“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.”
–January 18, 2005, at a news conference laying out his platform during his first mayoral election campaign.
“Everyone on the council has received briefings on this project for months as we’ve progressed down this line. This isn’t something that just hit our desks last week.”
–December 15, 2008, at a City Council meeting, explaining why we needn’t be worried about the council spending $40 million of our tax money on a private hotel a mere 72 hours after the project was officially revealed to the public. No opportunity for public input was provided, despite the project having been in the works behind closed doors “for months.”
Here’s one more quote — this one is from the September 20, 2004, “Word on the Street” column by Jennifer Davis:
“It frightens me that asking public officials to get input from the people who put us here frightens you,” at-large Councilman Jim Ardis in response to Civic Center Authority Board member Jane Converse at Tuesday’s council meeting.
Rumor is there is definite fear among Civic Center board members about public hearings on the proposed $55 million redevelopment of the Civic Center, especially letting the public weigh in on continued commitment of hotel, restaurant and amusement taxes as a revenue stream.
Mayor Ardis, you once felt like I and many of your constituents feel now. Excluded. Marginalized. Left out of the process in the spending of our tax dollars. You once fought for the kind of transparency I and many of your constituents want now — the opportunity to voice our concerns and be listened to. You promised us a “new generation of leadership” in 2005, but I’m still seeing closed-door, top-down leadership.
Ask yourself how the 2005 Ardis would have felt about the way the 2008 Ardis handled the hotel deal. How would you have felt if the mayor then would have told the public, like you did on November 10 at a City Council meeting, that “no development plans have been presented to City Hall” when the mayor had actually been discussing development plans “for months”? How would the 2005 Ardis have felt about public officials leaving the public entirely out of the process of spending $40 million of their money?
I like you, Mayor Ardis. I think you’ve done a lot of good things for the city. I even think the hotel deal has a lot of good points, frankly. But Dave Ransburg had a lot of good ideas, too. He couldn’t sell a lot of them because he lost the confidence of the people by going down the dead-end road of secrecy and exclusion. You ran against him because of it. Please don’t follow him down that road. Have faith in your constituents. If you think they made a smart choice in electing you, consider them intelligent enough to be included in public discourse.
Show us the 2005 Ardis again. You know — the one we elected.
On Tuesday night, the Peoria City Council will consider 
Peoria School Board member Jim Stowell believes the new northern branch of the library is misplaced, and would be better located by Expo Gardens and Richwoods High School. He doesn’t think it’s too late to change locations, either, since no construction has begun yet. A little over a week ago, he sent this letter to Peoria Public Library Director Ed Szynaka, Peoria Park District Director Bonnie Noble, Peoria Public Schools Superintendent Ken Hinton, and City of Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis: