a taxpayer subsidy. In fact, AMT pays the city a dispatch fee that generates $100,000 per year. We have a good medical emergency response system. It is not broken and meets the highest national standards defined to date. Private studies have provided the same conclusion.

Start-up costs to begin transport would be nearly $3.5 million for equipment and training. AMT writes off more than $2 million per year as uncollectable, bad debt. The company also discounts $5 million for Medicare and Medicaid. The city could not afford to lose a penny of revenue and still wouldn’t run this operation in the black. Simply put, transport is not a core service for our citizens.

…Our ambulance service agreement with our professional fire department is an idea that works. Adding to our already strained payroll is an idea that does not make sense.

I’m not going to dismiss Ardis’s criticism out of hand. But this explanation leaves a lot to be desired. Given the numbers put forth in this editorial, one has to wonder how AMT didn’t go bankrupt years ago. Why is AMT able to operate in the black, but the City of Peoria couldn’t? Since AMT is a not-for-profit organization, I took a look at its Form 990.

According to the 2009 Form 990 (the latest available), AMT’s total revenue was $11,696,795. That revenue went up every year from 2005 ($9,224,551) to 2009. Total expenses were $10,776,223, including the executive director’s salary of $256,549, the assistant executive director’s salary of $113,612, and the controller’s salary of $110,651. Considering they’re a non-profit company, and thus their services are priced accordingly, I’d say they’re doing pretty well, and have been for a number of years.

Again, I’m not saying that Ardis is necessarily wrong — I’m just saying his article doesn’t explain why AMT is able to make almost a million dollars a year and pay handsome salaries to its top brass, but somehow the City would lose money hand over fist if it provided the same service. I’m also unclear why we would have to “[add] to our already strained payroll.” Why couldn’t the existing personnel who are already BLS-trained also be ALS-trained? There would be training and equipment costs to be sure, but why couldn’t those costs be covered by the revenue the City would receive the same way AMT’s training and equipment costs are covered by the revenue they receive?

We need Paul Harvey to give us the rest of the story.

Census 2010, City of Peoria

A picture of Peoria’s shifting population

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From the City’s Planning and Growth Department, here are a couple of pictures that show the migration of Peoria’s population from the older neighborhoods to the south into the newer neighborhoods to the north. Areas in red and orange saw a decline in population, whereas areas in yellow and green saw an increase. As you look at these, take particular note of how large the area is that is losing population versus the area that is gaining population. Here’s a map that shows the change just over the past ten years:

And here’s what the change looks like over the past forty years:

Here are some other revealing statistics:

Year Population Area
1970 126,963 40 mi.2
2010 115,007 49.84 mi.2

That means that, over the past 40 years, there has been a 9.42% drop in population, and a 24.6% increase in land area that has been annexed into the City. In other words, our city has gotten physically bigger, but the burden of providing city services to all that land is falling on fewer taxpayers.

Now, to be fair, we had large population losses from 1970 to 2000, but have seen a slight population gain between 2000 and 2010. So let’s compare just the changes in the past ten years. Population increased from 112,936 to 115,007, or 1.83%, yet land area grew from 44 to 49.84 square miles, or 13.27%. If it takes over 13% growth in land to net a little under 2% growth in population, I would submit that we cannot sustain such a policy.

These charts illustrate that we have to find ways to get people moving back into our heritage neighborhoods. Northern growth alone is demonstrably insufficient to pull the city out of its fiscal crisis.

City of Peoria, East Bluff

EBNHS board full of vacancies, website out of date only four months after getting tax funding

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The East Bluff Neighborhood Housing Service (EBNHS) gets its funding from taxpayers living in a special service district on the East Bluff. Because of past problems with the EBNHS, the City Council decided to approve levying the tax on an annual basis hopefully to increase their performance accountability.

The FY2011 tax levy was approved in November 2010 after the EBNHS gave an update to the Peoria City Council showing all the progress they had made. Their accomplishments included having a “full and complete EBNHS board — all 13 positions filled,” publishing the monthly minutes and agendas on their new website (http://www.ebnhs.com/), and having a “loan committee actively meeting and pursuing creating proper loan criteria and documents with object to begin loan process again in near future.”

Upon reviewing the website, it’s interesting to note that the last minutes published were December 2010, and the last agenda published was January 2011. It seems that after they received the tax money, their diligence in keeping the site up to date waned almost immediately. It kind of makes it difficult to determine if they’re following through on their commitment “to begin [the] loan process again in [the] near future.”

There are now three vacancies on the board according to the website, so the “full and complete EBNHS board” was rather short-lived as well. In fact, the EBNHS gave their report to the City Council celebrating their full board in November, then created two vacancies as of the very next meeting, according to their December 2010 minutes. It appears those vacancies have yet to be filled.

What we do know from the website is this:

  • They gave $643 to Boys and Girls Clubs to sponsor an East Bluff child for a ski trip to the Ski Snowstar Winter Sports Park in Andalusia, Illinois, in January.

  • They paid Williamson Blind & Drapery $3,945 to make custom window dressing for the EBNHS House at Nebraska and Wisconsin. This house acts as the EBNHS office, and also the home of the EBNHS Executive Director Peggy Shadid, who receives a $43,191 salary and stays in the house for free, courtesy of the special service district taxpayers.

Speaking of the Executive Director, as the only employee of the EBNHS, and the one who has “general direction over the operations of the Corporation” according to the bylaws (including the responsibility to “keep the permanent minutes of the meetings” and “see that all notices are duly given”), one would assume it would be her responsibility to keep their website up to date with the latest minutes and agendas. However, there is no requirement in the bylaws that the website be kept up to date.

My guess is that the website will eventually get updated — at least by November, when it’s time to ask the City Council for more tax money.

2011 Election, City Council, City of Peoria

Guest Editorial: Mind Over Matter

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Editor’s Note: The following editorial was written and submitted by Frederick E. Smith, a resident of the East Bluff. Fred has recently started his own blog called Take Back Peoria. The views expressed by guest contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor.

Yeah, apparently the old puns are the best ones. The City Council of Peoria apparently thinks so. Last night, amid a select few voices that chose to once again offer the opinion that moving Big Al’s in such close proximity to Myah’s Day Care, CityLink Bus Depot, Peoria Rescue Mission, and the Box Office of the Peoria Civic Center was an unsound idea, the City Council voted to allow a city parking lot to be sold to the owner of Big Al’s for the bargain basement price of $7.00 a square foot. Interesting, since Councilman Sandberg (the sole opponent and the only member of the Council who seems concerned with the desires of the people who elected him) pointed out that it cost the City of Peoria $8.00 a square foot to build the parking lot.

This Council is, with the sole exception of Mr. Sandberg, totally indifferent to the needs and desires of their community, opting instead to do things “For our own Good”. Funny how that kind of thinking always seems to get people in trouble. Manzinar was “for their own good”, or at least that is what we told the Japanese Americans during the second World War. Segregation of Blacks and Whites in the Southern United States and Apartheid in South Africa were “for their own good.” Here in Peoria, it seems, we citizens, taxpayers, and VOTERS are no more than children, who need to have things done FOR OUR OWN GOOD!

Perhaps it is time for us poor, simple, small town folks to wake up and smell the indifference and the corruption. Do you really believe that no one is making anything on the side for this sweetheart deal? Do you really believe that the Councilpersons at Large (with the exception of Mr. Sandberg, who continues to rail against the corruption and the greed) care about what is best for Peoria? This latest decision, like so many to date, is about money, pure and simple. It is another statement by the City Council that says, “WE DON’T MIND, ‘CAUSE YOU DON’T MATTER.” to the people of Peoria.

So what do we do about it? How about we choose to say WE MATTER with our votes on April 5th. There are several candidates who are NOT a part of the political network, candidates like C. J. Summers, George Azouri, Beth Akeson, Chuck Weaver, Chuck Grayeb, and Andre Williams are all viable, honest candidates who deserve our notice and attention. Personally, I am voting for Gary Sandberg, C.J. Summers, Beth Akeson, and George Azouri. Since there is one more position left, so I will be looking to the other candidates to see what they offer. I will not be voting for Turner or Spain.

IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE PEORIA, YOU NEED TO VOTE THIS ELECTION. TELL YOUR FRIENDS, TELL YOUR NEIGHBORS, TELL YOUR PASTORS AND YOUR CO-WORKERS. YOU NEED TO VOTE AGAINST CORRUPTION, INDIFFERENCE, AND ARROGANCE. YOU NEED TO VOTE!!!

City Council, City of Peoria

City buys high, sells low

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If you ever wonder why Peoria is always broke, just take a look at how it has handled the Wonderful Development. It’s poised to give $37 million to EM Properties — $11 million of which will be used to buy a half-acre of buildings along Main Street. But that’s where the World Famous Big Al’s strip club is, so apparently we have to bend over backwards (pun intended) to find them a new place to locate.

The mayor and others constantly make a big deal out of the fact that “they didn’t choose to move; they were asked to move” — the implication being that they decided to move out of the goodness of their heart as a favor to the city. Call me cynical, but I think the $11 million might have had more to do with the decision than mere altruism. It’s one thing to be asked to move, and quite another to be paid handsomely to move.

Most people consider the eleven million taxpayer dollars to be sufficient incentive to move. But not the City. Not by a long shot. First, they changed the adult use ordinance, expanding Big Al’s “grandfather” status to the point that it can move absolutely anyplace it wants. One would think with $11 million, Big Al’s could find someplace in the City that complies with the adult use ordinance as it was, but the City felt this additional incentive was necessary.

But that wasn’t enough, either. Rather than giving Big Al’s the money and letting them find another home like the City did for the residents of Dechman when they were thrown out of their homes to make way for MidTown Plaza, the City took on itself the job of finding another location. The council and, presumably, city staff spent who knows how long looking at other potential sites on behalf of Big Al’s.

And they found one — a parking lot owned by the City of Peoria. One problem: it’s too close to a day care center. No problem! The city’s attorney invented a new definition of “property line” and read it into the code. Then they approved the site for the sale of liquor, despite having no site plan on file from the developer, which is required for any other applicant.

But last night was the coup de grace. After all this special treatment, the City did one last favor for Big Al’s. It sold this taxpayer-owned acre and a half of land at a bargain-basement price of $400,000.

Buy high, sell low. That’s the City’s approach to economic development.

City of Peoria, Television

Management says local news operation will remain local

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In the interest of fairness, I e-mailed WEEK’s general manager Mark DeSantis yesterday, and asked him about the employees’ concerns about outsourcing our local news to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Here’s what he had to say:

[T]he one point that seems to be the most vital to the viewers of Central Illinois is that the local news operation remain local. I have gone on record with the union and with the public that there is no plan and no proposal to move the news outside of our East Peoria facilities. We have invested millions to build a dual digital control room, outfit a second studio, purchased and installed digital cameras in the studio as well as cameras used in the field to produce 11 hours of local news each day. There is so much invested and so much news content to produce that it could not be moved to another entity. It does not make financial sense.

The local news operation here will remain local. Period.

According to published news reports and interviews I’ve heard, the troubling language that Granite Broadcasting (owner of WEEK) wants to insert in the contract is something called “jurisdicitional flexibility.” The employees believe that, regardless of current plans, this language will give the company the option of outsourcing the news if they desire.

So I asked Mr. DeSantis, if the company plans to keep local news operations local, why are they pushing for this “jurisdictional flexibility” language? What does the company hope to gain by including this in the contract? What are some examples of the types of things the company could or would do with this contract language?

DeSantis declined to answer, saying, “Obviously we cannot get into specific issues with regard to language proposals. These are employee issues and getting into specifics would be a breach of our relationship with the union. What I can say is that the proposed language is becoming industry standard and exists with units in many stations including stations represented by AFTRA. So there is nothing in the proposal that would be new to the union representing the WEEK/WHOI newsroom. It is, understandably, new to this unit and I understand that change is not easy for employees to accept.”

My take: To some extent, the news is always going to have to be gathered locally. If you want to get on-camera interviews with local newsmakers, you have to have someone in Peoria holding the camera and asking questions. If you want to cover local sports, someone has to be in Peoria attending the games and getting footage. In essence, you have to have some kind of reporting/newsgathering staff here locally, and you have to have some amount of camera equipment to support that function. But everything else — editing, voice over, and especially anchoring — can be done remotely, from a technical standpoint.

It’s true there has been investment in equipment and sets, but those can be moved. When Granite entered into a local marketing agreement with Barrington Broadcasting, owner of WHOI, they moved WHOI’s sets to WEEK’s studio, as well as their equipment. If Granite wanted to move the whole works to Ft. Wayne, they could pack up the sets on a truck and move them out to Indiana in a jiffy. The digital equipment could be repurposed to Granite’s other stations, or kept here for use as a production facility (i.e., creating commercials or other production services for hire). Even if they sold the equipment, any loss could arguably be covered by the decreased personnel costs.

The bottom line is that many local residents just don’t trust Granite Broadcasting. We’ve seen them move all their master control out of the area, resulting in job losses here. We saw them try to move the weather reports out of state for a while. We’ve seen the increase in technical glitches during the news programs. We saw them get rid of reporters when they brought WHOI into the fold. It’s hard not to be skeptical of their assurances that they’re heavily invested in the area and have no plans to move the local news operation in light of all these other actions that have hurt our local news coverage.