LaSalle Insider

I awoke early wednesday morning  to join the area’s mayors for a breakfast buffet at Mario’s Maples Supper Club hosted by IVAC.  The gathering was part of their ongoing breakfast seminars.  This was the last for the season and is usually well attended.  The topic was the “State of the Illinois Valley” and is  a forum for the local Mayors to give us their plans for their respective cities.  This year LaSalle, Peru, Spring Valley and Utica were represented.  All by their mayor’s with the exception of Spring Valley.  Newly elected Mayor Cliff Banks was off on a fishing trip.  I have to say that for the most part that the majority of the audience probably wished they were off fishing as well.

Spring Valley’s economic director, Deb Ladgenski did a very good job of entertaining the audience with a quiz she designed to point out how many of our lives in the Valley are impacted by the businesses located in her city. From St. Margaret’s Hospital to Walmart’s distribution center , the number of people connected to these two operations alone number in the thousands in the Illinois Valley.  It was an informative and  a well put together speech.

However it did little to give us  a view on the state of her city.   She was, however, the highpoint of the seminar.  Mayors Grove and Harl appeared to not be “ready for prime time”  Maybe it was the time of day (7:30AM) or the fact that they both have day jobs to deal with later but their talks left much to be desired.

First, Mayor Grove talked about Walmart being a good business partner in the area. Fair enough but we were looking for his thoughts on LaSalle’s current state and where he plans on taking this city in the coming years. His only contributions in that vain were that LaSalle would share equipment with the surrounding cities so as to lessen the costs of duplicating equipment used on part time basis and his continual plan to hire an economic director to bring businesses to LaSalle.

Mayor Harl told us about his daily schedule of arriving at city hall at 5:3oa.m.  leaving for his day job as a crane operator at 7:30 than returning to city hall around 3:00pm to work on city business till about 7:30pm.  He than tries to rest up to do the same thing the following day. He let us know that the job  of running Peru takes a lot of work.  Again no real insight on the plans for Peru’s immediate future.  Scotty, I love ya, but you had to know what you were getting into before you ran for the office.

Finally Mayor Esmond told us of how people in Utica don’t really like much change, which was the reason for his re-election as mayor.  I will give Mr. E credit though, he was the only area representative to tell us part of his plan for utica’s future.  He envisions a civic center north of Route 80 to host concerts and expositions, something on a line with McCormick Place but on a smaller scale.  This, if he can convince investors that “if they build it we will come!”

All in all, the strongest performance was probably the coffee which I consumed in large quantities to stay awake during the talks.

In all seriousness, I think what the attendees learned was that as far as LaSalle and Peru goes, we will have to go slowly with our new mayors until they fully comprehend the job at hand.  I think they are both realizing the job entails more than they originally thought.  Mayor Esmond is more comfortable in his position having been there for 8 years.  As far as Mayor Banks goes, I have not had the opportunity to see him in action yet but he has already had some challenges in his own way (see appointing a police chief).  

oh, and one last thing, I thought the eggs were great and the bacon I had was cooked just the way I like it, crispy!  Good job Mario…