Peoria Pundit

From Merle Widmer:

Caterpillar cuts 117 more white collar jobs; last day, this Friday. All the while, Cat officials say the non-income producing millions they would spend on the riverfront have nothing to do with firings, layoffs, and local PRODUCTIVE spending. Then have empathy for all of their local suppliers who produce a product. Those businesses have been severely affected. How must some of them feel about Cat having money to donate $55 million to a project in so must demand that the promoters are spending $640,000.00 to try to sell it to the voter?

Meanwhile local candidates continue to tell us that we ought to vote to double the Peoria County government’s sales tax rate, bdecause it will strengthen Caterpillar’s ties to the Peoria area. It’s code for pay more taxes or Caterpillar might leave people. Sorry folks, that ISN’T going to happen.

Caterpillar says its visitor center scheme will die if voters don’t approve the museum tax:

One questioner thought Caterpillar’s “this plan, or no plan” sounded like a threat.

Mark Johnson, the project manager for Caterpillar, responded.

“We’ve operated for 85 years (in Peoria) without such a facility. It’s not critical to us and it’s not going to return a single penny to a single stockholder,” he said. “It would be nice to have,” Johnson said, adding that it is now up to voters to decide whether the project has value.

First, there’s not one single molecule in my body that gives a flying rat’s butt if Caterpillar build’s this or not. And apparently they don’t either. If they can get the taxpayers to cough up money to build attractions next door, they are all for it. But otherwise, no big deal. Right?

Feh. I don’t buy it for a second. This is the pre-vote soft-sell. The strategy is to NOT turn off voters with threats (the usual tactic is to imply Caterpillar will pull up stakes and leave people). But I have no doubt these people will just keep coming back with one scheme after another.

I suggest the City of Peoria stop fooling around and put a  “for sale” sign” damn lot, and sell it to anyone who will build on it and pay property taxes.

No requests for proposals. No TIF agreements. Just a big “for sale” sign.

And if Cat wants to make a bid, let ‘em. But no more special deals for the Great Yellow God.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Citizens For Responsible Spending will be holding a press conference to announce their formal organization as well as the launch of their website. (which will explain in detail what their standing is on the proposed public facility purposes sales tax referendum.) (www.nomuseumtax.org)

Citizens for Responsible Spending is a group of concerned taxpayers whose mission is to advocate for responsible spending of our tax dollars by our local government for essential services.

We are not opposed to a museum per se, but are opposed to this design and the public funding mechanism proposed to help finance it.

Date: Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Time: 1:30pm to approximately 2:00pm
Location: Peoria County Courthouse, Room 403
Contact person: Karrie E. Alms, nomuseumtax@yahoo.com, 258-7762

The other day, for about the dozenth time, I typed the words “.25 percent sales tax increase” to describe the public facilities tax that the Peoria County Board voted oh-so-obligingly to place on the April ballot.

I looked at the words and felt shame. Shame, because I was making a mistake that Bob Unger, my former editor at the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, would never have tolerated. Bob as the first editor I encountered who didn’t operate under the assumption that it was the taxpayers’ job to make sure everyone was spoon fed a comfortable middle class life, complete with entertainment. He taught me to report from the point of view of  a taxpayer and a consumer of government services.

And yet here I was, letting politicians pretend they weren’t trying to raise taxes as much as they really were.

Consider the following chart, emailed to me by Scott A Sorrel, Assistant to the County Administrator:

Take a look at the COUNTY TAX rate in Peoria County. It’s .25 percent. That means if you buy a non-food item at the Wal-Mart at 3315 N University, about 25 cents out of the $8 in sales tax you are going to fork over will go to Peoria County government.

If you talk to politicians about taxes much — which is something I tend to do whenever I see one of them running loose in the wild — they get very defensive awful quick. Complain to a member of the Peoria County Board about sales taxes, and he or she will cut you short and politely but firmly explain explain to you that the county sales tax is only .25 percent. It’s the state sales tax and those nasty taxes from other governmental agencies that bought that total up to 8 percent (it’s 10 percent if you are trying to buy a cheeseburger off the dollar menu at McDonald’s, thanks to Peoria’s HRA tax).

In other words, the the Peoria County Board is responsible for a .25 percent sales tax, but not the rest of it. Just the .25 percent.

But complain about their majority vote to put this on the ballot — Merle Widmer as the lone “no” vote — and they will probably say that this new .25 is just a tiny little bit of the whole sales tax bill. Why, it’s ust a quarter-dollar on a $100 purchase!

But, wouldn’t this double the county tax rate, you might ask. After all the current rate is .25 percent. If the referendum passes, the county’s portion of the tax bill would be double what it as before.

As my former editor Bob Unger would say, this might be a .25 percentage point increase, but the tax rate would double. It would be a 100 percent increase in the sales taxes collected by Peoria County government from all Peoria County residents.

And where is this money going to go? To help build a not-for-profit museum on prime retail/residential land in the middle of the city of Peoria. This museum would replace one that already exists, and seems to be driven by the need of a Fortune 500 company to have a facility next door to the global visitor center it is building.

The other driving factor seems to be the need to support the Peoria Civic Center, a facility that was builtd more than 20 years ago that as supposed to be another temporary tax, a tax which is instead funding non-stop renovations, as well as the city of Peoria’s economic development bureaucracy and fine arts community.

This tax will be paid by people who live and work in cities like Dunlap, Brimfield, Chillicothe, Princeville, Elmwood and Bartonville.

No Peoria blogger is providing more solid evidence against the necessity and wisdom the museum sales tax than Merle Widmer. That’s understandable, considering that he’s the only member of the Peoria County board with the testicular fortitude to vote against placing the .25 percentage point sales task increase at the ballot.

Three good posts:

• Museum Pledges Aren’t Materializing in Atlanta, Ga.
• Museum Musings – Part 3
• The Impact of Science Centers/Museums on their Surrounding Communities: Summary Report

If you want accurate data instead of speculation and made-to-order studies, then Widmer-Peoria-Watch is the blog to visit.

Via Merle Widmer:

Museum problems have been mounting in recent years. Nichael Conforti, writes in today’s WSJ, “Hardly a day goes by without announcements by museums from Los Angeles to Detroit to New York of substantial reductions in programs, exhibitions, capital projects and staffing–collateral damage from a global financial drubbing that walloped museum donors, retail sales, and most critically, endowments.

Even the enormously wealthy J. Paul Getty Museum last month announced a job freeze and other cot cutting measures.” Poorly endowed are in dire situations in on the verge of going bust. Some have taken to selling donated offering which is a “no-no” in the museum business.

To call building a museum a stimulus to the community is more than likely to be a substantial financial drag on this community forever. Short term gains will look puny 5 years from now.

From my inbox:

The Block: “Peoria’s Own Economic Stimulus Package”

Peoria—The Block is Peoria’s own economic stimulus package—so let’s get to work! That is the message that local economists and union leaders will share at a press event at Peoria’s Labor Temple tomorrow morning.

Engine of Economic Growth

Independent researchers Robert Scott, Ph.D., and Joshua Lewer, Ph.D., will release information on their economic impact study of the Peoria Riverfront Museum and Caterpillar Experience on Peoria’s riverfront.

The researchers used national, state and local data sources and time-tested multipliers in their analysis. Their findings indicate The Block would create approximately:

• 1,100 jobs during the two-year construction phase
• 90 jobs per year after construction
• $210 million in business development and county growth during construction

Let’s Get to Work

The West-Central Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council (WCIBCTC) represents 20 individual construction craft unions and nearly 15,000 members living in Central Illinois. Executive Director Dan Silverthorn and Council President Mike Everett say the Block project would employ 250 to 300 workers per month and generate $1.8 million in labor payroll monthly over a 25-month construction period. And through an unprecedented agreement among Caterpillar, the Museum Collaboration Group and the Greater Peoria Area Contractors and Suppliers Association, the entire Block would be built with 100 percent local union labor.

• Wednesday, February 4, 2009
• 10:00 a.m.
• Peoria Labor Temple
• 400 NE Jefferson Ave

Speakers Include:

• Dr. Bob Scott, Professor of Economics, Bradley University
• Dr. Joshua Lewer, Assistant Professor of Economics, Bradley University
• Dan Silverthorn, Executive Director, West-Central Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council
• Mike Everett, President, West-Central Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council

Via Merle Widmer, who has actually paid a visit to the Dubuque Museum and finds the lack of transparency troubling:

Everybody who works at this museum is thrilled. They have a nice job with benefits. But financially, the nice museum which I have visited is a financial bust even though originally financed by a grant from the the State of Iowa for $50 million. The Chamber of Commerce supports the museum as do all chambers everywhere, support projects using taxpayer dollars. Since it received the large lump sum grant, it has received other taxpayer funded grants and at least $1 million dollars from the gambling boat next door. Despite drawing 301,000 visitors the first year it still failed to meet its operating budget by $500,000. The second year, the museum drew 250,000 and the third year, 220,000. Since then, the museum will not release numbers to outsiders.

The Build the Block crowd cites this museum when it makes hard-to-believe claims about local attendance. How can they, when the Dubuque Museum stopped telling people how many people are visiting the place? That would be a red flag to anyone wanting to gather honest and accurate statistics, rather than just create propaganda. It’s like they aren’t even trying to make up good lies.

Merle also looks at Lakeview Museum’s, surprise, lack of transparancy about financial problems.

As predicted, the Peoria County Board voted almost unanimously to put a referendum on the ballot for a .25 percent sales tax to fund construction the downtown museum fiasco.

Only Merle Widmer had the foresight and/or testicular fortitude to vote against the referendum, which Caterpillar wants to see happen because they want the museum to accompany their own shiny new toy, a visitor center that would be located next door to the museum. After all, John Deere has one, and by God, they want Peorians to help foot the bill for theirs.

Now that voters will see this boondoggle on the April 7 ballot, expect to see a campaign of lies and deceptions designed to both over promise the benefits and scare voters by convincing them Caterpillar will leave.

Among the lies:

• Grossly over estimating the number of visitors this whole project will attract, this overstating the incoming revenue AND the positive impact on the the local economy.
• Claiming that Caterpillar will move its World Headquarters if the museum doesn’t get built.
• Claiming the the sales tax cannot possibly become permanent (when revenue doesn’t meet the overinflated expectations, they WILL extant the tax to operate the facility and/or finance additional expansions, just like they did with the Peoria Civic Center).
• Impugning the character of those who publicly oppose public financing.

And the lies have already begun! As C.J. Summers points out, the Peoria County Website claims the government isn’t officially advocating passage of the referendum. But they go and sponsor forums organized and featuring presentations by those who really, really want to see this tax burden placed on voters.

The Peoria County Board is going to vote tonight on whether or not to give voters the opportunity to approve a sales tax increase to suppost the construction of a museum on the site of the former Sears store. I was considering attending this meeting instead of the regular Peoria City Council meeting.

But why bother? I doubt there are more than three politicians in Peoria with the testicular fortitude to say “no” to Caterpillar, let alone a majority of the PCC.

So, I’ll attend the council meeting, since that’s my beat. I’ll let Merle Widmer provide a blow-by-blow account of tonight’s travesty.

And if anyone out there doubts me, look at this:

Yeah. They are so confident it’s gonna get on the ballot, they are scheduling meetings to encourage people to pass the damn referendum.

And for the record: I’m not opposed to construction workers getting work. That people will put money into their pockets is the least objectionable part of this. But if there’s money to build that is certain to be a white elephant failure, there’s money out there to build and repair new roads, sidewalks and bridges.