Springfield Post

By Ronald Hamm

At least half the city council decided they would rather merely follow the rules than serve their constituents, and damn the cost of following those rules. This is evident in three issues that came before the city council on Tuesday, Oct. 1.

The first issue was renovations of the elevators in The Hoogland Center. Executive Director of The Hoogland Center, Gus Gordon, has said for months that the elevators at The Hoogland need replacing, and that this will be a major undertaking due to the company that originally put the elevator in going under in 2010. No one doubts this upkeep is necessary. No one doubts the value The Hoogland Center brings to the community. What is a matter of contention is where the funds the city intends to give to The Hoogland are coming from.

Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) are intended to help a community. Ward 2 Alderman Shawn Gregory consistently cites re-finishing roofs and replacing lead pipes as priorities for the use of CDBG funds. The concern with granting CDBG funds to The Hoogland is that it is against the spirit of the CDBG program. One speaker, Beth Langen, stated the problem directly; “We don’t want to be forced to compete with each other.”

To that end, Alderman Gregory proposed an alternate method of funding The Hoogland Center; transferring money from the American Rescue Fund Act (ARFA) intended to demolish Old Town in Ward 9. Ward 9 Alderman, Jim Donelan took incredible offense to this until Alderman Gregory reminded him that it was him and other people in Ward 2 that initially took issue with Old Town and asked for something to be done about it.

Over the course of an hour of insular financial discussion, it was decided that while this may technically be legal, it would be best to have other ideas on hand. Ward 5 Alderwoman Lakisha Purchase proposed taking money from corporate on the basis that if the city fails to find the money to put back into ARFA, it would come out of corporate anyway. Ward 3 Alderman Roy Williams, Jr. proposed taking the money from TIF, something he had proposed before. All three measures were put up for a vote. All three measures were voted down. Ultimately, nothing changed.

The second issue that came before city council was a correction to a union contract. A previous administration had, over the course of negotiating union contracts, accidentally omitted a raise for senior workers. The previous governor remedied this by unilaterally inserting the raise into the contract. A judge had decided that this was not withing the mayor’s powers, and instead ordered the city council to vote on it.

After another hour of debate over the rules, and over whether or not they were even technically allowed to vote on the court-order procedural correction, the simple correction was voted down. But the City Council is not completely heartless. Ward 8 Alderwoman Erin Conley made sure to express her personal gratitude towards the service workers going to areas affected by Hurricane Helene, workers she had just refused to bargain in good faith with.

The third issue to come before city council was a $450 million bond agreement with CWLP. Alderman Williams expressed some hesitation over spending such a large amount of money while being unclear as to what it is being spent on, and asks what it is being spent on. He asks for the bond agreement to be put back into regular discussion so that CWLP can explain how the bonds work and how they will save the city money. He is told that the city has already spent money getting the bonds credited, and that in order to get the promised $20 million in savings this $450 million agreement needs to go through as quickly as possible. Half of the city council agreed, and the measure to pull the bond agreement out was voted down.

Any one of these three issues on their own would indicate skewered priorities in some capacity. But these three things together, on the same day, with the same results, gives us the chance to triangulate what the issue is. The issue keeping our local government in deadlock is not the difficulty of some projects, it is not the needs of our constituents, and it is not even the money being spent. It is mere deference to rules as written. And it is worth asking if mere deference to rules is more important than serving the community.

An edited version of this story was published by the Illinois Eagle.