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Grayeb, Ali, Kelly voice differing opinions on state of Peoria in mayoral debate ahead of primary

Peoria mayoral candidates, from left, Chuck Grayeb, incumbent Mayor Rita Ali, and John Kelly stand in front of three separate black podiums in front of a blue background during a debate in the WTVP television studio.
Joe Deacon
/
WCBU
Peoria mayoral candidates, from left, city council member Chuck Grayeb, incumbent Mayor Rita Ali, and city council member John Kelly prepare to answer questions in the 2025 Peoria Mayoral Debate that aired Thursday night.

Rita Ali believes Peoria is making progress that should not be interrupted. Chuck Grayeb sees a city at a crossroads that must address criminal delinquency. John Kelly thinks a change is needed to cultivate growth and prosperity.

The three veteran city leaders seeking to occupy the mayor’s office for the next four years shared different views on Peoria’s direction during a debate taped Wednesday for a Thursday night broadcast.

The Peoria Mayoral Primary Debate presented by WTVP PBS, WCBU Peoria Public Radio and part of the NPR Network, the League of Women Voters of Greater Peoria and the NAACP Peoria aired on the radio and television stations at 8 p.m. Thursday.

The program will re-air on WCBU (89.9 FM and wcbu.org) at 6 p.m. Friday. Video and on-demand options will be available at www.wtvp.org, through the PBS app, and on presenting partner Facebook pages and YouTube channels.

Ali, Grayeb and Kelly responded to a series of questions on such issues as public safety, homelessness, economic development and downtown revitalization, property taxes, and diversity, equity and inclusion during the hour-long forum ahead of the Feb. 25 primary.

In her opening statement, the incumbent Ali said Peoria has made strides in reducing crime and investing in infrastructure during her first four years, and pointed to a five-year strategic plan as a path to seeing Peoria thrive.

“These strategic priorities are my platform and my promise to improve the quality of life for all of our residents, transform our downtown, rebuild infrastructure, help our businesses to prosper and keep our communities safe,” said Ali. “This is not a time for interrupted progress, so I urge Peoria voters to stay the course.”

However, Grayeb opened by saying Peoria is facing a wave of lawlessness that requires immediate attention.

“My first priority as your mayor will be to restore safety for our city. Our career criminal and delinquency problem in Peoria continues at a very high level. Folks in every neighborhood in our city are being preyed on,” said Grayeb, who has served on the city council for 24 years.

“We have to decide if we are more interested in coddling criminals and allowing errant juveniles and their criminally negligent parents slide, or if our priorities should be protecting our law-abiding citizens.”

Kelly, who is midway through his second term as an at-large council member, also included public safety as one of three pillars of his campaign, along with change and prosperity.

“Our city has stagnated. We have public policies that are holding our people back. Our people are the same as people in growing cities. The difference is public policy, and the public policies that I am most interested in are those that will get Peoria good headlines,” said Kelly, who proposed eliminating business permit fees and cutting city spending.

Public safety and homelessness

In response to a question on crime and making people feel safer, Kelly reiterated his call to turn Peoria into a “growth city.”

“Cities that are declining or stagnating always have a much higher crime rate than cities that are growing. We haven’t grown in our city for 60 years,” he said. “Bringing in growth policies that will bring crime down as well.”

Grayeb said the Peoria Police Department is doing a “splendid job,” but law enforcement needs more backing from the criminal justice system. He called for amendments to the Illinois SAFE-T Act to eliminate what he perceives as a “catch and release” situation.

“The leaders of these law enforcement agencies … they said that it was time to have some mandatory detention for certain serious crimes that are committed, that in many cases — some very blatant cases — the people are released, and then they go out and threaten police before they stand trial. This is wrong,” said Grayeb.

But Ali said police statistics show Peoria is trending in a positive direction with crime reduction with the use of targeted patrols, increased use of technology, and implementation of the co-response program.

“It takes a community working with the police to reduce crime in our community — our schools, our not-for-profit partners, and everybody really coming together to make a difference,” she said.

Ali said Peoria needs to be proactive and supportive in doing what it can to assist its unhoused population.

“One of our strategic priorities is to improve the quality of life in Peoria, and helping our citizens who are most vulnerable is part of that. We have to do it in a way that is compassionate, but a way that does remove people off the streets, not criminalizing them,” she said, alluding to the city recently beginning enforcement of a ban on public encampments.

“We need to somehow work with our community partners to add more housing. We have a crisis in terms of housing in Peoria, in Illinois and across the nation. We need more affordable housing for the people that reside here. We need to work again with our partners to successfully move people into shelters.”

Kelly said homelessness is not a problem that can be solved with increasing amounts of city funding.

“First of all, I did vote to end the encampments against all kinds of pressure — that these people were going to be thrown out in the dark. They’ve not been thrown out in the dark, and the encampments are gone,” he said. “Last week, we had a proposal to spend $10,000 to help LULA put people in a nearby motel. At the council meeting, that changed right away to $80,000.

“It took me back; it rocked me, and I thought, ‘You know, we’ve done this money placement before.’ … I’d like a little more warning on things like that. I do wish to have the city sponsor detox centers [and] recovery housing, not just housing, and I think we can get closer to the bottom of these problems.”

Grayeb said Peoria has been “very generous” in making a financial commitment toward solving the unhoused crisis.

“But it hasn’t been working. And one thing is for sure, no human being should be living out in these elements,” said Grayeb, claiming a delay on enacting the encampment ban allowed the problem to mushroom.

“It’s unconscionable what was allowed to happen. So I’m convinced that the people at Peoria will continue to support good initiatives, and maybe we ought to take a look at what Rockford has been doing. They’ve been successful [with] their way they deal with the unhoused crisis.”

Economic growth and downtown revitalization

Grayeb commended the work of the city’s economic development team in efforts to spark business growth through incentives such as TIF districts and enterprise zones. But he said any deals with the city must serve the taxpayers’ interests.

“If we can keep business here and continue to diversify our economy away from heavy manufacturing — not that we don’t love heavy manufacturing — but … we can’t have all of our eggs in one basket. If we do that, we’ll be able to soar and our future will be very bright.”

Ali noted that Peoria has distributed more than $3.7 million worth of American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA] funding in small business grants to more than 260 local businesses.

“We have to support our current businesses, and we need to attract more businesses here. By attracting more businesses, we will expand our tax base and potentially be able to reduce property taxes,” said Ali, who also touted a potential $1 billion economic impact over the next decade from the OSF HealthCare Cancer Institute that opened last year.

Kelly said he would like to see even more support for in-town operations.

“We have a little over 8,000 businesses in Peoria, Illinois. These are local businesses. These people pay taxes here, etc.,” he said. “We tend to concentrate our economic development dollars toward that mystical outfit from out of town. If they want to come in, we want to give them all sorts of help.

“If we instead work on our own economic climate, making Peoria a better place to do business, the economic effect of that on those 8,000 businesses is far greater than any new outfit coming to town.”

Kelly said he was adamantly opposed to Peoria’s purchase of the downtown PNC Bank building and adjacent properties, in part because the city paid $500,000 more than what Cullinan Properties purchased the site for less than a year before.

“I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I also don’t believe that the city itself is a good risk manager of buildings,” he said. “We don’t have a risk management department; banks have those kinds of things. That building, I think can be a great building if, in the present state, if we take — we the city government — take the parking deck away from it and own that. That will make that building much more attractive to a new investor.”

Grayeb said the purchase was a sound investment for the city because it was still below market value.

“The prior owner was going to just auction it off. Nothing good comes of an auction quite often. The parking deck alone is critical for the successful operation of our [Peoria] Civic Center and provide parking when we have major events downtown,” said Grayeb, adding he anticipates the location will yield a positive downtown development.

Ali said the city is seeking proposals to convert the tower into a mixed-use development.

“We need to invest in downtown, and we want to see downtown grow and thrive. We have a lot of partially empty, big buildings downtown that we need to turn into partial residential and commercial entities,” she said. “That’s the trend that’s happening in progressive cities across the country. That’s what we want to do with PNC Bank. We purchased that building because we wanted to control the narrative and control what happened to that building.”

All three candidates were unified in their stance that an existing intergovernmental agreement with East Peoria would require any land-based casino in the area to be built within the City of Peoria.

They also agreed on a need to ensure Peoria continues to make its roadways safer for pedestrian and bicycle travel, with Grayeb in particular highlighting the ongoing one-way to two-way conversion of Adams and Jefferson streets downtown.

Ali celebrated the progress on an initiative to develop a passenger rail connection to Chicago, calling it a major economic driver for the city. Grayeb agreed train service would be greatly beneficial.

“We must not neglect our transportation links, and that Amtrak link to Chicago is not only for people to go up there, but for them to come down here,” said Grayeb. “It’s critical for many of our Bradley students and their parents, and I believe it will further enhance our desire to look critically at what we’re doing with our transportation. … I believe this rail line, if we are able to see this to fruition, will do great things for Peoria and add to our prosperity.”

But Kelly said the project ultimately may be too costly and not result in a proportional benefit.

“I also voted against the passenger rail for one big reason: We’re going to have to build a depot,” said Kelly. “That depot is going to cost tens of millions of dollars, and I believe that, because of poor ridership, Amtrak will yank that train after about five years and we will be stuck with paying off the bonds to build that building.”

Property taxes, pension payments and DEI

Ali said a study by the financial information website SmartAsset that found Peoria had the highest property taxes among the country’s 342 largest cities is misleading. The analysis found that Peorians pay 2.6% of the value of their home in annual property taxes.

“Not that property taxes aren’t high; we need to hold the line on property taxes. I’ve promised that from the very beginning when I got elected at large, and we have held the line on the property tax rate and not increasing that,” said Ali, adding the SmartAsset study looked at median market property values.

“It would be more accurate if they looked at the tax rate. Our tax rate in Peoria, depending on the taxing body, is between $9.40 to $9.60 per $100 in assessed value. There are numerous communities across Illinois, in the state of Illinois that have rates that exceed $10 per $100 in assessed value. They’re much higher than us in terms of the tax rate.”

Kelly noted that during the budget sessions last fall, he voted against raising Peoria’s property tax levy in accordance with increasing property values.

“I said, ‘Let’s give our people a break. Our taxes are already too high. Let’s keep our levy the same as it was last year, and cut our rate.’ That was voted down by the rest of the council, not the [rest], but by a majority of the council,” he said.

Grayeb also said Peorians need a break from high taxes, but also referenced a projected $4 million deficit expected to result from elimination of the state’s 1% grocery tax that takes effect at the start of next year.

“Four million dollars could be four fire houses, 30-some police, it could wipe out the whole community development department,” said Grayeb, noting he also voted with the minority against raising the tax levy.

“We need to give our citizens a little bit of breathing room. We need to continue to work on reducing our tax load and grow our city to make it more prosperous.”

All three candidates agreed the escalating burden of required public safety pension payments are a significant hurdle the city faces. Barring any legislative changes at the state level, those responsibilities are projected to force the city into spending adjustments by 2030.

“We have cities across the state of Illinois with this same problem, and they’re all working together to try to convince our legislators to extend the date [and] give us a little breathing room, because it’s massive in terms of the requirement for Peoria,” said Ali, adding the city’s unfunded accrued liability is $366 million.

“We’ve used ARPA fund and some funding from our general fund to pay down early some of this debt that we have, some of this liability that we have. So that has helped, and I do believe that ultimately — maybe in 2033 or so, 2032 — that we may be able to issue bonds to pay down the remaining debt.”

The current law mandates that police and fire pensions must be 90% funded by 2040. Grayeb said Peoria leaders need to do a better job of lobbying state legislators to extend that deadline 10 years.

“If they don’t give us a break on that, it will basically decimate some of the departments in our city that provide core basic services — public safety services like police, fire, public works, our roads,” said Grayeb. “They helped create the problems by stealing money out of the lock box that that pension money should have been put into, and it was bipartisan theft of people’s money. And now, of course, we’re left holding the bag. It’s unfair to municipalities all across our state.”

Kelly expressed skepticism about getting any relief before returning to his overall campaign theme.

“I am not confident that our legislature will do much of anything about it,” he said. “I have met with our fire union, and they and the statewide organization of fire unions are writing a bill to try to extend our obligation from 2040 to 2050. I hope that works, but I am not confident that it will.

“So what do we do in the meantime? We grow our city. We make this less and less and less of a piece of our revenue. If we grow our city, we won’t grow out of this problem, but it will become more manageable each year as each year’s obligation comes forward.”

Kelly also remained skeptical about needing to emphasize diversity, equity and inclusion at City Hall.

“I’m against discrimination in any form [at] any time, and especially in the city government,” he said. “However, the Mayor’s Commission said that our city government is racist. So I asked the mayor, I said, ‘Please bring us the evidence that our city government is racist and we will deal with it.’ That happened two times; it never came to us.

“We have a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion department. They made a report after a couple of years, an 80-page report where they didn’t understand some of the abbreviations in their own report. I asked the question, ‘Have we had any — since you’ve been in office — have we had any instances in the city of reporting discrimination or adjudication of discrimination?’ The answer was no.”

Grayeb said cities and businesses need to realize the benefits of having a diverse workforce, but he also said the city must always hire the most qualified candidates for vacant positions.

“I do not believe, all things being equal, we would hire someone with less capability, less qualifications than someone with better qualifications because of DEI,” said Grayeb. “And I think more and more corporations are looking very critically at DEI, and we don’t want to back our city into reverse discrimination lawsuits.”

Ali said it’s imperative for Peoria to remain loyal to its DEI initiatives.

“I’m definitely committed to equity and closing racial equity gaps, or disparity gaps in our city,” said Ali, touting her role in establishing the Peoria City/County Joint Commission on Racial Justice and Equity.

“They produce annual reports; their first report identified the gaps in eight areas based upon race in our city and our county, and they are significant. … They’re working to close these gaps incrementally, with projects that people of different races, different genders are working, coming together to work to reduce these problems within our area.”

The two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary will advance to the Consolidated General Election on April 1. Another broadcast debate between the two remaining candidates is set for March 19.

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