(energetic music) - Hello, I'm H. Wayne Wilson, and welcome to At Issue.

It is a special one hour At Issue, for a Town of Normal mayoral forum, where we will hear from challenger Marc Tiritilli, and incumbent mayor, Chris Koos, who will address questions that I present to them over the next one-hour period.

The answers will not be timed, so that will allow the candidates to fully address the issues, and I will allow rebuttal time after both have responded to one topic, at my discretion.

We also have 90 seconds at the end of the program for closing statements by each of the candidates, and I want to thank WGLT Radio in Normal for assistance in preparation for this program.

Because he is the challenger, Marc Tiritilli will have the initial response to the first question, and that question is: the McLean County Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee endorsed three candidates for the Council in Normal, but neither one of you.

How would you create a pro-business environment?

- So, creating a pro-business environment means having a level playing field where everybody can participate, and that's not what we've had under Mr. Koos's term.

There's some moves now, with the Economic Development Council, to bring in sort of a menu of predetermined incentives, and I like that idea.

For too long, we've had packages where we go after a particular developer or a particular business.

We offer them all kinds of incentive packages, and I don't think we have enough self-respect for the resources that we have inherent in Normal.

We have interstates going in five directions, we have an airport, a rail line, we've got world-class talent in two universities.

So there are naturally a lot of businesses that want to come here, and so, instead of focusing on one or two particular players, I'd say, let's have incentives that everybody can participate in, that are determined in advance.

If you're going to bring this many jobs, if you're going to invest this much capital, we have these incentives already to go, and that will allow more people to come in than just one-offs that we've been doing in the past.

So that'll level the playing field, and on top of that, it improves the pipeline for how these deals get made.

They don't have to wait on Council approval and a secondary board approval from another taxing body.

So I think that's the way forward, and most importantly, we need to have the Economic Development Council working these deals, not the town, because we wind up in competition with Bloomington too often.

We need someone outside to say, "This is what's best for our community."

- The same question to Chris Koos.

What will you do to create a pro-business climate in Normal?

- Well, H., I think I've done that over the years.

Since I've been mayor, there's been over a billion dollars of private investment in my community.

Some of that has been done with incentives, and some has been done in a natural way.

I think there's a misconception that we choose businesses.

That's not true; businesses choose us, and some of these larger projects went through a process where multiple people came and asked for incentives, and we did, at that point, choose what we thought was the best business to move forward with that project.

I strongly, strongly believe that a vibrant business community and public-private partnerships between the community and the private sector are crucial in today's world to have a thriving economy, a thriving local economy.

Working with the Economic Development Council, I agree, is important, and this has been an issue for a number of years, to get this consolidated, what I would call a baseline consolidated incentive package where, if you meet criteria A, B and C, this is what you're going to get.

It streamlines the process, so I agree with that.

- A follow up from Marc Tiritilli?

- Sure, so, in terms of the billion dollars of investment, I think he's hinging most of that on Rivian, and I'm not sure they've fully invested that much money yet in the community, but we're talking, usually, in terms of Uptown.

However, I disagree with his statement that the businesses are choosing Normal.

You chose Portillo's, you went after them in particular.

We've been holding out for one Normal, 1 Uptown Circle.

We still haven't filled that space after three years because you want a high end restaurant in there, even though it's zoned for many other things.

And there's example after example, where we've gone after a particular developer, a particular business, so I totally disagree with that statement, and the result of all of that is, that we have division in the communities.

So Rivian is great, they're going to be here no matter who wins, okay?

But how do you bring a group like Rivian in, and we wind up having the community divided, because the incentive package is either too lucrative or taking money from the schools?

To me, that's a failure in leadership, where a lot of these deals wind up dividing the community, when they should be bringing us together.

And it's because we're excluding the voices of people who say, "Hey, not so much on the incentives, "or preserve the parking, or preserve the mural, "and those things have not been listened to."

- To Chris Koos.

- A factual misstatement.

We did not choose Portillo's, Portillo's chose Normal.

Let's just be very clear on that.

And to keep it brief here, I'm not referring to Rivian for the billion dollars of investment.

There's been a lot of other major investments in the community, and frankly, Mr. Tiritilli, you're the only one who talks about division in the community.

You're the divider.

- I, (laughing) I find that a shocking statement, especially given the ruling that we just had on public comment.

Someone comes up to try and talk about an issue, you don't want it talked about, and you wind up shutting it down.

And that's what happened in September of 2019.

That's what the attorney general ruled on, and they said you were wrong.

- You both mentioned incentives, and that leads us to the second question.

And, Chris Koos, you will respond first.

What is your philosophy on offering incentives to attract business, and please, in your answer address the $1 million tax credits and five-year property tax abatement offered to Rivian, and the issue of Unit 5 school taxes.

- So, the incentives that we offer businesses are designed to help them meet a threshold that we think is important, and they think is important for the project.

So when Rivian came to us, for example, that they were a startup company and they needed incentives, the state was not in a position, under the Rauner administration, to do much for them.

So we felt like we had to do something, because we believed in the project.

In terms of what we established for incentives, our move to incent them a million dollars was a pretty bold move for a municipality of our size, but we believed in what they were doing, and we had confidence that they were going to deliver.

Also, all these incentives were tied to milestones.

They had to have a certain number of jobs by a certain period of time, they had to have invested X amount of dollars by a certain period of time.

So it wasn't just a gift, there were deliverables that they had to give us to earn those incentives, and they actually missed one year.

So they ended up paying about $400,000 of property taxes to the different taxing bodies, because they missed the end of the five-year period, because their investment portfolio was so much larger than they had expected, they forgave the million dollar grant, because that's the kind of company they are.

They just gave $300,000 to Unified School District for COVID testing.

They were dealing with separate units of government, so the airport authority, Bloomington and Normal Water Reclamation District, Unified Schools, all separate governmental entities, so each of those entities had to make the choice to incent Rivian.

- Mr. Tiritilli.

- So that statement, that the state of Illinois was not in a position to do anything is completely wrong.

The state offered Rivian a package worth 49 and a half million dollars, compared to the few million that we were having at the town level.

So, they had a huge incentive to come here already, and that was my point four years ago, is that we have so much to offer in the plant itself.

The state is giving them 49 and a half million dollars in incentives; they're only paying $16 million for the entire facility.

It comes with all of the contents, forklifts, robots, equipment that they get to sell off.

They struck the Volkswagen deal, storing the places out there, or the cars out there.

So they were basically paid to take over that factory.

My issue about Rivian was the fact that we were using the school district's money in this deal, which to me, was unconscionable.

They didn't need to take any kind of risk, and it was admittedly a very big risk.

Chris, you have even admitted to me that, you've said, "This was a big risk."

So, the issue with the Unit 5 is, they're in for about $400,000 a year, and they've had to borrow twice since this deal.

So Rivian gave a million back to the town, but they didn't give the money back to Unit 5.

I even emailed R.J. over a year ago, and said, "Hey, you guys came in, "saying you had all the money you needed, "and now you've raised 7 billion beyond that.

"Why are you still taking money from the schools?

"That doesn't look good."

He said, "You know I agree with you, we're working on that."

But then they still took the property tax money from Unit 5, so if that much money, $400,000 a year was going to make or break this deal, I would have rather seen the town put that money in directly, but the money for our children's education should never have been on the table, and that was my opposition to this deal.

- And?

- I think you'll have to admit that it was a school board that disagreed with you on that.

- They were not happy about it.

Yes, they voted for it, but-- - They voted unanimously for it.

How would you not be happy for a vote that is unanimous?

- I talked to the board members directly.

They said they felt pressured.

They were not happy about the decision, and even in a subsequent meeting that Mark Peterson organized with the school board, coming to the Council, he said, "I know you guys were upset about this.

"We're trying to form a committee "where we can move together in the future."

And that lasted a few months, and then it petered out.

So they did do it, but they did not enjoy the process.

- So going back to some issues, the State of Illinois was cash strapped, and I offered tax credits, that's all they could offer.

There was no incentive.

When Mitsubishi first came to the community and started putting together their deal in the late 1970s, the state offered them $94 million, tax credits and cash to build that plant.

And so you go 40 years ahead, and all the state can do is offer $49 million of tax credits.

- Our next question goes to Mr. Tiritilli first, and you mentioned the fact that, you talked about Uptown, so this question refers to Uptown, and the TIF, and it was extended when Uptown 2.0 was created.

Has the town's investment in Uptown been beneficial?

- There have been benefits from it, there's no question about that.

It looks fantastic.

The initial task that was undertaken was the repair of the water and sewer lines.

That was about eight to $10 million, roughly, of the hundred million dollars that was eventually borrowed.

So, there have been benefits from Uptown, but the downside is, that Unit 5 has been struggling because they don't get the tax money.

The TIF extension was not tied to Uptown 2.0 necessarily, so that was a separate issue, but it was interesting that when Unit 5 had to go and take out a loan a few years ago, for $16 million just for operations, not even for capital investment, it was the amount of money that had been diverted over the life of the TIF up to that point.

And now they've had to borrow again, even bigger, so the TIF district has not been beneficial for Unit 5.

There are things in Uptown that haven't played out as well as we would have liked, and overall, we've put a lot of money in, we still have a lot of money to go, we still have 82 million in debt on top of that.

With interest, we're going to wind up paying another 117 million beyond what we've already paid so far.

- Mr. Koos.

- Ask the question again, please.

- The question is, has the investment by the community into Uptown been beneficial?

- I would say so, on a number of fronts.

I think one is, there was a $172 million of private development as a result of our investment, again, a public-private partnership, and that was what it was always intended to be.

Now that that TIF is coming to a closure in 2026, and we made an arrangement, by ordinance, with the other taxing bodies that we would extend the TIF for property undeveloped, and that all the property that had been developed, those dollars would then flow into the school system, into the airport, whoever the taxing bodies are, in that scenario.

So the other thing is, it's become a very, very vibrant community space, and I think you can't put too much value, or, there's so much value in that, in the community, to have that vital active community space that wasn't there.

And of course, in a TIF district that functions, and ours has won awards for the way it functions, none of this development would have happened had we not incented with TIF.

It would not have happened.

- Mr. Tiritilli.

- I'll start with that last statement.

There's really no proof of that, because a lot of these projects have involved four or five, $6 million of an incentive package on behalf of the town, and we're currently paying around $7 million a year in principal and interest, so, that could have been saved up and paid cash up front.

It's just, it wouldn't have happened necessarily on that timeline, but I disagree with the statement that development would not have occurred.

I think it definitely would have, and that's the point that I struggle with here, is that yes, there's value to what we have in Uptown, and it's still going to be here, and that's great.

It's the question of the price tag and how much are we willing to pay an interest for it.

So, half of the bonds that we still have are interest-only right now, and we had an opportunity to refinance one of them.

There was a $1.8 million bond.

We had enough money in the reserves, and we had a $6 million surplus, and they chose to refinance it.

We're still going to pay $2 million in interest on a $1.8 million borrowing.

To me, that's crazy when you had a chance to pay it off.

You could have saved the $2 million in interest.

You could have paid yourself back with the interest payments you were making, and had more in the capital reserves, long before the bond would have even matured in 2038.

So Uptown is here.

It's enjoyable, we should enjoy it, but we can find better ways going forward, in terms of how we're going to pay for it.

- A response?

- That's short term financial thinking, the way you presented that, because what you presented is just one piece of a cash management program that we have, to manage our debt.

So let's take a look at our debt.

Is it a manageable amount of money or not?

If your household is buying a house, the recommendation is that you should not exceed 30% of your income on a piece of property like that.

If you take a look at our debt management plan, compared to our annual revenues, our debt is 5% of our total revenue.

We can easily afford this.

Now there are bonds that are interest-only going in the short term, because bonds are different than a mortgage.

When you bond something, you have to have a guarantee to the person buying that bond that there will be a certain amount of revenue.

It gets very complicated.

I'm not going to get into that here, but we have a very, very solid cash management system for retiring our debt, and the rating agencies acknowledge it.

We have AAA ratings from the bonding agencies.

They think we're in 4% of the municipalities in the United States in terms of having the highest bond rating possible.

- So, municipal investment is not the same as a mortgage-- (laughing) - [Chris] Yup.

- It's not.

- I agree.

- So that analogy doesn't apply, but there was an opportunity to pay off that bond.

Okay, I understand your argument about the bond holders, but that could have been done.

And if we look at the AAA credit rating, that's really a statement about whether or not you have cashflow tied to the bond.

Are the bond holders going to get repaid?

That's all that that rating stands for.

It's not a policy judgment.

It doesn't say that this was a good investment or this was a good thing to do, what it says is, that the town has unlimited ability to raise taxes, and that they have set up taxes so that we could funnel money to pay these bonds on a regular basis.

That's what that rating says.

But more importantly, you look at the cash management structure, and the numbers are at 10%, according to the financial trends report, and there were some years that you were over that benchmark.

The thing is, we spend more in interest every year than we do on our roads, and so that's my point.

We have the debt, we have Uptown, but we've got to look at ways to improve our flow of money so that our priorities are more in balance.

To me, that's crazy that we're this far out of whack, - That's an apple and oranges comparison.

We won't go any further than that on that one.

Again, our cash management system is very solid.

Bonding agencies do not look at your ability to pay the debt, that is one thing they look at.

They also look at your liquidity.

They also look at the governance system, and the stability in the government system, governance system in the community.

It's all in the bond reports.

They're looking for a healthy community that yes, will pay back the debt, but they're looking for other things than just their ability to raise taxes.

They're looking at your cash management, your fiscal policies, the stability of your local government, all these things come into play on that.

- It doesn't say that it was necessarily a good thing to borrow money for.

- And we'll move on to the next question, and that concerns Portillo's, because it was brought up earlier, and Mr. Koos, you will respond first.

Normal gave Portillo's $1.8 million in tax rebates in December of 2016.

Has that benefited town coffers and other businesses?

- First off, the town gave Portillo's no money.

The town gave a developer who assembled the property the money, and we did that because it was an underperforming hotel that was on the market, that was generating about 35, $40,000 worth of taxes.

And Portillo's, by their pro formas, and our study on that, could generate up to $400,000 a year in taxes on that property.

So the money that we invested in that, we had over a seven-year period for a payback before we started seeing a net gain on that.

Portillo's exceeded their expectations and paid that back in four years.

- Mr. Tiritilli.

- So he is right, the money went to the developer.

However, the hotel had just been renovated to the tune of over a million dollars, and there were other lots further up the street that they could have developed on, without having to pay to tear down the hotel.

That was the sticking point is, the developer said, "Well, if we have to tear down the hotel, 'now it's going to cost too much, we need an incentive."

So, if we'd put them on an open lot, that wouldn't have been an issue.

As far as whether or not we recouped the benefits, so, $1.8 million was a sales tax rebate, okay?

So we're talking a percentage of the dollar.

You'd have to sell over $40 million worth of Portillo's to generate the 1.8 million to pay it back.

And the question is, have we generated $44 million in new dining experiences?

And I think the answer to that is clearly, no.

There's a lot of people eating at Portillo's, but not necessarily everybody's all of a sudden going out, because they wouldn't have gone out before.

- Yeah, there's some truth in that statement, but honestly, Portillo's is more of a regional draw, and bringing people off the highway.

So there is a significant amount of new business that's coming out of that operation.

Also talking to the businesses, the eateries around Portillo's, they ended up doing better business because there was increased traffic in the area.

- Yeah, that's true, 'cause Portillo's was so busy, they get the overflow, but again, what about the dining experience in Bloomington-Normal as a whole, have we generated more people dining out?

And I don't think we can justify that.

And so again, it's the way this happened, Champaign, just down the street, got one sooner than us with no incentives, and the community was divided over this deal, even though we all wanted Portillo's to come here.

It's these packages that wind up causing problems.

- The next question will allow Mr. Tiritilli to respond first, and you were talking before about debt.

Let's get into more specifics.

Normal has about $81 million in general obligation debt.

Is that an appropriate amount, and have funded projects been of value?

- I think it's more than I'm personally comfortable with.

I'm not opposed to debt in general.

So for example, when we had an infrastructure need, and the cash wasn't available, that's something definitely that's worth doing, but my approach would be to pay that back.

Have we gotten value from those things?

Well, Uptown looks great, there's no question about that.

It's a question of how much do you buy on credit?

Okay, I could have a large 85 inch screen, big screen TVs in my house, and put a pool in the backyard, and it would look great and I would have value from it, but is it the right policy, is it the right thing to do?

We're a fairly small community.

We have 55,000 residents and about 20,000 of them are ISU students, and so a lot of this burden is perched on the 35,000 residents who live there kind of lifelong.

And it's a tough nut to crack, and property taxes have gone up as a result of these things, and to me, the underlying question is, it's not necessarily is it good or bad, but have we got the basics nailed down?

And so, if we look outside Uptown, and we look at our roads and we look at our water mains, they are not in good condition, and they have suffered neglect, and it's because, I think, we've been too focused on Uptown.

So it's not whether it's good or bad, it's in the details of how we do it, and it's are we taking care of the basics?

And I think the answer on both of those is no.

- [H. Wayne] Mr. Koos.

- Again ask, can you repeat the question?

- I'm sorry, the question is, that the town of Normal has about $81 million in general obligation debt.

Has that investment been of value to the town?

- Thank you, and yes, I think it's been of huge value to the town, and you used the operative word on that.

It was an investment in the community, and sometimes you have to make an investment.

As a business person, when I moved my store to its current location, I had to borrow a significant amount of money.

Is there risk in borrowing?

Sure, of course there is.

You've got to measure the risk, and what are the rewards that you're going to get at the end of that?

You can't do that out of cashflow.

We did a lot of projects prior to Uptown, as pay-as-you-go, but we realized what the vision for Uptown was could not be done on a pay-as-you-go basis, it would not have happened.

Our rule of thumb is that our debt load should not be more than 10% of our annual revenues, and I think it popped to about 10.1% one year, but it's always been below that number.

So, we understand what our obligations are, and our ability to manage our debt.

We understand that very clearly.

And so, yes, it was a good investment.

- The next question will be first responded to by Mr. Koos, and we've talked about the TIF districts, Tax Increment Financing districts.

Regarding those districts, and the town of Normal has several, the Main and I-55, the Warehouse, et cetera.

Have they been cost-effective development tools?

- To be really honest, for the most part, yes.

There is one that was troublesome, I think.

It took a long time to develop.

That would be the hotel property, and frankly, the TIF that goes around 1 Normal Plaza, I am not a fan of, it's really never generated anything, but the other projects are wildly successful.

They've done very, very well.

So, they brought a lot of investment into our community and I think that's important.

- And the same question to Mr. Tiritilli, the value of the TIF districts?

- Well, what you have to look at, from my perspective, is how they've they've hurt Unit 5, our school district.

They have diverted money away from them.

The TIF districts have frozen the value of the properties in question, and they're going to stay that way well into the 2030s, in some cases.

TIF districts have proven to be problematic in a lot of areas; they originated in California and California has recently said, "No more TIF districts."

They've just seen the impact that they have on the local taxing bodies.

There's other ways forward.

I mean, you can have deals that are structured with property tax incentives that aren't so iron clad, as for 23 years you get exactly what you were getting before.

And nobody has a crystal ball, the idea of a TIF district saying, "Nothing is ever going to happen for the next 23 years."

And even the natural increase in EAV, You're not allowed to get that.

There's ways to structure these deals that offer better incentive packages.

So, while there has been a value to Uptown, I think the TIF districts have been harmful to our school district, and I do not want to see any more TIF districts implemented.

- So I'll go back to the issue.

Again, there are five TIF districts, I think, in Normal right now.

A separate unit of government, Unit 5, voted for every one of those TIF districts.

So, it wasn't a choice we were making to impact Unit 5.

Unit 5 agreed with the choices, and the reason they agreed with the choices is because they had the same long-term outlook that we did, that they realized, while in the short term they were staying the same, when that TIF district expired, they're going to have a lot of cash coming that would not have come, and I know you and I disagree on that, but these projects would not have happened without TIF.

- That, that was the promise, but then we went back to Unit 5 with the extension, kind of breaking that promise, saying, "You know what, we're going to move the goalposts.

"We told you 2026, but we're going to extend that "out another 12 years on some of these properties."

And I know you're going to say that they voted for it.

- No I'm not.

- But again, it was a special session, and there was a lot of pressure in that room.

- What I'm going to say is, by agreement with Unit 5 and the other taxing bodies, any property within that TIF district, Uptown TIF district, that had been completed, those dollars, in 2026, would go to the school district.

The only money we would keep for TIF purposes, is on four properties that are completely undeveloped.

They're brownfield properties right now.

- Let's turn to taxes and Mr. Tiritilli will respond first.

One Council candidate has suggested that the town could freeze the property taxes, unless there was a justification for a hike in that tax.

What's your position on tax rates?

Does the property tax rate, which is a 147 per $100 of equalized assessed valuation, do you see a scenario where that particular tax might be raised?

- I don't see a need to necessarily freeze the property taxes.

The real driver for the town's portion of the property tax, which stands at 1.032 right now, is that they've been using property taxes to primarily fund the pensions, our police and our fire pensions.

And so we've had a lot of increases over the years.

When Mr. Koos started, the property tax rate, the multiplier was 42% lower, so we've had a lot of increases over these 18 years that he's been in office, and yet, the pensions have not been properly funded.

He started out at 74 and 78%, and they're down to 43 and 47%.

So, we've been raising the property taxes, and the pension funding has been dropping, dropping, dropping, and I've been saying for years, to the Council, we need to have other mechanisms to fund those things, because this is not enough money and there's no way the property owners are going to be able to pay enough just through property tax to fund these obligations.

Our pensions now are $95 million short.

Again, we were only a couple of million short when he started, so, they've been unwilling to invest other money in the pensions to meet the obligations that we have in front of us.

And so we need to put money in, in that direction, and that'll help keep the property taxes lower - Mr. Koos, your position on property tax rates?

And I'll allow you to respond to the pension question.

- Well, I think the pension question is probably coming from you at a later point.

- [H. Wayne] It will, yes.

- I don't want to mix the questions here.

We're talking about property taxes.

So, the town sets a property tax levy, a flat amount of money, every year.

For the past four years, our levy has been flat.

We have not changed that levy.

That's been the same levy.

Now the assessor is the one that sets the rate, and the rate has gone up.

There's no question of that.

It's also interesting to note, the same period you say that our rate has gone up 42%, cumulative, sorry about that, inflation has gone up 44%, so we're not even keeping up.

- That's the wrong way to look at it.

The inflation increases the EAV, so in theory, you have a flat rate, a multiplier that never changes, because you need more money because of inflation, but inflation has made your property more value, and they should keep pace with each other.

So in theory, once you set that rate multiplier, you should be good, so the increase in the multiplier, coupled with the increase in the EAV of the community, people's property tax bills on average, and of course it's going to vary from property to property, have gone up 136% over that same time period.

So we shouldn't be changing that multiplier at all.

- Let's turn to the question of pensions, and we're talking specifically for the audience's clarification, police and fire pensions, two separate pension payments, that benefits are set by the State of Illinois, but the payment of those pensions are paid through commitment by firefighters and police officers, and by the town of Normal.

So to Mr. Koos first: what is your position on how you're going to handle these increasing payments that are increasing at faster than inflation?

What are you going to do to address that issue, and include in your answer how you have been communicating with state legislators?

- Fair question.

So, the first part on pensions is, this is an Illinois problem.

It's not a Normal problem, a Bloomington problem, a Peoria problem.

Most of what is driving property taxes is the state backing away from funding schools over the years.

65% of Normalites' property tax is schools, and it's because the schools have been underfunded.

Now, there are things that have exacerbated pension payments in the past 10 years or so, and that was the 2006 recession, the low return on pension investments.

Nationwide, pension funds were getting a seven to 10% return on their money, and now they're getting 5% return on their money, and then the third issue is mortality rates.

People are living longer.

So these are all problems that are exacerbating the pension system and everyone in Illinois is dealing with it, and to some extent, every municipality and state government in the United States is dealing with this issue, it is an issue.

So, one of the things that I can do locally is, I can raise taxes to generate more money, I can cut services to generate more money for property taxes, or I can work on economic development in the community to raise the overall EAV and value of the community, to put some downward pressure on that.

And to me, that's the first step I'm going to take, is I'm going to work on economic development to bring more money into the community, to put a downward pressure on taxes.

- Mr. Tiritilli.

- So, I think there's one other important piece that's not on that list, and that is, rearrange our priorities.

So, it would take years through economic development to try and contribute more to the property taxes, and that's not a bad thing, but there's more immediate work that needs to be done, and to me, that's a re-allocation of our existing resources.

We need to take money from the general fund to supplement the money we're using with property taxes.

And there are ways to do that.

So one of them, I already talked about, where if we were financing or refinancing our debt differently, and saving some of that interest, okay, that $2 million we could have saved, could be moved into the pension system.

We can look at things, for example, West College Avenue, which is the worst road in town.

It's in terrible shape.

It needs immediate repair, it's overdue.

And instead of just a simple, straightforward road repair, we're paying $1.4 million to a design firm just for imagination and design work.

To me, that money should be used to fix the roads directly.

So there's a lot of these projects where we're looking at grand things, which again are not necessarily bad, but do we have our priorities in line?

So before we pay $1.4 million to a design firm, let's put some of that money into our pensions, and help fund them that way.

We can do that immediately.

We had a surplus this past year.

We have avenues going forward, where there's some projects that would be nice, but aren't essential, that we can cut, to move that money in and get those pensions on an upward trend right away.

- Let me ask you both to address the second half of that question is, and that's state legislators.

They're the ones who have, in the past, been setting the cost of pensions that the towns have to pay for.

Have you had communication with state legislators?

- I have had communication with state legislators, my state legislators locally, and I'm on the board of the Illinois Municipal League, and it's a huge issue for the Illinois Municipal League.

Frankly, it's a frustrating path, because it has slowed down, but there were so many public sector pension enhancements that every time we started making a gain, the bar would raise, there'd be more money that was needed for the pension system.

I'll give you an example of that very quickly here.

Consolidation of police pensions and consolidation of fire pensions was something that the Illinois Municipal League fought for for years, and we finally got agreement on that and moved it forward, and then the legislature took existing firefighters that were in a Tier 2 pension and moved them up to Tier 1, wiped out the savings.

- A response, Mr. Tiritilli?

- Yeah, I agree, those are good moves.

The current system is unsustainable, and it's the state that needs to change that, going forward.

- You mentioned the West College Avenue rebuild.

Let me ask, that involves Rivian, in part.

You said that you are opposed to that $1.4 million investment in engineering?

- It's not so much the engineering, it's designing what will be a very large, landscaped area out there, it's more than just simple road improvements.

So I'm not opposed to doing that, but the way we're approaching it-- - Just for clarification for the audience, you're not opposed to the rebuild of the road.

- No, not at all, in fact, I want to see it happen sooner, because the current plan is to wait until 2023 to do it.

- And I'll allow Mr. Koos to talk about that rebuild.

- We're doing that as fast as we can.

There's a regulatory process that you have to go through on that.

This is what we're doing.

Initially is called Phase I Engineering.

It's very involved, and involves studies.

That road was designed in the 1970s.

Is that design still adequate for today's use?

Doing roads under a complete streets scenario is something that we're going to look at, and there's public hearings, there's the NEPA process, If I say any more, people will fall asleep, but it's a very convoluted process to do, but it's something you have to do on a major project like that.

- We'll allow Mr. Koos to address the next question first, and that is, should the mayor have the power to issue emergency or executive orders?

- The mayor of Normal has had that power since the 1960s, and this is frankly the first time it was used.

And I think the emphasis is on emergency, and there were certain things that we did that we had to do quickly, because there was so much that we didn't know about where this COVID pandemic was taking us, that we needed to take action quickly.

Most of those actions were followed up by Council action to adopt those going forward, and just about every emergency order that we did, that the Council picked up on, also had a sunset date on it, to be revisited.

- Mr. Tiritilli, same question.

- So, I don't have an objection with those emergency powers existing in the code, but the intention in the code is very clear.

They were supposed to be used on a very short-term basis, 48 hours with a couple of possible extensions, certainly less than a week overall.

Mr. Koos has had these powers coming up on a year now.

So it's not about the executive orders themselves.

It's the idea that we're in a situation where we're still in an emergency mode, where you have the authority to issue executive action.

That was never intended to go for this long, and there are people that have been quite upset by that in the community.

- There's no emergency order that I've issued that's violated a town ordinance or state ordinance, not one.

- Our next question will allow Mr. Tiritilli to address first: what steps would you take as mayor to ensure involvement and fair treatment to diverse groups whether that be by race, gender, age, et cetera?

- To me, the very first one is to open up our public comment policy.

We talked about this at the top of the hour.

The town's history in terms of allowing public comment, access to their officials, is not good.

We had the most restrictive policy in the state for a long time.

There was a rule that said, if you've spoken to Council, you have to wait 45 days before you can come back to another meeting and speak again.

That was ruled illegal by the attorney general.

They changed it just before the ruling came out.

Then we had this restriction that you had to be on topic with the agenda and the attorney general just ruled last month that that was illegal.

We have shut people out of conversation time and again, and we need to open those things up.

People feel frustrated when they feel like their voice isn't being heard, and the town's policies in this regard have been lacking.

People have been asked to stop speaking in public comment.

They've been excluded from addressing their officials.

It's been a violation of the law on behalf of Mr. Koos, and I want to change that.

I want to have a government that says, "Come on in, let's talk, we want to hear from you," because we have a fantastic community with incredible diversity, and people have great ideas, they have real concerns, and we need to be listening to them.

We don't have all the answers, not even the seven people up top.

We need to get that community input, and most importantly, when a decision's made, the people in the community need to feel that their voice was represented well.

And when you exclude people from the conversation, that doesn't happen.

- Let me repeat the question for Mr. Koos.

What steps would you take as mayor to ensure involvement and fair treatment to diverse groups, whether that be by race, gender, age, et cetera?

- This is a very important part of the conversation we had, and was part of the conversation for our comprehensive plan going forward, so we have kind of a saying for our plan is, that Normal is complete, compact, and connected, and complete refers to being a welcoming community, that people who come to our community, regardless of sexual orientation, economic level, race, you're welcome in our community.

You have full rights as a citizen in our community.

We welcome you in our community, we want you there, because this really improves the fabric of our community.

I won't go into the long story on that, but it's one of the reasons Mitsubishi chose Normal over a site in Indiana, is because they said it was a diverse, safe community.

They were bringing a lot of Japanese people into the community and they said, "We feel that we will be welcomed in this community.

"We didn't get the same feeling."

So that's very important that we have that image going out, especially in a community that has a university.

International students coming into our community need to feel safe and welcome in our community.

Now I want to bring up one thing about the public comment issue.

The state of Illinois has never issued anything but a non-binding opinion on our public comments ever.

So the reference that we're doing things that are illegal or broke the law is simply not true.

It is a non-binding opinion.

- Our next question will go to Mr. Koos first.

What can the town do to help citizens who experienced job loss or economic instability during the pandemic?

- There are things that we tried to do as much as we possibly could, and I think we had some good responses and good programs coming out.

We diverted about a half a million dollars of special funds from community block grant dollars to help people with rent assistance, people that were underemployed or unemployed.

We were giving money for rent assistance.

We got $450 million through the federal government to do small business assistance, and most of that money went to smaller businesses, independent restaurants, primarily because restaurants were most hit hard by the pandemic, as well as hotels.

And so we were able to give money in outright grants to help them with COVID-related expenses that they had, getting through this pandemic.

We also instituted a no-shut-off on our water system.

We suspended late fees on our water system for people that fell behind, and we work out payment programs so that people that can't make their payments, we'll extend that out over a longer period of time to help them.

There's more we'd like to do, but we only have certain amount of resources.

We took about a 10% hit in our revenues in COVID.

Now there's another round of funding coming from the federal government now, that may give us an opportunity to take another round at that, but as much as we possibly can to help our citizens who are struggling as a result the pandemic, we're going to do it.

- Mr. Tiritilli.

- Yeah, I agree with those programs, and I was glad to see the community block grant development funds being used in that regard, both for citizens individually, and for businesses.

So, absolutely that was a good thing to do.

But again, some of the programs that we've talked about, if we can put downward pressure on local taxes, be it sales tax, be it property tax, then overall, it's easier for people to make ends meet.

And so that's one of the indirect ways that we can also influence that.

And finally, I would say it would be providing more certainty to the business community.

There's some of the executive orders that were issued, and the way that fines were applied in a couple of restaurants, there were some statements in one direction and then action was taken in a different regard, and I don't think that helped the situation any.

So by having a more consistent policy in terms of administration, that would take a bad situation and not make it worse.

- The question to be answered by you, Mr. Tiritilli first, is the late Roger Mudd once asked the late Ted Kennedy, "Why do you want to be president?"

So I will paraphrase, and say, "Why do you want to be mayor of the town of Normal?"

- I want to give people better representation, to stand up for their voices that haven't been heard all these years, and to bring a new set of priorities to Normal.

We've had 18 years under Mayor Koos.

We've had some great things happen, but we've had some basic concerns that I think we need to do a lot better on.

Those are the levels of taxation, the quality of our infrastructure, and certainly the way that we represent the people in this community and the broader spectrum of concerns that we have.

- [H. Wayne] The same question to you, Mr. Koos.

Why do you want to remain mayor of the town of Normal?

- Well, I'll start by saying there's common agreement.

We can always do better, there's no question of that.

I'm a lifelong resident of the community.

My mantra is, you don't just live in great communities, you help to make great communities, to build great communities, and when you see a place that is special in the country, a city, for instance, it's because there were people there that did the heavy lifting to make it that way.

And I have a passion for that, I always have, in my entire adult life, I've been a volunteer for the community.

I won't go into the things over the years that I've done, but I've always been a volunteer to make the place I live a better place.

And that's a driving principle for me.

- Did you want to add to that, Mr. Tiritilli?

- [Marc] No, I think we're good.

- Oh, okay.

We have come down to the point where we can allow about 120 seconds each for closing remarks.

And in your closing remarks, you may, you are allowed to refer to other topics that we've already brought up, in addition to bringing up anything new that you would want to mention.

Because you started the round with answering first, Mr. Tiritilli, we will allow Mr. Koos to be the first for a closing statement.

- So, I just, I feel so strongly about my community, the love for my community, and I still have passion and vision for the community.

I've been a collaborative mayor in the community.

My philosophy is things don't get done by executive order, or by forcing things on people, they get done by consensus, and the Town of Normal Council has always been about that consensus.

I see so much opportunity in my community.

We have so many key pieces right now: Illinois State University, the amazing students that come through our community.

How do we capture those students?

How do we keep them in our community?

How do we give them the environment that they want?

So these are, these are questions that I'm asking myself all the time and things that I have to look at going forward.

Rivian landing in our community is simply amazing, and there's so much we can leverage off of that.

So I guess what I'm saying here, is I have such optimism for my community, and the people in it who help the Council do the work that we do, it's just an amazing place.

And so I'm excited for going forward, and we've got an election on April 6th, and I'm asking for your vote on or before.

Please vote for me.

- And the same, approximately two minutes for you, Mr. Tiritilli.

- So after 18 years, I think it's time for new priorities in Normal.

We have a lot to celebrate.

We do have a lot of great things about this community.

Uptown is going to be here after this election.

Rivian is going to be here after this election, but it's about the other things that we can improve on.

We need to fix the roads.

At the current rate of repair, it's going to take over 300 years to resurface all of our roads.

We can do better than that.

Property tax rates have risen 42%, because we're unwilling to fund our pensions with other resources, and we can do better than that.

People have felt unrepresented in their government.

They've raised concerns, whether it's about Blackstone trails, 1 Normal Plaza, the mural in Uptown, and those voices have been excluded, and people are frustrated, and we can do better than that.

There's a lot to love about Normal.

I love this community.

I have a history as an educator, as a problem-solver in industry, and I bring that mindset to the business that comes before the Council.

So it's an important election.

It was a close election last time, every vote counts.

I encourage people to do their research, get to know your candidates, and cast your vote for the one that best represents your views.

That's the way that your voice is truly heard.

So the election is April 6th, please come on out and vote.

- And we've heard from both candidates for mayor of the Town of Normal, the incumbent Chris Koos, and the challenger, Marc Tiritilli.

And you have both asked for people to vote, and I will repeat that request.

Please, go to the polls.

It's important that you cast a ballot, whether that be tomorrow or on April the sixth.

And with that, I say thank you to Mayor Chris Koos of the Town of Normal.

- Thank you.

- [H. Wayne] And to the challenger, Marc Tiritilli, thank you for joining us on At Issue.

- Thank you.

- And we thank you for joining us for the conversation.

We always appreciate your visiting with us on At Issue, and we'll be back next time, with more conversation.

Please join us then.

(energetic music)