Galesburg Aldermen remained subdued and fairly apolitical at last night’s meeting on the eve of an election where up to 3 seats could change hands.
That’s why it might have been all the more surprising that Sixth Ward Alderman Wayne Allen made impassioned remarks defending City Manager Todd Thompson.
Allen seemed, largely, to be addressing remarks made in public comment two weeks ago by Catherine Wiley-Parkin.
Wiley-Parkin implored the Council to investigate Thompson’s handling of former HR Director David Jones, who recently lost a $100,000 court judgment against a city employee.
Allen gave Thompson credit for aiding in expansions at Thrushwood Farms and Midstate Manufacturing.
He also said Thompson was instrumental in starting the Knox County Area Partnership for Economic Development and balancing the budget for over a decade.
“A few people are so bent on finding something that he’s done wrong and they can’t find it and so they move on to the next thing, then they move on to the employees and say ‘well, some of the employees are being mistreated,'” Allen said. “I guess I would ask everybody in the audience, just what the heck are these people doing to our city manager if it’s not mistreatment?”
Almost a year ago to the day Allen gave a similar speech defending Thompson, before Aldermen voted to extend the City Manager’s contract to 2020, with Angela Bastian and Wayne Dennis opposed.
On the agenda, Galesburg City Council had an ordinance on first reading last night that aims to free up some parking downtown in the corridor of Mulberry and Seminary Streets.
The proposal is to make eight spots in Parking Lot I, north of the Amtrak Depot, four-hour parking.
Thompson says currently a lot of these spaces are frequently used by train passengers for long-term parking.
“And there’s another lot to the south which sees very little use, it has about 16 spots. It was really built for Amtrak long-term parking as well. So, the thought is to create these four-hour spots to serve the businesses and Discovery Depot in the area and we’ll put up some additional signage that will direct people down to the longer-term parking.”
Denise Bradburn told the council that she’s glad to see them consider the time-limited parking spaces, at least as a temporary fix.
Bradburn is Executive Director of the Discovery Depot, which is just North across the street from the parking spots.
She says the children’s museum’s 19 spaces are usually filled within 30 minutes of opening, along with the fairly recent additions of Cornucopia, Jimmy’s Pizza, Cooks and Company and Prairie Players that are making the parking crunch a frequent complaint.
