Business park would be part of larger TIF district
Major infrastructure developments that include a $40 million business park could be coming to Peoria as a new taxincrement financing district on Galena Road Industrial Park moved one step closer to fruition.
City officials are hoping to establish the Galena Road Industrial Park TIF in Peoria and spur major industrial and business growth in the area. The district would encompass a chunk of land near Illinois Route 29, spanning roughly from East Gardener Lane and East Koch Drive.
Last Tuesday night, the Peoria City Council moved the TIF another step closer to reality by approving an ordinance that would set a date for a public hearing and establish an interested parties registry.
Final approval of the TIF is expected to come on March 12.
High demand for industrial land spurs TIF creation
Tens of millions of dollars of both public and private money would be spent to establish growth within the TIF, including $35 million of public funds and an estimated $65 million in private investment.
How to generate public funding for the project will be at the discretion of the City Council, but City Manager Patrick Urich said grant money and bonds are possibilities.
Urich said the idea for this TIF is to fill a need for more industrial land in Peoria.
In the area to the west of Natural Fiber Welding, there are ambitions to build a $40 million business park. However, the city must first acquire the 55 acres of land from Illinois American Water. “If we're able to acquire that land, we can expand the available footprint of industrial land throughout the city to provide more opportunities for industrial development,” Urich said.
During a special meeting of the House Ethics and Elections Committee Wednesday in her hometown of Urbana, Ammons said voting by mail has become increasingly popular. But she said the multi-step process of voting by mail is still inefficient because it requires voters to fill out and send in a vote-by-mail application to receive a ballot.
“But when we went back to look at the utilization of the ballots, the number that came back, and the cost associated with mailing a ballot, we realized as we talked to other jurisdictions that you would actually save the money if you simply mailed them the ballot,” she said.
Ammons is the sponsor of House Bill 4198, which would allow county clerks and other local election authorities to make voting by mail the default option in their jurisdiction. It would give them the option of mailing ballots to all registered voters in their jurisdiction, without requiring voters to ask for one. But it would still require local election authorities to offer in-person voting as well for those who prefer to cast their ballot in person.
Currently, eight states and Washington, D.C., operate elections almost entirely by mail. William Cavecche, an election administrator in King County, Washington, which includes the city of Seattle, said that state passed a similar law in 2005 and immediately, twothirds of the counties in the state shifted to vote-by-mail systems.
“Speaking to someone who has run both polling-place elections and voteby-mail elections, I can tell you from experience that vote by mail elections are significantly easier to administer,” he said.
Among other benefits, Cavecche said, in a vote-by-mail election, there is no need to worry about problems that commonly occur at in-person polling places such as running out of ballots, voting machines breaking down or poll workers failing to show up. He also said vote-by-mail elections are more secure because all ballots can be counted in a centralized location. He said ballot counting can also be livestreamed on the internet to provide more public transparency.
Last week's meeting was a subject matter hearing, meaning the committee only heard testimony and did not take action on the bill. But Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, who chairs the panel, said he intends to hold additional hearings during the upcoming legislative session, which begins Tuesday, and it's possible lawmakers could vote on the measure in time to take effect for the 2024 general election in November.