Probably most of you have forgotten that the Peoria City Council approved the building of one new public library and the remodeling of at least 3 more. The amount the city approved to borrow was $27,000,000.00. Plus interest of probably $12,000,000.00. Expect the libraries high possibility of asking the City Council for more money to buy computers, mainly for those people who can afford their own computer but dole off taxpayer dollars. Remember in an earlier blog I wrote that I saw a friend using a library computer on a regular basis and asked him if he didn't have his own. His answer? Yes, but I can use these public library's free. Others do not want the information they are seeking to appear on their own computers, some who come in to surf, play games or just get in out of the cold.
Remember that I saw 3-4 young guys standing around a computer looking at naked women performing. Where? At the now newly remodeled Downtown Library, the library the Library Board was considering closing because of falling usage until Caterpillar interceded back in 1999. And probably the protest of a few folks now residing in condos downtown.
Couldn't they have used the very costly expanded Lincoln Library soon again to revert to its previous category. Underutilized. Somebody should use Lincoln besides the employees and Common Place who has its own library.
Remember, Lincoln Library had never been visited by City Councilman Eric Turner BEFORE he put his name on a publicly circulated document complaining about how the bad condition of Lincoln Library. When I called him on it, he said he would visit the library with me because "there sure was a lot he didn't know about libraries".
He was being modest in his statement. Also, he never did visit the library with me.
I still believe it was my efforts to take a couple of city council people to visit the library system and see how little they were used except for computers, that the council decided not to spend an extra $5 million to remodel Lakeview BEFORE they saw the effects of the new Library North.
That was my point and it is proved daily if you are honest about the "crowded" Lakeview library. Neither is the relatively new Heights Library, about a mile and a half away. Nor the new Dunlap Library where you often see more workers than patrons.
As a frequent visitor to Lakeview, I have yet to see more than a 2 minute waiting line, maybe at the start of school openings and the start of summer. Not even when the downtown library was closed this fall.
City taxes are certain to escalate. Expect more money to be requested by the Library Board as soon as the next budget year. Remember the outlandish city pensions growing every year? Drive certain areas of the city and view the crumbling infrastructure. Unless residential new building picks up and more tax paying private businesses start moving in, unless the sewers aren't renovated, if Eagle Point and the Warehouse Districts are more of dream than a reality, city tax collections, one means or another on the existing population of property tax payers, have no where to go but up.
Peoria Public School District #150 bonds payments will start soon and continue for 20-30 years while the district plans new buildings, find the need for increased maintenance on the new buildings, lots of glass, plus updating the dozen or so schools in need of updating, as school pensions escalate and unions and management demand increasing rising salaries, buses need replacing, etc...........
Anyway you can blame a City who has not a great deal of regard for the property taxpayer, an ability to favor the elite who can afford higher taxes or they themselves live in property tax depreciated areas.
Remember, it was a city council with then Mayor, Dave Ransburg, that voted unanimously to NOT combine the election commissions, that an honest study of the records would show a saving of up to $300,000 despite the protests of present City Election Administrator, Democrat Tom Bride, who says there would be a saving but not that much. Overlooked is the vacating of the City Election building and leasing it or selling to a private tax PAYING entity. Like a law firm, etc..
Overlooked also, is employing fewer people resulting in taxpayer supported future benefits; healthcare, pensions, elimination of at least one high paying job, etc...
No attention was paid by the City Council and Mayor that the JS had printed an article titled, "Merger has worked in Springfield" (JS, 3/9/04) with a savings of over $1.5 million in six years.
Maybe the council is getting a little more cost conscious since they even gave the Humane Shelter with it's accompanying $500,000 a year loss to Peoria County, who currently has a balanced budget.
Now if they could just pass the big-time money losing Springdale Cemetery to the County......
Merry Christmas
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