Joe McMenamin for Ward 7Retired 12 year alderman on Springfield City Council 2011-2023
The State Journal-Register
Tim Landis
***
BURLINGTON COAT FACTORY plans to locate to the center space of the former Kmart building on Wabash Avenue, according to a developer update provided to Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin. Burlington now is located in Town and Country Shopping Center on MacArthur Boulevard. The company is aiming for an opening on Wabash Avenue by the spring of 2018 but still has not responded to questions about the future of the Town and Country store.
***
Letters to the editor
The Illinois Times
Dave Varner
I thought panhandling was illegal in downtown Springfield. Certainly it’s discouraged. But I guess not for aldermen. Or, specifically, the seven aldermen who greedily stepped up to the money trough and accepted huge checks from Brad Schaive, business manager for Laborers Local 477, a couple of weeks ago at Saputo’s restaurant (“Check, please,” by Bruce Rushton, Oct. 5).
What they did was actually worse than panhandling. When you give a homeless person a few bucks, neither of you expect anything in return. You feel good for helping someone, and they are grateful that you did. But not so when labor or any other special interest gives money to a politician. Special interest has an “interest” and expectation of how that politician will vote on
The State Journal-Register
John Reynolds
The Springfield City Council approved a plan Tuesday to spend more than $3 million in maintenance work for its two oldest coal-fired power generators, Dallman 31 and 32. Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder said the work is a high priority.
Dallman 31, built in 1968, is City Water, Light and Power’s oldest functional power plant. Dallman 32 went online in 1972. The city also has two newer power plants, Dallman 33 and Dallman 4.
The Illinois Times
Op-Ed by Joe McMenamin
When Springfield City Council members repeatedly accept large campaign contributions from the same serial donors year after year, they invariably compromise their impartiality and subordinate the general interest to special interests. Last month, several serial givers held a “thank you” event for a quorum of aldermen. The event was exceptional in its boldness, notoriety and legal recklessness.
Background
The Springfield City Council took two important votes this year of great interest to certain developers and union business managers.
In May, aldermen pushed through an ordinance on a 9-1 vote which freed developers from future city council oversight (and thus also freed them from neighborhood association input) on most large-scale development projects.
On Sept. 5, the city council voted 9-1 to extend the County/City Enterprise Zone in the Pawnee area. This ordinance will give Emberclear an estimated $50 million in construction cost tax subsidies to build a planned natural gas power plant that will compete directly with CWLP
The Illinois Times
Letters to the Editor
Bruce Rushton’s Oct. 5 article, “Check please,” which describes how aldermen lined up at Saputo’s to collect their checks from Labors Local 477 boss Brad Schaive, is a primer on how politics works in Springfield today. Absent were aldermen Fulgenzi, McMenamin and DiCenso.
I was going to let this pass, until the next morning, when, while listening to the radio, I heard Brad Schaive referred to alderman McMenamin as “Crazy Joe.” If Mr. Schaive is going to gutter down to Alinsky-ite tactics, then I do hope Alderman McMenamin feels free to respond to “Comrade Brad and his merry band of ethically challenged aldermen” at
Illinois Times
Bruce Rushton
With no election on the horizon, Springfield aldermen gathered last week at Saputo’s restaurant to snack on hors d’oeuvres and collect checks from labor and construction interests.
Seven aldermen attended, according to Brad Schaive, business manager for Laborers Local 477, which handed out at least $4,000. No city business was discussed, and so there was no violation of the state Open Meetings Act, according to aldermen who attended.
“Once I realized there were more than three of us, I made sure that I was never in a conversation with more than two aldermen at a time, and I made sure we weren’t discussing anything that wasn’t pressing city business,” said Ward 8 Ald. Kris Theilen.
Theilen said conversation centered on baseball, Springfield’s future and the need for blue-collar jobs. Ward 10 Ald. Ralph Hanauer said that he expected to see council colleagues at the affair.
“It was a nice little reception,” Hanauer said. “Then they gave us envelopes, and that was pretty nice.”
Ward 4 Ald. John Fulgenzi, Ward 6 Ald. Kristin DiCenso and Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin did not attend, according to Schaive.
The State Journal Register
Tim Landis
City Water, Light & Power at some point will have to retire older coal power plants as maintenance costs rise and markets shift to other forms of energy.
Agreement ended there on Tuesday after the Sierra Club released a study claiming loses at Dallman power station totaling $251.3 million from 2008 to 2016. Residential customers paid an extra $215 for CWLP power in 2016 and commercial customers an added $2,307, according to the report, compared with costs on wholesale power markets.
“Every year since 2008, CWLP would have been better off not to operate Dallman, but would have been better off buying power from the wholesale market,” report author Thomas Vitolo of Synapse Energy & Economics said in a phone press conference on the report.
Vitolo said the figures were based on public financial reports and customer costs estimates were based on the price of CWLP power compared with the cost of purchasing electricity in competitive, wholesale markets.
The cost of maintaining the power plant, including compliance with tougher federal clean-air standards, can no longer be justified, according to the Sierra Club, which released a similar report in 2015. The oldest of four units, Dallman 1, was constructed in 1968 and the newest, Dallman 4, went online in 2009, according to a CWLP history of the station.
Vitolo estimated the cost of shutting down the station at $10 million to $20 million, adding that he was not suggesting the city get out of the power generation business.
The State Journal-Register
Tim Landis
Supporters of MacArthur Boulevard revitalization say they have no illusions about years of engineering studies and millions of state dollars required for major traffic changes on the congested corridor.
Better sidewalks, bike paths and landscaping are goals in the short term.
The major challenge to traffic changes — including widening the boulevard — would be purchasing property required, according to an Illinois Department Transportation study completed in June. Wider pavement also would result in loss of business frontage and parking.
“I think there are ways to do this without buying property,” Michael Higgins, president of the MacArthur Boulevard Association, said after announcing at a monthly meeting Thursday formation of a boulevard committee to look at small-scale projects for boulevard improvements.
Higgins said the group would approach the city Public Works Department about additional sidewalk upgrades and bicycle accommodations. Properly designed, said Higgins, MacArthur Boulevard could serve as a link in the city’s developing network of bike paths. One of the primary goals of boulevard improvement efforts is to make the corridor friendlier to pedestrians and bicyclists.
Illinois Times
Bruce Rushton
Six years ago, Springfield did what many cities do when faced with a deteriorating thoroughfare.
Determined to turn around MacArthur Boulevard, the city commissioned a master plan, then appointed a committee to help make it happen. With trees and hidden parking and spacious sidewalks and stately brick buildings, the drawings were pretty. The dream was backed by the formation of a tax-increment financing district aimed at encouraging developers to make the plan reality.
Things have not developed, at least not yet, as folks had hoped.
So far, Hy-Vee has been the only beneficiary of TIF dollars. The city agreed to give the grocery chain more than $3.5 million to convert a former K-Mart building into a supermarket, with Hy-Vee paying slightly more than $6 million. TIF districts don’t get funded if property values don’t increase, and property values decreased in the MacArthur TIF district by more than $300,000 between 2012, when the TIF district was formed, and 2016. According to the most recent report submitted last year to the state by the city, the TIF fund had accumulated just $16,331 over the years.
Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 