Mixed bag of nuts

Things got squirrelly this week at City Council — figuratively and literally. The agenda took under half an hour with little discussion and only one dissenting vote (Ward 7’s Judy Yeager, casting her traditional vote against a 3 a.m. liquor license). That left a roomful of partisan politicians with microphones, no script and a lot of time to fill. That’s when things tend to get nutty.

Ward 2’s Frank McNeil used this opportunity to bring up a constituent’s sad tale. Apparently, about a month ago, an electrical line fell on a stop sign at the intersection of South 14th and Cottonwood, sending a power surge through several nearby residences. Many appliances shorted out, some beyond repair. McNeil asked if City Water, Light and Power had any sort of insurance policy that might help reimburse these homeowners. Mayor Tim Davlin had a ready response.

“A squirrel brought down that line,” he said. “Past practice is that nothing has been paid.”

McNeil tried for clarification. “I don’t think a squirrel is an act of God,” he said.

“Are you saying it was a planned act of terrorism?” the mayor deadpanned.

CWLP’s chief utilities engineer, Jay Bartlett, stepped to the podium to declare that yes, squirrels are agents of the divine. “It’s not something CWLP had any power over,” he said. Most power-line breaks are caused by cars crashing into utility poles, but in this instance, a CWLP investigator determined the culprit was a furry-tailed rodent. “And we have the dead body to prove it,” Bartlett said.

An open microphone also gave developer Dave Maulding a chance to remind the council that he’s still trying to build the warehouse project he’s been working on for three years. Shot down by the council when he proposed building it adjacent to Springfield’s middle-class black enclave, Eastview Estates, Maulding was back to pitching the original West Wabash location, with even less luck than he was having on the Eastside.

The property sits just west of the new Kerasotes theater, between Pleasant Park office development and the new 185,000-square-foot Wells Fargo building. The Wells Fargo proposal, presented well after Maulding’s project, sailed through City Council and was quickly approved. Maulding’s proposal hasn’t even made it into a council committee.

“I am being held to the jot and tiddle,” he said, complaining that Wells Fargo, meanwhile, is getting certain requirements waived. Maulding told the council he has kept every document and transcripts of all meetings on this topic.

“I have stacks of paper that show I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do,” he said later. “I’ve got a heckuva lawsuit ready to go.”

Missing from the past few council meetings was everybody’s favorite reporter, Leah Guffey, formerly of WTAX. She recently accepted a job with Clear Channel’s WFMB-AM station, covering the same turf Hartzel Bruno cultivated with his agribusiness news. While Guffey admits she’s having to take a refresher course on pork futures, she takes heart in recalling that Bruno’s radio career started the opposite way, with a well-cultivated expertise in crops but little knowledge of broadcasting. “His first words on the radio were, ‘Is this damn thing on?’ ” Guffey says.

Filling Guffey’s old seat in the press box was the new WTAX reporter, Jennifer O’Neill, who felt right at home during the squirrel discussion. “I just spent the past year working in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The name speaks for itself,” she says.

The next City Council meeting should be more interesting, with tasty ordinances like a hiring freeze on the agenda. Proposed by Ward 1’s Frank Edwards — despite the mayor’s executive order instituting a hiring freeze, with all jobs subject to the scrutiny of the mayor and two of his appointees — the discussion may turn to those lucky pre-freeze hires. This debate could be spiced with details, as two separate parties have recently requested and received lists of city employees hired under the Davlin administration.

One is Roy Williams, political chair of the increasingly influential grassroots activist group Unity for Our Community. Williams filed a Freedom of Information Act request back in August requesting a list of all hires and retirees since the new administration took office. He plans to assemble demographic information on the new hires, hoping to see significant improvement since the top three wards voting for Davlin were the wards with the most minority population – wards 2, 3 and 6. “We expect more from this administration,” Williams says.

The next City Council meeting, however, will be postponed from Tuesday, Nov. 18, to Wednesday, Nov. 19, (right at IT press time — darn!) at the request of Ward 4’s Chuck Redpath. Redpath was not available by phone to explain his request. Council Coordinator Joe Davis had no explanation either. “I have no idea,” he said. “It kind of surprised me.”

The fact that the Democratic Party of Sangamon County and Governor Rod Blagojevich
are holding a fundraiser the night of the 18th at Springfield’s Crowne Plaza
is surely just a coincidence.

This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2003.