Here we go again! It’s Tuesday night in beautiful downtown Peoria in historic Peoria City Hall, Council Chambers. All the council members and the Mayor are present except for Montelongo, and they will be disposing of the following agenda. Be sure to refresh this post often as I’ll be updating it throughout the evening.
The business portion of the meeting starts at 6:41, after 25 minutes of proclamations.
I’ve been saying it ever since the sphynxlike Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation first appeared that its clandestine efforts were going to cost the taxpayers lots of money. Now we know just how much: $1,250,969.
That’s the amount of money in taxpayer dollars the Peoria Park District is going to pony up to buy out the leasehold interests of two rail companies on the Kellar Branch rail line: Pioneer Railcorp and Central Illinois Railroad. Doing so will free up the middle portion of the line to be converted into a recreational trail.
But that’s the beginning. After they buy out the leasehold interests, they still have to actually build the trail, which will cost untold millions itself. In 2006, the estimated cost of conversion was just under $6.5 million.
But there are other costs. The City of Peoria actually owns the Kellar Branch. So in order for this plan to go through, the City has to give the Kellar Branch (technically, the easement) to the Park District. The appraised value of the Kellar Branch is $2,872,500. So how much is the City planning to ask for this valuable asset? $1. That’s right, $1. And the City doesn’t even get the salvage rights for the rails.
Perfect timing. Right on the heels of a City Council retreat where we learned the City is facing a $10-11 million budget deficit and is in dire need of a new revenue source, our illustrious City Council will likely approve a request next Tuesday to squander a nearly $3 million asset. Pioneer Railcorp at one time offered the city $750,000 for the line, but the City turned them down. No, they were holding out for the Park District’s winning bid of $1.
Anyone who thought that the Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation was buying out the rail carriers’ leasehold interests out of charity was naive. Included in that $1.25 million is $140,800 for the Corporation’s “expenses.” No list of expenses is given. I suspect it includes a little reward from the Park District for finally acquiring what they’ve coveted for so long.
For those of you keeping score, let’s see what our new grand total is for tax dollars wasted on non-essentials/poor investments:
| “Wonderful Development” (Downtown Hotel) | $37,000,000 |
| Peoria Riverfront Museum | $34,700,000 |
| Firefly Energy Loan Guarantee | $6,000,000 |
| Civic Center Expansion | $55,000,000 |
| Kellar Branch acquisition | $1,250,969 |
| Kellar Branch conversion | $6,441,738 |
| Total | $140,392,707 |
|---|
It’s like they say, pretty soon you’re talking real money. But we can’t afford to fix sidewalks or resurface streets, or fully staff our police and fire departments. Yes, I know I’m conflating expenses from several municipal organizations (City, County, Park District), but the fact is that all that tax money comes from the same source: our pockets. The Park District raising its property tax levy puts pressure on the City not to raise its levy. It’s all related.
Perhaps we could take those toll booths we’re removing from Riverfront Village and install them at the entrances to the Kellar Branch trail. Given the number of users predicted by the Journal Star, we should be able to solve our entire budget deficit by charging a modest toll.
The Peoria City Council had their annual retreat Wednesday night at the Peoria NEXT Innovation Center on West Main street. All the council members, the Mayor, and City department heads attended the retreat.
I was unable to attend the entire retreat, but did get there for roughly half of it. Based on materials distributed at the meeting, revenues are down again, and they’re expecting another ten to eleven million dollar deficit. They also appear to be anticipating a possible decline in population. One of the slides labeled “Key Expense Drivers” stated, “5,000 Loss in Population equals Approximately $500,000/yr of per Capita Income — 1 person = $100/capita.”
The Journal Star reports that revenues are down for a few reasons: (1) “reduction in property tax revenues because of a slump in the city’s equalized assessed valuation” caused by “assessment devaluations of commercial properties throughout the city,” (2) “January’s sales tax figures dropped by 10 percent from their November and December numbers,” indicating a troubling trend, and (3) “state income tax revenues are down from a year ago.” Nothing but bad news from the finance director.
By the end of the meeting, the following “next steps” were established, which are nearly identical to last year’s budget process:
Translation: Expect higher taxes and/or fees, the possible invention of new fees, and more cuts in services. The Mayor especially made it clear that he believes the budget hole cannot be filled by cutting alone — new revenue will have to be generated.
Just before 5:00 today, I received the following press release from Alma Brown, Communications Manager for the City of Peoria, regarding animal control services:
Control of Animal services will officially be in the hands of Peoria County as of May 1, 2010. The City of Peoria will maintain responsibility for animal nuisance calls such as barking dogs, wildlife complaints and the removal of dead animals. If your furry friend is a bit too aggressive towards other people consider giving it the best cbd oil for dogs.
Citizens with inquiries about animal control issues can call PeoriaCARES at (309) 494-2273 between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. After hours, please call our Emergency Communications Center at (309) 674-3131.
Attached, please find a matrix detailing specific types of calls and service level responsibilities.
The City Council has entered into an agreement with Peoria County to provide base level services that will total $77,027 in 2011 and $102,703 in 2012 and 2013 for animal control. This move by the City Council will save tax payers $150,000 in next year’s budget. Base level services include the following:
Type of Animal Protection Service Base Level Peoria County is mandated by Statute to provide certain animal control and protection services. The services in bold are mandated and provided at no additional cost. Public Safety Require rabies vaccination and registration
Quarantine biting animals
Require animal bites to be reported
Make determination of dangerous animals
- Prohibit animals at large
- Impound animals for attacking or intimidating people or other animals
- Impound animals for damaging property
- Investigate inhumane treatment of animals
- Investigate animal cruelty
Nuisance Abatement
- Require animals to have a collar and tag
- Prohibit abandonment of owned animals
- Confine female dogs and cats in heat
- Impound animals that cause unsanitary, dangerous, or offensive conditions
- Impound animals that chase vehicles
- Provide multiple pet license program
Animal Welfare Reimburse livestock owners if animal (i.e. dog) kills livestock
- Provide spay and neuter education
- Provide public education on appropriate animal care
- Vaccinate animals to prevent disease
- Impound loose, stray, or abandoned animals
- Quarantine sick animals
Animal Shelter Offer animal adoption
Microchip animals being adopted or redeemed to owner
Euthanize unredeemed, unadopted, or unplaced animals
- Impound and redeem loose animals to owner
- Terminate and autopsy wild animals that bite
- Spay and neuter animals being adopted
- Euthanize diseased or injured animals
Good evening, and welcome to Peoria City Hall, Council Chambers. We’ve just said the Pledge of Allegiance and it’s time for the meeting to begin. It looks like all the council members and mayor are present. Remember that this post will be updated frequently throughout the evening, so if you’re following live, be sure to refresh your browser every so often to see the latest update.
Here’s the agenda for this evening:
The Riverfront Village platform was built in 1999 at a cost of roughly $9.5 million — $4.5 million of which was public tax money that won’t be paid off until 2018.
And yet, despite the fact that it’s only been 11 years, the stairs leading to the platform have rusted “very pre-maturely…to the point that complete replacement is necessary.” The bids are in, and the cost to replace the stairs is more than a quarter million dollars — $265,617 to be exact. Riverfront Village developers Mike Wisdom and Monte Brannan have declined to help with those costs, according to the Request for Council Action. Instead, the council communication says, “The Developers are committed to a separate improvement which will allow access to the platform and pads during periods of high water. It is hoped that the stair improvement and the alternative entry will help the businesses on the pad to prosper.”
Here we have a project that was designed precisely as a solution to the flooding problem. They knew the area floods and so they devised the raised concrete platform as the answer to that challenge. But they used materials for the steps — the part that would be under water during flooding — that evidently were not rust-resistant, and they designed no alternative entry to the platform that could be used during periods of high water. A rather staggering oversight, wouldn’t you say?
Now that the stairs are about to fall off the platform, the developers are not offering to help pay for their replacement. Instead, they’re offering to correct another design flaw, and acting as though that sort of evens the score. I don’t get it. The developers should stand behind their product and incur at least some of the cost of replacing the stairs. And the City should exercise some serious oversight of this new “alternative entry” the Developers want to build to ensure the taxpayers won’t have to replace that, too, in another eleven years.
According to a Request for Council Action on Tuesday’s City Council agenda, “Firefly’s bankruptcy filing, and the City’s and County’s guarantee of a loan from National City (now PNC) Bank to Firefly have given rise to a complex legal situation. It has been deemed advisable to retain outside counsel with experience in this type of complex bankruptcy.”
The request asks the Council to approve hiring Thomas O’Neal of the law firm Westervelt, Johnson, Nicoll & Keller for $255 per hour. Here’s your trivia fact for the day: Tom O’Neal sought to fill a judicial vacancy on the Third District Appellate Court in 2006 after the retirement of Judge Kent Slater of Macomb, but lost the Democratic primary. He’s also been recognized by the state and county for his pro bono legal representation of the poor.
At the official Census 2010 website, you can create a map showing the mail participation rate as of the current date. You can see the rate by county, city, all the way down to census tract, and you can compare participation rates. Here’s the status of five cities as of today:
There’s a friendly competition going on between the mayors of Peoria and Springfield to see who will get a higher participation rate. Springfield is winning, but the stakes are pretty low. The losing mayor has to wear the lapel pin of the winning mayor’s city and issue a proclamation congratulating the winning city. Big deal. If they were really serious about this, the loser would have to do something more humiliating, like have his head shaved, or be put in a dunk tank while the winning mayor pulls the lever.
Within Peoria, the participation rates are higher north of McClure, and lower south of McClure. South Peoria has a 55% to 65% response rate. Moss Bradley area: 66%. The Uplands/Arbor District/Bradley University area: 68%. The Rolling Acres area: 83%. Edgewild/Mt. Hawley area: 87%. Overall, as the image above shows, Peoria is currently has a lower response rate than they did in the 2000 Census.
The participation rate for all of Peoria County as of today is 77%, which is higher than the national participation rate of 71%.
Earlier this month I published a memo from Public Works Director Dave Barber to Second District Council Person Barbara Van Auken outlining four options for improving safety along the West Main corridor east of University Street. The Bradley Scout has since published an update with some interesting information:
…Van Auken said Option 4 from the memorandum has been selected, and city council will not vote about it unless the issue becomes much more costly. She said the decision was up to those who use the area, which includes the West Bluff Council, area businesses and Bradley.
The selected option includes lowering the speed from 30 to 25 miles per hour from Bourland Avenue to University Street and painting three and five feet buffer zones between sidewalks and the road.
“This is a way to get people to start thinking about stopping driving so close to the curb,” Van Auken said. “Ideally what we want to do is expand the sidewalk wider in that area, but we don’t have the money for it right now.”
So the changes can be made without any vote from the City Council (I find this somewhat surprising), and the plan is to move ahead with implementing Option 4, which looks like this:
As you can see, one east-bound lane of Main Street is being removed, and the remaining lanes are being shifted slightly to the south, moving traffic away from the sidewalks on both the north and south sides of the street. No on-street parking is being added between University and Underhill (shown above), but there will be some parking added to the north side of the street between Underhill and Bourland. Lowering the speed limit to 25 mph for these two blocks is the weakest part of this plan, as it will have no practical effect. If the speed limit is 30 east of Bourland and west of University, the odds of someone slowing down for 700 feet is nil.
But I’m glad some action is finally going to be taken to start making Main Street pedestrian-friendly. Getting cars further away from the curb and eventually widening the sidewalks is a small step in the right direction. It has long been suggested that an easy and cheap way to begin is by simply restriping the roadway, and that appears to be what they’re finally going to do. The changes are being made thanks to a state grant of $48,491. (This is the new trend — we use state money for basic City services, and we use City debt to subsidize private development.)
There’s a lot more that needs to be done, but this is a good start.
They’ve all won the 2010 Driehaus Award:
You are invited to join Mayor Jim Ardis for a news conference on April 20, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. to announce that the City of Peoria is one of three winners of the prestigious 2010 Driehaus Award for excellence in form-based coding from the Form-Based Code Institute. The other two winning cities are Miami, Florida, and Denver, Colorado. The news conference will be held at 601 SW Water Street at the corner of Water and Walnut Streets, adjacent to Kelleher’s Pub, which is the site currently being renovated for the corporate offices for Water Street Solutions. The award will be presented on May 20, 2010, in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)-18 Conference.
I received this invitation because I’m a former Heart of Peoria Commission member.
