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Middle-income housing solutions, pension reform, capital funding among Peoria’s requests from state legislators

Peoria City Hall
Joe Deacon
/
WCBU
Peoria City Hall

The City of Peoria is asking the state legislature for assistance in developing solutions for a “missing middle” gap in housing needs.

At its first meeting of the calendar year, the Peoria City Council on Tuesday unanimously adopted the city’s annual legislative agenda of capital funding requests and desired legislation from Springfield.

“A lot of it is consistent with what we've done in the past, in terms of where we've made requests for direct sponsorship,” city manager Patrick Urich told WCBU prior to the meeting, identifying pension reform, economic development incentives, protecting home rule authority, and capital project funding as other priorities.

Among the requests is a three-pronged suggestion to address an unprecedented housing crisis in Illinois by accelerating production and encouraging preservation of residential units for middle- and moderate-income households earning between 80-140% of the median income.

The proposals include establishing a “Missing Middle” home ownership tax credit, as well as a similar tax credit for multi-unit rental housing. The city also suggests a state partnership with existing regional land banks to facilitate land acquisition for home construction.

“The challenge with not only low-income housing, but with affordable housing in that range of people that are making from $50,000 a year up to $100,000 a year, is do we have enough housing?” said Urich. “I think last summer when we looked at this, we only had somewhere in the area of 250 houses for sale in the region. So, we need more inventory to be able to support the housing needs of the community.”

The city and county’s joint legislative agenda will be shared with the local state representatives at Wednesday morning’s legislative breakfast at the Gateway Building.

“Approving this agenda doesn't mean that you 100% agree with all the items on it,” said Mayor Rita Ali.

The package also contains a renewed request for the General Assembly to pass public safety pension reform by extending the amortization periods, and to oppose efforts to roll back “Tier 2” pension benefits to “Tier 1” levels.

“This would have a negative impact on our fiscal situation, adding more costs to us as the benefits would be enhanced for those current tier two members,” said Urich, noting around a dozen bills with Tier 2 rollbacks already have been introduced. “So, we're simply asking that our legislative delegation oppose those efforts as well.”

Additionally, the city asked for revisions to the Safe-T Act that would require mandatory pretrial detention for Class X, Class 1 and Class 2 felonies, as well as upgrading the felony classification for a number of crimes, ranging from vehicular hijacking and fleeing and eluding police to possession of a firearm by a felon.

“We have to decide here if we are more interested in coddling criminals and allowing errant juveniles and their criminally negligent parents to slide, or if our priority in Peoria is protecting our law-abiding citizens,” said council member Chuck Grayeb.

Also on the city’s legislative wish list is the release of funding for several city capital projects approved through the Rebuild Illinois infrastructure program, including $25 million for reconstructing Main Street, $15 million for redeveloping the Peoria Riverfront, and $3 million apiece for projects on Pioneer Parkway and MacArthur Highway.

The requests also include new funding packages of $40 million for rehabilitating a stretch of Pioneer Parkway, $21 million to reconstruct a portion of Laramie Avenue, and $5 million for improvements to the roads in Springdale Cemetery.

The city also hopes to get support in seeking $600,000 to purchase and install a vehicle and pedestrian barrier system to protect public safety in high-density pedestrian areas during entertainment events and other community gatherings.

The request for removable bollards, crash-rated barriers or other similar systems comes in the wake of the early morning New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans where an assailant drove a vehicle through a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street.

Engineering services funding

As part of the consent agenda, the council raised the expense caps for its use of several engineering services firms.

“We have master service agreements between our engineering firms that we utilize for services to the city, both for construction management as well as design engineering,” Urich told WCBU in an earlier interview.

“These contracts last for a number of years, and we're getting to the upper limits of these contracts in terms of what we've spent with the firms. This just upgrades that and bumps the dollars amounts up for the existing firms that we have.”

The new limits increase to $2.1 million with Millenia Professional Services of Illinois; $1.5 million with Hutchison Engineering; $1 million with Maurer-Stutz; $600,000 with HR Green; and $500,000 with Foth Infrastructure and Environment.

“Eventually, we'll get to that point where we'll have spent that much with these firms, but this is just moving the cap,” said Urich, who noted the city only has two engineers on its staff and needs to rely on the outside engineering community to design and manage projects.

“Overall, right now with our master service agreements, about 14% of the contracts are with minority-owned engineering firms, and about 13% are with women-owned engineering firms.”

Joe Deacon is a reporter at WCBU and WGLT. Contact Joe at jdeacon@ilstu.edu.