Peoria Pundit

I sat down with Councilman Gary Sandberg today, and he laid out his case for approval of $35 million in bonds for the Peoria Public Library District’s renovation/construction project. The Peoria City Council will vote on the issue Tuesday.

I am now convinced that it is in taxpayers’ interest to approve the bonds now, rather than wait for the district to reach an agreement to buy any one of the several sites being considered.

I previously wrote that I wanted to wait because I thought it unwise to commit to any increases in property taxes to pay of the bonds before the city knew what it was buying. In fact, the Peoria City Council itself isn’t the entity that will eventually buy the property. The library’s Board of Directors will do that, and it will have to cast a vote in public. This provides for the public input on site selection I think is necessary.

All the council would be doing is exactly what the 72 percent of the public said it wanted: Pass bonds to renovate existing libraries and build a new one in North Peoria. I am not among those people who think an advisory vote should force the council ro rubber stamp whatever is approved by the library district. The council’s obligation, regardless of the referendum, is to provide oversight and not waste the taxpayer’s money.

And Sandberg presented a strong case that waiting would in fact be a waste of money. The library district believes that they can accomplish the renovations and construction within the $35 million cost mentioned in the referendum with a bond that will be paid off by a property tax increase of 13 cents per $100 in equalized assessed valuation. Previously, the estimate was 16 cents. The difference is the current economy, Sandberg said. Money can be borrowed for less than at the time the referendum passed.

How does the vote stand? Those thought to be favor of passage are Sandberg, Eric Turner, Clyde Gulley, Barbara Van Aken and Jim Montelongo. Mayor Jim Ardis, George Jacob, Pat Nichting, Bill Spears and Robert Manning are opposed. Ryan Spain is considered the swing vote, as he is supposedly considering switching from being in favor to opposing.

UPDATE: Since commenter Vonster insists on thinking of this in terms of a movie, here is the clip of which he speaks:

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This entry was posted on May 23, 2008 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Local . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.