Peoria Pundit

The Peoria City Council voted 10-1 — with Sandberg voting “no” — to take stimulus money that the city told the feds would be used for sidewalk repair and instead use it to make some repairs to some firehouses and to pay for roof repairs for the Center for Prevention of Abuse.

An area of the city most in need of the sidewalk and accompanying drainage work will have to wait until some more stimulus money comes in. Clyde Gulley, whose 1st District includes the South Side, is among the 10 who voted without discussion to approve  the diversion of stimulus funds.

Methinks there was a deal.

The Journal Star article indicated that city staff plans to have have designs in place to do the work ready by next once. Lack of designs to make the necessary repaits was cited earlier this week for the inability to spend the money in the South Side.

Kudos to the city staff and the council for finally noticing. Once these designs are done and shoved into whatever black hole they usually shove any initiative to help South Side residents, they can get back to the business of doing whatever North Peoria developers tell them to do.

A show of hands please: Which of the 11 members of the Peoria City Council want to vote to take money away from the South Side of Peoria and hand it to a private charity that is more than capable of raising it’s own funds?

We’ll find out Tuesday.

Journal Star reporter John Sharp has an article detailing the efforts to divert $54,000 in federal stimulus money that the council previously told the federal government was going to sidewalk projects and instead giving it to the Center for Prevention of Abuse to fix a roof.

Councilman Clyde Gulley is quoted extensively in the article. Not one council member spoke in favor of the bait and switch. Not on the record anyway.

Pay attention folks: Sidewalks and drainage are segments of public infrastructure and are proper expenditures of taxpayer funds. A roof for a privately owned building is not. It is pork. The Center for Prevention of Abuse is a fine organization. But the city has no business spending scarce taxpayer cash on this, even if the city were flush with cash. But the city is just as fiscally challenged as other cities. There are far, far, far too many unmet public needs. And even if the council decides against diverting the funds and instead uses the cash for sidewalks, they probably won’t target the areas on the South Side most in need,

So, what excuse are they giving today for the inability to make the repairs that South Side residents need to be made? Why, it seems that the lack of adequate sidewalks and proper drainage has caught the city staff completely by surprise:

Gulley said he is concerned that other sections of Peoria need improvements sooner than those areas that city staff members have identified. One area at Humboldt and Griswold streets, Gulley said, often floods during heavy rains because of a lack of curbs, drainage and sidewalks.

City engineer Jeffrey Smith said that project requires more design work and is much more involved than the quicker fixes of removing and replacing sidewalks.

Oh, bullshit. Just pure bullshit.

First, Gulley has been agitating for this work to be done as long as I’ve been watching him on the council. Why hasn’t the city’s engineering staff done this work? Here is why: The city engineering staff has for decades had its nose buried up the butts of Peoria’s many developers, most of whom would rather die that have anything to do with anything on the South Side.

I had hoped that there would be a change after Steve Van Winkle retired to be replaced by David Barber.

But as far as I can tell, Barber hasn’t lit any fire under any asses in the engineering department. Think about it: Here we have a segment of town in which residents routinely do not have access to the front entrances of their homes, and it’s been like that for years, and no one in the engineering department thought it might be a just good idea to put pen to paper to design a way to fix the problem should some cash become available to fix it.

Of course, the Peoria City Council could at any time vote to instruct the city manager to make sure those plans were done. That didn’t happen.

I’ll be at tonight’s Peoria City Council meeting. Coverage starts at about 6:15 p.m.

Am I the only person to notice this sentence from Monday’s Word on the Street column:

City Council also was away from 419 Fulton St., last meeting on Dec. 15. It won’t meet again until Jan. 13.

That’s two days short of a full month without meeting.

Yeah, and these guys used to meet four times a month. These days, it’s more like twice a month, except when there;s a budget session scheduled.

So, are our council members lazy? I mean, I didn’t get a day off the past holiday season (although I did get some holiday pay, big whoop).

No doubt, I’ll be pestered with emails about how many hours they spend on the phone listening to yammering constituents, and how many neighborhood meetings they attend, yadda yadda.*

Still, it must be nice.

And I have to admit, with the council not meeting, we’ll have gone a month without any new TIF districts, enterprise zones and loans to companies partially owned by Caterpillar.

* For the irony impaired, this post was written with tongue in cheek. Mostly.

Here’s the agenda for tonight’s meeting of the Peoria City Council. I’ll be liveblogging, but in a different way than usual. I’ll be posting brief updates on my Twitter page, located at http://twitter.com/peoriapundit. The Blog Peoria Network server is too slow to load and sometimes times out when I’m using an iffy wireless connection. I’ll be able to use these miniposts of 140 characters or less to create more traditional posts the following day.

UPDATE: I’m on Twitter now. Readers MIGHT want to sign up for their own Twitter account so they can reply to my Tweets. Also, if you sign up, be sure to follow me and I’ll reciprocate.

From a press release:

Councilman Bob Manning announced tonight that he will not seek re-election for his 3rd District seat. “I appreciated the opportunity to represent the 3rd District and I am thankful for the strong support that my constituents provided. I enjoyed working on their behalf and achieving solutions to many of the issues and challenges that we faced,” Councilman Manning said. He added, “My decision comes after weeks of deliberation and after discussion with family members. At the end of the day, I simply want more time to spend with my wife and children.”

My two cents: I usually print these verbatim, but this required comment. Almost instantly after taking office, Manning earned the respect from colleagues and constituents for his willingness to address concerns, reach compromise and to apply his professional skills to the issues brought before the council. I don’t blame him, though, for wanting to spend more time with his wife and two beautiful, young daughters.

UPDATED: Mr. Manning send me the following brief email:

5 years ago I would never had imagined that I’d be on the City Council. Never thought about and never gave much consideration to politics. But instead of sitting around complaining about various issues and our city leaders, I took it upon myself to do something about it. Beating an 8-year incumbent by almost a 2 to 1 margin (64% to 36%) and carrying every precinct was quite enjoyable, to say the least. The fact that I was not the establishment’s candidate made it even sweeter. I certainly don’t consider myself a politician. More like the Citizen Legislator that our founding fathers envisioned. Step up to the plate when it’s your turn, do the job to the best of your abilities, remember who you represent, and don’t stay too long.

UPDATE 2: HOINews got a post up on it’s Web site.

Diane Vespa attended Mayor Jim Ardis’s re-election kickoff party and came back with a very newsy post about, with the names of two previously unmentioned candidates for 5th District and City Treasurer. Go read her blog to find out who they are. Full disclosure: Her husband John Vespa is an advertiser.

I just caught pal C.J. Summers on HOINews discussing this subject, the possibility the Heart of Peoria Commission — of which he is a member — might vote to disband.

C.J. and other members think it’s useless for the commission to continue. After all, the city is limiting meetings to no more than six times a year, they have virtually no duties and almost no funding. The plan is to re-organize as a private organization that can meet whenever the Hell they want. And being free of the city would be sort of liberating. I get that.

I just don’t think they have the power to vote to do away with the commission. I mean, the Heart of Peoria Commission is a creation of the City of Peoria, which would mean only the Peoria City Council could vote to close it down.

Of course, the commission members could resign as a group.

Which means the Mayor and the council could theoretically name new people to the commission.

We’ll see what happens at 8 a.m. Friday at Peoria City Hall.

I’ll be attending tonight’s meeting of the Peoria City Council. The agenda is almost exclusively going to be a budget discussion. I’ll probably toss up a few comments and quotes, but it won’t be a blow by blow synopsis. Listen on WCBU or watch on Comcast public access Channel 22.

After, it’s pizza at Whitey’s.

I … I … I …

I am at a loss for words:

From a press release:

In honor of our “home run hero” Jim Thome, Mayor Jim Ardis and the Peoria City Council are declaring the City of Peoria “Thome Town.” This designation will be in place during the playoffs to recognize our home grown son and his many accomplishments.

Jim has hit 541 home runs and it was his home run against the Minnesota Twins that helped to clinch the American League Central Division crown, and secure the White Sox a spot in the playoffs.

Jim Thome and his wife Andrea have been true All-Stars in Peoria and other communities, and they are greatly respected for their generous charitable endeavors such as the Children’s Hospital of Illinois, Easter Seals, the United Way, Chicago Children’s Home + Aid, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, just to name a few.

This honorary designation recognizes Jim Thome not only for his big swing, but for his big heart. A resolution giving Peoria the honorary designation of “Thome Town” will be passed by the Peoria City Council at their October 14, 2008 meeting.

What gives these people the right to rename my city after a member of the stinking Chicago Black, excuse me, WHITE Sox?

The White Sox are one of only two major leage baseball teams in Illinois, and they are the third most popular team in the state. That sort of says it all.

I blame this on the fact that there are so many stinking Cardinals fans on the Peoria City Council. Most of them are fair-weather fans anyway, so sucking up to the White Sox now that they are in the playoffs is sort of typical for them.

Folks, I call upon all Chicago Cubs fans to loudly protest this outrage. And I call upon all Cubs fans on the Peoria City Council to vote NO.