The Peoria Heights Village Board emerged from a recent planning retreat with new vision and mission statements, strategic goals and an action plan, but most of all with a renewed sense of collective purpose.
Board members and other community leaders met with a facilitator – Peoria County Administrator Scott Sorrel – for several hours in June to discuss the community’s challenges and to come up with a framework for how best to address them. That planning session came on the heels of a long-term comprehensive plan adopted late last spring that was more than a year in the making and gives the Heights a blueprint for growth over the next 20 years.
“You plan the work and you work the plan,” said Mayor Michael Phelan. “With an abundance of local input, we now have a very good sense of where we’d like to take the community. We really feel like we’ve put ourselves in a good position and that we’re poised to accomplish some great things.
“I think many of us will look back on this moment 20 years from now with great pride in recognizing that this is where it all started.”
While the Heights has made great strides over the last several years, specifically in economic development and budget stability, the planning session and related due diligence did uncover multiple areas of concern. Among them are continued population loss, relatively high property taxes, income disparity, a dearth of housing inventory to meet market demands, a high percentage of rental property, a lack of neighborhood cohesion and identity, and the absence of an annual capital budget.
Generally speaking, board members emphasized that after years of concentrating on commercial growth, they would like to pivot to the residential neighborhoods and how to make them healthier.
To that end, the Village Board unanimously adopted a new vision statement on Saturday, Aug. 28, which reads as follows:
“The Village of Peoria Heights is the best small town to live, work, play, learn, grow a business, and stay. We are a thriving community.”
In practice, what that means is perpetuating a small-town atmosphere with big-city amenities, providing good value for residents’ investment in taxes, prioritizing infrastructure, keeping the Heights safe, embracing the arts, offering a greater array of housing choices, nurturing local businesses, prioritizing green space and recreational opportunities, preparing the leaders of tomorrow, and engaging residents with their government.
The Board also established goals, putting “strong neighborhoods” at the top, followed by a “thriving business community and economy,” citizen and customer focus, and partnering with other core stakeholders for community success.
Among the most immediate and concrete actions to come out of the planning session will be the hiring of a community development director to act as a liaison to the neighborhoods and a facilitator for their improvement. A top priority for that person will be to improve housing stock in the Village in order to attract families, young professionals and retirees, to increase enrollment in Peoria Heights School District 325, and to elevate property values. More aggressive pursuit of grant opportunities for housing rehabilitation purposes will be an essential part of that job. Another goal is the creation of more neighborhood associations with the idea of promoting safety, investment, better maintenance and brand identity.
In terms of economic health, getting a local hotel built is near the top of the Village Board’s list, as is an update of the zoning code to better communicate expectations to developers and extending the TIF and Business Development districts to the riverfront corridor along Galena Road.
On the partnership front, Village Hall wishes to pursue more dialogue with the school district, which is considered especially critical to the future of the Heights. Beyond that, fostering relationships with the upper Peoria Lake communities is off to a promising start and needs further attention.