Thursday, September 17, 2015
New Look on City Web Site and Council Videos
I see that the City Council videos are now being hosted on You Tube which is giving a much better sound to them. Not sure I like all the pictures on the city site so I clicked on the you tube icon and watching them there gives me a little more control of the video without distraction. Interesting that the last mtg has not been posted and the next mtg is this coming Monday.
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35 comments:
Not sure where to submit this but whats with the City of Peru white Ford pickup truck blazing down I80 this morning at 7:15 AM? 80 mph minimum. Heading east. Where the heck is this person going and why so fast? City emblem on the side of the truck. Not a good representation for safety on the highway.
so they finally figured out that hosting the video on the local servers costs to much? About time.
What was a city truck doing in that location in the first place? We use too many city vehicles for personal use and at our cost. Too many gas guzzling SUV's and trucks to run around town in both during business hours and off hours. That's our tax dollar. It's the same with the ambulances. Why do two of them have to follow each other to the bank, the grocery store, target, out to eat? Is it their job to navigate the city on a daily basis like the police do? It sure appears to be that way. Another waste of tax dollars.
8:53 was it a fire department pickup truck? I can't say I've ever seen a City of Peru white pickup truck except for the one at the fire department.
Yes 80 MPH is to fast but it is right in range of the average speed for Interstate 80. The majority don't pay attention to MPH as they do in staying within the flow of traffic on interstates. 70 MPH is supposed to be top speed and 45 minimum. If that truck was going anything less than 70 most bloggers on this blog would be complaining that the driver was loafing getting to the job.
2:05, it was a white ford with the yellow City of Peru logo on the door. I have seen the FD one and it was for sure not that one.
I saw one driving one block south of 4th Street in that parking lot behind the old First National Bank building. White SUV or maybe a mini-van. City of Peru Logo on the passenger door and what appeared to be a K-9 Unit warning sign on the cargo area door. Thought it strange because it was not rigged up as a police vehicle. So - maybe it was not a K-9 warning on the back, but it was some kind of warning. But, it was moving so fast out of the parking lot that I was not really able to read it. It just kind of zipped around the corner like the driver had to be somewhere in a hurry. This was on Tuesday around 2:00 PM
The majority of our pick up trucks are white!!!
Not true they are all white. Orange, tan, teal blue all spin around the city with the logo on the doors.
wow.....a white truck with Peru plates? Conspiracy in the making.
Are you sure it is a pick up and not a dump truck decorated with white sea weed from the Hennepin marsh lands. Was the driver dressed in a yellow tee shirt? At that super sonic speed how could you read the logo? Possibly it was Peru's battery powered vehicle being towed to a parade? If decorated you may have been looking at Peru's new float. This wasn't the often misused city elecric dept. pick up heading towards a retirement ranch in Iowa?
I got a notice for the Peru BB Gun Club with my power bill the other day. It is great that the city is doing that. I think they need to make a follow on program for the older kids using 22 rifles and pistols. We have a practice range that only the police use - the "22 Club" could use that in the summer time.
Go back to sleep 7:01 AM. I seriously doubt that there are any parents in Peru that own a gun. And I'm certain that there are no parents in Peru that would allow their children to be taught how to use a deadly weapon. The parents in Peru are higher class than that. We are not a bunch of hillbillies. Guns are dangerous. They kill thousands of children every day and we don't need them in Peru!
Higher class? You would be surprised how many people own guns in Peru. And you would be surprised how many have a license to carry one. That guy behind you in the grocery store may have a .38 Special tucked in his pocket. That girl in front of you in the checkout line might have a .380 semi-auto pistol in her purse.
Forget about the gun clubs and who has or has not guns in Peru. We need to stop the proliferation of stop signs in Peru. That ridiculous 4-way stop sign in from of Northview School which only comes into play 15 minutes a day, five days a week and not needed three months during the summer. Someone pushed the panic button.
I read through all the city ordinances. Peru does not allow everyday citizens to carry a gun! Period, end of story. There is no "license to carry a gun" in the City of Peru. Anyone who does should go to jail.
3:13 PM
Now try reading the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Peru cannot regulate anything to do with guns. The State of Illinois issues carry licenses and with that law, any new "home rule exemptions" related to firearms have been prohibited.
11:34am you are clueless when it comes to weapons in town. A very large number own rifles and shotguns and many own hand guns. Guns do not kill thousands of children every day.....not even close. You are so naive and uninformed.
3:13pm as was expressed already, numerous citizens carry a concealed weapon in Peru on a daily basis. They are all around you and you never even noticed. I guess you'll become aware the day one of them saves lives.......
There is no mention of the task force recommendation about a city administrator on tonight's city council agenda. Is it safe to assume that it is a dead issue and no city administrator will be appointed?
I think they are leaving that up to the new Mayor. It should not be long now before Boss Harl is appointed to the legislature.
9:41 am, I so hope that is true!
clueless is such a harsh word. Maybe ignorant of the law would be a better thing to say.
I see another article in the paper with Peru bragging about how they can get other cities and the citizens of other cities to pay their bills. This time with Hotel Motel Tax. Peru does nothing to generate tourism and charges 5% a night for the honor of staying in a Peru motel. Granted - almost everyone staying in Peru is just passing through. If that is not bad enough, they created a TIF district to pay for the hotels - removing the only revenue source for a school district.
Anyway, the article makes it sound like the Peru council and mayor are financial geniuses for raising the hotel motel tax and giving land developers kickbacks through a questionable TIF. What's next? A million bucks to someone to open a car dealership. Oh wait, they tried that with a movie theater and made the mistake of letting the people know.
12:33
Your post is far from accurate.
TIF does not take away from school and the hotels in Peru are not in the TIF area.
School districts are not determined by city boundary lines. Most of Peru development goes into the tax area of the Dimmick school district. They have done very well with Peru taxpayers holding the cost of roads and expansion. If your looking for real news one can write about how the Dimmick school has done well by the backs of the Peru taxpayer. The last big tourism event Peru hosted was the little league baseball tournament and concerts. We all know the positive blogs the concert created!
Peru has a few very clever politicians that were able to create the hotel and retail area and have everybody else paying those tax revenues.
Apparently you don't have a long term memory or think that nobody else does. The new Holiday Inn Express is part of a TIF district that was created AFTER the motel was built and opened for business. This TIF is inside the geographic boundaries of the Dimick School District. The improvements on that property and a number of others resulted in a large increase in the tax base, part of which should have gone to the school. Instead, most of it goes to the developer for "taking a chance and building a hotel there." Some of it goes to other City of Peru infrastructure projects. I'm pretty sure the lawsuit has not been adjudicated yet.
2:13 you have a lot of facts wrong. TIF money comes from ALL taxing districts within the boundary of that parcels in the TIF. Schools, county, etc. This is why school districts get involed with TIFs as they should. You are correct in that the Holiday Inn Express is not in the Peru school district but it is in LP and Dimmick.
Local TIF's are almost all skirting the law. Peru's TIFs give cash payments to the developer. The money is often not fed back in to cover the cost of infrastructure - the history if TIF's in Peru is a bit obtuse. Almost all for the benefit of one developer. Almost all approved after a development has been planned and sometimes implemented.
Peru has a fraction of the TIFs of LaSalle or Spring Valley. A fraction.
I"m pretty sure that the proposed TIF, where the new Holiday Inn is located, is still in court and costing Peru tax payers lawyer costs.
Maybe Peru is using hotel motel tax to pay the TIF lawyer. Its called "creative financing."
all that TIF money is still tied up in a legal battle between Peru and the Dimmick School. "J" wants that money bad.
The way Peru uses TIF's is wrong. Peru uses the increased tax revenue as a payment to the developer. When Tax Increment Financing was invented decades ago, the intent was to use increase in property tax to pay for infrastructure improvements. As they are used by Peru, they pay the costs for the developer. Sort of like that attempted SCAM with the movie theater - except it is well hidden. The money is used to remove the developers risk.
This is how it works. The developer buys a distressed property at a very low price. He then works with another entity within his organization to make retail space, a hotel, etc. While this is being done, he convinces a politician to create a TIF zone. Since he is also on friendly terms with the tax assessor, he knows with a fair degree of certainty how much the property tax will increase. Now is the interesting part. The developer gets the politician to use the TIF money as a backdoor method of compensation for "taking the risk." The developer sells the improved property to a business (sometimes another branch of his own conglomerate) at a hearty profit. He then continues to get paid for the duration of the TIF - 5, 10, 20 years. In all actuality, the developer has very little downside exposure and is making huge profits paid for by the tax payers - and they rarely know it. Ask five people in Peru what a TIF is and four of them will tell you it is a new summer cocktail.
Another convenient SCAM that developers use is the sales tax rebate program. This is where they convince a politician to give them the local portion of sales tax in exchange for developing a shopping center. This was used a few times in Peru. The new wally world falls into this category. That was the funny one. Our politicians agreed to the rebate. Then the old wally world moved to the new location. Still have a few million dollars left to pay off on that deal.
We need smart people that will read through these things before voting "Aye". Unfortunately, we have been stuck with a bunch of lemmings for damn near 75 years. Not a one of them smart enough to pour pee out of a boot with instructions written on the heel. All of them being led down the garden path by one or two connected individuals.
To 12:19 PM, By George, I think you've got it! I couldn't have described it any better. Cheers!
TIF..........Tequila, Ice, Fireball
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