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What’s going on in the city

I’m making a conscious effort to devote additional time to this blog. Today you don’t get an essay, but a few short items I think are still important.

So:

A TIF tiff (sort of)

Tax increment financing districts are complicated little agreements that simultaneously elicit yawns from anybody expecting government to actually be exciting and yet make the municipal world go round, so it’s worth it to explain a little.

Assistant City Manager Billy Tyus called to my attention this morning that I may have oversimplified a bit in my explanation of the City Council’s decision to begin setting up another TIF district around the Pines Shopping Center.

As my story states, the developers would be given a property tax break for a few years to help offset the cost of tearing down the old Save-A-Lot and putting up a brand new one. That’s the short version.

I’m a bit guilty of oversimplification because the truth is the developers aren’t really going to be skipping payments (or making smaller ones) – they’re going to be paying the city, but the city just sets a bunch of that payment aside after they receive it and then drops it into a fund dedicated to making improvements to the property. That’s the longer version.

So, in essence, it’s a little like when you were living with your roommates in college and you paid your friend your share of the cable bill, but then he immediately turned around and gave you the ten bucks he agreed he’d throw in for pizza that one night when you came back from class and totally expected him to have the pizza money, yet he was up in his room with a sock on his doorknob and the other two guys you lived with were out in the living room with the TV on really loud and everything was just really, really awkward.

Maybe not exactly like that…

On that parking garage

The Barnes Building and its adjoining parking garage are going up for tax sale Friday, but our previously reported figures on just how delinquent it was in its property taxes weren’t complete. Macon County Treasurer Steve Grimm pointed out today that the grand total owed on 236 N. Water Street, 250 N. Water Street, and the three parcels of land that include make up the parking garage is actually about $71,000 instead of just the $56,000 we had listed before.

Since it appears they won’t be paid off before the buildings’ liens are put up, the question now is, who will become lienholders?

Recommended reading

Well, they adapted Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” and turned it into a movie with Aragorn. I am all pumped up to see it. It’s a desolate tale of a lawless post-apocalyptic world, where society and government have collapsed and violence is out of control.

I understand they were hoping to shoot in Illinois, but there was the whole problem of actually needing a road…

In the last couple of days, my email inbox has been the recipient of some truly inspiring denunciations of Gov. Pat Quinn’s plans to use the Thomson Correctional Center to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

Andy McKenna’s campaign for governor says:

“The only thing that makes less sense than trying to solve our budget crisis by bringing terrorists to Illinois is promoting this plan as if it were a good thing for Illinois families.”

After a few more shots, the release reads:

“Andy McKenna and Matt Murphy recognize that the Thomson Correctional Center is underutilized, but this is not the direction we should take to maximize the facilities (sic) operations.”

Bonus points for leaving out “suspected” before the word “terrorists.”

I pick on McKenna and Murphy, but there are several others who have emailed me about it, and State Rep. Bill Mitchell of Forsyth came by Monday to speak with another reporter about the matter as well.

They’re all angry about who Quinn has proposed bringing in, but what’s really at issue here is that it took this particular use of the place to get anybody mad about Thomson at all.

Thomson is a textbook example of why state government isn’t working. It is a state-of-the-art facility that has sat vacant for years. It could be housing an additional 1,600 inmates in a system that is crowded, understaffed, and, lest we forget, is planning on releasing some of its convicts and firing some of its workers.

If everybody wants to start being angry about this only now, then I respectfully suggest they’re missing the point. The point is not that we’re somehow in danger from people who would be locked up in the place, it’s that after all the money the taxpayers have spent building Thomson and keeping the pipes from freezing over the winters it has sat empty, the governor is finally giving up on any pretense of it ever being useful to the Illinois prison system and handing it over to the federal government.

Whether it creates jobs or not, whether it reduces operating expenses or not, whether it’s being complicit in the unconstitutional treatment of prisoners that have been captured without being charged or tried for nearly a decade or not, it is forfeiting an investment this state made and could have been using years ago.

So yes, I, too, am disappointed with this proposed use of Thomson, but not because of the inmates.

Lest we forget, today (Nov. 3) is actually Election Day in some corners of the country, even though (thank goodness) we aren’t scrambling to the ballot here in Illinois.

Many people will use today’s election results to trumpet the beginning of whatever pet trend they’re interested in. In particular, the results from the handful of heavily-contested elections or ballot referendums are going to form the backbone of pundits’ spurious arguments for the next few months, so you might as well be up to date on the issues.

After all, you never know what elected official might unexpectedly become nationally important. Here are some races and issues I can’t help but be interested in:

First, everybody’s favorite wedge issue: Maine voters will decide whether or not to strike down a law allowing gay marriage.

Laws prohibiting gay marriage are likely to topple like dominoes in the long term for the same reasons laws against miscegenation did a few decades ago, but exactly how it happens – State Supreme Court rulings, referendums, legislative action – is going to be a tangled and complicated mish-mash of processes that will give any future historiographers a headache.

Why you should care: The more states that enact or uphold same-sex marriage laws, the more that will. Election number cruncher extraordinaire Nate Silver even predicted Illinoisans would statistically be likely to vote to overturn a ban against same-sex marriage by 2012, though his model didn’t include figures on how many people would grouse endlessly about it afterward.

Next up, Virginia: Which is looking like it might swing Republican in a big way after several cycles of woe and going blue for Obama last year. GOP candidate for governor Bob McDonnell held a double-digit lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds in polls going into Election Day, and if McDonnell wins he’ll be the first Republican to hold that office since 2001. Several of Virginia’s congressional delegation could also swing red.

Why you should care: A swing in the state’s congressional delegation will erode the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, and that’s of course going to get people talking about what that means in 2010. Momentum in national politics is not always imaginary.

Finally, the place we all heart: New York’s 23rd Congressional District is becoming a microcosmic display of the disconnect between GOP leadership and conservative voters.

Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is not a Republican, but he, without asking, gained the endorsement of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Conversely, the GOP candidate, Dede Scozzafava, dropped out of the race after voters railed at her for not being conservative enough. In a show of true New York guts, she turned right around and endorsed her Democratic opponent.

Why you should care: Here’s the GOP’s national conundrum writ small. Swing voters are trending less toward hard-line social conservatism, but the party’s “base” is unwaveringly conservative on social matters and is determined to be very vocal. In this scenario, it appears running as a Republican is no guarantee you’ll garner the conservative vote, or even that you’ll receive the endorsement of one of the Republican Party’s most visible (albeit most impolitic) public figures. Whether or not Hoffman wins is almost immaterial at this point – what matters more is that Scozzafava got drummed out of town, and disaffected GOP voters are going to take that to heart.

The 2010 election season has officially begun, and in much the same way a day at my old middle school usually began: With all of the participants lined up outside doors in the dark freezing cold of the predawn hours, standing next to people they’re probably going to call fat for the rest of the year.

The first candidates have finished filing their petitions, and based on the sheer number of them, at this point it is clear that most sane individuals with an interest in politics should invest in a shovel, find a suitable field somewhere, and get to work burying their heads in the sand until Nov. 4 – of next year.

Still, if we’re to properly put things into perspective right now, we should compare what things looked like at the primary stage in election years past. As always, the State Board of Elections’ single-minded dedication to accurate record-keeping and scrupulous disclosure will be our guide as we observe the following:

Running for U.S. Senate
Next year: 9 (4 Dems, 5 Repubs)
2008: 5 (Dick Durbin and 4 Repubs)
2004: 17 (8 Dems, 9 Repubs)

Running for Governor
Next year: 7 (3 Dems, 4 Repubs)
2006: 9 (4 Dems, 5 Repubs)
2002: 12 (7 Dems, 5 Repubs)

Running for Lieutenant Governor (a job with no Constitutionally mandated duties)
Next year:7 (3 Dems, 4 Repubs)
2006: 8 (2 Dems and 6 Repubs)
2002: 10 (4 Dems, 6 Repubs)

In nearly all cases we’re a little bit lower than in previous years, though the window for filing is still open and a few more are sure to put their hats in. While that is likely, it is also doubtless some of these bounders will either fold in the face of vaporous support, or else find themselves kicked off the ballot for improper use of a paper clip.

Many, including myself, have been saying the field looks crowded, but the real truth behind the fatigue we’re all feeling is partly due to moving last year’s primary up to February to accommodate Obama’s messianic rise, thus extending the election cycle by more than a month.

Since the General Assembly is putting off any meaningful votes on taxes until after the primaries (and after they’ve beaten down any challenges to their solid incumbencies), maybe we should actually consider moving up the primary to right now, or perhaps actually governing.

The Youth Leadership Institute’s tour of local government offices yesterday gives me a perfect prompt to speak on a subject I’ve always cared a great deal about – how much young people know about their own government.

The group, which was made up of 31 high school students from the schools that feed into our area, is run by Richland’s Partners in Education program, and aims to provide the students a view of the world beyond their schooling.

Yesterday, that included trips to the county courthouse, police station, and the Decatur Civic Center, where they participated in a mock council meeting that proceeded in only slightly less orderly a fashion than some of the actual ones I’ve witnessed.

I’m wholeheartedly behind this sort of education, but what has always concerned me is why only those most engaged and precocious students are the ones getting it. The sad experience I have when dealing with most people my own age is that they have only a rudimentary understanding of how government works, if that.

Some of this comes from our government’s inherent stability. Many I speak to simply believe the United States gravitates naturally toward policy that is good in the long run. That’s dressing that up: They actually don’t give two hoots about it because, let’s face it, it’s boring.

Most policy is the same as doing the dishes and mowing the lawn – it applies directly to you and must be dealt with, or else it goes from boring to interesting. The Illinois budget process should by all rights be booo-riiiiiing (pronounced with the cadence and timbre of a foghorn), but it is woefully, woefully interesting. While watching it, I have been interested to tears.

People my age and younger unfortunately want somebody else to handle all of this for them, or aren’t even aware of what must be handled.

Worst of all, it’s hard for me to blame most young people for this ingrained ignorance. On all of the soul-crushing standardized tests I got pulled out of actual class to take, never once was I asked how many votes you need in the U.S. House to pass a bill or override a veto. Schools – the area that suffers the most from unfunded mandates and is most often held hostage in fake budget doomsday scenarios –
don’t have the time to tell students about how their property taxes affect the computer lab.

Everybody need not be a wonk like I’ve become in the last couple of years, but something could probably be done at the K-12 level to let students know what’s at stake.

It’s great that these 31 students have seen the scope of services their local government provides them. Hopefully such knowledge, coupled with youthful idealism, can encourage them to be more active in this kind of thing. If we could somehow give the other 9,000 Decatur Public School students (and their private school counterparts, too) this same opportunity, we’d be on the way to that.

Last night the City Council finished what their predecessors started back in 2007: The matter of the Decatur Conference Center and Hotel is over and done with, and in a manner I don’t think anybody could reasonably grouse about.

The council voted to pay back the bonds they issued in order to buy up the hotel when the last owner pretty much abandoned it. The previous council decided it was better to make an attempt to buy up the thing and sell it to a business owner who would be responsible with it, rather than allow it to go to the auction block and become who-knows-what.

It was a risky and controversial move. The council bought the hotel for $7.2 million, a significant expense when you consider this year’s budget was set at $138 million.

Consider the factors that might have gone disastrously wrong: The city might have been unable to find a reputable developer willing to put in the time and money to buy the place and get it running again. Even if a buyer did emerge, there was the possibility said buyer might not settle for a price at least as high as the city paid for it (which Lakeside Hospitality, LLC did). Even if the city broke even on the sale of the hotel to a serious buyer, there was the problem of paying back the bonds the city issued to fund the whole enterprise, which accrued interest and couldn’t be paid off until an agreed-upon time. So, assuming everything went right with the sale of the hotel, the city would need to either hold onto the money from the sale and hope to be able to pay off the interest on the bonds, or invest it and risk the vicissitudes of the marketplace.

Also, the hotel could’ve been evil.

Despite all of these risk factors, a little more than two years later the hotel is in the hands of an owner who is putting money into it and has attracted conferences and conventions, the bonds will be paid off in full with interest, and after all is said and done the city’s general fund will net itself $27,500 after investing the money they got for selling the hotel.

Considering what an asset a convention center can be for the community, I think everybody can heave a collective sigh of relief that at least one government intervention program has worked.

As “change” was the buzz-word during the 2008 national election campaign, “business-friendly,” or “pro-growth,” or “job creation,” or some form of those terms was the thing to repeat ad nauseam in Decatur in 2009. Every candidate in every position was saying it.

And, it should be said, not without good reason.

Bearing that in mind, let’s examine the decision made by council members Monday night in the matter of No Regrets Tattoo and Body Piercing, the business that for the past couple of months has operated in downtown Decatur at the corner of Main & Main.

Council members said they were fine with a tattoo parlor in town, but just not at the historic corner where Lincoln gave birth to the great American stump speech, what City Councilman Jerry Dawson called “our showcase intersection.”

Whether a tattoo parlor detracts from the pristine beauty of that particular area of town is a debate I’d rather not enter into, but council members Adam Brown and Dana Ray both brought up misgivings about giving the place the boot.

Ray expressed concern the business was being singled out just for what it is rather than how it looks.

“I’ve driven down that road many times, and it does look fine,” Ray said to Plan Commission member Matt Jackson at the meeting. “I’m trying to figure out where the biggest concern is. Is the concern that it’s a tattoo parlor or is the concern the sign or how it looks on the outside?”

Brown said: “I’d just hate to turn down a company that wants to invest in Decatur right now.”

Brown and Ray both voted to allow the business to continue, while the other four voted against (Larry Foster wasn’t present at the meeting).

When I visited No Regrets today I found it to be clean, sterile, and seemingly innocuous when viewed from the street. My own body is unmarked, but I’ve had occasion to go to some tattoo places and most were in noticeably worse condition than this one.

Matt Stines, who owns No Regrets, said he wanted to expand his operation to include a Decatur location after hearing many of his customers are already driving from Decatur to Champaign for his services.

To repeat more clearly: Stines, owner of a Champaign-based business, made the choice to open a new location that would employ people in Decatur and provide a service for which Decatur residents are willing to drive 45 minutes. This location, it should also be noted, had been sitting vacant for almost three years, contributing nothing to the community or to the city’s revenues, which are now in desperate need of any positive news.

The council essentially refused to grant Stines a special permit to operate at the intersection, which all businesses in that area must obtain. The city’s Plan Commission recommended the council approve the permit, as did city staff members. Stines had been in violation without the permit, though he said he was given assurances from the property company he’d dealt with and from the city that he wasn’t doing anything illegal prior to being served with a violation for not having the permit.

Stines said he’s been put in a bad position by the council’s decision. Suggestions from Councilman Pat Laegeler, Dawson, and Moore-Wolfe that his business could stay in Decatur if it hid itself around a corner didn’t appeal to him when he spoke with me Tuesday.

“I’m not happy about this whole thing at all,” Stines said. “I’ve invested this money already out of my own pocket, I can’t just pick up and move down the street. I’m not one of those guys who can just do that.”

I’d like to actively invite some discussion on this topic, and I particularly encourage anybody who works, lives near, or runs a business in the downtown area to sound off, because I want to know what you think.

Update: I spoke with City Manager Ryan McCrady, who said he’s determined that Stines spoke with a member of the city’s Finance Department, but should have made more inquiries about zoning before moving forward. McCrady also said Stines has until Oct. 5 to cease operations, and that there’s no way he can seek an appeal in the matter.

Mark Twain once said a little starvation can do more for the average sick man than can most doctors or medicine.

As can sometimes be the case with him, it’s hard to tell if he was kidding. Of course, if you have ever seen the effects of starvation (as Twain did in 1866, when he met sailors who had been adrift more than a month with ten days’ worth of rations), you would know why he also commented that any person seeing the suffering of a beggar is often all too glad to render aid. To greatly simplify, the process is essentially the body eating itself for lack of anything in the stomach.

The city, like the rest of the country, is approaching that state.

The news from the City Manager last week was sobering, but not unexpected, given the numbers we’ve seen recently. The budget projections for this fiscal year weren’t pessimistic enough, and now the city with nearly 15 percent unemployment (not counting those who aren’t even looking for jobs anymore) faces a deficit they estimate at $3.6 million by year’s end.

This isn’t $3.6 million short for next year, it’s a projection of how short the city will be just in the next eight months if revenues remain as anemic as they’ve thus far been. For all anybody knows, the financial tides could worsen even further. It isn’t due to poor planning or careless overspending – it’s quite simply that when nobody is making any money, they aren’t buying the goods and services for which they’re taxed.

If things continue as they are, the result could very well be that the city is forced to institute furloughs and layoffs for their employees, putting more people out of work or lessening their pay. McCrady already took the first step with a buyout program that 41 city workers opted to take, ending their service and leaving vacant their positions. All of those employees will have left by the end of October.

While we’ve been assured police and fire personnel will be replaced, many other positions will be left empty, the departments reorganized around the gaps. McCrady himself will be taking on additional duties once deferred to Asst. City Manager John A. Smith, who oversees the city’s Water Management and Public Works Departments – two arms of city government that have some of the most wide-ranging and expensive responsibilities.

McCrady has said no layoffs or furloughs are currently on the table – the current plan calls for fund sweeps that will take money away from equipment and technology replacement and a policy of holding off on hiring all but absolutely essential positions.

He also said another 30 days of sinking revenues could force the city to finally consider the grim prospect of forcibly reducing its workforce – a drastic measure McCrady has many times said he does not want to take.

Putting more people out of work might lower the city’s costs, but it also condemns them to the unemployment office and the mercy of other public services, as McCrady himself said. Like a body breaking down its own muscle tissue to stay alive, the only choice might be to throw away useful things in the interest of survival.

I don’t know much about the Japanese language, but I do know that it has a particular bit of onomatopoeia – that long word they taught you in grade school (and which you’ve never used in conversation) that means “sound-imitating word” – that could be applied to basically any situation involving a dilapidated building in Decatur.

“Zuru-zuru” can variously be translated as the sound of something heavy being dragged, and sometimes refers to the dragging of feet.

Lots of really dangerous, structurally unsound buildings are scattered around the city, with a few high-profile eyesores readily on display. Those neighboring the structures say mostly the same thing if you ask them: “It’s ugly, dangerous, and it makes my house look worse. Please get rid of it.”

Rather than the sound of wrecking balls, people mostly just hear the sound of dragging feet. Why they do is somewhat complicated.

Roach School has been sitting unused on the 1900 block of East William Street almost longer than I’ve been alive. Jenese Brewner, who lives across the street from it, worked there. She has lived in her home for 50 years, and about half of that time has been spent staring at the empty, fire-damaged, shattering visage of the place she worked at and her children went up through school in.

Every property owner who has gotten their hands on the place has promised a different City Council they’ll fix it up, and none of them ever have. The project manager of the company currently wrangling the place says after some red tape is sorted out it’ll just be a couple more years before the place is a 45-unit loft apartment complex with off-the-street parking and an exercise center in the atrium. The issue hit a hiccup in 2006 over environmental regs, but at least it’s boarded up so nobody can get inside and set fire to it.

Mayor Mike McElroy – who at the last City Council meeting voted to declare the parking garage on Franklin and William unsafe after a lengthy discussion with the structure’s owner – pointed out one problem for the city in giving up on Roach and crushing the place: The cost would be astronomical in a city that is trying its best to scrimp and save.

Demolition puts the city in a costly double bind. On the one hand, most people are not willing to buy a house that’s been sitting open to the elements and become a place for squatters and vermin, no matter how cheap the place is. Leaving it to sit is a hazard to public safety.

Immediately rushing to destroy a structure seems great to the neighbors who have to live with it every day, but the other side of the coin is that the city must then spend taxpayer dollars bulldozing somebody else’s neglected problem, this after the expense the city must take putting it’s legal staff to work trying to sort out the ramifications of annihilating somebody else’s property and the cost to the public of the demolition courts and inspections and every hoop that must be jumped through.

And after all that expense, there’s one less property that could one day be occupied again, providing the city with tax revenue and utility companies with another customer. The city is, in essence, being forced to spend money to lose money. In cases where the building’s owner is dead or simply can’t be located despite months of searching, the city is faced with no choice but to amputate another potentially useful structure.

That’s enough to make anybody want to drag their feet.

Word has just broken from Springfield that Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna is resigning effective immediately.

The GOP in Illinois has seen brighter years than the five McKenna served as party chairman. Reports are quoting him as saying he wants to step down now so there isn’t stressing about who gets his position during the upcoming election.

He also said he’ll still be active in the primary and the election as a supporter and fundraiser, but this move will no doubt unleash a wave of speculation over whether or not he wants to make a pass at higher office or something.

The real question at this point will be who gets McKenna’s spot and can they do a better job? He’s served during two of the worst election cycles for Republicans in recent history, but the national situation shouldn’t have had as profound an effect on a state where Democrats have stumbled so embarrassingly and so consistently.

As I detailed in my last post, party unity was a problem under McKenna and is already shaping up to be a problem this go-round. Concerns over Republican togetherness were pretty evident at the Illinois Republican Party Convention last year.

This represents a chance for Republicans to change things - possibly to craft a message other than “Democrats are corrupt, so vote for us.”

Maybe a change in leadership will help with that.