Tag Archives: Peoria City Council

City Council, City of Peoria

What’s the justification for the Wonderful Development?

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The ordinance that would authorize the Wonderful Development (downtown Marriott project) to move forward includes this justification:

WHEREAS, the City Council of the City of Peoria finds as follows:

  1. That the buildings on the Project Site have remained underused for a period of at least one year.
  2. That the Project is expected to create or retain job opportunities within the municipality.
  3. That the Project will serve to further the development of adjacent areas.
  4. That without the Agreement, the Project would not be possible.
  5. That the Developer, EM Properties Ltd., meets the high standards of credit worthiness and financial strength as demonstrated by a letter from a financial institution with assets of $10 million or more attesting to the financial strength of the Developer.
  6. That the Project will strengthen the commercial sector of the municipality.
  7. That the Project will enhance the tax base of the municipality.
  8. That the Agreement is made in the best interest of the municipality.

Is this the standard for getting $37 million from taxpayers? I can think of all kinds of businesses that could make such claims — it will create jobs, strengthen the commercial sector, enhance the tax base, meet “the high standards of credit worthiness,” etc., etc. Is that really a justification for taxpayer assistance? Where’s the line at City Hall for those handouts?

I would also like to point out that the buildings on the Project Site have been underused for the past year and a half precisely because of the previous unfulfilled redevelopment agreement with EM Properties, whose “high standards of credit worthiness and financial strength” were not impressive enough to result in actual financing of the original project. Why would the current owner try to get tenants for the vacant buildings when he has an agreement to sell those buildings for imminent demolition?

And I take great issue with the contention the Agreement is in the best interest of the municipality. If the hotels (there are two now!) do not perform up to expectations, the bonds will have to be repaid from the general fund — a fund which is insufficient to provide the basic needs of the City. The City Manager is asking City departments for wage concessions to plug an anticipated $10 million budget deficit for 2011.

Supporters of the project will point out that defeating this project will not help the current budget crisis, and they’re correct. But what Peoria residents need to know is that approving this hotel project will create a future budget crisis. The MidTown Plaza project didn’t create a budget crisis in year one either, but we’re feeling its effects now. The same goes for the Firefly Energy loan guarantee. We won’t have to pay the piper for this hotel fiasco for five years or so, but mark my words, we will be paying the piper for it.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Mayor

Mayor’s directive elevates district reps’ power

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It’s no secret that district council representatives are given a lot of deference on “district specific business” already. Most of the council votes in lock step with the district councilman and are happy to defer items for no other reason than the district council person requested it.

Now Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis wants to take it a step further. He sent this e-mail to council members on Thursday, May 6:

In an effort to insure that agenda items are ready for council debate I have asked the Manager to put a sign-off line on council communications for district council-members to approve district specific agenda items before they are placed on the agenda. This will not only insure that the district member is ready for the item to come forward it should also minimize deferrals because they are, in fact, ready for council consideration.

Thanks in advance to District Members for assuring your district specific business is approved by you for placement on the agenda.

That means that an item will not even be put on the agenda unless the district representative approves it. To state it another way, under this system, items can be kept off the agenda by the will of a single city council representative. For instance, if Clyde Gulley didn’t want the Washington Street/Route 24 changes to come before the council, he could decline to sign off on this district-specific item, which would keep it off the agenda in perpetuity — even if all the other council members wanted to move forward on it.

The Mayor’s directive gives a special privilege to district council representatives, allowing them to dictate the will of the council on items impacting their districts. But where does the Mayor get the power to make such a directive? The City’s Municipal Code and Council Rules don’t confer this authority on the Mayor, nor does any ordinance preclude any council member from submitting an item for the agenda.

Section 2-31 of the municipal code states, “All reports, communications, ordinances, resolutions, contract documents or other matters to be submitted to the council shall, not later than 10:00 a.m. on Friday preceding each council meeting, be delivered to the city clerk, whereupon the city clerk shall immediately arrange a list of such matters according to the order of business and furnish each member of the council, the mayor, the city manager and the corporation counsel with a copy of the same prior to the council meeting and as far in advance of the meeting as time for preparation will permit.” Nothing in there requires the proposed agenda item go through the Mayor or the district council representative. It merely has to be delivered to the city clerk.

It would appear that the Mayor cannot make such changes without a majority vote of the council… unless, of course, the council voluntarily consents to the Mayor’s missive, abdicating their responsibility to represent all of Peoria, not just their own fiefdoms.

City Council, City of Peoria, Kellar Branch

Liveblogging the City Council 5/11/2010

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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.

Continue reading Liveblogging the City Council 5/11/2010 →

City Council, City of Peoria

Liveblogging the City Council 4/27/2010

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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:

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City Council, City of Peoria

Council retreat rescheduled for May 5

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The Peoria City Council retreat was originally scheduled for Saturday, April 24, but was rescheduled at the request of City Manager Scott Moore. “I had asked the Council to consider rescheduling the retreat due to several of their colleagues having a conflict and would not be attending the session,” Moore explained. “I felt it would be important that all the Council members attend the session to weigh in on the budget and establish key strategies for staff and I to work on this upcoming budget season.”

So the new date is Wednesday, May 5, according to Moore. The time has not yet been announced, but weeknight special meetings usually start at or around 5 p.m. Presumably the agenda will be similar to the one released for Saturday’s meeting:

ITEM NO. 1 WELCOME – Mayor Ardis and City Manager Scott Moore

ITEM NO. 2 MACRO-TRENDS – Dr. Aaron Buchko

ITEM NO. 3 CITY TRENDS – City Manager Scott Moore

ITEM NO. 4 CONFRONTING THE “BRUTAL REALITIES” – Dr. Aaron Buchko

ITEM NO. 5 BREAKOUT #1 – Key Strategic Issues

ITEM NO. 6 BREAKOUT #2 – Addressing the Issues: Guidelines

ITEM NO. 7 BREAKOUT #3 – Addressing the Issues: Action Items

BREAK

ITEM NO. 8 STRATEGIC ISSUES: Priorities, Policies, and Budget Implications

ITEM NO. 9 CITY/COUNCIL DISCUSSION – Budgetary Issues

ITEM NO. 10 WRAP UP and NEXT STEPS – Mayor Ardis and City Manager Scott Moore

ITEM NO. 11 ADJOURNMENT

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria County

Schock and Durbin in Peoria the week after City/County trip to D.C.

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Guess who was in Peoria this week? Dick Durbin and Aaron Schock. You may recall that Scott Sorrel, Tom O’Neill, Jimmy Dillon, and Tim Riggenbach just last week traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with these same two people, at a cost to taxpayers of $3,000. They didn’t actually meet with them, though. They met with Schock’s and Durbin’s staffs.

The justification for this trip was that the city council and county board reps could meet with “key projects directors for the legislators, who are the one’s who really make things happen,” and who “typically don’t make it to Illinois.” Of course, those staffs work for the Senator and Congressman, not the other way around. So they only “make things happen” with the support of Durbin and Schock.

The bottom line is, they could have met face to face here, and Schock and Durbin could have directed their staffs to “make things happen” when they got back to D.C., and the taxpayers could have saved $3,000. Better yet, the City and County could simply stop squandering our money on bread and circuses so we wouldn’t have to lobby Congress for money to take care of basic services like municipal road repair.

Hope our local officials enjoyed their taxpayer-funded vacation to D.C.

City Council, City of Peoria

No limit on preliminaries, but precious little time for people’s business

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This is not an observation original to me — in fact, it’s been pointed out by a couple different people since the last council meeting — and it concerns the time limit for discussion by council members during City Council meetings.

The City Council has a self-imposed rule of five minutes per council member on any one topic of business. In 2007, they started “enforcing” it with a (very expensive) timer and a buzzer. Furthermore, any citizens wishing to address the council must limit their comments to five minutes. This was done to keep the meetings from going too long due to council members repeating the same arguments in their own words.

But there’s no time limit for proclamations. At the beginning of nearly every council meeting, the Mayor makes several proclamations, which recognize individuals, businesses, and civic groups for their contributions and achievements in the community. At the last council meeting, the proclamations portion of the meeting clocked in at approximately 45 minutes.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating civic achievements, of course. I have no beef about that. The problem is the disparity in time spent on “fluff” versus the time allotted to deliberate more serious matters of public policy. As important and worthy as civic achievement is, its recognition is not the main business of municipal government. For the Mayor and council members to speak as long as they wish about National Bookmobile Day, but limit them to five minutes each for the discussion of tax levies and millions of dollars in expenditures, is a poor allocation of time and does a disservice to taxpayers.

Some issues simply require more than five minutes to discuss. Some issues are more complicated than others. It’s one thing to ask someone who’s repeating themselves to wrap up their comments; it’s another thing to cut off pertinent explanations or discussions because of an arbitrary time limit. Furthermore, five minutes is too long for some topics.

The bottom line is that the moderator (and that’s the Mayor, in the case of the City Council) should be leading the meeting based on content, not the clock. The meeting should be conducted in the interests of making the best decisions for constituents, not in the interests of getting done as quickly as possible. And, the moderator should recognize that the people’s business is more important and deserves more time than proclamations or other preliminaries.

City Council, City of Peoria

Liveblogging the City Council 3/23/2010

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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to room 400 of Peoria City Hall, Council Chambers. It’s time for another Peoria City Council meeting! As usual, I’ll be updating this post throughout the evening, so be sure to refresh your browser to see the changes. Here’s tonight’s agenda (linkable version available here):

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City Council, City of Peoria, Gary Sandberg

Council Roundup 3/9/2010

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I started to drive to Peoria City Hall Tuesday night for the council meeting, but before I even got there, they were finished! The agenda was short, and council members Spain and Sandberg were both absent. The consent agenda passed unanimously, and no one removed any items from it. The one regular business item regarding the East Bluff Neighborhood Housing Service was deferred for two weeks, and the Town of Peoria items were dispatched unanimously as well.

Speaking of Gary Sandberg, he’s been up at Mayo Clinic the past week where he underwent aortic valve replacement surgery. I’m happy to report that the surgery was successful, and he’s recovering well. He’s hoping to come home sometime this week. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Gary!

City Council, City of Peoria

Liveblogging the City Council 1-12-2010

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Welcome to Peoria City Hall, Council Chambers. It’s 6:35 p.m. and time for the first council meeting of 2010. As usual, be sure to refresh this post often as I will be updating it throughout the evening. All council members and the mayor are in attendance. The mayor is evidently growing a beard, no doubt to emulate yours truly. Councilman Jacob appears to have a broken finger, as he’s sporting a pretty large cast on his right hand.

So without any further ado, here’s the agenda:

Continue reading Liveblogging the City Council 1-12-2010 →