City gifts $78,000 to tornado victims

The city council unanimously approved a plan last night to coordinate disbursements from the Harrisburg Disaster Relief Fund with the Operation S.T.O.R.M. taking the lead.

Donors from around the country have contributed around $78,000 to the fund since the Feb. 29 tornado. The council passed a motion for Operation S.T.O.R.M. to make referrals to the city at up to $3,000 per client family.

Case workers from the group have made contact with around 250 families, explained coordinator Jerry King which he thought was about 95 to 98 percent of the total number of families in town affected.

Case workers for the volunteer group write up requests on behalf of families impacted by the tornado. They assign a case number to each family and the leaders of the group meets each Monday to review cases with members only seeing the case number rather than a name. The group prioritizes the need and then tries to match the family with one of 20 or so organizations or "pots of money" that have the ability to offer assistance.

King came to the council Thursday to ask the council what criteria the city wanted to use and how they wanted to coordinate the efforts with the group.

All five council members voiced support for King's group to take the lead. After Commissioner Ron Fearheiley noted that he didn't have "a problem with a number in the three to five thousand range," Commissioner Bart Schiff made the motion to set the amount at $3,000.

King stressed the group neither handles the money nor distributes it to individual families but to vendors hired to do the work or provide the materials. Under the plan approved Thursday the group will provide the city with a summary of the case and a pay order as to where to send the money.

After the vote King asked if the city could arrange for an inventory of the materials donated that have been stored in the Graystone building. Commissioner Ron Crank said the contents of each box had been inventoried, but no one at the meeting knew if there was an overall inventory in place or if they could use the Man-Tra-Con workers as King suggested, to do the inventory.

King noted that they had seven or eight families ready to move into new apartments and some of the household items such as plates and kitchenware that's been donated could be put to use fairly quickly.

At the end of his presentation King said the group is working with Fire Chief Bill Summers on a way to help some of the "tweeners" as he described some of the people impacted by the tornado that for various reasons fall between the guidelines for the various government programs.

Since the group has about 40 volunteers a day coming into the city to rebuild and remodel damaged homes, he's looking at a way to use them to rehabilitate some of the derelict, but still salvageable, homes the city has acquired through various ways. King indicated Summers thought there might be two or three homes in that category that could be fixed up.

The idea, King said, would be to turn some of the renters into homeowners.

The state and federal grants awarded for new homes require paid labor at prevailing wages which prohibits the use of volunteers on those projects.

The council asked city attorney Todd Bittle to work with the group to see what could be done.

Bittle also presented before the council two other items. The first was a resolution to sell the lot at 132 W. College St. which the city had previously acquired in an effort to clean up the property. No one bid on the property when it was placed for bids earlier in the year but recently an offer of $2,500 had been received. The council at the last meeting had authorized Bittle to write up the resolution and it passed unanimously.

The council also approved Bittle's request to annex into the city a piece of property that he and his wife owned.

In the area of contracts and purchases the council approved a change order of $26,000 with the company sandblasting and repainting part of the sewer plant to include work on four gates and four flaps in the levee. The cast iron and brass equipment dates to the levee construction during the 1940s and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has told the city that the work needs to be done.

After opening bids at the last meeting the council approved the purchase of a new Case backhoe from Diamond Equipment for $79,925, which was more than $2,400 cheaper than than the Caterpiller backhoe from Fabick. The backhoe will be used by the street department.

Also, the council approved an engineering agreement on the Granger Street sanitary sewer relocation which had already been started.

Later in the meeting local businessman David Kent spoke out on the problems to residents and businesses along Granger Street. His office as well as 13 apartments and rentals he owns are along the seven-block stretch of Granger that's been closed since last October.

"We've got a lot of issues on that street. This should have been done a long time ago," he said noting that for three days in a row there had not been a single worker "from the construction company out there."

"I've never seen so many incompetent workers before on a construction project," he added.

Council members noted that the company is technically ahead of schedule according to the project timeline that was in place. Therefore, members said the city could do little since it was a federal project with a contracted timeline.

"This project started years ago. We certainly inherited this responsibility. We're trying to deal with this too. I can personally tell you it's a pain," explained Mayor Eric Gregg.

Kent asked the council about the possibility of enforcing the no parking rule in the alley off of Webster Street between South Street and Lincoln Street that provides the only access to his apartments and office.

The council agreed to look into that and urged him to call the city when someone was parking in the alley and blocking access.

In other business the council recognized Harrisburg Police Officer James "Whipper" Johnson as the city's "Citizen of the Month" for allowing the free use of his Whipper's Gym, a 4,500 square foot pole barn for high school athletics and cheerleading training as well as providing a place for police training.

The council named J. Bacher's Fine Jewelry as the city's "Business of the Month." The store raised $15,257 from sales of scrap metals collected and sold for the tornado relief efforts. The store also acts as a distribution center for the tornado relief T-shirts.

The council ended last night's meeting with an executive session to discuss contract negotiations and personnel issues. They took no action afterwards.

Due to the Fourth of July holiday the council plans to cancel its first meeting of the month that would have been July 5. Instead the mayor said he plans to call a special meeting for 4 p.m. next Tuesday, June 26, at City Hall to take care of any necessary business.

The TIF advisory committee that had been set, then cancelled, for last Monday will be rescheduled for Wednesday afternoon, July 18, at City Hall with the time yet to be determined. The council will meet for its regular second meeting of the month the next day on the 19th.

Tom Henderson, executive director of the Illinois Tax Increment Financing Association, is scheduled to participate in both meetings. Gregg said he previously worked with Henderson in the state?s old Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. At the time Henderson oversaw the state?s enterprise zone program.

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