How desparate or ignorant is Galesburg?

There is no question that the viability of Galesburg as a city is at stake. This community faces numerous chal-lenges. Some are the result of economic changes beyond our control, but most can be traced to bad or ques-tionable deci-sions made by our leadership.

Permitting Aluminum Castings, or any potential Galesburg employer, to do whatever they wish solely based upon the imme-diate prospect of main-taining or creating a few local jobs and without consid-er-ation of the long-term impli-ca-tions of those deci-sions is a sign of desper-ation and igno-rance — not an example of leadership.

Over the past two decades or more Galesburg has hemor-rhaged both jobs and popu-lation — a trend that is critical to reverse if the community is to survive. However, a major component of those bad deci-sions that have contributed to the community’s present dilemma has been repeated over and over again, our lead-ership regu-larly make hasty and reactive deci-sions based solely on perceived short-term effects with little or no thought to the longer term impli-ca-tions of those decisions.

Aluminum Castings’ manu-fac-turing plant sits on the corner of South Kellogg and South Streets at the southern edge of downtown Galesburg. The plant is currently zoned M-1 or light manu-fac-turing but the companies manu-fac-turing process is not a legal use in this zoning clas-si-fi-cation. The company produces aluminum cast mate-rials by melting the metal into a liquid state and pouring it into molds made of sand. As the liquid cools and hardens the molds are removed. This is clas-sified as heavy manu-fac-turing and is normally permitted only in areas zoned for heavy manu-fac-turing or M-2.

There is little question that such a manu-fac-turing oper-ation on the edge of downtown and adjacent to Knox College is inap-pro-pri-ately located. This is why zoning exists after all. But due to the oper-ation being present since 1964 it has been grandfathered-in as a legal non-conforming use. Now that the company wants to expand production into new space recently constructed puta-tively to serve as ware-house space the zoning once again becomes an issue. The grand-fa-thering does not auto-mat-i-cally extend to expansion of the business and that is why the company initially sought to have the area rezoned to M-2 or heavy industrial.

Both the city admin-is-tration and the Planing and Zoning Commission recog-nized how inap-pro-priate such rezoning would be in this location. In fact at last Monday’s Galesburg City Council meeting when this issue was being discussed mayor Sal Garza acknowl-edged that city offi-cials attempted to encourage Aluminum Castings to relocate their facil-ities to appro-pri-ately zoned available loca-tions else-where in Galesburg before the company constructed the so-called ware-house space but company offi-cials refused. In hind-sight it now seems probable that iden-ti-fying the new building as “ware-house space” was but a conve-nient ruse to disguise the real intent until after the investment was made.

Wishing to accom-modate Aluminum Castings without re-zoning the area to M-2 the city has offered instead to modify the M-1 zoning clas-si-fi-cation to permit casting oper-a-tions such as aluminum casting to be a conditional-use under the M-1 zoning clas-si-fi-cation. This would become an extreme example of spot zoning to permit an oper-ation that has no business existing on the edge of downtown Galesburg to expand and create a few more jobs. This illus-trates the desper-ation of city offi-cials to job oppor-tu-nities in Galesburg at any cost.

Also at last Monday nights’ city council meeting alderman Peter Schwartzman had the temerity to question this zoning change during first reading of the ordi-nance. While neither the mayor nor anyone else among city offi-cials or council members acknowl-edged it Schwartzman is uniquely qual-ified to raise such ques-tions. Schwartzman’s concerns extend beyond the mere appro-pri-ateness of such a manu-fac-turing oper-ation being located on the edge of downtown to issues of whether or not Aluminum Castings current and antic-i-pated future oper-a-tions may pose envi-ron-mental air quality issues.