Peoria Pundit

C.J. has a good post following last night’s Peoria City Council meeting, and it’s about an item that the council deferred for two weeks. Public Works Supervisor Dave Barber has presented a new snow response plan that substantially changes the snow routes. Apparently, Barber wants to place more emphasis on the northernmost parts of Peoria.

Naturally, this doesn’t play well among those of us who live in the older parts of town. During the meeting, Sandberg did manage to get in some criticism, suggesting it’s more efficient to devote limited time and energy to more densely populated older neighborhoods. That way, each mile plowed helped out more folks that out north, there the houses are more spread out.

As C.J. noted, Pat Nichting noted that the homes out here pay more in property taxes, which he said means they deserve more services. Now, this infuriated C.J. as well as Sandberg. But I don’t fault Nichting. After all, he’s just representing the interests of his district. I guarantee that every district council members pleads for their constituents to get as much as they can get. But Nichting seems to get what he wants more than the others. I can’t explain why.

But there the plan now before the council isn’t in the interests of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th districts, and unless there’s some shameless deal-making behind the scenes, I can’t imagine that the council members who represent these district’s could possibly vote for it. Sandberg certainly won’t vote for it. That’s five votes opposed.

All it’s gonna take is just one of the remaining at-large council members or the mayor to let it be known that he won’t vote for it. If that happens, look for the plan to be revised and the current one not even come up for a vote.

This entry was posted on August 13, 2008 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Local with tags Gary Sandberg, Pat Nichting, snow removal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.