PEORIA, Ill. — After a heated back-and-forth Tuesday night that, unofficially, lasted one hour, 48 minutes, Peoria City Council voted not to approve a recommended restructuring to its fiscal year 2021 budget.
The 6-5 “no” vote came almost exactly a month before City Manager Patrick Urich hoped to have a 2021 budget approved.
The original recommendation put forth by Urich would have reduced 24 positions within the Peoria Fire Department and the decommissioning of three fire engines, and would have issued $10 million in working cash bonds.
That was then amended by Councilman Sid Ruckriegel to decommission two engines and, thus, reduce fewer positions.
Fire Chief Anthony Ardis said the two machines that would have been decommissioned would have been engine four on Jefferson and engine 20 on Wilhelm.
Once the new station 4 on S. Western Ave. were fully constructed, engine 4 would have been reintroduced, truck 4 from station 8 on Hurlburt would have moved to the new station, and engine 2 from station 8 would have been decommissioned.
This would have meant station 8 would have been without any trucks, which would have likely meant the station would have been completely shut down.
District 1 Councilwoman Denise Moore raised the first objection.
“Both station 4 and 8 are located on the southside of Peoria. And the southside of Peoria is the oldest part of our city,” she said.
“As the oldest part of our city, we have structures that are, quite honestly, tinderboxes sometimes. Structures that oftentimes are not equipped with smoke detectors, definitely not sprinkler systems, and many don’t have fire extinguishers in the home.
“The timing upon which this would occur, over the winter, is the worst time of all because of fires, because of heating. Unfortunately, people still heat their houses with their ovens on, [and] I grew up on the southside of Chicago, and I know what that looks like when you turn your oven on and you open the door to heat the apartment, and that’s not safe.”
Moore said she didn’t have another suggestion where cuts could be made, but said there was no way the southside could absorb the impact of losing station 8.
District 2 Councilman Chuck Grayeb was even more verbose in his opposition.
“I’m not going to support any of this, because every citizen in the city of Peoria, I want to treat just as if they’re a family member, and I would never do anything that would jeopardize the lives of my family, nor the lives of our employees,” he said.
Grayeb proposed two “geographically positioned” town hall meetings to be held after Labor Day to show constituents pertinent data and gather feedback from them before taking a final vote.
This proposal was shot down.
At-Large Councilman Zach Oyler was one of the “yes” votes.
“I was elected to make tough decisions and do my job, and if I don’t get reelected, so be it,” he said.
“We have been talking about this for six months, we’re nine months into the year, and we can’t figure out how to fix this budget. I said months ago the money wasn’t going to come to bail us out of this mess, and guess what, the money didn’t come.
“Something has to be done, and it’s time for this group to grow up and stop doing it. Stop sitting in your chair and just waiting for the problem to fix itself.”
Fellow at-large member John Kelly pleaded his case in the same vein as Oyler.
“If anyone disagrees with me, right, you want to kill people, right? You don’t care about public safety, right?” he quipped.
“That’s an insult to people on this body. We’ve got a real crisis, we have to face it, it’s not just for now.
“By golly, if Santa Claus shows up and sprinkles us with money, fine. But I don’t think it’s going to happen, so let’s decide.”
Mayor Jim Ardis added his two cents, and they weren’t ones of pleasure.
“Who cares about the fact we’re bleeding profusely? We know what needs to be done, but not if that fire truck is in my neighborhood, regardless if my district already has two or three fire stations,” he said.
“There’s 11 people in the whole city who say ‘I have what it takes to sit up there and make a decision,’ and I have never served on a council that was less willing to do that.
“And it pains me to say that.”
Aside from Ardis, Ruckriegel, Oyler, and Kelly, District 3 Council Member Tim Riggenbach also voted to approve the restructure.
Council Members Grayeb, Moore, District 4’s Jim Montelongo, District 5’s Denis Cyr, and At-Large members Rita Ali and Beth Jensen ultimately tipped the scales to deny passage.
