PEORIA, Ill. — Peoria City Council voted 7-4 on Tuesday night to direct the city’s legal team and City Manager Patrick Urich to return to the council in future meetings with possible referendum questions for Apr. 6’s ballot regarding a fire and police protection tax.
Council came into the meeting facing three options.
One was to place a binding referendum question on the ballot that, if it passed, would have immediately raised property taxes.
Another was to plan to increase fire and police pension fund taxes as part of the 2022 budget process. This measure would have been carried out with simple majority vote of the council and would not have required public vote.
The third option, which was ultimately chosen, was to place an advisory referendum on the ballot to gauge voters’ feelings about supporting additional property taxes for public safety pensions.
Per advisory from the city manager and legal counsel, the council will be able to craft the question as it sees fit.
“This item was brought forward not because we’re saying we want to raise taxes,” said Mayor Jim Ardis. “The gist of the articles when we discussed this a month ago was, the city council wants to raise taxes, and that’s not the intention.
“The intention of bringing this forward for discussion is, do we want to ask the taxpayers how they feel about that? It’s to get feedback from the public saying, what are your thoughts about the council’s potentially using property taxes and increasing property taxes to balance our budget.”
Illinois law states by 2040, police and fire pensions must be 90% funded.
In 2010, the city contributed $10.2 million to the pensions, $8.5 million of which came from property tax, and the other $1.7 million came from corporate income tax.
By 2020, the city was contributing $24.6 million.
“If we decide to do a referendum, we have an opportunity to educate the public. I know we talk about it all the time, but people don’t realize how much money we spend and how much we’re going to be obligated to spend these coming years,” said At-Large Council Member Beth Jensen.
“So if it’s on the ballot, it’ll give us an opportunity to really educate the public on what’s going on and how there needs to be reform in Springfield. So, I think that aspect of it is a real positive.”
At-Large Council Member John Kelly, who vehemently opposed the tax during September’s initial discussions, continued his vocal dissent.
“If we approve this, we’re going to put a Band-Aid on our problem for another year or two, and then we’re going to have the same problem again, and again, and again,” he said, “because we have a police and fire system, including pensions, I think we all know we cannot afford.
“We need a strategic discussion on what we’re going to do about that, instead of coming up against a problem like we had this year, where we just kept our system the same, but kind of cut it here, cut it there, but we’re still in trouble. And so now we’re going to have another tax to essentially fund pensions, which we can’t afford, okay?
“If the public goes along or doesn’t go along, it doesn’t much matter, because we’re still going to run out of money. We’ve been ignoring it for 30 years, and no one is surprised when we come along say ‘oh gosh, we’re really in trouble.’”
District 2’s Chuck Grayeb was also one of the four “no” votes.
“We collect about 12 cents of each property tax dollar. The lion’s share of the property taxes goes to our largest school district,” he said.
“I’ve been a firm advocate of public safety budgets, robustly funding police and fire, and make no apologies about it, from the very first day I walked into this city council chamber.
“And if Chuck Grayeb would vote no on it, then there must be something wrong with it, because I have the notion, and I do not believe it is erroneous, our first responsibility is to fund that.”
Besides Kelly and Grayeb, District 4’s Jim Montelongo and Council Member At-Large Rita Ali dissented.
Council has until Jan. 19 to agree on a question to place on the April ballot.
