Peoria Pundit

First, I want to thank Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens and his family for their many contributions of time and money to this community. Second, I want to state that Mr. Owens has every right to support the museum with his own money, and he has every right to exercise his freedom of speech to encourage employees of Caterpillar to vote in favor of the museum tax referendum on April 7. His letter to employees — which many received today — is reprinted below.

But before any Caterpillar employee decides to follow Mr. Owen’s advice, I’d like to exercise my free speech rights and encourage them to visit this site and read the many, many arguments against this tax.

I am not arguing against Caterpillar’s involvement in this community. I have seen how Caterpillar can step in and provide expertise and funding when it feels it is necessary (their help is keeping downtown free of snow is a marvel to see). And I am told that Cat does far more of this sort of thing than other major employers in other nearby communities, and for that I am grateful.

But I would hope that anyone on the fence regarding this tax referendum should note that the generosity of Caterpillar as a corporation and of its personnel does not obligate us as voters to vote the way Mr. Owens suggests, not that he is saying it should.

And I now note than C.J. has posted his comments on the letter.

Mr. Owen’s letter:

Dear Team Caterpillar:

In 2002 my predecessor, Chairman Glen Barton, committed Caterpillar’s support to a new regional museum. Since then the company has supported this project to revitalize the downtown Peoria community. Our involvement has grown from a relatively simple presence in the new museum to the current concept — a separate facility housing a corporate visitor center, called the Caterpillar Experience.

This new riverfront development along with the proposed renovation of the Hotel Pere Marquette and the recent expansion of the Civic Center, should transform the landscape of downtown Peoria. The Museum project specifically will offer tremendous educational and entertainment opportunities to residents throughout Central Illinois.

Peoria County voters now have an opportunity to support the Museum project through a countywide referendum on April 7. The proposed 0.25 percent county sales tax increase will provide critical public funding for the new Museum. As federal and state funding sources have disappeared, this local funding initiative has become the last opportunity for moving this project forward.

If you live in Peoria County and can vote on this referendum, I encourage your support. Without a doubt, this project will make Peoria a better place to live, will make downtown Peoria a better place to work and will help us attract the best and brightest employees for the future.

Please remember to vote on April 7. You’ll find the issue as the last item on the ballot which references “public facilities sales tax.” If you’re going to be out of town on election day, you can take advantage of early voting between March 16 and April 2.

Thank you for your support. This is an important opportunity for the members of Team Caterpillar to make a difference in Peoria.

Sincerely,

James W. Owens

All kidding aside. supporting the Museum Tax doesn’tmake you the “enemy” except in a narrow sense. But still, support of this boondoggle is just one thing tired taxpayers use to determine whether to vote to re-elect or not.

Press release:

Hannig, Koehler support The Block as recipient of federal or state funds if referendum passes

Peoria—Illinois Secretary of Transportation Gary Hannig and 46th District State Senator David Koehler agree The Block project—comprised of the Peoria Riverfront Museum and the Caterpillar Experience—is an ideal project to receive federal or state funds from a capital bill.

The two expressed their support at a 9 a.m. press conference today at the Peoria Labor Temple. The location emphasized the importance of The Block project in bringing much-needed building trades jobs to the area. Estimates indicate that The Block would create up to 300 local construction jobs and $45 million in labor payroll over 25 months.

“It’s important to provide economic stimulus at the local level,” said Koehler. “We need jobs in Peoria. We need jobs now. This museum project will put local people to work.”

Hannig is working with legislators like Koehler to create state-local partnerships where economic stimulus funds can create jobs quickly. Projects that are already planned and “shovel-ready,” like the underground parking structure of The Block, are given high priority. The parking structure would qualify as a transportation enhancement project.

“Transportation is the foundation for economic development and job creation in Illinois,” Secretary Hannig said. “Whether the funds come from the federal package or a statewide capital program, our first priority at the Illinois Department of Transportation is to support communities like Peoria in rebuilding crucial transportation infrastructure and creating a sound environment for job creation to take place for years to come.”

Hannig and Koehler join many others in supporting this project, which will generate jobs, and long-term economic and educational opportunities. More than $91 million has been committed to the project, and an April 7 “public facility” sales tax referendum will determine if an additional $40 million in public funds will become available.

Many potential donors have said that, if the referendum passes, more private funds will be forthcoming to provide the additional $10 million needed to complete the project. Federal or state stimulus dollars would help close that gap.

If the referendum fails, the federal stimulus money, as well as the $91 million already committed—including $55 million pledged by Caterpillar—may be lost to the community.

Via Merle:

Four more “Vote No” signs were vandalized and 2 were stolen … No other signs have I seen vandalized. We ordered a lot of signs and events like these revive my energy.

Merle thinks these are kids. Kids aren’t that organized. Trust me, I’ve seen this before. These are adults and they are organized.

You know how two Bradley university professors studied the museum proposal and declared it would be a boon to the local economy?

Well, not so much as it turns out:

Citizens for Responsible Spending says the Bradley University professors wildly overstated the number of jobs the museum project is expected to create.

“On Dr. Carlson and Dr. Betts’ report, it said, “continued spending will not create additional new jobs each year as the author suggests. Using the author’s estimate, the continued annual spending would create a total of only 80 jobs over the 18–year period,” said Karrie Alms with Citizens for Responsible Spending.

Full disclosure: I am a member of  Citizens for Responsible Spending.

And please note that CFRS did what ANY member of the news media COULD have done, but did not: Have the bought-and-paid-for study reviewed by independent professionals.

Why didn’t they? Well, constant budget cuts could be one answer. It’s hard to find time for enterprise reporting when you’re doing the work of three reporters. And even if that were the case, it’s a lot easier to do reporting that isn’t going to piss off virtually every elected and appointed politician you must work with in order to generate the copy you need to keep your job.

Overworked and frightened reporters tend to regurgitate a lot.

Remember how the City of Peoria yanked the River Station’s liquor license when it fell behind on HRA taxes? Consider this:

Skywalks can be impressive-looking structures. Certainly, they are noticeable.

But in the city of Peoria, not much of a fee is charged for their invasion into the public’s space. As a matter of fact, the fee hasn’t been collected since Jimmy Carter was president.

That could change.

A change would be refreshing.

If you are a bank, hospital or a Fortune 500 company, you get away with not paying what you owe. But if you are a lowly small business owner, the city will squeeze the nickles out of you.

Time for a change.

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.

Backers of the downtown museum project want the upcoming economic stimulus package to include $4 million to build a parking deck. This is in addition to the extra sales taxes they want Peoria County residents to pay at the cash register.

My two cents: The County Board is going to vote this month on whether to put the sales tax hike on the April 7 ballot. In 99 percent sure it will be on the ballot, because I doubt there are three politicians in the entire county with the testicular fortitude to say “no” to Caterpillar, which whispers that they will leave Peoria whenever there’s a chance they won’t get their way.

I can predict what will happen. The argument will now be made that if we say no to this sales tax, we’ll be saying good bye to a free $4 million from the Feds. After all, isn’t our guy Ray LaHood in charge is doling out transportation dough? Aren’t these jobs going to go to “local” guys?

Feh. We need to spend our cash on essential services, not bread and circuses.

The City of Peoria recently announced that it is initiating a hiring freeze to help cope with what is sure to be a long and damaging recession. But, this is a “sensible” hiring freeze because it doesn’t include police and firefighters.

Bunk. There is nothing safe about not having enough employees to fix streets and sidewalks^*. There’s nothing safe about not having enough workers to perform routine maintenance.

To suggest that we can make do with less is to suggest we are overstaffed now. Look around the city and the number of problems we face, and tell me we don’t need more manpower, not less.

The shabbier our city looks, the more unsafe it seems. And that just drives more people out of the city, which means less tax revenue, which makes the city look even more shabby and feel even less safe. And then more people leave and the cycle continues. We need to break this cycle, not spin the wheel faster.

The reality is that we probably need more cops (and maybe more jail space, but that’s a County of Peoria responsibility) and maybe some more firefighters. And I’d say that we could use better roads and sidewalks, which in my mind means more city workers to maintain them.

What we have instead is fewer workers and status quo on cops and firefighters. Amazing.

I didn’t attend this little press conference, so I don’t know what questions were asked and what answers came forth.

Was there any thought given to, I dunno, maybe NOT raising taxes to building a much wanted, but instead NOT building the little-needed new library branch on the northernmost city limits of Peoria? Was there any thought to implementing the once-discussed plan to implement a public safety tax, which would generate revenue from Peoria’s many large non-profit institutions, many of which demand many services from the city?

Take a look at the hospitals and Bradley: ALL of them are undergoing massive building projects. They aren’t hard up for cash.

And was there any thought given to officially opposing the sales tax Caterpillar and other movers-and-shakers want to implement to help finance the downtown museum project?

This “sensible” plan is a cop out. It creates an illusion of fiscal responsibility, when in reality it lets the decision makers duck having to make really hard decisions that might be unpopular as an election nears.

Feh.

* CORRECTION: Commenter Sud O. Nym notes:

Do you even read the article anymore, or just the headline: “Included under the life safety position umbrella are police officers, firefighters and employees of the public works department.”

If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. My apologies and thanks for the correction.

I’m not surprised that the push poll discussed in a previous post generated a result in favor of the .25 percent sales tax increase.

And I’m only a little surprised that the Peoria Journal Star didn’t bother to use the term “push poll,” although they did tell readers that the poll takers were biased and let their bias be known:

After describing the $136 million combined museum and Caterpillar Inc. visitor’s center in a favorable light, respondents were asked if they would support a sales tax increase of 25 cents on every $100 of retail purchases.

But I was surprised to learn that this poll was commissioned by the taxpayers of Peoria County. That’s funny, I kind of thought it was against the law to use taxpayer money on a marketing campaign to convince voters to vote on way or another. Silly me.

I wonder if there are actual lawyers in Peoria County with the testicular fortitude to stand up to Caterpillar and challenge this in court. I’m certain that Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons would never even consider doing that.

Maybe there’s an anti-tax group or some good-government group willing to check into it. Perhaps Illinois Auditor General William Holland might have something to say about the legality of expenditure.

I’ll ask around.

But the most surprising thing to me — since I don’t really follow the Peoria County Board all that much — was that the guy who’s running to replace Bob Manning on the Peoria City Council, is all in favor of the tax and thinks the push-poll results are just spiffy:

“We were very pleased with the results,” said County Board member Tim Riggenbach, chairman of the board’s finance committee, which will recommend whether to place the tax question on the April 7 ballot. “What we got was a plurality of voters who support the project and a majority supported the sales tax increase if there was an end to it. That bodes well, I think.”

The polling results are one tool the finance committee will use as it decides whether to put the question to the voters in April, and how that question will read.

Voters will be making a lot of decisions on April 7.

Manning famously tore into the museum project this month about how none of the fundraising efforts are working, and warned voters to be learly of the public relations blitz that backers would stage to convice people that the tax was a good idea.

Riggenbach, Manning’s would-be replacement, thinks the tax is a good idea AND is an active participant in the marketting blitz.

Yes indeed, voters WILL have decisions to make on April 7.

Blogger and Peoria County Board member Merle Widmer is notorious for keeping clips about how the government conducts its public business. He’s been keeping an eye on the Peoria Park District and the Riverplex project.

This week, he brough it all together with a five part recap, the first of which is this one. Here’s a paragraph that sums it up:

Most of the projections made by the PPD did not pan out. The major one was that the RiverPlex would be self supporting and later very profitable. It has operated at substantial losses since opening day. These are facts, generally denied by PPD officials. However, the saying goes, “To ignore or deny facts, does not change the facts.”

Well, Merle does have the facts on his side. But when this thing was built, there weren’t many people who held office, nor anyone in the media, who was standing up and saying this sort of thing was a bad idea.

My two cents: So why rehash old news? Here’s one reason: Just as the RiverPlex was a bad idea because it was and is taxpayer-funded way to compete with private businesses and already existing non-profit organizations, it is also a bad idea to give special property tax breaks to the proposed expansion and renovations of the Pere Marquette Hotel in downtown Peoria.

There are differences, of course. The RiverPlex is totally owned by local governments and financed by taxpayers. The Pere is and would be owned by private developers. But the whole sale of the hotel to local people depends on the success of the yet-unrevealed  and unapproved Tax Increment Financing district agreement.

And this isn’t just a helping hand the city would be offering, I’ve heard that the developers want something close to if not more than half of the cost of the whole thing to come from TIF sources.

And what does the city get? Well, maybe the thing will succeed and start paying taxes. Although, we’ve yet to see that happen with any TIF. While we’re waiting, school districts and other taxing bodies will see tax rates frozen. The people who run the Peoria Civic Center think this will help draw customers. One theory has it all these tourists and convention goers are going to spend big cash at bars and restaurants, But the others think the whole idea about the walkway is for the Civic Center to capture every single red cent of discretionary spending these fine folks spend during their stay in the river city.

And what do the other hotels in the Peoria area get? They get to compete against a business that’s being funded by taxpayers.

Just like Peoria area health clubs have to compete against the taxpayer funded RiverPlex.

Myself, I hope they do renovate the hotel, even if they add that walkway. But I don’t think taxpayers should fund ANY of it, let alone half of it, through a TIF or anything else.