The JS as usual misses the point of why anyone would offer $200,000 for consultants to advise the city whether of not to buy out the water company. Of course, consultants, 8 times out of ten, give those putting up the money the rational to support the moneyed position. The JS should look how much land is owned by those willing again to put up large amounts of money or how the buyout would benefit these generous donors.
One major reason favoring those who would greatly benefit from the buyout is same as I have blogged many times before is that the City of Peoria could take actions to extend water well outside the City without needing the approval of the ICC. Some developers would love to see more growth northwest of Peoria. producing more sprawl at the ordinary property taxpayer's expense.
Really quite simple to answer the question if the Journal Star could afford competent reporters who could dig deep into why one wealthy person with extensive holdings in the Brimfield area would put up $200,000 of their own money.
Kudos to Mayor Jim Ardis for again realizing ownership of public utilities is never a benefit for cities the size of Peoria. For communities like Carlock, Mackinaw, Deer Creek and Goodfield is where buyout advocate, Steve Van Winkle, gets his mis-leading figures to support the buyout. They all own their water companies because they are forced to because the answer is large privately held water companies are not interested in them as there would be no profit so these small communities have little choice but to have local taxpayers involved in running their own water systems.
I would predict that Weaver, Johnson, Riggenbach, Greyab, Turner, and Moore will cast 6 votes in favor a another paid study.
I did extensive study of the buyout effort years back. Readers can find my blogs under such titles as "Waterlogged", etc. George Jacob cast the 6th deciding no vote. George credited my blogs to help him arrive at the correct decision.
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