This blog is maintained for the sole purpose of allowing the people of Peru and those interested in the cities of the Illinois Valley to express their views.
“It doesn’t take a majority to win, just a tireless minority that will keep starting brush fires in the mind and hearts of their fellow men.” Samuel Adams
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Water and Sewer August 1 Meeting
i was asked to remove this topic by the city.
27 comments:
Anonymous
said...
So now this blog is directed by the City? Kristie had points someobody must not have liked.
Lois, don't you think it would be appropriate to reenter comments which were included under this topic but did not pertain to the Water and Sewer August 1, meeting.
The request came because someone in our city erred in putting the name of the company in the minutes and I don't know who is responsible for that. 8:32PM, I have gone through the comments and there were only 2 that did not mention the company name and I will rewrite those. It was on my answering machine and I did not talk to them personally but if I had to guess a good portion of the town knows who the co. is as I have heard it outside of he city web site and I am sure I am not the only one.
Yes a good portion of the town knows who the company is and the information did not come 100% from the cities web site or this blog. When the city published the August 1 minutes of the water and sewer committee in their web site they became public knowledge. As of this afternoon sometime the committee minutes of Aug. 1 have been removed from the city web site. I now question whether the cities gain is going to be worth the cities expense. Yes 25 jobs are a significant number but it is possible that Peru's taxpayers will anti up all the funds and not one of the 25 jobs will be filled by Peru residents. How many white collar jobs will be created by this secret and how many of Peru's young people will get them? Growth is not always progress! Lois, It appears that the city officials owe you a public apology, as they also owe Mr. Larry Bianchi.
That company laid off alot of people that worked there 13 plus years and hired through a temp agency to take their place. If they can expand, they should hire those employees back...just sayin
First off the City can not with hold public minutes once they have been approved let alone published on a private website. Is this a private website? Second TEST actually takes the minutes of the W&S committee which explains why they were so thorough. Third why would any expansion be so secretive unless the City could not accommodate it? Jobs are good and growth is good unless the City can't accommodate it and like I stated yesterday; this company currently is a closed loop system that has little impact on the lift station.
Please try to repost my comments from yesterday without the company name if that makes your more comfortable. But be confidentant I am certain with my comments from yesterday. Thank you. Kristy
Test takes the minutes of "OUR" water and sewer committee meetings? It's beginning to look to me like Test and Chamlin pretty much are the backbone of all that goes on in our city. I find it disturbing that we seem to need to go to outside consultants to run our city.
Correct because of the long standing connections with outside contractors instead of using our own professional employees hired by us, Peru is not running their own city, pretty said isn't it?
previous comment I thought the company was a closed loop system so how could they be causing problems at the lift station? If they are the factory expanding are they changing their pretreatment process now?
There have been problems with that lift station by Arby's for many many years and it's a sad state of City affairs if a business can not expand due to inadequate infrastructure especially in TIF zones.
Why did Alderman Radke want to go into closed session on the subject of the demolition of the power plant rather than discuss it at the regular city council meeting? "Don't ask, don't tell" is not the attitude which will successfully hide a partially demolished building. What form of legal agreements are in existence with the contractors and sub contractors, and is the general contractor still in business? The contractor bought the power plant for a $1.00. Where is the status of the $500,000 bond? Could Engineer Larry Good explain why he thinks homes on Westclox Avenue have flooded basements and the ravine becomes a raging river in heavy rains. Could not be that what at one time was a vacant grassy land at the top of a hill descenting to a ravine is now a large building with a huge blacktop parking lot which does not allow for the rain to seep into the ground therefore it rund downhill into the ravine and floods. August 23,2011 - reposted
12:40 a.m. makes a very interesting and important observation. I am not familiar with the situation at EAKAS, but I would not be surprised to hear another company had disposed of its long time employees in such a way. Not exactly the kind of public relations info a company would want while apparently seeking some type of concession or monetary assistance from its host city. Kristy - I am not yet familiar with the Pre-Treatment requirements for the EAKAS industrial discharge but I think we will all be learning much more about this company and its operations in the weeks and months to come. I know you are familiar with the subject matter but most people are going to need some basic information regarding the laws applying to Industrial Pre-Treatment programs in Illinois and who is responsible for waste treatment, regular monitoring and enforcing those laws. I will try to post some info and links in the near future. We, as citizens, have every right to (eventually) know all the details of any agreement between any Peru business or industry that involves spending taxpayer dollars intended to benefit that business or company.
(reposted from Monday August 22, 2011) The problem is the City should not have to do a great deal of work for a local manufacturer to expand. Too much speculation is occurring right now with this grant.
To explain, a closed loop system means the company does not discharge their process water and it is not treated at the waste water treatment plant: therefore it doesn't go through the lift station. The only thing that leaves the facility is waste from the toilets and hand washing etc., at least that is how it was when I was the pretreatment assistant at TEST, I do not know if they have changed the process or if an expansion will change the closed loop.
Regarding the Westclox Culvert, the City did receive the IKE grant (not for the Water Street problems) and I believe the State is going out for bids on the project.
There are no funds in the TIFS which I questioned on why to resurface roads in an area if no building is occurring. Someone should be researching the Build America bonds for the expansion of plank road sewer and May Road drainage. There is no money in the wastewater fund and no money in the TIF funds yet the build america bond is supposingly being paid from both accounts? Yet the May Road drainage is not complete and I wonder if there is enough money left for that project? Not to mention the 4 & 6 project loan which the bond has not even been take out yet and the increase us citizens experienced has been spent already and blah blah blah a sales tax increase for unearmarked infrastructure spending? If people only knew what was really going... Kristy
(reposted from August 23, 2011) Please Kristy, or someone who knows, tell us what is going on. Many of us would seriously like some straight forward answers and the truth. We were led to believe as that TJ Lambrecht just surprisedly walked off the job. Yet, it you read the minutes of the meeting above( now removed) you will note that Mr Hylla presented a letter from Lambrecht stating they would walk off the job 8-6-11, if not paid. The grant was just thrown out there with no information provided. There was even a public hearing, which was a waste because no information could supposedly be presented at that time.
This, to me, is just another example of "give the people a little bit of information but don't tell all". It's our money! We're entitled to know how it is being spent. If information cannot be released why even bring up the topic - let alone a public hearing?
Wow...the blog is being controlled by a few at city hall? Who requested that the minutes be altered? I thought they only controlled the stories at the newspaper.
If the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is intent on not disclosing business agreements until they are finalized why did the Mayor and Director of Economic Development take 15 representatives of a Peru corporation to a local restaurant and accumulate a tab of $1500.00 for 19 people a brief period before the intention to apply for a State Community Development Grant (CDBG) was announced? It would have been best to have a meal catered into the conference room of the local corporation with only decision makers involved. It is not difficult to identify some of our city representatives, they are the ones with steak sauce on their face or in this case should I say egg on their face?
10:47 AM Even more interesting is the fact that the minutes of that meeting are no longer on the city web site. If they do return I assure you they will be altered. For the time being, I am saying the request for removal came from City Hall and I don't know whether the person was only a messenger or the person who wrote up the minutes, so I will leave it at that.
Whatever kind of system this company has it's apparent that changes will be made if the expansion is a go. If you read the minutes of the meeting while they were posted it was stated that along with modifications of the west end WWTP (the CDAP grant), the lift stations and 10" pipe line would need modification. I think one could safely deduce the the company's system is going to be changed at quite an expense to the city.
I too had heard the rumor that this particular company had previously layed off employees. If true, will they be hired back first? And, more importantly, why would you want to expand if you don't have a need for the number of employees you have on your payroll now? How can you afford a $35 million expansion but can't afford to keep your employees working?
I hope that many of our local students are readers of the blog. What a wonderful exposure this situation has given them that could only take place in a democracy. It is also a good example of how much easier the results are achieved when all the facts are brought out in front of everyone and the complete truth is practiced. I believe the proper descriptive word would be TRANSPARENCY. If the main concern is jobs how many people are previously layed off from this firm and do they have recall rights? What is this firms present employment numbers and their payroll? How many of their present workforce are from Peru? What is Peru's financial investment and what is this firms investment going to be if they do expand? What guarantees does this firm give Peru in terms of longevity and future expansion? There are many, many questions to be asked and answered before the local taxpayer should be committed to invest in this firm. The final reason I am so skeptical is that this entire business proceeding has been poorly handled by people who were considered experts of the city in these matters. TOO MANY QUESTIONS AND NOT ENOUGH ANSWERS WITH THE USUAL MIX OF HASTE MAKES WASTE (for example the light plant).
The Peru plant is one of three locations in the U.S. and six in Asia.
No matter how much money they have or how much they spend on expansion - they will never keep employees on the payroll unless they are making money for them.
I'm not sure how it works, but their Hydrographics process looks interesting. If you are into that sort of thing.
The lay offs occurred maybe a couple years ago, and quite possibly COULD have been economically driven. With that beeing said, it was within 5-6 months of these lay offs, if that long, that they were taking on help from temp agencies. I don't know if it was the cost of providing benefits, but it was upsetting to see people I know laid off and then people I know hired through a temp agency. I believe that they have been laid off too long to have recall rights.
To 6:05 p.m. - Very well stated. The questions you pose are exactly the questions we only hope our elected officials have already asked on behalf of Peru taxpayers. It is certainly nothing new for an industry to "leverage" its host community for financial assistance with an expansion or improvement. I suspect it all started with a company official writing something like, Dear Peru, "We are contemplating a sizable expansion to our operations "somewhere in the US" and we would like to offer you an opportunity to convince us our expansion should happen in Peru, IL as opposed to one of our other locations. Of course, similar letters were sent to elected officials in those other plant locations as well. As always, the devil will be in the detail of the proposed agreement. Since these situations are typically kept confidential until nearly finalized, local citizens are not allowed to participate in the negotiations until it's basically a "done deal". I am not convinced one way or the other if this entire business deal has been poorly handled, yet. When we finally find the answers to the questions you just asked as well as a few others.......then we'll know.
The problem is nothing has changed but the letterhead. I don't understand why the administration is blinded or too stubborn to notice.
12:12-You may be talking about different issues. First the City has had a very difficult time allocating the industry causing the problem but when I worked at TEST several years ago I personally billed the industry believed to clog the pump at one time (not certain same situation or industry still billed). Second the City has had problems with the new plant since it has been built and I am curious if this is a design error? The permit NPDES permit was up for renewal recently and I wonder if the IEPA requested modifications to the plant? Also since Plank Road was extended that has to go somewhere...and if I am not mistaken all new lines must be separated meaning separate sanitary and separate storm so this would indicate they would have to go to the West Plant since these lines are not combined. Now this is me just thinking out loud and using "common" sense which we all know is not common. But same people doing the same work...
Which leaves me with another "common sense" question...how can the City pay an engineer firm to design a project than pay the same engineer firm to oversee/manage the design project? Who actually can advise for the City and the residents if that design was the most cost effective option available? NOBODY and that is why sewer rates and sales taxes go up!
27 comments:
So now this blog is directed by the City? Kristie had points someobody must not have liked.
This blog is not directed by the city and had nothing to do with comments made by Kristy.
Wow Lois! Who from the city made that request?
Lois, don't you think it would be appropriate to reenter comments which were included under this topic but did not pertain to the Water and Sewer August 1, meeting.
The request came because someone in our city erred in putting the name of the company in the minutes and I don't know who is responsible for that. 8:32PM, I have gone through the comments and there were only 2 that did not mention the company name and I will rewrite those. It was on my answering machine and I did not talk to them personally but if I had to guess a good portion of the town knows who the co. is as I have heard it outside of he city web site and I am sure I am not the only one.
Yes a good portion of the town knows who the company is and the information did not come 100% from the cities web site or this blog. When the city published the August 1 minutes of the water and sewer committee in their web site they became public knowledge. As of this afternoon sometime the committee minutes of Aug. 1 have been removed from the city web site. I now question whether the cities gain is going to be worth the cities expense. Yes 25 jobs are a significant number but it is possible that Peru's taxpayers will anti up all the funds and not one of the 25 jobs will be filled by Peru residents. How many white collar jobs will be created by this secret and how many of Peru's young people will get them? Growth is not always progress!
Lois, It appears that the city officials owe you a public apology, as they also owe Mr. Larry Bianchi.
That company laid off alot of people that worked there 13 plus years and hired through a temp agency to take their place. If they can expand, they should hire those employees back...just sayin
First off the City can not with hold public minutes once they have been approved let alone published on a private website. Is this a private website? Second TEST actually takes the minutes of the W&S committee which explains why they were so thorough. Third why would any expansion be so secretive unless the City could not accommodate it? Jobs are good and growth is good unless the City can't accommodate it and like I stated yesterday; this company currently is a closed loop system that has little impact on the lift station.
Please try to repost my comments from yesterday without the company name if that makes your more comfortable. But be confidentant I am certain with my comments from yesterday. Thank you.
Kristy
Test takes the minutes of "OUR" water and sewer committee meetings? It's beginning to look to me like Test and Chamlin pretty much are the backbone of all that goes on in our city. I find it disturbing that we seem to need to go to outside consultants to run our city.
Correct because of the long standing connections with outside contractors instead of using our own professional employees hired by us, Peru is not running their own city, pretty said isn't it?
previous comment
I thought the company was a closed loop system so how could they be causing problems at the lift station? If they are the factory expanding are they
changing their pretreatment process now?
There have been problems with that lift station by Arby's for many many years and it's a sad state of City affairs if a business can not expand due to inadequate infrastructure especially in TIF zones.
Kristy
(Aug 22, 1911)
Why did Alderman Radke want to go into closed session on the subject of the demolition of the power plant rather than discuss it at the regular city council meeting? "Don't ask, don't tell" is not the attitude which will successfully hide a partially demolished building. What form of legal agreements are in existence with the contractors and sub contractors, and is the general contractor still in business? The contractor bought the power plant for a $1.00. Where is the status of the $500,000 bond?
Could Engineer Larry Good explain why he thinks homes on Westclox Avenue have flooded basements and the ravine becomes a raging river in heavy rains. Could not be that what at one time was a vacant grassy land at the top of a hill descenting to a ravine is now a large building with a huge blacktop parking lot which does not allow for the rain to seep into the ground therefore it rund downhill into the ravine and floods.
August 23,2011 - reposted
12:40 a.m. makes a very interesting and important observation. I am not familiar with the situation at EAKAS, but I would not be surprised to hear another company had disposed of its long time employees in such a way. Not exactly the kind of public relations info a company would want while apparently seeking some type of concession or monetary assistance from its host city.
Kristy - I am not yet familiar with the Pre-Treatment requirements for the EAKAS industrial discharge but I think we will all be learning much more about this company and its operations in the weeks and months to come. I know you are familiar with the subject matter but most people are going to need some basic information regarding the laws applying to Industrial Pre-Treatment programs in Illinois and who is responsible for waste treatment, regular monitoring and enforcing those laws. I will try to post some info and links in the near future.
We, as citizens, have every right to (eventually) know all the details of any agreement between any Peru business or industry that involves spending taxpayer dollars intended to benefit that business or company.
(reposted from Monday August 22, 2011)
The problem is the City should not have to do a great deal of work for a local manufacturer to expand. Too much speculation is occurring right now with this grant.
To explain, a closed loop system means the company does not discharge their process water and it is not treated at the waste water treatment plant: therefore it doesn't go through the lift station. The only thing that leaves the facility is waste from the toilets and hand washing etc., at least that is how it was when I was the pretreatment assistant at TEST, I do not know if they have changed the process or if an expansion will change the closed loop.
Regarding the Westclox Culvert, the City did receive the IKE grant (not for the Water Street problems) and I believe the State is going out for bids on the project.
There are no funds in the TIFS which I questioned on why to resurface roads in an area if no building is occurring. Someone should be researching the
Build America bonds for the expansion of plank road sewer and May Road drainage. There is no money in the wastewater fund and no money in the TIF funds yet the build america bond is supposingly being paid from both accounts? Yet the May Road drainage is not complete and I wonder if there is enough money left for that project? Not to mention the 4 & 6 project loan which the bond has not even been take out yet and the increase us citizens experienced has been spent already and blah blah blah a sales tax increase for unearmarked infrastructure spending? If people only knew what was really going...
Kristy
(reposted from August 23, 2011)
Please Kristy, or someone who knows, tell us what is going on. Many of us would seriously like some straight forward answers and the truth. We were led to believe as that TJ Lambrecht just surprisedly walked off the job. Yet, it you read the minutes of the meeting above( now removed) you will note that Mr Hylla presented a letter from Lambrecht stating they would walk off the job 8-6-11, if not paid. The grant was just thrown out there with no information provided. There was even a public hearing, which was a waste because no information could supposedly be presented at that time.
This, to me, is just another example of "give the people a little bit of information but don't tell all". It's our money! We're entitled to know how it is being spent. If information cannot be released why even bring up the topic - let alone a public hearing?
Wow...the blog is being controlled by a few at city hall? Who requested that the minutes be altered? I thought they only controlled the stories at the newspaper.
If the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is intent on not disclosing business agreements until they are finalized why did the Mayor and Director of Economic Development take 15 representatives of a Peru corporation to a local restaurant and accumulate a tab of $1500.00 for 19 people a brief period before the intention to apply for a State Community Development Grant (CDBG) was announced? It would have been best to have a meal catered into the conference room of the local corporation with only decision makers involved. It is not difficult to identify some of our city representatives, they are the ones with steak sauce on their face or in this case should I say egg on their face?
10:47 AM
Even more interesting is the fact that the minutes of that meeting are no longer on the city web site. If they do return I assure you they will be altered. For the time being, I am saying the request for removal came from City Hall and I don't know whether the person was only a messenger or the person who wrote up the minutes, so I will leave it at that.
Who were the elected officials at the dinner?
Whatever kind of system this company has it's apparent that changes will be made if the expansion is a go. If you read the minutes of the meeting while they were posted it was stated that along with modifications of the west end WWTP (the CDAP grant), the lift stations and 10" pipe line would need modification. I think one could safely deduce the the company's system is going to be changed at quite an expense to the city.
I too had heard the rumor that this particular company had previously layed off employees. If true, will they be hired back first? And, more importantly, why would you want to expand if you don't have a need for the number of employees you have on your payroll now? How can you afford a $35 million expansion but can't afford to keep your employees working?
I hope that many of our local students are readers of the blog. What a wonderful exposure this situation has given them that could only take place in a democracy. It is also a good example of how much easier the results are achieved when all the facts are brought out in front of everyone and the complete truth is practiced. I believe the proper descriptive word would be TRANSPARENCY.
If the main concern is jobs how many people are previously layed off from this firm and do they have recall rights? What is this firms present employment numbers and their payroll? How many of their present workforce are from Peru? What is Peru's financial investment and what is this firms investment going to be if they do expand? What guarantees does this firm give Peru in terms of longevity and future expansion? There are many, many questions to be asked and answered before the local taxpayer should be committed to invest in this firm. The final reason I am so skeptical is that this entire business proceeding has been poorly handled by people who were considered experts of the city in these matters. TOO MANY QUESTIONS AND NOT ENOUGH ANSWERS WITH THE USUAL MIX OF HASTE MAKES WASTE (for example the light plant).
The Peru plant is one of three locations in the U.S. and six in Asia.
No matter how much money they have or how much they spend on expansion - they will never keep employees on the payroll unless they are making money for them.
I'm not sure how it works, but their Hydrographics process looks interesting. If you are into that sort of thing.
what a mess this city has become, if anything has changed it has changed for the worse, sad sad sad
The lay offs occurred maybe a couple years ago, and quite possibly COULD have been economically driven. With that beeing said, it was within 5-6 months of these lay offs, if that long, that they were taking on help from temp agencies. I don't know if it was the cost of providing benefits, but it was upsetting to see people I know laid off and then people I know hired through a temp agency. I believe that they have been laid off too long to have recall rights.
To 6:05 p.m. - Very well stated. The questions you pose are exactly the questions we only hope our elected officials have already asked on behalf of Peru taxpayers. It is certainly nothing new for an industry to "leverage" its host community for financial assistance with an expansion or improvement. I suspect it all started with a company official writing something like,
Dear Peru, "We are contemplating a sizable expansion to our operations "somewhere in the US" and we would like to offer you an opportunity to convince us our expansion should happen in Peru, IL as opposed to one of our other locations. Of course, similar letters were sent to elected officials in those other plant locations as well.
As always, the devil will be in the detail of the proposed agreement.
Since these situations are typically kept confidential until nearly finalized, local citizens are not allowed to participate in the negotiations until it's basically a "done deal".
I am not convinced one way or the other if this entire business deal has been poorly handled, yet. When we finally find the answers to the questions you just asked as well as a few others.......then we'll know.
The problem is nothing has changed but the letterhead. I don't understand why the administration is blinded or too stubborn to notice.
12:12-You may be talking about different issues. First the City has had a very difficult time allocating the industry causing the problem but when I worked at TEST several years ago I personally billed the industry believed to clog the pump at one time (not certain same situation or industry still billed). Second the City has had problems with the new plant since it has been built and I am curious if this is a design error? The permit NPDES permit was up for renewal recently and I wonder if the IEPA requested modifications to the plant? Also since Plank Road was extended that has to go somewhere...and if I am not mistaken all new lines must be separated meaning separate sanitary and separate storm so this would indicate they would have to go to the West Plant since these lines are not combined. Now this is me just thinking out loud and using "common" sense which we all know is not common. But same people doing the same work...
Which leaves me with another "common sense" question...how can the City pay an engineer firm to design a project than pay the same engineer firm to oversee/manage the design project? Who actually can advise for the City and the residents if that design was the most cost effective option available? NOBODY and that is why sewer rates and sales taxes go up!
Kristy
Post a Comment