Tag Archives: City of Peoria

City Council, City of Peoria, Museum Block

Council agenda includes museum redevelopment agreement

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The City Council agenda for August 24 includes three items regarding the proposed museum. They include approval of the design concepts, the redevelopment agreement (which includes conveying the land to the County for $1), and vacating certain portions of Liberty and Main streets between Water and Washington streets.

Dave Ransburg, chairman of the Peoria Riverfront Museum, has been meeting privately with City Council members two or three at a time (to avoid an Open Meetings Act violation) to talk about the museum’s plans and to line up at least six votes in favor of the redevelopment agreement and land conveyance.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

Entitlement mentality fostering discontent with the city

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There was a meeting Wednesday at Friendship House where residents could talk with City and School District officials about their concerns. I was dumbfounded by this one:

Another [attendee] said she was worried for two of her younger children because of a lack of youth activities.

“After 5:30 (p.m.), there’s just nothing for them to do . . . when are you going to give them something to do to keep them off the streets, out of the gangs . . . and be part of the community,” the woman said.

First of all, I can’t believe someone actually said that. There are a lot of ellipses — perhaps she was misquoted or taken out of context. But if that’s an accurate representation of the question, God have mercy on our nation. Think about the philosophy described here: she believes the reason her kids are on the streets and joining gangs is because the government hasn’t provided sufficient youth activities. And “when are you going to give them something” exhibits a textbook definition of “entitlement mentality.” I wonder what she thinks her responsibility is, if anything, as the parent of her children.

That said, there are, in fact, plenty of free entertainment options. We just expanded the libraries in Peoria, so there is more opportunity to borrow and read good books. The libraries even have organized summer reading programs that include prizes. District 150 has just built two new schools with huge outdoor playground areas where kids can play basketball or baseball. The park system has baseball diamonds, tennis courts, frisbee golf courses, and other amenities. Lots of churches have youth activities. The Christian Center has bowling, pool, ping-pong, and other games at low prices. There is no shortage of opportunities for young people to entertain themselves in this city.

I wish someone would have pointed out to her that it’s not the City’s or the School District’s job to entertain her children. The City and School District don’t have the resources or responsibility to raise the children of Peoria — that’s the parents’ responsibility. We can and do provide a number of resources, but parents and children need to take some initiative to avail themselves of those resources.

Here’s the answer she got:

Riggenbach said with dwindling money that it could be difficult to fund such activities.

“I think it’s time the churches stand up and join all the forces, the park district and schools and hit this head-on,” Riggenbach said. “I don’t have an easy answer tonight but I do hear you.”

In essence, Riggenbach reinforced her entitlement mentality. He didn’t dispute it. He just said there wasn’t enough money or church involvement to provide those entitlements. Ironically, he’s a Republican.

City Council, City of Peoria, Museum Block, Peoria County

County told State it already owns land for museum

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In April, Peoria County applied for a $5 million grant through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO). A copy of the grant application was acquired from the County:

DCEO Grant Survey – Peoria Riverfront Museum

The County listed itself as the “grantee” on page 2, and 203 SW Water St. (which is the City-owned Sears block) as the “project location” on page 4. Then, in answer to question 2d — “If the property is being improved, is the property owned by the grantee?” — the County checked the “Yes” box.

Question 10c asked, “If grant funds are to be utilized to make capital improvements to real property (structures/land) that your organization does not own [emphasis in original], provide a copy of the lease or other agreement (i.e., easements, rights-of-way. etc.) between your organization and the property owner that will allow your organization to continue to use the improved premises for an appropriate length of time, consistent with applicable state law and rules.” The County’s answer: “N/A.”

Question 10d asked, “Does your organization have an executed contract for the purchase/acquisition of the land/building in question?” The County’s answer: “N/A.”

Question 10g asked, “Provide the name, address, phone number and email address (if applicable) of the entity from which the land/building(s) is/are being purchased.” The County’s answer: “N/A.”

As you can see, the County consistently represented itself to the State as the owner of the land. When asked why, Peoria County Administrator Patrick Urich said:

By April when the grant survey was submitted, we had already negotiated the title transfer issue with the City of Peoria. As I said before, the redevelopment agreement has included language regarding title transfer since at least February, and by April, this issue had been to the County’s understanding, resolved. There were several other issues (paying permit fees, the commercial space approvals, the assurance that the funds would be there to build the museum, and what happens to the property if PRM no longer operates the museum) but the negotiating teams had moved on from the title issue.

That still doesn’t explain why this information wasn’t included on the grant application. The proper way to complete the application would have been to answer “No” to question 2d, and explain these negotiations in question 10d, at minimum. The questions couldn’t be any more specific; they clearly expect even anticipated ownership to be disclosed. The County misrepresented its ownership status no matter how one looks at it. No response was received from Urich to follow-up questions on this issue.

Other Questions

Urich’s answer raises another question: is it true that the title transfer issue with the City of Peoria had been resolved by April of this year? That was surprising, considering it has appeared as such a contentious issue here in August. I asked City attorney Randy Ray for some clarification. He replied:

There is no contract in place that requires the City to convey title to the Museum Site to the County.
It is true that there were negotiations, and draft agreements which contemplated such a conveyance. That was a major topic of a series of meetings with 3 or fewer council people that took place the first week of March, 2010. Obviously, those meetings did not convey the property, nor did anything else the City has done up to this point. If Council does not approve a Redevelopment Agreement, no conveyance will occur.

Ray acknowledges that negotiations did in fact take place, and we know from Urich’s statement that the County believed the issue of land conveyance was “resolved.” These negotiations were not just with City staff, mind you. There were “a series of meetings with 3 or fewer council people” at a time. Unfortunately, we’ll never know the real story because the City took great pains to completely skirt the Open Meetings Act (OMA).

The funny thing is that negotiation of the sale or lease of property can take place in closed session according to OMA, so why not just discuss it in executive session instead of these little meetings? Did they not want the negotiations on the record? (Minutes are taken during executive sessions.) Were they not giving the same information to each of the council members? Somewhere there seems to be a breakdown in communication because the City now appears reluctant to convey the land, but the County thought the issue was “resolved” way back in April.

Of course, there’s no legitimate reason not to conduct these negotiations in public, in open session. The reason property transactions are allowed to be conducted in secret is to protect taxpayers from market reaction. In this case, since the land is owned by one government body and being conveyed to another government body, there are no market forces and those concerns are moot.

During the 2005 mayoral campaign, then-candidate Ardis promised, “My leadership, a new generation of leadership, will be open, not closed; inclusive, not reserved for the select few; and bottom-up, not top-down.” Yet from the hotel deal to the museum, right up to the recent secret meeting with Ransburg — against whom Ardis ran in 2005 and, ironically, whom Ardis criticized for doing the public’s business in secret — he has not shown us this so-called “new generation of leadership.”

City of Peoria, Firefly Energy, Peoria County

Firefly update: Cost to settle bankruptcy just went up a half million dollars

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On Thursday, the Peoria County Board approved a resolution to settle a lawsuit with other creditors involved in the Firefly Energy loan default. The $500,000 settlement allows the City and County to own Firefly’s intellectual property, which they can then sell free and clear to Electrotherm Ltd. of Ahmadabad, India. After the sale of the assets, the County and City will only owe the bank $2 million, so the total cost to settle the original $6.6 million loan guarantee will be $2.5 million.

The vote to approve the resolution was 15-2, with Brad Harding and Andrew Rand voting against it for unspecified reasons.

City of Peoria, Museum Block, Peoria County

County wants to acquire museum block for a buck

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According to the recently-published Peoria Riverfront Museum redevelopment agreement, the County wants to obtain the museum site from the City for one dollar.

The site is reportedly valued at $10 million. The City acquired it after Sears moved from downtown to Northwoods Mall in 1998. At that time, the City also acquired the remaining parcels on the block, and in 2005 Caterpillar razed the land to prepare it for construction of the proposed museum and Caterpillar visitors center.

“The City’s conveyance [of the land] is in essence a $10 million contribution to the project,” explained County Administrator Patrick Urich. “In fact, the $145 million price tag figure for the entire project (Cat, PRM and parking deck) includes the City’s contribution and the $2 million Water Street upgrade.”

City representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment, except for at-large City Councilman Gary Sandberg. “Selling price toooo low. Should be $10,000,001.00 and I’ll give them the dollar,” he said via e-mail.

Urich also stated that, “Since at least February, the City has not given any of the parties any indication that they object to conveying the property to the County.” The Council has taken no public action or made any public comments regarding conveyance of the land to my knowledge.

The last museum agreement the City approved called for them to lease the land to the Peoria Riverfront Museum for $1/year for 99 years, not deed them the land permanently. “Initially there were discussions that included a ground lease,” Urich continued, “but since February (publicly at the County Board Committee of the Whole meeting) and prior to that in the negotiating sessions we have discussed the City conveying the property to the County.”

The City is facing a budget deficit of more than $10 million in 2011.

City Council, City of Peoria, Signs

Van Auken misses “Golden” opportunity

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There I was Tuesday, beating the newspaper against my head after reading this:

The city’s Planning & Growth Management Department believes [Golden Corral’s] proposed sign is too big, much more so than what is allowed in the city ordinance. Proposals have the sign at 40-foot, 215-square-feet tall [sic]. The city requires 25-foot-tall, 70-square-foot signs for businesses such as Golden Corral […]

Russ Hruby of RJH Management Corp. said the company is willing to meet whatever restrictions are decided upon by the zoning commission or City Council. […]

[Second District City Councilwoman Barbara Van Auken says,] “We’re going to work with them and give them as close to the size as they want,” she said. “That area is a little unique in that way that there is a lot of big signs on University. While we like to get signs smaller, we have to be realistic. As new businesses locate there, they have big signs to compete with.”

Think about that for a minute and let it sink in:

Here’s a developer who is locating on University Street between War Memorial Drive and Forrest Hill — a stretch of road that is the epitome of poor urban design, and probably the most often-cited example of visual clutter in the City. Presumably, city officials would like to see the area improved and would jump at the opportunity to start scaling down the signs to bring them in line with the sign ordinance.

And it gets better! The developer says he’s “willing to meet whatever restrictions are decided upon by the zoning commission or City Council” — unlike Westlake Shopping Center which intimidated the City Council into giving it a big ordinance-busting sign by claiming its then-secret tenant (later revealed to be Fresh Market) would not locate there if they couldn’t have a humongous sign. No, this developer is very happy with the City, and doesn’t perceive the city as unfriendly to business. In fact, he’s quoted as saying, “It’s not an adversarial position at all…. Peoria has been (accommodating).”

What an opportunity! No threats, no intimidation. A new business on University street willing to abide by the code! Could this be the start of cleaning up University and reducing visual clutter? Could this business’s sign compliance be used as a shining, positive example for other businesses who locate there in the future?

Enter Barbara Van Auken, Second District Council Representative.

“We’re going to work with them and give them as close to the size as they want,” she said [emphasis mine]. What? Why in the world would you want to do that? “That area is a little unique in that way that there is a lot of big signs on University….” Hmmm, “unique” is one word for it; “ugly” is another. “Blighted” fits the bill, too.

“While we like to get signs smaller, we have to be realistic. As new businesses locate there, they have big signs to compete with.” I’m not sure whether this is doublespeak or just plain self-contradiction. If Councilwoman Van Auken really would “like to get signs smaller,” then she logically would not “give them as close to the size as they want,” which is three times the size allowed by ordinance and twice as big as the McDonald’s sign across the street, especially after the developer has already stated for the record that he’s “willing to meet whatever restrictions are decided.”

So the bottom line is that signs will continue to escalate in size along University, unless the rest of the council does the right thing and upholds the sign ordinance. The unwritten rule on the council is that you always vote for what the district council member wants for a project in his or her district. That’s a poor policy in general, and one that definitely should be disregarded in this case.

For those of you who like visuals, I drew this in Google Sketch-Up to show you a comparison of the maximum sign allowed by ordinance (on the left) versus the size of the sign requested by Golden Corral (on the right). These are to scale. Note also the size of an average human at the bottom:

City of Peoria, Museum Block, Peoria County

Museum moves forward despite dismal finances

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According to a spreadsheet document distributed at a recent Peoria County Finance/Legislative Study Committee meeting titled “Peoria Riverfront Museum Capital Budget by Project,” updated 7/28/2010, pledges to the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum total $23,073,484. Of that, only $6,475,076 (28%) have been collected.

In addition, whereas the County has said in the past it would only be contributing $34.5 million to the museum project from the public facilities sales tax revenues, the latest spreadsheet shows a full $40 million being contributed. While that’s the lion’s share of public money, there are also significant amounts coming from other public money pots, including the Illinois capital budget, Illinois Department of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Department of Energy, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, NASA, and the Peoria Civic Center Authority. Despite all of this public help, and presuming they’ll actually collect all the pledges that have been committed over their multiple years of fundraising, they’re still looking at a budget deficit of $6,448,988.

But they’re moving ahead with construction anyway. What happened to all the money that was going to come in after the sales tax referendum passed? Remember that? When questioned as to why they weren’t making their private fundraising goals before the referendum, their response was a very confident assertion that people were waiting in line to give money, but wanted to make sure the public would support the tax referendum first. Once the referendum passed, the funds would come rolling in, we were told then.

Perhaps the most shocking thing on this spreadsheet is the total amount that has already been spent. Are you sitting down? It comes to $13,471,440. $4.5 million has been spent on architectural and engineering fees for the museum building — another $1.8+ million in fees for the parking garage. $2 million has been spent on something called “pre-opening operating support.” Almost $1 million was spent on “public awareness” — which was their campaign to make sure the $40 million tax referendum passed, so I guess that was money well spent from their perspective.

There are two line items for endowments on the spreadsheet. One shows $2.3 million “committed” but not “received” from Lakeview as a funding source. Another line item shows a $5,248,000 “endowment enhancement” which has been neither committed nor received. The endowment is important because the museum needs the interest from the endowment to cover its ongoing operating expenses. If there’s no endowment, the museum will have no cushion when facing an operating deficit — and let’s not kid ourselves, there are going to be operating deficits.

But they’re moving ahead with construction anyway, undeterred.

Oh, and they’re still counting on the City just giving them the Sears block for nothing. That land is worth $10 million according to the Build the Block website. What is the City’s budget deficit for 2011? Hmmm…. $10 million, I do believe. Wouldn’t it make sense to sell the land to the museum/county and use those funds to plug our deficit so we don’t have to lay off any more police officers? Nah, the museum is more important than public safety, right?

The conventional wisdom now is that the money fairies will sprinkle the museum with cash once it’s built. You know, once people really see the thing being built, then they’ll start contributing! They’re just skeptical that we’re not really going to build it. If we show them we really mean business, then there will be a race to see who can give the most money fast enough.

Second verse, same as the first.

City of Peoria, Crime, Peoria Police

Task force sees early success

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Click above for larger image (PDF)

Peoria Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard recently updated City officials on the results of his efforts to quell gun violence. So far, it’s going well:

[P]lease see attached hot spot maps relative to our current task force initiative. We are 14 days into the task force so I conducted an analysis comparing the 14 days prior to launching the task force versus 14 days afterward. City wide we had a 25% reduction in people being hit by gunfire and a 25% reduction in confirmed gun discharges.

The attached maps demonstrate the before and after picture for the combination of murders and gun discharge incidents. The red hot spot areas are gone which is very good news. I would temper the good news however by stating that 14 days is a very small sample size and we need to keep up our efforts.

I also would note that the hot spot maps include all instances where someone was killed, someone was shot, or simply where we had a confirmed gun discharged. This does not include reports of shots being heard with no witness and no physical evidence. We must have had someone who was willing to stat they saw it happen, or we found shell casings, or someone or something was hit, etc. The criteria is identical for both “before” and “after” to ensure apples to apples comparison.

City of Peoria

Sign committee to meet

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The ad hoc committee looking at the City’s sign ordinance meets once a month, and their July meeting is on the 27th. Here is the agenda:

SIGN REVIEW COMMITTEE MEETING
TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2010
456 FULTON STREET, SUITE 402
10:00 AM

AGENDA

  1. DISCUSSION OF MARYSVILLE, WASHINGTON MUNICIPAL SIGN CODE COMPARISON
  2. DISCUSSION OF SIGN AREA
    • Current regulations
    • Examples of issues
    • Suggested revisions
  3. NEXT MEETING: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 10:00 am.

The meeting is open to the public; however, there is no public comment portion of the meeting.

City of Peoria, Peoria County

County is better run than City? Not anymore.

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In Karen McDonald’s Sunday Journal Star article about the status of “uni-gov” negotiations between the City and County, she had a lengthy quote from Peoria County Treasurer Tripp O’Connor:

“We live within our means. The (city) lives how they want to live. We’ve done everything right,” O’Connor said.

He called the uni-gov concept a “bailout to save one government” that lacks a solid financial structure.

O’Connor said he’s only in favor if both city and county governments “start from scratch and design and build a government that can operate effectively in modern times.”

“I am not in favor of combining a well run organization with a poorly run organization. I am in favor of having a single cost-effective government structure that could operate financially responsibly and serve the citizens of Peoria County.”

I used to feel this way about Peoria County, but not anymore. Not since they made the same mistake as the City in backing a $6.6 million loan for Firefly, for which they’re now liable. Not since they decided to pursue non-core services like museums to the tune of $40 million. Not since they decided to break their word to the taxpayers and agree to build the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum before all the money had been raised and collected, putting taxpayers at increased risk. Not since they decided to rebuild Belwood Nursing Home at a time when tax revenue is declining.

No, Peoria County is embarking on the same path that the City of Peoria has been on for a long time. They’ve decided they’re going to “live how they want to live,” to use O’Connor’s words. The days of fiscal conservatism at the County are over.