Bruce Rushton
The Illinois Times
It took nearly a year for the honeymoon to end, but Mayor Jim Langfelder this spring finally faced a room full of constituents angry at him.
City council chambers in April bulged with people clutching signs: “Enough is enough: Protect our kids.” The signs were held high as speaker after speaker attacked a scheme to move a planned Salvation Army homeless shelter from Ninth Street, where construction unexpectedly stopped in February, to the bankrupt Gold’s Gym, which closed last fall.
The Salvation Army saga notwithstanding, Langfelder has generally won kudos for communication skills – even aldermen who’ve grumbled about not getting advance word of mayoral initiatives acknowledge that Langfelder returns phone calls.
There have been bumps, notably redevelopment of the North Mansion Block, site of the long-shuttered downtown YWCA. But no bump has proven as big as the Salvation Army imbroglio.
The Springfield Mass Transit District wants to move the downtown bus transfer station from Capitol Avenue to land just north of the county courthouse on Ninth Street, which would displace a Horace Mann parking lot. The solution? Put a new parking lot for the company on the Salvation Army’s adjacent land and push the charity elsewhere.
Sangamon County board chairman Andy Van Meter confirms that he told the mayor last fall that Horace Mann needed a new parking lot. In February, Langfelder quietly asked the Salvation Army to stop work on the homeless shelter.
When the media in March reported that work on the shelter had stopped, forcing the mayor to respond, Langfelder didn’t tell the whole story. Instead of saying that Horace Mann wanted the land for a parking lot, the mayor said the homeless shelter might be too close to adjacent railroad tracks and that a planned, but unfunded, railroad relocation project might somehow force the shelter to move. It seemed an odd reason. After all, the tracks and the building due for conversion to a homeless shelter had been in place long before the Salvation Army paid $3.4 million for the land in 2009. And the charity’s property isn’t on the acquisition list to make room for more train tracks. Van Meter says that the downtown bus transfer center on Capitol Avenue needs to move regardless of railroad relocation that is far from a done deal.
The mayor now says that moving the Salvation Army would create a blank canvas for development on Ninth Street that could eventually include a train station. Just what the homeless shelter would be has been a work in progress. The Ninth Street site was going to house both men and women; after residents near Gold’s Gym objected, Langfelder and the Salvation Army said that the new location would be for families only. The mayor and the charity also have suggested that a gym-turned-shelter could double as a community center, something residents have long wanted, but there have been no concrete plans or funding unveiled.
“This whole process is convoluted,” says Ward 2 Ald. Herman Senor, whose ward includes Gold’s Gym. “I think the residents have been listening to two or three different stories, and they don’t know who to believe.”
Compounding the lack of early full disclosure about Horace Mann’s need for a parking lot was Langfelder’s awkward announcement last month that Gold’s Gym would be converted to a homeless shelter. The press conference in city council chambers on April Fool’s Day was made with short notice to Senor, contrary to custom that dictates aldermen should be told well in advance when something their constituents won’t like is en route. The mayor later apologized for holding the press conference, but the damage has been done.
Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin says the mayor is well-intentioned in finding a new home for Salvation Army, but he appears to be carrying water for SMTD and Sangamon County.
“He wastes a lot of political capital on this and upset, not just Herman Senor, but the other aldermen,” McMenamin said. “The mayor should have gotten some advice from the aldermen. It was both a political mistake and a strategic mistake. … The mayor’s in the arena taking all these shots. SMTD and the county and Van Meter are looking down from the top row while Langfelder’s doing their dirty work for them. That’s what it looks like to me.”
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High marks for CWLP
The mayor wins high marks for his administration of CWLP. Similar to Senor, McMenamin gives Langfelder a B-minus when it comes to his first year as mayor, but when it comes to CWLP, the alderman says the mayor gets an A.
Between refinancing $500 million in debt and renegotiating the utility’s coal contract to lower fuel costs, the mayor has charted a course to financial stability for the utility, which had needed an infusion of cash from the city’s corporate fund to maintain a sketchy bond rating. Under Langfelder, bond rating agencies have improved CWLP’s credit rating, and last fall’s refinancing of debt incurred in building a power generator a decade ago is saving the city as much as $7 million a year in interest.
The refinancing came after Langfelder pushed rate restructuring through the city council with little advance warning to the public. It was a fundamental shift for ratepayers, who previously could count on saving money if they conserved energy. Under the new rate structure, which boosted the flat monthly charge while lowering the per-kilowatt usage charge, large consumers of electricity can save money while small residential customers pay more.
Langfelder got it through the council on an 8-1 vote (Ward 5 Ald. Andrew Proctor voted no, McMenamin voted present) just two weeks after it was publicly announced. Opponents who pointed out that the new plan created a disincentive to conserve power barely had a chance to squeak. The mayor prevailed after meeting with aldermen in ones and twos, prior to the proposal’s public debut, to pitch the plan that helped convince rating agencies that the city was serious about righting CWLP’s listing financial ship.
To some degree, Langfelder benefited from events beyond his control. Before leaving office, his predecessor, Mike Houston, predicted that CWLP was about to turn a corner due to plummeting coal prices and low interest rates that set the stage for refinancing. But McMenamin, who criticized the mayor for fast-tracking the rate restructuring plan, praised Langfelder.
“He got it done,” the alderman says.
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Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 